by M. J. Scott
“I’m trying to get you permission but you just turning up there isn’t going to help persuade them. Play by the rules, Ash. It’s quicker in the long run.”
The problem with the long run was that Rhi might not survive it. She hadn’t exactly been holding on to sanity with both hands when we’d left her. I’d been unable to do anything to save Julie or my sister from Tate. Damned if I was letting Rhi go without a fight. Rules or no rules.
“I’m sorry, Dan, but no. This isn’t as simple as that. This is personal. Rhi’s the closest thing I’ve had to a little sister since I lost Julie and my family. I have to help her.”
“I’m your family too,” he said. “Don’t you trust me to help you?”
He put his hand on mine and for a breath I let myself just be still. Everything seemed better just because skin met skin. But, just like the desire Esteban had evoked, I couldn’t let the physical reaction I had to Dan sway me. Lust didn’t outweigh my ties of loyalty to Rhi. Neither did love. I loved them both. But right now, Dan could take care of himself so my choice was simple.
Rhi needed me.
Dan would forgive me—I hoped.
“I’ll give you a couple more hours,” I said finally. I owed Dan that much. “But then I’m going to Grayson.”
He moved his hand and, as the warmth faded from my skin, I watched his eyes turn silver glass. “Don’t do anything stupid, Ash.”
“I’m not going to. It’s not like I can attack Grayson with a revolver and break her out of there. I’m just going to see her. I’ll camp out on the damned doorstep if I have to.”
“Give me until midnight,” he asked.
That was six hours away. Six hours Rhi would be alone and scared and out of control. “We’ll see,” I said. “Now, let me get back to work.”
“There’s something I need you to do first.”
“What?”
“May I?” He gestured at my keyboard and I rolled my chair back so he could get in.
With a few quick keystrokes he pulled up some sort of photo database.
“What’s this?”
“These are all the images of dark-haired women from Maelstrom’s security cameras that night. See if you can find your mystery vamp.”
I scrolled through the images. They were grainy and the lighting was weird. After a couple of minutes of nothing that rang any bells, I started to wonder if every woman who went to Maelstrom had dark hair. It felt like I’d looked at hundreds of pictures already. “How many of these are there?”
“About three hundred.”
Seems Seattle wasn’t lacking in vampire freaks. I started scrolling the pictures again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Wait. Dark lips smiled out of the screen. “Her.”
“Are you sure?”
I leaned closer, stared at the eyes in the photo. Even in yanked-from-security-camera grainy resolution they were creepy. Dark. Empty. Soulless. Yep. That was her all right. “Positive.”
Dan smiled. “Great. We’ll run her through the FBI and police databases and I’ll get the guys to redo the search on the tapes, see if they got an image of the guy with her. Remember, don’t do anything stupid.”
I didn’t watch Dan leave. Despite my success at identifying the woman’s picture, I couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding. Finding her picture meant we’d hopefully find the name of the crazy vampire out to get us this time. Knowing the name didn’t make the fact there was a crazy vampire out to get us any easier to deal with. It seemed the harder I tried to hold onto normality, the quicker it fell to pieces.
So maybe I needed to stop trying. Embrace being different. Maybe the only thing that would let me stop these people would be to play the game the way they did.
Only thing was, in Dan’s world, even being different had rules. Lines you didn’t cross. Black and white. If I started coloring outside those lines, I wasn’t sure he would follow me bond or no bond.
With a sigh, I turned back to my computer and the paperwork on Esteban’s accounts. At seven, I tried to log-on to the accounts, only to be rewarded with a very satisfying ‘Access denied’ message. Hopefully Smith would have the same experience if he tried siphoning out more funds.
Esme arrived back from the base around nine. She let me interrogate her about Rhi but she didn’t have much more to add to what I already knew. Marco’s phone, when I tried all the numbers I had for him, was diverted to a very polite answering service that didn’t offer anything more than “Yes, ma’am, I’ll pass on that message and all your others.”
Finally I reached frustration overload. Exhaustion kicked in with a vengeance. “I’m going home to get some sleep and grab some stuff,” I said to Esme. “Tell Dan I’ll check in at midnight.” He hadn’t come to speak to me again so I had to assume so far the picture of our mystery vampire hadn’t resulted in any hits on the database searches.
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk to him yourself?”
I glanced down the line of cubicles to Dan’s office. I could just see his head bent over something on his desk. He was wearing a headset and talking to someone. Hopefully about Rhi. I didn’t want to interrupt him or, if I was really honest, let myself in for another argument. “No. He can call me when he’s done.”
Esme’s perfectly glossed lips pressed together. She was worried. About me? About Dan and me? About the case? I couldn’t face getting into it with her just now.
“Look, I’m going straight home, I promise.” I held up two fingers. “And I’m telling Andy, so he and his guys can follow me. Scout’s honor and everything.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Were you a scout?”
“No, I was a mathlete. But mathletes don’t have cool salutes.” I smiled, trying to convince her everything was fine. “Now, I’m wrecked and you must be too. I’ll see you later.”
