Enhanced: Brides of the Kindred 12 (The Brides of the Kindred) (53 page)

“I’m not trying to hurt you.” Stavros fought to keep his voice
level and calm. Couldn’t she see that he’d just saved her?

“I know what you guys do—you abduct women and take them up to
your ship,” the girl accused him. “Well, we don’t have to put up with that
anymore! The President came on TV and said the draft is
over
. So you
stay away from me!”

“I’m not trying to claim you!” This time Stav couldn’t keep the
irritation out of his voice. “I don’t have any interest in claiming you or any
other female. Look, never mind—I will just go.” He started to back away from
her but suddenly something hard and cold was jammed in his back.

“I don’t think so, Kindred,” a soft, feminine voice purred in
his ear. “You’re coming with me. You’re under arrest by orders of the Earth
Protection Bureau.”

Chapter
Two

He was a big son-of-a-bitch, but then all the Kindred were.
Charlie wasn’t intimidated by his size in the least. The bigger they were and
all that. She kept her gun jammed in his ribs as she reached for her reinforced
cuffs—the ones made of titanium alloy and strong enough to hold an angry
elephant—or an angry Kindred. And this one certainly didn’t seem to be happy.

“You’re making a mistake,” he growled in a deeper-than-human
voice that raised the hackles on the back of her neck.

“I don’t think so. Hands behind your back—
now,”
Charlie
barked. For a moment she thought the big warrior would balk but with a muffled
curse, he finally complied with her command.

Despite the fact that the cuffs were specially made for
Kindred, it was still a tight squeeze. He had extremely muscular arms and the
cuffs were made to fit around the wrists and forearms both, forming a double
barrier against escape. The wrist parts went on fine but his forearms were
going to bear some marks—not that Charlie cared.

“I was
not
attacking that female,” he said, clearly
thinking she had the wrong idea. “Another male was. I drove him off and tried
to help her up.”

“I know it. I saw what happened,” Charlie snapped. She had
actually been following him for most of the night and had observed the entire
scene around the back of Bad Decisions.

“Then why are you restraining me?” He sounded thoroughly
exasperated.

“Because
I saw what happened,” Charlie repeated,
still keeping the gun on him. “If you’d actually been attacking that girl, I’d
be calling a unit to scrape your brains off the pavement instead of cuffing
you. I don’t tolerate rapists.” That had been true of her time on the Asheville
PD and it was just as true now that she was in the EPB.

“If you don’t tolerate rapists you ought to be hunting down the
male who attacked her.” He nodded at the semi-hysterical girl who was still
trying to get herself together.

“That’s not my priority—you are.
Kindred.”

“The male might come back at any moment,” he said, turning his
head to try and look at her.

“After the way you ran him off? I don’t think so—eyes front!”
Charlie jammed the gun against the side of his neck though she had to reach up
to do it.

“The female is very upset and in need of comfort,” he
protested.

“I’ll call for back-up and have them send someone to calm her
down and chase after him,” Charlie snapped. Then she felt immediately irritated
for explaining herself to the big warrior. “Come on now—move!” She thumped his
wide back with her gun, nudging him forward. God, he was built like a tank! His
shoulders were fully twice as broad as hers and he had to be six foot seven or
eight if he was an inch.

She couldn’t be sure but in the glow of the arc sodium lamps
overhead, his hair, which he wore in a club at the back of his neck, looked to
be dark auburn.
Hmm, never seen a red headed Kindred before.
She
wondered if he was a special breed. He had tattoos too—thick black curving
lines that started at the nape of his neck and crawled down into the collar of
his shirt. When Charlie stared at them, trying to make them out, the pattern
seemed to shift like snakes.

“Where are you taking me?” he growled. He was moving in the
right direction but not fast enough to suit her.

“To my car for starters. That’s all you need to know for now.”
She thumped him again. "Hurry up."

He was silent but his shoulders were tight. She could tell by
the tension in his big body he was thinking of running.

