Keystone (Crossbreed Series Book 1)

by Dannika Dark

  Wyatt spun around in his leather chair and unrolled the paper sack. He drew in a deep breath, his smile turning orgasmic.

  Gem headed toward the television. “Want to play video games?” she asked me.

  I was busy watching Wyatt empty the sacks onto his desk, creating a mountain of fries.

  He flicked a gaze at me and grinned. “Don’t bother educating me about germs. Gravewalkers don’t get sick.”

  “No, but now your desk is covered in grease, and you’re getting salt all over the floor. Isn’t this a shared room? Or do you just share it with the critters who live in the cracks of the walls?”

  “This is Wyatt’s World,” he said with a mouthful of fries. “It’s supposed to be my domain, but I can’t seem to keep them out.”

  I clapped my hand on his shoulder as I walked past him. “Are you sure two sacks are enough?”

  “Hmm, probably not. Be right back.”

  “Wyatt!” Gem shouted. “Great.”

  I sat down on a roller stool with a round leather seat. “What’s the big deal? His fries will just get cold.”

  She plopped down in a beanbag chair. “The last time that happened, he borrowed my hair dryer and left it on low to warm them up in the bag. My hair smelled like french fries for a week.”

  I rested my elbows on the desk and put my head in my hands. I was still feeling sick from having consumed Mage light the night before, and the kung fu scene in the alley earlier had left my head spinning. I thought my life before was full of drama, but these people ate it for breakfast.

  Claude swaggered in, looking like some kind of Adonis with those big beautiful curls, and grabbed a handful of Wyatt’s fries. After tilting his head back and shoving them into his mouth, he stared at me, chewing silently. Despite his handsome features, there was raw power in his eyes—an animalistic ferocity that flickered in their golden depths. You felt his presence in a room, especially being that he was six and a half feet tall.

  He suddenly gripped my arm and rolled my stool out, spinning me around to face him. I jerked back when he touched the pieces of tape in my hair, making me turn my head left and right.

  “I’m going to have to cut it out,” I said.

  He held up a section of my hair and examined the ends. “That’s okay. You needed layering anyhow. I’ll take care of it.” When he reached the doorway, he pointed his finger at me. “Don’t move.”

  Gem crossed her legs. “Looks like you’re his new favorite toy.”

  “Is this where everyone hangs out?”

  “Sometimes. It’s mostly Wyatt’s playroom, but since Viktor detests electricity and Wyatt needs it for his work, we just happened to notice this great big wall in dire need of a television to plug into that beautiful socket.” She gestured behind her like a female model on a game show.

  I tugged at a piece of tape. “No one’s heard from Christian? Seems strange.”

  Gem played with her hair. “Christian marches to the beat of his own drum, so nothing surprises me. Unless Viktor sends us on assignment, we can come and go as we like. Planned vacations are fine, but who needs a vacation with all this house? Everything you could want is right here.”

  I spun around and rolled up to the desk. The touch screen blinked to life when my finger grazed over it.

  “Wouldn’t do that,” Wyatt warned me, out of breath. “I have it rigged so if the password isn’t entered correctly, a small country blows up.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “You’re a dark soul.” He rolled me out of the way and sat in his chair, flourishing a can of cheese dip and setting it on the desk. He peeled back the metal lid and dipped his fry.

  “Ugh.” Gem wrinkled her nose in disgust. “You’ve ruined them.”

  “Speak for yourself,” he said around a mouthful of fries. “If I’d known back in the eighteen hundreds that one day there would be food you could prepare in less than thirty seconds or cheese in a can, I would have time-traveled my ass to the future.”

  “Did you drink milk straight from the udder?” she quipped.

  He waved a fry at her. “You modern kids are spoiled. You don’t know what it was like to wash your clothes on a washboard, sleep with heated stones in your bed because there wasn’t a heater or fireplace in every room, or have ink stains on your hand because ballpoint pens weren’t invented. As soon as the fifties hit, I felt like I was born again. Microwaves, television, washing machines, Twinkies, James Dean… it was magical.”