* * *
I spent most of the cab ride home in a semi-daze, jolting in and out of a half-asleep state that made everything seem distant and floaty. I had one hand in the pocket of my jacket, fingers rubbing over the little black panic button without really registering it. In my more awake moments, I checked that Andy was following me and his black SUV was there every time.
As the cab pulled up in front of my house, I spotted the second SUV—the rest of the detail Andy had sent ahead—parked half a block down. I resisted the temptation to wave at them out of the window.
My cell rang as I paid the driver and I fumbled for it with my left hand. I’d stashed it in my jacket pocket too, wanting to be able to get to it fast if Dan called. I looked at the display. Dan.
Maybe with news of Rhi. But even as I went to hit receive, another wave of exhaustion washed over me and I changed my mind. I desperately needed some sleep. Werewolf energy only took you so far. Whatever Dan wanted could wait an hour.
Andy opened the door for me and I climbed out of the cab and followed him up my front path. I stumbled up the porch steps, searching for my keys before I realized Andy had a set and was already at the door. The phone rang again as the door swung open.
I reached for it as Andy went inside. I knew enough to wait for his all clear at least. But before I could answer, there was a strange muffled sound followed by a thump.
“Andy!” I yelled, and dropped the phone as I went for my gun with one hand and the panic button with the other. Something shoved me from behind hard and I was three feet inside the house before the smell registered.
Vampires. And blood. A lot of blood.
I jerked my gun up but a light blazed to life and the vampire from the woods stepped forward and suddenly I was frozen again.
“Hello, puppy,” she said. “So nice of you to join us.” I just had time to catch sight of Andy sprawled on the floor behind her but then she pointed a finger at me, pain seared through my head, and the world blacked out.
* * *
My brains felt like they’d been scrambled. With something sharp and pointy. Every part of me voted for staying still and going back to sleep until the stabbing sensations went aw
ay.
It took a few seconds to work out why I felt so strange but then I remembered the vampires. And registered that I was sitting up, not lying down. Worse, whatever I was sitting on was moving. My head rested on something thin and soft but behind that metal vibrated. I cracked my eyes open, just a little.
I was in the back of some sort of vehicle. Something big. I smelled diesel, not gasoline. My hands and feet were bound with leather lined metal cuffs and chains. Another chain ran round my waist then disappeared from view. I guess it was attached to the wall of the truck or whatever it was that I was inside.
“You’re awake then.”
I squinted harder through the gloom, vision blurry. Weres have good night vision but the pounding of my head made me reluctant to open my eyes wide enough to use it. One of these days I was going to have to stop getting myself knocked out. I was getting really tired of it. Waking up with a pounding headache should be the result of tequila not terror. Didn’t any vampires ever kidnap someone awake?
I blinked, trying to clear my vision but it stayed blurry. I could just make out a dark figure sitting near the opposite wall to me. A vampire. Violets and acid hit my nose. Not just any vampire but my friend from the woods. Perfect.
I peered harder at the vamp. As my vision slowly refocused, her pale skin and dark hair became clearer. She sat on a bench seat, looking serenely composed. Someone else was lying on the seat too, their head in the vamp’s lap. I couldn’t see the sleeping—I hoped they were sleeping not unconscious—person’s face, just the outline of them, covered by some sort of blanket.
My kidnapper stroked their hair with one hand in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Creepily possessive.
And, I realized, as my nose sorted through the conflicting stinks of vampire, violets, hot engine, fuel and metal, there was another familiar smell in the mix.
Rhianna.
I surged forward only to be brought up sharp by the chain around my waist. I fell back against the wall with a thump that rattled my teeth and jarred my back.
“Careful, those are silver.”
I ignored her jibe. The cuffs on my wrists weren’t burning me so obviously they weren’t silver, even if the chains attached to them were. The vamp was trying to distract me. “What have you done to Rhi?”
The vamp smiled.
At least I thought it was a smile. It involved a flash of very white fangs and an expression of smugness.
“I rescued her.”
Rescued? From what? Comprehension dawned. “You boosted her from the hospital?”
“No, we waited until they were moving her.”
My skin crawled. How had they known Rhianna was going to be moved and what sort of force could they muster if they could take on a military transport and successfully steal their prisoner? “What did you do?”
“Stupid humans moved her in a van with a single escort vehicle. It wasn’t that hard.”
Stupid dead humans I imagined. What sort of trouble did that mean Rhianna was now in? Would they think that she’d organized this?
I hoped not. After all, she’d been under tight security for days. How would she get herself rescued without help? Which, I realized with a sudden flash of horror, made the other most likely suspect me. Fuck.
I put that less than welcome thought out of my head. The Taskforce would stick up for me against the army. I had a bigger issue right now. If I didn’t survive it didn’t really matter what the army or anyone else thought I’d done.
I took a deep breath. The other likely outcome of a hijacked transport and a vanished prisoner was that a lot of people would be looking for Rhianna. Which could only be a good thing. I couldn’t feel the hard bump of the panic button in my pocket, so really, our only hope of being found quickly was a massive manhunt for Rhianna.
