Blood Magic by Laken Cane

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Brenda Ferguson was indeed waiting in the hallway. She stood between two hulking human guards, her brow knit.

“Joe,” I said, not slowing.

“I’ve got her.”

I didn’t look back to see him grab her arm and yank her away from the unresisting guards, but I knew he did. She began asking questions immediately. “Where am I? I don’t know why I’m here. What has happened?” She started crying. “I’ve lost my mind.”

“Not your mind,” Joe growled. “Just your memory.”

“But what happened?”

“Some bad people took you from your home,” I said. A tall woman stepped away from the wall at the end of the hallway and waited to show us out. “Your husband hired me to bring you back.”

“I don’t remember anything.”

“Probably for the best,” Joe told her.

“But what do I tell the police?”

“Nothing.”

Joe handed her into the back seat and buckled her seatbelt, then climbed in beside me. “Kait. We’ll find them.”

“How, Joe?”

“When Jennifer was awestruck and distracted by the torture, I got some pictures.” He flashed his cell phone. “All I need to do is give this to Max. He can find anything.”

“Of the detective?” I wished my voice hadn’t sounded so soft and full of tears.

“Yes. Of them all.” He reached across to squeeze my hand. “Max will find them.”

I could have cried. “Joe. Thanks.”

I drove like a maniac all the way back to my office, my mind buzzing so loudly I could barely hear Brenda’s incessant questions. Joe tried to soothe her as best he could, but it was beyond me.

Max and Zach were waiting when I rushed into my office, and both of them knew immediately that something bad had happened. Zach more than Max, perhaps.

“Oh my God,” Max said. “What?”

“Call Ferguson to come pick up his wife.” I strode past him and toward my office. “Then come see me.”

Zach didn’t wait for an invitation. He followed me into my office as Max picked up the phone and Joe dealt with Brenda Ferguson.

He shut the door and leaned against it, and I finally noticed he was dressed in new clothes. Dark green pullover shirt, brown button-up, black jacket, jeans, and boots. “I’ll pay you back for everything I bought today.”

I waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What happened?”

I opened my laptop, more because I didn’t want him to see my eyes than because I needed on my computer. “Axton’s bitch gave me a private viewing of a horror flick.”

He nodded, then sat down in the chair in front of my desk. “Who’d he kill?”

I swallowed, trying to get the vision of sun-killed vampires out of my head. “Bastien and Farrow.”

He put his fingers to his mouth, then crossed his arms. “Fuck,” he whispered. “How?”

I shook my head. “You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I fucking want to know. I was there for a long time, Kaitlyn. Believe me, you don’t need to baby me. What the fuck did Axton do?”

I dropped my gaze. “His human guards found their resting place and dug them up. The sun…” I swallowed convulsively, sick to my stomach.

But I didn’t need to tell him. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. “Before I was taken,” he told me, his voice raw, “I hated vampires. I killed them. That was what I was raised to do. I didn’t torture them—just killed them. I thought of them as…mutated corpses who didn’t have the sense to stay down and rot away in their graves, like normal people.”

“I know,” I murmured.

“Farrow helped me as much as she could. I know of twice that Axton punished her for it.” He tightened his lips. “I’m sure there were many more times I didn’t know about.”

“In the end,” I told him, “the assholes started shoveling the dirt back over them. If I find them quickly and get them some…” A ripple of distaste washed over me, but it was less than it would have been just a week ago. “Some blood, maybe it will bring them back. I’ll save them if I can.”

He watched me, and something in my eyes made his face go carefully blank. “Tell me the rest.”

Max hurried into the room, and I was glad of the interruption. “Joe filled me in. I transferred the images to my computer and am working on them now. I know I can find the two vampires, but it’s going to be harder to get Detective Moreno’s location.”

“Max, you have to find him quickly.”

“Um, there’s a brick wall and blood? It might take me a minute even with all those super awesome clues. Also, Ferguson collected his wife. I don’t know what will happen with those two, but both of them seemed a little odd.”

“I’ll check in on them tomorrow.” I started to pace, too anxious to sit for long. “Maybe he’s in Axton’s basement, but I don’t think he’s near that house.”

Zach got to his feet. “He took a friend of yours?”

I nodded. “A close friend. A police detective I work with.”

He stood with his hands loose at his sides, motionless, blank. “He offered to trade the detective for me.”

“Yes.” I clenched my fists. “He could have tried to take you from me, but he’d rather force me to return you.”

His smile wasn’t really much of a smile at all. “Axton is all about control.” He gestured at my cross tattoo. “Can you spell my tats to affect the vampires before you take me back? They never worked for me, but I heard how yours hurt him when you punched him.”

I brought my hand up to look at my cross tattoo, surprised. “I never spelled it. It works like a silver cross on a chain. They don’t like them.”

