The two guards were quiet a moment. Then one nodded; the other smiled. “Thank you, Adrian.”
“For what?”
“Trusting us,” Ben said.
“And taking us back,” Andrew added.
Adrian looked at Lindsay, at a loss for what to say. Her encouraging smile got him back on track. “Let’s pack up and get to the airport. We need to get these samples to Siobhán.”
She reached for his hand and squeezed. He wondered if she knew what that simple gesture meant to him, how much love and support it conveyed, how quickly he’d come to depend on it. On her.
He’d come to Vegas for blood and was leaving with something far more precious—a deeper connection to the woman who held his heart. In the chaos of his life, facing terrible odds and even more horrifying decisions, Lindsay was his light in the darkness. Shining even when he couldn’t see her.
“F
uckin’ creepy,” Raze muttered, crossing his arms as he leaned into the side of Vash’s rental. “Quiet as a damn tomb.”
Elijah glanced at the vampire and nodded grimly, in accord with the sentiment. His skin was crawling. They’d split up and surrounded the residential subdivision, then worked their way inward, looking for any signs of life. What they’d found was nothing. Nothing at all.
“Where are the newspapers?” Vash asked, moving restlessly. “The mail? The overgrown lawns? You can’t have an entire neighborhood disappear and not leave a trail that someone can follow.”
Syre opened the back of the Explorer and began pulling out weapons. “How do you suggest handling this, Vashti?”
“Two vamps on vantage point—rooftops, each end of the subdivision. Then three teams: one will take the
homes in the center while the other two come around the outer circle on opposite sides. We pick this place apart home by home. The lycans can do the walk-throughs for occupants, while the vamps work on gathering physical data. There has to be a loose thread to pull somewhere.”
“All right.” He looked at two of the vamps he’d brought with him. “Crash and Lyric, you two are on point. Anything makes a run for it, take it down.”
The two minions each selected a weapon and moved off, their bodies freshly fortified against the noonday sun by Fallen blood.
Elijah waited for further instructions, grateful for the dark sunglasses that hid how he watched Vashti. Her hair was restrained in a ponytail, her body encased in her customary black—the pants he’d shoved down her thighs earlier, paired with a leather vest that zipped from navel to cleavage. Her creamy skin and brilliant amber eyes captivated him, as everything about her did. His woman. So beautiful and infinitely deadly. A warrior whom other warriors followed into battle without question. He adored and valued her, even while she was driving him crazy.
She divided the remaining five vampires into teams of two, two, and one, then turned to him for guidance on how the four lycans should be divided. He put Luke and Trey with the teams of two vamps, and put Himeko under his watch. She could handle herself, but he’d lived—barely—through the Las Vegas attack. If they were facing something like that again, he wanted to be the one who had her back.
He and the other lycans began to undress. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it into the cargo space of the Explorer. Then he toed off his boots and yanked his button fly open.
“What are you doing?” Vashti snapped, having paused with her katana harness in hand.
Brows lifting, he looked at her. “Armoring up, like you.”
The others continued to shed clothes and the vampires resumed the process of strapping weapons to their bodies, but he was keenly aware of their poorly disguised interest in his conversation.
Vash’s gaze darted from his open fly, to Himeko, who was now in bra and panties, then back to him. “You’re not getting naked here.”
Himeko snorted and unclasped her bra. “Nudity is part of what we are. Get used to it, bloodsucker.”
“Absolutely,” Crash said, shooting a glance at her bared breasts. “Great way to kick off a hunt.”
“Shut up.” Vash rounded on Himeko. “And you. You’ve already seen what you’re going to see of him in your lifetime.”
Himeko smiled coldly. “There’ll be others. Women with fur instead of fangs.”
Vash twirled one of her katanas in a graceful arc. “Try me, bitch.”
“Vashti—” Elijah sighed, knowing tempers were high. The thrill of the hunt was part of that serrated edge, but so too were Micah and Rachel’s ghosts. Animosity lurked beneath the untried and tentative truce between vampires and lycans. Keeping that enmity
under wraps was a priority now, considering they were about to rely on each other in a possible life-or-death situation.
“I can get naked, too,” she shot at him. “Start a new trend.”
“Not the same thing and you know it.”
