Night Hungers (3 page)

Aiden heard the, “I’ll just bet it did” from Tristan and grinned at him. It had taken a lot of planning to make the last minute thing happen just as he was leaving for the airport and it almost wasn’t enough to make them stay. But in the end, he’d won. He wanted this trip to be about seeing if he could make it work here rather than about having to be a third wheel in entertaining his parents. He loved them dearly, but a man needed some time with his brother.

“Did you bring me anything, Uncle Aiden? I loved the horsey you sent me, but Momma said I can’t ride it. I think the pretty colors are so beautiful.”

Emma said beautiful as if it were a long three syllable word, enunciating each one like she meant them. He loved this little girl and was very glad that Bailey and Tristan had adopted her.

Bailey couldn’t have children. She had been engineered in a lab and was trained as a killer. But when she and a few others had been slated to be destroyed Bailey and four others decided that the corporation, Co-Tech Industries, had to go.

“No, you can’t ride it. But I think I might have been able to find a pretty unicorn for you that matches your horsey. I have to make sure that it’s not a fake before I send it to you.”

“Oh! I seen a unicorn at Aunt Mel’s castle. She was so pretty and she let me touch her. I had to be really, really, really careful or she would be skirty. Momma said that only special people get to see them ‘cause nobody believes in them no more. Why is that, Uncle Aiden? They sure could make the world so pretty if they were to come here, don’t you think?”

“Everything is ‘pretty’ now,” Bailey told him. “Last month everything was ‘lovely.’

It depends on what new word she hears that she repeats all the time. I shudder to think what she might hear next. Come along, sweetheart, it’s bedtime.”

“Ah, I see. And ‘skirty?’ I take that to mean ‘skittish?’”

“Yes. Very good. I have to get her to bed. If I don’t, she’ll be a terror in the morning.

And I need my quiet time more and more lately. Tell Uncle Aiden goodnight, baby.”

He kissed Emma’s forehead and handed her back to her mother. Bailey took her up the stairs and disappeared around the corner. Aiden went to the study with his brother.

~CHAPTER 3~

Zane watched her target move along the building. She’d been following him for the past hour and he never seemed to be alone. If he didn’t move to a quieter place, and alone, she was going to have to change her plans and shoot him. That would not only be messy, but also dangerous.

Just as she was about to move in for the shot he moved to the front of the abandoned building and slipped inside. Zane wasn’t sure what was in the large warehouse, but she was willing to bet whatever it was couldn’t be good. The file she had on him said that he was dealing in making and disturbing rock cocaine. She was afraid that’s what this was going to be.

As soon as he shut the door behind him Zane moved closer. By the time she was slipping into the door five minutes had passed. It didn’t take her long to find his scent and that of the projects he had going on within the building. Not only was her target making crack, he was also dealing in meth. She moved back to the front of the building and reached out to her contact with the cell phone that had been in the second envelope that had arrived at her work early this morning.

“There’s a problem. I’ve found his money-making projects and he’s in the building.

If I blow it like I should, it’s going to be cleaner. If I call the cops to find it, I’m not hanging around to make sure he gets dead. Up to you.”

“Blow it. Make sure there is the least amount of casualties as possible without causing an issue. I’ll leave the way you do it in your hands. I can extend your time to Saturday if you wish. The client will be pleased about the drugs. What are they, by the way?”

“Yeah, I’ll need the extra day to get the place set up. The coke is here that you said and meth. From the smell I’d say he has a large set up going. I can make it look like an accident from the heat. I’ll leave enough evidence so the cops don’t worry what happened.”

“Very well. Saturday then. Good luck and be safe, Mechanic,” he said. Then the phone went dead.

Zane took out the battery of the phone and held it in her hand. Pouring energy into it, she dropped it as soon as it flared with heat. Anyone who picked it up would never know it had been a battery at one time. She did the same with the phone itself. She’d been working with this man long enough to know he’d never used the same phone twice. And she destroyed it so that no one would ever be able to track it her back to her.

