Shattered (23 page)

"Where do
you think this group came from? Has he been here all along and we
just never realized it?"

Jack shook his
head. "No, a mentalist with that much power would have found out
about us long ago if he was here on our continent. He was strong
enough to pick stray thoughts out of people's heads without even
trying at an incredible range. No, his move here had to have been
relatively recent. He came from the Old Country."

I tried to
suppress the shiver of unease that Jack's words conjured, but it was
just too much to ask from my exhausted body. Europe had been all but
unreachable during the days of the monarchy. We'd known it existed,
that there was something out there across the oceans, but that had
been during a time when flight was impossible and ocean voyage a
near-certain death. And then later on, after the Coun'hij took over,
we were all forbidden from crossing either ocean.

Europe and Asia
had taken on a mythical stature. Anyone could see pictures and videos
of the great cities, but that didn't answer the one question that we
all had. What was it really like there?

We knew that
was where vampires had come from, but had no way of knowing for sure
whether the vampires here were just the castoffs who couldn't survive
back in their homeland. The theory had a certain elegance to it. The
Pilgrims had been in many respects refugees who'd been fleeing
persecution and it only followed that some of the weaker vampires
would have seen the same opportunity to make a new life for
themselves.

Despite that,
we'd continued to hold out hope that it wasn't so. The vampires here
were bad enough, a dark plague that did nothing but destroy and
reproduce. The thought of vampires even more ancient, more dangerous
was enough to give anyone nightmares, only now the nightmares had
just been proven real.

"So where
do we go from here, Jack?"

"It seems
to me like you're the guy calling all the shots now, Alec. I don't
have the people to contest your leadership, not after whatever you
just did to that vampire."

"I don't
want it to be like that between us, Jack. I value your expertise and
your friendship. If you want to officially join my pack then I'll
welcome you with open arms, but I'm not about to take advantage of
what has just happened to force you into some kind of position of
subservience.

"Please
just give me the benefit of your advice. How do we guarantee that
whatever monster vampire this gang reported to doesn't come after
us?"

Jack shrugged.
"I'm not sure that there's a way to guarantee that, but the
first step is going to be trying to hunt down the humans and vampires
who executed the hits at the power station and in that alley. I'll
organize patrols—preferably with a wolf on a leash like what
James did with Jess. We'll send one group out, maybe two if some of
the surviving wolves regain consciousness in the next half hour."

"The gang
members are going to be moving around in vehicles."

"Yeah, I
know, but that's not much different than what we were up against in
St Louis. Once it gets dark we'll go back to patrolling in pairs on
four legs so we can cover more ground. Some of the humans might be
able to escape by lying low, but unless there is a storm in the next
couple of days we should be able to hunt down any vampires who
haven't already left town. Sooner or later they have to get out of
their car and walk somewhere and when that happens we'll have them."

"That
sounds good to me. I don't think that James or Carson will give you
any trouble, but if they do let me know and I'll do my best to
convince them to support you. Can you help me move Brindi off to one
side of the bed before you go talk to them though?"

"I'm not
sure that's a good idea, Alec. I know you're worried about increasing
the strength of her addiction, but something happened to her while we
were fighting inside that warehouse. One minute she was fine and then
all of a sudden she collapsed. By the time we managed to hook back up
with Alison's mom, Brindi had been running a temperature for more
than half an hour and she was having a hard time breathing.

"We dumped
the two of you in here because there weren't enough open rooms to
give all of the injured their own beds. By the time another room came
open and I came back to move her, her temperature had stabilized and
she was breathing better."

"So you
think whatever happened to her had something to do with me killing
the mentalist?"

"You have
to admit, the timing is pretty suspect."

"Yeah,
only I have no idea what I did or why Brindi would be involved,
especially from so far away."

Jack gave me a
tight grin. "You'd better figure it out. If we're really going
to be up against a batch of super-vamps then whatever it is you just
did to that mentalist may be the only thing that saves our people
from extinction."

"Yeah, I
already had the same idea. What if it only happened because this
vampire was stupid enough to hit me?"

"Then
we're all screwed, but try not to let the pressure get to you.
Carson, James and I are being vague about what happened inside the
warehouse when Alison and her mom ask questions. It isn't much, but
we'll try to buy you a little time to figure out what exactly you're
capable of now."

"Thanks."

"Yeah,
just don't take too long. There's a war going on out there and we
need to know whether your ability will help hold off the Coun'hij."

Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming

The sound of
the messaging service asking me if I wanted to save the third message
eventually brought me out of shock. I hit the save option with a
shaking finger and gritted my teeth so I could get through the last
message. I didn't want to listen to it, but I couldn't not listen to
it, not when it might be whoever had abducted my family calling back.

"Adri, if
you get this I need you to call me right away. I sent Brad over to
your house and the back door had been ripped off of the hinges. Your
family is gone. Brad called the police while his girlfriend texted
me, but something tells me that they aren't going to find any clues.

"Cindi
told me about her theory where Detective Belarose is concerned, so I
called her up and begged her to look into the investigation, but I
don't know if she'll actually do anything. I'm going out of my mind
here. Please call me back so I know what to do next."

I absently hit
the save button and then hung up. I felt strangely disconnected from
the world around me as I stripped out of my pajamas and pulled on
jeans and a t-shirt. I felt like I should be freaking out, but some
basic, survival-level instinct had taken over and it had broken
everything down into a set of linear steps.

Getting dressed
meant that I could slip into my shoulder rig and holster my gun
underneath my arm. Once I had my gun, then I could go back out into
the rest of the bunker and tell Taggart and everyone else what had
happened. Part of me was faintly yelling that I had things out of
order, that I needed to tell everyone what had happened right now,
but that screaming piece of me was wrong.

