The Bite That Binds (The Deep In Your Veins #2) (32 page)

“Yet he didn’t stop?” Jared’s expression morphed into one of disgust.

“It wasn’t sitting well with him. Many times he had considered going to the police, but he was in too deep and he had a wife and twin daughters. Apparently, though, the vampires had noticed the guilt, so they had frightened him by telling him that if he talked, they would drink his wife dry and sell his children before then killing him.”

My eyebrows rose. “I suppose that explains why he was prepared to slit his own throat rather than tell us anything.”

“Was Ryder able to get us any names?” Jared asked Antonio.

“Yes. The name of the person who did most of the talking was ‘Zeke’. The one with the gift of meddling with memories was ‘Blake’.” Antonio smiled slightly as he added, “Ryder did sketches of them, but he’s no artist, so don’t expect too much.”

“This house that Erik, Sandra, and Mitch were taken to,” I began. “Did Ryder manage to get an address?” I wasn’t optimistic about that.

Antonio’s smile was smug. “Fortunately, as Sandra was familiar with that particular area, she was able to recognise the avenue.” Oh, fab.

Jared nodded approvingly. “Were there any other names? Anything that could be linked to the vampire who’s running the operation?”

Sighing disappointedly, Antonio replied, “They merely referred to him as ‘the boss’. They talked to each other about ‘Lynne’ and ‘Moira’, both of who I suspect take care of the babies.”

“Then Lynne and Moira die too,” I said simply, to which Jared nodded.

Antonio rose from the bench. “I suggest you leave promptly. Regrettably you’ll be missing tonight’s entertainment, but I will not have you miss or delay the ceremony − it
will
happen in two evenings’ time. Tomorrow evening must be a time that you can relax and prepare for it. As such, if all is not resolved tonight, I will hand over the assignment to another squad.” He held up a hand when both Jared and I went to speak. “I appreciate that this is a sore spot for every squad, but I will not let your work interfere with your Binding.”

We gave Antonio ‘fair enough’ nods. He was right; we couldn’t place an assignment before our Binding, no matter how delicate this particular assignment was. That simply made me more determined to end it tonight.

Okay, so the plan had been simple enough. Using the same technique we used at the secluded bungalow, we get inside, kill the occupants, and rescue anyone that needed rescuing, if applicable.

Of course, at first we needed to find out just how many people were inside, where exactly they were, and what it was they were doing. That was where Stuart would come in. From the roof of the late night café on the corner of the avenue, we had been able to tell that the gated house had plenty of security cameras. That wouldn’t be an issue as nobody monitoring the footage would notice Stuart travelling around as molecules. His role was to get inside, investigate, and report back with whatever information he found.

There turned out to be a huge problem with that.

“What do you mean you can’t get near the house?” I asked him. Jared and the squad all huddled closer on the roof.

Stuart looked at me helplessly. “The building’s surrounded by some kind of psychic alarm. I might not have noticed it, but a guy in the legion has the same gift and he’s placed one around his apartment so that if anyone even gets close to his door, the activity will trigger the alarm. You can’t
see
the alarm, but it makes a really low buzzing sound. I probably would have ignored the noise if it hadn’t been so familiar.”

Harvey flapped his arms. “So now what?”

“There’s something you guys should know,” began Stuart. “I heard two voices talking. One of the windows had been slightly open. Anyone passing wouldn’t have heard it…if they hadn’t been a vampire. They were talking about picking up a ‘package’ shortly to take to ‘Moira’, and that ‘the boss’ was impatient. They were also frustrated that some of the other ‘Docs’ hadn’t contacted them with a ‘package’ yet.”

“He obviously means Erik, Sandra, and Mitch, then,” said Jude, her eyes gleaming. The woman knew justice was close, and it was making her both anxious and restless.

“By package, they clearly mean they’re going to pick up another baby soon.” Jared sighed. “Well, if we can’t get in there, maybe the best thing would be to wait for them to come out. Then we follow them. We let them lead us to Moira and Lynne.”

“
And
we stop that baby from being sold,” stated Jude.

Jared nodded. “This ends tonight.”

Enter the new plan…

That plan entailed me sitting in the passenger seat of a car that Jared had parked outside the café. Courtesy of the vampires that Antonio sent, we were in possession of four cars that had been ‘borrowed’ for the night. It was a given that if we screwed this up and the vampires realised that someone was onto them, they would disappear and we might possibly lose any chance of getting to them or the person behind the op. Worse still, that would mean not only would babies continue to go missing and their mothers be killed, but we would be
unable to track the children that had already been sold. None of that was acceptable to any of us.

With all that in mind, it was agreed that in order to follow the Handlers without attracting their attention, we would need to be extremely careful. While watching from a car seemed beyond cliché and could often attract suspicion, Chico had been right when he said that a car parked outside a café wasn’t going to look suspicious. As an added precaution, he had instructed me to go shotgun, reading a newspaper; that way, it would simply look as though I was waiting for someone.

Inside the café, Jared was having a coffee at one of the tables near the window with David and Butch, who would soon be using the car that was parked beside mine. All three of them were very subtly monitoring the target. Of course, a human would have extreme difficulties with monitoring from such a long distance, but our enhanced vision gave us that advantage. What we had to bear in mind was that Zeke and Blake also had that advantage and would be able to see us as clearly as we could see them – hence all the cautiousness.

Helping the situation, Stuart and Denny were hovering near the house in their alternate forms, ready to report back with any movement from inside the building. As the house was on a one-way street, it had made it possible for Chico and Jude to wait in another vehicle around the corner – the Handlers’ car would have to drive in their direction, and so Chico could pick up the tailing from there.

