by R. E. Butler
“I’m ready.”
* * *
Jason Finnegan sat at his desk and looked at the screen on the wall that showed the church locations in the US as well as the covens. Every state had at least one bloodsucker coven, and some larger states had numerous ones. His gaze landed on Ohio, and his vision hazed red.
Damn Cleveland coven. They took his sister from him, when all she was doing was working on the side of justice. Vampires were a bane to society, and if they continued to thrive, they’d eventually kill every human.
He’d lost so much. Too much. He had only his brother Sean now, who he’d sent to Cleveland to oversee starting up the church again after it was closed down by the vampires. They’d used the human police department like a sledgehammer to destroy it from the inside out. He hated for Sean to be out of his sight. He worried he’d lose him too. But Sean was smart, and his hatred of vampires was as soul-deep as Jason’s.
“Pamela?” he called out.
His assistant, who’d been with him for six years, stuck her head in the door. “Yes?”
“Get Sean on the phone. I want to video chat with him. Grab your laptop because I need you to take notes.”
“Sure thing.”
From her desk outside of his office in their underground bunker, the only safe place on the planet as far as Jason was concerned, Pamela connected him with his brother. The map of the States disappeared and the video chat program appeared, the screen dark as he waited for Sean to answer the call. Everything they used for communications was encrypted. He hadn’t left the bunker in so long he wasn’t sure he even remembered what the sun looked like.
Sean’s face appeared. “Hey, big brother.”
“Hi, Sean. How’s it going?”
Sean blew out a breath. “Slow. We lost our recruiters when the coven took out the main branch of the church here in Ohio. It’s been hard to get the numbers up. Especially after that guy was busted with the bomb on his chest standing in line at the club. People think he was a fanatic.”
Jason waved his hand dismissively. “It’s okay to say that some of our people may be more extreme than others. I didn’t think it would work. I was fairly certain he’d get caught before the bomb went off.”
Sean made a face. “Then why did we waste a member with that tactic if you didn’t think it would work?”
Sighing, Jason said, “I want them to believe we’ve moved on from the SyBl factory. They’ll be looking for us to go after it again if we do nothing. Putting a bomb on a random man in line at the club was a smart idea. He was too low on the totem pole to know anything of value about the church, so losing him is not a big deal. And it throws the bloodsuckers off into thinking we’ve moved on. So tell me what you know about the factory.”
“They got rid of their trucks,” Sean said. “They’re replacing them with new ones.”
“Interesting.”
Pamela sat in a chair across the desk from Jason and opened her laptop. He glanced at her and said, “Send some people to disable the new vehicles. Make a note of that, Pamela.”
“Okay,” she said, her fingers flying on the keyboard.
Jason drummed his fingers on the desk for a moment. “Didn’t you tell me that one of the church members was on vacation when the bloodsuckers took out everyone there?”
Sean nodded. “Jerry. He and his wife, Daria, were instrumental in getting things back up and running when I got here. She’s the one whose sister was turned. She’s pretty upset about it. We held a funeral for her sister, did a nice service.”
Jason let his thoughts roam. “Do you know where the sister is?”
“Daria and Jerry were watching her apartment after she was turned, and they saw trolls come and pack up her belongings. It was one of the vehicles we have listed as belonging to the club. Our guess is that she’s living at the club.”
Jason blew out a breath. “Daria’s a true believer?”
A true believer—in that she was whole-heartedly against vampires and considered them a menace to humanity that needed to be destroyed.
“Yes.”
“I think we need to plan something for Daria. If you’re certain she would go along with anything to help the church.”
“I’m one hundred percent certain.”
“Good. Have her call me later today so we can talk.” He glanced at Pamela, who typed up the conversation. Then he turned his attention back to his brother, giving him a shrewd look. “You’re using bodyguards, right? You’re not going anywhere alone or letting yourself be out in public much?”
“I’m being careful.”
“I can’t lose you too,” Jason said.
Sean closed his eyes for a moment and then said, “You won’t.”
“Good. Let me know how it goes when they disable the vehicles. And then I’ve got plans for the club and restaurant, so expect a message from me in the near future.”
“You can’t tell me now?”
“I have to get some things in place first.”
“Okay.”
Jason said goodbye to his brother, the last living member of his family, and then stared at the dark screen again. He pressed a button and put the map back up. It was hard to believe that out of all the covens in the States, all the church locations and leaders he had, that the only one he really had a problem with was Cleveland. None of the other covens put up as much of a fight as Cleveland did, and he couldn’t figure out why. But while he had his other leaders working on driving the covens away and killing as many bloodsuckers as possible, he focused his energy on that location. That little red dot on the map. Where the people who killed his sister were still alive.
For now, anyway.
Swiveling in the chair, he looked at Pamela. She raised her head and gave him a curious look. “Find me someone who’s powerful enough to disrupt a Wiccan protection spell.”
Pamela’s brows winged up and then she nodded slowly. “You got it.”
