“For your information, the Seekers will be back in less than twenty-four hours.”
“No matter. I’ve already secured a nice little property where we can relax for awhile. Sending the coordinates now.”
“I have them. I’ve got transportation. I’ll have our guest there in less than four hours.”
“Excellent, and my dear?”
“Yes?”
“Use the chemical I provided to subdue her. Other than that, she’s not to be touched. Any touching will be done by me, understand?”
Dead silence.
Sidheon squeezed the bridge of his nose with two fingers and took a deep breath. Dealing with this vamp had been trying at best. Perhaps he’d just feed the impertinent skank to the Seekers and be done with it? If she hadn’t been such an excellent source of information and a damned good lay, he would have seriously considered it.
“I said, do you understand? If you can’t manage to answer me now, then perhaps in four hours I can get you to say the words I want to hear with a bit of sharp persuasion.”
On an unsteady intake of breath, she whispered, “I understand. I’ll do as you ask. No problem.”
“Thank you, my dear. See you in four hours. By the way, I’m famished. I have plenty of blood, but not near enough pussy. Be ready.”
Disconnecting the line, he rolled over onto his back. Now he could get back to his experiment—counting how many times he could come before Carin arrived. Dragging a voluptuous blonde female vamp onto his engorged cock, he felt the freeing sensation of his lengthening incisors clear down to his balls. A petite curly-haired brunette bared a slender neck for him on a sigh. Yes, this was the kind of research he could really take good notes on.
“Carin, wake up.”
“What? What?” Carin shot up in the big bed, jumped to the floor and looked around for danger. Her training was coming in handy—her fingers wrapped securely around a nasty-looking curved silver dagger, ready to fight before she was even fully awake.
This must still be a dream. There was no other way Natasha would be standing in her bedroom shaking the hell out of her.
“Bix called the secure line,” Natasha said frantically, already moving towards the door. “There’s been trouble, Carin. He asked me to bring you to him.”
The dagger clattered to the carpet with a dull thud.
“Bix? What? Where?”
“He’s been injured. It doesn’t look good.”
Natasha’s words hung in the air, then twisted and tightened around Carin’s gut. Fear far more paralyzing than what she’d experienced when her mother and grandmother died wrapped around her lungs. No, this couldn’t be happening. Not with Bix. He was a damned vampire. He wasn’t supposed to die on her. But maybe there was something she could do? There had to be a way. Hope and panic mobilized her limbs. She snatched a sweat suit out of the dresser drawer while peppering Natasha with questions.
“Where is he? What happened? Should I get Dr. Lyons? Oh, my God. Move it woman, hurry up.” She threw a few articles into a bag, pulled on her coat and was ready to go. On the way down the stairs she remembered something.
“Hold on a second. I need to tell Alaana I’m going.”
“She already knows. Now let’s go or we won’t make it in time.”
Carin fidgeted and wrung her hands as she moved down the staircase. Her throat tight with unshed tears, she pushed down the terror gnawing at her belly and asked more questions.
“Where is he, Natasha? What kind of injury has he sustained?” She cringed as Natasha ignored the first question and bowled her over with the answer to the second.
“It’s a fatal wound. He’s unconscious and losing blood rapidly, but holding on because he knows you’re on the way.”
Oh God, this can’t be happening, Carin screeched to herself as their car flew towards the private airport on the south side of the vast estate.
“I’m really sorry, Carin. I know we haven’t been on the best of terms, but I certainly didn’t want anything to happen to Bix.”
Running up the steps of the small jet, Carin dropped her bag at her feet, strapped herself in with trembling fingers and told Natasha to have the pilot move faster.
Carin kicked her bag under her seat and winced when her toe came in contact with something. No telling what she’d stubbed her toe on, but truthfully, she didn’t care. All she wanted was to get this plane moving and get to her husband. The bag wasn’t cooperating with her nudging. She bent down and forcefully pushed it into place. When she sat up, Natasha stood over her.
The nasty sneer Carin had become so familiar with was back.
