The Community Series, Books 1-3

by Tappan, Tracy

  “ … change in doctor’s orders, Dr. Parthen,” Thomal was saying in a chipper tone. “He’d like you to get some solid sleep now.” Thomal’s hands reached for Antoinetta’s IV.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Antoinetta interceded.

  “If you’d sign here, Dr. Bernard,” Nurse Hollowitz crooned, “then we’ll just head down to Room ….”

  “I have a concussion, Nurse. I’m not supposed to sleep deeply.” Antoinetta’s voice turned authoritative. “I’d like to see your badge.”

  Ah, shit. “You need to throttle back, Vinz,” Jacken hissed. “The target isn’t knocked out yet.”

  Vinz’s voice suddenly mellowed into warm honey. “You know, Barbara, that’s a very beautiful necklace you’re wearing. Do you mind if I take a closer look at it?”

  Jacken saw Thomal plunge the syringe of Special K into Antoinetta’s IV tube.

  “My God!” Antoinetta blasted. “What did you just give me?” She started to yank the IV needle out of her arm.

  Thomal grabbed her wrist.

  A loud crack rang out as she slapped Thomal across the face with her free hand. “Let go of me!” She reached for her needle again, and they started to struggle.

  “Oh, ho, my fun meter is pegged now,” Thomal panted out.

  “ … a lovely stone, Barbara. Is it an opal …?”

  Jacken gritted his teeth. “For Chrissake, Thomal, is this what you call charming the target? Get moving!”

  “Ah!” Thomal exhaled, straightening from a limp Antoinetta. “Target is sacked out, gentlemen.”

  Jacken released a pent breath. “You hear that Vinz?”

  Apparently, yes. Vinz’s video image started down the hall again. “Well, I should probably see to my patient,” he said to the nurse, both of them entering Room 506. “Don’t want to get stuck in San Diego rush hour traffic if – oomph!” The picture in Vinz’s quadrant fell to the floor, blanking to fuzzy snow. A second later, the nurse screamed once, then went abruptly silent.

  Jacken stiffened on the couch. What the –?! “Costache!?” he barked.

  But the image in Thomal’s quadrant was jiggling wildly, the sounds of scuffling and cursing exploding into Jacken’s earpiece. Holy shit! He jumped over his laptop and the coffee table in one leap and ran from the waiting room, moving down the hall with absolute silence in his heavy boots. Pressing his back flat against the wall just outside of Room 506, his breathing tight, he peered around the jamb.

  A low curse snarled past his lips. Vinz’s body was sprawled out on the floor in a stain of spreading blood, a knife sticking out of his chest, that busty nurse flopped over the top of him with her ass in the air. Two other men were in the room, both large, both dressed in the type of metal-accessorized aggressive black leather usually saved for BDSM parties. One had a shaved head with black flame tattoos curling up from his temples to the top of his skull. The other guy had spiked black hair and the same tattoos, his climbing the length of his neck.

  It was this asshole, Spike Boy, who was clutching a blue-faced Thomal by the throat.

  Louder alarm bells went off in Jacken’s head. Whatever power these men were wielding was something outside the norm. Thomal was one of the fastest of his kind, and Jacken had never seen anyone get a firm grip on the man unless he allowed it in training.

  Hissing under his breath, Jacken reached to the back of his belt and eased a long knife out of its sheath. He stepped through the doorway and, keeping to his maxim of fuck up an enemy first, ask questions later, he threw the weapon with a sharp snap of his wrist. Aiming for a point as far away from a collision with Thomal as possible, he sent the blade thwacking into the meaty part of Spike Boy’s shoulder.

  With a scream, Spike Boy stumbled backward into a medical cart, sending metal drawers clattering, scissors, gauze, forceps tumbling to the floor. Thomal crumpled out of the man’s hands, and then Spike Boy himself dropped.

  Jacken turned on the other one, Skull—just as that peckerhead let fly his own knife. Jacken hit the deck and rolled, hearing the knife swoosh just past his head, then thunk into the floor. A moment later, it exploded, geysering up ragged pieces of linoleum. Holy Christ. Only one type of knife exploded. A Bătaie Blade! Who the hell were these assholes? There wasn’t time for a Q&A. Powering to his feet in front of the bed, Jacken plowed a hard right cross over the mattress into Skull’s face, landing the punch dead center. Skull’s head snapped back, the bones in his nose splintering beneath Jacken’s fist. The man hit the wall, bounced forward, then grabbed Jacken by the shirtfront.

