Controlling the fire that lived in her was the work of eternity. Brigid would never be rid of the task. She would never cease being aware of the quick flash that could so easily spiral out of control, destroying anyone and anything around her that she held dear.
She thought of it when she was angry. She thought of it when she was excited. She thought of it when she made love. It was the constant drumbeat of her life.
Sex helped. Feeding helped. Feeding during sex helped the most, especially when it was sex with a grounded earth vampire.
Thank God Carwyn had a thousand years of pent-up sexual energy she could access nearly anytime she wanted.
Humidity also helped. So did ocean air. Fog. Any kind of balancing water element.
Like Murphy.
Yes, like Murphy. Her boss and his mate were both water vampires. So were Murphy’s sons. So was most of their office. It wasn’t intentional, it was just something that had happened for which Brigid was profoundly grateful.
It was also one of the reasons she was so attached to Ireland. The damp air that surrounded her nearly all year round felt like a cushion, a thin protective layer that helped to keep her in check. In the dry, crackling air of the desert, Brigid felt inches away from disaster.
She made it back to Liberty Springs, making sure to stop her run well out of town. She ambled toward the old Bronco, planning to leave the binoculars in the car and read her phone messages before she went to check on Lupe.
“I saw you running.” Daniel stepped out from behind the Bronco.
The wind had hidden his scent from her, and Brigid stopped in her tracks, her fangs falling instinctively at the suggestion of a threat.
“It’s not smart to sneak up on our kind.” She shot him a look from the side of her eye and opened the Bronco door. “What can I do for you?”
He gulped, and Brigid recognized the look on his face before he even opened his mouth.
No, lad, don’t do it.
Daniel stepped forward and raised his wrist to Brigid. “I know you’re not a newborn. If you need to drink, I would trust you not to—”
“Are you really framing it like it’s a favor to me?” Brigid shut the car door and leaned against it, carefully putting both her hands in her jacket pockets. “How much do you reckon Scarlet took before we came to get you, Danny?”
His face paled. “I know she took too much, but you’re not Scarlet and I know—”
“Yer an addict.” Brigid caught his eye and held it. “Like recognizes like.”
Thoughts raced behind his eyes, a dozen questions before he managed to open his mouth. “I’m not—”
“You are addicted to the very intense dopamine rush that vampires use to lull their prey into compliance.” Brigid looked into the distance, trying to make her words as impersonal as possible. “Some humans are more susceptible than others, and if you’d been working in a reputable club that only allowed a monthly or even biweekly draw, you’d likely never have gotten to this point, but there you are.”
Danny’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t speak.
Brigid kept her voice soft. “How many times a week did she feed from you?”
“Ev—” Daniel cleared his throat. “Every night.”
“That’s not normal.” Brigid shook her head. “That’s not right. She took advantage of you. She probably would have left you a shell if we hadn’t taken you from her.”
“You don’t get it. I wanted—”
“Course you did.” Brigid stepped closer, still keeping a safe distance between herself and the vulnerable and appetizing human. “It’s not your fault, lad. It’s hers. She made you want the rush, and she only provided it when she fed from you. She’s rewired your brain, and now—unfortunately—yer goin’ to have to live with that.”
His face screwed up in a flash of anger only to relax again. “You’re saying I’m an addict. Like… a drug addict.”
“Yes.”
“And you said ‘like recognizes like.’” He pressed his lips together. “What does that mean?”
Brigid resisted the urge to tell the human to fuck off and mind his own business. He’d come to her with a reasonable offer, and she’d opened this particular can of worms.
“It means that I’m a heroin addict,” Brigid said evenly. “How do you think I died? Why do you think I turned into a fuckin’ vampire firecracker? Died in fury. Sired in fury. I’m an addict for eternity now.” She blinked, shoved the stab of pain to the back of her mind. “So believe me that I know what I’m talking about.”
Daniel looked confused. “You’re a heroin addict? But vampires—”
“Can’t get high.” She nodded. “I know. I could shoot as much heroin as I could find now, couldn’t I? I could pump my body full of it and I’d never get the rush. Can you imagine that? I just feel the urge now. Just the hunger.”
The realization of it began to grow in Daniel’s eyes. “You’re saying that I’m like that. That I’ll always crave—”
“The bite? Sure you will. It feels good, doesn’t it? Feels amazing. You’d be a fool not to crave it once you know what it feels like.”
The young man’s face was wan and hungry in the moonlight. “But I can have it sometimes, right? Just… didn’t you say once a month I could—?”
“Do you think when I was human I could shoot up once a month?” She smiled a little. “You know what? I actually tried that. In fact, at the beginning I was very careful about self-medicating. Had a journal and a schedule and everything.” Her smile turned bitter. “How long do you think I kept that up?”
“Not long?” His voice was barely audible.
“I was fooling myself. I didn’t control it; it controlled me. I was an addict. I am an addict. I will always be an addict. Nothing changes that. Now instead of fighting the urge to get high, I fight the urge to let fire consume me and everyone around me.”
Daniel went pale again. “Is that what happened at Scarlet’s club?”
