The neighborhood was in lock down with the were families of the pack sheltering in their hidden underground dens waiting the matriarch’s advice that it was safe to venture forth.
It was eery, Raiden thought as they got out of the taxi out front of his parent’s house, to not see a single light in a window, no flicker of TV screens, no cars or motor bikes going too or from. No other cars or motor bikes moved on the roads, no one took out the trash, or ran the streets in wolf form to burn off energy before bed. He had never known such stillness, the pack territory normally seethed with life.
He pulled the hood of his tracksuit jumper over his head and inhaled as he stepped out into the night, looking for any sign of vampires lurking in the shadows. If he were Lucian, he would have someone watching the pack’s neighborhoods for any sign of Lia or himself, but the bittersweet vampire stink was hours old and faded.
He knew that particular stink – Elior, and two others, Nate, and Rebecca, though it took a moment to place the latter scents as he was less familiar with Elior’s turned-children. It made sense that he would have escaped with them, or with their help.
Wade paid the taxi driver cash from the safe house, and then entered the code to pass through the pedestrian gate, leading them up to the house, all four werewolves on high alert, eyes scanning the shadows and flower beds for anything unusual.
There was blood on the front door, along the glossy entrance way tiles, and smeared against the wall. A dark trail almost black in color. Vampire blood, the smell of it sickly sweet, overpowering due to its quantity, causing Raiden to raise his hand to his nose.
Someone had begun cleaning it up in the kitchen, the mop standing in a bucket of water turned bright red, but had been interrupted, the job barely begun.
Blood dripped off the kitchen island bench, the puddles beginning to congeal. Whoever had been bleeding had been placed there for medical care by the disarray of bandages and discarded packaging that littered the floor. There was a frantic urgency to the way the items had been scattered.
“Lots of blood,” Tara murmured, uneasily.
“Whoever’s blood it is will be hungry,” Wade predicted grimly. “And your mum is here alone.”
In the butler’s pantry, Wade triggered the door hidden behind a wall of shelving, and they made their way down the staircase, their eyes adjusting to the dark swiftly, the Other glowing vividly, rising with their wariness. From the set of Wade’s shoulders, Raiden could tell that his father was preparing to shift, and fight – a fact confirmed by the look Wade cast over his shoulder at his children, the inclination of his head warning them to be alert and ready for whatever they found.
Raiden pulled the door closed behind him. If the vampires had hurt his mother, they would not be leaving the den, the four werewolves would make sure of that.
The staircase came to a steel door secured by a keypad. Wade entered the code, and they recoiled as the door open, the scent of vampire blood stronger for having been enclosed.
Tara made a gagging noise. “Vampire’s stink,” she complained under her breath.
“We probably stink to them too,” Wade reminded her mildly his words barely audible.
The hallway had five doors. Two opened into bedrooms, another into a bathroom. The fourth was another heavy steel door and contained their family’s treasures and wealth amassed through the ages that could not be explained in the modern world. The fifth door opened into a living space, complete with a kitchenette.
The tension released from the werewolves upon hearing the rise and fall of Diedre’s voice, her conversation one sided but her tone calm. “No, just stay in your den, I will be in touch when I know more.”
“Shit,” Will said with amazement. “That explains the blood loss.”
Elior was on the couch. One arm at the elbow and a leg at the knee had been severed, and tourniquets had been applied just above the injuries. His turned-children Rebecca and Nate tended to him, supplying blood from a large icebox, which he devoured like one starving – which he would be after such a trauma.
Elior bared his blood-stained teeth in a grin of defiance. “The one who did this did not survive it.”
“Good for you,” Wade replied and strode across the room to where Diedre was on the phone. He pressed his lips to her forehead, and they murmured together, their voices too low to carry.
“Where is the girl?” Elior demanded looking beyond Raiden as if expecting to find Lia hiding behind him. “You had better not have lost her to him, or we will all die.”
“No, someone else has her,” Raiden replied. He narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “You were hoping to drink from her. That was your purpose in seeking asylum from my mother. You were hoping I was here with Lia.”
“It is where I left her, so it was where I expected her to still be. We have to balance the battle,” Elior replied wearily, resting his head against the back of the couch. “At the moment, Lucian has a distinct advantage.”
