Chapter 27
Leandro
I didn’t know how much longer we were going to have to drive, but I was happy to take the wheel as the dark settled in and the rest of the team opted to get some sleep.
I’d bought us a large seven-seat car for as little money as I could and paid with cash.
It had probably aroused suspicion on its own and made us traceable to some degree.
Because of that, we had changed cars a couple of times in various places before finally settling on another car with seven seats. Petros was the least comfortable of all of us. We’d managed to make the back section of the car much darker than the rest and keep the light out of the back-most areas.
Petros also had a sort-of-working ring, but it wasn’t as effective as before and he still felt incredibly uncomfortable during the day. It was sapping his strength. Made worse by neither of us feeding.
Now it was dark, he was resting peacefully and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. I would drive us through the night if it meant he would survive until we reached our destination.
Crossing some of the borders had been difficult, but we’d made it and now I had Anais beside me and the open road ahead of me. There were no more countries to travel through. We’d gone from England to Scotland and now we just needed to keep going north.
Anais had slept almost twenty hours when we’d finally been in our final car and she’d had the opportunity to rest. Then she’d taken the wheel for a while and made sure everyone else had been able to sleep as much as they needed.
Other than stopping for food, restrooms, and fuel for the car, we’d carried on every moment of every day.
It had taken us far too long to get this far and we’d only briefly discussed what we were going to do about being framed.
Now and then one of the group brought it up, but the consensus had been to do nothing for now and all the phones had been switched off and the batteries removed to make us far harder to trace.
We couldn’t defend ourselves yet and would need to be careful how we did when the time came. I wasn’t about to stay on the run, however.
“Are you okay to drive, or do you need to rest now that it’s night as well?” Anais asked.
“I can drive,” I replied. “Least I can do right now.”
I glanced in the rearview mirror but couldn’t see many of the passengers behind me. They were all sleeping, with the exception of Anais who needed to direct us the last part of the journey. Only she knew where we were going from this point.
She looked behind, catching me trying to see. We were alone on the road, no cars traveling on the smaller Scottish roads at this time of night.
“They’re all asleep,” she confirmed what I’d suspected. “I’m glad we don’t have to put them through much more of this.”
I glanced over at her and noticed her staring down at her hands. She looked as if she could cry at any moment.
“This isn’t your fault,” I said, knowing she was likely to be feeling bad and shouldn’t be. “I dragged you all into this. It was my mission for the Brethren that allowed the turned to get the better of us.”
She shook her head. “We all got involved in this for various reasons. We trusted each other. None of us is to blame for trusting each other and the people we had faith in. But I should have protected my team better once this did happen. I need to find a way to make sure they’re considered innocent and they get their lives back. ”
“And what about you?” I asked. “Doesn’t matter how safe this farm is right now, no safe house lasts forever.”
“I plan to continue. I’m a hunter. There are vampires I need to deal with. I hoped you’d still want to go after them.”
“With you?” I replied. “Always. I’m not going to let myself be set up and not make every person, vampire, turned or otherwise involved in this pay for it.”
She nodded, and this time when I glanced over at her there was a new light in her eyes and her gaze was locked on me.
Neither of us needed to say any more about it. We were going to keep hunting. No matter how long it took and how many vampires and academy people came after us, we would find who trapped us and make them regret it. After that, we could figure out how to get some kind of life back.
It might not be simple, and we might need to keep on the move, but once we’d got everyone else safe, we could consider doing that and drawing attention away from them.
Or seeing if they’d go back to the academy and Brethren and tell them that we’d forced them to work with us and they hadn’t known what was going on.
The downside of the rest of the team turning themselves in and blaming us was the decreased chance we’d ever be able to clear our own names enough to return to normal life.
We could still go after everyone involved in causing this, but it might not be enough to ever make anyone believe that we’d been set up.
I had a lot of thinking and planning to do, but it made me a lot happier to know that I’d have Anais at my side no matter what we did next. I could face this situation if I was facing it with her.
