“It’s Riley and Scott,” Ashton reported as Zachariah picked up his machete and examined the sharp edge of the silver-lined blade for flaws before sliding it into its sheath. “They’re tangling with vampires. That didn’t take long.”
“Is there an elder?” Zachariah questioned.
“I don’t see one,” he said.
“Great,” Zachariah said, enthusiasm leeching into his voice. “This should be a piece of cake then. I could use some stress relief.”
“Go help them,” Ashton ordered. “I’ll send you some help—”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Zachariah said. “I’ve got this.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. We don’t need too many people out there risking too much attention on the fight. Last thing we need is the cops—or the Coast Guard from down the street—getting involved.”
“Be careful.”
“Of course.” Zachariah exited the office and moved to the door on the warehouse’s back wall. As he swiped his badge to open it, his mind settled into the business of preparing for the oncoming fight. Because there was a fight, and Zachariah knew he’d be involved in it, but there was no one else that could handle it. Out of everyone in the warehouse, he and Ashton had the most experience dealing with vampires in hand-to-hand combat, and Ashton couldn’t fight anymore because of his prior injuries. So it was up to him to put a stop to the attack before The Unnaturals’ newest recruits got themselves killed.
Zachariah assessed the scene: Scott on his back by a van, holding off a vampire with his feet planted against its chest; Riley backed against the side of the warehouse, two vampires dead at her feet and another two attacking, dodging the bullets she fired at them. Blood soaked her left side, but she held her own. Another vampire paced between the two groups of fighters, as if waiting for its companions to either defeat Riley and Scott or die so it could have its turn. Zachariah was impressed that both had survived this long, but it wasn’t hard to recognize that they weren’t going to last much longer. They were too inexperienced to repel the vampires without difficulty or assistance.
Zachariah took two steps forward as he drew one of his pistols from its holster, lifted it, and squeezed off a round. The unengaged vampire collapsed to the pavement, and Zachariah moved to the vampire attacking Scott. It was faster than the first one, and his shot went wide. He grimaced and steadied the pistol with two hands as the vampire’s red eyes met his. A chill slinked down his spine and settled over his soul, and the voices surged through his mind, more and more of them, clamoring over each other and drowning out everything else. The sheer force of it nearly brought him to his knees. He fought past the wall of mental sound and adjusted the aim of his pistol. He squeezed the trigger, and the vampire fell back. The clamoring voices ceased, but then they redoubled as the vampires engaging Riley lost interest in her and turned their attentions onto him.
Pain blasted through Zachariah’s skull as the vampires started toward him. He sank to a knee, fighting to not drop his pistol and put his hands to his head. Instead, he looked away from the vampires and to Scott and Riley; Riley was firing on the small group of vampires, her finger rapidly depressing the trigger until her pistol ran dry. Several bullets struck their marks, but the vampires continued to ignore her and Scott in favor of Zachariah, slowing their approach like a pack of wolves that have cornered their prey. Zachariah struggled to push words out past the burning pain. “Go,” he ordered. “Get out of here. Back to the hotel.”
“You need help,” Riley protested. She was reloading her pistol with shaking hands.
“Scott, get her out of here!” he yelled, ignoring her protests.
Scott didn’t hesitate to obey. He grabbed Riley by her bicep and hauled her down the sidewalk. Zachariah thanked whatever deity listened that someone had followed his orders. The behavior of the vampires before him, the way they were stalking him rather than rushing him, like predators who had been leashed and restrained, told him what was coming. There was only one thing that could make a youngling vampire stop an attack on their prey, and it was something Scott and Riley wouldn’t stand a chance against.
He would be lucky if he managed to survive against it.
The vampires on the sidewalk resumed their slow advance, as if they were assessing him, trying to figure out what he was capable of. With every slow, scrabbling step they took, the pain in Zachariah’s head grew in intensity, until his eyes watered and his eardrums felt like they would explode. His pistol hand sank lower, the effort to hold it up to shoot at the oncoming threat too much to bear. He fought back the groan of pain that threatened to escape his throat.