Moving deep into the belly of the building again, she followed her nose to get to the lab. She was surprised at how massive the operation was. Not only did he have several hundred different heat stations, he also had an assembly line of workers filling the containers for distribution. It was both disturbing and fascinating to her that he’d never been caught.

Zane stayed in the building until she noticed that at around midnight people started cleaning up their stations and were getting ready to leave. Her target had never ventured from his office in the four hours she’d been there. She knew that he was above the work area, so she knew that he was still close. Doing a mental scan of the building she knew that, other than her target, there were two men in the room with him. Everyone else had left.

Moving to the floor were the workers had been Zane started lighting small fires among the areas just far enough away from the highly volatile drugs. She figured she had approximately ten minutes to make sure that her target would be found in part of the carnage. When she was satisfied that it would soon be burning out of control Zane went to the door of his office.

She never got the name of the targets she was to take out. Not that she felt she’d make some sort of personal attachments to them. She just didn’t want to have to deal with more things in her mind to remember. Some days it was hard enough trying not to remember some of the things she’d done. She didn’t want to think about having names to try not to think about too. Pressing both hands to the oak door Zane listened to the conversation going on inside.

“I think we should buy the building and be done with it. There are a couple bigger ones, but this one is just far enough off the beaten path to afford us all the privacy we want. Besides, we can get it cheaper because of where it’s located.”

“Yes. But what happens when we expand? You know as well as I do that the only reason we haven’t gotten caught is because we pay so well. If we have to hire more and more workers, who’s to say they wouldn’t turn us in just for the thrill of it? I just think we should hold off for another couple of months.”

The man who had spoken last was her target. A quick touch of his mind told her that.

The other man, the one who had spoken first, was none other than the assistant chief of police. That was just great. The third man was a were. Zane slipped inside his mind quickly then back out. Now she had a problem. He was DEA and he was working to bring these two to justice. She did the only thing she could do with...three minutes to go.

“I need you to get out of the building. It’s going to blow very soon now, in about
three minutes, as a matter of fact.”

“Who is this? I’ve been working this case for nearly three months. I swear to Christ
if you fuck this up for me, I’ll hunt you down.”
The man was pissed. Not that Zane could blame him, but still.

“I’m coming in so you need to tell me where you are so that I don’t accidently hurt
you. I’ve been ordered to kill the wolf by someone of higher authority than you.”

“Fuck you. You come through that door and I’ll shoot you. I don’t care who you
think is your higher authority. My gun says I win.”
Zane felt his anger as he spoke.

