The Purest of the Breed (The Community) (42 page)

Sedge, Gábor, and Jaċken were already waiting by the long, dark passageway when Dev arrived. They made one helluva grim group. He didn’t know which was worse, a guy being cut off from a mate who was stuck topside, like he and Sedge were; Kimberly was either at her law firm or her apartment, probably none the wiser about the possible threat to her safety. Or having to leave his woman behind here in uncertain danger, like Jaċken and Gábor.

“Arc fucked up?” Jaċken asked.

“Yes.”

Jaċken paused, then nodded stiffly. “He’ll be okay. Let’s do this thing. Nichita and Pavenic, you’re on point.”

Jaċken put his hand on Dev’s shoulder; Sedge did the same with Gábor. Then the two of them with Pure-bred eyes set their retinas on flashlight-mode and led the way down the black-as-pitch tunnel.

When they reached the elevator, Jaċken moved over to the control panel. “Give me some more light over here, Nichita.” He waved Dev closer, then punched in the door-release code.

Nothing happened.

Jaċken muttered under his breath and pressed the intercom button. “Alex, you there?”

“Yes.”

“What the fuck? The doors aren’t opening.”

“Uh, I know, sorry. Unfortunately, the elevator codes were all erased when the community shut down. I have to reset everything.” They heard computer keys clacking over the intercom. “Just punch in 4-8-4-8 for now.”

Jaċken braced a hand on the side of the elevator. “Is that the same code I’ll use to get back in?”

There was a pause that lasted a second too long. “Um…I’d have Plan B ready to go, just in case.”

Jaċken pinched the bridge of his nose. “Well, this mission is off to a splendid start.”

Dev dimmed his retinas as he slid his gaze over to his boss. Kind of not his usual badass self right now, was he?

Jaċken punched in the new code and the doors cranked open.

The four of them stepped inside.

“Hey, Jaċken,” Alex’s voice came out of the intercom again. “As soon as those doors close, we’ll be cut off from all communication. So, um, good luck, okay? Tonĩ, she…she really loves—”

“Got it.” Jaċken rammed his forefinger into the
close
button and the doors thunked shut.

Not a great time for a warrior to get all squishy inside.

The elevator jerked, then rose,
clank
,
clank
,
clank
, like a dumbwaiter being hauled up from Hell.

Gábor stared up at the elevator’s fluorescent lights, watching them flicker. “Fuck, I hope the electricity holds.”

Dev glanced upward, too. How fun would that be to get stuck mid-ride, one-half mile deep in the earth with nothing but a whole lot of climbing to do in either direction?

They rode in tense, ready silence. Dev rolled his head from side to side, loosening up his neck. Twenty minutes of this was going to be a killer.

Sedge glanced over at Jaċken. “Facing death’s tougher now that you’re going to be a dad, isn’t it?”

Dev stopped fidgeting and fixated on the elevator’s
open-close
buttons. If the Topside Om Rău had somehow found out about this elevator exit and were waiting for them, then they’d be walking into one helluva shake and bake. But, shit, it was kind of an unspoken rule not to talk about the possibility of dying before a job. Or ever.

Jaċken didn’t answer. For a minute Dev thought he was following the tacit agreement not to jinx the mission, but then he did speak. “Tonĩ cried when she said goodbye. She tried not to, but she did.”

“Shit,” Gábor murmured. “I couldn’t even face Chelsea.”

Sedge swung his rifle up, resting the stock on his shoulder. “Welcome to married life, gentlemen.”

Dev snorted.
More like welcome to
— “Aargh!”

Together, the three other warriors turned to look at Dev, their eyes dropping to the hand he had pressed to his breastbone.

Jaċken’s eyebrows stabbed together. “Your radar?”

Dev’s mouth went dry. “It feels like it. Fuck!” Something was wrong with Marissa.

“Any reason to believe that Marissa would’ve left her hotel?” Jaċken asked.

“No,” Dev gritted.

“Then you need to assume she’s safe, Nichita.”

