Marcus’ chest squeezed. “I did.”
They marched up to the house together.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sebastian was too tense to sit, so he took up a position next to Nial’s chair, spread his feet and hid his fists behind his back. There had been too much happening in the last two hours and this thing with Dominic was just the icing on the cake. A deaf man who could hear….
Everyone was arranged around the living room in a rough semi-circle, lining the walls, leaving a large space in the middle of the room open. Kate sat on the other big lounge chair, the one matching Kurshid’s. Garrett and Roman were resting on either arm. Garrett was holding Kate’s hand.
Winter sat on the sideboard, her feet up, her knees hugging her chest, with her arms around them. She was probably feeling guilty and afraid right now. What had she been thinking, fucking around with live DNA? If the worst of it was that Dominic could scan personal thoughts while he was “listening” to people, she should consider herself lucky and warned at the same time.
Dominic was standing at the kitchen door, his shoulder against the frame. He was hugging himself, a small smile playing on his lips. Sebastian mentally sighed.
Kurshid and her bruiser were where they had originally stationed themselves. They hadn’t moved from there in the last three hours.
The front door opened, then closed a few seconds later. Shadows moved across the sun-lit tiles. Then Rick and Marcus Anderson appeared. They showed no surprise at the assembly of people in the room. Anderson was carrying what looked like a cooler over his shoulder.
They both stepped into the center of the room. Anderson put the cooler down.
“Madam,” Rick said formally, and gave a graceful nod of his head in acknowledgement. “Nathanial,” he added coolly.
“You know why we’re all here,” Nathanial said.
“Of course,” Rick replied. “So you might save us all a tedious time by actually not speaking it aloud. There has been a development.”
“You start a civil war and consider it not worth talking about?” Nial asked.
“No war has started yet, and it will not start if you would only listen to me.”
Anderson touched the back of Cyneric’s shoulder. Sebastian wouldn’t have seen it if he had not been standing at an angle to them. Startled, Sebastian considered the touch. Was he warning Rick? Reassuring him? It didn’t matter – the touch itself forced Sebastian to reconsider the animosity he thought existed between them.
Common enemies made uneasy allies. Both Nial and he had guessed that Marcus Anderson was helping Rick, but Sebastian had assumed it was a reluctant cooperation. He recalled the pair of them propped against the back of Rick’s car, after the explosion. They had both looked stiff with shock and grief, two strangers with the only connection between them now dead.
Perhaps they had found a way to keep the connection alive.
Kurshid rested her hand on Nial’s knee. It had the effect of silencing him. “Cyneric, my old friend,” she said, her voice melodious. “You have always acted in good judgment, for as long as I’ve known you. But these people and many others are worried. They do not understand how events unfold the way you do. Please explain it to them.”
“Of course, madam,” Rick said. He inclined his head toward her.
The sound of a phone ringing was very loud in the room. Anderson reached into his pocket. “Sorry,” he muttered and answered it. He moved away from Cyneric, closer to the doorway into the front passage, turning his back to the room. “Casper, hi. This isn’t a good….What?....You’re not bullshitting me, are you?...Fuck. No, I’m on my way.” He disconnected and looked at Rick, who had turned to face him. “My house is on fire,” he said in a monotone.
Sebastian saw a remarkable thing then. Fear showed on Rick’s face. It was momentary, and he pulled himself together quickly. Then Sebastian processed what Marcus had said. His house was burning. Fire.
Rick spun back to look at Nial. “It is vital we go back there at once. The police and the fire department do not know what they are dealing with.”
“What are they dealing with?” Nial asked.
Rick picked up the cooler on the floor and placed it on Nial’s knees. “Guard this like it was liquid TNT and nitroglycerin combined, for it is.”
“Rick,” Marcus called urgently, moving toward the door.
“Coming,” Rick said shortly. He looked back at Nial. “This is the League hitting back,” he said quickly. “They don’t want to start a war any more than you do, so they’re making it personal.” He shook his head. “No, it’s been personal all the time.”
