Jace

by Sarah McCarty; Sarah McCarty

“What about Joseph?”

  A shadow crossed Caleb’s face; worry darkened his gaze. He blew out a breath. “Right now he’s stable. The concoction Slade created seems to be keeping his food down.”

  The men looked at each other. It wasn’t hard to tell what the weres were thinking. If little Faith had the same problems that Allie’s baby was having, she might not be alive to come home.

  As much as he wanted his brother’s help, Jace couldn’t accept it. “Your responsibilities are here.”

  “I’m not denying it, but there’s no telling how long it will take us to get the baby out of there, and I’m the only one you can trust to get her home if the sun comes up.”

  “We can handle it,” Tobias offered.

  The offer came a bit too fast for Jace’s comfort.

  He exchanged a glance with Caleb.

  Miri doesn’t trust him, Jared reminded them both.

  There was a chance Miri wasn’t thinking straight. There was also a chance she was.

  And Tobias wasn’t family.

  Caleb gave an imperceptible nod and turned to Tobias. “Are you stronger than me?”

  Tobias didn’t flinch at the straightforward question. “Can you walk in sunlight?”

  Caleb hitched up his rifle. “Yes.”

  Tobias’s shock was reflected in the ripple of murmur that went through the other weres. Vampires walking in sunlight was unheard of.

  Tobias recovered quickly. He shook his head. “You Johnsons are a contrary bunch, aren’t you?”

  “I believe the politically correct term is ‘immortally maximized,’” Slade interjected.

  Caleb snatched up a gun. “Well…me and my immortally maximized self are going with you. Looking at the three of you, little Faith is going to wonder if she’s landed in a family of disreputables.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jared growled. “And looking at your face is going to put those fears to rest?”

  “A hell of a lot faster than looking at yours will.”

  Jace looked between his brothers and the weres as the bickering picked up momentum. The sacrifices they were all making were tremendous, yet they didn’t hesitate. His daughter needed help. They were there. It was that simple. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say except thank you, and that just didn’t say enough. He grabbed the energy shield and tossed it to Tobias. “Let’s get a move on.”

  12

  AFTER the long, tense ride getting close to the area, followed by a cold hike across the snow-covered ground to the remote cabin, the actual battle was going to be anticlimactic. Jace looked through the window. There were only a few Sanctuary vamps guarding the place, and they clearly weren’t expecting company. Inside, two vamps sat at a table playing cards. Through the whisper of his transceiver, Jace heard the weres checking in.

  “Target one down.”

  “Target two down.”

  They were an efficient lot.

  Jace slipped through a window. Across the way, Caleb mirrored Jace’s movements—approaching his target at the same speed, cloaking his presence with illusion and masking his energy with the overtones of common threads already existing, visible only to each other through their mental path.

  The two Sanctuary vamps snarled over a bet, clearly bored. That didn’t mean they were harmless. They stank of Sanctuary perversion and enhancement. Their amplified aggression practically seethed with the need for an outlet. Jace was more than happy to give it to them.

  Aligned behind his target, Caleb nodded.

  Remember, neat and clean.

  I hear you.

  There was just going to be a slight change in the plan.

  In the blink of an eye, Jace dropped illusion, nodding at the shocked vamp across the table. Caleb swore as the table flew across the room. Both vamps sprang to their feet and leapt for the enemy they could see. Jace.

  Big, powerful, they wanted his blood. Jace wanted the fight. He smiled.

  “Son of a bitch, Jace.”

  Caleb didn’t have time to grab his vamp. Jace did. With a grim smile and the superior speed granted him at his conversion, he stepped into the attack, sliding sideways under the outstretched claws. With smooth efficiency, he slit the first’s throat, tossing him back toward his brother, the spray of his tainted blood feeding the primal rage welling inside. They had his daughter. They might even be the ones who had hurt Miri. He needed to kill them with his bare hands.

  Caleb caught the injured vamp and tossed him to the ground. Brilliant light flashed as the sunlight replicator seared through his chest.

  “This is supposed to be clean, Jace,” he growled.