As Zachariah slipped closer to unconsciousness, the distinctive sound of high heels clicking against concrete came to a stop behind him. The vampires in front of him scrambled backward, as if something even more dangerous than them was approaching. Zachariah tried to turn to face the threat, but he slumped forward instead, dropping the pistol and bracing his hands against the sidewalk. A hand ran along the back of his neck, and the voices and pain that had accompanied them vanished. Zachariah pushed himself upright and started to turn, started to twist around to see what was behind him, but then the creature spoke, its words arresting his movements as if he were being physically restrained. It was a woman’s voice, low and husky, almost sensual, and terribly familiar, and a cascade of shimmering blond hair brushed his cheek as the woman leaned over and murmured in his ear.
“Well, here you are,” the woman said, her accented voice sending a chill halfway between desire and dread down his spine. Elder, his brain whispered, the mental word sounding like one uttered by a terrified child huddling in a corner. “I was so disappointed that you ran last night. Most people would have killed for the opportunity that I was going to present you. But now that I’ve finally found you, you can come home, my consort.”
Then a fog flooded his mind, and the last thing he remembered was the flash of her hair against his cheek again before he collapsed to the sidewalk and slipped into unconsciousness.
Chapter Nine
“What the fuck happened back there?” Riley asked, clinging to Scott’s arm for support as she ran alongside him toward their rental car, her backpack bouncing against her torso with every step. Her side throbbed, her nerve endings raw and on fire around the four thin claw marks that the vampire’s claws had sliced into her flesh. It hurt to move, but she didn’t have time to focus on the pain. They had to get out of there before the vampires finished off Zachariah and came after them. Riley didn’t know if she could fight back with the oozing wounds in her side.
“Vampires,” Scott snarled. Her hand slipped down his arm, and he grasped it in his own, his fingers tight around hers as he hauled her with him. They’d rounded the front corner of the building, and their rental was in sight. Just twenty more feet and they would be at it. Just thirty more seconds and they would be inside it. Scott shoved his free hand into his pocket and withdrew the keys, hitting the unlock button on the remote as they reached the car. “Motherfucking vampires. I can’t believe this.”
Riley let go of Scott’s hand and circled the car, keeping a hand pressed to the hood to steady herself and leaving a smear of blood on the white metal. She wrenched the passenger door opened—another blood smear on the door’s handle—and fell into the passenger’s seat. Scott swung into the driver’s seat and shoved the key into the ignition as she yanked the door shut behind her. “Wait, are you telling me that even after everything Zachariah and Ashton showed us, and even after the fight we just got pulled out of, you still don’t believe they exist?” She shook her head in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I mean, I’m pretty damned skeptical, and even I’ve accepted it.”
“No, I’m not doubting it,” Scott replied. He peeled away from the curb with a squeal of tires against pavement. “I’m fucking pissed. I didn’t expect to have to use the shit Zachariah showed us so soon.” He turned the corner too fast, and Riley was thrown against the door. She shot h
im a dirty look across the darkened interior of the car. He thumped his hand against the steering wheel and continued his rant. “Damned vamps! I got thrown against a car for the first time in my life, I’m pretty damned sure I’m going to have a bruise the size of fucking Texas on my back by morning, I hit my head, and I lost my favorite fucking gun!”
“What kind of gun was it?” Riley asked.
“Who the fuck cares what kind of gun it was?” Scott snapped. Riley raised an eyebrow and snorted back a laugh, but before she could answer his question—despite its rhetorical nature—a chirping noise broke the space between them. It took her a moment to realize it was her cell phone’s ring tone, and she patted herself down, searching for it, as Scott turned on the dome light. “What the hell is that noise?” he demanded. “And why is your shirt covered in blood?”
“Because I got hurt, you jackass,” Riley snapped. “And if you’d stopped bitching about your damned gun for five seconds, I could have told you that already.” She found her cell phone in her backpack underneath a bag of potato chips and answered it without looking at the caller ID. “What?”
