He pulled on his jeans first, for Vash’s sake, then used his shirt to wipe the blood from his mouth and chest. “I’m lenient about many things,” he said to the group at large. “But I won’t tolerate disobedience or threats of any kind against Vashti. Are we clear?”
Two of the males shifted forms at the mention of who she was, unable to restrain their agitation. The snarl he shot them had them sitting, if shifting restlessly. “Let Paul get up.”
Vash released the man, but kept her gaze trained on the others.
Paul straightened, raking Elijah with a sweeping glance. “I’ve never seen a lycan shift so fast.”
“Betcha never seen a lycan who’s nailing a vampress either,” Vash said. “Syre’s second, no less. It’s a whole new world.”
Elijah arched a brow at her. “Didn’t I tell you to behave?”
“I don’t take orders from you when I’m not naked.”
He decided not to give her any more ammunition. “I need access to your data center, Paul.”
“Yes, Alpha.” Paul gestured through the gate. “I’ll show you where it is.”
Elijah was deep into working on the data when Vash’s cell phone rang. Excusing herself, she stepped out to the hallway and answered, managing a smile when Syre’s face appeared on her iPhone screen.
“Vashti,” he greeted her. “How are things faring in Huntington?”
“I don’t know yet. They’re digging for the goods now.”
“What is that on your neck?” He frowned. “Is that…jewelry?”
She flushed. “Yeah. What’s up?”
“Have things smoothed out between you and your lycan?”
“I’m keeping him.” She figured it was best to get that out of the way.
Syre’s smile revealed his fangs. “Excellent.”
Her fist clenched at her side, her mind’s eye seeing the fork in the road ahead and the decision she’d soon be forced to make between the two most important men in her life.
“Can you speak privately?” His smooth, soothing voice had the opposite effect, making her hackles rise.
“Not yet.” Vash glanced up at one of the lycans on guard duty in the hallway. “Nearest soundproofed room?”
He jerked his thumb down the hall, his gaze cold and hard. “Two doors down on the right, bloodsucker.”
“Thanks, Fido.”
Once she was inside alone, she cocked her ears and listened for anything other than her own breathing. She kicked the walls one by one, listening for the telltale sound of a pocket where a bug could be hidden. When those checks come up clear, she nodded. “Okay. I’m good. What’s up?”
“I’m heading with Raze to Chicago now to follow up with his contact there. Torque is covering for us while we’re in the field.” Syre leaned back in his chair. “As for your lycan…there’s something you need to know.”
Her heartbeat skipped at his tone. “Oh?”
“His blood caused a remission in that wraith yesterday for a reason—he’d just drunk filtered Sentinel blood through Lindsay. When Grace tested Lindsay’s blood via the needles and other paraphernalia that you had the presence of mind to retain, she found the effect to be even more pronounced. It’s highly likely that pure, undiluted Sentinel blood—or perhaps all angelic blood—is the key to a cure for the Wraith Virus.”
She heaved out her breath and nodded grimly.
“You suspected that,” he noted.
“I knew it had to be something major in order for Adrian to let Lindsay come with me.” She ran a hand through her hair and paced, her heels clicking across the tiled floor. “Fuckin’ A. This could explain why he took my blood. He probably figures we might still have similar blood properties.”
“I’ve sent Grace blood samples from me, Raze, and Salem. We’ll see what she turns up. With any luck, this trip to Chicago will prove fruitful and we’ll be able to get her the help she needs to speed things up.” He paused a moment. “Also, there was an incendiary device found in the wreckage of the pickup truck. It’s possible it was set off by remote.”
“How would the person with the remote know to activate it?” Her mind scrambled ahead. “Unless they were watching.”
“We found pockets of C4 all over the wraith house. It was a trap.”
“Why didn’t the house go up? If they saw the truck pull out, they definitely saw us in the house.”