“Don’t do it.” Charlie poked him in the ribs again with the
muzzle of her Glock. “My daddy taught me to hunt when I was twelve. Used to
take me out to spend the night in the deer blind, waiting for some buck to
wander by. And let me tell you, buddy, you’re a hell of a lot bigger target
than a lot of the game I brought down.”

Some of the tension leaked out of the big form and the Kindred
continued plodding towards her car.

“Besides,” Charlie continued. “You’d never get those cuffs off
by yourself. They’re pretty tight, aren’t they? No way to drive a car or a
space ship with those on. And after a while, blood loss and nerve damage set
in. Better stay with the person who has the key.” She patted her pocket with
her free hand, making her keys jingle. “Right?”

“You make a compelling argument,” he rumbled. “But I still do
not see why you have to apprehend me. Despite the fact that our people are at
war, I am not your enemy.”

“Oh no? Then what were you doing skulking around at night like
a skunk in the garden?” Charlie demanded. “Just out playing vigilante, making
sure nobody got raped or stabbed behind the bar for the hell of it?”

“I did not set out to interfere,” he protested. “But I couldn’t
stand by while the female was attacked. I was actually trying to get—”

“Trying to get where?” Charlie poked him again. “Go on—you can
say it.
You were trying to get to the HKR building and contact the Mother Ship, weren’t
you?”

“They have an urgent message for me,” he growled reluctantly.
“If I could just speak to my superior—”

“He’d what—give you instructions on where to plant a bomb or
how to sabotage the local military base?”

“Of course not.” He was sounding exasperated again. “Give my
people some credit. We are not terrorists—we are honorable males. No Kindred
would do such a thing.”

“I don’t know what you’d do and I’m not about to give you a
chance to find out.”

They had reached the car at last and Charlie was grateful.
She’d had about enough conversation with the big warrior. It was time to bring
him in to the EPB headquarters—which was actually just a makeshift area inside
the local precinct—for processing.

She had to stand on tiptoes to get her fingers on the top of
his head and fold him down into the back seat of her unmarked sedan. Folding
was the right word, too—the big bastard was accordioned in like a piece of
origami by the time she finally got him into the back but finally the deed was
done and she was able to shut the door.

Then, leaning against the side of the closed driver’s side
door, she got out her cell and called her immediate superior, Agent Purvis. He
answered on the tenth ring.

“Damn it, Sayers, do you know what time it is?” he muttered
sleepily into the phone.

“One fifteen AM exactly,” Charlie answered crisply. “I wouldn’t
bother you at this hour without a good reason, Sir. My suspicion that a Kindred
was in hiding somewhere in the vicinity of

“What?” There was a flurry of sounds on the other side and
Charlie pictured Agent Purvis sitting up suddenly in bed and knocking his
balding head against the headboard. “You
what?”
he demanded.

Charlie repeated herself.

“By yourself?” Purvis demanded. “You went after a Kindred
by
yourself?
Where’s Jenkins? He’d better be with you, Sayers!
”

Charlie cleared her throat. “Jenkins went home at the end of
our shift. I wasn’t intending to apprehend the suspect on my own but when I saw
him, I followed him. He wound up engaged in a fight outside of the bar Bad
Decisions, off of Curlew and I had no choice but to take him down.”

“He was in a fight? Great, just
great!”
Purvis snapped.
“It’ll be all over the news by morning! Hell, it’ll be all over the news in an
hour
if the wrong person gets hold of it. And they’re going to twist it too—make
it look like we were too late to stop him attacking ordinary citizens.”

“How it looks in the news wasn’t my prime consideration when I
arrested him, Sir,” Charlie said stolidly. Purvis with his constant attention
to the media and concern about his personal image bugged the hell out of her.
Sometimes it seemed he was more interested in preening for the cameras than
doing his job. “I was more interested in making sure no one was hurt,” she
continued. “Should I bring the Kindred suspect in to headquarters for
processing?”

“Into headquarters—you mean at the PD? No—no, of course not!,”
Purvis sputtered. “Why the hell would you do that? The media vultures would be
on us even quicker.”