“Your revenge stops here, Rick!” Nial called after him as he strode across the room, picking out his car key from the ring as he went.
Rick’s response was the slamming of the front door.
Everyone in the room seemed to shift in reaction. Nial stood up and placed the cooler on the chair. “Sebastian, Roman, follow them to Anderson’s house. There’s more at work here than petty revenge. Find out what it is.”
Sebastian glanced at Roman, who stood and dug in his pocket for keys. He turned and kissed Kate on the cheek, while Nial zipped open the cooler and flipped back the lid.
Nial stepped back, looking down at the contents. Sebastian leaned over and looked, too. A wine bottle, packed in with what looked like kitchen towels. “What is it?” he asked.
“Some kind of liquid explosive.” Nial closed the lid on it. “That explains the fires. If Marcus has it stored at his house, then they’re worried it will explode in the fire. Be careful,” he added, glancing at Sebastian. “This stuff kills vampires.”
Sebastian opened his mouth to ask how he knew that.
“No bodies, no clothing, no personal accessories found at the scene,” Winter murmured. She had crept up next to him. “That means they burned to ashes. All of them—nothing was left, not even their clothing.”
“What is this shit?” Sebastian breathed.
“Go and find out,” Nial told him.
Roman was standing at the door. Sebastian hurried over to him. “Figure you can beat Rick back there?”
“Not even with a Porsche,” he replied. “But from the sound of it, I don’t think I want to be there first.” He headed for the door.
Sebastian followed.
* * * * *
There was very little left of the wood-framed house by the time they got back to Malibu. The fire had consumed everything from the ground up.
The fire chief wouldn’t let them near the house, and Marcus couldn’t tell them the real reason why it was imperative they be given access. Rick could see frustration and fear tearing at him, and stepped up beside him. “It’s a matter of state security,” he said.
“And you are?” the chief asked, turning his soot and sweat covered face to look at him.
Rick glanced at Marcus. He had given him the hint he needed. It was up to him to take it from there.
Marcus had understood. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his ID badge. “CIA,” he said. “There are things in the basement that I need to secure at the earliest possible moment.”
The chief shook his head, the chin strap of his helmet swinging. “No one is going into that basement. It’s only got a half-wall.”
“So?” Marcus asked, baffled.
“The concrete only rises halfway up the wall,” Rick told him. “The fire is eating the studs inside the top half of the wall. They’re waiting for it to collapse.”
“Your friend got it in one,” the chief said. “You’d better listen to him.” He shook his head. “Gotta be a pretty old house. I haven’t seen a basement in years.”
“It is old,” Marcus said. “It was one of the original houses on the beach.”
“Well, there goes another piece of history then.” The chief curled up his lip and walked away.
Marcus turned and watched the ruins of his house smolder and smoke. So did Rick. “What might happen when all that steel drops into the basement?�
�� he asked quietly.
“Possibly nothing,” Marcus replied. “It’s stored in a fireproof cabinet. It’s the heat I’m worried about. There are some incendiary chemicals down there. If they catch fire….”
But the fire fighters spent the next two hours spraying fire retardant on the walls, cooling them down and putting out whatever fire remained, while the joists and walls groaned and shifted, but didn’t collapse.
Rick listened to the timbers shifting and leaned toward Marcus, where he was sitting on the doorstep of the fire truck, the closest they were allowed to get. “The steel…it’s keeping the fire out of the basement,” he murmured. “If they douse the walls, then it will stay intact.”
Marcus nodded.
Another hour passed and the sun was high overhead when the fire chief found them once more. “You can go in on two conditions,” he said. “You sign a waiver against personal injury, and you go down there with two of my guys.” He held out a clipboard.
Marcus took the board and scribbled his signature. Rick did the same, making his completely illegible.
The chief whistled and waved his arm. Two fire fighters jogged over. “Take these two down into the basement and try to bring them out in one piece. Get them some boots and a jacket each.”