“Well, my fucking chest is saying otherwise, Jaċken.”
Ow
. This was open heart surgery performed with a spork.

“Jaċken’s right,” Sedge said. “My radar’s been doing a number on me, too, Dev. I think we’re all just spooked.”

Dev rubbed his sternum with the flat of his palm and took an uneven breath. Okay…okay, yeah. The pain was lessening a bit now.

Shaking his head, Gábor faced forward again. “What a group we make.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Minutes reeled by, one after the other. Could this elevator move any slower? The damned box finally bumped to a halt.

Jaċken was fully back in the game now; if they’d needed to dig themselves out of the cave, his jaw was hard enough to do it. He gestured them into position.

Dev and Gábor moved to stand on either side of the doors while Jaċken and Sedge knelt down at their sides, all of them with their rifles jacked back against their shoulders.

Jaċken reached up and pushed the
open
button.

Dev breathed slowly through his nostrils as the doors slid open onto a hallway off a parking garage, a door at the end, a stairway off to the right.

The muscles along Dev’s shoulders snapped taut. He applied steady pressure to his trigger—then released.
Nobody
.

They didn’t have a clear view through the door, though.

Jaċken rose smoothly to his feet and gestured Dev to the stairway for a better visual.

Holding his rifle in one hand, Dev ran two steps and grabbed the railing with his other, inhumanly managing his entire body weight with one arm as he swung himself up and over. He landed silently on the stairs right across from the door, adrenaline blasting through him. He brought up his M4 again and sighted along the stock.
Clear
.

He gestured to his team.

Jaċken flowed in a half-crouch down the hall, weapon raised. He surged through the door, scanning the entire garage. “Clear,” he said.

They experienced a collective tension power-down.

“One secured,” Sedge said. “Only three more entrances to go.” Sedge’s cell beeped the arrival of a message. “Whoa, what’s up with this?” He reached for the phone on his belt. “I thought we were off-comm.”

“It’s coming from up here,” Jaċken said.

Sedge looked down at his cell screen. “It’s from Kimberly. She wants me to call her.” His mouth curved into a distracted frown. “This message was sent hours ago.”

Jaċken cracked open the stock of his rifle and checked the ammo. “It couldn’t get through to you down in Ţărână, so it’s just been up here floating around on airwaves until we—” Jaċken’s cell phone beeped.

A second later Gábor’s.

They exchanged looks.

Grimly, Jaċken checked his phone. “Mine’s from Kimberly, too. She wants me to call.”

Gábor looked down at his screen, looked up. Nodded.

Sedge’s hand absently lifted to his breastbone.

Dev’s phone beeped. Three pairs of intense eyes watched him pull his cell out of the thigh pocket of his black cargo pants and read the message.
Where is everybody, for God’s sake? Call right away! Kimberly
. Dev’s throat clamped. “Mine’s from Kimberly, too, and she sounds urgent.”

Sedge whitened. With overly precise fingers, he dialed his phone, then lifted it to his ear.

Dev watched him, feeling antsy. If Sedge’s radar was pinging for a real reason, had Dev’s been, too?

“Shit,” Sedge ground out. “Our comm is still screwed up. No outgoing calls, just incoming messages.”

Jaċken slammed his rifle back into the holster across his back. “Move out,” he ordered.

They became the night.

They raced over rooftops, harnessing the power of the moon and the stars, effortlessly flying across the wide chasms that separated one building from the next. On the ground, they slipped invisibly from one patch of shadow to the next. Civilians on the street might sense a shift in the air around them when they passed, but that was all. They were Vârcolac in their element.

They headed to Kimberly’s office first. If she wasn’t there, they’d go to her topside apartment, and after that…nobody wanted to think about
after that
. It brought up too many images of finding her tortured body in a dumpster.

The four of them landed noiselessly on the roof of Kimberly’s two-story office bungalow. Light glowed in her window: good news, hopefully.

Below on the street, a man walked his dog.

Crouched low to the shingles, Dev paced the two. Keeping his breathing even, he drew deep quiet lungfuls of the night into his chest, filling himself with otherworldly power. Times like these, he hated living in a cave.

