Chapter Three
They weren’t pursued.
Reyna couldn’t believe it.
She was sure that someone would look at their vehicle and assume it held rebels. But no, they drove out of the neighborhood and onto the open roads without a hassle. Tye listened to the police scanner and narrowly missed a roadblock or two, but once they got on the interstate, the coast was clear.
Tension hung heavy in the SUV, and it was a silent hour before Washington finally directed them off the main roads and onto a long bumpy drive. Once they moved from under a copse of trees, they came upon a large iron gate.
Reyna’s eyebrows rose and she leaned forward to get a better look at it. The gate was straight out of some Victorian period piece. As if it should be a dark and stormy night with lightning announcing their entrance instead of a bitter cold but sunny New Year’s Day.
Tye punched in a passcode and the gates creaked apart slowly. Very slowly.
They inched forward onto the grounds. Everyone was rubbernecking, trying to figure out where the hell Washington had brought them. They passed what must have once been lush gardens but were now overgrown and ignored. And after a couple more minutes, they got their answer.
A circular drive ended right before a three-story stone mansion.
“What is this place?” Reyna asked as they came to a halt.
“Yeah. I’ve never seen this in any records,” Meghan said.
“It’s not in any records,” Washington said. “It’s my home.”
“Does Harrington know about it?” Reyna asked, terror suddenly lancing through her.
“Yes, but he would never in a million years suspect that I would come back here. I haven’t stepped foot in it in fifteen years.”
“Why?”
He glanced back at her. “Because my wife was killed here.”
Then he opened the door and slid out of the SUV.
They looked at one another in confusion and sorrow before following him.
Reyna’s feet hit the gravel drive, and she stared up at the imposing structure.
Vines covered much of the entrance. The stonework, which must have once been beautiful, had deteriorated from the elements.
Reyna could see at least one window that was broken, and a tree had fallen into the roof on one corner of the building.
Would they have running water? Electricity?
The house had clearly been built long before those things existed.
“We left for this,” Gabe voiced what everyone was thinking. They might have had no choice, but some run-down old mansion didn’t seem like the salvation they’d been looking for.
Tye stretched his lean muscles out. “Looks like a piece of shit.”
“I can hear you,” Washington said. He had ambled up to the entrance and was prying the front door open.
“We know,” Gabe said with a grin. “Doesn’t change the appearance of this place.”
“I’ll have you know that I have had this home since after the turn of the nineteenth century,” Washington said, turning his nose up at them. “It has come a long way since 1805.”
Reyna’s mouth fell open. She sometimes forgot how old vampires could be. Beckham was so young for a vampire and yet he still was sixty-seven. The thought hit her like a sucker punch to the stomach.
Past tense.
He’d been so young. He had been sixty-seven. He was no longer.
She squeezed her eyes shut and rode out the pain until it subsided.
It was easier in the moments when she didn’t have to think about the immediate consequences of him being gone.
It was hard to wrap her brain around the fact that he wasn’t about to walk up the drive with his usual stoic look and burning broody passion.
“Hey,” Meghan said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”
Reyna didn’t want to think or talk about her feelings. “Let’s just get inside.”
She followed Washington into the cavernous interior of his turn-of-the-nineteenth-century mansion.
The foyer had vaulted ceilings that reached up to an impossible height.
It was dark inside and when Washington reached for the lights, only a few flickered on, casting the entire place with an eerie glow.
“Creepy,” Reyna whispered.
“You can say that again,” Gabe said behind her.
“I thought you were bringing us to a rebel operation,” Tye said. “If you haven’t been here in fifteen years, what are we going to do here?”
“I have not been here, but I have a colleague who has been maintaining the premises since I joined Elle. It will suffice for the time being. Now, follow me,” Washington said.
Gabe and Meghan exchanged a look before pulling out their phones to use as flashlights. With the entrance fully illuminated, they could see the layers of dirt that said no one had stepped foot in here for years. It certainly didn’t look maintained.
Washington pulled open an enormous wooden door that led from the historic foyer into a gorgeous and stately living area.
