There were a horde of children in the room with the vampire, who didn’t look the least bit frazzled by them. Blaise actually appeared to be in total control of the situation.
He glanced at the little one Garth was holding, who was still biting him. He snickered. “Auberi cleared him?”
Garth nodded, prying the child’s jaws gently from his arm. It was easier said than done. The kid had the nerve to grin after Garth managed to get him loose. “The boy is a shifter with magik in him—and, oh yeah, he bites.”
Blaise took the boy and smiled down at him, careful to show no fang. “Hello there, buddy. You only bit the mean old nasty man because he’s a Viking, didn’t you? Yes, that’s right. Good boy. Now, what do you say we get you set up over here and get you a cup of juice?”
The little boy blinked up at Blaise. In the next breath, a small cup on the side counter lifted into the air all on its own and began to float in the direction of the little boy. It stopped and then changed route, going instead to the tiny girl with brown hair who had mentally threatened Landros only minutes before. Her arms went up and she took the cup like it was no big deal that it had flown on its own.
Blaise laughed. “Ah, she was thirsty, and you knew that, huh?”
The little boy blinked again before wiping a bit of Garth’s blood from his lip. He then turned his attention to Garth and growled, making Blaise laugh more.
“I like him.” Blaise grinned.
Garth let out a long breath. “Good. He’s your problem now.”
Blaise nodded to Garth. “Try not to kill Auberi while you’re out there. I know exactly how much the two of you like each other.”
With a curled lip, Garth headed out of the room, refusing to make any promise about keeping Auberi alive.
He was just a few steps into the hall once more when another member of the Fang Gang came past. Searc Macleod walked by Garth carrying a small child with a head of shoulder-length red hair. The little girl was paler than any child should be. The vampire, who could rival Gram with his thick Scottish brogue, inclined his head. “Found this wee one locked in a closet. I do nae think she put herself there.”
A growl started in the back of Garth’s throat.
Searc nodded. “Aye, wolf. I feel the same way.”
“Have Auberi look her over,” said Garth as he followed Searc back to the main lab.
Something had changed since he’d gone but he couldn’t figure out what. The compulsion to look at Landros was great. The man had set the little girl down and was talking to another operative.
The little girl stared up at Garth—and he froze.
Something was wrong. It felt as if someone reached out and ripped him from behind his belly button in the direction of the child. He was almost to her when he swayed. Buzzing started in his head and ringing sounded all around him, confusing him.
He grabbed his ears, covering them, wondering why no other ops were responding to the deafening volume level of the noise. He didn’t dare look away from the little girl. He couldn’t. The ear-piercing ringing faded away quickly, becoming dull and faint.
The little girl stumbled and then collapsed onto the floor, her gaze still firmly locked on Garth. He reacted faster than he ever had before. He shot forward and snatched her off the floor before Landros could so much as blink. Deep down, he knew the little girl was in critical condition.
Her eyes closed, and her tiny head lolled back. Garth knew without being told that she wasn’t breathing. For a second, he couldn’t take a breath either. His keen hearing picked up on the fact her pulse was weak and fading fast. It was then he noticed blisters on her and something white on her skin. He wiped his hand through it and it came away, taking part of her skin and leaving red, angry tissue behind.
“Auberi!” Garth rushed the child to a table in the center of the lab. He laid her upon it gingerly. “Something is wrong with her!”
The sight of the small child there, on the table, fighting for life, caused Garth’s wolf to react fiercely. He shook.
Auberi was suddenly there. The vampire thrust him out of the way with a force that sent Garth stumbling backward. Auberi began performing life-saving measures on the child. When he reached the point of CPR, Garth’s wolf roared within him. The wolf understood just how dire the situation was as well.
A line of French shot out of Auberi rapidly. Garth’s French was decent on most days, but Auberi’s state of panic caused him to talk faster than Garth could follow along. Auberi began shouting at Garth, demanding he hunt for items required to help the little girl. The vampire went on and on about her having a lethal dose of the chemicals in her system.
Garth’s brain raced with the list of items Auberi had given, getting stuck on low-molecular-weight polyethylene glycol—whatever the hell that was.
“Look for a three-hundred or four-hundred PEG one!” shouted the vampire, not that any of the men he was yelling at even knew what PEG meant. “Blaise, is there milk back there?”
Garth, along with Rurik and Gram, ran back into the first lab and began scouring the glass cabinets for the items Auberi required. Garth threw containers aside, desperate to find what was needed.
Rurik came up with a plastic tube of some sort and then went to a cabinet that looked to be refrigerated and grabbed two bags of clear fluid. Garth’s search yielded nothing, but then again, his mind was still racing and muddled. Currently, he couldn’t find his ass with both hands. The normal level of clarity he possessed in stressful situations was totally and completely gone.
Garth’s wolf pulsed at him from within, wanting to be free. It caused the muscles in his neck to strain and he had to step back from the cabinets as he tried to gain control once more. It didn’t work. He felt his shoulders increasing in size, another sign that he was losing the internal battle with his wolf side. But what had triggered it? Why was it trying to take control?
He wasn’t in danger.
The child.
She’s in danger.
The words echoed in his head.
