“Lass, all will be explained soon enough. For now, let’s make sure no one kills anyone.” Striker stepped back and released Nicolette’s arms. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “Sorry about the nose.”
He grinned. “Yer nae the first lass to break my nose.”
“Won’t be the last either,” said Goth Guy.
“You are all horrible at this. I’m glad I insisted on coming,” said a woman with long red hair as she stepped out from the backseat of a black SUV. She looked at Clara first. “My name is Edee. I’m reluctant to admit I’m with these morons.”
Striker laughed.
She pointed at him.
He shut up.
Edee walked to Duke and touched his arm. “Let him go to her. Would you want someone holding you back from Mercy?”
With a grunt, Duke released Garth and he ran towards Nicolette. When he got to her, he swept her up and off her feet, his lips finding hers at once. His kiss was just the way she remembered—hot, branding, perfect.
Unable to help herself, Nicolette burst into tears, the toll of the week hitting her hard.
Garth hugged her to him as he set her gently on her feet, keeping her close. “Beauty, I’m so sorry. I never meant to leave you.”
“Why did you?” she asked. “And why did you do it without clothes on?”
Duke snickered. “He put on his version of a fur coat.”
It hit Nicolette then. “You changed into an animal?”
Garth nodded, worry in his green gaze. “Yes. A wolf. I lost control. Claiming you pushed me over the edge. I had to put distance between myself and you because I wasn’t sure what my wolf would do.”
Nicolette cried harder. He’d not run out on her because he didn’t want her.
Garth cursed slightly under his breath. “I’ll go as soon as I know you’re safe from my brother. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She swatted his chest and then yanked on his shirt, pulling him closer. “I’m not scared of you. I’m crying because you didn’t run off because you didn’t want to see me and regretted what happened. I haven’t heard from you all week and I don’t have any way to contact you.”
Garth gasped. “No! Beauty, I spent a week stuck in wolf form, and when I came out of it this morning, these assholes wouldn’t let me come to you. They thought they were helping.”
“You better be on the level, Viking-Cupcake Dude,” warned Clara, still in the vampire’s arms.
A man with long blond hair came out of the SUV, along with a man with shoulder-length, wavy dark hair. The blond was in a suit. He buttoned the jacket and offered a curt nod. “Nicolette, Clara, I understand neither of you have any reason to trust us, but how about Landros?” he asked, a British accent evident as he handed Clara a cell phone.
Clara took the phone as the vampire still held her off the ground. “Landros, these buttheads are with you?”
Nicolette tensed.
Garth rubbed her back gently.
“I understand, but this would have been a lot easier if you’d have told us the truth all along, starting with you being a creature of the night. What do you mean? Of course I know what you are! I suspected as much when I was like ten. You avoid midday sun. You barely eat. And you have a thing for ‘red wine’ that you keep stocked in a personal refrigerator. I thought you were Dracula himself for about five years. Don’t take that tone with me! You may be hot, but you can’t talk to me like that. What? Yes, I said you were hot. Oh, like you don’t know you make women want to toss their panties at you by just speaking.”
Nicolette felt faint. “Gah! Stop! He’s my uncle. That is gross.”
Clara lifted the phone from her ear, still being held by the vampire. “Uh, you’re more worried about the fact I told him he’s hot than the fact he lives off blood? Really?”
Nicolette shrugged. “Yes.”
Clara rolled her eyes and thrust the phone at the British man. “I’m done talking to him.”
The Brit took the phone, and then tried to hand it back to Clara. “He wishes to speak more with you.”
Clara snorted. “No.”
The man looked to Nicolette. “Your niece appears stunned. Perhaps this conversation is best had in person.”
Nicolette nodded.
“Meet us at Division B.” The blond hung up the phone. “Okay then. Ladies, if you will join us, we’d like very much to get you to safety. The Corporation has to be close. Your credit card will have been flagged by them by now.”