The furniture was carefully preserved beneath sheets, and the windows were covered to keep the light out, presumably to save the antique artwork lining the walls.
Reyna felt as if she had stepped back in time.
They toured the mansion, finding thirteen bedrooms on the second floor.
The third floor was one big suite. Though the tree falling in clearly disrupted that.
When Washington showed them the basement, Reyna expected a dark dungeon or prison or something equally medieval.
But no, the basement was a fully finished medical lab with all the equipment he’d had back at the bunker.
Plus, a store of firearms, communication devices, and pretty much everything else they would need to pick up where they’d left off.
“I’ve never worried much about upkeep in the main parts of the house, but the basement was completely refitted in recent years.
” Washington seemed more comfortable now that he was back in a lab, downstairs, and away from the memory of his dead wife, upstairs.
“All of my research has been uploaded to the servers, and the lab was created as a just-in-case option.”
“Wow,” Gabe said, admiring the impressive gun collection, “appearances are deceiving.”
“I’m glad that I pass your muster,” Washington said dryly.
Gabe tipped him a two-finger salute.
“We should all pick rooms and clean up. I have a superior olfactory system and can tell you that everyone needs a shower,” Washington said with a small smile. “I’ll contact Genevieve to come by with food.”
“You trust her?” Meghan asked.
“She has been taking care of this house longer than you have been alive. She’s trustworthy.”
“All right,” Meghan agreed. “A shower sounds nice.”
Gabe, Tye, and Meghan immediately fell into a sense of normalcy, arguing over which bedroom to take for themselves. They all seemed extravagant. Reyna didn’t really care.
Washington stopped her on her way toward the stairs. “Reyna…”
“Yeah?”
“Beckham stayed here in the past. Before I abandoned the place, he had a room.” Reyna’s heart constricted. “I thought you’d want to stay there.”
She nodded, unable to form words.
“Turn left and it’s the room at the end of the hall.”
“Thank you,” she choked out.
“I am terribly sorry for your loss. Beckham was a good vampire. A great man. He deserved better than William Harrington,” Washington said. “As long as I was friends with William, I never knew him to get his hands dirty. He must have felt very threatened by you to do something so out of character.”
“Little consolation.”
“Indeed. But don’t ever forget the power that you have over him. He seeks to control you, but he doesn’t understand you. It’s his greatest weakness. I do not think he has realized that harming you was a tactical error.”
Reyna raised her chin. “He will one day.”
Washington let a small smile grace his cheeks. “I believe you.”
With that, Reyna grabbed fresh clothes out of one of their duffle bags downstairs, climbed two flights of stairs, turned left, and faced down the door to Beckham’s room.
She slowly walked toward it and placed her hand on the metal doorknob.
Her hand shook on the knob before she worked up the courage to turn it and push the door open.
She flipped on the lights, and the room was bathed in a soft glow from the antique lamps.
Beckham’s space felt homey. A four-poster bed took up the center of the room, complete with a canopy and navy duvet.
An entire wall was full from top to bottom with books in every shape, color, and size.
An old-fashioned writing desk sat unoccupied in a corner, still littered with papers he’d apparently left behind.
The Beckham who had lived and worked at this residence had not been the Beckham she had known. This was the ruthless vampire who had risen to the top with murder and destruction. The vampire he had been before he’d turned his back on this life and started to help Elle. Before he became hers.
She sensed it in every fiber of her being. Still, somehow, she was completely connected to Beckham in every way. He was gone, but she felt him like phantom pain in a severed limb.
Reyna swallowed back the bile rising in her throat and then for the first time since Beckham wrapped his jacket around her shoulders, she removed it from her body.
She found a wardrobe against the wall still stocked with clothes.
The smell of him nearly overwhelmed her.
For a moment it was as if he were standing directly behind her.
She could close her eyes and feel his hands on her and breathe him in.
She pushed all the clothes together, took out a hanger, and hung the jacket in the wardrobe.