* * *
The night passed quickly. The first fifteen humans had told no lies at all in their employment applications. The first hint of fraud she had was in person sixteen, and it turned out that they’d moved shortly after they began working for the coven and forgot to tell Cella. With each person she tested, Avery felt excited and fatigued. She was glad to help the coven sort out the humans they trusted to feed them, but with each person, touching her power drained her energy a little bit more.
By the time the twentieth person walked through the door, Avery didn’t have to think too hard about her power. She’d grown quickly adept at bringing it to the forefront of her mind, and it grew stronger each time she used it. Truth tasted sweet. Lies were bitter.
Exhaustion plucked at her, but she pushed on, wanting to deal with as many people as possible. While she grew more exhausted with each person she tested, she couldn’t get over the feeling that someone was hiding something dangerous and she just needed to find them. The thought that someone could cause harm to the coven filled her with dread. Vampires were strong and quick, but they were vulnerable when they were feeding, distracted by the nourishment they needed every week.
“We should take a break,” Cella said when the twentieth person—a twenty-year-old college student—walked out of the office. “You look tired.”
Avery blinked a few times and straightened in the chair. She’d gotten a text from Traz an hour earlier that they were nearly finished at the factory and heading back to the club soon. He’d checked on her frequently, and she appreciated his concern. And Cella’s. But something was bothering her about the food, and she couldn’t put her finger on it.
“I’m fine. Who’s next?”
Cella gave her a curious look. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” Avery blew out a breath and shook her head. “I feel weird.”
“So, let’s take a break.”
“No, I mean I feel like there’s someone here I need to expose. I can’t shake it. I want to keep going.”
“Sure you’re not being paranoid?
It’s the first time you’ve used your power like this and on so many different people. Look at how you only discovered one lie, and it was one of omission, not of malice.” She looked thoughtful. “I figured there would be more fudging of the applications, actually. People tend to try to make themselves look better than they are when it comes to employment. But I’m glad that we haven’t found that to be the truth here.”
“Me too. Still, I’d like to keep going.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Absolutely.”
Cella called in another person, and Avery got to work, touching her power and sorting out whether they were telling the truth or not. The niggling feeling at the back of her mind grew stronger, and after they interviewed two more people, who hadn’t lied on their applications, she rose to her feet. “Give me a sec.”
“Okay,” Cella said, brow raised.
Avery walked out into the reception area, where Angie sat behind a desk and three people sat in chairs waiting to be called in for interviews. Angie greeted her, and she gave her a tight smile and turned to face the three people, letting her power flare out. She caught a lot of different smells from the three people—two women and one man—who were wearing white shirts. It was nearly four a.m., and they looked tired. Only the man had a healing wound on his wrist from having fed someone. The two women gave her wary looks.
And then she realized what she’d been missing. While vampires could lick over a wound and heal it after feeding, it wasn’t an instantaneous healing, and the wound took a little while to heal. Like the one on the man’s wrist. She might have expected the first few people at the beginning of the night not to have been fed from, but by this point she should have noticed more wounds. And the last handful of people who’d come through the office hadn’t had wounds on them.
Cella came out. “Everything okay?”
“I figured out what’s been bothering me.” Avery moved to the three people and let her power of compulsion flare, catching the human women in her gaze. They went very still, looking dazed and confused. “When was the last time you fed a vampire at the club?”
Both females tried to resist answering, which told her she was onto something. “Answer me.” She let out her compulsion power more, feeling it flow through her like lava on a mountainside, hot and powerful.
“A week,” the first woman said.
Avery looked at the other woman, and she tried to look away but was unable, snared in Avery’s power. “Two weeks.”
“Why?” Cella asked.
The women didn’t answer until Avery prompted them. “We get paid whether or not we feed someone,” the first woman said.
“Who told you that?” Cella asked, folding her arms.
The second woman tried to resist answering, but she finally succumbed to Avery’s compulsion. “I don’t remember.”
The bitterness of the lie was so strong on Avery’s tongue that she almost vomited. Baring her fangs at the woman, she leaned into her. “Tell the truth or suffer.”
Her eyes filling with tears, she said, “We heard Robert talking to another vampire about what a cushy job it was for food. That we could turn down vampires anytime we liked, and we’d still get paid. So we tried it. We walked away from vampires who were coming to ask us to feed and we said no when asked directly. No one noticed.”
“Who else did you tell?” Avery asked.
The women, locked in her compulsion, were unable to stop themselves from listing four other people.
“We saw those people tonight,” Cella said. “I didn’t even notice they hadn’t fed anyone.”
“Me either,” Avery said. She rocked back on her heels and let out a breath, her powers receding. It wasn’t an immediate danger, but it was a cancer that could spread throughout the food. She looked at Cella, who was furious, but she didn’t say anything to the women.
Cella looked at the man. “Do you have a problem feeding vampires?”
He held up his wrist, showing fresh fang marks that were healing. “Hell no. My sister’s a vampire. Her coven’s in Maine. You can ask anyone; I try to feed two people a night, but always at least one.”
