“Out of gas? From what we could see when we drove past, we thought a bear had mauled him. You know, they have a serious black bear problem up here.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that.” Not really, but she didn’t want him to go into a lengthy explanation about animal/human interactions. She just wanted to be on her way with as little conversation as possible.
“So, he’s okay?”
“Yeah, he’s—” Something pricked the veil of her awareness and she jerked her head to the left. Something way off in the distance through the trees. A slight breeze ruffled her hair as her tracker senses stretched into the night like an arrow shot from a bow. Although the scents here were much different from those back home, there was no mistaking this stench.
Darkbloods. Two of them. Somewhere deep in the forest.
From the strength of the smell, she estimated they were a mile or two away. If they were shadow-moving, she wouldn’t have much time.
“He’s fine,” she said hastily.
The man scowled, his eyes narrowing to slits. “What’s wrong? Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, but we’ve got to get out of here.”
One eyebrow shot up. “I’m getting the feeling there’s more to this story than just a guy running out of gas.”
She didn’t have the luxury of time to come up with a reasonable explanation as to why they needed to hightail it out of here. Things wouldn’t be pretty if they stayed.
She started to reach for him, intending to give him a mental push to get back into his rig and drive away—if she could even manage it right now—when someone called out from the truck.
“What’s going on? Do you need me to call an aid car?”
Damn. The other guy with him.
She’d have to come up with another plan. If Darkbloods showed up while they were all still here, she’d have to take care of them herself and wipe the minds of the witnesses before they could alert the human authorities. At one point in her life, she’d have easily been able to take down a couple of Darkblood losers, but she was out of practice. She was a teacher now. She hadn’t been a field agent in years.
And if the DBs were high on Sweet… Shit.
So she did the only other thing she could think of.
Grabbing her cell phone, she called the one person who’d be able to help out right now, who happened to be the last one she wanted to ask.
* * *
THE GUY STARING up at Tristan Santiago was pleading for his life, but that wasn’t the reason he decided not to kill him.
Instead, Santiago yanked him to his feet and slammed him against the wall. The Darkblood clutched at his hands, trying to break the hold, but it was no use. Santiago outweighed him by at least forty pounds and was a helluva lot stronger.
“How did you know where to find us?” Santiago hissed through his bared fangs.
“What?”
“My men. How did you know we were waiting for you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Had it been two weeks, two days, even two hours ago, he’d be handling things differently right now. He’d have unsheathed Misery, plunged the silver blade into the guy’s heart muscle, and watched him turn to ash. But as it turned out, he needed a few answers first.
“Oh, really.” It was a statement, not a question. The guy was bullshitting him and they both knew it.
There was no way DBs should’ve known Guardians would be coming. Their intel about the location of this den came through only yesterday. Now, one of his men had been injured on a job that should have been routine.
Misery hung heavily beneath his coat. He pulled out the blade, placing the point just inches away from the guy’s eye. Most Darkbloods wore sunglasses to hide the fact that the whites of their eyes were black, but this one didn’t. Either that or he’d lost his during the chase.
“Don’t kill me. I swear to God, I don’t know.”
“I’m not planning to kill you.” The guy relaxed ever so slightly and Santiago smiled, flashing his own set of fangs again. “But don’t think I’m being nice. I don’t do nice.”
His phone vibrated in his pocket but he ignored it. Instead, he let Misery’s razor-sharp point prick the skin and a small bead of blood teardropped down the guy’s cheek.
“Please, no,” the bastard pleaded.
The blade wanted to go deeper and Santiago considered letting it. No one fucked with his people. No one.
The lone overhead light snapped and fizzled as its filament started to fail, creating grotesque shadows on the curved cement walls. Soon they’d be enveloped in total darkness, which would make shadow-moving much easier. Footsteps pounded in the tunnel behind him as one of his men approached.
“What’s wrong?” Kip Castile glanced at the two of them, confused. Guardians didn’t show mercy when it came to their enemies. Justice was swift and unforgiving. “Why didn’t you charcoal him? Wait. You’re saving him for me, aren’t you?” With a cold smile, the young Guardian-in-training withdrew his stiletto and advanced on the prisoner.
What a sadistic son of a bitch. I knew I liked the kid.
The Darkblood cringed, tried to take a step sideways, but Santiago held him tight. “No,” he told Kip. “He is not to be injured.”
At least, not right now and not any more than he had been already. Let the guy be relieved for a while, get him to drop his guard, then they’d threaten him again, but with more force. This untrained Darkblood lackey would soon be singing like a canary.
Kip dropped his hand and tapped the flat part of the knife impatiently against his black cargo pants. The kid was like a runner in the starting blocks, itching to move, to do something. Luckily, he wouldn’t have to wait for long.
A quick pat down revealed the Darkblood’s black trench coat was filled with a shitload of syringes and vials. Santiago yanked it off and tossed it aside. “Planning on a little door-to-door selling, huh? ‘Ding dong, Darkblood calling.’”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The guy sneered, making Santiago reconsider his decision to keep him alive. He should be pleading for his life, not acting cocky.