Her arched brow challenged him, as did her fingers on the pull of her zipper.
Shooting her a look that spoke volumes, he rounded the front of the Explorer and shifted, returning a moment later with his jeans between his teeth. He dropped them at her feet.
“Thank you.” She picked them up and threw them into the cargo space with the rest of the clothes. Then she strapped on her blades, gave a nod to Syre—who sported a wicked-looking repeating crossbow—and they flowed outward from the vehicles to begin the hunt.
Elijah wasn’t surprised when Vashti joined him and Himeko, but it was a circumstance that was far from ideal. Keeping an eye on either headstrong woman was tough enough. Having two of them at odds with each other made it dangerous.
The tension between the three of them was forgotten the moment they entered the first house. The two-story single-family dwelling was comfortably furnished and welcoming. There were no signs of disturbance. In fact, he could almost think it was a model home, everything being in its proper place…including the family photos on the mantel. He looked at them, noting youthful parents and three children, the smallest being an infant.
Loping up the stairs, he searched the bedrooms.
There, he found signs of life—rumpled beds, children’s toys scattered on the floor, clothes spilling from hampers. There was a trash can in the baby’s room that had a soiled diaper in it, and a bottle of rotting formula lay half full in the crib.
Vash entered the nursery behind him. “There are messages on the voice mail. Calls from the dad’s work asking where he’s been. Same with the mom and a carpool she’s got going for the kids. Looks like we’re on day four now.”
The next several homes were more of the same. By the eighth house, Elijah decided to check the backyard as well. As with the other homes, Vash joined him after only a few moments. It struck him then that she was hovering.
He growled at her, but she played it cool. Still, he read the anxiety in her body language—she was afraid to let him do his job.
Shifting, he confronted her. “Stop smothering me.”
She scowled and blocked the view from the house with her body. “Put your damn fur back on before Himeko comes out here.”
“For fuck’s sake. Nudity doesn’t automatically equate to sex in a lycan’s mind.”
“She’s female. In case you hadn’t noticed, they drool all over you when you’re clothed. When you’re like this”—she gestured at his body with an impatient wave of her hand—“you’re asking to be molested.”
His nose twitched as he smelled the first tendrils of her arousal. “Again? On a hunt? Jesus, you’re going to screw me to death.”
She flushed and shifted restlessly. “If you don’t want me hot and bothered, don’t run around naked!”
Softened by her obvious embarrassment and understanding how helpless they both were against the pull between them, he said more gently, “I don’t need a bodyguard, Vashti. Go do your thing; let me do mine.”
“You say that as if it’s easy. Those fuckers want you worse than the damn women do! I watched them tear you to pieces once. I won’t do it again. I c-can’t.”
“Vash.” His throat tightened at the pain he saw on her beautiful face. “Sweetheart—”
“Don’t.” She glared at him. So fierce and strong, yet fragile. “You got me into this mess.”
“What mess?” But he knew. And if they’d been anywhere else, he would have kissed her senseless.
“
This
mess!” She waved an impatient hand between them. “You and me. Us.”
“Us.”
“What are you? A parrot? Yes, us.”
“We’re a mess?” It was very hard not to smile.
“We were last night.” She ran her gaze over him from head to toe and sighed. “But we’re okay now. When you’re not telling me not to worry about you or trying to share your naked body with the world.”
“I share my body with no one but you, my crazy vampress. God. I adore you.”
“She’s coming!” Vash hissed, stepping closer to shield him. “If she sees your family jewels, I’m gonna have to kill her.”
“You’re nuts, you know that? Certifiably insane.”
And he was crazy, too. About her. He shifted back and spun away from her.
When Himeko darted out of the house at a full run, he directed her to scout one side of the yard while he handled the other. He sniffed out a dog buried in the far corner, which was confirmed by a little headstone, but he found nothing out of the ordinary. Himeko, however, whined and began scratching at the dirt.
He joined her, and they dug through fresh sod to find potting soil covering a layer of quicklime. Three feet down they discovered what was left of a child’s body, identifiable as such only by the size of the bones. They both leaped back in horror.
“Oh man,” Vashti breathed, her hand going to her stomach as the stench broke through the disrupted lime. “Fucking wraiths.”