Brigid shrugged. “Everyone has setbacks, lad.” She pushed away from the Bronco. “Put your wrist away. I’m not going to feed your habit, and I highly recommend you stay away from people who will.”
They’d been walking in silence toward the distant lights of the Springs when Daniel asked in a hesitant voice, “Do you think Scarlet would have turned me? If I died, I mean. Do you think she would have turned me into a vampire?”
Brigid stopped and waited for him to turn toward her. “No.” She made sure he understood the weight of her words. “I was turned by the foster mother who found me, the woman who had raised me since I was seven years old and who happened to be a vampire. She sired me because she loved me.” Brigid took a breath and let it out slowly. “Do you think Scarlet loved you?”
Daniel looked at the ground. “No.”
God, what a bitter pill to swallow. Brigid tried to soothe the sting the best she could. “Some of our kind aren’t capable of love,” she said. “It’s not who they are, and it doesn’t have anything to do with you.” She waited for him to look up. “It doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Daniel looked at her, looked back at the Springs, and started walking again.
Brigid walked silently next to him.
It was all she could do.
Chapter Twenty
Carwyn felt a heaviness in his heart as he returned to Liberty Springs. The rage when he’d seen the children at a distance had flashed, then dulled. There wasn’t much more he could do on his own, so he headed back to his mate. The tunnel was wide and the passage would be easy. He’d taken the time to account for little feet and tired legs.
They would need vans. The Bronco wouldn’t carry all of them. They would need shelter and food. Blankets and hugs. As he approached his and Brigid’s campsite near dawn, he felt the weariness hit him. It wasn’t physical exhaustion—it was mental and emotional.
The crimes humans continued to commit against their own would never be understandable to him.
Brigid looked up from
her perch on the hood of the Bronco, sensing his mood instantly. “What’s wrong?”
He held out his arms and she ran to him. He took a deep breath, inhaling the familiar and comforting scent of her skin and hair. The subtle smokiness of her essence teased his senses.
“It’s worse than we thought.”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
“There’re more children. Lupe said the girl who escaped remembered about a dozen children there, but there are more.”
“How many?”
“I didn’t get too close, but from what I saw, closer to two dozen. And there are more men too. They showed up just after the third night patrol, an hour or two ago.”
She nodded solemnly. “Okay, so we have to account for that. More children. More men. The basic plan hasn’t changed though. We sneak the children out through the tunnel and—”
“I think Lupe needs to go with us.”
Brigid didn’t say a word.
“Think about it.” He took her by the shoulders and looked her square in the face. “I’m a giant of a thing. You’re a strange, foreign woman dressed in black. Daniel is a man. Oso and Wash are both men. These children are being held by people who look a hell of a lot like us. We need Lupe and maybe Didi to come with us.”
“Lupe looks like everyone’s big sister, so I get her, but Didi?”
“She speaks Spanish fluently and she doesn’t look like she’d harm a soul. Can you think of a more perfect pair? We’re not going to have time to win these children over, and if they’re not cooperating, they’ll alert the very people we’re trying to avoid.”
Brigid was shaking her head. “There has to be another way. Lupe—”
“Lupe is our best option,” he said. “You know I’m telling the truth.”
She knew it; she was just fighting it. “If anything happens to that girl, what do we tell María? What do we tell Carmen and Emilio?”
“We won’t have to tell them anything because you’re going to plan a perfect entry and exit.” Carwyn squeezed her hand. “We’ll go in tomorrow at dusk. You’ll gather everything we need, and then night after next, we get them out.”
* * *
The following night, an hour after dusk, Brigid emerged from the tunnel, wearing stark black with her face painted to match her clothes. Carwyn hadn’t taken that extra step, but then Brigid was planning to go much closer than he had the night before.
“Did you see any dogs?” she asked softly.
“No. What do you think of the tunnel?”
She nodded. “It’ll work. The passage is wide enough not to scare them, the floor is smooth, and the slope should be manageable for the little ones.”
“We can carry the smallest if we need to.”
She stared at him. “How young are we talking about?”
“I don’t know. A year? Year and a half?”
“Fucking hell.” She was horrified. “They took babies from their mothers? Makes me want to kill them all.”
“We can’t focus on that now.” He pulled her close for a fast kiss. “In and out, darling girl. Meet me here in fifteen.”
A hint of a smile touched her lips. “Only fifteen?”
“Think you can do it?”
She was gone before he finished asking the question.
* * *
Brigid knew the basic layout of Miller’s Range from her perimeter surveys, but she resisted the urge to head to the dormitories where the children were being kept. Instead, she started at the gatehouse.
Where two men had been before, now there were six. Though it appeared only two were actually working, the other men did present an additional barrier to remaining undetected.
Unless…
They also presented an opportunity.
She moved in the darkness on the edge of the floodlights that lit the courtyard and spotted a half dozen black SUVs parked in a line near what looked like a hangar. She waited and watched, but there was no indication of movement from the building. She could hear people inside though. The air conditioner was humming, and a television was playing something with a laugh track.