  “Uh-huh.”

  The second vamp grabbed Jace from behind, confident in his strength. Jace broke his hold and spun fast enough to catch the shock in his expression. He smiled, punching his hand through the other vampire’s chest, closing his fingers around his heart. “Where’s the baby?”

  The vamp held perfectly still. “You’re Jace Johnson.”

  Jace squeezed, enjoying the other man’s grimace. “That wasn’t an answer.”

  Cunning joined the desperation on the vamp’s face. “You’ve got a pretty mate.”

  Jace lifted him off his feet, holding on to his control with a thread, enjoying the vampire’s spastic jerk as his heartbeat was aborted. “Where’s the baby?”

  “Jace…” Caleb warned. “We need him.”

  The vamp’s eyes glowed red; blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. Jace set him on his feet and relaxed his grip on his heart for the few seconds it took for the man to get his breath and for his heart to resume beating.

  Hate warped the vamp’s expression.

  “I’m not going to tell you a thing,” he snarled at Caleb. He spit blood and met Jace’s glare. “But you, I’ll tell a little secret. Your mate has the tightest, juiciest little—”

  Another blinding flash of light, and a burning heat seared Jace’s cheek. Before him, the vamp’s head exploded. Bone, blood, and brain blew backward, splattering the wall. Jace dropped the body and stepped back. He glanced over as Caleb stepped forward. “Weren’t you the one who warned me we needed him?”

  Caleb stood over the body, his expression cold as ice as he burned out the heart. “We don’t need him that badly.”

  “It was my right to kill him.”

  “You were taking too long.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jace cast his energy through the tiny three-room cabin. There was a lingering scent that could be the infant, but nothing fresh and nothing concrete. Tobias appeared in the doorway. He took in the blood and gore. His eyebrow went up.

  “Having fun?”

  “Not as much as I’d like,” Jace growled, the rage still prowling through him. The bastard had touched Miri. He wanted to take him apart, bone by bone, layer by layer, one nerve ending at a time.

  Stay with us, Jace, Caleb cautioned.

  Jace shook his head and buried his rage. “Any sign of the baby?” he asked the Enforcer.

  “No. The rooms are clean.”

  Not what he wanted to hear. He looked around. “They were guarding something.”

  “Yup.”

  “She might have been moved,” Tobias offered, entering the room.

  “Maybe.” But Jace didn’t think so. There was a nebulous something nibbling at the edges of his subconscious.

  Jared came into the room. “The perimeter is secure.” He looked around. “From the gore, I’m guessing it’s secure in here, too.”

  Caleb grunted and asked Jared, “Can you feel any stray energy here?”

  “Hell, it’s going to take an hour for this violence to subside enough to read anything.”

  “Damn.”

  Jace moved farther into the room. The nebulous something didn’t get stronger, but it didn’t go away, either. A man came up beside him. Tobias.

  “What do your senses tell you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Energy, distinctly male and powerful, slid over his and then withdr
ew. Jace should have been surprised that the Enforcer was telepathic. He wasn’t.

  “You’re an empath,” Tobias said.

  “Not that I’ve noticed.”

  “It’s enough that I have.”

  Jace walked around the room, but all he could smell was vampire tainted with the perversions the Sanctuary gave its members. “Keep it to yourself.”

  “I got bottles in the fridge,” Slade called.

  The baby had been here. The certainty sank deep. Jace spun on his heel and almost ran Caleb over. “It doesn’t seem likely that they would have moved her already.”

  “Not and leave the bottles behind.” Tobias dropped his rifle butt to the floor and then frowned. “All the guards are vampires, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Tobias looked around. “It’s a damn sunny cabin for a vampire to hang out in.”

  Jared cocked his head to the side. “Yes, it is.”

  Jared strode to the back door and opened it. “There’s no cave entrance and no obvious hillside.”

  The back door closed. Jared came back into the room. Slade stomped on the floor in the middle of the living room. The sound was different than when Tobias had tapped it with his rifle butt. “This place have a basement?”