Mindless, my ass,
Elijah thought grimly. The burial was proof of intelligence and clear, cold calculation. He looked at Vashti, frustrated that they couldn’t converse while he was in his lycan form, a connection that could exist—if they were a mated pair.
Vash turned away and spoke without raising her voice. “Syre. Raze. Have the lycans check the backyards.”
He heard the quaver in her words and sensed her disquiet. She was horrified and disturbed by the discovery, shaken. He went to her, brushing gently along her hip in a gesture of comfort.
She scratched absently behind his ear. “How many wraiths would it take to wipe out a whole neighborhood? How much time would pass? Because if it was
more than a few hours, they’d have to be cunning to avoid detection and I’ve only seen one wraith who had any working brain cells.”
Raze’s curse from across the neighborhood caused Elijah’s ears to twitch. “We’ve got a body in the yard. Damn it…it’s a child’s corpse.”
“Here as well,” Syre said harshly. “No sign or evidence of the parent—a single mother, I gather, from the mail and photos in the house.”
Elijah returned to the grave and began to dig deeper, growling at Vash when she tried to assist him. He couldn’t protect her from everything, but this, at least, was a grisly task he could spare her from.
In the end, he found three bodies, all children.
“Where are the adults?” Vashti asked, following him over to the coiled-up water hose, which she turned on to spray him off.
Raze’s voice crossed the distance between them. “Nothing found on the next property. No children in the household. Looks like two males lived here. Neither body is in the yard.”
Elijah led the way through the house and back out to the street. He was moving on to the next property when Syre spoke. “I saw movement in a window here in my sector. Drapes are drawn, so I can’t see inside.”
Vash broke into a run. “Hold until we get there.”
Raze met them at the house. Without a word, he led his team to the side-yard gate and they slipped into the back.
Staring at the home from the sidewalk, Elijah watched the upper windows and saw the curtains shift
softly, as if with a breeze, but he heard neither the hum of an air-conditioning unit nor a fan. He also didn’t hear breathing or movement, which raised his hackles. What the fuck were they dealing with?
“I don’t like it,” Vash muttered. “I’d rather smoke ’em out than go in. But the flames would bring fire crews, and then we’d have mortals involved.”
Syre surveyed the exterior. “My team will take the upper windows. Your lycans can enter from the bottom floor. Ready?”
With a nod, Vash leaped onto the side of the house and scrambled up like a spider. Syre did the same. Elijah took one side of the house; Luke took the other. Himeko remained on point at the front, while Thomas waited in the rear.
“On three,” Raze whispered, his voice drifting on the wind. “One, two…”
Elijah lunged through the nearest window, entering the house in a shower of glass. He’d scarcely registered that he’d landed in a small home office when he slammed into the closet door, unable to gain purchase on carpet slickened by a viscous substance. Shaking off the collision, he registered what coated the floor—the black, oily residue left behind when wraith bodies decomposed.
Himeko’s frantic barking spurred him into action. He careened out into the hallway, skidding into the wall and denting it before finding traction in the unsoiled carpet. He leaped into a family room, where Himeko and Thomas were covered in wraiths. With a roar of fury, he lunged into the fray, grabbing a wraith
by the neck and snapping it as he tossed the body aside like a doll’s.
The repetitious report of a pistol cracked through the room as one of the vamps emptied his clip into the writhing bodies ringing the edges of the huddle. Raze waded in through the sliding-glass door, yanking wraiths up by the hair and severing heads with his blade. Elijah was tackled from the side. Fangs bit into his flank. Snarling, he kicked with his hind legs, his claws raking into the thigh of his attacker. The wraith lost its grip and fell away. Elijah turned and crouched to retaliate, aiming for the Navy anchor tattoo that decorated the pale-as-milk flesh over the wraith’s heart…
“Vashti!”
Syre’s shout pierced Elijah like a silver bullet. Abandoning his attacker, he bounded up the stairs. He reached the second floor and hit a wall of wraiths, the teeming mass of gray bodies clogging the narrow space. A glint of light on a flashing blade drew his attention to the ceiling, where Vash clung upside down with a one-handed grip. Her free arm slashed a katana at the upraised hands that clawed at her, trying to pull her loose.