Night Shadow (28 page)

until he came to bring her back . . .

Sobering thought, because God damn it, there was a very real possibility

that he wouldn’t be alive
to
retrieve her.

“Let’s start with facts, go to suppositions, and finish with theories,” Edge

told the ladies when Lucas was done. With a slight movement of his hand,

Edge once again rearranged the seating. This time, they were moved into

a tight circle around a circular cherrywood table. Which left the council on

the outskirts stil emersed in shadow. The close proximity made

conversation easier, and brought him from behind the massive desk. He

also dimmed the interrogation lights.

“Now, does anyone have anything new they can add? The more we know,

the better we’l be able to deal with Knight. Who’d like to get the ball

rol ing?”

“I wil ,” Lexi told him, her tone grim. “Mind if I walk while I talk?” She

released Alex’s hand and stood. “Easier for me to think that way.”

Without waiting for Edge’s consent, Lexi began pacing. Due to the

excel ent acoustics, her voice carried easily in the vast room as she

walked away. “Intel ectually I understand that Knight produced three

children with in vitro fertilization. But for one thing, it’s statistically

impossible for them all to left-handed and green-eyed.”

That hadn’t occurred to him because he’d considered those small details

immaterial. Fascinated, Alex watched Lexi power on her brain, pulling

connected facts out of the corners of her mind, things she’d read and

stored, but possibly not connected before.

God, he admired her mind almost as much as he lusted after her. Who

knew the brain was an erogenous zone? Didn’t hurt that she was also

funny and sexy and had a body that made him salivate.

“I don’t understand the purpose of the babies.” Lexi stared at a gilt-

framed landscape on the far wall, clearly deep in thought. “So I can’t

address that.” She turned, striding back, long legs encased in dark pants,

boots thudding on the plush carpet underfoot. She looked like a warrior

princess with her black clothing, empty holster, and shaggy blond hair.

She circled a decorative table on her return trip. “But I believe the liquid

obtained from dissolving wizards and the bodies of organ donors is being

used in some grotesque way to manufacture the clones. Much like

embryos in advanced in vitro cloning.”

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Night Shadow

“And your educated guess as to why Stone, Blackthorne, and Fox have

been used as models for these embryos? They’re called Vitros, by the

way.”

“I don’t make
educated
guesses,” Lexi told him shortly. “I like facts,

backed up by statistics and freaking pie charts.”

“What exactly is Mason Knight
doing
?” The woman beside Lucas Fox asked

tartly as she crossed long, tan legs and used a slender hand to twist the

ring on her left hand in a nervous gesture. Lucas reached out and took her

hand in his. She shot him a grateful smile.

“He’s breeding superwizards,” Blackthorne told her grimly.

“That’s who—
what
the babies are? Manufactured wizards?” Kess Goodall

asked, clearly repulsed and appalled by the notion; her pale skin went a

little whiter.

“We’re stil not certain how the babies fit into all this.” Edge leaned back in

his chair, steepling his hands. “One more detail we’ve been able to piece

together from images taken at each of the bomb sites, is the totality of

the information on the bar code tattoos on their left wrists.”

“Other than longitude and latitude?” Lexi asked, returning to the group

and squeezing between her chair and Alex’s to sit down again.

“Date of death,” Alex told her.

She turned to look at him, her brow furrowed. “They know when they’re

going to die? More to the point, they’re programmed to die?”

“They have an expiration date. When it’s time, they disintegrate.”

“Or when one is shot,” Fox pointed out dryly.

Lexi glanced around at the group. “Has anyone noticed their age? How can

they all be—what? Twenty or thereabouts?”

“They’re not,” Alex said flatly. “As far as we can ascertain, they’re all

twelve months old.”

Her eyes grew wide. “They grew from birth to adulthood in one
year
?”

“Apparently.”

“Accelerated growth creates premature aging,” Sydney murmured, picking

up her water glass but not drinking.

“Bingo,” Fox said flatly.

“What on earth is their purpose?” Kess asked. “Terrorists for hire?”

Simon nodded. “You can say that. Nothing can stop them. A bullet gets

one, there are thousands just like it right behind him. It’s a tango army,

armed and souped up with wizard powers.”

“God,” Lexi breathed, clearly horrified.

“Helps those who help themselves,” Edge finished, Sahara-dry. “We have

to find
where
these Vitros are being manufactured,
how
they’re

manufactured, and how to annihilate them on an epic scale. And we have

to do it
now.
”

“Agreed.” Lexi speared Edge with a glance. “Why have Alex’s powers been

short circuiting?”

“And Lucas’s?” Sydney added.

Kess chimed in. “And Simon’s?”

“There’s no need to t—” Tel the women this part, Alex wanted to say. But

Edge shook his head.

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Night Shadow

“We believe they’re operating on a col ective mind set. That all of these

Vitros, like drones, are becoming a single entity. Many bodies, one brain.

One control.”

“What are you saying?” Sydney said, her voice raw with fear.

“He’s saying,” Lexi told her flatly, “That all three of our guys are being

sucked into some sort of communal paranormal mind control that’s going

to take them—Alex, Lucas, and Simon—away from
us,
and force them all

to do the freaking bidding of that damned megalomaniac, Mason Knight.

They’l end up being exactly the people they’re here to eliminate. Our guys

wil be
terrorists
.” Lexi took a deep breath.

“That these three men right here are the originals for the Vitros. Isn’t that

what we’re dancing around here?”

“Thus far it’s only supposition,” Edge informed her without inflection.

