by Misty Evans
Oh, yeah, and after taking care of the Undead, witches and the queen of hell, I’d deal with his happy ass, too.
Chapter Twenty-seven
We drove through neighborhoods with two-story brick Tudors, well-manicured lawns and inviting parks. Nudra’s two-acre property was set back on a cul-de-sac and took up half of a block with a park on one side and a forest preserve behind it. A high-stone wall surrounded the grounds, blocking the street view of the house as Rad did a drive-by.
The wrought iron gate stood open, though, so I got a glimpse of the long drive, lined with oak trees, and a circular parking area near the front of the house. A massive water fountain took center stage with a half a dozen luxury and sports cars parked between it and the front entryway.
Since I’d been knocked out the last time I’d entered and too messed when I’d left to notice the ostentatious Hollywood look of the place, I was more than curious. Fancy houses weren’t uncommon in this area, but fenced and gated properties were.
The drive-by didn’t give me any real sense of the property’s grounds. Good thing JR had come through with diagrams and satellite pictures. The house was a mansion, even by Chicago standards. Over five-thousand square feet of brick and stone with an outdoor tennis court and indoor swimming pool. Porticos, a Juliet balcony and extensive landscaping covered the front. One of the porticos led around to the north side and a five-car garage.
The cars in that garage were listed on the inventory JR had sent and read like a Maddy list of the Top Five Cars of the Rich and Famous. Several of them peaked my interest. An Aston Martin, a Lamborghini Gallardo, a Porsche Carrera GT, a Bugatti Veyron and a Ferrari Enzo. Cole and I were going to have one hell of a good time test driving all of those.
None of the cars on the list matched the ones parked out front. Those belonged to Toel and his friends. Since the gate was open, I suspected he was expecting more.
Either that, or he was expecting me.
Rad turned the Land Rover around and parked up the street. “Security is tight inside the fence’s perimeter. There are cameras over all the entrances and mounted on trees around the house. Last time I was here, the house was reinforced with structural magic and the hired help was armed.” He glanced at me in the rearview. “We were lucky to get out last week without more bloodshed.”
The statement carried a warning. If we went in tonight, blood was definitely going to flow.
I fiddled with the satellite image JR had fed me. “What about the sky? Any cloaking over the house?”
Cole snorted. “You gonna fly in, Kali?”
I was walking in through the front door. My backup, however, needed a less detectable entrance. “Nudra’s security is all ground oriented. Seems he was more worried about human criminals than supernaturals. Our best plan of attack may be to slip in from the roof.”
Madison woke up and yawned. “Where are we?”
I opened the insulated case of blood and handed her a bottle. “Nudra’s compound. Drink up. You’re doing recon for me.”
She didn’t hesitate to take the bottle, but she gave me a funny look. “Recon?”
“Toel’s throwing a party to win some of Nudra’s followers over to his side is my guess. You’re a vamp. I want you to sneak in, have a looky-loo and report back to me. How many Undead are there, what are they doing, where are they clustered. Anything you hear or see that can help me.”
She glanced at her clothes, back at me. “I’ll stick out like a palm tree on Lake Shore Drive.”
“I thought you were The Mouse.”
A touch of indignation raised her voice. “I am.”
“Then get in and get out without being noticed, Mouse.”
Three Cadillac Escalades rolled up and pulled in behind us. One by one, the passengers filed out, demon soldier after demon soldier. All dressed in black, all wearing their Bridge badges conspicuously.
When Damon sent the cavalry, he didn’t mess around.
They lined up on the sidewalk and Cole hopped out to inspect his troops. Each one popped in a high-tech ear bud that doubled as a microphone as Cole went down the line and most had some sort of visible weapon. Those that didn’t were probably more dangerous.
I climbed out of the Land Rover, bringing Maddy with me. Rad hung back, watching the surrounding area with a trained eye.