He looked away. “It’s not your tattoo, then. It’s you. He believes there’s something inside you that’s different. He’s right.”

I shrugged. “Max, get to work. Let me know the second you find anything.”

He didn’t say anything snarky, just nodded and hurried from the room.

Zach hadn’t been free for long, but with a lot of good food and a little freedom, he’d already begun to look healthier. Brighter. But now he sort of curled in on himself and everything about him dimmed and darkened with the hopelessness and knowledge of what was to come. He could have run. He didn’t have to stand there offering himself back into his torture so that a man he didn’t even know could be freed—but he did.

“I’m ready,” he said. “But don’t give me to them until they take you to the prisoner. Axton would rather kill him than make a trade. And you’re right. He won’t be in Axton’s house. Call them. Tell them to—”

“Zach,” I interrupted, but gently. “I’m not handing you over to that bastard. I’m stashing you somewhere safe until he’s dead.”

It was like he heard me, but he couldn’t understand my words. “What?”

“I’m not giving you to Axton.” I knew Axton was fucking with me. He wasn’t going to make an easy trade, no matter what he said. If I got Rick back, it would be because I found him and took him. “But you know Axton. Are there any places you think he might have taken the detective?”

He didn’t answer, not at first. His body was tense, his face pale, his eyes terrible. He’d resigned himself to the fact that he was going back, and he wasn’t quite sure what to think now that I’d told him he wasn’t. And finally, when he did speak, he surprised me. “You’ll take me back, Kait. The man he is torturing. Your friend. He’s not in the life?”

“No.” I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, hoping the sting of pain would distract me from thinking about the detective’s torture. Then I shrugged. “He is, a little. He works with me. He’s seen demons at work. Spirits.”

“But not vampires or shifters?”

“No.” I took a deep breath, realizing that Rick’s blissful ignorance was now a thing of the past. The vampires—especially Axton—would have been gleefully eager to show him the real world.

“I can’t hide while this shit is going on,” Zach said, and I saw the man he’d been before Axton had taken him. The man he still was. “The human may already be dead. But that’s not a chance we can take. We protect the humans.”

“You’re human,” I pointed out. “And I’m not giving in to the demands of a fucking…monster. I’m not doing it,” I said loudly, overriding his protests. I wanted him to stop arguing because it wouldn’t take much for me to agree, and that was not me. It wasn’t smart, and I wasn’t going to do it. “So shut the fuck up,” I added, and he blew out a hard breath and closed his mouth.

“Help me figure out where he is,” I said. “Please.”

Finally, he nodded. And maybe the darkness in his eyes retreated just a little. “I’m going with you when you find out where he is.”

I dropped back into my chair. “No. With your blood ties to Axton…”

He stopped arguing. He knew what would happen if he got near the master.

I needed to concentrate on Rick. And then after dark, I’d see what I could do for Bastien and Farrow. If I found them alive, those two were going to have to get out of their clan. Bastien needed to give up his plans to become County Master and take Farrow and run. Because if he survived the damage from the sun, Axton was just going to find another way to kill him.

As if he knew what I was thinking, Zach said, “Bastien is Frederick Axton’s half-brother. In their human lives, before they turned, they were close.”

“And now they hate each other.”

“Yeah. Bastien thinks of the clan as his, Axton wants the power…”

“So Axton tortures and tries to kill him constantly.”

“But not as hard as he could, because in spite of everything, he needs Bastien. His brother is his only link with the way it was.”

Max knocked on the door—unusual for him—and stuck his head inside. “I rescheduled the people you were supposed to see tonight, Kait, and I’m thinking you might need to either hire another ghost assassin or make enough time to actually do your job here?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at ghost assassin. “Thanks, Max. What’d you find?” He wouldn’t have come in just to tell me he’d rescheduled my clients.

He nodded. “I know where the two vampires are, but those pictures? I don’t think they survived that.”

“Still.”

“Yes. So…I’ve sent the location of the graveyard to your phone, as well as directions to the tombstone you see in the image.”

I picked up my cell. “And the detective?”

“I don’t think he’s in a basement. Not a normal one, anyway. In one of the images Joe captured, there’s the edge of a gilded mirror. In another, I saw part of a red…mattress, I think, and the leg of a bondage table. I think he’s in a club, Kait.”

I leaped to my feet, and Zach and I said at the same time, “Scarlett’s.” It was Axton’s favorite club, and it had that freaky private lower level that Bastien had taken me to. “How the hell can I get down there without Bastien?”

“You can’t,” Zach said. “You’ll have to wait for the sun to go down and hope you can save Bastien. There’s not another vampire in the city who will escort you into that club.”

He was right. Taking some muscle with me to kick ass and force my way into the club still wouldn’t get me past thick metal doors and keypads that secured the private part of the club.

I could do nothing but wait.

And hope.