  “I think TVs were invented long before that,” I said.

  “Yeah, but not everybody had one. Let me enjoy this century before it changes and they have us wearing fedoras and eating wheat grass because fast-food places have become outlawed.”

  Gem giggled. “You’re so dramatic.”

  “You sound like Viktor.”

  I jumped at the sound of metal blades slicing together. Instead of katanas, it was Claude holding a pair of scissors, a comb, and a spray bottle.

  “I changed my mind,” I blurted out.

  Claude winked. “Don’t worry, I have magic fingers.”

  Wyatt watched with avid interest while Claude began snipping at the tape. “You know, I bet a blow-dryer would loosen some of that adhesive.”

  Gem stood up. “Stay away from my hair dryer.”

  She stood beside me and watched pieces of my hair float to the floor. “Isn’t Claude gentle with his hands? You’d never believe he could crush a man’s skull with them.”

  He gripped my head and turned it left.

  “Oh, I believe you, Gem.”

  “Who cut this last?” he asked, the horror in his voice thinly veiled.

  “Me.”

  He moved in front of me, spritzing and combing. “Using what?”

  “One of those pink razors.”

  Claude dropped the scissors on the floor.

  Gem sputtered with laughter. “Poor Claude is going to have nightmares.”

  Wyatt switched on his dual monitors, and a wall of text scrolled up while he clicked on different windows.

  I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes before Claude resumed his shearing. “How does a man go from hanging around in cemeteries to computer hacking?”

  Wyatt peered over his shoulder. “A misspent thirty years in the arcade.”

  “So you were the guy who was always hogging the machines and making kids cry.”

  “Gauntlet was an awesome game. And I’m not a hacker. That’s a human subculture that speaks their own language. They sit around playing Magic, watch reruns of Doctor Who, and wear clever little T-shirts that tell the world that they’re hackers. There’s nothing glamorous about what I do. I’m shut up in this hole for hours, my vision blurring, searching for vulnerabilities in a system. There’s no fancy holographic images beaming onto the wall like you see in the movies. Half the time, I’ve already got access, and I just have to sift through a bunch of records. Like I’m doing now.”

  “Can’t you just perform a search?”

  He snorted. “You should see how they decided to archive the Breed land titles for the past few centuries.”

  Claude shoved my head so my chin was touching my chest. “Keep your head down. I’m a hair genius, not a magician.”

  “I thought you had magic fingers?”

  He chuckled. “Maybe I do, but they don’t perform miracles.”

  Gem circled around him. “I bet I know a few women who would disagree with that,” she said with mischief in her voice.

  I peered up and smiled at the remark.

  Blue walked gracefully into the room and sat on the edge of the desk, lifting one of the fries and tossing it into the wastebasket. She had on jeans and a pair of black boots that reached her knees. “What’s going on in here, besides a french fry massacre?”

  Wyatt sighed, still staring at his screen. “Research.”

  “Viktor’s getting impatient,” she said, her shoulders hunched.

  Loose hairs tickled my nose. “Why do all this research? By the time y
ou finish, he’ll have bought a house somewhere in Paris and you’ll never find him.”

  “That’s why we need Wyatt to expedite the process,” Blue said, giving him a verbal nudge. “Human witnesses aren’t enough to pin the murders on him; they’re only a lead. The information you gave us will help, but we can’t act impulsively. You didn’t actually see him in the bathroom, so you couldn’t even be a witness if something went wrong and the higher authority interrogated us. Viktor is searching for a motive.”

  “And I just fell into a steaming pile of it,” Wyatt said. “Take a look at this.”

  Claude stepped away, and everyone swarmed over Wyatt, transfixed by something on the screen.

  I flipped my damp hair back and stood up. “What is all that?”

