Meta Marshal Service 4

by B N Miles

  Beatrice stalked around in front of them, hands behind her back. Jared lingered in the opening and scanned the room. It must’ve been a garage at some point—large doors were open at the far end of the room, the metal bent back where Beatrice and her team had breached them. Several vehicles were blackened and shattered and one was actively burning. Corpses littered the ground, blood stained the concrete floor, and the smell of copper blood and shit permeated the air.

  “You are all found guilty of war crimes,” Beatrice said with her chin held high. “There will be no trial. There will be no mercy. When I rotted in one of your prisons, I was given no quarter, no friendships, no comforts. There will be none for you.”

  She raised her hand. Her women pressed their rifles to the heads of the soldiers.

  “Should we stop this?” Cassie asked. He heard the urgency in her voice.

  “No,” Jared said. “This isn’t for us.” He reached out and pulled her toward him. She buried her face in his chest. He met Jessalene’s eye but she only nodded and didn’t look away as Beatrice’s militia executed the prisoners in one loud burst of rifle fire.

  Bodies slumped lifeless to the floor.

  Beatrice turned toward them and spotted Jared. “There you are,” she said, sounding chipper. “How’d it go?”

  “Got a battery,” he said, “but no Wade. They moved him before we got here.”

  She scowled. “At least we got to slaughter these bastards.”

  “Rescued more women too.”

  She sucked in a breath. “How many is that now? Hundreds?”

  “Hundreds,” he agreed. “We’re going to need more housing.”

  She cackled and waved for her fighters to fall in. “Least of our concerns.”

  “You take point, Commander.”

  “Shouldn’t we torch this place?”

  “Their reactor is melting down right now. I have a feeling that even if we don’t burn it, the place won’t be salvageable.”

  She gave him a look and he knew she wanted to go rampaging through the place. She’d been a prisoner herself, and the memory of that experience had hardened her toward anyone involved with the Medlar. If she had her way she’d slaughter everyone—man, woman, child, didn’t matter. They were all complicit in her mind.

  “Fine then.” She turned to her militia. “Roll out.”

  They marched back toward the bent-open doors. Jared lingered, eyes scanning over the dead Medlar bodies. He felt Cassie take his hand and squeeze, a strange look of compassion and worry in her eyes.

  They followed Beatrice out and into the night.

  4

  The Chapter House was busy as the new girls were taken inside, given clothes, food, water, and a place to sleep. There wasn’t much space in the house, unfortunately, and Jared knew he’d have to buy another building sooner or later—though that wouldn’t be too much of a problem given his own financial status, combined with Nikki’s absurd glut of cash.

  He found the Vampire Underlord lounging in the back room of their house, which was connected to the Chapter House by an enormous wooden door that locked on both sides. She looked tired, the bags under her normally pristine eyes more pronounced than usual, her mouth pulled into a tight line, as she scrolled through her phone and read through her messages—or read through a variety of social media accounts her Underlord office ran for political and propaganda purposes.

  Metahumans weren’t a part of normal Human society. That had been a condition of the Accords, and so all Metahumans must abide by that one simple rule—they were to never reveal themselves to non-Magi, except where necessary for life and death, and in those cases the Magi were responsible for cleanup. The Vampires stuck to those rules, at least the spirit of them, but they certainly pushed the boundaries of what was right and acceptable. Out of all the Metahuman races, the Vampires were the most aggressive toward Magi rule. They liked to play tricks on the Magi, liked to test their boundaries, liked to fuck with them in general when given the opportunity, and Nikki was one of the most mischievous Vampires Jared had ever met.

  She looked up as he stepped into the small, cramped study. A couch was pressed against the wall, overstuffed and light blue. A chair, a desk, and a computer were in the left corner, and filing cabinets were on the right. This room used to be for laundry, but they’d put the machines in the basement and turned it into a command center for their mission. Hanging on the right wall next to the filing cabinet was an enormous corkboard covered in pictures and long strands of red, yellow, and white string, each color denoting a different relationship, though Jared had long since lost track of what it all meant. At the center of the board was a picture of Wade, with photos of various Medlar and other Magi players surrounding him.

  “How’d your meeting go?” Jared asked, crossing his arms and leaning up against the doorframe. He felt exhausted from the night, exhausted and angry that they hadn’t found Wade.

  “Frustrating.” Nikki lowered her phone. “How was the raid, darling? Did you find him?”

  “Not this time.”

  She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I really hoped you would. Getting Wade back would make all this so much easier.”

  “We did get something interesting though.” He reached into his bag and took out the battery.

  Nikki’s eyes glittered in the low office light. She sat up straight and leaned toward the battery, almost like she was attracted by its power. Nikki was beautiful, with long blond hair, Nordic features and body style—slim, pale, but with a deliciously feminine figure—and Jared never got tired of letting his eyes play along the lines of her form. She noticed him looking and smiled, not shy about her looks, and tilted her head as she crossed her legs and leaned an elbow on her knee, letting the neckline of her otherwise modest button-down shirt fall open enough to let him catch a glimpse of her breasts. He smirked and shook his head, knowing full well what she was trying to do—and falling for it anyway.