One of the fire fighters jerked his head. “This way.”
Once they were kitted out with boots and the heavy fire retardant coats, the two fire fighters walked them over the groaning floor joists, insisting they follow their steps exactly. The basement door was lying over the top of the joists. The frame that had once held it in place was gone.
The stairwell that had been behind the door was like a black hole, the iron stairs dark with soot.
“Watch your step,” one of the two guides said and made his way down the stairs. He switched on a powerful flashlight as he went. Marcus and Rick followed him down, and the second guide was the tail.
Three steps from the bottom, water swirled darkly, oily highlights picking up the flashlight beam and sparkly with a rainbow of colors. Unnamable objects bobbed and glided about in the water.
The firefighter stepped into the muck without hesitation, climbing down the last two steps with his hand on the rail. He moved forward a few steps, playing the flashlight around the room, up at the ceiling, and along the walls. Then he whistled. “Looks like someone was here before.”
Marcus sloshed through the water to the firefighter’s side and Rick climbed down the last of the steps.
The surfaces of the two long benches were a good two feet above the water level. The ceiling and walls were intact, but showed signs of bulging and warping, especially in the top half of the walls.
Rick had noticed that Marcus was a fastidiously tidy worker. His benches had been clean and shining, the instruments maintained and lined up in neat rows. None of that precision remained. Someone had systematically destroyed every instrument on the benches, and dashed all the tools and glassware to the floor. The beam of the flashlight picked up broken shards glinting under the water. Beakers, flasks, pipettes…it was all smashed.
Marcus turned to look at the cabinet where the pyrrhus was stored. One door stood ajar, buckled and mangled where the lock had been. He slogged through the water to the cabinet and wrenched open the other door. Rick could see from where he stood that the cabinet was empty.
Marcus hung his head for a moment.
“I think we’ve seen enough,” Rick told their two guides. “Marcus, let’s go.”
Marcus trudged back to the stairs. His face was blank and expressionless. The firefighter stepped aside and let him climb up. As he passed him, Rick patted his shoulder and wasn’t surprised to feel it trembling.
* * * * *
There was yet another surprise waiting for them by the time they got back to Rick’s car. Sebastian and Roman were leaning against the car, waiting for them.
“Did you find it?” Sebastian asked, straightening up.
Marcus shook his head. He knew what Sebastian was asking, but he couldn’t give voice to the disaster just yet.
“It’s called pyrrhus,” Rick said. “Someone cleaned out the entire stockpile before they set light to the house. They didn’t realize the basement walls were steel. They were counting on the fire hiding their theft.”
Roman was still leaning against the front of the car, his arms crossed. “I checked with the neighbors and around the area. There were three men seen looking in the windows of the house, around nine a.m.”
They had barely left the house at nine. “Fuck,” Marcus muttered. “They were watching. They saw us leave.”
“The flames were seen not long after that,” Sebastian said. “We got descriptions. It sounds a lot like one of them was Verlyn Zink.”
“’Bald, small and bad teeth,’” Roman quoted.
“That would be him,” Rick agreed.
“Who is Verlyn Zink?” Marcus asked. “League?”
Rick nodded.
“Then they have all of it, and they destroyed the lab, so I have no way to make more. There was two hundred and forty liters in that cabinet.”
“What would two hundred and forty liters do?” Roman asked.
“The four liters sitting back at Nial’s house could level half a city block. You work it out,” Marcus told them.
Roman stood up, digging for keys. “That’s something Nial needs to know.”
“Not just Nial,” Sebastian added. “This shifts everything around. The Pro Libertatus should know what the League has got.”
“In addition to the Blood Stone,” Roman said. He shook his head. “Heru could kill the planet with those two things alone.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rick unlocked the door and pushed it open and stepped aside. “Go in,” he told Marcus.
Marcus hefted the grocery bag, shifting it to the other arm, and stepped inside. He looked around curiously. “You said this is Roman’s apartment?”