“I found what I think is the low-molecular-weight poly-whatever-the-hell-col! It says PEG 300!” yelled Rurik, half in Russian, half in English as he came up with a jug of something clear. He too was panicked. He slammed into Garth on his way past and the act helped Garth to gain something close to control once more. The Russian kept going and took the last of the items to Auberi, who also lacked his normal calmness in stressful situations.
In fact, Garth couldn’t recall a time when the vampire had ever seemed so out of sorts when chaos surrounded him. He typically seized every opportunity to make smart-ass remarks, despite the gravity of the situation. No such quips came from him now.
Garth moved quickly to the side of the table once more and reached out, touching the little girl’s head. The need to lift her and protect her forever nearly took him to his knees. “Fix her!”
Auberi’s gaze whipped to him and filled with black instantaneously. That meant his demon had taken the lead.
And that meant he was a threat to the child in the eyes of Garth’s wolf.
“Captain, yer arms!” shouted Gram.
“He’s going to lose control and shift,” said Landros, coming at him quickly. “Rurik, get him out of here.”
Garth shook his head, his teeth lengthening and his mouth changing shape. The word “no” came from him, but it was nearly unrecognizable.
The Russian seized hold of him, lifted him off his feet, and rammed him back against an empty crib. He then held him as Garth fought, needing to get to the child. He had to help her. He had to keep her safe.
Why couldn’t they see that?
He would never hurt the little girl.
Ever.
Auberi lifted his arm and bit his wrist.
As Garth’s mind caught up with why the vampire would be doing such a thing, a red haze of rage came over him.
Auberi was going to give the child his blood.
His very vampire blood.
“No!”
Garth snarled and broke free from Rurik just in time to be struck head-on with a blow of magik. He was no stranger to the source. It was Gram. The power flung Garth backwards and sent him to the floor with a massive, thundering boom, as if Thor’s chariot had run the Viking over.
Unable to move, still pinned by magik, Garth locked gazes with Auberi as the vampire put his bleeding wrist above the child’s mouth. He’d seen what ingesting vampire blood could do to a person.
Sometimes it healed them.
Sometimes it converted them.
And sometimes, it killed them.
Every threat Garth wanted to issue, every promise of death he wanted to say, fell short as his wolf took total control. He knew then he was powerless to the pending shift. He also knew that without the aid of Gram’s magik, he could kill everyone around him without meaning to.
Desperate to protect the others from himself, he looked to his second-in-command, hoping he’d sense the severity of the situation.
Gram’s attention was currently on Auberi, who had lifted the little girl and let out an agonizing cry as she remained limp and unmoving.
Landros charged Auberi, ripping the child from the man’s arms just as Gram sent magik at Auberi.
The magik knocked Auberi over as well, pinning him to the floor just as the man’s demon took the lead.
“S-stop…me,” managed Garth as his body contorted. He didn’t want any child hurt because of his lack of control.
“Fuck!” yelled Rurik. “Gram, Captain needs a super dose of that stinky Fae crap you’re throwing around!”
Chapter Three
Present Day…
Nicolette Henebury stood in her kitchen and poured salsa from a jar into a bowl. It was as fancy as her cooking skills went. Though, it wasn’t for lack of trying. She’d taken cooking classes for six weeks and came out the other end barely able to toast bread. It just wasn’t her thing.
She was an expert with the blender and the juicer. Anything beyond those two kitchen appliances, and she was hopeless. She grabbed a glass from the cupboard and proceeded to fill it with her signature gray energy drink. It was something she and her uncle had perfected to help her combat a bout of fatigue that hadn’t seemed to want to go away. There was enough in the blender for two glasses, but she knew her best friend wouldn’t want one. To Clara, the drink was a form of torture.
Nicolette loved it. It had been something her uncle had helped her come up with when she was younger and had issues with sluggishness.
To each their own.
Nicolette grabbed a bag of tortilla chips, pinned them under one arm, gathered the bowl of salsa and her energy drink, and headed towards the living room. The rowhouse was spacious and had fairly open rooms, considering the age of the home and the fact it was in the historic district of Savannah, Georgia. Had her uncle not purchased it for her and demanded she reside there, and not in the apartment she’d first tried to live in, it would have been outside of her price range on her current salary.
As she made her way into the living room, she sipped from the gray drink, careful not to drop the chips or salsa. The room was dark except for the flat-screen television that was normally tucked away from view in a large repurposed armoire. Someone had set it by the roadside to discard it, and Nicolette had saved it, seeing the beauty in the piece of furniture even when it was in a state of disrepair. With some elbow grease and a little creativity, the thing looked new again. Since it was free, it was even better.
Nicolette and her roommate had done their best to honor the look and feel of the home’s original bones, while still having modern amenities and comforts.
Like a television.
Clara smiled up from her spot on the end of the sofa. She was in a pair of navy blue silk pajama bottoms with a matching cami. Had Nicolette not been used to their opposite tastes in fashion, she might have felt underdressed. As it was, Nicolette had known Clara for what felt like all her life and didn’t mind being seen in a ratty pair of sweatpants and an old T-shirt. Thankfully, Clara wasn’t to the point in her life where she was embarrassed by Nicolette’s lack of sophistication. And so far, Nicolette hadn’t grown tired of Clara’s ability to get them into trouble.