Salem and Reuben were waiting at the bus stop that was one hundred yards in front of Chico’s car, who would pick them up as he passed by. Chico felt that for all four of them to be sitting in the car on watch would attract the attention of passers-by or neighbours, and attention wasn’t what we needed. I wasn’t all that convinced that so much cautiousness was necessary, but as he had been on stakeouts before, I trusted his intuition. Apparently, he had been on a couple of stake-outs that had been ruined by simply a nosy old woman seeing a strange car parked near her home. These days, people were wary of strangers hanging around. They had every reason to be.

Max, Harvey, and Damien were sitting in another car in the parking lot of a store located not far away, awaiting telepathic contact from Jared. Basically, everyone was in position, and all we needed now was for the Handlers to get moving.

Soon enough, a trail of molecules entered through the open window of the car. Taking a sneak peek around me and satisfied that no one would see anything, I quietly said, “You can change back.”

A second later, Stuart was lounging on the backseat with his head rested on his hand. “We have movement. The two guys from Ryder’s sketches were putting jackets on and switching off the T.V. I reckon they’ll leave any minute now. From what I could gather, they’re the only people in the house.”

Time to move
, I told Jared.

Quickly yet still managing to appear casual, he, Butch, and David abandoned their coffees and headed for the door. They would have managed not to attract any attention if they all weren’t so bloody gorgeous. One of the women in the café actually said something to Jared as he passed, which I imagined was a line of some kind.

“Slut.” I hadn’t realised I’d spoken aloud until Stuart started laughing. I shot him a scowl, but he just laughed harder. “Your time will come, Stuart. Then I’ll be the one laughing.” He just gave me a dismissive, ‘sure, sure’ look.

A little of my irritation must have been showing on my face, because the first thing Jared did when he hopped inside the car was give me one of his ‘whatever it is, I didn’t do it’ looks. I merely snorted.

“They’re leaving,” announced Stuart. We all looked in time to see two male vampires exit the house.

“Those are definitely the guys from the sketches,” stated Jared. “I’ll warn Chico and all the others to get ready to move.”

Obviously having heard Jared’s telepathic announcement, Denny travelled in his alternate form to the car beside ours, wherein Butch and David were already waiting. Once inside it, he returned to his human shape on the backseat.

We all remained very still as the Handlers’ black SUV drove by. I had no idea whether or not they took a look at us, because I focused on my newspaper to avoid any chance of eye contact. When I saw in my peripheral vision that they had turned the corner, I looked up again. It was only then that Jared – having known better than to immediately slip behind the SUV – started the car. At a steady pace, he exited the car parking lot and followed after the SUV. Butch kept close behind us.

As Jared drove along another street, keeping a fair distance between us and the Handlers, my enhanced vision was able to spot Chico’s car up ahead, tailing the SUV from the front. I guessed that was one way to avoid suspicion, though following from the front seemed a little complicated to me.

A left turn took us all onto a very busy road.

Jared exhaled a loud sound of annoyance. “We could have done without the heavy traffic.”

He was right. Keeping the vehicle in sight would be much easier for us, but that didn’t mean we could afford to leave a lengthy distance between us and them. Doing that would be to risk losing them in the traffic. So, as advised by Chico, Jared kept two car spaces between us and the Handlers as he drove. He was careful not to remain directly behind them by changing lanes every now and then. At one point, Max and Butch positioned the cars either side of the Handlers, so that we had all effectively boxed the SUV in.

About ten minutes into the pursuit, we came to a roundabout. Startling the hell out of me – and I’m pretty sure it equally startled the others – the Handlers didn’t take the first, second, third, or final turn; they instead continued to circle the roundabout…leaving us no choice but to drive on ahead of them, or expose that we were following them. Bollocks.

Chico, too, had been forced to take the final turn or expose himself. In the visor, I was able to see that the SUV actually circled the roundabout three times. At that point, they then took the same turn that we had taken, placing them six car spaces behind us.

Stuart took the words out of my mouth. “What the hell was all that about?”

“Chico thinks they’re testing to see if anybody’s following them,” said Jared.

“They’ve sensed that they have a tail?”

“It’s more likely that they’re doing a standard test. Chico said a lot of guys do things like quickly change their course, or enter a public building.”

I thought it wasn’t a bad idea, actually. “Circling a roundabout…I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“Chico’s pulled over up ahead,” Jared told us. “He’s going to fall in from behind and take our place at the rear of the Handlers. We’re going to now take his place at the front.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “I suppose the question is, though…how do you follow someone from the front?”

“Well, according to Chico, I shouldn’t watch for signals. He says that most drivers take a couple of seconds before flashing the light to signal that they’re turning. I should watch the driver and the tyres.” So that was exactly what Jared did. And he did pretty well at it. That was most likely a lot to do with the fact that Jared’s vision enabled him to observe very well.

But then the Handlers turned down a side-street.

“Shit,” Jared uttered.

“It’s okay. Chico or one of the others can stick with them.” But Stuart was wrong. Chico didn’t stick with the Handlers. He instead stopped just before reaching the corner, where Salem hopped out and proceeded to follow the Handlers on foot.

Having crossed the intersecting street, Jared made a somewhat illegal U-turn and drove down the opposite side. He parked outside a Chinese takeaway, placing him parallel with Chico. It was at that moment that Salem had returned to Chico’s car.

“They’ve parked at the end of the one-way street,” revealed Jared, obviously having telepathically heard the info from Salem. “Apparently there’s a white van waiting there. A van that looks a lot like the mobile hospital that Erik had.”

“Stuart, time to go spying.” My announcement was met with an excited smile. Then Stuart reduced himself to molecules that went zooming out of the slightly open window and across the road. “Where are Max and Butch?” I asked Jared.

“One of them is parked at the end of this road, and the other is waiting at the end of the other side.”