However this
went down I was going to need my gun. I was going to do my best to
save Cindi and my parents, but either way I was going to put a bullet
between the eyes of the parasite who had kidnapped them.

Everyone was
still running back and forth packing up the vehicles in the garage
area as I stepped out of my room, but I simply worked my way through
the crowd, searching until I found Isaac and Taggart. They were in
the cafeteria, discussing the best way to California and putting
together a list of people who might be willing to get involved in a
fight where the stakes included the possible extinction of their
entire race.

"They have
my family."

Taggart turned
towards me, his face frozen in shock. "What do you mean? Who has
your family?"

"I don't
know for sure, but the only logical answer is that it's vampires.
Nobody else would have known to be looking for me."

Somehow Taggart
had covered the distance between us without me even seeing him move.
"Adri, I need you to start from the beginning. What happened
after I left you?"

"I checked
my messages. The first two were just Tristan leaving me his number
like he'd said he would. The third one was from someone I didn't
recognize, someone who said that she knew who I was—knew what I
was capable of—and that she had my family."

Isaac had his
smartphone out. "Maybe she's bluffing. I'll check the police
feed—it's Minnesota right?"

I shook my
head. "No, it's for real. The last message was from Tristan. He
sent his friend over to my house to talk to Cindi, but when he got
there my whole family was gone."

Isaac stopped
moving as though unsure how to proceed. Taggart knelt down in front
of me so I didn't have any choice but to look at him.

"Adri, can
I listen to that message?"

I hit redial on
my phone and then entered my passcode before putting the phone on
speaker mode. Listening to the message again, listening to someone
threaten to cut pieces off of my family should have ignited a fresh
wave of anger inside of me, but I was too numb to do anything more
than just sit there as Taggart replayed the message two more times.

"I don't
hear anything distinctive in the background. Isaac, is there any way
you can track down where the call originated from?"

Isaac was
tapping on his phone, but he wasn't actually typing anything, it was
just a nervous tic. "I don't know. I'll try, but I haven't taken
a run at the major phone carriers for a while. I'd have to hack
something like a dozen different systems to have even a remote chance
of tracking them down that way and even then the odds aren't good.
Even if I can track them back to where the call originated, there
still isn't any guarantee that they haven't moved since then."

Isaac was so
obviously distressed by his inability to help that his emotions
managed to penetrate even the numbness inside of me. I tried to
smile, but my face felt too wooden for the expression to have looked
very natural.

"It's
okay. I knew all along that I was going to have to give them what
they want. I'll call them back and go wherever they want me to go.
Maybe if they have me they'll really let my family go."

Taggart had
hold of my shoulders and his grip tightened to the point of being
painful before he regained control of himself.

"You can't
do that, Adri. Even if you turn yourself over it's far more likely
that they'll hold onto your family as a way of guaranteeing that
you'll continue to do what they want."

"I know
that, but I don't see any other option. We don't have any way to
track them down and we don't have very long before I'm going to have
to call them. What would you do in my place? What if it was me who
had been kidnapped?"

Taggart sighed
heavily. "I would give myself to them—but only after I'd
done everything else I could to free you using other means. The
message said that you had time still, let us use that time. I'll call
my contacts, Isaac will call his, and we'll try to put together a
plan."

I gave him a
sad smile. "You guys can't afford to do that, not when we still
don't know if Alec's group managed to wipe out that other group of
vampires. There's more at stake than just the question of what
happens to me."

Taggart shook
his head. "There is very little, if anything, in this world that
is more important to me than you are. The odds are that Alec and his
people will be just fine. Your skin is cold, you're obviously in
shock. Please let me walk you back to your bedroom so you can lie
down. Isaac and I will come up with something that gives us a chance
to rescue your parents and then we'll come get you in a couple of
hours."

I hesitated, at
which point Isaac jumped in. "He's right, Adri. We just need
some time. Whatever you do, please don't call them back yet. The fact
that they didn't have any way to get ahold of you directly is the
best thing we have going for us right now. It means we have time to
plan, to get people into position and do all of the other legwork
that will give us a chance at having this turn out okay."

"Okay,
I'll give you some time, but don't feel bad if you can't come up with
a solution. I'm not expecting anyone to produce any miracles."

"Hey,
miracles are our specialty. We can always have Heath accompany you
wherever they take you. He'll just go invisible and they'll never
even know he's there."

"Nice try,
Isaac, but we all know that kind of thing won't work against
vampires. A mentalist like Pamela doesn't need to see you to know
that you're there. There isn't a solution to this particular
problem."

Taggart started
to guide me back towards my room, but I shook off his hands. "I
don't want to go back to my room, but I also can't be here right now.
I'll be in the shooting range if you need me."

I'd only been
back to the bunker's small shooting range once since we'd returned.
There were a lot of different reasons, but the truth of it was that
now that I'd fired a gun in anger, shot with the intent of killing,
marksmanship wasn't just some diverting pastime that had the added
bonus of potentially being something that could save my life.

I'd gone back
to the range the day after we returned expecting things to be the
same, but they hadn't. I'd still gone through the practice regime
that I'd developed during my first stay at the bunker, but making it
to the end of the routine had been emotionally and mentally
exhausting.

As I stepped
into the range—wincing from the way that closing the big door
pulled at my phantom injury—I could already tell I wasn't going
to have that problem now. Whoever had stolen my parents and Cindi
away was probably guilty of far worse crimes than just kidnapping,
but that didn't matter, kidnapping was enough for me.