“Credit card?” asked Clara, before whipping around in the vampire’s arms and staring at Nicolette. “You used a credit card? How? You didn’t bring your bag.”
Nicolette shook her head. “No. I used the cash you gave me.”
Garth squeezed her to the point she thought she’d pop. “Grid! He already found them and drew us here, knowing I’d drop everything and come.”
Just then, a red dot appeared on the forehead of the vampire holding Clara. The man was too busy looking at Nicolette to notice. The strangest feeling started deep in Nicolette’s gut as she stared back at the man. In that moment, her mind and her body came to a complete and total understanding. He was not to be hurt. She did what felt natural.
She reached out towards him and shouted, “Get down!”
As she did, a hot tingling sensation started in her arms and hands as a loud buzzing noise sounded around her. The dumpster took flight and careened into the hotel front. The broken-down car that had been sitting in the parking lot flew as well, making a loud scraping noise as it did. It actually ended up dropping onto the roof on the left side of the motel.
The vampire who Nicolette had shouted at went to the ground fast, yanking Clara with him, just as a shot went by where his head had been. “Corbin!” he yelled, coming up quickly and thrusting Clara at the Brit.
Corbin grabbed Clara and spun around, putting his body in front of hers as he and the man with the wavy hair backed up, pulling weapons, inching Clara towards the SUV.
Striker rushed to Edee and swept her up and off her feet before diving behind the van with her.
Garth grabbed Nicolette’s hand and tried to yank her into the motel room. She shook her head and screamed as another shot rang out, just missing the vampire again.
Garth snarled. “For fuck’s sake, Auberi, get in here before she gets herself killed worrying about your already-dead ass!”
Auberi moved with a speed that stunned Nicolette. He lifted her out of Garth’s reach and went right into the motel room with her. Goth Guy and Garth followed, slamming the door shut behind them.
Chapter Twenty-One
Garth locked gazes with Auberi, who currently had Nicolette shoved against a wall, his body protecting hers. An unspoken understanding passed between the men. She was to be protected, no matter the cost.
“Get down!” yelled Nicolette again. This time she reached for Garth.
He bent just as a hole exploded in the door behind him, right where his chest would have been. He came up fast and struck a man trying to enter the room. He hit the man with such a force that he felt the man’s jaw shattering upon impact. Garth wasted no time. He let his claws emerge and he spun, slashing the man’s throat open wide. He kicked him back through the door, making the blood spray away from him.
Another man charged in, this one partially shifted. The smell of cat-shifter filled the room. Garth made a move to go at the man, only to find Boomer rushing the guy. It gave new meaning to the term cat fight, since Boomer was also a cat-shifter.
Auberi withdrew his sidearm and pointed at Garth. Prior to their come-to-Odin moment on the plane, Garth would have assumed the vampire was going to shoot him. He knew better now. He stepped to the right and Auberi took the shot, taking out another of the bad guys.
There was no shortage of them. Two dove through the front window and Garth bent before stiff-arming them at the same time. They went down hard. Shots rang out and the men’s bodies jerked. Garth knew without being told that
Auberi had fired the kill shots.
Never did Garth think he’d see the day when he and the stiff got along on anything. Then again, he never imagined Auberi as his father-in-law either.
There was no way he could wrap his mind around that at the moment. No. That would take several bottles of vodka and therapy.
Nicolette screamed, and Garth twisted to find hybrids rushing in through a side window. The men stunk of decay. That meant they weren’t the cream-of-the-crop experiments Grid and The Corporation were so fond of. Garth had to wonder if that meant his brother was running an off-the-books mission.
Garth attacked one of the hybrids while Auberi went at another, keeping Nicolette pushed behind him.
Suddenly, there seemed to be far more bad guys than should be swarming around them. Garth did a partial shift, allowing his arms and upper body to increase in size and mass. His shirt pulled hard at his biceps, threatening to tear from the added girth.