She hated the absence of it already. She wouldn’t let it go, but she would keep moving forward.
If she stopped entirely, his death would be for nothing.
Beckham would want her to go on. He would want her to use his death to further their cause.
He would want so much more from her. He always had.
Mourning would be a long process, but she couldn’t let it cripple her. Not when there was so much left to do.
After her shower, Reyna felt much clearer and levelheaded. She dragged on new clothes, pulled her hair up in a tight ponytail, and knew what she needed to do.
An hour later, she had everyone assembled in the dining room. The room was much too big for their motley crew of five, but it was better than nothing. Tye stood on the antique table to light the candles on the chandelier, which somehow had survived all this time and not been replaced by electric.
“Do you know how old that table is you’re standing on?” Washington tsked. Reyna didn’t know how else he was supposed to light it.
“Probably not as ancient as you, old man,” Tye said teasingly before jumping down and taking his seat.
“I take no offense to having three hundred or so years on you,” Washington said.
Reyna stood from her seat at the head of the table. It had been purposeful to take what had been Sydney’s place. None of them knew if the leader of Elle had survived the attack on the bunker.
“I called this meeting,” Reyna said, “because I don’t want to waste any time. Though I am thankful that we have a place to stay, there’s a lot that needs to be done.”
“Reyna,” Meghan said with a sigh, “this is really not the time. You should rest. You should grieve. You need the time to recover.”
Reyna held up her hand, and to her surprise Meghan stopped talking. “I understand where you’re coming from, but no. I don’t need downtime. I don’t need to grieve. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Right now, we need to regroup and hit them back. They’ll never expect us to rally.”
“Because we have nothing to rally around,” Meghan said.
“That’s where you’re wrong. We have everything to rally around. Everything. Visage is still going to unveil their plans for a feeding camp. They still have humans imprisoned beneath their building in the city. They’re trying to take over the world. We can’t let them get away with it.”
“I agree with you,” Gabe said, holding his hands up. “But we need more time.”
“You said that I needed to live so that this wouldn’t all be for nothing,” she said, throwing his words back at him. “Let’s not make it for nothing.”
“I’m sorry, Reyna. But you just saw Beckham murdered. You’re not ready for this,” Meghan said.
“Kid gloves off, Meghan. I appreciate you breaking me out of Visage, but please don’t baby me. You all lost as much as I did and you’re not falling apart. I’m ready to step up. Are you?”
Meghan leaned back and pursed her lips. She didn’t respond. Reyna shrugged and faced the guys.
“Well?”
“Whatcha got?” Tye asked.
Gabe winked.
Washington smiled and tilted his head toward her.
“We have a lot to do, but first, we need to figure out what happened with the bunker. Tye and Meghan, you two should figure out how bad the damage is and work with Washington to contact whoever survived.”
“And you and Gabe?” Meghan snapped. “Where do you fit in all of this?”
Reyna turned and faced her friend. She loved Meghan. But something had broken in her with this. She was no longer the upbeat woman that could charm the pants off of anyone with a smile. “Gabe and I are going to get Jodie.”
Meghan’s eyes rounded. “Jodie left almost a week ago. We have no idea where she is. It’s a waste of resources to look for her right now.”
“Jodie escaped Visage with us. She’s our responsibility and my closest friend.
She has never been on the streets alone.
Ten years inside Visage and now this? No, we have to find her.
The mission is to get all of Elle back together.
Jodie is part of Elle, and we do know where she went.
I have an address. Once we have our team back together and more information, we can get back to the real matter at hand—taking down Harrington. ”
“It’s a good plan,” Washington said. “We have much to do to get Elle back on its feet. This is as good as any place to start.”
“And we will get Elle back on its feet,” Reyna said passionately. “Visage will not win. They will not break us. No matter how they try. We will always come back swinging.”
Gabe, Tye, and Meghan looked up at her with a newfound respect. As if she had suddenly grown into the person she was always meant to be. And Reyna vowed to do whatever it took to live up to this new role. Beckham’s sacrifice would not be in vain.