Dark Vengeance Part 2

by Reinke, Sara

  This is all your fault, she wanted to scream at him. We were happy until you came along and messed with Brandon’s head, his heart—messed with everything! Why in the hell couldn’t you just leave us alone?

  “Go fuck yourself, Augustus,” she seethed, disconnecting the call.

  “Friend of yours?” Elías asked. He’d been politely pretending to wrestle with his boots while she was on the phone, but glanced at her now, brow raised.

  “Ha. Hardly.” With a disgusted snort, Lina shoved the phone back into her pocket, then rested back against the hood beside him, reaching for her boot. “That, Detective Velasco, was Brandon’s grandfather.”

  “Ah.” Elías nodded. “The illustrious Augustus Noble, who up until earlier this year was president, CEO and controlling stockholder of Bloodhorse Industries, and the…what? Nineteenth? Twentieth most wealthy man in the world, according to Forbes magazine? Net worth of somewhere around 25 billion, if I’m not mistaken.”

  Lina blinked at him, surprised and impressed, and he cracked a grin.

  “It’s that Google thing I keep telling you about,” he said with a wink. “Works wonders. So what did Old Man Noble want with you?”

  “Nothing. He was looking for Brandon. Says he hasn’t heard from him the past few days.”

  “That’s unusual, I take it?” Elias asked.

  “Lately, yeah,” Lina said. Since they’d left California, it seemed that Brandon had been on his phone at least every fifteen or twenty minutes, texting back and forth with Augustus. It had been a sore point for Lina, and the source of many, escalating arguments between her and Brandon since their departure. “But then again, not much has been usual with Brandon. Not since…”

  Her voice faded and she cut a sheepish, sideways glance at Elias.

  “Not since he met Pilar,” he finished for her, his mouth turned down as if he’d tasted something bitter. “Yeah. I know.”

  Because just as her relationship with Brandon had abruptly withered, so, too, had Elías’s with Pilar Cadana. Pilar’s family, who coincidentally lived next-door to Lina’s mother, were Nahual, vampires sown from the same ancient genetic seeds as the Brethren. From the moment Brandon and Pilar had laid eyes on one another, things had gone to hell in the proverbial hand basket for their respective romances. They were parejas, as the Nahual called them—or breeding pairs, as they were known among the Brethren. They were soul mates, meant to be together, each like some kind of drug to the other—something to be craved with a growing, relentless intensity, a desire no other lover could possibly slake.

  Once upon a time, Lina had believed in such things as soul mates. She’d been young, a rookie cop just barely twenty years old when she’d met Jude Hannam, the man she’d once thought she loved enough to marry. She’d been six years older when she’d fallen for Brandon—and wiser, or so she’d thought. But in the end, as impossible as it seemed, the proverbial lightning had struck twice. Jude had fallen in love another woman and broken her heart, and so had Brandon. Never in a million years had she seen the betrayals coming—and that only made the pain and humiliation worse.

  Brandon had kissed Pilar; she’d learned as much from him, as well as from others who had witnessed the passionate exchange. But the idea that Brandon might make love to Pilar, that his hands and mouth would taste, touch and explore her body as they once had Lina’s—bringing her seemingly endless pleasure—left her devastated, scraped hollow and raw inside.

  Elías understood that feeling, Lina’s pain and dismay. She could still see it mirrored in his own eyes every time he mentioned Pilar’s name, or his thoughts wandered even momentarily to the beautiful young woman.

  Because he still loves her, just like I still love Brandon. They’re the ones who changed, not us. Me and Elías…our hearts are still in a holding pattern.

  Brandon had left her, or rather, Lina had broken things off with him, unable to bear the realization that despite what her heart wanted—desperately needed—fate and Brandon’s Brethren nature may have held other designs. Or worse—that his heart had. Even though he’d begged her for another chance, and a part of her had begged her to grant him one, in the end, another had won out. The part that still blamed herself for Jude leaving her, that told her she was likewise at fault for Brandon’s betrayal. Because she hadn’t been good enough, pretty enough, sexy enough, busty enough, light-skinned enough—something about her had proven ultimately, utterly wrong.