“Well what am I supposed to do with him?” Charlie demanded,
thoroughly pissed off. “Just let him go? We’re the EPB for God’s sake—taking
down any remaining Kindred is our job. Or so you told me when you recruited
me!”

“Take him to a safe house,” Purvis said quickly. “You do have
safe houses here in Ashville, right?” Purvis was from the DC area and had come
to town to start the Asheville
branch of the EPB so he wasn’t familiar with the area. Still, his question
struck Charlie as more than a little asinine.

“No Sir, we do
not
have a safe house set up and just
waiting for anyone who needs to use it,” she said acidly. “It’s the Asheville
PD, not the Witness Protection Agency.”

“Well you
can’t
take him to the precinct.” Purvis was
sounding belligerent now.

“I can’t leave him cuffed in the back of my car all night
either,” Charlie countered. “He’s got to go
somewhere
secure.”

“Somewhere secure…somewhere secure…” There was a clicking sound
at the other end of the phone and this time Charlie pictured Purvis tapping a
plastic Bic pen cap against his yellowing top teeth. It was an annoying and
slightly disgusting habit he had while thinking—if what went on in his balding
head could be called thinking, that was.

Not for the first time she wondered why she’d allowed herself
to be recruited away from the PD for this job. She had just made detective—one
of the youngest in the Asheville PD history—and she’d had her own office and
everything.

But Purvis hadn’t seemed like nearly such an idiot when he came
rolling into town with his presidential mandate and his plans to protect their
country and world from the evils of the Kindred. He’d told Charlie that they
needed people like her—people who had grown up here and already knew the lay of
the land. After all, it’s the hound that knows the hills it’s hunting that
catches the most game.

Everything he’d said had seemed to make sense at the time.
Charlie had allowed her patriotism to overcome her common sense and had quit
the PD to become Charlotte Sayers EPB, Agent First Class. Of course, it wasn’t
just patriotism that lured her in—it was the way she felt about the Kindred and
their draft. No female ought to be forced into a sexual relationship against
her will. After what had happened to Missy— But Charlie shut down that line of
thought fast. It wouldn’t do to get emotional right now.

“…kids?”

“Excuse me, what?” She realized that she’d missed what Purvis
was saying.

“I said, do you have kids?”

“No,” she said, wondering why he was asking. “I don’t.”

“Or anyone else who might be put at risk?” he went on. “In your
house, I mean?”

Charlie began to see where this was headed. But surely not even
Purvis would suggest what she thought he was suggesting.

“No, Sir, I live alone. But—”

“Excellent. Take the prisoner to your place.”

“What?”
Charlie demanded. “Sir, you can’t be
serious! It’s against protocol—all
kinds
of protocols—for me to take him
back to my personal living space and guard him
by myself.”

“Well you apprehended him
by yourself,
Sayers,” Purvis
reminded her nastily. “And you seemed to have managed that just fine.”

“This male could be dangerous,” Charlie reminded him icily. “He
is six foot eight and built like a professional wrestler. I’m five foot seven
and he outweighs me by at least a hundred pounds if not considerably more—I’m
no match for him physically.”

“You don’t have to be. You’ve got your cuffs and your gun. Taze
him a couple of times if you have to in order to show him who’s boss.”

“Sir, this is really unbelievably irregular. The fact that you
would even suggest that I take a suspect back to my private residence—”

“Do you want to keep your job?” Purvis snapped.

“Not badly enough to put my life in danger,” Charlie shot back.
“What you’re asking me to do is dangerous and illegal,
Sir.”

“It’s also the only way you’ll keep both your job and your
freedom,” Purvis practically shouted. “The world is at war here, Sayers. We’re
under martial law and I
will
have you court-martialed in a heartbeat if
you don’t obey my orders. Now I am
through
discussing this with you! You
will
take the prisoner back to your house and keep him there until I can
figure out what kind of spin to put on this to the press.
Do you
understand?”

Charlie was so pissed off she felt like she could spit nails.
What Purvis was demanding of her was completely unreasonable but he wasn’t
leaving her a choice.
God damned idiot! What the hell is wrong with him? Why
did I ever quit the PD? What was I thinking?