Chapter 9
Loren
The news was bad.
When he saw Sav waiting for him by the Council doors, after he'd been requested to appear without warning, Loren had been certain the news would be bad.
Sav's grin confirmed it.
It remained now only to discover who the news was bad for. Everybody? Loren alone? Or Kiera as well?
"You didn't have to wait to accompany me," he told Sav. There was, as always, a fine line to play with Sav. Play being the operative word. He suspected they both understood it was a game and that pretending otherwise was some shared fiction.
Sav was in his command. Putting his brother who was also a constant antagonist under his command was a typical Vampyren military tactic known, basically, as take care of your own problems.
Sav was his.
But having Sav under his command meant if it had been any other soldier, Loren would have ordered him back to whatever duty he wasn't doing in order to be here.
Because it was Sav, discretion was necessary.
Anger him and he might strike back in unpredictable ways that were savage even for the Vampyren.
Fail to censor him and Loren wasn't doing his job as a commander.
Typical test.
"I didn't mind waiting for you."
Sav's voice gave nothing away. Loren couldn't ask. Asking if Sav knew what was waiting for Loren would be a weakness.
"Shall we?" Just that, and indicating the door, and Sav nodded and almost walked in front of him.
He pulled himself back in time.
Disciplining his men wasn't Loren's favorite thing to do. He'd once had to hunt another Vampyren back on their home world and he had done it, had taken down a traitor and dispatched him. He hadn't enjoyed it, though.
Sav had.
"Your quick response is gratifying." The Council leader, dour as ever, still looked like a human male in his thirties.
They were long lived and healthy, the Vampyren.
When nobody executed them for dereliction of duty or for some other crime.
Loren stood calmly waiting for an explanation for his presence here.
"You were not a part of the hunting party that was attacked by Diane Red and Stuart Red?"
Loren blinked. So the humans had already been judged.
Humankind considered Vampyren justice anything but, even though the vampires could smell lies, and could scent the people who had left their unique signatures at a site.
Add in blood smell from any who were injured or cut on the site and it was nearly impossible for the judge, jury and executioner – and when conditions were right, one Vampyren could be all three – to be wrong.
"I was not." It had been his team, but that night he had been reassigned to the breeding pool, a silly assignment any of the youngest of them could have handled.
"But you were granted a full array of reports, were you not?" That was one of the Council leader's seconds, leaning forward to be heard.
"I had full access to all reports. I've been over them in great detail.
" The grainy images were indelibly etched in his mind now.
The way the building had torn itself apart.
The way the pipe bomb, a homemade thing of plumbing and carpentry supplies and explosive, had ripped through vampires he had known for most of his life.
Was he somehow under suspicion? Perhaps because he wasn't there that night? But his assignment had come from the commander himself. It was a stupid assignment but his nonetheless. Was that why -- ?
"You're being assigned to take a team to the following sector," the Council leader said and on the screen behind him, immediately in sync with his words, the neighborhood in question was projected.
It was nothing special, a neighborhood not that far from the one where they had run down Stu and Diane. He didn't think it was Kiera's home. She'd looked repeatedly in a different direction than where these coordinates lay.
"What will I be seeking?"
The council leader nodded and images came up.
A portly man in his fifties, arrogance in his eyes as he moved through the short clip and then his photo stabilized.
Jason Tul, a scientist with a minor career at minor West Coast universities, shuffled around a lot.
Next to him, a thin woman with dry skin and prominent clavicles stood just as arrogantly.
He blinked, and the images were memorized.
"You're to bring them back," the Council leader said.
"Diane and Stuart have been questioned." For an instant the old vampire looked smug.
"It has taken remarkably little work. They both talked fast and when told their accusations against each other would only lead to prolonged deaths for themselves, they stopped and only answered questions.
Tul organized the strike that killed our people and he's probably arranging something else even now. "
The leader leaned in close enough for Loren to smell the blood on his breath.
"Bring them in. Our people need a victory and Earth's peoples need another example."
He had a team already assigned. Sav was not on it, but Jericho and Perdita were. Before leaving the council chambers, while everything was still being determined, he requested Sav.
Humans had an expression he'd thought curious until now: Damned if you do, damned if you don't. He didn't want Sav on his team, didn't want him along with him.
But it was unthinkable to leave him here with access to Kiera.