The soldiers had tight, skillful magic simmering under their skins and they were hyped with controlled anticipation. They hung out with weapons day in and day out, honing and fine-tuning their bodies until they were as dangerous as the guns, knives and other killing tools they used, thus the smell hanging in the cold night air made me think of the inside of an armory.
“Maddy’s with us,” I told them, making sure each of them looked her in the face and registered her features. “She’s going to sneak in and gather intel, then give me the lay of the land. When things go down, if she’s inside, you don’t touch her, you protect her. Understand?”
The soldiers nodded and grunted affirmations. A few of them were familiar. We’d worked previous jobs together. The rest were strangers but still part of Cole’s elite fighters. All well-versed in combat, I knew every one of them hated vamps as much as I did.
Oh, yeah. This was going to be fun.
Still, I wanted to be clear about the situation. “Anything happens to Maddy and I’ll hold you all responsible.”
A female soldier stepped forward and handed me a folded set of papers. “Director Soule asked me to give these to you.”
Damon’s formal title sent a shiver down my spine, especially in the female’s Basque accent, which sounded like his. He’d probably brought her to America with him, and if so, she’d been around a long time. I wondered why I hadn’t run into her at the Institute. “Thank you.”
Unfolding the papers, I felt Damon’s magic on them. Yasmin and Kirill’s as well. There was a bunch of legal jargon and their signatures, but bottom line, the papers were a decree naming me sole proprietor of Nudra’s compound, possessions, bank accounts and blood slaves.
I refolded them and tucked them in my cape. Cole and I gathered the group into a huddle. It was dark out and the neighborhood was quiet, but we didn’t need to draw more attention than necessary. “Did you bring any rope?” I asked Cole’s second-in-command.
The male was basketball-player tall, black as the night, and held his magic so tight, a bowling ball would have bounced off it. I’d never worked with Jimmy, but I’d seen him in the gym. He was a crack Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner, and once he had you down, you weren’t getting back up in one piece.
At the mention of rope, his dark eyes flashed with excitement. “Rope, harnesses, crampons, carabiners, we’ve got it all. What are we climbing?”
“You won’t need the rope to climb, only to repel down from the trees around the house onto the roof.” I showed him the satellite shot on my cell phone screen. “You’ll infiltrate on the upper level, round up any occupants there and restrain them until I give the signal.” I grabbed Maddy, who was standing on the sidewalk looking nervous. “The Mouse is going to get us a headcount and tell us where the majority of people are. While she’s doing that, I need half your squad to get into position around the backside of the perimeter where the largest trees are located. The other half stays here with me.”
I looked at Maddy. She was pale, even for a vampire, but it wasn’t because of blood loss. She was scared. “You up for this?”
Her hands disappeared into the sleeves of her jacket and she bounced lightly on her toes. “Do I have a choice?”
I shook my head. “Not if you want to work for me.”
“Here,” Damon’s Basque female handed her an ear bud from a pocket in her tight-fitting jacket. “Put this in your ear. No one will see it and we’ll be able to talk to you through it, give you guidance if you need any. It has a mic as well, so anything you say, even if you’re whispering, we’ll be able to hear.”
Maddy looked impressed. Hell, I was impressed. I gave the female soldier a gr
ateful nod and patted Madison on the back. “I’ll give you ten minutes, not a second more. Go through as much of the place as you can, but don’t take unnecessary risks. Tell us what you see, who you see and anything that looks out of place or unusual. Then get your butt back out here, got it?”
She gave me a determined nod, the old Maddy surfacing. “I won’t let you down.”
I watched her disappear into the shadows and set the timer on my watch. Cole, the Basque female and Jimmy all did the same to their watches. Jimmy counted off half his men, motioned them to follow him to the last Escalade and started handing out repel rope.
A mid-sized Ford eased down the street. Hone.
“I’ll be right back.” Walking away from the rest of the soldiers, I waved Hone over. He parked his car, rolled his giant body out of the poor car, and I swear the shocks squeaked from the strain.
It was good to see him. “You ready to read a vamp king’s mind for me?”
