Kai (A Dark Assassins Novel Book One) (17 page)

“You have it bad.”
 
Ghost clapped him on the shoulder.

“She’s my mate,” he said simply.

“I figured.”

After she’d met everyone in the room, and had taken the time to hug the shifters she had come to know, she sat and pulled a notebook in front of her, and began writing again.
 
Kai motioned everyone to the media room before he dropped down beside her.
 
She reached for him, and gave him another kiss.

“Call if you need me, okay?” he said.

“Okay,” she said, returning to her work.

Reluctantly, he stood and followed the others to the media room downstairs.
 
He inserted the drive into the laptop.
 
Before he started it, he thought he should give them a warning.
 
It was one thing to kill in a humane manner, but what was depicted on the video was cruelty.

“This is fucked up, but I have to show all of you what we are up against,” Kai said.

The warning about the video rendered everyone silent.
 
He stepped into the projection booth and closed the door before he started it, so it blocked out the sound.
 
He watched the counter as the video counted down to zero, and when he stopped it and walked out to join the rest of the assassins, silence greeted him.
 
He understood their disgust and their fear, but they would never admit out loud to either of those rare feelings.

“Liv believes there are others being held captive, waiting until the time they perfect their formula.
 
We have no clues as to where they are hiding them, but we will obtain as much information from Liv before we surveil the campus and break them out.”

As they others talked about the upcoming mission, his mind snapped back to Liv’s earlier question about the sensors outside of the house.
 
The first morning after they’d made love, he’d been speaking to Reaper about the possibility of mates, but when he glanced up, he found Liv on the counter by the bay window, searching the surrounding area with a pinched look on her face.
 
He’d been so absorbed by what had happened between them that he hadn’t thought about the possibility that someone was already after her.
 
They hadn’t been careful, and if she’d spotted someone who had come after her, he knew the danger that surrounded her was more severe than he realized.
 
Pure rage filtered through him at the thought of them hunting her.

He interrupted the conversation.
 
“I think they’ve already sent someone after her.”

Reaper shot to his feet, his fists clenched at his sides.
 
“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He explained about her strange question about the perimeter, and her reaction the other morning when Reaper had arrived, and the other man sat down hard.

“She took me by surprise.
 
I walked in and fumbled with your stupid code, and didn’t even realize she was sitting at the table until she spoke.
 
I didn’t smell anyone when I arrived, but they could’ve arrived after me.”
 
Reaper looked at the other shifters.
 
“Did any of you smell something new when you arrived?”

Each of them shook their heads, but that meant that whoever had been outside had arrived and left before any of the shifters could smell him, and he hadn’t been back.
 
“That means it was recon, and once he spotted her, he had no reason to stick around.”

“Not your fault, Reaper,” Kai said.

If he thought that the rage was thick before, he could feel his muscles shake as it passed through him at the thought of her being spotted.
 
He didn’t blame anyone but himself.
 
He would need to keep her close.

“We won’t let anything happen to her.
 
We’ll take shifts during the day, and have at least seven to ten in residence on a single night.
 
We’ll change our codes, and we’ll set up more perimeter alarms to make sure no one comes back.
 
Everyone agreed?” Ghost asked.

The entire group nodded.

“And during the day, we’ll talk to Liv to see if she can locate the building where they might house the prisoners, and make a plan to get them out.
 
All of you should work on your telepathy.
 
It’s been awhile since we’ve worked as a group.”

Again, everyone nodded.

“I don’t need to emphasize how important she is.
 
Liv risked her life, smuggled out the information we needed to make an informed decision, and walked away from a career that she spent her entire life working toward, without hesitation.
 
She has worked tirelessly to find a cure so if we are ever exposed, her solution will render it useless.
 
Despite her words, there will be no way we allow her to be captured and tortured.
 
We will not fail her, understand?” Ghost demanded.

“Understood,” they all agreed in unison.

“What are you going to do about the contract?” Xander asked.

“I took it so I could monitor those who accepted as well.
 
We don’t have to worry about the human mercenaries, because even if they find her, they can’t get through us.
 
But the others—they may present a bigger problem,” Ghost said.

With that, they were dismissed.
 
He returned to Liv exactly where he’d left her, but in the time they were gone, she accumulated a pile of papers that leaned precariously.
 
Something in his chest loosened at the sight, and he bent down and kissed her.

“That’s my girl.”

At that moment, he remembered the horrific dream the day after she’d arrived, and when Thomas and Isaac walked by, he asked them without warning Liv.

This is a weird question, but do you guys ever dream?

They both shook their heads, and dread sliced through him.

What was your dream about?
 
Thomas asked.

Unable to stop the visions that swamped his mind, he pushed the images into both of their heads, and watched as they felt his fear, his need to get to her.
 
She felt real in his arms, and when she died and the warmth seeped out of her body, his mind and heart splintered into a million pieces.
 

He reached for her sitting on the floor in front of him and cradled her against his chest.
 
She must have sensed his sadness because she wrapped him in her arms, and whispered words of reassurance in his ear.
 
When the images were finished, he looked at the two vampires.
 
Their troubled eyes were on Liv.
 
Thomas shook his head, and when he met Kai’s eyes, the fear that he’d felt was reflected back at him.

