Rogue Darkness by Dianne Duvall

Sheldon whistled. “That’s some serious Mission Impossible shit there.”

Sean nodded. “Except unlike Ethan Hunt and his team, immortals don’t need makeup and masks to look like someone else.”

Jared scowled. “Why can’t he rush through security with enhanced speed? He’ll be too fast for the cameras to catch, and everyone else will just feel a breeze.”

“The alarm will go off,” Chris responded without looking up from his notes.

“If the alarm goes off and they don’t see anyone, they’ll just assume it was a malfunction.”

Chris’s writing paused as he looked up. “You think they’ll believe a malfunction with the security alarm happening the same night they kidnapped and captured an immortal being is a coincidence?”

Silence.

“We don’t know their lockdown procedures,” Chris continued, “or what weapons they may have in their arsenal. We’ve been in places before that were outfitted with booby traps designed specifically to halt immortals in their tracks.”

Henderson nodded. “And this place is a pharmaceutical company. They’ve had the sedative for an unknown amount of time. For all we know, they’ve found a way to administer it as an aerosol. Even worse, what if they’ve developed a drug that’s poisonous to both vampires and immortals?”

Melanie’s brow furrowed. “I agree. We should play it safe on this.”

Chris’s phone buzzed with an incoming message. After reading it, he tapped a response and set the phone back on the table. “I suggest the shape-shifter we send in also be a teleporter. Once he reaches an interior room with no occupants, he can then teleport out, collect the rest of the team, and teleport back in. We’ll dress some team members as maintenance staff and cleaning crew, who rarely garner attention. The uniforms are pretty generic, and the network keeps a variety on hand at all times.”

Of course, they did. Because Chris thought of everything.

“Since security is so tight, any employees on-site will be less likely to raise a red flag if they see an unfamiliar face, because they have no reason to believe anyone could sneak in. One team will retrieve Tessa and take care of the vampire if they still have one in custody. The other will hack their system, retrieve the data we want, and then plant a virus that will erase everything related to vampires and immortals while leaving the rest of their data intact. Once done, they’ll rendezvous at a designated place where the shape-shifter will teleport them out.”

Jared turned to Seth. “Is that really necessary?”

“I believe so,” the immortal leader responded. “We need to know definitively if this was Roubal’s brainchild or if this is Gershom’s Plan B. And I don’t want any employees who are working in other departments to be harmed or their research destroyed.”

Sean thought it was a sound plan. But clearly Jared disagreed.

“Why can’t you just command everyone to fall asleep, sabotage their security measures, and force them to tell you what you want to know?”

That did sound less labor-intensive.

“Because we must maintain a balance,” Seth reminded him, an edge of warning entering his deep voice as he caught and held Jared’s gaze. “As you already know.”

Once more, a hush descended.

“I don’t understand,” Becca said tentatively. “What balance?”

Kayla turned to her daughter. “Becca—”

Seth stayed her with a slight wave of his hand and turned a kind look upon her daughter. “There was a time long ago when those of our ilk—the first generation of Others that came before Zach, Jared, and me—walked openly amongst humans. When they shared their magic—as it was called then—with humans, such chaos and destruction resulted that the world had to be wiped clean to… reset things, if you will.”

“The Great Flood,” Sarah murmured.

Nodding, Seth motioned to himself, Zach, and Jared. “When our generation of Others was born, we were cautioned not to interfere with humans in any way, to keep ourselves apart so humanity could progress at its own pace. It’s why Jared and the Others were so furious when I defected and married a human woman. They feared history would repeat itself. But I was very careful—I have always been careful—not to overstep my self-imposed bounds. Only once have I failed in that.”

The day his wife and children were slain. Sean didn’t know what had happened that day, but rumor labeled it catastrophic.

“I used my gifts,” Seth continued, “to help humanity, not to corrupt them. And I often did so in secret. When vampires appeared on the scene, humans were no match for them. Had gifted ones suffered the same mental deterioration as vampires, mankind would’ve long since gone extinct. But gifted ones instead became immortals. So I banded them together, declared myself their leader, and trained them to hunt and slay vampires. We restored the balance.”

“What kind of balance?” Becca asked. “I’m still not sure I understand.”

“The kind that keeps us from conquering the world.”

Zach smiled darkly. “Which we are more than capable of doing.”

Seth tipped his head in acknowledgment. “The hunter who sits up in a blind and shoots a defenseless, unsuspecting deer while it feeds below has an unfair advantage. There is no balance. The deer has no chance of survival.”