Gray Bishop (27 page)

“Got it,” Mason said. “Winston said there’s a fire?”

“The auction house is burning. We’re doing what we can.”

“All right.”

Bishop hung up, then dialed Winston. The call went straight to voice mail. Something unpleasant slithered into Bishop’s gut, warning him. He called the house line. It rang once. Three times. Six.

“What’s wrong?” Knight asked, eyes narrowed.

Fear crept over him, a cold blanket despite the heat. “Fucking diversion.” Bishop didn’t have to say anything else.

Rook was running toward home before Bishop could get up and follow. Jillian overtook him by a few paces. More footsteps beat the pavement behind him. His singed lungs strained for air, and his tired muscles ached, but he ran harder. Something was very, very wrong at home.

The front door stood wide open, mocking them. He caught up to Rook on the porch, snagging his shirt collar before he could barrel into an unknown situation. Rook twisted around swinging. Bishop shoved him behind him, right into Jillian’s arms. Bishop held up a silencing hand. Knight stood behind them, and their group had also picked up Jonas and Devlin.

They were doing this smart. Bishop pointed at Jonas, Jillian, and Rook, then made a circling gesture. Go in the back. They understood and took off. Bishop pointed two fingers at Devlin, then at Knight, who rolled his eyes at having a personal bodyguard. Bishop didn’t care, not if the hybrids were still around.

He moved closer to the open door, his smoke-filled nose working hard to identify the bizarre scent of the hybrid females. Instead, he smelled blood. A lot of it, and his stomach soured. He eased into the foyer, the scent drawing him into the living room. The coffee table was shattered, as were several vases. A streak of fresh blood led into the dining room.

Colin lay on his back on the wood floor, blood forming a pool around his head. His eyes were wide, his throat torn out. On his chest, coated in his blood, was a chess piece. A black rook. A reminder that Fiona had once promised to kill Rook for Brynn’s broken word. The last two hybrids hadn’t forgotten their sister’s vow.

Bishop had no time to mourn for the dead man. He had family to find.

They met the other group in the hall near the patio doors.

“Downstairs is clear,” Jillian whispered.

“Check upstairs,” Bishop replied. “We’ll go—”

“Hello!”

Brynn. Her voice was distant and muffled. Rook tore away and dashed through the basement door, yelling for his wife. Bishop followed, surprised to find Brynn and Mrs. Troost inside the quarterly cage. Brynn had tears in her eyes, but neither woman appeared wounded. Brynn shoved the key at Rook, who fumbled it twice before getting it into the lock.

“They couldn’t get us in here, the crazy things,” Mrs. Troost said, riled up and none too happy. “We locked ourselves in and they left.”

“That was smart, really smart,” Bishop said. “What about Winston and Shay?”

“Dunno, I’m sorry. I heard that lad Colin shouting about vampires, so I grabbed Miss Brynn and ran down here. Shay was upstairs, I think.”

“Colin’s dead.”

“Oh dear.”

He left Rook to look after his wife and their housekeeper, and he bolted back up to the first floor. He nearly ran down Devlin in the hallway.

“No one’s upstairs,” Devlin said. “I can smell them, though. The hybrids were here.”

“Think you can track them? The fire killed my nose.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Devlin headed out the patio doors and into the yard, head in the air, scenting for the hybrids. Bishop turned in a slow circle, unsure where to go next. Two of his people were missing. Colin was dead. The auction house was burning to the ground as he stood there, and the hybrids had invaded his home.

His fucking home.

He’d kill them both with his bare hands.

***

Knight ran blindly from room to room, double-checking behind the others because he had to see for himself. He had to know that Shay wasn’t hiding in a closet or under a bed, waiting for him to find her. He had to know she was there. She couldn’t be anywhere else.

She was
not
with the hybrids.

Jillian grabbed him after he descended to the second floor. “She’s not here, Knight. We need to start looking outside.”

“She can’t be with them.”

“She’s their half-sister. Maybe they won’t hurt her.”