He cut through three of the enemy and saw Boomer partially shifted as well, making short work of some others. As Garth spun around and delivered a wicked kick to a hybrid, he caught sight of Auberi being piled on by hybrids. There were too many for the vampire to handle alone. Garth fought faster, trying to get to the man and Nicolette.
A huge hybrid male who had skin rotting off one cheek made a play for Nicolette. Garth’s breath caught as he watched his mate bend, grab the very phone she’d nailed Striker with, and then proceed to beat the living hell out of the rotting hybrid before her.
“Take that!” she yelled, giving the hybrid a stern look that really belonged more in her preschool classroom than in a battle for their lives. The look was that nonthreatening. “I will spoon you in the eye with this phone!”
Garth lifted a brow at her words and kept fighting against the enemy. He tripped over two dead bodies, and a hybrid used the moment to his advantage. He caught Garth’s upper arm with his clawed hand, slashing it open.
Nicolette screamed again, and Garth’s head filled with the sound of buzzing.
As the hybrid who had cut him went airborne, and then smashed against the wall like a bug on a windshield, Garth realized the buzzing was Nicolette’s doing. It was her power.
His eyes widened, and he made a mental note to avoid pissing her off.
Garth used his good arm to yank a hybrid off Auberi, who was now pinned to one of the beds by bad guys. Auberi hissed and bit the neck of the hybrid on him. When Auberi yanked his head back, the bad guy’s throat came with him, drenching Auberi in blood.
Nicolette hit another of the men on Auberi with the same phone she’d clearly mastered the art of weaponizing. The impact was hard enough for Garth to hear.
The hybrid fell away and stopped moving.
Nicolette looked up at Garth, her green eyes wide.
It took him a second to realize he was still partially shifted. He put his furred arms up. “I won’t hurt you!”
She pointed at something behind him.
He spun and found his brother there, holding Boomer off the ground by the throat. Garth knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his brother would snap Boomer’s neck without a second thought.
“Enough!” said Garth, watching his brother closely. “I’m here. Let’s do this.”
Grid sneered, and Boomer slashed at him, catching Grid’s cheek in the process. Grid released the cat-shifter, and Boomer made a move to charge him.
“No!” shouted Garth. “See to Auberi and Nicolette. I’ll deal with him.”
Boomer cast him a questioning look but nodded and went for Auberi, who was in the process of killing the last of the men near him. He also looked like someone had dumped buckets of blood on him. While that was normally a vampire’s idea of a kick-ass time, from the expression on Auberi’s face, he wasn’t happy.
“Brother, you didn’t tell me you claimed her,” said Grid, holding Garth’s attention. “When we spoke last week, you never brought that up. Then again, you were having issues talking with your wolf riding high. So weak now.”
“Grid, I won’t pull punches. I won’t step in to protect you. We’re past all of that,” warned Garth. “The time has come for you to pay for your crimes.”
“And you think you’re the one to make me pay?” Grid asked, laughing and glancing past Garth at Nicolette. “Tell me something, brother, how are you going to hand out this justice when your mate and unborn babe are in danger?”
“Viking,” said Auberi, his tone alarming. “Stand down.”
Confused, Garth glanced behind him to find the rotting-face hybrid was up and had Nicolette held off the ground, a clawed hand to the side of her head. Her eyes were moist, and she was even paler than normal. Fear radiated from her.
Grid’s words echoed in Garth’s head.
Mate and unborn babe?
Gasping, he stared at Nicolette’s stomach. She was expecting?
Auberi inclined his head as if reading Garth’s thoughts.
Garth’s hands trembled. “Step away from my mate or you won’t have to worry about botched science experiments being your downfall.”
“I shall assist,” said Auberi, wiping a hand over his face and flicking blood to the floor. “Harm her in any way and you will beg us for death.”
Grid laughed more. “Take her out the side to the truck. If either of them blinks, tear her throat out.”
Garth’s breath caught. “Grid, no.”
“Beg all you want, brother. She is coming with me one way or another. The people I work with can learn from her dead body nearly as much as they can from her alive. Maybe even more.”
