The smile on Thomas’s face grew. “You going to strike me, pup?” Fangs slid down, protruding past his lips.
Fear shaped the world before him. As though William was looking at Thomas through tunnel vision, everything went fuzzy and dark. Everything except Thomas’s face. William heard a weird whistling sound and realized he was wheezing for air. A cold, clammy sweat trickled down his back. Tears blurred his vision. He couldn’t think…couldn’t think…With hands that shook, he reached up and rubbed his eyes.
It was during those few brief seconds when he had his eyes closed that William realized just how unnatural this was. He didn’t feel fear like this. He didn’t let it control him. Not anymore. A growl rumbled up out of his chest, and anger rushed through him in a torrent, washing away the fear. “You bastard. How dare you do this to me?” William roared. He struck out and watched as his claws carved four diagonal slices down Thomas’ cheek. Blood welled, but even as it started to roll down his face, the lacerations were knitting themselves together.
“How dare I?” Thomas asked. He drew a handkerchief from inside his suit jacket and dabbed at the blood. “I could easily ask you the same question, you fool. You risked us all. You have let this new power go to your head, destroy your common sense. I simply gave you a reminder—you may feel indestructible, but you are not. None of us are.”
MURDEROUS images didn’t make for a restful sleep. But sleeping with Jess in his arms did. Vax woke up in the same position he had been in when he’d fallen asleep, his back pressed to the wooden headboard and his arms looped around her waist. He’d slept the whole night through, no nightmares. Jess was cuddled against him, her head on his shoulder, her chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm.
She was alive. Safe, sound, and whole. Now he just had to keep her that way.
“You’re doing it again.” Jess’s voice was sleepy, and when he looked down at her, her eyes were still closed. She opened them just long enough to look at him and smile, and then she snuggled closer. “Thinking too loud.”
“I woke you up.”
“’S okay.” A deep sighing breath escaped her, and she mumbled, “At least it will be if you get me coffee.” She opened one eye and looked at him. “Get me coffee?”
He smiled a little. Lowering his head, he pressed a kiss to one narrow shoulder and whispered, “You probably bleed coffee, you know.”
“Hmm. Eat, drink, breathe, and bleed it. Get me coffee?”
Vax climbed out of the bed and watched as she rolled onto her side and curled into a ball. “Yeah. I’ll get you coffee.” He swatted her naked ass gently as he added, “But you have to get up and get moving. Sun’s rising. We need to find them today, and the sooner the better.”
She yawned so loudly, he heard her jaw pop. After he started the coffee in the small in-room courtesy machine, he turned back to look at her. She sat back up in the bed and pushed her hair from her face before she wrapped the sheet around herself a little better. “Think we’ll find them?”
As the rich scent of coffee filled the room, Vax shrugged. He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest, pondering his answer. Finally he said in a low, quiet voice, “I think we will. We don’t have any other choice.”
Jess quirked a brow at him but didn’t say anything.
She didn’t need to. He could read the doubt all over her face, even though he couldn’t feel anything coming off her. Vax rubbed his palms together and stared down at his hands. They had to find them. There wasn’t any other alternative. Feeling the weight of her stare, he looked up. She sat in the tangled mess of sheets, surrounded by white sheets and blonde hair.
The sight of her hit him like a short arm jab straight to the solar plexus. A handful of days. That was all. They’d known each other just a handful of days, and she had managed to do what nobody else had done since he’d lost Cora. She had gotten under his skin. She had made herself matter to him.
Nothing could happen to her.
Vax couldn’t do it again, lose a woman he cared about to the monsters. “We’ll find them,” he murmured, more to himself than anything else.
Behind him, the coffeepot made a weird gurgling sound and then it hissed. There were thick, heavy white mugs hanging on pegs attached to the wall. He took two and filled them. As he handed one to Jess, he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her take the first sip. She never waited until it cooled off, even a bit. Instead she hissed a little and took a second sip. She made a soft humming sound, and her eyes closed.
