“Look, I need to check on Riley. I’ll keep in touch and let you know how he’s progressing.” Jess’s head popped up and he locked gazes with her. “I’ll be back by tomorrow. Maybe I can take you to lunch.”
Jess offered him a halfhearted smile. “You’ll see that Riley gets the best care, won’t you?”
“Like he was my own brother,” Ty replied. Which was close enough to the truth now, whether the Brierlys knew it or not. Their family and his were getting more closely knit all the time.
* * *
Ty left the Brierlys’ house and headed down to the water, where he took the foot ferry across the deep blue waters of Sinclair Inlet and changed boats, hopping on the big-car ferry to Seattle. It gave him an hour to think about how to approach the security leaders of the Cascade Clan.
He walked off in downtown Seattle with the rest of the commuters, shoppers and tourists headed into the city. They hunkered into their jackets, avoiding the bite of the cold wind buffeting them from the water, smelling of salt spray, sea kelp. Ty didn’t care. He’d lived out in the elements most of his life. Overhead gulls wheeled and cried as they rode the air currents, their sound blending in with the shush of the car tires on damp pavement and the honk of horns.
Just being in the city like this put him on edge. He watched each person who passed him by on the streets, aware any one of them could be a vampire, shifter or Were like himself. He made his way up to Doc Maynard’s Public House on First Avenue to catch the tour for the Seattle Underground.
The place was a Victorian bar straight out of 1890, complete with red walls and a black-and-white diamond-patterned-mosaic tile floor. The dark wood of the long, polished bar was glossy with use and backed with a huge mirror split by massive pillars into three sections, all capped with an ornate carved top that reminded him of some fancy fireplace mantel.
A group of tourists waited for the next hourly tour and Ty did his best to blend in. The new Wenatchee Were Pack leader, Slade Donovan Blackwolf, had told him where the Cascade Clan could be found.
He waited until the tour was underway, then sniffed his way along the darker portions of the abandoned city streets until he found the right door. Ty slipped the key Blackwolf had given him into the lock and was half-surprised it worked. He hadn’t been sure Blackwolf would give a damn what happened to him after he split from the pack.
He walked cautiously down the dark hallway, thankful for his keen eyesight in the dark. He had to be in the right place—the air reeked of vampire. He opened one of the double doors at the end and found himself blinking against the harsh brightness of the light. Ty held up a hand to shade his vision. What the hell?
An atrium with a brilliantly lit frosted-glass ceiling soared two stories over his head. Beneath his feet concrete had given way to a sage-green industrial carpeting. The wide-open space looked like some kind of resort more than a vampire cave. Here and there were clusters of live green plants and groupings of plush, comfortable club chairs upholstered in white. On the far wall was a receptionist’s desk beside a wall fountain where the water trickled, making it sound as though he was outdoors by a stream. “Too weird,” Ty muttered to himself as he stalked directly to the front desk.
The vampire behind the desk wrinkled her nose and stared pointedly at him. “Can I help you?”
“Yes. Tyee Grayson, here to see Commander Stefanos.”
She gave him a perfunctory nod. “You can wait over there,” she said, indicating a cluster of café tables well away from her desk.
Ty could have acted offended. She stank of mold and decay to him, like all vampires did, but he said nothing. The last time he’d been in this place he’d been too damn weak to move, half-dead for all practical purposes. The vampires had silver chains that could zap him faster than he could down a beer. He didn’t want to give them any reason to use them on him. Not when he needed their help.
Fifteen minutes later a huge man with dark blond hair and the bearing of a soldier shoved open another door at the west end of the atrium and came walking at a fast clip straight toward Ty. He recognized Achilles Stefanos instantly.
“Ty. I’m surprised to see you.” The big blond vampire extended a welcoming hand and Ty shook it.
“Not as surprised as I am to be here. Trust me.”
“How’s life on the outside treating you?”
Ty grunted as they sat down at the table together. “Good enough. I found territory where I can start over. But it’s got a bit of an infestation I was hoping I could get your help with.”
Achilles gave him a questioning look. “Infestation?”
Ty nodded. “A nest of reivers that’s threatening my newly formed pack. I knew they weren’t your vampires. They’ve got red eyes.”
“New pack?” Achilles’s green eyes glinted with wariness and questions. “Anything I need to be concerned about?”
Of course the vampire focused in on that. As if his pack was any kind of threat compared to who knew how many damn reivers. Ty shook his head, but he was still a little annoyed. “Just some immediate family. A mate, her younger brother.”
Achilles sat back, his beefy arm slung over the back of his chair. “How many reivers?”
“I don’t know exactly. I haven’t found their nest yet. But they’ve already killed off some mortals in the area.”
Achilles leaned forward, his gaze intent. “Then we’ve got a problem. You didn’t see Eris with them, did you?”
Ty shifted in his seat. The last time he’d seen the goddess, she’d been deep in battle with Blackwolf, her blond hair writhing about in the wind right before she’d taken over Bracken’s body and fought to the death with the half-breed vampire. He’d be only too glad if the reivers had nothing to do with her.
