Chapter Twenty-Two

Hunter almost laughed at the expression on Alice’s face when she saw the Vampire Motorcycle Club sign on the door of the clubhouse.

“You advertise? I thought it was a big secret.” She sat back in the passenger seat of the SUV, having again refused to drive it. “I mean, the gold outline of a motorcycle on the sign out front made sense, but this?”

She was twisting her fingers together in her lap, clearly worried about Charlie but refusing to discuss it.

“That’s the back door. Only a few of us use it, and Luke thought it was funny. The name of the club is public, though. Kind of Bane’s jest. He says the best way to hide something is in plain sight. Would you suddenly have started believing in vampires just because you heard the name?”

She slanted him an emerald look. “I’m not sure I believe in them now, to be honest. I’m halfway sure that any minute I’m going to wake up from a long fever dream, or…”

When her voice trailed off, Hunter put the car in park and turned off the ignition. “Or?”

She said nothing, so he pushed it aside and put his hand on the door handle, almost missing her whisper.

Almost—super vampire hearing, though.

“Back in the Institute.”

He climbed out of the vehicle and raced around it to open her door and pull her into a hug. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Why would I? I’ve known you for two days,” she said, anguish in her voice.

He closed his eyes and breathed in her scent. “But two days of this chaos is like six months in human days.”

She pulled away from him, but there was a hint of a smile on her face, and he decided to take it as a win. “Later. Let’s discuss this later, after we find out what these people want and why they’re willing to stalk us and shoot us to get it. Also, we rescue Charlie, no matter what.”

He narrowed his eyes, not sure he could agree to “no matter what,” but she poked him in the chest.

“No matter what,” she repeated, her eyes daring him to refuse.

“Ow. And yes, okay, no matter what.”

They passed through a line of vampires and werewolves—mostly still in wolf form—on their way into the club. With their combined forces in charge of security, nobody was getting into the club that they didn’t want there.

The clubhouse itself was long and low and looked a lot like a family-style chain restaurant from the outside. On the inside, it more closely resembled an English pub—not that Hunter had ever been to one of those, but he’d seen them in movies. They weren’t going inside the clubhouse part of the building, though. Bane had sent Meara, Luke, and Edge telepathic instructions to bring Charlie and the culprits here to the basement.

Again, Hunter felt that slight sense of surrealism. Suddenly he took werewolf guards and telepathic communication as a normal part of his life.

He glanced at Alice. And, possibly, a ghost-whisperer girlfriend? He shook his head, mentally smacking himself on the forehead.

Too soon for that.

When they entered the building, Hunter immediately headed for the steel door at the back end of the hall. Then he leaned forward and looked directly into the state-of-the-art retinal scanner.

“Evans, Hunter. Welcome back to Vampire Motorcycle Club headquarters,” came the familiar, faintly British tones of the computerized female voice. “How are you tonight?”

The door unlocked, and Hunter walked in, turning to find that Alice hadn’t moved but was staring at him with her mouth slightly open.

“You’re kidding me,” she said. “This is getting more and more Syfy channel every minute.”

He shrugged. “You’re not wrong. But when you see Edge’s computers, you’ll understand why.”

“But they brought the attackers in here?”

“I doubt they were conscious at the time,” he said flatly.

She took a shaky breath but followed him into the office, which was kept at a freezing cold temperature due to the computers he’d told her about, and he headed straight back to another steel door, this one unlocked, that led to the vault and other rooms in the basement. Her flame-red hair gleamed in the bright light, but he noticed that her fine-boned face was still extraordinarily pale. She was definitely not okay, but she hadn’t uttered a single word of complaint.

She was way tougher than she looked, but he still felt an overpowering need to pick her up and spirit her away to someplace safe. He knew there was no way she’d allow that, though, so he put it out of his mind.

“What does he do with that setup?” Alice was still staring at the bank of super high-tech computers. “Run NASA?”

Hunter laughed. “He probably could. The man is a super-genius and about three different kinds of scientists all rolled up into one.”

“So why is he a vampire?”

Hunter shook his head. “That’s his story to tell. Or not tell, more likely. But let’s head down. They’re starting to question the prisoners.”

She bit her lip and squared her shoulders before starting toward him, and he realized the small talk and questions had been a stalling technique. Alice pretty clearly did not want to go into the basement and face whatever awaited them but was going to force herself to do it.