Maybe he should let Kip waste him. Or better yet, he’d do it himself and show the kid how it was done. Misery suddenly felt a little lighter in his hand, as if urging him to continue on with this way of thinking.
“Jet’s gonna be okay,” Kip said, looking at his mobile device. “Says it’s a surface injury. The blade didn’t go deep.”
Damn. That’s right. He couldn’t charcoal the guy. Santiago needed him alive to figure out what he knew about the operation that could’ve killed one of his men.
“Didn’t your mama ever teach you to tell the truth?” He shoved the DB face-first against the wall again, spread-eagling his legs using the oh-so-gentle toe of his boot. With a hand on his back, he searched him for weapons.
Kip piped up. “Shouldn’t you—”
Santiago shot him a cold look that said “Shut your piehole.”
Sure, regulation stipulated he put on a pair of latex gloves to protect him from the effects of any silver he may find, but his way was faster.
That was the problem with having a new guy shadow him. They knew all the rules and were puppydog-eager to demonstrate their knowledge. Like they were being tested. Which, of course, they were, but fieldwork was more flexible than that. You did things by instinct, by what felt right. Not by some rulebook you memorized in a classroom setting for a test you were about to take on a computer. Santiago had never let himself get caught up in bullshit created by the so-called experts, and his wariness had served him well over the years. Street smarts won out over book smarts when lives were at stake.
Kip mumbled something under his breath that Santiago didn’t quite catch and didn’t care to either.
He started to turn his attention back to the DB, when the guy jolted sideways away from the wall and made a move for the weapon at his feet. Before he could pick it up, Santiago stomped on his fingers and kicke
d the knife away. It spun against the cement floor, hitting the wall with a metallic ting that echoed down the corridor. The guy howled, tried to pull free, but trapped beneath Santiago’s foot, he wasn’t getting anywhere. His efforts got noticeably weaker as he squirmed on the pavement.
“See the metal strip on the toe of my boot there?” Santiago twisted it as if he was grinding out a cigarette butt. The man groaned. “Answer me.”
“Y-yes.”
“It’s on the heel, too. But it’s not steel. It’s silver.”
“What…what do you want from me?”
“The boots get ’em every time,” Santiago said over his shoulder to Kip. With hands on his hips, he turned his attention back to the DB loser. “So you lost the attitude, have you? Ready to talk now?”
“Yes,” the guy groaned. “Just get off my hand.”
Santiago pretended not to hear and kept his foot firmly planted. “Tell me how you knew we would be at the landing.”
“I told you, I don’t know. We were just there.” His gaze darted furtively to the left a few times as he bit the inside of his cheek.
You didn’t need to be a shrink to figure out that this guy knew something and was trying to cover it up. “Well, you’d better pray you remember something. Next time, I’m not going to be as forgiving as I am right now.” He quickly cuffed the asshole with silver-lined cuffs, hauled him to his feet and shoved him at Kip. “Take him to one of the holding cells.” Maybe after a little persuasion, the guy’s memory would improve.
“Me? You want me to take him?”
A flash of anger heated Santiago’s veins. “Are you questioning me, boy?”
A muscle in Kip’s jaw ticked and his nostrils flared slightly. For a split second, he thought the kid was going to argue with him. Tell him it wasn’t his job. That it was for the capture team to bring in a prisoner, not a Guardian. Jesus Christ. Did youngsters these days have no respect for their elders? Not that Santiago was all that old, but he might have to show the kid a thing or two about respect.
An old friend’s words rang in his head. Respect is earned, Santiago, not demanded.
Ha. You respected what you feared.
Then, just like that, Kip’s brain started functioning again. He turned away and grabbed the DB’s arm. “No, sir.”
Smart kid. Santiago wasn’t known to react kindly to those who didn’t do exactly what he ordered. He expected people to do what he told them to do without asking any questions. And to do it with a damn smile on their faces. He didn’t lead by committee or a show of hands. In these parts, his orders were as good as the laws written in the old edicts. You did what you were told or you were out. It didn’t get any simpler than that.
As Kip led the loser away, Santiago stooped to pick up the DB’s weapon, careful not to touch the business end. He was about to tuck it into his weapons belt then check his phone to see who’d been trying to get ahold of him, when something about the blade drew his attention. From the uneven marks, it appeared to be hand-forged, not machine made, and the hilt was obviously carved by a talented artisan.
How strange. DBs were not known for their high-quality weaponry, but this thing was gorgeous. A piece of friggin’ art. He turned it over in his hands. When the overhead light caught on the metal, it flashed in his eyes like a powerful mirror, making his pupils contract.
Holy shit. He blinked a few times, wondering if it was just his imagination, but he angled the blade just so, the light flashed and his pupils tightened again.
Just as a real pearl could be distinguished from the fakes by the gritty feel of it against your teeth, only a few blades were so finely made that they’d cause an ocular reaction like this. Misery was one of them.
This was a Guardian’s weapon—Santiago was sure of it.
CHAPTER TWO
SANTIAGO WAS SURPRISED. And that didn’t happen often.
