Thirteen
I make my way to the garage. Enoch and Ezriel have been cleaning up the yard and have moved those “lucky”
enough to have survived Mother’s monsters into the cells hidden beneath the building.
When the trapdoor is shut, you can’t hear their screams of pain or cries for help, but at the moment, it’s been left open, and wails and howls and little pathetic whimpers echo up the stairs.
They know something worse than death is coming for them.
I head down into the harshly lit room, the bulbs so bright as to hurt the eyes. But though it’s bad for me, it’s worse for the wolves.
Despite being born on Earth, their kind evolved on a world that never sees true sunlight due to a constant coverage of clouds.
Around two to four pups lie in each of the three cells. Normally, it’s one person each, but these are not hardened soldiers, an elite task force that was trained to fight Mother.
These are nothing but rogue pups that were promised a position in Antonio’s pack if they fought well. They weren’t even told we were the target; else, they wouldn’t have come.
All they are is cannon fodder. I doubt they will know any of Antonio’s secrets, but if there’s a chance one of them has overheard something they shouldn’t have, I need to check.
“Heal me… please,”
a young mutt begs as he lies on his side on the floor, scooping up his spilled intestines with shaky hands.
He pushes them into the hole in his stomach, but they keep falling back out. He needs to lie on his back to have a chance of keeping them in, but even then, his odds of survival without a healer are slim.
He’s lost too much blood, his skin pale and sweating. “Please…”
Cries for mercy flood the place.
“Let me go.”
“Please don’t kill me.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Antonio forced me…”
I glance at a blond-haired boy who is missing both his legs from the thigh down. The fact that he’s still conscious means he has just entered his ascension. The healing magic inside of him has a fresh well to pull from, and it’s working overtime, but eventually, it will fail. He can’t be more than nineteen.
When he finds me staring, hope fills his eyes. He’s too naive, not knowing it’s worse to have the attention of your enemy. He wouldn’t have spent any time in the Death Hunt.
I start to turn away to pick someone else to interrogate when he says, “He has my sister… Please help her… and I’ll tell you… everything.”
“What do you know?”
“Help –”
“Only if you have usable information.”
He struggles to sit up. His desire to talk to me like a man rather than lying on his back has me recalculating what he might’ve been through. Kids don’t handle pain that well if they come from happy families.
“Antonio is breeding… hybrids,”
he says. “My sister was forced… into the program four… years ago. I tried to rescue her… but they chased me out.” He takes a heavy breath, then another. Sweat glistens on his brow. The puddle around him grows, and the stench of iron is making my teeth ache. I clench my jaw, fighting back my urge to feed. I am more than my base desires.
“I have been rogue ever since, but I know… where they are keeping her and the other women. He… bought a whole town and turned the school… into a… a facility…”
My blood runs cold. Micha is in a school. If he’s fucking breeding her –
His eyes start to close.
“Where?”
I snap, praying he isn’t going to say the area I just fucking marked out.
“Morning Springs, West…”
“Virginia?”
He nods, looking as pale as a ghost.
A dark energy claws at me, begging for release. My body shakes as I struggle to control it. She’s been there for hours. How many times have they –
Stop.
Concentrate.
You can’t help her if you lose it.
Gritting my teeth, I breathe in hard. My fists clench, but I stop the rest of my body shaking. “How many wolves?” I demand.
“A few hundred... There’s not… much security… in the school itself… But it’s in… the middle... of town… Please… help… Katie…”
His eyes start to close, and I storm up the stairs to get cell service to call Louise Warner. She’s our second best healer (Mother is currently out with Aleric and seven of his vampires, searching the area I outlined for her hours ago), and I want this boy alive. I can use him to turn his sister into a mole, recruiting her through Zita.
Despite it being three in the morning, Louise answers on the second ring. “Yes, Boss?”
“Come to the house.”
I hang up, knowing she’ll be here in a few minutes; she doesn’t live that far away. I text Mother the town she should be searching for, and she replies back, saying she’s already found it and is waiting for the vampires to study the area enough to phase us in. Which means she’ll be back well in time for the raids.
In three hours, every government agency in America is going to crack down on the Death Hunt. They’ll attack their compounds, businesses, and every place they like to hang out in an organized sweep, creating the perfect distraction we need to go after Micha.
Once that starts, all we’ll need to wait for is for Zita to smuggle Maddox inside the school.
My heart rate increases as I call Khalid. He’s with the rest of my brothers and Stormie, working on creating a new ward around the house. He doesn’t answer, but I feel the air buzz with power, giving me the reason why. A shimmering blue wall, visible only to sups, shoots up around our yard. Then it goes black, crackling with energy as Stormie feeds it the bubble of magic she took from Rudy. My anger towards her ignites, but I push it down. I can’t kill her. I need her for this raid.
She’s a shielder, meaning she can contain my powers if I start to pulse. No one knows when I’ll hit my ascension or even if it’ll happen, but if it does, it will spiral out of control, exploding out of me and hitting everything in its path at random intervals. Given we don’t know what abilities I’ll be blessed with, I could kill everyone nearby, so she needs to stay by my side during the rescue.
We’re only going to have one shot to take Antonio by surprise, and I won’t be the reason we fail.
My phone rings as Khalid calls me back.
“What’s the update on Zita?”
I ask as soon as I answer. The last I heard, she’d managed to steal someone’s phone and text Antonio, telling him in a coded message that she had important news she needed to tell him in person. He never answered her, but she was driving up to find him.
“Antonio’s men picked her up in South Carolina. They’re interrogating her.”
“They going to kill her?”
“I don’t think so. She’s using the intel about the raids she ‘overheard’ as leverage to move up from omega.”
She’s smart. It makes her seem selfish rather than a rat. And if we lose, she still comes out better for it. I can see why my brother likes her.
“And Maddox?”
“In position.”
My grip on my phone tightens. Everything so far is going to plan. I could have my wife back in a few hours. But if they don’t buy Zita’s act, I’ve just killed my brother. “Call me as soon as there’s change.”
“I will.”
I start to hang up, knowing he won’t answer my other questions about Micha. He wants my head in the game, but just as my finger moves towards the end call button, I blurt, “Are they breeding –”
But the line is already dead.
Burning with a need to move, I start to head back down the fucking stairs. I’ll get the kid to tell me what they’re –
My phone vibrates, and I glance down.
My feet instantly root in place.
My breath is squeezed out of my fucking lungs as I stare at the notification on the screen.
Antonio: You’ve violated something sacred to me, so I’ve returned the favor.
My hands shaking with rage, I open the text. At the sight of a link beneath his message, an eruption of darkness burns through my veins, clawing at my skin, begging for release.
The fucker’s posted her torture on the dark web.
I tap the phone.
Micha’s body appears, beaten and broken. Her clothes are torn, her breasts and pussy bare. Antonio is pinning her to a table with one hand on her throat.
My rage burns cold as I hover on the play button so I can see how long the video is.
Four hours. Thirty-eight minutes.
Four hours. Thirty-eight minutes.
Four hours…