And he didn’t want her there, either, but he was going to stand by her side.

She’d demanded the right to confront them, and he wouldn’t be the one to deny her, as much as he might want to do so. He held out a hand, instead, and held his breath until she reached out and clasped it, and they started down the stairs together.

At two flights down, they passed the weapons room. One more flight, and Hunter suddenly scented blood.

A lot of blood.

And he realized he hadn’t quenched his own thirst for a while.

He glanced down at his wrists, but his veins hadn’t darkened, so he should still be fine. Someone cried out behind the door on his left, and Alice whirled around and reached for the handle.

“Not yet.” He blocked her from seeing into the room when he opened the door, just in case, but the scene was still fairly benign. Bane, Ryan, Meara, Luke, Edge, Reynolds, and Max stood in a rough circle around a large open space where three men and a woman huddled.

Alice pushed past him, her focus on only one thing. “Charlie!”

The dragon, perched on a long, low table behind Meara, flew up and around the room to them, carefully avoiding getting in reach of the prisoners, one of whom stared after him with hungry eyes.

“When I get out of this, I’m going to stake your hide to a wall, you piece of demon shit,” the man snarled. He wasn’t tall or short, not broad or thin. He was almost entirely forgettable in every way, except for the savage rage twisting his expression.

Alice ignored him completely and gathered the dragon in her arms, holding him close. “Don’t do that to me again. You scared me when you disappeared.”

“Oh, please,” the man sneered. “As if you gave a shit about a Minor demon.”

Before Hunter could punch the asshole in the face, Bane flicked his fingers, and the man—warlock, actually, Hunter realized when he smelled the faint scent of rot—fell to the concrete floor, moaning.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, you pig,” Meara snarled. Her always-immaculate appearance was roughed up; her shirt was torn, and her jeans were ripped and grass-stained at the knees.

There had been a fight, then. Warlocks weren’t the type to give up easily, and they had some pretty powerful magics.

“Are these the warlocks?” Alice suddenly asked, staring at the four of them. “The ones the ghosts warned us about?”

At the word “ghosts,” the female prisoner raised her head and stared at Alice. “Are you her? You don’t look like much. I wonder what all the fuss is about,” she sneered.

“Shut up, Zela,” the one Bane had shot power at hissed. “Keep your mouth shut for once in your stupid life.”

Zela laughed. “Oh, I don’t think so. I warned you, but you didn’t listen. Now look where we are. If we survive this, I’m ratting you out to Neville at the first possible opportunity.”

The man’s face turned bright red, and he lunged at Zela, getting his hands around her throat for a few seconds before Max calmly walked over, picked him up by one arm, and threw him into the wall.

The wall that was nearly ten feet away.

“Damn, I don’t want to make you mad at me,” Hunter told Max, whistling in appreciation.

She flashed a quick grin at him but said nothing.

Reynolds crossed over to where the warlock lay in a heap, surely with at least a few broken bones, and lifted him so high into the air that his feet dangled several inches above the floor. Then he dropped him.

“Tell us. Now. Who are you, and why are you here? Why did you shoot the beta of the Savannah Wolf Pack, and how were you fool enough to think you’d survive doing it?”

The warlock just spat at him, but the other two male prisoners still in the center of the room, both human, huddled close to each other and started sniveling.

“We didn’t do nothing, Mister Werewolf. We didn’t shoot nobody. We were just the hired muscle. We don’t even know what the plan was,” one of them wailed.

The other one, who seemed to be missing a few teeth, eagerly nodded. “Yeah, what he said. We showed up just before the shooting started. All we know is we were gonna get paid five hundred bucks to help out. We didn’t know, help out with what.”

The first one wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Yeah. Yeah. And we didn’t even get paid,” he said indignantly.

Hunter sighed. “Right. That’s certainly the important point, here.”

Edge shoved his long, white hair out of his face. Hunter noticed that he was also disheveled. But of course, if Meara had been in danger, Edge would have been right there at her side. The scientist raised an eyebrow. “The big question here is do we submit this story to Stupid Criminals in the News or to the Darwin Awards?”

One of the thugs looked at him hopefully. “We get a reward? How much?”

“Look. These two are not the brain trust here,” Hunter said, pointing out the obvious. “We should let them go.”

“Yes, you totally should,” said the one with the teeth. “About that reward, though?”