“We don’t know. Perhaps your double had the remote for the house in the truck. Or the receiver was defective. Salem is leading a team through the property now. Torque is working on tracking the purchase of the C4. Hopefully we’ll have some answers soon.”
Vash rubbed at the icy lump in her chest. “Until we’ve got a better handle on this, watch your back in Chicago. And keep an eye on Raze. There’s something between him and that lab tech you’re visiting.”
“I caught that. Keep me posted.”
Syre’s austerely beautiful face faded to black and she blew out her breath in a rush. She turned when the door opened behind her.
Elijah filled the doorway and the fear that had been sliding through her eased its grip.
He held his hand out to her. “We’ve found what you’re looking for.”
Vash squeezed Elijah’s shoulder as she read the data on the massive van-sized monitor on the wall. “Three lycans,” she said. “Three against Char and Ice. They shouldn’t have been able to win.”
He looked at her, studying her face, wishing he knew who she’d been on the phone with and what they’d told her. Her usual vivacity was subdued, concerning him. “Do you believe the accusation that Charron’s fledgling incited an attack?”
“It’s possible.” Her troubled gaze met his. “Ice was problematic. He was struggling with bloodthirst and he lacked self-control. I was leaning toward putting him down, but Char thought he could turn the kid around. I was so busy with my duties as second that it was hard for me to deny him something that gave him pleasure and kept him occupied.”
Elijah read between the lines. They hadn’t been equals, not as he and Vash were. “But Ice survived the attack—”
“Only by hours. He’d been burned too badly by the sun.”
“—while Charron was brutalized.”
She nodded. “The attack was especially vicious. So much so that I thought maybe the demons had gotten to him before I arrived. But the body reeked of lycans, and the disemboweling had been done with lycan teeth.”
The demons. A chill moved through him. Pulling her close, he placed his lips to her ear and asked, “How soon after Char’s death were you attacked?”
She yanked back. “Who said I was—” Then she scowled. “An hour. Thereabouts.”
“An hour…” He crushed her to him, squeezing her so tightly, she gasped and struggled. “I’m going to find a way to raise them from hell and kill them all over again.”
“Elijah.” She softened and let him love her, pressing her lips to his jaw. “Always avenging somebody…except when I get in the way.”
He turned back to the monitor, keeping an arm around her waist. He spoke to the lycan named Samuel who manned the keyboard. “Can you pull up their histories and display them side-by-side?”
Samuel typed in the necessary commands and Elijah studied the results. “Same month and year of birth for all three,” he noted.
“And they all died the same year,” Vashti murmured. “Within a few months of each other.”
“Same litter, Samuel?”
The lycan frowned at the monitor. “We don’t have many triplet births, but let me pull up their breeding charts…Huh. There aren’t any. That’s weird.”
“We can check their blood,” Elijah said. “Send someone to cryostorage to pull their samples.”
Samuel picked up the phone embedded in the workstation and passed along the order.
Vash’s fingertips kneaded restlessly into his hip. “Would that be unusual for brothers to hunt together?”
“Depends.” His gaze remained on the monitor. “At a younge
r age, no. But these were breeding-age males. They should have been spread around among the outposts.”
“Widening the gene pool,” she filled in drily. “How romantic.”
“Explains why their information is so similar. Doesn’t explain why they died. Samuel, why isn’t there a notation as to cause of death?”
Shrugging, Samuel said, “Depends on the situation at the time and the thoroughness of the tech. Remember, this room was Sentinels-only before the revolt, and most of them don’t give a shit how we die.”
Elijah pulled his ringing phone from his pocket to silence it, then noted Stephan’s name and took the call. “What’ve you got?”
“A few hundred lycans,” his Beta said drily. “I’m back at the warehouse. As the teams move across the country, they’re running across expat lycans and sending them here. Someone needs to be here full time to process them.”
“Thank god you’ve got initiative.”
Stephan laughed. “If I bothered you with every administrative decision, you’d bite my head off. Perhaps literally.”