Rage from old wounds joined a brand-new kind of hate. They simmered deep in his chest, giving rise to that tamped-down darkness he’d lived with since the forced shift, a living thing that calmed his adrenaline rush and allowed him to think more clearly. He would get Shay back, and then he’d make the hybrids pay. For everything they’d done.

“Let’s go,” Jillian said.

He avoided the hand she extended, bypassing her concern for the stairs. He thundered down the hall toward Bishop, who looked as pissed as Knight had ever seen him.

“She’s not here,” Knight said. “Why would they take Shay?”

“We’re their sisters,” Brynn said. She emerged from the basement with Rook at her back, her wide eyes mixed with both fear and anger. “They came for us. Me and Shay. One of them told me so.”

“They didn’t take you.”

“Mrs. Troost locked us in the quarterly cage. They couldn’t get to me.”

“You left Shay unprotected.”

Rook growled. “Back off, Knight.”

Knight wasn’t going to brawl with his brother over this. They were wasting valuable time, and the hybrids moved fast.

“I’ve got Devlin out there trying to find their trail,” Bishop said. “We need noses that aren’t—”

“I need some help out here!” Devlin’s frightened shout chilled Knight even as it spurred him into action.

In the far back corner of the yard, near a wide, ragged hole in the fence, Devlin was crouched in the remnants of Mrs. Troost’s garden. Knight lost his footing in the soft earth and came down hard on top of a half-dead tomato plant. Right next to Winston, whose turned head was missing an eye.

Knight scrambled to his hands and knees, ignoring the surprised reactions from the others. He couldn’t get his brain to accept what his eyes were seeing. That Winston had gaping wounds in his face and throat, and that Devlin was desperately trying to hold his cousin’s shredded neck together.

Dev met Knight’s eyes in a kind of dazed shock he’d never seen in his best friend. “What do I do?”

Knight pressed his fingertips against the un-mangled side of Winston’s neck, mindful of the blood soaking the ground around him. Nothing. Claw marks scored his flesh from forehead to shoulder, deep and ragged. They’d shredded his carotid artery, then gone for the aorta. He hadn’t had a chance.

“He’s gone, Dev.”

Devlin shook his head. “But . . .”

“I’m so sorry.”

Rook squatted next to Devlin, agony in his eyes, and put a hand on Dev’s shoulder. The four of them had grown up together. Winston had often challenged Knight for the most serious of the group—protesting pranks or other means of getting into trouble. He’d been a strong and loyal enforcer for the run. Most of all, he’d been a friend.

Devlin pulled his cousin’s head into his lap, tenderly mindful of the broken flesh. He made a soft, mournful sound that came from deep within where his beast also grieved for the loss of his family. Instead of sad, though, the sight and sound infuriated Knight—skin and beast. He was tired of loss and pain. He was tired of being afraid. Tired of being a victim.

Bishop’s steady voice drifted over, bellowing orders into a phone about security and tracking. Asking for an update on the fire. Everything a good Alpha should be doing, rather than giving over to his grief. Cold vengeance had sharpened Bishop’s face to stone.

Rook comforted Devlin, while Mrs. Troost held a silently sobbing Brynn. Jillian and Jonas emerged as beasts from behind the garden shed and raced toward the woods. Tracking the scent with the best noses. The hybrids wouldn’t be found tonight, Knight was certain of that. But they would be found.

They would be found, and Knight would take great delight in seeing them die slowly, taken a piece at a time. He would find Shay, and he would spend the rest of his life making sure she was safe and loved and never wanted for anything, because his beast knew what his mind hadn’t quite accepted.

The hybrids had taken his mate, and Knight would stop at nothing to bring her home.

No matter what it cost him.

Look for the next book in the Cornerstone Run saga

WHITE KNIGHT

Available from InterMix January 2015

Raised on a steady diet of Star Wars, Freddy Krueger and “Fear Street” novels,
Kelly Meade
developed a love for all things paranormal at a very young age. The stealthy adolescent theft of a tattered paperback from her grandmother’s collection of Harlequins sparked an interest in romance that has continued to this day. Writing as Kelly Meding, Meade is the author of the Dreg City urban fantasy series with Bantam and the MetaWars books from Pocket.