Bane’s eyes flashed ruby red, and the men flinched away from him.

“You are lucky we’re letting you live,” he told them. “Don’t try what’s left of my patience.”

They fell over themselves agreeing, and Luke walked forward and grabbed one by the arm. “I’ll enthrall this memory out of their tiny brains and dump them on the side of the river somewhere.”

“I’ll go with you,” Edge said. “Meara?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m staying here.”

They all waited until Edge and Luke left with the two thugs, and then Bane grabbed a chair from the side of the room and set it down with controlled violence on the floor next to Zela.

“Sit,” he commanded her. “Tell us what you know, and we’ll do you the same favor.”

“You shut up. He’s lying,” shouted the warlock.

Hunter pointed at him. “I’d suggest you shut up. Everyone in this room knows you’re the one who shot Max. We can smell the gunpowder on you.”

Alice glanced at him; he figured she was thinking that technically neither she nor Ryan could smell the gunpowder at this distance from the shooter, but it wasn’t a detail the warlock needed to know.

“Shut up, yourself, Derek,” Zela shouted back. “I warned you we should never have taken on a secondary mission.”

“Secondary mission?” Max frowned. “Besides shooting me? And I got shot by someone named Derek?”

Hunter snorted.

Zela darted a quick look at Max and then rolled her eyes. “Nobody meant to shoot you, exactly. You’re not important. Our job from the Chamber was to protect her.”

Alice froze when she looked up and saw the woman pointing at her. “What? Protect me? Why? From whom?”

“Shut up,” the warlock moaned, clutching his broken leg. “The Chamber will torture you to death, you stupid bitch.”

“Enough with the bitch, if you please,” Meara snapped. Then she flicked her hands at Derek the warlock in an elegant gesture that levitated him up into the air and pinned him against the wall. “Now, you shut up.”

He struggled and fought, trying desperately to speak, but Meara was brilliant with her vampire magics. Derek was going nowhere and saying nothing until she allowed him to do so.

Charlie, curled up in Alice’s arms, peeked out. “He is the one who hurt me and made me sneak and spy on you, Lady. But I found him. I found them for the vampire friends of the Lady.”

“You did good, Charlie,” she said soothingly. “You’re a good boy.”

“All right,” Bane said to Zela. “Tell us. Now. And then we’ll decide if your story wins you your freedom or your death.”

The woman’s face turned white beneath her heavy makeup, and she pulled her jacket closer around her shivering body. “Okay. Okay. Listen, I’ll tell you everything I know about the Chamber. I’m tired of that busted group of snobs, anyway. They treat women in the organization like shit, and—”

Alice suddenly thrust Charlie at Hunter and took a step toward Zela. “Do you think we give one single damn about your employment problems? You could have killed my friend.”

Max, who’d known Alice for even less time than Hunter had, looked surprised and then pleased but again said nothing.

Zela cowered in the chair. “I’m sorry. He did it, not me. I said, do you have a death wish? Shooting somebody in the middle of a vampire party like that? But Derek had a dossier, with pictures. Said that she, the wolf, was a dangerous beast—”

Reynolds growled, and Zela backtracked, fast. “No, I know. You’re not beasts. Hey, one of my best friends is a shifter. But Derek said we had to protect the property from the wolves, so he shot her”—she pointed at Max—“to protect her”—she pointed at Alice.

Several people started talking all at the same time, but Alice’s clear tone cut through the chatter. “Did you say ‘protect the property’?”

Zela nodded. “Yeah. We had double orders, I guess. The Chamber wanted Derek to capture you, and so did the other guy, and I don’t know why.”

“Capture Alice?” Hunter’s vision started to haze red. “Capture Alice?”

“Yeah,” Zela said, looking back and forth between all of their faces, probably seeing her lifespan dwindling to the next few minutes. “Um, they said it was too dangerous to try for the Nephilim right now, with Bane on the alert.”

Bane’s eyes flashed back to ruby, and, from the way everything in the room shone a brilliant scarlet, Hunter figured his eyes looked exactly the same. Then Alice made a small sound, and Hunter saw that her entire body had started shaking. He lowered Charlie to the floor and leapt across the few feet separating himself from her, then put his arms around her and pulled her close.

“Alice? Are you okay? What is it?”

“They called me property.” Suddenly—horribly—she started to laugh. “Property of the Institute, established 1870. We should have had T-shirts.”