“Just a little something to help you sleep on the plane ride.”
“But I don’t have any trouble fly…” A prick in her neck was followed by a dull, freezing sensation. The last thing she saw was the face of a smug Natasha. Oh, just great, she thought as a strange gray haze settled over her eyes before darkness enveloped all.
Chapter Seventeen
It was almost six in the morning and his mistress hadn’t risen yet. Jaidyn knocked on the door again, but Alaana still didn’t answer. He sent out a psychic call to her and encountered nothing but an empty void. Even if she were blocking, he would have at least run into the block. He couldn’t remember ever encountering no psychic signature at all. Something was wrong.
Jaidyn put all his strength behind the hard kicks against the door. When it finally gave, his insides tilted with alarm. Alaana was sprawled out on her front room floor. A nasty, but healing bruise covered her right cheek. Ralen lay next to her. Both of them were unconscious.
He tapped her lovely face while bellowing into her ear. “Matriarch!” No response. What the hell was going on here? The bruise on her face shouldn’t have knocked her out like this. He leaned close and buried his nose at the base of her neck. A drug. He could smell it, but had no idea what it was.
Jaidyn eased her onto the couch and settled Ralen on the loveseat before dialing Dr. Lyons’ extension. Ten very tense minutes later, Dr. Lyons monitored their vital signs just as the Council and Bix’s team walked into her suites.
The moment Alaan spotted his mother’s pale face and limp body lying prone with doctors and assistants all around her, he hurried to her side and gently pulled her into his arms.
“Mother, what happened? Are you all right?” He looked up at Dr. Lyons as he swabbed an antiseptic wipe over the Matriarch’s neck. “Doc, what happened?”
“It appears your parents were hit at the base of the skull, then drugged. I’ve given them something to revive them but it takes a few minutes to break through the grogginess.”
Just then, the Seratis became fully lucid. Dr. Lyons checked them over and confirmed their overall excellent health. Other than a pair of fading headaches and matching bruises on the back of their heads, they were fine.
“Stop fussing over me,” the Matriarch snapped, shooing away all the hands trying to help her off the couch. “Jaidyn, I’ll have my breakfast now. Make sure Cook remembers that ghastly latte thing Carin sighs over every morning. In fact, I’ll just go on out to the terrace.”
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll head downstairs and take care of it personally.” Jaidyn kissed her palm. A glance past her shoulder to the table and chairs on the terrace sent a streak of alarm through him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He turned on his heel. Bix was two steps behind him.
“Matriarch,” Bix called, “I’m glad you’re all right. I’ll change and accompany Carin when she comes for breakfast. Feel up to briefing me on what happened while the two of you eat?”
“Same for me,” Alaan insisted.
Alaana nodded her agreement and slipped a warm robe over her lounging set.
All of them were on the way out when something Jaidyn had forgotten snapped clearly into his mind and made him want to kick himself. He glanced at his watch, stopped dead at the threshold of the door and turned back towards his mistress. Even his concern for the Matriarch was no excuse for overlooking such an
important point.
“Mistress, I am so ashamed.” Jaidyn lowered his head in shame. “I forgot that…”
Her face pale and pinched, Alaana stalled just short of the terrace. “What is it, Jaidyn?”
“It’s Dr. Carin. She should have been here twenty minutes ago.”
Bix flew out the door with Jaidyn, Alaan and their entire team on his heels until the Matriarch pushed them all out of the way and darted past.
In Bix’s apartment, Carin’s fading scent and one look at the rumpled sheets, open dresser drawers and closet doors said she’d left in a hurry several hours before.
Jaidyn eased Alaana into his arms and cradled her head against his shoulder. For the first time in centuries the Matriarch of Clan Serati cried in front of someone other than her mates while Bix howled his loss to the rafters.
Bix’s strangled roar ricocheted around the inside of his head followed by a deafening silence during the past hour he, Alaan and internal security spent tearing Natasha’s private apartments apart.