Vax laughed. “I’ve never met a woman who could make me hard just by drinking coffee,” he murmured. “Not until you, at least.” He reached up and brushed her hair back from her face, tucking a thick lock behind her ear. After a light kiss, he stood up and murmured, “We need to get going.”
JESS hadn’t believed they would do it.
She hadn’t believed she could do it.
But she had. Cold chills racked her body: She had a serious aversion to walking into the building that sprawled before her. It was a warehouse. Or at least it appeared on the surface to be a warehouse. The place gave her the creeps. Vax stood up, and she snarled at him. “They’ll have security cameras, damn it.”
He just grinned. “They don’t work very well around magick.”
“I’m not magick.” She stared at the hand he held out to her, and looked around. She spotted two cameras on the first glance. They were still out of the cameras’ range, for now. But if she put her hand in his and let him pull her closer to the warehouse, the cameras would catch them, alert anybody watching to their presence.
“I am. Come on.” He gave her a gentle, cajoling smile and said, “Come on. Trust me.”
Trust me. That was what it boiled down to—oh, the cameras would catch them. Jess didn’t see how his being a witch could make the cameras not see him. But did she trust him to protect her inside those walls? That was the question. It was a whole new world inside those walls, and there were creatures within them that she wasn’t able to stand against.
Jess blew out a breath and reached for Vax, linking her fingers with his. They started forward, and Jess stared at the cameras. But just before they would have stepped within the camera’s viewing range, the little red light started flashing. There were sparks, and then she saw wisps of smoke drift from the camera. Her eyes widened as the same thing happened with the other camera.
They reached the door, and Jess looked at Vax. “How in the hell did you do that?”
He just laughed. “I told you the cameras wouldn’t work around me. Technology and magick just don’t mingle very well.” He slid a hand up and down her back, moving it in slow, soothing circles. “You ready?”
Jess made a face. “Do I have any sort of choice?” The sun was starting to creep up on the horizon, and if anybody worked in this warehouse, then she and Vax needed to be out of sight before they showed up. Jess licked her dry lips and nodded. “Come on, let’s do it.” She took a step and then froze. “Speaking of it, exactly what is it we’re doing?”
“Right now, just looking around.” He tried the door, but it was locked.
Vax slid her an appraising look. Jess knew what he wanted before he even said anything. But she just gave him a sweet smile. “You worked mojo on the cameras. Do the same on the lock.”
He gave her a disgruntled look. “I didn’t work mojo on anything. Technology and magick don’t mix well. I’m lucky—I can use a telephone, drive a car, and listen to electronics. But I’ve known people who can’t even watch TV. There was this woman—she worked a job in the mortal world as a counselor. She usually had her own office, but they were remodeling and so she had a session in the computer lab. Every single computer crashed while she was in there. She never even touched them.” He laid his hand on the doorknob and said, “I can use magick, but the more I use it, the worse it affects things around me. If their security system gets fried for no obvious reason, somebody will notice.”
Without turning around, he reache
d behind himself and grasped her wrist, pulling her forward. He took his hand from the handle and replaced it with hers. “You, though, don’t have that issue, do you?”
Jess stared down at the handle. Telekinesis worked more easily when she could see things, but she didn’t have to. There was next to no weight to the lock. She felt the lightness of it as she unlocked it; there was a snick, and then the locks turned. “No. I don’t have that issue.” Although she sort of wished she did. She’d always been content with the ability she had. Moving things with her mind could come in handy. Could be a good weapon. But it suddenly seemed paltry. The unknown lay inside these doors, and she figured she’d have felt a lot more secure if she had something more in the way of firepower on her side.
Unconsciously she reached behind herself, touching the gun she had tucked inside her waistband. She closed her hand around the butt and almost pulled it out. But she made herself pull her hand away. She looked up and found Vax watching her. He held her gaze and reached up to cup her chin.
“I’ll take care of you,” he murmured. He pushed her hair back from her face, his fingers brushing against her cheek. Then his hand trailed down her arm and around her waist and then she felt him reach inside her waistband. He pulled out the gun and pushed it into her hand. “If it makes you feel better, carry it.”