His head was bandaged but he’d snugged a black knit cap down over it. After hiking up his pants, he adjusted the cap, covering a strip of white bandage peeking out near his temple. “Another vamp king? You crazy, girl?”
Hone and I had a system when I was interviewing perps. If the perp told the truth, Hone kept his hands at his sides and his eyes on the perp’s upper body. If he put his hands behind his back or lowered his eyes to the perp’s shoes or the floor, I knew the idiot was lying. Even the clever criminals never guessed my bodyguard could read minds. “Crazy as a Mockery demon.”
Which, if Toel had been a demon rather than a vamp, would have fit his style. He was good at charades, good at mocking others for his own benefit, and all the while appearing harmlessly goofy and completely sincere.
But he wasn’t harmless and he hadn’t made king status because he was an expert surfer. “My plan isn’t to kill him,” I told Hone. “But I’m making one real sweet example of him.”
Hone clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “You wouldn’t be takin’ personal revenge, now, would’ya, Kali?”
“You know me better than that.” I flashed him the folded up decree. “This is Bridge business.”
Hone jerked his head in Rad’s direction. “He helpin’ with this Bridge business?”
Until that moment, I’d been putting off deciding what to do with Rad. Knowing him, he wouldn’t sit this out, but I didn’t want him in the line of fire, either.
Which annoyed me. I didn’t want to feel protective of him, and besides, he’d demonstrated his ability to take care of himself quite effectively with both Lilith and Cole. There was no good reason to tie his hands.
I still didn’t like the idea of him coming in with me. Stepping a little closer to Hone, I lowered my voice. “Can you read his mind?”
Hone stared off at Nudra’s compound, going utterly still for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “Nothin’.”
Damn. “He’s half human. Why can’t you read him?”
The big guy shrugged. “Too many blocks. Too much chaos in there for me to get a beat on anythin’.”
There were all kinds of different mental blocks. Even the chaos itself was a type. “Are the blocks tangible?”
“Ho, yeah. He’s been trained.”
The Noctifectors at work again. I squeezed Hone’s arm. “Thanks for trying. Go get an ear piece from the tall black guy at the tail of the Escalades. I’ll let you know when I’m ready to breach the compound. I want you on my left when I walk in, okay?”
“You got it.”
I left Hone and moseyed over to Rad. “Is there anything I can say to make you stay out here when I go in?”
His arms were crossed over his chest and he was leaning on the Land Rover. Shadows covered his face. “Looks like you’ve got plenty of backup. You don’t need me.”
Wait. Was he willing to sit this one out? I narrowed my eyes. What was up with his sudden change of heart? “Vamps make you nervous?”
He didn’t laugh at my half-hearted joke, nor did he deny my accusation. Instead, he motioned me to get in the SUV with him. “We need to talk.”
As usual, Rad’s timing sucked. “I’m about to go head-to-head with a vamp king. Now’s not the time to talk about the past.”
My protest went unheeded. He got in the driver’s side, shut the door and stared at me through the windshield. In the dim recesses of the car, his mouth moved. “Get in.”
Looking around, I noticed Cole was the only one watching me. The others were all engaged in checking their weapons, testing mics and strapping on ropes and other gear.
I walked around to the passenger side and climbed in. “Did you know Nudra was high-jacking teenagers at the concerts and turning them?”
One of Rad’s hands hung over the top of the steering wheel. He tapped his fingers on the dashboard. “Nudra was my latest Noct assignment. I was investigating his various business transactions. You killed him before I got anything concrete.”
I settled myself in the seat, straightened my skirt. Noctifectors didn’t discriminate. Vamps, demons, shifters, we were all evil. They killed anything not human. “He was a vamp. Why didn’t you just stake him?”
Rad turned his head to face me. His gold eyes reflected back the small amount of light coming from the street. In their depths, I saw guilt and desire. Guilt for not taking out Nudra or guilt over still wanting me after all these years?
“Despite the twelve Noctifectors tenets I’ve broken in the past twenty-four hours over you, I usually follow orders and take my job seriously. My orders were to gather intel on Nudra, not kill him.”