  Jared extended his talons and slid them into the crevice between the wood slats that composed the floor and pried upward. “Let’s find out.”

  Nails screamed and wood cracked. He tossed the board aside.

  Jace looked into the dirt basement beneath. Unease spread over his skin. “From the looks of things, not much of one.”

  They didn’t bother looking for the door. Tobias ripped up another board, Jace another. Damp, musty air rose out of the room below. Jace set his rifle on the floor and braced himself on the edge of the opening. “Cover me.”

  Slade grabbed his arm. “Give us a minute and we might be able to—”

  Jace wasn’t waiting for anything. His little girl might be down there. He dropped into the hole and landed softly on the hardpacked dirt floor. The place was dark, no light of any kind. A dank, merciless grave.

  The baby’s energy was clearer down here, not strong enough to identify whether it was Faith or not, but near enough to identify were and vampire attributes. Jace followed it, tracking it to a room on the far side. He cast about with his energy. There was nothing. No guards, nothing, just the weak thread of energy belonging to a tiny life.

  A sick feeling welled in Jace’s gut. Faith’s captors knew the brothers would come looking for her. She’d be heavily guarded. Whoever this baby was, it probably wasn’t his daughter. Still, hope wouldn’t die. He did not want to go back to Miri again empty-handed.

  The baby’s energy got stronger as he got to the end of the short tunnel. There was nothing familiar in the pattern. Nothing familiar in the scent that trickled to him. The only thing he did know was that she was female, and were, with a strange resonance of vampire. It could be Faith.

  “Jace?” Jared called.

  “All clear,” he belatedly called back.

  He entered the room. It was tiny, little more than a closet. A box was sitting on top of a rickety table against the wall. IV bags hung off pegs driven into the wall above. Lord only knew what liquid was dripping down the tubes that disappeared into the interior of the box. The place smelled of mold and decay. The way he imagined a tomb would smell. And there was a baby in there. The knowledge soured in his gut.

  A faint sound, like a kitten crying, came to him. The baby. He couldn’t make himself move forward. He heard footsteps behind him. He looked over his shoulder. The grim horror he felt inside was reflected in the tight expressions on Jared’s, Caleb’s, and Slade’s faces. Tobias, in contrast, wore no expression at all. Caleb came up beside him.

  “Afraid of what you’re going to find?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want me to go?”

  Jace shook his head. If that was his daughter in there, he wanted the first friendly face she saw to be his. “No.”

  He sensed energy ahead of him, little tendrils of light that searched randomly for a connection. He mentally touched one. The light retreated, a terrified cry in his mind. Another little hiccup of sound disturbed the quiet, so faint it might have been a figment of his imagination. Except it wasn’t.

  He took one step and then another. The next brought him close enough to see the box and smell the stench of urine and feces. At first he thought it was a lump of rags, that the baby was gone and the IVs and tubes were the discarded remnants of occupation, but then the rags twitched. With his finger he reached into the box and moved a flap of dirty material aside. His bile rose.

  The tiniest of babes lay there. Scrawny, pale, almost blue with cold. IVs pierced her legs and her arms, and another entered her chest. Liquid dripped in a steady stream into her body. Everything in him demanded he pick her up, warm her. He didn’t dare touch her for fear she’d fall apart. “Slade.”

  “Right here.”

  “Is it her?” Jared asked.

  “No.” There was nothing of him or Miri in the infant’s energy or scent. She was were, strangely mixed with vampire, but she wasn’t his daughter. But still, he’d never seen anything more in need of saving. Her big brown eyes watched him with a mixture of terror and resigned acceptance.

  Jared looked over his shoulder. “We killed them too fast.”

  Slade grunted and skimmed his hands over the fragile body.

  “Yeah.” Jace couldn’t wait any longer. He slid his hands under the chilled baby until she rested on the cushion of his palms, feeling the flat hardness of the box beneath. They hadn’t even padded it.

  Jared pointed to two bite marks on her forearm. “Looks like they tried to convert her.”