Man and dog disappeared around a corner.

At a gesture from Jaċken, Dev and Gábor remained poised on the edge of the roof while Sedge and Jaċken slipped soundlessly to the second floor balcony.

Sedge handed his rifle to Jaċken, gesturing his boss to stay back, then just walked through the door.

Mouth tight, Jaċken pressed against the wall.

“Sedge!” Kimberly exclaimed.

“Hey, Berly baby. I brought you some chocolates.”

“Where the hell have you been?! I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all day!”

There was an expelled sigh. “That’s
not
the way you’re supposed to answer the code. ‘Yes, I love chocolates’ means that there’re no bad guys lurking about. ‘No’ is…”

Jaċken looked up at Dev and Gábor, one eyebrow lifted at a sardonic angle. “I guess we’re clear,” he whispered, then pushed into the office.

Dev and Gábor descended fluidly to the balcony and followed him inside.

Sedge was pulling his wife into a relieved embrace, but the moment Kimberly saw Dev, she broke free and rushed over to him.

“Thank God, you’re here,” she cried out. “It’s Marissa, Dev! He took her!”

Dev slammed to a halt, his chest collapsing.
He
?

Kimberly clutched his forearm, her complexion chalk-white. “I was left behind to give you a message.”

Dev felt the oxygen leave his lungs. He felt his palms turn to ice. “What message?” he snarled. His eyes exploded with Pure-bred fire as the first winds of an incredible tornado of fury whirled to life inside him.

Chapter Forty-three

Topside, 8:17 p.m.

“Please, don’t do this,” Marissa begged, gripping the edge of the limousine’s leather seat.

Her captor didn’t get a chance to respond.

They appeared suddenly, dropping from the tops of the tall buildings with cat-like stealth, landing silently in the alley on widespread legs. Motionless as shadowed night, they stood just beyond the beam of the limousine’s headlights, three sets of massive shoulders silhouetted against a single streetlamp further down the alleyway.

A primordial hush descended with them; traffic noises faded to an indiscriminate, rambling
hum
, and the night watch at the nearby 32nd Street Naval shipyard stopped their shouting and hammering. Off to the right, a manhole cover belched out a steady boil of steam, wispy fingers that wended around their legs and trailed up their bodies like a ghost’s caress.

“My, how atmospheric,” Raymond Parthen commented glibly from where he sat watching through the window of his plush limousine. “For all their shortcomings, the Vârcolac certainly know how to make an entrance.” He pulled on one leather glove, then another, the set a perfect match for his camel-hair coat. “Good call on your friend, my dear. The lawyer obviously passed on the particulars of this rendezvous as was required.” He glanced across at Mürk and Videön. “Gird your loins, lads, it’s time to negotiate—do
not
shoot anyone.”

The Topside Om Rău called Tëer—Gangrene Face—stayed behind the wheel of the limousine, a pistol on the seat beside him, while Mürk and Videön climbed out and positioned themselves on either side of the car, both armed with nasty-looking black rifles.

With a debonair smile, Raymond offered Marissa a gloved hand. “Shall we?”

A shiver flitted up Marissa’s spine. She made no move to take Raymond’s hand. The moment she stepped out of this limo, Dev’s life would be in danger. Raymond had no intention of
negotiating
. He was going to threaten the Vârcolac, and use her to do it, which meant Dev was going to go bananas, and
that
would probably get him killed. “Please, don’t do this,” she said again.

“Ever so sorry, my dear.” Raymond thrust open the limo door. “I must have Tonĩ returned to me, and you’re my trump card for achieving that end.”

She shrank back against the seat when he reached for her. “You don’t even know if Tonĩ can be useful to you,” she argued. “You’re hurting people for no good reason.”

His smile returned, frightening and chilling. “Perhaps I would like to be reunited with my long-lost daughter. Antoĩnetta has acquired some…interesting powers which require discussion.” He took Marissa by the arm and pulled her out onto the street next to him.