“Where the hell are you and Scott?” Ashton demanded. “And where is Zach?”
“Good evening to you too, Ashton,” Riley said.
“Do not start your sarcastic bullshit with me, Riley,” Ashton replied, his voice laced with more anger than she’d ever heard in a person’s voice. “Zach is missing, and as far as I’m aware, so are you and Scott. What happened?”
Under Ashton’s angry tone and the words he was snapping out, Riley could detect rising panic. “We were attacked by vampires,” she reported. She pulled the phone away from her ear and turned the speakerphone on so Scott could hear too. “We were overwhelmed, and Zachariah saved us. He told us to get the hell out of there and get back to the hotel to finish our assignment. We did what he said, and last I saw him, he was facing off against three vampires.”
“Three vampires is nothing,” Ashton said. “Zach can handle that with one hand tied behind his back. Did you see anything unusual?”
“He could barely fight,” Scott spoke up. He took a left turn slower than the last and scanned the street ahead. “He killed a couple of vampires, but it took a lot of effort after that. He was on his knees when we left him, and he looked like he was in serious pain.”
“But the vampires hadn’t even touched him,” Riley added. “And there were those voices…”
“Voices?” Ashton repeated.
“Yeah, voices,” she confirmed. “Like, in my head. I don’t even know what they were saying, but it was…pretty overwhelming and felt like a sudden migraine. You didn’t say vampires could do that.”
“They can’t. Not normally,” Ashton said. “They’re pretty limited in what their capabilities are, though they do have some abilities akin to hypnosis.” He fell silent long enough that Riley thought he’d hung up. But the screen displayed the call as still active, so she waited him out. “Do what Zach said,” he ordered. “Finish this part of your assignment. As soon as you have the box in your hands, get back to your hotel, lock the doors, and don’t let anyone in, not even room service. Once you’re there, call me, and I’ll give you further instructions.” He hung up without another word.
Riley grimaced and tossed the phone onto the dashboard, slumping in her seat and fighting back a groan of pain. The ache in her side was getting worse, as if it were burrowing through the skin and muscle down to—no, down into—the bone. She gritted her teeth and tried to shunt the pain aside; she’d been through worse pain in her life, and that included a gunshot wound. This should have been nothing.
If it’s nothing, then why is it hurting so much? She tried to ignore the question and focus on Scott.
“Get me back to the hotel, please,” she muttered. She started to fold her arms over her chest but aborted the movement when the ache in her side radiated even deeper.
Scott glanced at her through the yellow pall cast by the dome light with a look of concern on his face. “How bad is it?” he asked, pressing a hand to her side. She hissed through her teeth and recoiled as pain rocked through her again. Scott pulled his hand away as if he’d been burned, and it came back wet with blood.
“Bad enough,” Riley grumbled. She felt lightheaded and queasy. She rested her head against the cool glass of the passenger window; when she sighed, it fogged the glass in front of her face. “We’ll need to stop for first aid supplies. I might need stitches.”
“You need a hospital,” Scott said.
“No, no hospitals,” Riley shot back. “You know the rules. It would invite too many questions we can’t answer.”
“What about the Agency?” Scott asked.
“What about it?”
“Well, they have a med ward. Why don’t I take you there?”
Riley scoffed. “I hate their med ward. The medics there are always so rude to me.”
“So you’d rather get sewn up in a hotel room than in the med ward because…the medics are rude to you?” Scott sounded incredulous, and Riley couldn’t blame him. On the face of it, the whole statement was ridiculous.
“Look, I don’t think it’s that bad,” she said. “I don’t like going by there unless it’s something major that I can’t take care of myself, and I don’t think this is bad enough to bother with going all the way to headquarters.” She wasn’t going to tell him the rest, like how the place gave her nightmares because, after Kevin’s death, she’d spent weeks at a time locked up in one of the exam rooms, poked and prodded and examined by every type of doctor there was as they’d tried to figure out if there was some sort of “mental deficiency” or whatever. All because they hadn’t believed a word of her report and thought she’d finally gone off the rails. If she had her say, she’d never set foot in the place again.