  “Let me take a look,” she said, holding out a hand.

  “I should put it with the others.”

  “Please, darling?”

  He sighed and tossed it to her. She caught it, her hands a blur as she moved. The sun hadn’t risen quite yet, which meant her unnatural speed and strength were still intact—but when the day came, she’d be as strong and as fast as any other Human her size and weight.

  “It was almost not worth it,” Jared said, “except we rescued a bunch of new girls.”

  “Interesting,” she murmured, turning the battery in her hands. He wasn’t sure if she meant the battery or the rescued girls.

  “No men this time, which I thought was strange. I can’t seem to figure out any pattern.”

  “There might not be any.”

  “The man running this facility was a real piece of shit. Had one of the girls half-naked and acting like some kind of servant.”

  Nikki looked up sharply and made a face. She hated the Medlar as much as anyone else, but the idea of them using women as sexual objects pissed her off beyond reckoning and likely made her want to rip the Medlar bastards into very small, very bloody pieces. She was a feminist like that.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Dead.” Jared shrugged. “He told us they moved Wade though, just a few days earlier. We were on the right trail. Your intel was good.”

  Nikki clenched her jaw. “But not good enough.”

  “What happened with you?”

  “The usual bullshit.” She tossed Jared the battery and he slipped it back into the bag. “Lord Raynard giving me the same garbage story about wanting peace with the Medlar, blah blah blah, not wanting to escalate. Really, darling, he’s a total waste of time.”

  “You know we need more Vampire support. The Elves won’t step up and the other Metas aren’t strong enough.”

  She sighed dramatically and leaned back on the couch, tossing her hands over the back and giving Jared a little smile. He knew that look. He took off his bag and let it fall onto the ground before walking toward
her. She looked up at him with a hungry, eager expression, and he sank down onto the couch beside her before leaning over and kissing her neck. She purred slightly and ran her hands through his hair as he unbuttoned her shirt and bit her lower lip.

  “Try harder,” he said softly.

  “I’m trying as hard as I can.” She almost whined, but not quite—Nikki never really whined. “You know how this goes. Politics, favors, that whole thing. I have my own network and I’m working it as hard as I can.”

  “That’s working so far. Maybe we don’t need more support.”

  She let out a soft breath as Jared pushed her shirt open and cupped one full breast, her nipple already hard, and kissed her collarbone.

  “Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know anymore, darling. I thought this would be so much easier when we started it all.”

  He laughed as he moved down to her breasts and ran a tongue around one pink nipple. For a dead woman, she was surprisingly soft and warm and gorgeous—and sensual. Of all his girlfriends, Nikki was the most in touch with her body and her needs, and she was rarely shy about asking for what she wanted—or taking it when necessary. Jared had his hands full, juggling multiple women, dealing with their competing personalities, all on top of managing the Chapter House and the rescued refugee girls. Fortunately, he had Beatrice and a few other women helping with that, but still—if he were less of a man, or if the Need didn’t leave him constantly wanting physical intimacy, Nikki might have been too much for him.

  Fortunately, they were a match made in heaven—or in hell, depending on perspective.

  Jared smiled to himself as he raked a hand through Nikki’s hair then pulled up the sleeve of his shirt. He leaned back and pulled her on top of him. He pushed open her shirt and cupped her breasts as she rolled her hips down along his hard cock. She let out a moan as Jared held up his wrist, offering it to her, which she took greedily in her two hands.

  Her bite still hurt. There was no getting around that, but she was good at it and the pain was only temporary. Her fangs sunk into his wrist and she began to feed—and Jared felt the heady, dizzying rush of blood leaving him in thick waves. She drank to the rhythm of his heart, the beat aiding each suck, and it was so sensual and gorgeous, her breasts heaving with each deep draught of him, her beautiful lips cupped around the wound on his wrist, that he felt his cock grow harder.

  She didn’t take too much. She never did, and when she pulled back her lips were smeared with red. He pulled her down and kissed her before she could lick it away, tasting his own blood on her tongue, smearing it against his face. She shimmied down off him and tugged at his pants, revealing his thick shaft, which she stroked sensually before taking into her mouth.

  He stripped off her shirt as she sucked him then stood her up and made her take off her pants. She grinned, almost shy, but stripped as he stared at her and felt the Need screaming at him to take her, take what he wanted, take her body. Her clothes fell to the floor and he couldn’t help the smile that drifted across his face.

  She rode him then, fast and hard. That was the best part of Nikki—she knew what he wanted, too, and didn’t hesitate to give him what he needed. They were a good team that way. She got his blood, which she desperately wanted, and he got her love and affection. She rode him faster, their bodies intertwined, her warm, wet spot gripping him tight, and he felt her purring, then growling, then moaning as they writhed and fucked together. He moved her back down onto the couch, turning her around, gripping her gorgeous ass and taking her from behind, teasing her breasts, then her clit, pulling hair, slapping her ass—working out his anger, his frustration, his Need, and loving every second of it. She moaned, worked her hips—

  And he knew she was close. He didn’t slow as her orgasm overtook her, a normal orgasm, non-magical, but still beautiful as her body tensed and twitched. He was close now, so close, and as he finished deep between her legs the magic unleashed and they were one. For a moment, they floated together in a haze of pure bliss as the priori left his body in a rush, using Nikki as its conduit into the wider world. She came for the second time in less than a minute, and the intensity of the orgasm left them both on the couch, spent and sweating.