After listening to the voice mail Roxanne had left on his cell, he assumed he’d arrive on the scene to find chaos and a boatload of collateral damage: Darkbloods, screaming humans who’d need their memories wiped, maybe a few dead bodies. Instead, things looked relatively calm. Just two vehicles pulled off to the side of the road and Roxanne near the edge of the forest, standing over a pile of what probably used to be a Darkblood. From the looks of it, Misery wouldn’t be needed.
Although he’d heard of Roxanne Reynolds—Lily couldn’t say enough complimentary things about her—he’d never actually met her in person. What he did know, though, was that she was into some weird spiritual crap—meditation, mind-over-matter kind of shit. Sure, the touchy-feely stuff was popular with her students. Lily, for instance, gushed about her at every opportunity, but as far as he was concerned, anyone who practiced nonsense like that had to have a screw loose somewhere.
He exited his vintage Corvette and jogged toward the red Search and Rescue truck. Oddly enough, two men were slumped over, sleeping in the front, while their dog barked its head off in the back. How could they not wake up with that racket? His acute hearing picked up the regular sound of their heartbeats, so he didn’t bother to open the door. It was obvious they were both healthy and alive.
“It’s okay, boy,” Santiago said to the German shepherd as he passed the vehicle.
Before he got to Roxanne, the Capture Team’s panel van pulled up alongside him and a tinted window slid down.
“Where do you want us?” one of the capture team agents asked.
“I’ve got things handled here.” He motioned for them to continue. “But I want temporary roadblocks set up ahead and behind us. If anyone asks, say there’s been a rock slide.” This remote part of the highway wasn’t well traveled at night, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
“Yes, sir.” The vehicle drove away and the sound of its engine was soon swallowed by the night.
He quickly assessed the scene as he crossed the road, his boots crunching loudly on the pavement. Crickets chirped in the nearby bushes, apparently undisturbed by what had just happened. He didn’t detect any live Darkblood scent, just the scent of the sweetblood who was stowed safely in what he assumed to be Roxanne’s car about twenty feet away.
“Hola,” he said as he approached. “Roxanne, I presume?”
She straightened her spine at the sound of his voice and turned to face him. And for just a moment, he forgot entirely why he was here.
Since joining the Agency over a century ago, he’d been stationed in various parts of the world that most people only experienced by reading books and magazines, seeing pictures online or news clips on television. And he’d witnessed many astounding things. Tattooed pleasure workers in Thailand, secret Incan mating rituals, French courtesans well versed in the sexual arts. In short, he’d seen a lot, experienced a lot. There wasn’t much that could take his breath away.
Until now.
“And you must be Santiago.”
God, he even liked the sound of her voice.
She picked at a twig nestled in her dark blond hair, which fell past her shoulders in messy, tangled curls, but she wasn’t having much luck.
“Here, let me get that.” Without thinking, he reached over and had to use two hands to keep from pulling her hair too much. “There, got it.”
It was only after he was done that he realized how intimate an action it had been. He stepped away and folded his arms over his chest as he studied her.
Despite the frigid night air, she wore a cream-colored tank top with a surf shop logo that sported a few blood stains, dark brown yoga pants—the kind that felt different depending on whether you ran your hand up or down the fabric—and slip-on, once-turquoise tennis shoes that were now covered in mud. The juxtaposition between feminine perfection and scrappy street fighter was so utterly arresting that the world fell away for one brief moment.
Although none of her individual features stood out on their own—straight nose, golden eyes framed by dark lashes, and lips that were neither thin nor generous—when they were put together, she was striking. Her face
was oval, her skin smooth and unblemished except for a smudge on one cheek. He had the sudden urge to brush his fingertips against her skin to see if it was dirt or blood. She wasn’t old, but the confidence reflected in her eyes indicated that her Time of Change, when a vampire youthling’s blood cravings began, was decades behind her.
“So what do we have here?” he asked, glancing at the charred remains. His tone was purposely sharp and businesslike as he attempted to shake off his lingering reaction to her. He didn’t like losing control of his thoughts like this.
She fingered her necklace. “Turned out I was able to handle the situation on my own.”
“And the human witnesses?”
“They’ll need to be dealt with. I didn’t have the energy to wipe their minds, only to insert a sleep suggestion.”
Very clever, he thought, noticing for the first time the weariness in her eyes. “What about the other Darkblood? You said there were two.”
“I took care of them both. Here—” she toed her sneaker against the pile of ash at her feet “—and over there about twelve to fifteen feet beyond that downed tree.”
“I don’t understand. You said on the phone you didn’t have any weapons.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then how—?”
“I used theirs,” she said matter-of-factly, as if disarming two Darkbloods who were probably high on Sweet was something a teacher dealt with every day.
It still didn’t make sense. His confusion must’ve been apparent because she continued.
“I pretended I was trying to get away from the sweetblood human, that I was concerned I might kill him, and needed their help.”
“So they knew you were a fellow vampire.”
“Yes, but they had no idea I knew they were Darkbloods. As soon as they didn’t consider me a threat and dropped their guard, it was a simple matter to strip their weapons and use them to my advantage.”
Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
This woman performed under pressure as well as any Guardian he’d worked with, and yet she was just a teacher at Tracker Academy. What happened to the adage, “those who can’t do, teach”?
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