As we drove into an even more rural area of Scotland, out in the middle of nowhere, I relaxed even further. When Anais had said this far was out in the wilderness and away from people, she had really meant it.
There was no need for her to give me directions after a while. There was only one road to take and it wound through fields and past barns, getting ever closer to the farm in the center.
I slowed as the road grew bumpier, giving way to dirt with a ridge of grass down the middle and occasional tire tracks of tractors and other farm machinery visible to either side of us. This had to be the place.
As we got closer, Anais tensed and frowned.
We came around a corner and into a courtyard area in front of a farmhouse. There was a large barn on one side, which we had to drive beside before coming around into the courtyard.
A building that looked like it had once been a stable was on the other side of the area, but there was no sign that horses really used it anymore. I also noticed there was a car and tractor in the courtyard, and from the tracks and mud, both of them had been used recently.
“There’s someone here already,” Anais said, frowning and already undoing her seat belt.
Her words were loud enough and panicked enough that they broke through the sleep of Naomi and she then shook Tess awake.
Alan was in the back of the car not too far from Petros, but both of them were beginning to stir on their own, their bodies noticing the lack of movement and the strange silence as I switched the engine off.
Anais was the first to get out of the car, barely waiting for anyone to acknowledge where she was. She reached for one of her weapons but held it where it couldn’t be seen by anyone ahead of her.
On the way to the farmhouse she checked out the car, but there wasn’t much light and it was hard to see inside it.
I followed her, but kept back a little bit in case this was a safe situation and a vampire walking into the farmhouse would make everything worse.
I wasn’t about to let her go into danger without having me as backup.
All the thoughts and fears I’d had about this old farmhouse being compromised or taken over by someone else since her parents died came back into my head. This could be another part of the trap.
Her team sensed her mood and took in the way she was walking, and began to spread out around the courtyard, making sure they weren’t going to be snuck up on by anyone hiding in the other buildings. Petros followed even more slowly after that, keeping to the shadows.
Anais reached the area by the front door and looked around for a key.
It didn’t take her long to find one and work her way over to the door.
I made my way to the wall, wanting to be able to hear what was going on inside.
I could faintly hear the sound of a TV. It was playing some sort of sitcom or show where the laughter was faked later.
She was careful about unlocking the door, but the key squeaked the tiniest amount in the latch.
I frowned and listened for any sounds of movement, but over the TV it was difficult to hear if anyone had noticed and was moving inside the building.
It was late in the night for anyone to be awake, especially a farmer, so I hoped that they had fallen asleep in front of the TV.
Anais went inside, staying close to the door, and I hurried to close the distance between me and her, not wanting to let her out of my sight.
“Bob!” she yelled. “You’re alive.”
She relaxed and then turned to stick her head out the doorway to wave us over.
“It’s all good. We’re safe. It’s just my uncle.
” Anais grinned and made her way back inside.
Although I wanted to follow and I was the closest of anyone, I hesitated, letting Naomi, who had been trying to give her backup as well, go in next.
Alan and Tess were next. Petros also hung back, waiting for me to decide if I was going in or not.
After a few seconds Anais looked out again. She saw me lingering by the door, reached out and grabbed my arm and then pulled me toward the inside of the farmhouse.
“What are you doing here? And with so many extras?” Bob asked as I came around the corner.
Bob was an older man with white hair and a slightly portly frame. He took us all in but his eyes narrowed when he saw me and then Petros as well.
“It’s okay,” Anais added. “They’re with me and helped us get here.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a story to tell,” Bob replied. “You’d best all come sit down. I’ll put the kettle on and you can tell me what brings you here at this time of night.”
I didn’t relax until Bob had made tea for everyone, not leaving Petros and me out at all. While he moved around the kitchen, Anais did the same, knowing where the mugs were kept.
She started telling her uncle everything that had happened to us, although I noticed that she left out a few details about how she’d worked with me to appear undercover.