“One of the reivers was feeding another vampire using my students from my outdoor survival school. He called it a Thrall. They’re not as strong as regular vampires and they don’t bleed ichor.”
“Already got in a scuff with them, have you?”
Ty’s body tightened. “They approached my mate.”
“Ah.” Achilles gave him an understanding grin. “Can’t have that, can we?”
“Do you know what a Thrall is?”
Achilles frowned. “No. But I might have a man who does know.” The vampire closed his eyes for a moment, his brows bending in concentration. Ty just sat still and waited, watching the movement of the vampires in the atrium around him. He still didn’t trust them completely. No Were with two brain cells left to rub together in his head would.
The moment Achilles stood, so did Ty. A spiral of dark particles formed into heavy military boots, black fatigues, chiseled features.
Ty recognized the vampire right away. Last time they’d met in battle he’d shot one of his own clan who was half Were in the back, thinking he might wolf out. Ty didn’t trust him as far as he could throw him, which, considering he was built like a linebacker, was saying something.
Short well-cut blue-black hair accented a powerful jaw and a set of eyes nearly as blue as Jess’s. He was muscular, about Ty’s height and while they might weigh the same, Ty was fairly certain in his wolf form he could outdo the vamp. Achilles’s man dismissed Ty with a glance. “You pick up a pet, Commander?”
The icy chill in Achilles’s green glare turned up a notch to frigid with a chance of getting demoted. “Watch your tone, Crawford. Ty is a guest.”
The vampire pressed his lips together in a resolute line and refused to drop his gaze. “Yes, sir.”
Achilles nodded. “Ty, this is James Crawford, one of our security specialists. Now that he’s here, can you repeat what the reiver said?”
“He told the other two to take the Thrall back to the nest and pick up any of the weapons they could use.”
“Thralls?” Crawford blurted, his skin turning paler, if that was possible for a
vampire.
Achilles pinned him with a no-nonsense stare. “You familiar with them?”
Crawford frowned. “Yeah, too well. They’re like Shyelds—mortal guards amped up on vampire ichor—only they operate with the hive mind. Whoever controls the reiver nest controls them. We thought we’d cleaned up the reiver nest outside of Chicago a few years ago, but they ended up creating a mass of Thralls to do their dirty work while they relocated and rebuilt their nest. Nasty business. Pretty nondiscriminatory when it comes to killing. More like freakin’ zombies than humans, with that damn hive mind of theirs.”
Achilles grunted, turning his gaze back in Ty’s direction. “It’s a good thing you came here. It looks like the little town of Sinclair is about to get a whole lot more interesting.” Ty bristled. On the surface it sounded like Achilles was planning on taking over and rooting out the reiver nest without him.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
Achilles crossed his arms over his chest and glanced in Crawford’s direction. “I want you to accompany Ty back to Sinclair. Find out what you can about the nest.”
“Anyone else going in on this?”
Achilles said nothing. Just stared.
“I’ll take that as a no. You ready to head out, wolfy?”
Achilles glared at him and Crawford flinched. Ty knew mental communication between vampires happened in a similar way as it did for Weres. And it was obvious by Crawford’s demeanor he’d just gotten reprimanded by his commander.
“Sorry. Let’s make tracks. We’ve got reivers to nail.”
Ty actually growled, bearing just the tips of his very white, very human teeth. “I didn’t come to the clan to get told what to do in my own territory. You’re strictly going in as an adviser, so we can figure out what we’re dealing with that could impact both my pack and your clan, got it?”
Crawford narrowed his gaze. “I know how to obey orders from a superior, and when you are one, then we’ll discuss it.”
“Crawford, stand down.”
He glared at Achilles. “You seriously want me to take orders from a furry?”
“Maybe where you come from there’s still a lot of animosity, but this clan and every vampire in it will stand by the accord we’ve agreed to with the local Weres. It would deeply disappoint Laird Peterov to know that you’ve somehow marred that carefully constructed relationship.”
“Yes, sir,” he said between gritted teeth.
This. This was precisely the reason Ty had wanted nothing to do with the bloodsuckers. Most of them remained completely biased against his kind, believing themselves to be superior. The Cascade Clan might value their precious pact with the Wenatchee Were Pack, but as far as he was concerned, all bets were off. If this vampire gave him any trouble, he’d feel no obligation whatsoever to help him find his way back to civilization. He could rot in the forest for all Ty cared.
“Report back when you find the nest and determine the scope of the Thrall infestation,” Achilles said.
Crawford put his arm across his chest, closed fist against his heart, and gave a small bow from the waist. A sign of respect to a superior officer. “Yes, sir.”
Just being in the atrium of the Cascade Clan a couple of stories beneath the streets in the Seattle Underground was unsettling enough that Ty wanted the hell out. The sooner the better. The stench of the vampires filled his nose and invaded his pores. “You ready to go, then?” he asked Crawford.
He didn’t wait for a reply, just spun on his heel and started marching toward the doors he’d been led through so he could get to normal, salt-laced air at the surface.
Crawford jogged, easily able to keep up, his vampire reflexes faster than even Ty’s.
“You like small towns?” Ty muttered.
Crawford’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Hate them.”
“Good.”