Chapter Fourteen

Olivia

Olivia shouldn’t have been surprised how quickly she’d gotten back into the rhythm of working in a lab, but once Kai and the others built and set up her lab that Ghost had approved and paid for, it had felt as though she never left.
 

When they had surprised her with the reveal, she hadn’t meant to, but she cried at what the lab symbolized.
 
They trusted her, despite the danger she had put them in, and she had doubled her efforts into finding a solution.
 
The differences this time; Kai was on her mind more often than not, and when Seth wasn’t in school or at work, they worked together and she had come to care for him.
 
Seth was surprisingly at ease around all the vampires and shifters, and when she made it known that she would be hurt if the vampires touched him, they had vowed that no harm would come to him.
 

As the days passed, she had lectured herself on the dangers of falling in love with the vampire.
 
Despite the entire mental list of reasons why she shouldn’t risk her heart, she had come to realize that logic had nothing to do with how she felt, and she couldn’t reason her way out of it.
 
It didn’t help matters when Kai had made her feel as though she truly mattered to him.
 
He’d gone out of his way to make sure that she ate, and made sure that she didn’t close herself off from getting to know the others, despite the snarl that he released whenever someone moved too close.
 
Jade and Kai had come close to fighting several times when the fox had touched her for what he considered to be too long, but she and the rest had managed to separate them before they hurt each other.
 
The more she’d gotten to know the small group of shifters and vampires who had volunteered to stay behind and protect her, the more she felt as though she belonged.
 
It wasn’t her career that defined her anymore.

Over the last couple of days, she had worked with the assassins who were part of the recon and breach team, going over the layout of the buildings she’d been in, and drawn out the blueprints of the buildings she had entered before.
 
Because of her wanted status, she had given the team codes to get in the building from the scientists who she believed continued to work there.
 
When they had gone over the plans, she mentioned where security was stationed, how often they patrolled the buildings, the number who were on the job during the middle of the night, and which scientists they might run into.
 
They had gone over every eventuality, but when she learned that Kai had volunteered, she’d worked herself into a frenzy as she listed all of the possibilities that might occur and worked on all contingencies for those eventualities, until she drove herself and the others crazy.
 
It wasn’t until Reaper had pulled her aside and promised to watch over Kai that she allowed herself a small amount of relief.

The relief lasted until the team suited up, and with one deep kiss, Kai had left with the rest of them.

Her eyes trailed over to the clock, and she noticed that it had been five minutes from the last time she hadn’t managed to keep her eyes away.
 
To distract herself from her worry, she had been finalizing the formula for the antidote.
 
She hadn’t been lying when she told Ghost that she had almost completed the formula when the entire company had arrived.
 
She typed the last of the formula into the protected document, so when they arrived back she would be able to give them the data.
 
With the formula completed, she backed up her work and saved it, before she shut down and stored the laptop in the safe.

For the first time since she’d arrived the week before, she had nothing to do.
 
But that wasn’t true.
 
She had to verify her results, and that meant using shifter or vampire blood, vaccinating it with the new antidote, and then exposing it to the bio-weapon.
 
Not bothering to glance at the equation she knew by heart, she took the next hour and a half to create her first countermeasure.

A spark of an idea flickered in her mind, but just as quickly she dismissed it, knowing that she would have to get permission before she continued.
 
She knew she couldn’t idly sit around and wait for Kai to come back to her safe and sound.
 
Before she could talk herself out of it, she walked toward the refrigerated storage and glanced to see whether she had everything she would need.
 
Instead of finding her supplies lacking, they had given her everything she would need to recreate the bio-weapon several times over.
 
As she debated whether she really needed to, she glanced at the clock again, and made up her mind to keep busy.

Before she dove in, she read over the instructions and divided the amount that would be created, enough for testing with a single drop of blood.
 
Her hand moved swiftly over the paper as she wrote the new calculations, double and then triple-checking, and found the calculations to be correct.
 
It still took her a moment to start on the final stage.
 
When she opened her eyes and reached for the first ingredient, she noticed that her hand shook.
 
Chastising herself, she closed her eyes and took several deep breaths before she continued.
 
Determination steeled her spine, and when she opened her eyes, she worked with precise movements, checking off each step as she went.

For the first time since Kai had left, she became immersed in her work.
 
The implications of what she’d created, without their permission, started to weigh on her, and by the time she almost completed the creation, she paused.
 
Her heart hurt with each beat in her chest, but when she heard loud footsteps that echoed down to her from above, signaling that they were home, she added the last ingredient.
 
She rushed to secure the liquid that amounted to less than a quarter of an ounce, before they came downstairs.
 
Cleaning the area thoroughly, she jumped when she spotted movement on the stairs, and her heart froze.

The door swung open the second she punched in the code, and she watched as Xander and Hunter carried Kai, broken and bleeding, into her lab and onto the couch in the corner.

“What happened?” she choked out.

“He was shot several times, and a guard broke his arm.
 
He lost consciousness for close to a half an hour, still bleeding.
 
They were waiting for us when we located the captives, but we managed to get everyone out alive,” Hunter grunted.

“He’ll need blood,” Xander said.

She nodded before she thanked both of her friends.
 
“Can you give us a few minutes?”

“We’ll be upstairs if you need us.
 
I’ll fog the glass so you won’t be disturbed.
 
Shout, and we’ll hear you, okay?” Hunter asked.