Chapter 23 – Tristan
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tristan
“Where the fuck is she?!” I roared. The bastard whose neck I held in my grip whimpered through the limited air that I allowed him. His eyes bulged, his tongue lagged out of his mouth, his already pale skin was pasty white, and he trembled violently in acute terror.
I couldn’t really blame the asshole. After all, my hands were coated with blood up to my elbows from three of his friends, who I took great pleasure in tearing apart limb by limb. And even after killing all twenty-seven of their personal security detail, my rage was in no way diminished. I knew that the fuckers hadn’t known more than what they had told me, which was nothing that could help me find Kali, but I was so damn pissed that I tortured and killed them anyway. The bastards had Kali kidnapped. Not only did they not know where she was but they also didn’t know who the fuck they’d hired.
I had all nine members of the Regiment sitting around their pretentious round table of power, and I had been questioning them one by one as the others looked on. Their headquarters was in Dallas, Texas, in a bunker-style basement under the local FBI offices. With no windows or chance of daylight filtering in, they couldn’t have offered me a more ideal torture chamber.
When I questioned the first member, General Chadwick Newman of Canada, at least three of them pissed their pants when I sank my fangs into the bastard. By the third body ripped apart and discarded on the floor, the others were openly sobbing and pleading their case. The three already dead were Newman from Canada, Yamada from Japan, and Williams from the UK.
Cyrus, Aidan, and my nephews were with me, taking up positions in different corners of the room. In the hours I’d been interrogating the Regiment leaders, they hadn’t shifted their positions once. A few times, Apollo, Aidan, and even Cyrus had sent me telepathic messages on reading the minds of the men not being interrogated. So, the order in which I questioned the fuckers was not random. It was very deliberate.
Meanwhile, Luka, Drako, Xander, and Owen were checking all of our sources, trying to find any intel on Kali’s kidnapping.
Even after I had bitten the bastard in my grasp, Colonel General Vladimir Bakhin from Russia, I took my time torturing the motherfucker. People often threatened to break every bone in someone’s body, but usually they didn’t have the patience or knowledge of the human skeleton to do it. I didn’t have such issues. Not only did I know a human body as well as an orthopedic surgeon but I had the strength and speed to break every bone in the general’s body within seconds. Given that this was the fucker that contracted Kali’s kidnappers, he was deserving of my undivided attention.
There is a method, a skill, and a precision to break more than two hundred bones within seconds and not cause a person’s instant death. The general’s screams, tears, and snotty snivels were music to my ears. By the 170 th broken bone, the asshole passed out.
I waited for the fucker to wake up.
I made sure that within the last few seconds of the general’s life that he and his remaining comrades around the table understood in graphic detail why I was called Il Carnefice .
“You bastards are fortunate that you have managed to avert a major war or two in the past sixty years,” I told the five men staring at the four corpses piled on the table. “This is the only reason that we will allow this organization to continue.” I looked General John Bastian dead in the eye and smirked.
He glared back at me defiantly.
It was all false bravado though. I could smell his fear, and I could unfortunately smell that the fucker crapped his pants when I was done with the Russian.
“The organization is necessary to keep corrupt, power-hungry leaders in check, not that you fuckers weren’t the same. Therefore, the new organization will continue under new leadership and a few new members in your ranks.” The hopeful looks on the faces of the remaining members were almost comical. And then my words seemed to sink in for General Bastian. His face leached of all color, and he looked as if he would pass out any minute now.
“I’m glad.” The general cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “I’m glad you understand how important this organization is,” he wheezed out, his voice paper thin with fear.
Within a blink, I had his neck in a vise grip. “Don’t think for even a second that you will die as quickly as your colleagues have. Every minute that my mate has been missing equates to an hour that you will suffer in excruciating pain and terror. You will beg me to kill you, and I won’t. So, you better hope that whoever you assholes employed to kidnap her not only brings her back safely but also soon.”
“I swear…”
I tuned the general out as Luka’s telepathic message grabbed my attention. The fear and worry in his voice were visceral.
Luka: “Zora has also gone missing.”
Me: “What? When?”
Luka: “No one has heard from her since this morning. More than twelve hours ago.”
Owen: “No mere human would have been able to subdue Zora.”
Luka: “According to the other students in her class, Zora and her professor went missing together. Zora had apparently offered to show Dr. McKenna an interesting place to help him study the DNA of gifted humans.”
Drako: “I thought she had joined a program studying the DNA of humans with psychic abilities. Not to study our kind.”
Luka sighed.
Luka: “She apparently has a crush on her professor and is maybe trying to further his studies.”
Xander: “The only place human needles and other extraction devices work on immortals is in the Chamber. Apollo and Drago took her there two years ago when they found out that Tristan was living down there.”
Me: “I’m going to ignore that effort to blame me for Zora’s curiosity and instead focus on the possibility that Kali might be there too. It is probably why I can’t sense her.”
Luka: “That’s probable. We will meet you at the entrance.”
Me: “Cyrus, stay here with Apollo and Drago. Aidan and I will join the search in the Chamber for Kali and Zora.”
“Gentlemen, I hate to pause this interesting discussion,” I told the remaining Regiment men, who sat in varying degrees of fear, desperation, and relief.
“If we are allowed to make a few phone calls, we can help find your girlfriend,” General Bastian offered.
Apollo: “He is wanting to call in reinforcements to attack us.”
Me: “Yeah, I thought as much.”
“Thanks for your kind offer, General. But given that you have a long, slow, and agonizing death to look forward to, your plate might be a little full for the foreseeable future.”
The fucker turned milk pale with fear.
I didn’t wait around a second longer. The possibility of Kali being in the Chamber had me both hopeful and frightened as fuck.
As soon as Aidan and I teleported to the entrance of the Chamber, we discarded our jackets and strapped on our personal tactical vests, which Luka handed over to us. Luka, Drako, Xander, and Owen already had on their vests, which were already loaded with each man’s preference of guns and knives. Since the Chamber and Petrov headquarters are in London, our vests are always kept at the ready at Petrov headquarters for any visit to the Chamber.
The Chamber’s entrance was situated in Central London’s underground. There was a special elevator door that only immortals could see and access with our enhanced vision and DNA. No human could access the Chamber without an immortal’s assistance. And any human making it to the Chamber probably had no awareness that they were traveling with an immortal. The elevator to the Chamber could easily carry twenty grown adults.
“Mate and blood links are one of the only paranormal powers that work down there,” Xander mumbled softly. “As soon as we’re in the Chamber, we should be able to speak telepathically to Zora if she’s there.”
“Kali and I are mated,” I told them, only to then realize that, other than Aidan and Cyrus, no one else in our family knew that I had completed our mate’s bond. “So, I can reach out to Kali too.”
“You gave her a mating bite and she didn’t turn?” Luka looked stunned.
They all did.
“Yeah, it freaked me out too,” I admitted.
“Whatever Alexi’s blood did to her in the womb must be almost the equivalent of him siring her,” Aidan said calmly. “So, she must be a version of a dhampir, but given Alexi’s unique paranormal DNA, she would be unique as well.”
“None of us has a better theory, so we will go with that.” I shrugged.
Owen gave me a long stare. “If you ever hurt that girl, I will find a way to make you regret it for every day of your existence.”
I nodded, finding that I didn’t have a problem with that. I would kick my own ass if I hurt Kali.