Garth looked at his brother. “This is not what Mother would have wanted. Brother against brother. One of our mates threatened. Or to see one of her sons become the same monster Father had been.”
Grid’s gaze narrowed. “Do you think Mother would have liked knowing one of our mates was drained of her blood and turned into a night feeder—a vampire?”
Confused, Garth lifted a brow. “Nicolette has vampire in her but she’s not a vampire.”
Grid snorted. “I know what she is and what she’s made of. After all, I’m the one who was there when she was born. I’m the one who sensed something was different with her. That she had a connection to me somehow. I fully understand she is no vampire.”
“Then what in the hell are you talking about?” demanded Garth.
Grid’s hard gaze slid to Auberi. “He knows.”
Auberi shrugged. “I have no idea what the lunatic is going on about.”
“You made no move to stop your maker when he attacked my mate! When he drained her dry and then gave her his blood, bringing her back as something dark, twisted, without a soul!” said Grid, venom dripping from his every word. “She was like you—unfit to breathe the same air as the rest of us. Blood drinkers are beneath us in the hierarchy of supernaturals. You stood there, watching as your master drained the Fae girl of her life, and brought her back as one of you!”
Auberi gasped. “No. She was your mate?”
“Yes. I know you fucked her,” snapped Garth.
“I did not touch her in such a manner. My heart wept for her. She was caught up in a world she did not understand and had an innocence about her that was infectious.”
“Who are we talking about here?” demanded Garth.
Auberi sighed. “Garth, he speaks of the woman he defiled and slaughtered a century ago. The woman I tried to kill him over.”
Grid laughed, sounding even more insane than Garth knew him to be. “Woman? Hardly. Once her heart stopped beating and your fucking maker fed her his blood, she stopped being my woman! She became something else. And I was expected to claim her then? To accept her for what she’d become? No. I would never sink so low.”
Garth realized what Grid was saying. His brother had turned on his own true mate. He’d tortured and killed her, all because of his hate of vampires.
It was in that moment Garth saw their father in Grid. Their father’s hate, his prejudices, his savagery. �
��Grid, to harm a woman at all is unthinkable. To harm your mate?”
“I granted her freedom from the demon in her!” shouted Grid. “I ended her suffering.”
Auberi shook his head. “She was not suffering. She’d fallen ill. While she was Fae, it was a small, small amount, not enough to stop the sickness that had ravished her system. My maker did as she requested. He made it so she would have forever with her mate. I was not aware you were the mate.”
Grid tensed. “You lie. She did not ask to be a monster.”
“She most certainly did ask to be sired. She came to him, desperate, knowing she was too far gone for a claiming to save her. She wanted a life with her mate—with you—and because of that, you murdered her,” said Auberi, inching closer to Nicolette.
Garth knew the vampire needed a distraction, so he gave it to him. He faced his brother fully. “You know, I once heard our aunt tell our mother she should have drowned you at birth. She said she sensed a great darkness in you. That it was best for the future of all mankind if Mother took matters into her own hands. I wonder if she considered it.”
Anger flashed in his brother’s eyes a second before he lunged at Garth.
Garth was prepared and caught Grid around the waist, tackling him through the already broken front window. They tumbled out and onto the parking lot. They rolled, and each pushed up and to their feet at the same time. They began to walk in a circle, as Garth and Auberi had done in the training room.
Bullets whizzed by them but neither man flinched. They were past the point of worrying about anything else. The confrontation had been coming for the past twelve hundred years. The time for it to end was now. Only one man was going to walk away, and Garth knew damn well it was going to be him.
There was no way he was leaving his mate and unborn child alone. He would kill his brother a thousand times over before he dared to permit his child to grow up not knowing him.
He went hard at his brother, and Grid gave back as good as he got. The men were matched not only in looks but strength as well, making it hard for one or the other to gain the advantage.
Act of Brotherhood_Paranormal Security and Intelligence_PSI-Ops an Immortal Ops World Novel Page 26