She debated for all of one second. He’d been warned. If something happened to him then so be it. Least amount of causalities possible was her orders. It mattered little to her if he didn’t want to help her not kill him. Reaching into the room she could tell where each person was; the wolf she needed was directly in front of her. She could feel movement of someone and, with a quick dip into the mind, she knew she’d found her DEA agent. Gathering power from around her Zane exploded the door off its hinges and into the room. A blast of power to the target then another to the police officer killed them where they sat. She turned to the agent just before he fired at her. Quickness on her part is all that saved her from a fatal shot to the head. The agent was dead before the room exploded beneath her.

~~~

Aiden was standing at the bar at Blood Moon when his brother and Aaron showed up. Tristan was dressed in his usual button down dress shirt, tie, suit coat, and brogans.

Aaron, however, was dressed as every cliché vampire Aiden had ever read about. Dark pants, dark silk shirt, and long dark hair that he’d tied back with a leather tie. Aiden was sure he was projecting an image, he was part owner of the bar, but it was still funny to him.

“I thought you old men would be a little longer.” Aiden looked at his brother and the others as he spoke. “I just asked about a donor here. Why don’t I meet you guys in the back later?”

Tristan had told Aiden yesterday that the bar had originally been set up to be for the paranormal, but their attorney had pointed out how that wouldn’t work and now there were humans wandering around. But there was a way for vamps to feed from willing humans and weres alike.

“Go ahead. The ladies are still shopping and we have plenty of time. And Bradley called to say he was going to be late. Something about a shifter on his land without permission.”

Aiden only half listened to his brother. He was watching the woman come toward him. A fairy. Vampires couldn’t get drunk, drugs didn’t affect them, and they couldn’t get any sexually transmitted diseases. But fairy blood could make all those vises seem like child’s play when drank, but only if one had permission. Without it, the blood was poison.

Taking the woman, Scalar, to the back room, he leaned her against the wall and inhaled her scent. Clean and fresh, but not who he wanted. Licking her pulse, Scalar put her hands around his waist and moved closer to him, her body molding to his.

“Sorry, darling, I just want dinner. I’m supposed to be meeting my family right now and there isn’t time for that. I have to say it’s hard, very hard, to turn such a luscious creature down, but I like to take my time when I have sex.”

“Are you sure? You’re very hard and I could really use a good fuck. Please?” she begged prettily.

Aiden ran his tongue down her throat again. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I can make it good for you. Close your eyes and think of me. That’s it, think of my cock deep inside of you.”

Planting the images of them having sex was easy. He was a little disconcerted that she had thought his cock was so small, but he needed to feed before too much more time passed. He was fairly old and a pureblood, being born a vampire instead of turned, so he didn’t need to feed often. But he’d been putting it off more and more and he was going to get himself into trouble soon if he didn’t get better at it. Sighing deeply, he nudged Scalar to her release and bit her. Hot blood filled his mouth and slid down his throat. When her climax was coming to an end Aiden pushed her again as he sealed the tiny prick marks at her neck. She would be weak for a little while, but more than likely blame that on two really hard climaxes. Once he tipped her he walked out the back door to get a breath of fresh warm air.

Aiden had four brothers who had all found their mates. He was the baby of the family and the only one who’d not found his mate. He wanted to find her, wanted to spend the rest of his days making her happy, pleasing her, but mostly he wanted someone he could be with. Even with his family, all of them, Aiden was still lonely.

Going back inside, he moved to the back where everyone was. He sat down next to his brother and was able to move right into the conversation. It seemed that Bradley was still going on about the shifter on his land.

“It’s a female. I don’t know why the pups didn’t recognize her scent. I certainly did, it was all over them. They said that they’d played with her before. And that she was really fun. Fun? What the fuck does that mean? Fun my ass. She was trespassing, trespassing on my land.”

“What are you going to do? I mean, with that much land you certainly can’t watch the whole thing. And as for the pups, can’t really blame them. A female out for a run, maybe they didn’t tell you because they were learning the ways around her. You know, getting a little tail.” Kyle was the only one that laughed at his own joke. Aiden smiled, but knew that it was a little too tense for his taste around the table.

“That’s just it, they said that she wasn’t there but to play. They actually thought she was a full blood. The only reason I know she wasn’t is because her scent was a little too perfect, too clean on them. And there was the magic. I could smell it on them.”

They spent another three hours sitting around talking. They were all good friends and by the time they left Aiden felt like he was with old friends and good ones.

~CHAPTER 4~

Zane was under a car when Danny came back to the bay area three days later. They had been dancing around each other, not saying anything, yet talking a lot. When he said her name she didn’t even come out from under the car but continued to work.

“Zane, Duncan called. He wants to know if you want a few books he picked up on the Internet. He said to have you call him when you get a chance. He’s also bringing in a couple of other cars to be serviced.”

Zane had just finished reading something she’d picked up over the weekend and was ready for something new. “Yeah, I’ll call him, thanks.”

Danny didn’t move away from the car. She could still see his feet from where she was. He was doing that toe to heel thing again and she wanted to tell him to go away, but it was his shop.

“Russell said that we may have...that we may have been a little rude to you the other day. I wanted to tell you, that is, we wanted to...fuck, Zane, I’m sorry. It’s just that neither of us had seen anything like that before. I...we want you to come over tonight and talk to us. Okay?”