  That explained the vampire energy. Jace carefully lifted her up. The tubes trailed behind her, foul tentacles connecting her to her prison. Jace wanted to rip them out. He set his jaw and forced himself to speak calmly.

  “Does she need to be hooked up to this?” Jace asked his brother.

  “Hell,” Slade retorted just as quietly, examining the unmarked bags. He poked his talon through one and sampled the contents. “I don’t even know what this stuff is.”

  “Are any of natural substance?” Caleb asked.

  Slade tapped one bag filled with clear fluid. “This is saline.”

  “Leave that one, then,” Jace said, every drop of the unknown fluids that seeped into the infant’s body making him sick. “Remove the rest.”

  It seemed to take forever for Slade to disconnect the ugly tubes from her torso.

  The baby kicked her feet. The rags heaved.

  “Whoa!” Slade turned his head for a moment, blinking against the released fumes, keeping pressure on an insertion point to keep the blood from flowing. “She needs a bath.”

  It was likely a trick of timing. Jace knew she had to be too young to understand language, but when her lower lip trembled and her face crumpled, he wanted to hit Slade. Tears dripped from her eyes and flowed down into the wells of her sunken temples. “Watch what you say, Slade.”

  It came out sharper than he intended. Slade snapped his head back, took one look at the little girl’s face, and swore. “Oh, hell.”

  “What’d you do?” Caleb asked, checking the hall before coming into the room.

  “He made her cry.”

  Caleb took one look at the baby’s face and added his own curses to the mix. “Poor tiny mite.” He glanced up at Jace when more tears seeped from her eyes. When she sucked in a ragged breath, he snapped. “Don’t just stand there, fix her.”

  “What do you propose I do?” Jace asked.

  “Something.”

  Slade slowly pulled out the needle in her chest. The baby screamed a high-pitched warble.

  “Hurry up, damn it!”

  Sweat beaded on Slade’s temple. “I’m going as fast as I can. It’s in the heart. I’ve got to heal as I go or she’ll bleed out.”

  The infant shuddered from head to toe.
The needle was almost out. “Jesus, how long is the thing?”

  Another shudder and Jace couldn’t stand it. He wrapped the baby in his energy, drawing off her pain and stress, striving to impart comfort and caring. It wasn’t easy. Not only was the baby’s mind less developed and therefore less focused, it was obvious that she’d never known a kind touch. Any connection at all terrified her.

  He found an opening and slipped within. Her scream stopped as abruptly as it had started. She stared up at him, not blinking, not moving, just staring as if she didn’t dare believe. It reminded him so much of the look Miri got in her eyes when she thought he couldn’t see.

  “I’ve got you,” he promised her, his voice hoarse with the inhumanity of it. Of the deprivation this tiny little mite had endured.

  Slade slipped the needle out.

  A fragile beam of energy reached out to Jace. A quivering, hesitant query. He lifted the baby carefully and pressed her tiny body to his chest. Her head bobbed. He cradled it in the palm of his hand, supporting her, ignoring her stench, focusing on the emotion pouring from her to him, the fear, the hope, the wonder of contact. His hands shook as he laid his cheek on her tiny head. Dear God. “I’ve got you, peanut.”

  “She’s cold,” Caleb said.

  Jace covered as much of her back as he could with his hands.

  “Let me get these other needles out, and we can wrap her up.” Slade’s drawl wasn’t any steadier than Jace’s hands. And no wonder. There were some things too ugly to take stoically.

  “The sons of bitches,” Caleb snarled, shrugging out of his coat before stripping off his shirt.

  “You’re the one who was in an all-fired hurry and started blowing off heads,” Jace retorted.

  “Next time I’ll know better.” Caleb draped the soft cotton shirt over Jace’s arm. “You can use this for the first layer.”

  “Thanks.”

  “She’s probably too young and definitely too weak to monitor her body temperature,” Slade said, slipping the last needle free.

  “I’ll keep her inside my coat.”

  “That’ll work.”

  Jace looked up. Tobias stood guard, his rifle braced on his hip, watching them with a strange expression on his face. It could almost be called satisfaction. “Do you have a problem?”