  Jacken shouted as Skull hauled him off the floor with impossible strength, tossing all 215 pounds of him over Antoinetta’s bed and into the far wall. His shoulder rammed out a hole in the drywall, the plaster blasting apart into a dense white cloud around him. Landing unsteadily on his feet, he struck out blindly and missed, his head spinning. His upper gums throbbed ruthlessly in primitive reaction to the violence.

  Spike Boy was on his feet now, too, Jacken’s knife still sticking out of his shoulder, white liquid oozing from the wound. White …?

  Spike Boy slammed a fist into Jacken’s gut.

  Air whooshed out of Jacken’s lungs. Jesus Christ, these guys were strong. “I need backup!” he yelled, hoping like hell Thomal’s fountain pen would pick up his shout, his own mic being inconveniently attached to his laptop back in the waiting room.

  Skull and Spike Boy exchanged looks.

  “Bloody fuck!” Skull whirled and snatched up Antoinetta.

  Jacken bolted forward, but Spike Boy’s fist flying into his peripheral vision stopped him. Ducking the punch, he came up with a brutal uppercut that evidently sloshed Spike Boy’s brain in his skull; the asshole made a second trip down to the linoleum, this time in an unconscious heap.

  Jacken grabbed Antoinetta out of Skull’s arms, pulling so hard he fell backward onto the bed with her.

  Skull jumped on top of him, toppling Antoinetta to one side of the mattress, her body wedging against the bedrail. Skull grabbed Jacken by the collar and cranked back a fist.

  Two things pinged Jacken’s senses in rapid succession: one huge holy-shitter was that Skull’s eyes were as black as his own. Not just very dark brown, but as black as if the pupils had eaten up the irises – and only one breed of man owned black eyes. Second, Skull stank … like corroded metal or transmission fluid. Not at all like blood. Not at all like the way he should’ve smelled with the black eyes of an Om Rău.

  Jacken dodged the punch Skull threw at him. Skull countered by trying to put him in a headlock. Jacken grappled with the man, grunting and cursing, their arms and legs tangling. Muscling Skull underneath him, Jacken hit the fucker hard enough to split the skin on his knuckles. Skull rolled Jacken back over, both men landing on Antoinetta’s feet, and punched Jacken in return, a ring on his finger tearing a line of flesh out of Jacken’s cheek in a streak of pain.

  Jacken snarled, grabbing Skull by the throat and –

  “Well, heck, looks like I’m missing all the fun.”

  Jacken and Skull stopped fighting and snapped their eyes up to the door in unison. Relief jackhammered Jacken’s heart. Nyko!

  His older brother was standing in the doorway, looking super bad-assed huge with his tall, broad, muscular body filling the entire frame. Eyes as cold and dark as black glaciers peered out from a tumble of shaggy black hair, and a savage array of black interlocking teeth tattoos ran the length of his forearms and ringed his neck. Nobody would guess that on the inside Nyko was pure marshmallow, because on the outside, he looked one hundred percent psycho serial killer.

  Thank crap for that. “About damned time,” Jacken growled.

  Eyebrows lifting, Nyko started into the room, but made it only one step inside when there was a blur of motion off to the left.

  From out of nowhere, Skull suddenly had a pair of medical scissors sticking out of his neck, a disgusting gurgling sound coming from him.

  Thomal stood next to the bed, a nasty sneer on his face.
“Sorry, guys, but I owed these bitches a spanking.”

  A white foamy substance like shaving cream oozed from Skull’s wound. Some of it blopped onto Jacken’s chest and began to eat through his shirt. “Jesus!” He heaved Skull off, letting the man crash unaided to the floor, and shot to his feet, tearing his shirt off and hurling it aside. “What the hell?”

  Nyko shook his head, his expression troubled as he crouched down next to Vinz and checked for a pulse. Nyko rolled the nurse off the fallen warrior, her removal exposing a unique sunflower burst of blood on the wall.

  A startled curse came out of Thomal’s mouth.

  Nyko carefully pulled the knife out of Vinz’s upper chest and held it up with one hand, the other jammed to Vinz’s wound.