  Brandon had left a note saying he planned to return to California, but Lina suspected that he’d remained somewhere within Pilar’s immediate proximity. And Brandon wasn’t the only one to have seemingly fallen under the Cadana family’s spell. Pilar’s older brother, Valien, was part of a corillo, what Lina’s brother Jackson had described as a recreational motorcycle group. Jackson had become a part of that group since he’d come to Florida, and had even given up a lucrative teaching career to become an apprentice grease monkey at Valien’s motorcycle repair shop on the south side of town. Within hours of Brandon’s departure, in fact, Jackson had loaded up his belongings into their mother’s Honda and moved out of the house, opting for residency in an efficiency apartment above the shop. Although both Jackson and their mother claimed the move had been planned well in advance of Lina and Brandon’s visit, to Lina, the timing was too perfect to be anything but coincidental.

  Jackson had pretty much told her off once he’d found out she was working as a cop for the city of Bayshore. And that Elías was her partner. And that together, they were investigating Valien’s connections to Tejano Minoza Cervantes, a known drug-dealer and gang leader.

  You have no idea what you’re getting into, he’d warned her at the local hospital weeks earlier when she and Elías had arrived, hoping to question Valien in the wake of a brutal attack by Tejano’s gang members that had left two of Valien’s cousins and one of his closest friends, Téodoro “Téo” Madera Ruiz breathing through one tube and pissing out another.

  At the time, Lina might have sworn the same for him, but she’d since come to learn otherwise. Not only was Jackson aware of the fact that Valien, Pilar—the whole damn corillo, in fact—were vampires, but he was actually a feeder, a human who submitted to the Nahual to be fed from on a regular basis.

  “So where do you think he went?” Elías asked, breaking into her train of thought and drawing her attention. By this point, they’d crossed to opposite sides of the car and climbed inside, and she glanced up from buckling her seatbelt to find him watching her expectantly. “Brandon. You said it’s unusual for him not to contact his abuelo.”

  “I don’t know,” Lina said. She tried to sound nonchalant about the whole thing, as if she really didn’t give a shit where Brandon was, because she really didn’t give a shit about him, but the truth was that she did give a shit—about both the former and the latter—and that truth hurt. Like a bitch.

  “You think he’s okay?” When Elías turned the key in the ignition, air-conditioning blasted full-force and headlong into Lina. Like her, Elías was trying to sound aloof, but what he was really asking was Do you think Pilar is with him? and more importantly, Do you think Pilar is okay?

  “Oh, sure.” Lina forced a smile. “Brandon can take care of himself. Trust me.”

  Elías smiled back, and it was as sincere as hers had felt. “Yeah.”

  * * *

  They drove to the hospital where Téo Madera Ruiz languished in intensive care. It seemed like a casual enough choice, but Lina had come to know Elías well enough to realize this was anything but. The hospital was a daily stop for the detectives—sometimes more than once. Elías had ordered armed guards outside of Téo’s room to make sure no one, not even his family—and especially not Valien—were allowed inside. He liked to check in regularly, not only to make sure his sentries were vigilant, but also to rub it in Valien’s face that he was calling the shots. Téo had information that had been entrusted to him by Tejano to relay to Valien—of that, Elías felt certain. And he damn well meant to prevent Téo fr
om delivering that message, at least not until he and Lina heard it first.

  Lina also knew Elías was hoping for the chance to see Pilar, but she hadn’t come to the hospital even once, despite Elías telling Lina that she and Téo had once been close, that the boy had harbored a pretty fierce crush on her.

  Whenever they came to the hospital, it pretty much played out the same way. Téo’s family and friends—all members of Valien’s corillo—would be gathered in the waiting room adjacent to the intensive care unit where he stayed. They would swarm Lina and Elías almost from the moment they’d step off the elevator together, demanding to see Téo, shouting out threats of lawsuits or bodily injury—or both—interspersed with profanities in English and Spanish. Neither their persistence nor their vehemence surprised or intimidated Lina anymore. It had happened enough to become nearly commonplace, the greeting they’d come to expect upon their arrival, little more than a mutual nuisance.