Since neither of the Serati Elders had seen the perpetrators, there were no leads on who’d taken Carin, except one. Natasha, and one of the Council’s small jets, was missing, too.
Bix had called telepathically to Carin the moment he learned she was missing, but like Jaidyn when he’d tried to rouse the Seratis, all he touched was a blank wall. As if she’d disappeared off the face of the earth leaving only a gray murky void where her thoughts should be. It left him more empty and alone than he’d ever been in all his long years.
“Well, old friend,” Alaan said, jaw tight with agitation, “at least we know who the mole is.”
“But why drop the hint if she was the mole all along?” Bix questioned hotly, barely containing the volatile mix of rage and uncertainty coursing through his being. His woman was missing and all he had was a barrage of questions. There was nothing a Seeker hated more than unanswered questions, and right now he had a sea full.
“Think about it, Bix. Natasha dropped the info about a mole, and what did we all do? We immediately assumed it wasn’t her. The goal was to draw suspicion away from herself, and I’m sorry to say, it worked.”
“Fuck!” His bellow echoed through the valley with intent so deadly, it chilled the already chilly air of what should have been a typical peaceful mountain morning.
“Why can’t I feel her?” a livid Bix ground between clenched teeth, worry snaking its way through his gut.
“She may be unconscious,” Alaan reasoned. Bix’s spine went ramrod straight as he teetered on the verge of madness at the thought of Carin being knocked out, the possibility of someone touching her, hurting her. Again. No, he refused to accept it. He would find her and she would be fine. She just had to be.
“Listen, Bix, they probably gave her the same stuff they gave my parents. If they went to all this trouble to get to her, it wasn’t to kill her. Natasha could have done that anytime.”
Gripping tight enough to buckle the steel, Bix’s fingers dug into the balcony railing as he looked out over the rolling hills in the distance. The hollow pit of his stomach constricted when instead of snow-capped mountains and frozen streams, Carin’s lovely face and feisty spirit filled his thoughts.
“Why the hell would Natasha do this, Alaan? Forget her obsession with me. How could she do this to our people? She’s betrayed every one of us.”
“Some things just can’t be explained. And to be honest, I don’t care why she did it, only that she pays for it. Over and over again.”
Bix whipped away from the terrace railing and stormed back into Natasha’s apartment just as his cell phone rang. Tameth’s calm, quiet voice was on the other end of the line.
“Bix, I’ve found something. I’m in the communications center.”
“We’re on our way,” he snapped as he and Alaan took off out of the ransacked apartment at vamp speed. The comm center in the middle of the compound was crawling with Seekers and Iudex judges. Tameth sat in the midst of them, coolly confident, the only one in the huge room not stalking around with nervous energy or snarling mad. The only thing giving away her anger was the stiff set of her shoulders and the hard glint of her dark eyes.
When Bix reached her side, she showed him something they couldn’t believe they’d missed in the first place. Natasha’s personal electronic calendar and intelligence files had been wiped from her personal computer, but were backed up on a secure part of the V.C.O.E. network. All it took to expose them was the encrypted password, which Tameth guessed right away—JonBix1822. Bix’s name and birth year.
There were phone records, names of contacts, dates the contacts were made and how, notes of exchanged information and what data was sent where. All of it.
Natasha had been gathering intelligence on Sidheon for months. She knew he worked in one of the biotech companies owned by V.C.O.E. The rogue had somehow garnered management support for his projects and gotten several of his cohorts hired into the facility. From the documents Tameth found, it was apparent Natasha kept the info to herself. When the Council decided it was time to eliminate Sidheon, she planned to deliver the data that would bring him down and secure a place for herself on Bix’s team on a more permanent basis.
“Then why the issue with Carin?” Bix asked, still unsure what the bitch was up to.
Tameth hit a few buttons on the keyboard and the screens filled with more data. “According to these notes, Carin was a complication.”
“Why?”
“Because the Council didn’t want you to go kill Sidheon. They wanted you to infiltrate the facility and uncover his experiments. That introduced Carin to the equation.”