  He scrolled through scanned copies of documents. “It took a while to gather up all the data on the suspected victims to trace where they worked. Most were business owners. These here”—he pointed out the names, tapping his screen—“are old Breed records that show Darius owned that land up until last century. I still need to map out the area and make sure the businesses fall within it, but I think that gives us all the motive we’re looking for.”

  Blue hopped off the desk. “That little weasel. If Darius used to own the land, how did humans get their hands on it?”

  Wyatt licked salt off his finger. “Maybe he lost it in a bet. I don’t know. I still need to dig.”

  Claude patted him on the head. “Good work, Spooky. Find out if he owns any other land… now or then.”

  Wyatt gave him a peevish look. “Any volunteer helpers?”

  Gem flashed out of the room.

  Claude turned to look at me and held out his hands. “Your hair is perfection.” In a burst of action, he ran at Chitah speed out of the room.

  “I’m serious!” Wyatt called out. “Aren’t we a team?”

  Blue casually strolled toward the door. “I’ll give Viktor an update.”

  Wyatt dunked some fries into the cheese dip and spun around to face me. “When the going gets tough, they leave skid marks on their way out the door. There’s no way I can get this done as fast as Viktor wants it.”

  “Don’t you have enough evidence?”

  He tossed a fry back onto his desk. “It could backfire on Viktor if we can’t at least provide a solid motive. We’re not allowed to ignore any new evidence, even if it slows down the case. We still have to follow protocol before we move in.”

  Wyatt’s monitors suddenly went black.

  “Son of a ghost. That’s the second time today.” He leaned back in his chair.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  His eyes skated off to my left as if he were looking at someone. “That’s okay, buttercup. They don’t really care.”

  “What if you just have a mental condition, like schizophrenia? I mean, I believe you can locate people buried alive, but the rest is probably just self-induced fears from spending so much time in graveyards.”

  Wyatt laughed and ended it on a snort. “Who do you think keeps shutting down my computers? They get mad when I don’t talk to them.”

  I shook my head. “Power failure.”

  He pointed his finger at the lamp. “But the lights are still on.”

  Wyatt held the can of cheese dip and swirled two fries around. “It’s a crazy world when a half Mage, half Vampire doesn’t believe in the afterlife. How did you get tape in your hair?”

  I paused in the doorway, turning to answer in a playful tone. “Gem tied me to the clearance rack.”

  “I always knew she was kinky.”

  Chapter 13

  “Mr. Bane, you have a phone call in your office.”

  Darius threw five more punches at the bag and then stepped back, wiping the sweat from his brow. He caught the reflection of his secretary in the wall mirror. Darius didn’t really need a secretary. He’d only hired Camille because it was nice to have a woman in a skirt around the house. He didn’t get out much, and the only people who kept him company were a bunch of male guards. But lately Camille had been wearing slacks and a lot less makeup.

  “Who is it?” he asked, removing one of his wrist wraps. “And why aren’t they calling my cell?”

  Darius had a landline for routine calls, not for business. And routine calls were not important enough to interrupt his workout session.

  Camille shifted her hips, and somehow her perfume managed to fight its way through the musky air. “He says he’s your Creator.”

  Darius unwound the second wrap. “Tell him I’ll be just a moment.”

  After she closed the door, he gulped down a bottle of imported water and then wet his curly black hair with a second bottle. He had a modest gym no bigger than the average living room, equipped with a punching bag and weights. It would have been nice to have something larger with high ceilings, but there wasn’t enough room on the floor.

  He tossed the empty bottle into a wastebasket. He didn’t tolerate anyone disturbing his private time, but a man didn’t ignore a call from his Creator, especially when his Creator was a member of the higher authority.

  Darius took long strides down the narrow hall toward his office. Most of the rooms in the building were closed off, leaving long hallways like one might see in an office building. It gave him another level of security knowing his guards wouldn’t have anything to distract them from their duties.

