Scorned by Venom (Argentium Vampire Hunters Trilogy #2)

39. Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Luka

Jimmy had come running up to me and Sage asking to speak to me and I had no clue what he wanted.

“I’m going to check on my mom real quick,” Sage said, before kissing me. She headed toward the cabin and Jimmy started rambling.

“The witches visited us while you were still locked up. Shayla took my hand and told me something. At the time, I had no clue what it meant, but I finally figured it out.”

My brows pinched as I wondered what this had to do with me. “Go on.”

“There are nine figures for the house, which means it’s nine numbers long. Seven will lead the race with nine on its tail, so seven and nine are the first two. The snake eyes come in last so the number sequence ends with two ones back to back. The two shall not pass the other three, and that’s the part that confused me, until I realized there were two different threes and the number two had to be between them. Then she said, the five shall follow it, which meant the five had to follow the two, along with six. So the answer would be 793256311.”

I glared at Jimmy, wondering where this conversation was going. “Okay. I don’t know what any of that means.”

“Well, at first I thought the numbers were a security code but something deep down told me that was wrong.”

“Is there a point to this story?” I asked, baffled by the dude. He seemed cool, but I barely knew him.

“Did you know you had a code attached to you at VRC?”

Winnie screaming about Nellie being a rat, brought my attention in his direction. Seeing that Peach and Ravage had the situation under control, I turned back to Jimmy. “I actually didn’t.”

“They call it a patient identification number. While I was going over files, I saw your ID and even though the numbers started in a different sequence, they were still nine digits, like the one Shayla told me, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to pop the numbers into the patient registry. When I did, I found a vampire who they captured a year and a half ago. There’s no name attached, but they caught him in the same zip code as yours. His description closely resembles yours, leading me to suspect it may be Strike.”

Worried Jimmy was about to say my brother died while being experimented on, my mouth fell agape and my heart thundered in my chest.

“At first, I thought it could have been a coincidence until I saw this.” Jimmy held out a piece of paper and pointed to a section which said known markings. “The tattoo described on his sternum is exactly like the one you have.”

I placed my hand over the goat skull tattoo in the center of my chest, barely sticking out through the top of my T-shirt.

Not long after Ravage figured out how to tattoo vampires, me and my brothers decided to get matching ones. Andrei drew a goat skull with etchings inside of it that looked cool, so Strike and I both agreed to get it tattooed with him. At the time, I just wanted a tattoo and didn’t care what it was. But as I reflected on it years later, I realized the three of us having matching ones was a part of who we were. A bond that nobody could ever break.

Shoving my memories aside, I let my hand fall and took a shaky breath. “Is . . is he dead?”

Jimmy pushed his glasses back onto his nose. “No. He’s being held in a VRC location in Nevada and I have the address.”

Knowing my brother was alive, everything stopped—time, emotions, my breaths. The only thing that continued were the memories that flashed through my brain, reminding me of the months of torture I’d suffered at the hands of VRC.

Glass shards seemed to fill my throat as my heart pounded loudly in my ears. I’d barely survived what they’d done to me, and my brother had been there much longer. I needed to get him out of there—if there was anything left of him.

I yanked the paper from Jimmy’s hand. “Is this the address?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“When Winnie’s done trying to kill Nellie, tell him to meet me in the parking lot in ten minutes.”

I turned away from Jimmy and headed toward my cabin to grab some supplies before I hit the road.

“Ravage, Sage, somebody!” Jimmy hollered before running up and blocking my path. “You can’t go yet, Luka. We need to get a team together like we did for you.”

“You know I can kill you before you even blink,” I growled.

“If that’s what you feel like you need to do, then do it because I’m not moving!”

Even though I hadn’t known Jimmy long, he’d helped rescue me, so I wouldn’t kill him, but I had no problem scaring the shit out of him.

A hiss left me as I opened my mouth and bared my fangs. Jimmy’s eyes widened, then his chin stiffened, and I had to give him props because it was the bravest I’d ever seen him.

Before I had a chance to shove him aside—because seriously, he weighed about a buck fifty and I could remove him with my pinky—Ravage slid in between us.

“What’s going on, son?”

“I have to find Strike,” I said, holding up the paper. “I have the address to the VRC location he’s at and we need to get him out of there today.”

“We’ll have to get a team together and come up with a plan.”

Shaking my head, I stepped around him.

“Luka, wait.”

I ignored Ravage, continuing toward my cabin, but I knew damn well he wasn’t going to let me get far.

“I swear to you, boy, this is my only warning. If you take one more step, I’m going to hand you your ass!”

Even though I didn’t have time to fight with my origin, I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around. With fists tightened, I moved in close, going almost nose to nose. “You have no clue what they did to me in there! How they starved me, cut me, fucking tortured me. They stuck fingers in every goddamn hole of my body and needles into my balls to extract semen and they did it all in the name of fucking science!”

A gasp came from behind us and when I looked, Sage had both her hands clasped firmly over her mouth. It was mortifying to realize she’d overheard the one thing I wanted to keep secret.

The dampness on my cheeks made me quickly rub my face against my shoulder, using my shirt as a tissue before I turned back to Ravage. “Like I was saying, we need to get my brother out of there now.”

Ravage gently laid his hand on my shoulder, his eyes softening. “Okay, son. Let’s find Winnie and Drag.”

I bit down my feelings, forcing my gaze back to Sage. She didn’t look at me with pity or like I wasn’t a man anymore due to what happened to me. There was a fire in her eyes, the same kind I had brewing inside of me. A fire that said we would not only save Strike, but we’d take down every VRC and Venom location we’d find.

“We’ll get him out of there as soon as we can,” she said, picking up my hand, gently holding it between hers. “However, it’s important to avoid risking our lives or the lives of our friends by rushing in without a plan. If anyone knows how hard it is to wait out that time, it’s me, but we have to be strategic, Luka. For the sake of everyone.”

Just as I was about to reluctantly agree with her, Peach ran up. “Something is going down at Drifter’s and it’s not good.”