  That afternoon, however, when they stepped off the elevators, Lina was surprised to find the corridor ahead of them empty and quiet. No angry family members, no corillo gathered in droves to curse or shout or snap at them. Only the soft dialogue of a nearly muted telenovela playing on a TV in the waiting room hinted that any of them had even ever been in that general vicinity prior to that moment.

  “Where is everyone?” Lina asked, but judging by Elías’s bewildered expression, he was caught as off-guard by the reception, or lack thereof, as she.

  “I don’t know,” he said, a crimp forming in his cheek as he set his jaw at a grim angle, his brows drawing together. “But I damn sure mean to find out.”

  The answer came soon enough. The critical care unit was accessible through a set of double doors that opened only when triggered from the other side. From there, the unit was divided into compartmentalized bays instead of individual rooms, with glass doors and windows facing a centralized nursing station. Curtains could be drawn to provide privacy, and each bay was crowded with electronic monitors, ventilators, intravenous pumps and stands, and other medical equipment. This had actually proven to be in Elías’s favor, as all of these machines apparently threw off enough of an electromagnetic field to interfere with the natural telepathic abilities of the Nahual and Brethren. Thus, Elías really had been able to keep Téo completely cut off from any form of communication with Valien or others of his kind.

  Until that morning, it seemed.

  They found the missing members of Téo’s family gathered in a huddle, their backs toward the ICU doors. These were apparently the overflow, as everyone else, including Téo’s parents—whom Elías had staunchly refused entry more times than Lina could count—were inside the narrow confines of the bay, surrounding Téo’s bed. Of the uniformed officer normally positioned just outside Téo’s doorway, there was no sign.

  “Pero qué coño?” Elías muttered—What the fuck?—as the furrow between his brows deepened, the veins in his neck standing out in taut, enraged relief. None of Téo’s family had noticed his arrival yet, but the nurses sitting behind computer monitors at the station did, as one of them rose hesitantly to her feet as he stormed forward.

  “Detective Velasco…” she began in a tentative voice. Her expression grew all the more uncertain when Elías leveled his fiery gaze in her direction.

  “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. He was a boxer by heritage, as well as by hobby, and when he landed one balled fist with a sharp, audible bang against the top of the station counter, the young nurse jumped like a firecracker had just ignited immediately behind her.

  “Detective, please,” said another nurse, walking briskly from behind the nursing station. “This is an intensive care unit. You need to lower your voice.”

  “I gave specific instructions—I have a goddamn court order keeping these people…” Ignoring the second nurse completely, he thrust an emphatic forefinger in the direction of Téo’s kith and kin, some of whom had startled at the report of his fist hitting the countertop and turned to regard him with curious alarm. “…no closer than one hundred and fifty feet from Téodoro Madera Ruiz. No one is allowed to see him without my implicit and specific permission, that’s what the goddamn—”

  “I’m afraid this is all my doing, Detective Velasco,” said a voice from behind Lina. She turned to find a smartly dressed African American man wearing a charcoal grey business suit stepping out from a men’s room, wiping his hands on a paper towel. His mouth was stretched in a broad smile. He wore his dark hair in a closely shaved fade. His features were angular, his cheeks high and his chin long with a slight cleft. A light dusting of mustache and beard that were both too well groomed to be anything but deliberate graced the lower half of his face. There wasn’t a hint of lint on his jacket; his lapels were immaculate, his shirt sleeve cuffs pinned together with gold links. He smelled good, some kind of unfamiliar, spicy, warm cologne that wafted against her nose as he reached past her for Elías, extending the proverbial olive branch of his hand.

  “And just who the hell are you?” Elías demanded, ignoring the proffered handshake and electing to glare instead.

  “My name is Marcus Simms,” the black man replied, retracting his hand without seeming to draw any offense, and reaching beneath one of those immaculately pressed suit coat lapels. “I’m with the Miami field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he added quickly, as he pulled out a black leather wallet, letting it fall open against his palm to reveal his badge.