Now everybody was watching Alice.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Hunter touched her cheek. “Can you tell me?”

“I bet he can,” she said, pointing at the warlock pinned to the wall. “Meara, let him talk.”

Meara looked doubtful, but she flicked her fingers again, and the warlock gasped and choked out a hoarse, barking sound.

“Tell them,” Alice shouted at him. “Tell them who gave you your second mission.”

The warlock raked a leering glance up and down Alice’s still-trembling body. “Grogan told me you were fuckable and that he was finally going to get the chance. I guess he has low standards.”

“Oh, now you’re going to die.” Hunter started toward him, fury searing through his body. His fangs snapped down into place, and he snarled out a wordless threat, but before he could reach the man, Alice screamed, and her scream was loud and long and reverberated with power.

Charlie, as if in reaction to the sound, suddenly launched himself into the air, flew over Hunter’s head, and dove at the warlock, his golden eyes glowing. Hunter jumped up to try to catch the dragon but missed.

“No! Charlie, no,” Alice shouted.

But it was far too late, because suddenly Hunter remembered a very important fact—Charlie had reached the anniversary of his hatch date.

So now he was “breathing much fire,” as he’d told them he planned to do. So much fire, in fact, that Derek the warlock burst into flames.

Charlie’s first attempt at breathing fire was a damn good one, by dragon standards. He was burning a man to death.

And Hunter, the firefighter in the room, couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Fuck that.

He raced toward the screaming man, ripping his own shirt off as he went, with some idea of using it in a “stop, drop, and roll” scenario, but damn, nobody had ever envisioned dragon fire when they came up with the technique, and he was just so fucking useless, and—warlock or not—the man Hunter had always been wasn’t about to watch somebody burn to death.

But a shirt wasn’t going to be enough.

All the anger and frustration, all the confusion and pain and helplessness of the past few weeks—of every moment since he’d first gotten trapped in that house fire and almost burned to death himself—rose up in him, and he threw back his head and roared.

A powerful gust of wind surrounded him and shot out toward the warlock, and then it wrapped around the man and somehow…stopped.

Stopped the fire immediately, almost as if it had suffocated it. Starved it of oxygen.

Which made no sense at all.

He whirled around and stared at the vampires. “Which one of you did that?”

Meara and Bane were both shaking their heads.

“It wasn’t us, my friend,” Bane said gently. “I think we’ve discovered what your power is.”

Alice, in the meantime, had started walking toward Derek, her eyes turned to emerald ice. “Say his name.”

The warlock was injured and too terrified to understand, and he just stared at her out of his reddened and shocked face.

“Say his name,” she shouted. “Say it!”

But Derek just rolled over on his side and moaned.

Alice started rocking back and forth, and Hunter was very much afraid she’d gone past shock and was headed for a catatonic state. Whatever was on her mind might actually kill her if he couldn’t bring her back to reality.

Back to him.

“Alice. Please, can you hear me?”

But she closed her eyes, rocking and rocking, and suddenly the room filled with white mist that was seeping through the walls. It was no ordinary mist, of course.

It was the ghosts. So many of them that they filled the room.

“We’re here to help you, mistress,” said the same one who’d talked to Alice at Bane’s house.

Alice either didn’t hear him or didn’t care, because she never opened her eyes. The ghosts advanced on the injured warlock and then retreated in a tsunami of rolling fog, disappearing right through the cement walls the way they’d arrived.

And somehow, defying the laws of physics, they took the warlock with them.

The woman, Zela, fainted and fell out of the chair. Nobody rushed to catch her, but Ryan did walk over to check on her after she hit the floor.

“She’s fine,” Ryan said. “Didn’t even hit her head.”

Everybody else still in the room watched Alice like she might be very dangerous, but nobody said anything, so Hunter, not knowing what else to do, wrapped his arms around her and held her close, hoping to share his warmth. His strength.

After a long, silent moment, she opened her eyes. “He knows where I am. He’s the only person who has ever called me property. I’ll kill him before I go back.”

“You’re not going anywhere you don’t want to go,” Hunter growled, tightening his arms around her.

“Tell us who,” Meara demanded. “You’ll kill who?”

“Dr. Hanford Kurchausen,” Alice said. “The head of the Institute where I was imprisoned for eight years of my life.”