“Do you really think that Lia’s blood has given him greater abilities?” Raiden sat on the couch opposite to the vampire and tried not to look too closely at the limbs which had already begun regenerating.
“He moves too fast and is too strong for even the strongest vampire, a strength and speed he has not previously possessed,” Nate answered for Elior who was working his way through another bag of blood. “He thinks it is the girl, and we have no reason to doubt his belief.”
The icebox had the name of a blood bank along the side. The vampires had made a detour on their way to asylum, Raiden observed, and hoped that they had not injured anyone at the blood bank in doing so.
“He has been frantic seeking the girl,” Rebecca added. “It is almost as if he is addicted to her blood rather than the reverse.”
“Perhaps he will grow weaker without the supply,” Elior observed having finished the bag of blood. “But do we have the time to find out? We need to obtain the girl. This other that has her, must bring her here to me.”
Raiden arched his eyebrows. “What makes you think that I would allow you to drink from my mate, Elior?”
“It is to your advantage for me to defeat Lucian,” Elior pointed out with irritation. “Or he will not stop looking for her, and he will eventually find her. You know this to be the truth. I would protect her to preserve good will with the pack. So, get on your phone, Raiden please, and summon her here, before he tracks me to your den and kills us all.”
“We need to move,” Diedre announced having moved away from the phone. “To your den, Raiden or Ethan’s. He lost too much blood coming in. They will track him here.”
“I need to go,” Raiden decided, running his hand through his hair. “I need to get Alatar and retrieve Lia,” he was careful about how he phrased it, considering the vampires who listened attentively from the couch.
“Raiden, you need to sleep,” Wade protested.
“No,” Diedre said quietly. “He is right and so is Elior. Raiden needs to get his mate and bring her to pack lands. We need to secure Lia, before Lucian destroys the pack searching for her.”
“Not to mention what he is doing to my region,” Elior added grimly. “My people are dying, and he will not stop there, he intends to go all the way to the vampire elders.”
“Alright, let’s do this then,” Diedre decided. “Will, get the blankets. We will wrap Elior in them in order to prevent any blood spilling. Rebecca and Nate, you will carry him. I will bring the blood.”
“I will go with Raiden,” Tara decided.
For a moment Diedre paused, and then she sighed heavily. “Be safe. I would not lose two children tonight.”
They bound Elior in blankets and Wade led the way back up into the house. They crossed the garden into Raiden’s house without incident, the werewolves keeping a lookout around the house and down the street until the injured vampire was safely in the den.
“I am just grabbing some clothes,” Tara told Raiden and ran across the street into her house. “These sweats might be fit all, but we look like a bunch of prisoners on a jail-break when we wear them.”
“Good idea,” Raiden headed into his bedroom and dressed hurriedly, pulling on the first items that he found. They met out front of his garage as Raiden lifted the car cover off his Porsche.
“I brought my spare phone,” Tara said as she pulled on her seat belt. “I have Alatar’s number on it. You are going to the grimoire, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Raiden backed out the driveway. “It is at Lia’s house.” He gave the address and Tara added it to her message to Alatar. “What did you say?”
“To meet at the house, and that you want him to look at Lia’s grimoire to see if we can somehow use it to trace her.”
As they made their way through the empty suburban streets and out of the pack’s territory, the phone vibrated in a response.
“He is coming,” Tara said. “He reckons there might be other things he could use, like hair in her hairbrush, or her toothbrush even.”
“That is a good idea,” Raiden felt some of the tension release from his shoulders. “Yeah, I am sure there is something there.”
“You are not going to let Elior drink from Lia, are you?” She asked quietly when the car had fallen into silence for some time, the yellow streetlights whipping through the interior as Raiden pushed the speed limits to their tolerances. “I don’t know if that would be a good idea. We might end up with more than one super-vampire than and double our problems.”
“I don’t know,” Raiden replied, a muscle in his jaw ticking. “I don’t know if Lia is alive. I feel she must be. Surely, I would feel it if she died? I don’t know where she is, or how to get her back. We don’t even know if Lia is the source of Lucian’s strength and speed, or if he even had greater strength and speed. How far can we really trust Elior, after all? Whether Elior then drinks from her is so far down my priority list at the moment, that I don’t even have an answer.”
“We will find her,” Tara said, reaching out to put a hand on his arm. “We will, Raiden.”
“Thanks T.”