  Nikki grinned at him, toothy and fangy. She kissed his neck.

  “I love when you come home,” she murmured.

  “I know you do.”

  There was a knock at the door. It opened and Penny stood, framed by the light behind her. Short hair cut at an angle just below her ears, pale citrine-tinged skin, beautiful red lips. She tilted her head and crossed her arms.

  “Already?”

  “Sorry,” Jared said. “She got to me first.”

  She sighed then sat down in the chair next to the couch. Nikki burrowed deeper against Jared’s chest, completely unaware of her naked body—not that she’d mind if Penny joined them. The young scientist was a new member of their little family, and one Jared was still getting used to, but she’d grown on them all ever since she came with them from that facility out in Arizona.

  “The new girls are doing well.”

  “Yeah? What did Izzy say?”

  “The usual. Malnourishment. Dehydration. Some of them had strange wounds. Some might need some serious therapy for the rest of their lives.”

  He nodded and extricated himself from Nikki’s arms. She sighed but remained naked on the couch, arms above her head, body gorgeous and lithe. Jared stood and got dressed, though he noticed Penny giving Nikki a very appreciative smile.

  “Nikki’s going to push harder on her contacts. They moved Wade just before we attacked and we need to know where.”

  “Oh, darling,” Nikki murmured. “There’s only so much a woman can do. You’re insatiable.”

  “And you love it.”

  Penny crossed her arms. “How many more facilities do you think the Medlar have?”

  “Hard to say.” Jared drifted over toward the corkboard. “We’ve raided four, if you include Arizona, and we know about five more. But there can easily be twenty, fifty, a hundred.” He tapped a map of the United States with red pins stuck at surprisingly even intervals all over it. “They have land on nexuses all over the place, and any one of them could have enough juice to power a serious ritual.”

  “So we’re still playing catchup.” Penny frowned and shook her head. “I wish I could’ve seen that place. I mean, the facilities, were they as nice as the place I was working in?”

  Jared gave her a look. “Miss your lab?”

  “Sort of. You haven’t exactly given me something state of the art.”

  Jared laughed and ran a hand through his hair. Part of Penny’s conditions for coming back with them had been the freedom to study healing magic and how it might be harnessed for good. So far, that had yielded some surprising information, but Jared had her working out of a nearby house that he’d retrofitted into a lab. The top floor was all for Penny, while the bottom two floors housed more Meta refugees. Penny lived in Jared’s house with the other girls, so she split her time between the two buildings.

  Before this was all over, he was going to own this entire block, and it would be packed full of Meta girls rescued from those bastards. The thought wasn’t entirely awful, though he felt exhausted imagining it.

  “We need to have a meeting,” he said, turning to look at the girls. “Let everyone know. We need a plan moving forward.”

  “I thought you had a plan,” Nikki said.

  “That was before we realized they’re going to keep moving Wade around and have us chasing our tails.”

  Penny tapped her lips with her fingernail. “You want to get ahead of them? I’m not sure how that’ll work.”

  “I have an idea, but I want to talk to the group first.”

  She nodded. “Alright then. We’ll get everyone together.”

  “Later today.” Jared drifted back over to where Nikki lay sprawled on the couch. “I need a few hours of sleep first. Make sure the new girls are getting settled and everyone that came on the raid is getti
ng sleep.”

  “Roger that, Captain.” Penny stood and rolled her eyes. “Anything else? Want a sandwich?”

  Jared burrowed down onto the couch with Nikki. She let out a soft sigh of pleasure as he kissed her neck and pulled her warm, naked body against him. Penny fished a blanket from a corner next to the couch and tossed it over them.

  “Sandwich would be divine,” he said as exhaustion pulled him down.

  Penny let out a huff, but she kissed him. “Asshole.”

  He grinned as she kissed Nikki then left.

  “Think she’ll make it?” Nikki asked.

  “Not likely.”

  She pressed herself harder against him, and he let sleep take him.

  5

  Jared stood outside of a low wrought-iron fence that encircled a large brick building. The wooden double doors with their intricate carvings and sleek black knocker stared back at him. This was the last place he wanted to be in the city—but they were getting desperate and he knew that if he didn’t make a big move soon, then the whole world might suffer for it.

  “Are you sure about this, darling?” Nikki leaned up against the fence in a chic dress shirt and slacks, her hair down in soft curls around her shoulders.

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Last time you saw your uncle, you two fought each other, yes?”

  “I won that fight.” He took a deep breath. “And I’m not here to see him.”

  Nikki gave him a long look then shook her head. “I have meetings, so I’m dropping you here. But scream if you need help.”

  He kissed her cheek. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sure you will.” She walked off with one look back over her shoulder and a small shake of her head.