Avery’s power flared and she looked at Cella with a nod. “He’s telling the truth.”
“Can we trust you not to spread this kind of disgusting rumor around the food ranks?” Cella asked.
“It’s stealing,” he said. “It would be like going to work in a factory and sitting in the break room the whole time. I won’t tell anyone. And if I see food turning vampires down regularly, I’ll mention it to you.”
Cella cast a quick glance at Avery and she nodded that he was speaking truths. “Thank you for your honesty,” Cella said. “You will get a nice bonus in your paycheck this week.”
He rose to his feet and smiled. “Thanks.”
Cella said, “Go with Avery to run through your application, then you can head back out to the floor, unless you’d like to go home for the night, with pay.”
“I’d like to go back out and see if I can feed someone else tonight,” he said.
As Avery walked back to the office with the man named Paul, she heard Cella tell Angie to get guards in to escort the women from the club and to find the four people the women had listed as conspirators. Avery heard the women’s protests, but it would not sway Cella. They were no longer welcome as food or patrons.
Once Avery sat at the desk across from Paul, she felt exhaustion take hold of her once more. He was the last interview of the night, since she wouldn’t have to interview the two women who’d just lost their jobs.
“You okay?” Paul asked.
“Fine, it’s just been a long night, thanks. How long has your sister been a vampire?” she asked.
“Four years. She was in a car accident and dying, and one of the EMTs was a vampire who asked if she’d like to be turned and saved. She said yes.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that there were vampire EMTs.”
“I’m sure there are vampires in pretty much every industry that has night hours. I’m grateful for him though. When she told me that there was a shortage of human blood donors, I went to a blood bank for a while, but I actually like being in the club. It’s fun and I get to meet interesting people.”
Avery smiled at him, took his picture and his fingerprints, and ran over his application. “Thanks so much for coming in tonight. I’ll let you get back to the floor.”
He shook her hand, and she walked him back to the reception desk where two coven guards were escorting the sobbing women down the hall.
She stared at the door, her vision going blurry.
“Avery?” Cella asked, her voice hollow and tinny, like she was talking in a tunnel.
Avery opened her mouth, but she could only groan as her head spun and her legs weakened.
Something was terribly wrong.
Chapter Sixteen
Traz climbed out of the new truck and jumped down, then swung the door shut. “They’re pretty damn awesome. Quiet as hell.”
“Indeed,” Brone said.
“And you can’t tamper with them like the diesel ones,” Temple said as he joined them. “Which is very good news for us.”
Traz let his gaze travel from the shiny new trucks to the factory, where workers were making SyBl. He felt a faint pang of fear mixed with pain, and he frowned. As the odd feeling passed and then rose again like an echo, he knew he was feeling Avery’s emotions.
“I need to get back to the club,” Traz said. “Something’s wrong with Avery.”
His friends immediately kicked into gear, Temple jogging with him to one of the vehicles they’d brought. “We’ll close up here,” Ven said. “We’re right behind you.”
Traz nodded as he climbed behind the wheel of a coven SUV, started the engine, and gunned it as soon as Temple shut his own door. The SUV rocketed forward, the wheels screaming as they caught purchase on the blacktop. He swung toward the gate, braking enough to let it open fully before he slammed his foot on the gas again.
&nbs
p; Temple chuckled. “Want me to drive? You know, so we make it there in one piece?”
Traz eased up on the gas a little, bringing the SUV’s speed down a bit. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. What are you feeling?”
“Pain. Fear.” He rubbed the space over his heart. He pulled his cell from his shirt pocket and said, “Call her.”
“You got it.”
The SUV picked up the Bluetooth signal and it rang over the speakers. There was no answer. Temple called it again. And again. As he was about to tell Temple to call again, a call came through.
“Hey, it’s Cyrus,” the male said. “Avery’s unconscious. And before you ask, no one hurt her. She just passed out in the reception area.”
Traz put his foot down more firmly on the gas pedal as he simultaneously tried to quell his panic. “Do you know what happened?”
“Cella said she’d just finished an interview. She was fine one minute and falling to the ground the next.”
“Where is she now?”
“We took her down to your chamber. I’m outside in the hall, Cella’s with her.”
“What the hell?” Traz asked, his knuckles cracking as he squeezed the steering wheel.
“Angie and Cella both witnessed it, and they don’t know what happened. After hearing what was going on, I suspect she overused her power and drained her energy. Maybe you can rouse her when you’re here and get some SyBl into her system. We’ve been unable to wake her.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Traz said.
Temple ended the call and grabbed the handle over the passenger door. “I’m holding on so you can drive like a maniac. Your beloved’s unconscious. I understand why you need to get to her.”
Traz glanced at his friend and nodded sharply, then stomped on the gas, his heart in his throat.
* * *
Traz left the SUV idling at the curb in front of the club with a quick “thanks” to Temple, who agreed to drive it around to the garage. He was through the front door and down the hall, bursting through the door into the reception area.