Chapter 8
“Don’t suppose you could just zap us back to Sinclair so we don’t waste time on the ferry,” Ty asked, hoping Crawford might be willing to use his vampire powers to make things easier. He’d already debriefed and sent the rest of the recruits back to their respective bases this morning before he went to Jess’s house, so he knew showing up there in a swirl of dark dust wasn’t going to flip anyone out. Unfortunately it also meant Riley was alone in his private cabin at base camp.
“You in a rush for something?”
“Got things I need to do,” Ty said, deliberately keeping it vague. He needed to check on Riley.
The vampire shook his head. “Can’t transport to somewhere I haven’t been before.”
“Not even if you tap into my memory of it?”
Crawford gave him a sly smile. “Thought you might resist me poking around in that melon of yours or manhandling you, so I didn’t bother.”
“Look, if it’ll get us back to clear up this mess faster, do whatever it is you need to do.”
Crawford closed his eyes, a crease forming in his brow as he put a hand on Ty’s shoulder and concentrated. The sensation of a stranger in his head wasn’t welcome. It felt like needles jabbing into his brain, but Ty resisted the instinctual urge to push him out.
“Got a lock on it,” Crawford muttered, eyes still closed. “Ready to roll?”
“Go for it,” Ty said between gritted teeth.
The instantaneous suck and pull at the center of his gut made Ty weightless for a moment. The second he felt the earth beneath his feet he shook off Crawford’s hand. The late-afternoon light slanted through the trees, casting shadows over the large grassy square formed by the four main log cabin buildings of his camp. In some places the grass still held a coating of frost where the sun had never reached it over the course of the day. With only one gravel road in or out and surrounded by forest, it was the perfect place for both his school and his pack.
“This is HQ?” Disdain underscored Crawford’s words.
The buildings of base camp weren’t meant to be five-star accommodations. They served as a training facility: clean, functional, hard to detect unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. Ty had taken the old cabin he found on the location as a basis for his designs and remodeled it. The entire base camp consisted of four heavy squat buildings, crafted from peeled logs, with cedar shingle roofs. But while they were woodsy looking on the outside, they were high-tech on the inside. Only the satellite dish, painted in camo to blend in, gave any hint to the scope of his operation. In the late shadows of the dark of the forest, the base camp practically disappeared.
“May not look like much, but then I teach outdoor survival, not couch surfing one-oh-one.”
“So where’re the reivers?”
Ty jerked his head in the direction of the snow-capped peaks of the Olympic mountain range. “Attack happened about forty clicks north by northwest of here.”
“Means their nest has to be in the local area within a certain radius. They’d have to have one vampire per Thrall to transport. It’s easier to make ’em walk or drive. The nest could be anywhere out on the peninsula.”
Great. That meant they only had the entire Olympic National Forest, Olympic National Park and outlying areas to scour. “Please tell me that’s the bad news.”
Crawford grinned, his teeth white in the shadows, his fangs down and exposed. “Hell, no. That’s the good news. Bad news is until you know how many of them there are, you have no idea how many Thralls they might be creating.”
“Just how dangerous is a Thrall?”
Crawford jerked his head to the side, cracking his neck and rolling his shoulders. “They’re still mortal, so you can kill them. But they’re as strong and as fast as any vampire. Heal quicker than an average mortal, too.”
“And they’ve got fangs?”
Crawford’s blue eyes widened slightly and blinked. “Fangs? No. Not normally. Why?”
> Ty crossed his arms. “These were feeding with fangs.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
The vampire frowned and shook his head. “That’s some messed-up shit.”
“So what you’re telling me is that’s not normal?”
“Not for Thralls.”
Ty cursed under his breath, then glared at Crawford. “Freakin’ fantastic. Anything else I need to know?”
Crawford cupped one hand in the other and cracked his knuckles. “We’ll do better looking for their nest in the daylight hours.”
“No problem.”
“Big problem.”
“Come again? Didn’t you just say—”
“Yeah. But the reason it’s good for hunting is the same reason that makes it a pain in my ass. I don’t need the migraine being out in daylight that long. Eyes are too sensitive.”
“So put on some shades and man up about it.”
Crawford muttered something beneath his breath and held out his hand. A dark spin of particles became a pair of screw-you wraparound shades that he slid on his face. “We’ll hit it in a few hours when the sun’s lower. That should give us enough advantage without making it too miserable.”
“You forgot, we’ve got my nose, too. We can always sniff them out if we have to.”
Crawford shrugged. “Whatever. You got any beer around here in the meantime?”
Ty led him into the canteen building. “Thought you guys could materialize what you want,” he said as he opened one of the refrigerators and pulled out a beer and tossed it to Crawford.
Crawford caught it and flipped off the lid and kicked back a swallow. “We can. Doesn’t mean I want to put out the effort. Got to save my strength for chasing down reivers.”
Ty held back a terse comment. Getting into it with Crawford wasn’t going to accomplish anything. He needed help finding and getting rid of those reivers and Thralls, the sooner, the better. “Bunkhouse is to your left. Rec hall to your right. You’ll find a TV in the rec hall. See you in about three hours.”
One Night With the Shifter Page 9