  “We didn’t call the FBI,” Lina said with a frown.

  “You didn’t have to,” the man, Marcus, said mildly. “Your commanding officer did.”

  “Lieutenant Fairfax?” Elías asked. Some of the tense fury had drained out of his expression and posture, replaced by the same bewilderment Lina felt.

  The agent nodded. “Tejano Minoza Cervantes is wanted on federal charges.” With an aww-shucks sort of shrug, he said, “That means we have jurisdiction here.”

  Elías didn’t say anything, simply stood there, blinking. When she got tired of waiting for him to get pissed off all over again, Lina frowned and stepped forward. “Yeah? That doesn’t give you the right to come barging in here, messing up the investigation we had underway.” She pointed toward Téo’s ICU bay. “That man has information directly related to our ongoing investigation. We have reason to believe Tejano Cervantes gave him a message with the intention of him sharing it with another suspect in our case. We had a court order prohibiting Mr. Ruiz from communicating with that suspect—or with anyone who would be able to relay that message to him. Which pretty much meant everyone now standing either in or around that room.”

  “Mr. Ruiz is dead,” Marcus said. “Which pretty much means anything he had to say died right along with him.”

  “What?” Stunned, Lina whirled toward the corillo members standing outside of Téo’s room. For the first time, she noticed the red-rimmed eyes, the ragged breaths, the shuddering shoulders. “But he…” She blinked at Elías. “He was getting better. His condition was improving. That’s what they told us yesterday. They were going to try weaning him off the ventilator today.”

  “They tried, yes,” Marcus said with a nod and a sympathetic sort of expression. “It must have been too much, too soon. From what I’ve gathered, he’d been through so much already…his injuries were pretty severe. They think a blood clot became dislodged somehow. He suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm. Killed him almost instantly.”

  “When did this happen?” Elías asked.

  Marcus lifted his arm, tugging his jacket sleeve and shirt cuff back enough to spare a glance at his watch. “About two hours ago.”

  Lina glowered at the nearby nurses. “And you didn’t bother to notify either Detective Velasco or me because…?”

  “Because it’s not your case anymore, Detective…Jones, is it?” Marcus asked, still smiling. “It’s mine.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Brandon cracked open another can of beer and watched images flash across the television screen in t
he apartment above Valien’s garage. Had he felt so inclined, he could have used the remote control to turn on closed captioning so he could follow the storyline of the soap opera in progress. He could have even tried reading the actors’ lips, although on TV, with its quick cuts, multiple angles and voice-overs, this was usually impossible. But he didn’t really feel too inclined. In fact, even though his gaze was directed toward the TV, his mind was a million miles away…or, to be more specific, a little more than a decade in the past.

  He’d first seen Aaron, the man from his dream, when he’d been eleven years old. The occasion had been when Lamar Davenant, the patriarch of the Davenant clan, had turned five hundred years old, and his family had hosted a lavish affair at their 22,000-square-foot mansion. Brandon’s twin sister, Tessa, had lived in that sinister place for three years before following him in his escape from Kentucky. However, Brandon had only been past its daunting threshold to commemorate Lamar’s half-millennial survival. That had been more than plenty.

  “I don’t understand why the children couldn’t stay behind,” Brandon’s mother, Vanessa, had fretted. They had all ridden together in a stretch limousine from the Noble great house to the party: Vanessa and Sebastian, Brandon’s father, along with the twins, older brother Caine and younger sister Emily. Their youngest sibling, Daniel, had not yet been born.

  Jackson had come to live on the farm at this point, and Brandon had learned to lip-read with a fair amount of proficiency. As he sat between his father and Tessa on the jostling car ride, he’d been looking directly at his mother, and was thus able to understand her perfectly as she spoke.

  Vanessa had been dressed exquisitely; they all had—Brandon and Caine in matching miniature versions of Sebastian’s finely tailored Armani suit, Tessa and Emily wearing modified dresses in pale champagne shades designed to match their mother’s Alexander McQueen evening gown.