She continued deeper into the old base, skirting cameras and avoiding lights. There was a mess hall with another television, this one tuned to cable news. Angry little men sat on safe soundstages thousands of miles from the California desert, railing against people they’d never seen in order to anger men and women they didn’t know.
It was a game to those humans. The real suffering of others meant nothing to them. The anger made them money. Brigid turned in disgust but paused when she saw a tray of neat paper bags being rolled out the back of the mess hall, ushered by two men in dark battle dress uniforms. One was pushing the cart, and the other was armed to the teeth.
Brigid followed at a distance, noting the time the men moved.
7:07 p.m.
Was this the children’s dinner? Did they not even eat together? They didn’t receive a hot meal?
Disgusted all over again, she trailed the men until they arrived at a long row of what looked like dormitories. There was a low building in front with the remnants of a faded red cross attached to it. One by one, men who looked like soldiers arrived to carry the paper bags to the dormitories.
Brigid frantically counted the bags as they disappeared off the rolling cart. Ten. Thirteen. No, sixteen. No, twenty. In the end, twenty-three bags were taken off the cart and two remained.
Brigid was haunted by the two remaining bags as she moved closer to the dormitory. Who hadn’t wanted to eat? Who wasn’t able to eat? The bags were delivered. The men serving dinner left. And Brigid waited.
On the half hour, a man started a lazy circuit of the low building, holding an M16 on his shoulder as he walked.
One circuit around the building, then nothing.
Brigid waited far longer than the fifteen minutes Carwyn had teased her about. She waited to see a hand or a little face in the windows of the dormitories. She waited to see anything. There were windows next to each door, but the curtains inside them barely moved. A few swayed rhythmically as if they were being nudged by a fan, but for the most part, the curtains remained closed. The doors remained unopened.
On the hour, the man circuited the building again, looking for all the world as if he were patrolling a cemetery. He didn’t look around. He showed no situational awareness. He simply walked, looked casually from side to side, and continued back to his chair next to the desk in the guardhouse.
Brigid was so tempted to move closer, but she continued around the back of the building and searched the outlying areas for any signs of life. There was nothing. While the front had been propped up, the rear of the base still looked mostly abandoned.
Which worked perfectly for her plan.
* * *
He saw her in the distance and knew she was as angry as he’d been the other night.
“Twenty-three,” she said. “They’re feeding twenty-three.”
“Feeding?”
“I caught the tray with the bag meals on the way back to the dorms. There were twenty-five bags prepared, twenty-three delivered.”
“They don’t strike me as the type to spend money on extra food for the hell of it, so what happened to the other two?”
Her jaw was tight. “Good question.”
“Twenty-three.” He mulled over the number. “As long as they’re old enough to walk, it’s doable. More than we expected, but doable.”
“I also have an idea to help at the front gate.”
“I hope it doesn’t involve you blowing yourself up,” Carwyn said. “As much fun as that is to watch, we need you leading the rest of the team.”
“I have no plans to blow myself up over these mercenaries,” she said. “But it does leave me with an excellent idea of how Daniel and his friends might provide a distraction.”
Alerted by a faint noise in the distance, Carwyn pulled Brigid behind him and dropped to the ground. He shoved both of them behind a rock and peeked out.
&nb
sp; “What is it?” she whispered.
“Voices and lights.” Carwyn watched the light come closer. “I’m not sure if it’s one man or two.”
“One would be idiotic.”
“Well, there’s no accounting for… Never mind, there are two.”
“Two of them?”
“Coming directly toward us.” He put his finger to his lips. “Tunnel?”
“I don’t want them coming toward it.”
“So let’s not let them.” He rolled the both of them toward another rise. “You know, if we made it fast and freaky, they’d never know we’d questioned them.”
Brigid raised a brow. “Yer better at muddling brains than I am.”
He grinned and wiggled his eyebrows. “Let’s then. We might learn something useful.” Carwyn scooted to the side and popped up, waving both his hands.
“Oi! Over here, boyos! I’ve got a wee question or two if you might.”
“Carwyn, they might have radios!”
“Oh fuck.” He rushed toward the men just as one was taking out a communicator of some kind and knocked it out of his hand. “Forgot about that bit!”
He heard his wife muttering something dire as he grabbed both gobsmacked humans and knocked their heads together. “Oops, will you look at how clumsy I am? What a mess.” He knocked them again. “Oh, lads. I’m too sorry. What was I thinking?”
“Who the hell are you?” One of the men was blinking and the other one had nearly fallen over.
Carwyn grasped both of them by the neck and let his amnis flood their senses. “Hello, boys. I am the angel of vengeance, and you are going to tell me everything that’s happening in your little sleepaway camp.”
The blinking man opened his mouth and frowned. “I… No. Can’t. Employees of… Canyon Security Systems operate under a strip… strict NDA. So… we can’t.” The man blinked. “Sorry.”
“Oh, look at the lamb. An NDA.” He whispered over his shoulder, “Brigid, we’re out of luck, they’ve both signed NDAs.”
Saint’s Passage: Elemental Covenant Book One Page 16