“What the hell does she have to do with any of this? She didn’t work on any of Sidheon’s projects. She was only supposed to get me close to him, or at least that’s what Natasha claimed.”
“Yes,” Tameth answered, “but she was assigned as your target because the Council had done a little research of their own. They knew Carin was not only the brightest mind in biotech science today, but she happened to be in the same facility as Sidheon. By sending Carin’s boss out of the country and putting you in play, you could either give her authority to provide you with info on what Sidheon was doing, or the means to figure out for herself what he was up to.”
Alaan asked, “And Natasha knew all this?”
“It’s all here in her notes. There’s even a picture of Carin here.”
Bix’s eyes narrowed dangerously as he said, “So that explains why Carin was my target, but…”
“There’s more, Bix. Natasha was playing both sides. By sending you leads on Sidheon, then contacting Sidheon to tell him where not to be, she kept the Council’s trust and Sidheon’s. Basically, with Carin in play, all Natasha’s plans to save the day and make herself the hero were ruined. Then when you mated and bonded Carin, Natasha had to improvise, change her plans.”
“Plans for what?” Bix bellowed.
Tameth turned from the computer screen and looked Bix square in the eye. “To turn Carin over to Sidheon. If you hadn’t mated her, it would have been a piece of cake. But since Natasha had always planned to make herself indispensable to you, Carin put a fly in her mix.”
“Shit,” Bix raged. All this because a woman he never wanted planned to remove the only woman he ever needed?
With all the files open now, the data Tameth managed to hack filled in all the pieces. There was only one question left.
Fists clenched at his sides, and his lips tight against bared fangs, “Where?” was the only word Bix could manage to form.
Tameth answered without hesitation. “I have no idea. There’s a lot of information here, Bix. Even a vampire can’t read at super speed. But don’t worry, we’ll find her.”
Bix raked a hand through his hair and pulled. All this waiting and wading through shit irked him to no end. And the betrayal of someone of Natasha’s caliber cut, and cut deep. The woman had been a Council Liaison for the Western territories, for fuck sake. Had held one of the m
ost trusted offices for the care of their people and the enforcement of Council law. In all the years she’d served, she’d never been reprimanded, never stepped out of line—other than the occasional ill-timed remark regarding his or Alaan’s love life. But her work ethic—flawless. Until now.
“How did she get a fucking plane out of here?” But even as the words left his mouth, Bix knew the answer.
“Well, we know she didn’t do it alone. She didn’t have to, not with her security clearance. Bix, she could have signed anybody in or out of here.” Tameth clicked a few buttons and opened another file. “Wait a second, here’s something. Looks like she requested clearance for a small jetcraft for a medical emergency last night. The request was active for about two hours, between ten o’clock and midnight. No flight plan is listed. Huh. Wonder how she pulled that off. It’s got to be somewhere.”
“I want to know where the hell Natasha took my woman. Grab one of the Beta Seekers and have them work with you. I want to know the second you get a breakthrough.”
Tameth copied the files to a shared folder on the system, swirled her chair around and pinned him with a hard stare. “Bix, we just got here this morning and you haven’t rested or eaten. Do both, or you won’t be any good to Carin or any of the rest of us.”
“I’ll sleep later. We have work to do and I want out of here as soon as possible.” His vid-cell emitted a low vibration. He flipped it open and stared into the bluish-white eyes of Kenoe Hatsept.
“We’ve found something in your woman’s lab. You’d better get over here.”
“This better be good,” Bix snarled, snapping the phone shut. Tameth was on his heels all the way back to the main house and up to Carin’s labs. Kenoe met them at the door, his movements urgent.
“Check this out,” he said, pushing a strange-looking round of ammunition into Bix’s hand.
Bix’s brow furrowed, followed by wide-eyed understanding as he took in what he was seeing.
“It’s all documented in her notes,” Kenoe explained. “Your woman has amazing foresight. She’s been working on a weapon. A weapon for you, Bix.”
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