by Mary Hughes
“Drop!” He bellowed it, darkening the command with every ounce of ancient compulsion he possessed.
Instantly the vampire collapsed.
Kat—
Didn’t.
She demanded of him, “That bull roar… Where did it come from?”
Shock hit him like a lightning bolt. Overwhelmed him with racing electricity, immobilizing his body, his brain, his very blood. He stared at her, incredulous. He’d used his most powerful voice, the one no one could withstand. Disbelief gnashed and ground against the gears of his reason.
She was immune to him.
Chapter Fourteen
Kat was immune to his compulsion. The implications made his head spin.
Mate.
Ryker had lived his whole adult life without entangling relationships, avoiding the traps and trauma they inevitably brought.
Yet he teetered at the brink of a relationship canyon the size of hell.
To say he was freaked was an understatement. On a scale from calm to agitated, he was at utterly losing his shit. His fist clenched so hard, the tracker in it crushed to dust. Bits fell from his fingers onto the pavement.
Kat took a step toward him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” A rough growl emerged from his throat, aching as if it had been scarred with acid.
She gave him a twisted smile. “That means something is definitely wrong. Was it that vampire’s roar? It was a big one. Could’ve been the king.” Concentrating on her feet, she mounted the steps, gingerly feeling her way toward him.
“No.” He backed away, unable to help himself. She was everything he wanted and so feared. Beautiful. Wild. Capable. Attractive as hell. Potential mate. He’d already let a tenuous connection start between them, more fool him.
“I suppose you’d recognize his voice better than me.” She thought he meant no, that wasn’t the king’s roar. “A pretty powerful vamp, though. Who do you think he was? Where do you think he went…?” She stepped wrong and slipped. Feet stuttering, she began to fall.
Cursing, he zipped forward and managed to catch her before she hit the hard edge of the stairs. He kept a firm grip until she was steady on the sidewalk level.
Then he let her go like a hot potato.
“What’s wrong, Ryker?” she asked again.
“Nothing,” he repeated. Everything. “I have to go.”
The gold-bar leader at the bottom of the steps sat up, shaking his head woozily.
“Finish him off, will you?” He had to get out of here. “Use one of your serum-coated blades.”
He didn’t have feelings for her. He couldn’t.
Relationships only caused him pain. Staying just long enough to see her stab the vampire and the rogue start to crumble, he nimbly leaped over this one and got the hell out of there.
…
While I wasted several seconds gaping at Ryker’s back, the first wave of police emerged from the station and gawked over sucker body parts.
I’d be suspect number one. Time to get out of there. Besides, I didn’t have nearly enough body bags. I spun and stalked west.
Well, considering the ice, more minced, but my attitude was all stalking.
As I walked, I jammed my cold hands under my arms. I should’ve probably been tracking down the source of that big-ass commanding shout, but my brain wanted to chew on Ryker’s blowing me off. And after I’d had so much fun fighting with him, too. We were no longer working together, fine. I could do this on my own. In fact, I had a clue saved up that I hadn’t investigated, putting it off through paranoia and guilt.
I headed north, toward the vast Roller-Blayd lot—and the single house on it.
How could Ryker kiss me like that then run away? I’d even told him about Max and Juliette, baring my freaking soul, yet had that stopped him from running off? No. Double asshole. A little healthy attraction could hurt.
Rey would tell me I was being unreasonable. He’d given me the boot, so what? The best thing for me would be to boot him out of my life in return. She would tell me not to moon over him. Not to feed the hurt, anger, loneliness, and fear churning in my gut. Talk about unappetizing and non-nutritional; emotional stews are the worst.
I missed him, damn it.
Dart-riddled idiot that I am. Somewhere along the way, I’d developed feelings for the bastard.
I should have listened to my first instincts. Don’t get close to a human who’s insane enough to be pals with a vamp.
Missing him hurt, and I didn’t like it. Rey said feeling bad about bad things is normal. She said not to push the pain away, but not to feed it, either.
So, as I reached the bungalow and mounted the steps, I deliberately did not feed my missing-the-bastard thoughts. I’m happy. I gritted my teeth. My hunt for the king is nearly over. I knocked.
Still no one was home. I waited a good five minutes, knocking and ringing the doorbell. Nothing.
I was about to try my luck with my lock picks when a bunch of lederhosen- and dirndl-wearing folks trooped into view on the sidewalk. I pretended to be simply waiting at the door until they passed, headed for Roller-Blayd Hall.
But another group came right behind them, and another behind them.
I called out to the third group. “What’s going on?”
“Oktoberfest scavenger hunt,” a braided, costumed Heidi called back. “Co-sponsored by Nieman’s Bar and the Lutheran Ladies Auxiliary. There are at least twenty teams.” She checked her list. “I don’t suppose you have a gold-plated beer stein, do you?”
“Sorry, no.” There went that plan. I left and tried to take out my frustrations by hunting. The only thing to attack me was a wavy-arm blowup plastic tube with painted-on lederhosen, its sign proclaiming, “Get your cheese and sausage fix at Wurst Und Käse!”
Those things are annoying. Stabbing it was a public service.