“He lived here before he moved in with Garrett and Kate.” Rick dropped his keys onto a small shelf next to the front door and shut the door.
“You guys don’t stint yourselves much, do you?”
“Generally, no,” Rick told him. “The money keeps piling up. We have to do something with it, or taxes would send us broke.”
Marcus blinked. He hadn’t thought of that. Taxes. They would have to pay taxes, if they were posing as human. “Hope you have a good tax accountant,” he said.
“The best. He’s been honing his trade for three centuries.” Rick smiled.
Marcus moved over to the peninsular bar that separated the kitchen from the small dining area and put the bag of food on it. He looked around. Everything was neat and tidy. Of course. The kitchen looked untouched.
“You should make yourself at home,” Rick said, behind him. “You are most likely to be here a while. I understand your insurance companies can take their time settling matters.”
Marcus turned to face him. “Do you mind?” he asked.
Rick crossed the floor to stand in front of him. “I’m sorry about your house, Marcus.”
Marcus swallowed. “I care more about the pyrrhus.”
Rick shook his head. “You’re worried about the pyrrhus. But you lost your home today. That’s the more important matter. I don’t care how long you have to stay here.”
“You don’t care that I’m here?”
Rick’s jaw rippled. “That’s a different matter.”
Marcus looked around the room one more time. “Bedroom and bathroom upstairs?” he guessed.
Rick nodded.
“I need a shower,” Marcus told him. “I have to wash some of this day away before I can think.”
Rick stepped back. “If you want to risk my cooking, I’ll make that steak for you while you’re doing that.”
Marcus snorted. “Your cooking is probably better than mine. I’m so hungry I could eat it raw. Do your worst.”
He trudged upstairs and opened doors, figuring out the layout. There were two bat
hrooms to pick from. “Ah, screw it,” he muttered and walked through the big main bedroom to the ensuite. He didn’t care what it said that he was using Rick’s private bathroom. He had a feeling Rick wouldn’t give a damn, either.
The shower was heavenly. Hot, with good water pressure and there was a ton of room in the cubicle. Marcus sat on the tiles and let the water beat down on his head and shoulders and tried not to think about the pyrrhus and what could be done with it if someone truly maniacal got their hands on it.
Rick banged on the stall door and Marcus slid it aside a few inches and peered out at him. Rick held up Marcus’ cellphone.
Marcus looked at the puddle of denim he’d left on the floor. Rick must have fished it out of his jeans pocket.
“What’s your PIN?” Rick asked.
Marcus told him. Rick punched it in, then swiped a couple of times. He nodded and held out not just Marcus’ phone, but his own, too, holding them side by side. “You just got a text message. So did I,” he said.
Marcus turned his head so the water wasn’t splashing in his face, and read the screens.
Help me! 587-45681 Forrest. Both messages were identical.
He looked at the sender ID line. It was a raw cellphone number. One he recognized. He looked up at Rick, his stomach rolling. “It can’t be her,” he whispered.
“It’s her burner phone,” Rick said. “But anyone could have sent the message.”
“Heru?” Marcus asked.
Rick sat on the floor and crossed his legs. “Probably.”
“Then this is a trap.” The sick feeling eased and his hope died. “He has to know we’d figure that out.”
Rick put Marcus’ phone down, and tapped his thumbs on his own screen, writing a message. “He does,” he said flatly. “Which means that the trap has to be diabolical. He’s so confident that we won’t be able to escape the trap that he doesn’t care if we know it’s a trap going in.”
Marcus got up and turned off the water with an angry wrench of his wrist. “Ilaria is dead,” he said flatly. “Why would we dive down his hole? Why do we even care?”
Rick looked up as Marcus stepped out of the shower and reached for the big, luxurious towel hanging on the hook on the wall. “Because if there is even the slightest chance she might be alive, I would walk through pyrrhus aflame to release her.” Rick dropped his gaze back to his cellphone. “So would you.”
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 30