“No. It’s more than that.” Lexi shifted to sit on the edge of her chair and

braced her arms on the table. “We have to find Knight, and we have to

figure out how to take him down. Take down the head, down comes the

monster.”

That was his Lexi. Straight to the point and already figuring the angles.

Alex felt a surge of pride coupled with his fear for her safety.

“What does this bastard
look
like?” Kess demanded. “I want to recognize

him when I see him.”

“You’l
never
meet the son of a bitch,” Blackthorne told her unequivocal y.

“You’re never going to be anywhere
near
him.”

She laid a pale hand on his arm, her orange boots scuffing at the floor.

“Fine. But just in case shit happens and I
do
—I think we all need to know

what this monster looks like.”

Caleb conjured a holograph of Knight in the center of the table. “This was

taken a month ago. He hasn’t been seen since.”

Sydney rose, flattening her palms on the table as she studied the image.

“I saw this guy.”

“Where?” Fox demanded, touching the small of her back in a protective

way that spoke volumes about their relationship.

Without looking away from the image, Sydney answered absently. “At

Novos Começos Medi-Spa.”

“Did he talk to you?”

She shook her head. “No. I was in the medical building, and was going to

try sneaking upstairs to the third floor to see if I could discover anything.

But there were armed guys guarding the elevators. This guy—Knight—was

talking to them. Clearly he knew them. In fact—he looked to be in charge.

They let him go up.”

While the exchange of seemingly random bits of intel was vital if they

hoped to apprehend Knight and destroy his “Vitros,” Alex’s druthers was

being out there, beating the bushes, rather than sitting here—wherever

here was—
talking
about it.

“One question we
haven’t
covered is why these guys have been having

power outages,” Lexi observed.

Alex locked eyes with Duncan.
Need to know.

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Night Shadow

Edge shook his head so slightly no one else would see it.
They’re invested

in this. The women
do
need to know.

Hel .

“We believe we’re being assimilated into the col ective of the Vitros,” Alex

told her with grim reluctance. “Knight’s plan is that everything we are,

everything we know, will be absorbed by these—Vitros.”

“That includes al our inside knowledge and training from T-FLAC,” Lucas

added.

“And our powers,” Simon concluded.

“And
what,
” Lexi demanded fiercely, “does he plan on doing with what’s

left?”

That
was the million-dol ar question.

Sixteen

“That went wel ,” Lexi said dryly, getting to her feet with the others as

Edge teleported the hel out of Dodge. She sucked in a breath and

muttered a curse as, a second later, she found herself standing weak-

kneed in an opulent, unfamiliar, bedroom.

The crackle of the fire blazing in the stone hearth sounded so . . . normal.

The flames on the tall, lightly tuberose-scented white tapers flickered with

the air current stirred up by their entrance.

Staggering, Lexi used both hands to grab Alex’s arm for balance. “Don’t

you people ever give a freaking heads-up?”

Sliding an arm around her waist to keep her steady, he glanced around.

“Definitely not HQ.” His tone was martini dry.

“Not unless your pal Lark has secretly gotten a sideline decorating, no.”

Lexi tipped her head back to study the twenty-foot-high, elaborately

carved wood ceiling. Definitely
not
Montana. The room was dominated by

a massive four-poster bed draped in bronze silk and heavy autumnal-

colored tapestry fabric. The carpet underfoot was a deep chocolate color,

the walls lined with the same dull-sheened silk as the bed hangings. Very

plush. Very fancy. Not her style, which tended to run to serviceable

neutrals, but pretty damn cool nevertheless.

It was the kind of place that looked as if it should have portraits of stern-

faced ancestors in odd outfits lining the walls. Fortunately, instead there

were beautiful landscapes in huge gilt frames. Definitely better than

staring eyes.

She felt the chill of the outside air even through the leaded windows

directly behind her, but the room was toasty warm and very romantic for

two counterterrorist operatives.

“Nice, in a Barbara Cartland-meets-Mary Queen of Scots kind of way.” She

tried to gauge Alex’s response to the undoubtedly romantic setting.

Of course, Alex being Alex, he was a master at hiding what he was

thinking; his face revealed nothing. A great trait for an operative, and Lexi

had been trying to emulate it since the op started. But it was damn hard

to keep a poker face around wizards, where strange goings-on were a

matter of course. She was just fortunate she didn’t walk around with her

mouth hanging open in horror/ awe/shock 24/7.

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Night Shadow

She glanced out of the window at the bril iant moonlit snowscaped garden

below the rough stone walls. Apparently they were in a castle.

Somewhere.
She didn’t even bother to try to figure that one out. It had

been a hel of a night. Lexi’s heart ached for Alex. What could she do?

What could she say?

Nothing.

This was something Alex—and the others—had to wrap their brains

around themselves.

The meeting had been intense.

The new intel terrifying.

He needed to unwind, to forget, if only for a short time, the implication of

everything he’d learned tonight.

She
hated
that. Hated that she couldn’t just damn wel step in and fix this

for him. She’d spent years fixing things minor and major for her feckless

parents. Here was someone worth putting on her armor and going into

battle for. Unfortunately she knew that not only was this not her fight, it

was something she
couldn’t
fix.

Turning, she shot him what she hoped was a naughty look. “I think it’s

against the rules for us to share a bed.” The truth was, even though she’d

had a couple of lovers in the past, she’d never instigated their

lovemaking. She’d never flirted, hell, she didn’t even know
how
to flirt.

But God, she loved this man.

Alex’s eyes gleamed intensely as he walked her backward, crowding her