  When he entered the tiny room, he shut the door and took a seat in the leather chair behind his desk. A short towel hung from his neck, and his thin T-shirt was drenched with sweat and water. He braced himself as he watched the blinking red dot on the phone.

  Darius was a low-key individual who spoke in a modulated voice and preferred people who kept the excitement level down. Patrick, on the other hand, was an extrovert who had a politician’s knack for steering the conversation and talking over people.

  “This is Darius.”

  “Have you been hiding from me?” Patrick asked. He possessed a pleasant Irish accent that was light and lyrical, making everything he said sound wonderful. “I had a little trouble when your number was no longer in service, but I had a good friend of mine look you up. Staying out of trouble?”

  Darius leaned back in his leather chair, his gaze shifting to an old photograph on the wall of him standing in front of a building. His face was obscured with a fedora, but he remembered that day like it was yesterday. “I was in the middle of negotiating a contract for a piece of property.”

  “Is that so? I’d love to hear the details.”

  Darius shifted uncomfortably in his seat. True, he bought and sold properties for profit, but not recently. “I’m stretched for time. What can I help you with?”

  “You’re not my financial advisor, Darius, so don’t bother with addressing me so formally. I have every right to see what my progeny is up to, especially after what I’ve heard.”

  Darius stood up and flipped the towel away from his neck. “And what have you heard?”

  “That a certain employee of yours was recently incarcerated for assault and attempted rape.”

  “And what does that have to do with me? I have no control over what my employees do any more than you do.”

  “True, true. We can’t put a leash on them. But I happen to know a fella who knows a fella. Humans love surveillance cameras, and it seems that your partner was arrested in a human establishment. What intrigues me is how the video shows your car in the parking lot. What were you doing on that side of town?”

  “You can’t fault me for having a beer. What is this leading to, Patrick? My time is valuable.”

  Patrick’s voice lost all humor. “As is mine. You’re not even bothering to clean up your messes. Why didn’t your man call the Mageri? It’s standard protocol when arrested by humans to notify the Mageri so they can send in a team to perform a thorough cleanup.”

  “And what consequence is it if Salvator’s fingerprints belong with human authorities? These are just humans we’re talking about.”


  “Just, he says. You’re my progeny, and what you do reflects on me. That’s the way it is, and it’s my right as your Creator to find out if you’re involved in any illegal activities that could jeopardize my position. If you need money or help, I’m always here. Tell me, Darius, do you need money or help?”

  Darius was far too proud to ask for help, especially after he’d lost everything his Creator had given him when he’d become independent. Ever since Darius’s incarceration, Patrick meddled in his affairs, which was why Darius had put distance between them. But he couldn’t afford to get on Patrick’s bad side. “I’ve already bailed him out, and if you wouldn’t mind taking care of the records at the police station, I’d appreciate it,” he said reluctantly.

  “Already taken care of, but I’d still like to know what it is I’m protecting you from. It’s been years since we’ve seen each other. Let’s get together. There’s someone I’d like you to meet, and it would mean a great deal to catch up with my progeny. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  A knock sounded at the door, and when Salvator poked his head in and started to back out, Darius snapped his fingers and pointed at a chair next to the door.

  “Very well,” Darius agreed. “Name the time and place and I’ll rework my schedule.”

  Patrick laughed quietly. “You were always such an eager entrepreneur. I’m so glad to see you on the straight and narrow with your real estate dealings. Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow at Angelo’s. Noon. See you soon. Oh! And one more thing before I forget. Let me know if you have any prime real estate on the north side of the city. A colleague of mine is looking for a new place, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to offer him the expertise of my progeny. It could be a good move for you. We’ll talk about it more over lunch. See you then.”

  Darius hung up and rounded his desk before sitting on the edge, his arms folded, and glaring at Salvator. “I have a mind to throw you to a pack of Shifter wolves. All you had to do was take care of one puny human, and you couldn’t even do that.”