Chapter 21 – Tristan
Chapter Twenty-One
Tristan
“ What the fuck do you mean you don’t see her ?” I demanded from Cyrus telepathically. He and Aidan were tasked with guarding Kali, along with her usual guards, during daylight since I couldn’t.
I paced along the carpet in front of my desk in my office at the penthouse. I have a mountain of things to attend to, but worry for my mate made it impossible to care about anything else.
I was not in the best mood. In fact, I was trying my damnedest to not panic. After Kali blocked me by ignoring my telepathic messages, I had been even more frantic about keeping close watch over her. However, the wolves could only do so much while she was on duty and working with her unit.
After Luka had read the minds of each employee at the restaurant, he had uncovered the employee who had sold me out. Once we followed the money trail, it was no surprise that one of the Regiment’s shell companies was behind the bribe.
If we had been ignoring them before, they had just become number one on our shit list. However, before we ever took a group down, we would gain as much information as possible on the organization. Part of it was to determine how essential the organization was to any worthwhile cause, determine if there was anyone in the organization worthy of our mercy, and also determine how much they’d learned about us.
We had gotten reports early this morning on all of that and then some. They were under the illusion that we were unaware of them and that even if we did that they were untouchable. Unfortunately for them, they have no idea that no one was safe from us. Finding out that given their failures in coming after me directly, their plan was to now try get to Kali and force me to them, the Regiment had signed their own death warrant. While I knew that Kali is no easy target, she was not immortal, nor was she as impervious to human weapons as the rest of us were. However, after last night, she did have an additional layer of protection.
Since meeting Kali, although I had fed, I was never satisfied no matter how much blood I took in. Last night I hadn’t meant to feed from her, but in the heat of the moment, it was impossible to resist her allure. The first taste of her blood was pure nirvana. And before I could pull back, I was giving her a mating bite. A vampire’s mating bite.
On my tongue, her blood was like ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, and I hadn’t been able to stop. With my cock in her snug walls and my fangs in her soft skin, I lost complete control, and I couldn’t get enough of her. And then our bond snapped into place, complete and whole. I felt like a living, breathing being with a heart that beat specifically for her. And for the first time in forever, I felt a reawakening and a rebirth of my soul, a soul that existed only for her. I was a monster, but I was no longer soulless.
At first, I had been terrified that I had taken her human life, but my bite hadn’t affected her as we had anticipated. Usually, a mating bite would turn a human to a vampire. It was clear now that Alexi’s blood had impacted Kali’s DNA, and she is obviously not human. However, our bond link has been completed, and her lifeline was now tied to mine. Her kidnappers could injure her, but they couldn’t kill her.
That was small comfort now that she has gone missing.
As it was impossible for two men that were more than six and a half feet tall and over three hundred pounds to go unnoticed, Aidan and Cyrus had waited outside the hotel for Kali to emerge from SWAT before breaching it.
Five minutes after she entered the hotel, our psychic link, which had strengthened and felt like a physical heartbeat since last night, had completely blinked out and I felt nothing. I started pacing then and demanded Cyrus or Aidan go into the damn building after her. Of course, they reminded me of the reason why they hadn’t entered an active police scene.
The whole process took just over an hour for the teams to go in, free the hostages, and reemerge again. However, Kali never came out of the hotel.
“ I heard her partner, Cooper, asking Sergeant Harper for her ,” Cyrus relayed.
“ I don’t understand. Why would her partner have to ask someone else for her?” I was vibrating with the need to act.
“ As you know, they work in pairs. Apparently, Sergeant Harper changed her team at the last minute, ” Cyrus explained.
“ What the fuck ?” I’ve never wanted to have my human skin back more than at that moment. I wanted to go out and find her myself.
“ Yeah, since Kali started with SWAT, she has always partnered with Cooper ,” James, one of the other wolves tasked with guarding Kali, piped in. James and his brother, Malachi, had been guarding Kali since she was a baby.
“ What is Sergeant Harper’s reason for changing the teams, and how did he lose sight of her if they always work in pairs ?” I demanded.
“ He claims that Kali went off looking for Cooper, but Cooper didn’t believe him ,” Aidan relayed. “ Cooper questioned the bastard for a full minute before running back into the building to find her. He found her gear, gun, and communication devices just inside the entrance of the hotel where she entered with Harper. Cooper looked worried when he confronted Harper again, especially since the bastard seemed unconcerned. We also did a sweep of the hotel and the surrounding area to find her as well. There was no trace of her, and her scent has long since faded .”
“ Bring Harper to me ,” I growled.
I don’t know how Aidan would get Harper away from his unit, and I didn’t give a damn how he did it.
A few minutes later, Cyrus deposited a blustering Harper at my feet.
“Take your fucking hands off me!” Harper bellowed, and then in the next moment, he looked around in bewilderment. “H-how…how did I get here? What is this?”
I didn’t bother asking the stronzo anything. Luka can read minds, but I had one better. I pounced and sank my fangs into his wrist. I just needed a drop of his blood on my tongue to know every bit of knowledge he had.
“He handed Kali over to two guys,” I said slowly, trying to stop from going ape-shit crazy.
Luka, Drako, Xander, and Owen had arrived at my suite a few minutes before Aidan, James, Malachi, and Cyrus arrived with Harper. Apollo and Drago had been with me all morning in anticipation of the Regiment’s attack.
“The fucked-up thing is that he doesn’t have a clue who he handed her over to,” I told them. “He received one million dollars in his bank account this morning and a telephone call to hand Kali over for another million. The greedy bastard gave her up without even knowing what danger he was putting her in.”
“Listen, I don’t know if this means anything, but I picked up a faint scent of some stray wolves in the hotel,” Aidan said quietly. “There were hundreds of people in and out of that hotel today, but it seems strange that wolves would be in the city like that.”
“Send some trackers out to investigate,” Owen instructed.
Aidan fell silent as he reached out telepathically to some of the wolves in the penthouse. Our best trackers were James and Malachi, so I’m certain that he would task them with that.
“We will find her, Tristan,” Luka said calmly.
“I won’t know where she is until she regains consciousness,” I said with escalating fear. God, I hated this emotion. I thought I was done with that after Alexi’s death. My becoming Il Carnefice again meant I was embracing the mafioso way of life. Emotions like fear and love were nonexistent because loyalty, death and money were the only things that mattered in that world.
“Who are you people?” Harper whispered, and his voice shook with every word he spoke.
I didn’t even think about it. I set his ass on fire.
Harper’s anguished screams filled the room, but it was over far too soon.
“What the fuck, Tristan?” That was Xander; he couldn’t help his need to want to heal.
I gave him a shark grin, more than satisfied that Xander couldn’t heal that asshole. He was burned to a crisp within seconds of me lighting him up. Too fucking quick as far as I’m concerned.
“That wasn’t necessary,” Xander growled.
“Are you telling me that if that asshole had given Alexandra a drug and turned her over to two strange men while vulnerable that you would have let him live?” I asked darkly, letting him know from my glare that I didn’t give two shits what he thought.
“Xander would have chopped up the fucker into tiny little pieces with that sword of his,” Drako drawled.
Luka, Owen, and Aidan nodded.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Xander conceded.
“Well, I’m not waiting around for Kali to wake up from whatever fucked-up drug these bastards gave her,” I muttered. “I’m going to torture every fucking one of them until they tell me where Kali is.”
Without waiting for the others, I teleported to the Regiment’s secret headquarters. The bastards thought they were untouchable? I wasn’t only going to touch the fuckers; I was going to ensure that every one of their worst nightmares became a fucking reality.