About midnight I returned to the bungalow, but teams of scavengers were still tootling by. I gave up and went to get a few hours sleep.
…
Ryker spent an hour stalking around the city, looking for one of those black-fatigue enemies to question—with his fist. He only came across a blood-starved rogue fleeing Chicago’s new master, a rogue who, seeing Ryker, squeaked and slit his own throat. Disgusted, Ryker returned to the police station, slipped into his Officer Keydew disguise, and tried to steady his nerves by burying himself in paperwork.
There was always paperwork.
He found a desk and dug in, scouring away any blood-chilling mate notions with details so abrasively boring he was yawning within the hour.
By then it was the start of Keydew’s shift. He stayed desk bound the whole time. Longer.
Well into first shift, the accident report came in.
He nearly yawned past it. A van registered in Meiers Corners had been towed to the city impound lot after crashing just east of the city limits. Crash investigation was done by the county sheriff’s department.
A van, exiting Meiers Corners. He flipped it and went onto the next report.
Stopped. Slowly flipped it back.
Trailing the kidnap vehicle’s exhaust, he’d been thinking car. But that was wrong. Kat had said it. “At minimum, they’ll have installed restraint anchors fit for a rhinoceros.” If he were capturing the most dangerous vampire on the planet beside himself, he’d use a tank with a Faraday cage inside.
A tank, in little Meiers Corners? That’d stand out. A full-size van, though? Something like a Brinks truck or reinforced commercial van would be perfect.
Heart beating faster, he reread the crash report. Single vehicle, traveling east on Eisenhower. Collided with a concrete building. The skid patterns and final resting position indicated it had swerved wildly before impact.
As if a fight had gone on inside? If Elias had been struggling, not simply for appearances, but us
ing all his strength, that would account for the swerving.
Certainty gripped Ryker’s gut. He was on the right trail.
He checked vehicle make and model. If it was a minivan, all his suppositions were for nothing.
An armored full-size van. Ryker pumped a triumphant fist.
Blood trails at the scene indicated more than one person had exited, yet the driver and any occupants were missing. Blood trace mysteriously burned off the next morning.
The date? Four nights ago.
The night Elias had disappeared.
Yes. This was it. Elias had let himself be taken then for some reason decided it was no longer advantageous to remain captive. Hopefully because he’d already learned enough.
Because the alternative, that the attackers had upped their game, enough that Elias was in real danger, was too gruesome to consider. His brother vampire had already looked like hell coming out of the hall.
If something even worse had happened to him in that van… Ryker’s bones iced.
“Where are you now?” he muttered. If Elias had escaped, why hadn’t he contacted anyone? Even if he’d gone to ground to heal, he should have emerged by now.
Had he been retaken by those pseudo-military fangs for hire? Then why was that leader so eager to put trackers on him or Kat?
Ryker checked the paperwork. The van had been towed to an impound lot on Eighth and Lincoln. If he went to see the wreckage, maybe he could figure out what had happened.
Energized, he jumped to his feet and dashed outside, blinking in the bright sun of a new day. The vamps from last night’s attack weren’t even spots on the stairs.
If he stayed out too long, he’d go up in flames, too.
Trotting down the steps as fast as Officer Keydew’s legs let him, he thought about changing back into himself. But no. He needed the authority Keydew’s badge gave him.
As he trotted the nine blocks, clouds scudded across the sky. He dodged from shadow to shadow, resting in a building’s shelter when his body temperature began to climb.
During one of these breaks, he thought about notifying Kat.
Longing surged through him.
He shut it down. Even one single moment of enjoying her company might be the moment that sent him over. Best to avoid her for now.
That tracker bothered him, though. He set out again. When had those uniformed goons started trying to plant them? Had they put one on him or Kat at some point earlier? Perhaps they’d even tried bugging the police themselves. He stopped a moment to search himself. To his dismay, he found another disk on the back of his department-issued bodycam. He peeled it off and stuck it to the side of a lamppost.
Here was the biggest reason not to tell her about the van. Those black-uniformed vampires were obviously a trained, cohesive unit. Dangerous. He didn’t want her anywhere near the van because he didn’t want her anywhere near them.
He wanted her safe.
The insidious relationship trap—caring—beckoned him again. He ignored it.
…
Though I’m normally a night owl, I was up by five, determined to spend some quality time with that bungalow’s camera. I showered, suited up, and was on my scooter by quarter to six.
Irritation, not hope, fueled my hand on the throttle to Fifth and Grant, and stubbornness…I mean resolve strengthened my arm as I raised my knuckles to knock on the bungalow door.
The door swooshed open, surprising me. I stared at a round face, a thatch of red hair smooshed under a black-visored police cap. Blue eyes peered at me from a gnat’s swarm of freckles. A blue uniform shirt, bearing a name plate reading “Titus,” was pulled taut by a duty belt so weighed down with gear, I was the underachiever with a simple weapons vest and swords.
He popped on his bodycam. “Who are you?” Without waiting for me to answer, he pushed past me, shutting the door as he did. “Can’t talk. I’m late for work.”
“Wait! I need to see the footage from your security camera.”