Jess forced a laugh. “Don’t you know how many gunshot wounds happen every year? A lot of them are accidental. You want to be a statistic?”
Vax just bussed her mouth. “I won’t be.” He linked his fingers with hers and led her inside. Jess swallowed. Her breathing was too fast. She could feel her heartbeat pounding—it beat against her ribs so hard that it almost hurt. Her ears were buzzing, and everything she saw seemed to take on a weird, surreal quality. Her body felt weightless.
“Breathe, Jess.”
Air wheezed out of her in a rush. Hard hands pushed her back into the wall and she looked up. Blinking, she found herself staring at Vax. His eyes were stormy. His hands cupped her face. “Breathe.”
Her eyes were too damn dark. Her skin was as white as a bedsheet. Vax didn’t like it. He shook his head and muttered, “Let’s get you out of here.” He caught her hand in his, took the gun from the other one, and tucked it in his jeans. But when he went to pull her away from the wall, she wouldn’t come. Jess shook her head and said, “No.” She took a deep breath and expelled it in a rush. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
He didn’t think she was. But her eyes weren’t so dark now, and there was a little bit of color in her cheeks. “It’s not too late to get you out of here. Not yet.”
Jess gave him a faint smile. “Yes, it is. No turning back, Vax. At least not for me. I can handle it.” His hand felt firm and strong in hers. She squeezed lightly. He squeezed back and then murmured, “Let’s get to it.”
The ground floor of the warehouse had a couple of roughed-in offices, but it didn’t look as if they were being used at all. The desks were bare, there was nothing on the bookshelves—the entire area had a vacant feel to it. He found a stairwell, but it didn’t go down, just up three floors. “I thought you said it would be underground,” Jess whispered.
“It will be. There’s another way down.” But ten minutes of walking around just revealed two more stairwells and a utility elevator. Vax grumbled under his breath and started to retrace his steps. The warehouse had more cameras and each one had fizzled up into smoke before he got within thirty feet. “No monitors.”
“What?”
Looking back at Jess, he said, “I haven’t seen any security monitors. Eight cameras, and no locked rooms for employees only. Hell, this entire place looks untouched. It was like they moved the desks and furniture in as soon as the paint dried and never set foot back in here.” The place wasn’t vacant, though. He smelled them.
Blood. Soap. The faint, wild scent of werewolf. The cool, almost herbal scent he associated with vampires. And women. Even without shampoos, lotions, and perfumes, women smelled different from men. Softer and sweeter, and each woman smelled unique. Vax scented five different women.
The stronger scents belonged to the vampire and the werewolf. They were the ones moving around up here the most, and the most recently. Closing his eyes, he blocked out everything but the faint scent trail. The blood was human—he knew whose. The girl who had died during the night. The werewolf had had her blood on him when he came in here, and it was that scent that Vax locked on. He followed it into the centermost office. Most of the office space was large and open-aired, separated by fabric-covered partitions. But this small office was enclosed, insular. The blood trail came to a dead end right by the built-in bookcases.
“I don’t believe it,” he muttered. He turned slightly and looked at Jess. “A secret entry. This is a first for me.” He cocked a brow. “Can you?”
CHAPTER 11
“BASTARD”. William rubbed a hand over the back of his mouth and tried to forget the bitter, nasty taste that fear had left. He’d seen Thomas in action. Thought he knew what the vampire was capable of. He had been wrong, wrong, wrong. Even though he knew that it had been Thomas’s power causing the fear, feeling that fear pissed him off to no end.
He had paced the floor so many times, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see tracks in the carpet. It felt as if the walls were closing in on him, but he couldn’t seem to make himself leave the room. He wanted to, needed to. He wanted to run and feel the wind on his skin.
Maybe some bloodied flesh under his claws.