Another deep breath revealed no hint of Andy’s steamy green scent in the truck. God. Was he still alive? Had they killed him back there at my house? I shoved the thought aside. If he wasn’t here then I’d have to worry about him later. He couldn’t help me and I couldn’t help him.
It was just me and Rhi.
So I needed to keep both of us alive until we were found. I looked down at my wrist. No watch. Damn.
No way of knowing how long I’d been unconscious or how long it had been since they’d taken Rhi. I didn’t even know what the protocol was for a prisoner transfer. How regularly did the drivers check in with their destination? Or, put another way, how long until the army and Grayson would notice the transport had gone AWOL?
“Is Rhianna okay?”
“She’s just sleeping,” the vamp crooned, softly. “She’ll be fine. Now that she’s with me.”
“She needs to be with her family.” Stall, Ashley, stall. Try and figure out what had happened and where we might be headed. They had to have taken Rhianna on an isolated stretch of road. These vamps were organized. They planned. I wasn’t dealing with Tate, though whoever the vamp across from me was, I didn’t think she had a much stronger grip on reality than he’d had. But even if she was nuts, she seemed to be capable of going after what she wanted with great success.
“I am her family now.”
“Like hell you are.”
She snarled, fangs glinting white in the dim light. “Watch yourself. You’re in no position to piss me off.”
Piss me off. Interesting. In my experience, older vamps didn’t tend to use modern slang quite so easily. I slotted the information away. Younger usually meant weaker but she had already demonstrated impressive psychic powers. Then again Jase was strong in that department too. But pinpointing her age would be useful information if I got out of this. It would help identify her, for a start. “Well, I’m still alive so far. You must want me for something.”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Wonderful. I settled back against the wall, tried to find a comfortable angle for my head and shut my eyes. I couldn’t do anything in my current position and Rhi didn’t seem to be in immediate danger. Insanity wasn’t catching, after all. Might as well try and conserve energy. I had a feeling I was going to need it when we reached our destination.
“Oh no, puppy. You go to sleep when I say so.”
“Sorry, but I just don’t find egomaniacal vampires all that interesting. Besides, I’ve had kind of a long day.”
Color flared against my eyelids. The vamp had turned on a light. A torch or a lamp, maybe. I squeezed my eyes tighter together and let out a snoring sound.
“I wouldn’t sleep if I were you. After all, I might get hungry.”
Cold spiked through me and my eyes flew open.
The vamp grinned at me nastily. “That woke you up.”
I summoned my best ‘try it and you die’ expression. “Like I told you in the woods, the last vamp who drank from me paid a high price.”
“Tate was an idiot. And weak.”
Well, that was something we agreed on. “I suggest you learn from his mistakes then. Don’t mess with me.”
“I’m not going to mess with you. I’m going to use you and then get rid of you.”
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stiffen. “Use me for what?”
She shook her head and raised her hand. “You’re boring me. Maybe you should go back to sleep after all.”
I didn’t even try to fight it; just let the pain flaring through my skull carry me into darkness.
* * *
When I forced my eyes open for the second time, I was lying on a mattress shoved in one corner of a small room with bare walls painted an industrial shade of beige. There was no sign of Rhianna or the vampire. A bottle of Gatorade sat on the floor within reach.
The sight of it, combined with the renewed throb of my head made me want to gag. I couldn’t stand the taste of Gatorade since Tate. But my mouth felt like I’d been breathing sand all night and I was starving. I held my nose, chugged the bottle as fast as I dared and then forced myself to my feet. I wanted to change, to see i
f that might help the headache but weak as I felt, I wasn’t sure I’d have enough energy to change back or just how much weaker I’d be if I did manage it.
The door was shiny silver metal. I pressed a tentative fingertip to the surface then pulled it back as the skin started to sting and burn. Unlikely that the door itself was silver but whatever it was painted with obviously contained at least some silver. If the paint covered wood, it would be worth the effort to cover my hands and try and break it but there was no way I could rip a metal door off its hinges in my present state. The walls had no windows so there was no other way out. I retreated back to the mattress, sitting with my back to the wall and my eyes on the door.
They’d come for me soon enough.
While the minutes ticked by, I sucked absently at my fingertip, trying to ease the sting. Someone had once told me that some weres eventually gained enough control to change just one part of their bodies to heal a wound. I didn’t know if it was even true but right now I wished I knew how.
What I really needed was my panic button. Whether I was anywhere within range of Dan’s monitors was anyone’s guess. I could be still in Seattle or half a country away.
But he had to be looking for me. I’d smelled blood in my house. More than just Andy’s. I was guessing they’d taken out the second detail before Andy and I had even arrived. As soon as they missed a check-in call, Dan would have raised the alarm. But still, I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious or whether I’d been in any other sort of transport before the truck.
The only one who was likely to get me out of this mess was me. Unless Jase could hear me. I spent a few minutes concentrating on him and yelling ‘come get me’ in my head before my headache worsened to the extent that I had to stop.
I was just about to curl back up and try to go back to sleep when the door swung inward. The fact I hadn’t heard any footsteps outside told me something else unwelcome. My cell was probably soundproofed.
I expected my favorite nutty vampire again.
Instead it was Smith.