He clomped down the porch stairs. “Which one? Doesn’t matter. You’re not police, and even if you were, you’d need a warrant. Got a warrant? Didn’t think so.” He hit the sidewalk going south.
My win was going south fast. Literally.
“Officer Titus, wait. Please.” I dashed after him to the corner where he turned east on Grant, not slowing a jot. “I’m trying to find a missing person. If I can just see the footage facing the Roller-Blayd Hall lot—”
“This isn’t about missing billionaire Kai Elias, is it?” He shot me a glare over his shoulder. “That would be interfering with a police investigation.”
“N-no?” I finally caught up to him and gave him my sincerest smile. A certain charming man would’ve come in handy about now. “Could you stop? I only want to see that camera—”
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to cite you for harassing an officer in the course of his duty.” He screeched to a stop, slid a pad of forms from his belt, flipped it open, and scribbled on it with a stub of a pencil. “If you contest this citation, you have seven days to file a formal request for administrative review.” He tore off the top sheet and handed it to me. “Of course, that means filling out forms 701, 702, and long-form 703—in triplicate. And now, I’m late.” He strode off.
I blinked at the incomprehensible writing. Had he just given me a ticket? I’d have to contact Officer Keydew to see if he could do something about this. Not even to necessarily make it go away. I’d be happy if he could simply decipher it.
As Titus disappeared from view, I glanced over my shoulder at the now-empty house. Because, come on. With that personality, no way Titus had a co-hab.
Now was my chance.
Sure, it was daytime. But I was done waiting for the right time. I’d make the right time by wearing my fleece’s hood real low. I flipped it over my head, heading toward Titus’s home while I tied myself into my hood like Kenny from South Park.
Starting into the yard, I was intent on the house, intending to skirt around to the back and enter there.
“Whatcha doin’?” someone piped behind me.
I jumped about three feet, landing twisted half around.
Nobody was there.
“Lady?”
Adjusting my vision down, I beheld a small tyke waving at me.
What was a baby doing outside? Though, frankly, anyone under eighteen looked like an infant to me.
“Whatcha doin’?” he said again.
“I’m, um, going trick or treating.”
“That’s not for days and days yet. Though Mommy already bought candy.”
“Your mommy sounds prepared. That’s what I’m doing. I’m rehearsing for Halloween.”
“Oh. I thought you were going to break into Mr. Titus’s house.”
I winced. Lucky guess or I wasn’t as stealthy as I thought.
“You don’t have to, though. His key’s under the rock there.” He pointed. “It’s not a real rock,” he added helpfully.
“How do you know all this?” I moved the fake rock and took the key.
“I live there.” He pointed across the street. “Mr. Titus moved in a few months ago and he keeps locking himself out.” His face brightened. “I learned lots of new words from Mr. Titus.” His face fell. “Though Mommy doesn’t like me using them in p’lite company.”
I bet. “Thanks, kid.”
“Welcome.” He trotted off.
I waited until he was safely home before returning to the front porch. That kid would make a killing with trick or treat. Using the key, I opened the door.
Immediately a whistle sounded, three short tweets. A feminine voice cautioned, “Disarm system now.”
A short shot of adrenaline sent my pulse racing. Breathing through it, I shut the door and scanned beside it for a keypad. None here, which meant it was by the back entrance. I dashed t
hrough the house, found the keypad, and entered four zeros. Another tweet was followed by, “Disarmed.” Thank you, nice alarm lady. It always amazed me how many people didn’t change the default security system passcode.
A quick search netted me a running laptop in a bedroom furnished as an office. Password—password. Clicking around brought up the camera program.
When I found the correct camera, I used the menu to select the time frame. My heart beat harder as I clicked play.
Almost immediately a large white van pulled into the Roller-Blayd lot, its side toward the camera. Yes. Good resolution and tantalizingly close. If it were turned front, I might even be able to read the license plate. Though if I didn’t get the plate, I still might be able to find it. While full-size vans weren’t exactly rare, there couldn’t be too many in the area.
The van idled, engine puffing exhaust. I waited.
Four big guys in black uniforms burst into the picture, the fangs for hire. My pulse quickened. They struggled with something. Or someone.
The van’s driver threw open a set of doors in back. The four goons shoved their victim toward the opening.
A huge hand like a mallet reached out the back.
My heart skipped a beat then thudded faster. I didn’t like that giant ham fist.
The victim’s head rose. It was the king and his silvered temples. My mouth went dry.
The hand closed on Elias’s shirt like an electronic claw and yanked him inside. The other four leaped in after him.
The driver shut the doors, scooted around to his side, and moments later, the van took off—squealing out of the lot on a tight U-turn.
A U-turn, with a flash of back bumper.
I sucked in a breath. Is this it? Swirling the mouse, I found and clicked on pause, then tracked back through the video frame by frame.
Revealing the edge of a license plate.
Heart hammering now, I clicked back through another couple frames until the whole plate was revealed. I scanned the interface for a zoom function. There. Holding my breath, I tried it.
The plate characters resolved.
I pumped a fist. “Gotcha.”
Hopping onto the TOR network via my phone, I found Black Widow was on chat. For once, things were going my way.