“You’re too valuable. I’d find something else to torture you with.”
“Listen, there’s something else.”
The sudden gravity in his Beta’s voice set Elijah on alert. “What?”
“Himeko’s telling everyone you’ve mated with Syre’s second.”
“Hmm…” He watched as Vash stepped in front of him with a frown, her vampiric hearing ensuring that she heard every word. He smoothed the line between her brows with soft strokes of his thumb. “Not yet. She’s still getting used to the idea.”
There was a long pause. “Alpha, I hate to point out the obvious—”
“Then don’t.”
“Vampires can’t breed.”
“Thank you for the recap.”
Stephan was not amused. “It’s my job as your Beta to inform you of concerns in the ranks. Don’t mock me for doing it.”
“I would never mock you—I respect you too much. In return, I ask that you don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot. I’m doing everything I can to the best of my ability. That’s all anyone has a right to know. My personal life is my own. If there’s a problem with that, tell the others to direct their energies to finding the Alpha outpost. Then we can have a democratic election and everyone can have a say.”
Vashti’s gaze darkened. Not funny, she mouthed.
No, it wasn’t. The only way another Alpha could gain control of the packs was by taking Elijah out. They wouldn’t get the respect they needed to lead without that victory.
“I’ll keep you posted,” Stephan said.
Elijah killed the call and returned his attention to the monitor. “Now, where were we?”
The ringing of the phone in the workstation interrupted as if on cue. Samuel answered. “Did you double-check? Well, check again.”
Vashti’s gaze narrowed. “Wanna bet the blood’s missing?”
“Don’t like the odds,” Elijah replied, not surprised when Samuel proved Vash’s hunch correct. “Okay, then, pull up their photos.”
“No problem. Let me see…Ah, here’s one. Peter Neil.”
A familiar image popped up on screen and Elijah scowled. “I know him. Worked with him a time or two. His name isn’t Peter.”
“A sibling, maybe?” Vash queried.
“No. See the scar on his lip? Same guy.”
“Is he here?” she asked Samuel.
“I’ve never seen him before.”
“He’s dead,” Elijah said curtly. “Killed in a nest raid about twenty years ago. I was there when it happened. Do you have head shots of the others?”
Whistling, Samuel tapped out another string of keystrokes and another picture popped up. “Here’s Kevin Hayes.”
Vashti sucked in a deep breath.
Elijah’s remaining patience thinned dangerously. “Wrong photo.”
“That’s the one that was shot on intake,” Samuel insisted.
“It’s a mistake. That’s Micah McKenna.”
“McKenna, huh? Hang on. Okay, there’s a Micah McKenna in the system. Yeah…you’re right. He came in the same day as Kevin. Maybe the photos got switched around and misfiled. Here’s the one from Micah’s file.” The same photo popped up. “Someone fucked up.”
But Elijah’s attention was riveted to the history data that had opened along with the photo. His gaze skimmed through it, finding all the expected information—registered mate, archives of transfers and kills, breeding chart.
“He lied,” Vash said. “I asked him his age and he said—”
“—fifty.” Micah’s official record put him at eighty years old, which made it possible for him to have killed Charron. He’d been too young at fifty—the perfect alibi. “Where’s the third lycan’s photo?”
“Here.” Samuel pulled it up. “Anthony Williams.”
His fists clenched with recognition. “Look up Trent Parry.”
“All right…Yep, he’s here, too.”
“Well, look at that,” Vash muttered. “The same photo as Anthony.”
Elijah’s entire world tilted to the side, skewed by the realization that the men he’d trusted had betrayed him and every other lycan.
She began to pace. “It’s a fucking cover-up. They created a paper trail for three imaginary lycans and absolved them of guilt in Char’s death. Why, damn it? Why did the Sentinels protect three rabid dogs?”
He shot her a look that warned her to say no more. “Samuel, get me copies of all these files, on both a flash drive and disks. Look up a Charles Tate, too, and throw him in the mix. He’s the one using the alias Peter Neil.”