Clara had an array of boxed candies on the coffee table before her. It looked like she’d robbed a candy store. “I picked these up on the way home from work. Now it’ll be just like being at the movie theater, minus rude people who talk nonstop and check their phones all through the movie. And our feet won’t stick to the floor from mysterious substances. Not to mention, we have great seats here and can relax in our jammies.”
Nicolette snorted. Clara had a deep-set hatred of people who interrupted others while at the movies. More than once, Nicolette had been forced to usher her friend out of the theater in an effort to avoid a scene.
Clara was opinionated and had a temper.
Never a great combination when provoked. And Clara took interrupting her movies seriously. Hence, the home setup. There was a new horror movie that had only just released on DVD that Clara had been dying to see. Nicolette wasn’t a fan of scary movies, but she’d given the thumbs-up for this one, knowing how much Clara had been looking forward to it.
“When you talked me into movie night and girl time before you leave on your work trip, I’d really hoped it would be something other than twenty pounds of sugar,” said Nicolette with a smile.
Clara held out a box of sour gummies for Nicolette. Her green eyes widened as she used her free hand to push her black-framed glasses up on her nose. “Here. I know these are your favorite.”
“When I was like ten,” said Nicolette with a wink as she sat on the sofa next to her friend. She put the salsa and chips on the coffee table and looked at the massive amount of junk food present, before putting her drink on the end table closer to her. “We are never going to be able to eat all of this.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Clara as she snatched a chip and dipped it in the salsa. “I ordered pizza for us too.”
“Of course you did.” Nicolette shook her head. “If I hadn’t known you for like, ever, I’d warn you about all of this and how you’re going to have to spend countless hours in a gym to work it off. Tell me again how it is you eat like this and stay so thin?”
“Pretty sure I have a tapeworm,” answered Clara as she ate more chips and salsa. Salsa fell off the chip and onto her silk pajama bottoms.
Clara, by all outward appearances, was a put-together, high-class, reserved young woman who was going places with her career. Behind the scenes, the real Clara was funny, loud, and didn’t much care if she spilled salsa on expensive pajama bottoms.
“That, or just watching you work out so much makes me burn calories through osmosis or something. We could have started this movie an hour ago if you wouldn’t have insisted we take a walk first. You’re like living with a personal trainer. I’m shocked you didn’t bring out some sort of weird thing that you want to force me to drink—again.”
“I’m not that bad.”
Clara loaded another chip with dip. “Tell me again about the cupcakes you ordered for your class? Gluten-free, dairy-free, taste-free…”
“You know I had to order from the specialty bakery so that all the kids can have one and feel included,” chastised Nicolette.
She taught preschool and loved everything about her job. Children were amazing and excited to soak up knowledge, especially the young ages she worked with. Everything was new to them, and Nicolette made sure to make learning fun. They’d done so well recently that she’d planned a class celebration. They’d spent the week making decorations for it, and all the children pitched in, working hard to make the upcoming day extraordinary.
Clara had been with Nicolette when she’d stopped in the bakery to place a special order for cupcakes. Since they had to be something all the children could eat, regardless of their allergies, they were very unique. Or as Clara would call them “not actually cupcakes anymore.” Nonetheless, the children would enjoy the
m. Though, the specialty bakery even seemed put off by all the things the cupcakes couldn’t contain.
“The kids are so excited. They keep talking about it,” Nicolette said. “We’re going to discuss celebrations around the world tomorrow in preparation for our party.”
“I’m pretty sure most three and four-year olds just enjoy eating glue. Not learning about celebrations around the world,” said Clara.
“I’ve only had one child who likes to eat glue,” returned Nicolette. “I need to make a note about picking up the cupcakes. You’ll be gone on your trip for work, so you won’t be here to remind me, and we both know I’m terrible with to-do lists.”
Clara curled her lip. “You’re really going to make kids eat those things?”
“Stop it. They’ll love them and you know it. You saw them getting ready. Tell me they weren’t thrilled about the celebration, I dare you,” pressed Nicolette.
“I cannot believe you had me meet you at the school for our lunch date. You know how much I don’t like children. That place is crawling with them.” Clara wiped the salsa from her pajama bottoms and then had the nerve to lick the salsa from her finger. “That place is one giant flu bug waiting to get all over you the minute you step through the doors.”
“It’s crawling with kids because it’s a school,” stressed Nicolette, doing her best to avoid laughing. “A place where children gather to learn.”
“No clue why you picked that as a profession. They pay you crap and you’ve come home with snot wiped on your pant leg before from some kid,” said Clara before going for a box of chocolate-covered raisins. “And I know you dip into your savings to buy things for the class—like the cupcakes. I get you’re technically a trust-fund baby, but still.”
She wasn’t wrong. The pay was horrible, but the job fulfilled her in other ways. Ways that Clara simply couldn’t understand. “Tell me again how banking pays you as much as it does?”
Act of Brotherhood_Paranormal Security and Intelligence_PSI-Ops an Immortal Ops World Novel Page 5