  The hilt was carved with intertwining black flames, not like the interwoven black teeth they were used to seeing on their pain-in-the-ass Om Rău neighbors’ knives, but still with the boiling red crystal on it that marked it a Bătaie Blade.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Jacken said grimly.

  Thomal hissed a breath. “What the hell are these jagoffs doing with an Om Rău blade?” The man already looked like warmed-over shit, both eyes red from blown capillaries and dark bruises forming around his throat.

  “Maybe because they are Om Rău,” Jacken returned.

  Thomal’s blond brows arched high. “The only Om Rău in existence live next door to us.”

  Jacken tossed Nyko a roll of gauze. “These slimeballs have black eyes, Bătaie Blades, tribal tattoos, and were strong as fuck.”

  “They also bleed acid,” Thomal pointed out.

  “Then we need to look into the possibility that they’re a different genetic branch of Om Rău.”

  Nyko looked up from bandaging Vinz. “A branch that just so happens to be after our women, too?”

  Thomal made a guttural noise in his chest, his protective hackles going up.

  Women like Antoinetta carried a bloodline that was key to the salvation of their race. Jacken and his men of the Warrior Class protected and guarded any they found like the rare and precious commodity they were.

  “We’ll debrief further when we get back to Ţărână.” Jacken grabbed a bag and started shoving Antoinetta’s personal effects into it. “We’ve got to get out of here. Sunrise is riding up our asses, and we don’t want to get stuck in the safe house with Vinz needing to see Dr. Jess right away.” He looked at Nyko. “What’s the SITREP?”

  “No more bad guys are en route,” Nyko replied. “I put the backup team on the stairwell to keep an eye on that. Couple of nurses heard some noise coming from this room, but Arc is pulling a flirt ’n divert.” Nyko pushed to his feet, tossing Vinz over his shoulder as if the warrior weighed no more than a CPR dummy. “Still, we should get going PDQ.”

  “Agreed.” Jacken reached for Antoinetta. “Let’s get our target safely down to—Whoa!” He jerked back a step.

  Thomal stepped up beside him. “Told you she smells really good.”

  Really good? That was a massively enormous understatement. He hadn’t been able to tell before, what with so much of Vinz’s blood masking her scent, but … Jesus.

  Thomal glanced at Jacken’s bare chest. “You sure you want to be the one carrying her, chief?”

  Jacken exhaled a short breath. Right, the feel of this woman’s fragrant body pressed close to his, with only her thin hospital gown as a barrier between them, would probably make it right to the top of the Bad Idea Column. “You take her,” he ordered.

  But as soon as Thomal scooped up Antoinetta and settled her snugly against his chest, Jacken had the sudden, savage – and totally irrational – urge to tear out Thomal’s perfect blond entrails.

  Chapter Three

  “Murk and Ren bodged up the mission.”

  Raymond stopped writing in his ledger and looked up, squinting through the glare of his desk lamp at the young blonde woman standing just inside his study, a clipboard propped on her hip.

  She was dressed like a blooming tart, as was her habit, wearing four-inch pointies on her feet and a miniskirt not much wider than a belt. Her blouse showed as much cleavage as it did midriff, displaying a jeweled belly button ring, along with a black flame tattoo that curled from her navel down into parts unknown. Well, not entirely unknown from what he understood of his daughter’s escapades when she went out pubbing with the girls.

  “I beg your pardon,” he asked coolly, even though he’d heard her.

  Pandra hesitated, spinning the immortality ring on her finger with her thumb, the eerie red stone reflecting light like blood flecked with diamonds.

  The blasted thing was more often a curse than a salvation these days, all of the progeny seeming to think they had carte blanche to rampage around like blootered bulls.

  “Murk and Ren failed to nab Toni from the hospital.”

  Raymond narrowed his eyes, anger burning through his head and into his nostrils. The most important part of his plan was the attainment of Toni Parthen, and after that, her brother, Alex. Murk and Ren were fully aware of that. “I see,” he replied acidly. “And what, pray tell, occurred?”

  “I don’t know all the crack,” she said, “but the gist is that our lads got into a punch-up with some other blokes, who ended up nicking Toni from –”

  He slammed to his feet, knocking the metal arm of his desk lamp into a crazy swing. “Other men have taken her?” A wave of his power burst off his body and thumped into Pandra.

  She staggered backward a couple of paces, her black eyes flaring wide.