Vash stopped directly in front of him. “Is Trent dead like Micah and Charles? Have I been hunting ghosts?”
“Trent was with me in Phoenix during the trip when Nikki attacked Adrian and we found Lindsay.” He pressed his lips to her brow and murmured, “You may have to fight her for him. She wants him, too.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain later. For now, let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 20
Vash didn’t realize how furious Elijah was until they returned to the hotel and he began shoving things into his bag.
“Elijah.” She reached out to him as he stormed past her.
“Get your shit. I want you out of here. I don’t trust this place. Don’t trust what’s left of that pack.”
“Elijah.”
“I’ll throw it together if you won’t,” he growled, grabbing toiletries out of the bathroom. “But you’d better not bitch at me if something gets left behind.”
When he emerged, she stepped right into his path. “Will you talk to me, damn it!”
“What?”
“You’re pissed.”
“Goddamn right I’m pissed.” He tossed the things in his hand on the bed and growled. “You know what Rachel said to me before she incited the rebellion at Navajo Lake? She said, ‘It’s all on you.’ Now I have to wonder if I’ve been manipulated in ways I haven’t figured out yet. It’s certain they wanted you and me to kill each other. If we hadn’t fallen into rut the minute we scented each other, one or both of us would be dead. We’d never have spent the time together that led to where we are now, and Syre would be out for someone’s blood.”
“You think Micah’s the one who planted your blood for me to find?”
He crossed his arms, straining the armholes of the T-shirt he’d borrowed after getting blood on his own. “You killed Micah’s partner but kept Micah alive to interrogate. Why not the other way around?”
“He had a big mouth. Taunting me and being an all-around asshat. It was easy to pick him.”
“He made it easy. And I think it’s possible you recognized his scent from Charron’s attack without realizing it. Maybe you even recognized it from Nikki’s abduction. That knowledge might’ve been there in the back of your mind.”
“I have Char’s killers’ scents ingrained in my memory. I wouldn’t miss that.”
“I
once had to argue my right to claim a kill because a badly wounded lycan had bled all over the body. It smelled like her, more so than me, because of the blood. If Micah had access to my blood to frame me, certainly he had access to others’. Considering the trouble involved in creating that paper trail, dumping a couple bags of blood around Charron’s body would be the easy part. And we both know how a disemboweling smells. That could explain why the attack was so vicious—they wanted the stench to cover up their identities.”
She sank heavily onto the bed. “Why?”
Elijah crouched in front of her. “To break you. I think they’ve been trying to do that for years. First through Charron’s death, then through me. Micah’s the thread there. You can’t tell me that’s coincidence. I won’t buy it.”
“No.” She exhaled harshly. “I’m not buying it either.”
“And we can’t forget about your double attacking Lindsay’s mother. Lindsay grew up planning on killing you her whole life.”
“They would’ve had to know who she was. That she had Shadoe’s soul inside her.”
“Yes. Just as they’d know Adrian or Syre would find her, and through them, she’d find you. It explains why she wasn’t killed along with her mother. In my experience, the minions who go batshit have a liking for children’s blood.”
“I’ve heard it’s sweeter,” she murmured absently, rubbing at the ache in her chest. To think of Char dying because of her…“I’m not important enough to go to this much trouble for.”
“You’re important to Syre. Very much so. And so was Phineas to Adrian.” He caught up her cold hands in his. “This is psychological warfare—cripple the primaries by taking out their seconds. Micah likely deliberately sacrificed himself for the cause—just as I now suspect Rachel did. They wanted me in a specific headspace to achieve their aims.”
“To put you and the lycans on the high ground? Is that what this is all about? To make you the dominant faction?”
“I don’t know.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “That wouldn’t explain the doctored files and missing blood; only Sentinels had access to cryostorage and data centers. And your double brings vamps into the mix, too. Why would they want lycans at the top of the food chain?”