In the middle of the room, William came to an abrupt halt. That was exactly what he needed. Maybe not the blood. Not a good idea after last night. Had to lie low. Definitely had to lie low. With the rising sun, the murderous drive from last night had faded, and he knew that it had been too damn risky, what he had done. Way too risky. Stupid.
It was that sort of thing that led Hunters to the doorstep. That was the last thing they needed right now. “Got to be careful,” William muttered. He nodded and repeated it. “Be careful.”
“It is a little too late for that, pup.”
He turned. The sight of Thomas made his gut clench, but he refused to acknowledge it. William didn’t live in fear—he wouldn’t let himself develop an instinctive fear of some fucking bloodsucker. “Shouldn’t you be in your coffin?”
Thomas didn’t smile. He came inside and made his way to the bank of security monitors on the far side of William’s room. “You know, these do more good if you actually have them engaged.” He turned them on. Most of the cameras were trained on the labs on the level below, and the images on the monitors were nothing remarkable. The various subjects were sleeping or pacing their cells. One camera was trained on the only cell that held more than one person. This one contained the witches that Thomas used to harvest the brain chemical. They were brain-dead, but as long as their hearts beat, their bodies would live. Lower brain function continued. The perfect donors.
But the remaining monitors showed nothing but black and white bars flashing across the screens. The monitors from outside and the ground level. Thomas slid William a look and cocked his brow. “Perhaps if you had the screens on, you might have seen something before they went dead.”
Unsure what Thomas was talking about, William just shook his head. “Exactly what was I supposed to see?”
“The Hunter who just found the elevator down here, perhaps?”
William heard the elevator as it started its descent. He looked back at the bank of monitors. There was an odd little prickle low in his spine, and he hissed as recognition tore through his body. Another witch. He could smell them now. A man. A woman. Powerful magick. Very, very powerful magick.
William growled. Rage sizzled through his veins, and then there was that disgusting, hated fear. The fear was fueled by some gut-deep knowledge. It was as if his recently acquired magickal sense had a measuring gauge, and when he held himself against this new witch, he came up lacking. He was lesser.
Lesser—my ass. Claws ripped through the tips of his f
ingers, and his hands shifted so rapidly, he never felt the discomfort that usually came with any sort of shift. “I’ll show the bastard who the lesser one is.” But when William started for the door, Thomas blocked him.
“Do not be any more a fool than you already are,” Thomas said. William went around him, and Thomas backhanded him. “You rush out there without thought, and you are a dead man.”
Through a haze of pain and fury, William pushed himself to his feet. He wiped the back of his clawed hand across his mouth. The smear of blood there was the last little spark—blood rage tore through him.
“You are an ignorant arse,” Thomas said with a weary sigh. He reached inside his jacket.
William was already rushing him, leaping for him. Even though he saw the syringe in Thomas’s hand, the fury and the bloodlust rode him too hard. He took Thomas down under him, and his own body weight pushed the thin needle inside. The drug hit fast, a shock to his system that was instantaneous. First there was a wave of weakness and dizziness. Then black dots closed in on his system. Shoving off of Thomas, he rolled away and stared down his torso. The needle had caught him in the abdomen, and only a scant bit of liquid was left inside the barrel of the syringe.
“What did you…” At least that was what he tried to say. It was more along the lines of wah duh.
“It’s a sedative. An extremely strong one,” Thomas offered. He stood up and nudged William’s unprotected side. Then he followed with a harder kick. A wide smile spread across his mouth, revealing the tips of pointed white fangs. “You know, when I started this endeavor, I knew that I might at some point encounter fools like you. Individuals that came through the transition with more power than sense. That was why I manufactured this—do you know, this particular narcotic is strong enough to put down three elephants. Let’s see how long it keeps you out. I think I have a minimum of six hours….”
Six hours was the last thing that William heard. Thomas watched as William’s eyeballs rolled up until just the bottom crescent of the iris showed in the whites of his eyes. A tiny bit of saliva dribbled out the corner of his mouth, and his heart beat more slowly with each passing second. “Bloody fool,” Thomas muttered.
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