  He took an immediate breath and composed himself, locking his power into a low simmer. There was no need to be uncivilized, no matter how extreme his anger. “Where are Murk and Ren?” Those two needed to give him a full report on this catastrophe, posthaste. He felt a muscle in his jaw flicker as he added, “In jail, I presume?”

  “Um ….” Pandra moved forward to her former position. “No. They escaped before the police arrived.”

  “I see,” he drawled. “So the lads were too frightened to face me and went on a bender instead. Why am I not surprised.” He crossed to his cherrywood sideboard and poured himself a Courvoisier. Mouth tight, he stared down at his drink, the cut crystal of the double old-fashioned glass biting into his palm.

  The devil take Murk and Ren. Raymond had been preparing for this next step for twenty-six years. He and his partner, Boian – the last two pure Fey men on earth – had kept their Om Rău female, Yavell, churning out children during that entire quarter of a century and more, sometimes one baby a year, usually one every two years to prevent her womb from clapping out completely. Now they had eighteen progeny between them, and more planned for the future. But this year, the year Ren and Murk, born eleven months apart, came of age at twenty-six, was the year to set his scheme in motion.

  If women with the correct bloodlines could be acquired.

  More easily said than done, apparently, what with the way their missions had been going pear-shaped of late. First, Teer and Dace had failed to obtain that fifteen-year-old girl, and now Murk and Ren had made a dog’s dinner out of nabbing Toni. Taking her should’ve been a doss of a task, as well, since she’d been nearly unconscious in a hospital bed. When the detectives Raymond kept on permanent assignment watching Toni had informed him of the poor girl’s unfortunate car accident, Raymond decided straight away that this was the perfect time to take her. And now Murk and Ren had bodged it. By God, Raymond would be a bloody codger before he saw his first grandchild born.

  He looked up from his drink at Pandra again, the skin across his cheeks taut. “What do my detectives have to say about this? I imagine my chaps saw something.”

  “Yes,” Pandra said. “I checked with Mr. Perkins and Mr. Rathburn before coming to speak with you.”

  Raymond arched a single eyebrow. Smart girl. “And?”

  Pandra glanced down at her clipboard. “Perkins said there were seven men total at the hospital, although it appears only four actually got into a row with Murk and Re
n; one man was dragged out injured and unconscious, I imagine due to our lads. Two men,” she glanced up “– and here’s the important part – had black eyes and tribal tattoos.” She lowered her clipboard. “By the way Perkins and Rathburn described the tats, they sound like the same as Mum’s.”

  Raymond snorted elegantly. “That would make the two men Om Rău.”

  Pandra shrugged noncommittally.

  Raymond frowned over that. “Yavell is supposed to be the last of that breed.” The rest of the Om Rău race, it was rumored, had killed each other off. Hardly surprising, that. They were such ghastly creatures.

  “I can’t be sure, of course. I didn’t see the tats myself.” Pandra shifted from foot to foot.

  He took a sip of his drink. His daughter’s feet must be near wrecked in those ridiculous shoes.

  “Murk and Ren will have to confirm it.”

  “Well, I shan’t be waiting for those two dimmocks.” He set down his glass. “Best I go have a little chat with your mum.” Lord, the very thought soured his stomach. He preferred to have contact with that woman only when it was his turn to impregnate her, and that was about as much of a lark as doing the business with a leaf shredder. And probably gave him about as many injuries. “Am I correct in assuming that your neglect to mention Toni’s whereabouts indicates that no one has the remotest idea where she is?”

  Pandra fidgeted again; maybe she was wearying of her role as the bearer of bad news. “Perkins said he and Rathburn followed the getaway van for a good half hour, but the blokes eventually lost them.”

  As I suspected. He was surrounded by incompetents. He headed for the study door. “When the lads get home,” he told his daughter as he passed her, “send them to me straight away.”

  Pandra blank-faced the request.

  She must have realized that the poor chaps would be enjoying one of his more inventive castigations.

  * * *

  Kimberly Stănescu jammed her thumb into the remote control button, flipping channels quickly and aggressively, her jaw set. She wasn’t watching anything on the television, just waiting for her husband to finally get his butt home. Outside her living room window sunlight was fading into dusk – or rather, the huge stadium lights mounted on the cave ceiling that passed for this underground community’s version of sunlight were dimming.