“You helped me kill him in the torture chamber.”
“That assistance was personal, not professional. I’m sure it won’t go unnoticed by my superiors.”
He sounded so business-like, so professional. “Why are you here, Rad? Gathering intel on me now for your superiors?”
Once more, his eyes flashed with desire and guilt. He wanted me, and he wanted to be a good soldier. No way he could have his blood and drink it too.
“You’re not a killer,” I said. “How did the Noctifectors manage to turn you into one?”
He looked away, staring out the windshield. What he was seeing, though, was far removed from this suburb of Chicago. “Are you really going through with this vampire coronation thing?”
I sat back, sighed. “I don’t have any choice. A demon with blood slaves can’t work for the Council, and in fact, is considered to be a ticking bomb. Damon’s willing to cut me some slack, but it involves me making nice with the Undead.”
“He’s blackmailing you.”
It wasn’t a question. “If I don’t go through with this, he’ll be forced to kill my blood slaves.”
Rad tapped his thumb on the dashboard, cut his eyes to me. “Does he know I’m your blood slave?”
“No, and I plan to keep it that way, but the bond has to be severed one way or the other, or I can’t work for the Council. It’s either the slaves or…” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Me.”
Rad chuckled without humor. “He won’t kill you, Kali. You’re too valuable to him.”
Snorting, I shook my head. “One thing I’ve learned over the years is everyone’s replaceable. Even me. Damon taught me that.”
“You’re valuable to the Bridge Council, but that’s not what I meant.” He searched my face for something I didn’t understand. “Damon has plans for you that go beyond the Institute.”
I started to ask him what he was talking about, but my car door opened and Cole stood there, holding out one of his hands. In the palm was an ear bud. “Madison’s discovered something. She wants to talk to you.”
Taking the miniscule equipment, I slipped out of the Land Rover, a surge of adrenaline shooting down my legs. “I’m here, Maddy,” I said as I stuck the receiver in my ear. “What’s up?”
“I’m in the basement. Actually in a tunnel below the basement. There’s a hidden room or something. The door’s locked and I can’t get in.”
“You don’t understand.” Her voice was strained, barely above a whisper, but I could hear noise in the background. “There are people in there. Humans. They’re trapped and I can’t get them out.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Toel had brought humans to the party. To turn them or use them as an entree?
Why would he do that? For a second, I stared at Cole, brain cells clicking together like magnets.
To get to me. Toel had kidnapped humans and stuck them in the torture chamber to get to me. Whether he and his friends turned them into vamps or just feasted on them tonight didn’t matter. He was once again thumbing his nose at the Bridge Council and me in particular.
Bastard. “Hang tight, Mouse.”
I removed the ear bud and flicked the switch to off. “Did she give us any other intel?” I asked Cole. “Do we know how many are in there?”
“Seven vampires in the study, playing pool and partying it up. Three staff in the kitchen. The staff members aren’t Undead. Most likely blood slaves. The rest of the place appears clear.”
“No one watching the cameras?”
“Madison couldn’t find the control room, but she cleared the fence in the back and got in without raising any alarms.”
Vamps could jump anything and become nearly invisible in the night. The girl was either as covert as she claimed or Toel didn’t have anyone on security detail. “Is your squad ready to crash this party?”
“At your signal, Madam Enforcer.”
I opened the connection to Maddy. “We’re coming in. Stay out of sight. I’ll let you know when it’s clear.”
Cole took out his gun, double checked the clip and chamber. “What’s your plan?”
My weapons were securely stashed in my cape. Volante was coiled on my wrist, vibrating with anticipation. “Send the tree squad in now. Have a couple stay in the trees and keep eyes on all exits. The rest go in from the roof. Tell them to stay out of sight and double check the upstairs. I don’t want any surprises. The rest of your squad should take up positions around the perimeter, restrain anyone who comes out until I give the okay to release them. You, me and Hone are walking in through the front door.”