Scott didn’t look happy with her answer. His jaw clenched as he turned his focus back on the windshield. He held his bloody right hand away from the steering wheel, as if he were afraid he’d leave a stain that would be questioned later by the rental agency. Riley sighed and lifted a leg to brace the heel of her shoe against the edge of her seat. “Here, wipe your hand off on my jeans,” she offered. “God knows I’ve got enough blood on me as it is. A little more won’t hurt.”
Scott grimaced and shook his head. “I am not wiping my hands on your clothes,” he replied.
“Oh, come on,” Riley insisted. “One of us has to go into whatever drugstore we stop at for supplies. I’m already bloody and shit, so you’re it. You can’t go waltzing into Walgreen’s with blood all over your hand. The clerk’ll think you just stabbed somebody. So wipe. Now.”
Scott sighed and rolled his eyes, pulling into the parking lot of a pharmacy in a brightly lit strip mall. He parked before he did as he was told. He dropped his hand to Riley’s thigh and rubbed his fingers and palm over the denim, trying to erase the red liquid staining his skin. Though she’d told him to do it, Riley wasn’t prepared for the tingle that his touch sent through her skin, distracting her momentarily even from the ache in her side. It took everything in her to not shift and wiggle as he pulled his cleaned hand away.
“We’ve got quite a bit of work to do,” Scott said as Riley tried to not psychoanalyze her body’s reaction to Scott’s touch. “Are you going to be okay to work with those wounds in your side?”
“I’ll be fine,” Riley grumbled, irritated by the man’s nannying. Lord but he could make her moods swing like a pregnant woman’s. She slid lower in her seat as he reached for the door handle. “Just go get the shit we need so I can clean myself up and get busy with our assignment. The last thing we need is the vampires getting one step ahead of us and grabbing the box before we get to it.”
~*~
The smell of coffee woke Henry from the nap he had taken on his desk, and he lifted his head and blinked as his brain tried to focus in on it. He sat up, pushing away from the desk with one hand as he rubbed at his eyes with the other. The rich, heavenly aroma filled the room as he tried t
o shake himself awake, and he looked up to see Vanessa sitting in the visitor’s chair across from his desk, her hands wrapped around a white paper coffee cup with a green logo on the side. An identical cup sat on the desk in front of him, inches away from where his head had rested, and he grabbed it and drank deeply from it.
“I thought that would wake you up,” Vanessa said. She sipped daintily from her own cup and leaned forward to set it on the edge of the desk. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I haven’t had enough sleep.” He hadn’t, either. He hadn’t gotten the chance to go home and sleep the night before and tonight seemed to be no different. He rubbed his hand over his eyes again, took another swallow of coffee, and glanced at his watch. It was nearly midnight. “How in the world are you still up and running this late?”
Vanessa waggled her coffee cup at him. “This. It’s my lone vice. It’s roughly the consistency of sludge, but it gets the job done.” She took a deep swallow of the liquid, as if to emphasize her point, before adding, “So I went digging while you were napping. I might have found out a few intriguing details you could find potentially interesting.”
“What kinds of things?” Henry asked, intrigued. He drained the rest of his coffee with one long swallow and dropped the cup into the trashcan by the desk.
“Like the fact that I hear through the grapevine that another name you can add to the list of those going for the Deputy Director position is Brandon Hall,” Vanessa said.
If Henry hadn’t just finished off his coffee, he was sure he’d have spit it all over his desk. “Brandon Hall?” he repeated. “You’re kidding me, right? There’s no way he thinks he’d even have a chance, not after that mess that happened when he recruited Riley.” He snorted. “Hell, I thought Damon Hartley was going to terminate him himself when that came to light.”
The Unnaturals (The Unnaturals Series Book 1) Page 13