Return of the Assassin (All the King's Men) (9 page)

Stryker's expression grew grim, but true to his militaristic demeanor, he didn't mince words. "It's bad. Real bad. Several victims have already died. Most of the others are strung out on cobalt. Some can't even be described." With a shake of his head, he sucked his teeth then pursed his lips. A moment later, he continued. "One of the vics brought in earlier was just a boy. Looks like he was filleted. I don't know how he's even still alive. Our people are trying to learn what they can from what little was left behind out there, but there's not much. This was a professional operation, well-funded. Whatever Bishop and Apostle were doing with those vampires and mixed-bloods, it was fucked up. And I think we're going to have our hands full real soon. This shit could go all the way to Premier Royce, and I'd bet my ass it does."

Premier Royce, who swore he had no knowledge of any funny business or illegal behavior being perpetuated by his people. Yeah, right. Sure. That bastard was a master at keeping his ass clean.
Too
clean. What Micah wouldn't give to be in the same room with Royce just once so he could dipsy-doodle into his mind and capture his secrets.

"Keep me posted, will you?" Micah said as he stood.

"Sure thing." With that, Stryker spun on his heel and marched out the door, his boots thunking like a perfectly timed drumbeat as he headed toward his own office.

Something wasn't right, but Micah couldn't put a finger on it. His instincts told him there was a tie between cobalt distribution and what was going on in Bishop's lab. Were the drecks using cobalt as a lure to draw in victims, or was there some darker, more sinister purpose to the drug? If the victims coming back from the lab were strung out on cobalt, it meant that Bishop was dosing them with the blue shit. Logically then, the question was why? Obviously, the drecks were using cobalt against the vampires, but to what end?

Agitated and needing to move, Micah left his office and went to the medical ward. He wanted to check on Maddox anyway, so while he was there, he would look in on the two victims Stryker had referred to.

He stopped at the reception desk just inside the double doors. "How is he?"

Everyone knew by now who he was referring to when he stopped in.

"He woke up," the nurse behind the desk said.

"He did?" This was a new development. "Why didn't someone come and get me?"

She shook her head. "It wasn't pretty, Micah. The docs didn't want any interference."

Well, shit on a stick. This didn't sound good.

He brushed back his hair. "Can I see him?"

She offered a crooked grin, dipped her head to one side as if she already knew there was no way he would take no for an answer, and waved him back.

"Thanks." He hurried down the hall and made his way to Maddox's room, where he quietly opened the door. Maddox's imposing form lay on a bed they'd brought in special for him. The normal medical beds weren't big enough, but even with the bigger bed, his feet came right to the bottom edge of the mattress.

A heart monitor
beep…beep…beeped
beside him, but what surprised Micah were the wrist restraints. And the leg restraints. And the thick leather and iron binding around his waist, as well as one around his neck. He was strapped down to the bed like a serial murderer about to receive death by lethal injection.

What the fuck? What in the hell had happened when Maddox woke up to warrant such treatment?

He approached the bed and noted that Maddox's pale eyes—so like Trace's—stared straight up at the ceiling. The mammoth male didn't even seem to notice Micah was there.

"Maddox?" Micah peered closer, but got no response. Not even a blink. And what little he got from Maddox's mind didn't make much sense. But then, the guy had apparently been in some kind of hibernation or some shit, so his hardwiring was probably going through a reboot.

"Can you hear me? Maddox? I'm a friend of Trace's. Your son?"

Maddox blinked, shifted his eyes toward Micah, and with a deathly quiet hiss, drew back his lips to expose two impressive sets of Slavic fangs.

Micah narrowed his eyes at the unusual reaction. "So, you
can
hear me."

Another hiss, this one louder.

"I'm not your enemy, Maddox."

This time Maddox growled, and the muscles in his arms corded as he clenched his fists.

"Okay, so you're not ready to talk." Micah backed away.

He wasn't scared of Maddox, he just didn't want to upset him.

The door opened, and Micah turned as the doctor entered.

"Why is he restrained?" Micah asked, not at all pleased that Trace's father was being treated like an animal at the zoo.

"Our guest became a bit…
agitated
when he woke up." The doctor gestured around the room.

That's when Micah noticed the broken glass in the cabinets, holes in the wall by the door, and a couple of snapped shelves.

Ooohhh. Okay. "I see." He glanced back at Maddox, whose gaze was locked on the doctor. And not in a good way. More like a you're-dead-if-you-get-any-closer kind of way. Talk about your evil stares. Maddox could have turned Medusa into stone.

"He went crazy. Tossed two of my nurses aside like they weighed no more than feathers."

Micah didn't know what to make of this. What had they gotten themselves into with Trace's father? "Any idea why?"

"No." The doctor shook his head. "He just went berserk, yelling in some odd language as he tore up the place."

"He's an ancient." Micah looked back at Maddox. "He was probably speaking in his native language."

"Well, whatever language he was speaking, we couldn't understand him, and we weren't about to call for a translator. We finally subdued and tranquilized him. I'm here to give him another so he doesn't rip out of his bindings."

Micah shook his head. "You can't keep him tied down like that."

The doctor waved his arm around the room. "Tell it to my staff, Micah. We can't have him running around like a savage, tearing up the entire building and killing God only knows how many in the process, either."

Frustration didn't begin to describe how Micah felt about the situation. Maddox didn't seem intentionally dangerous. Scared? Wary? Absolutely. But they weren't going to acclimatize him to the new world he'd awakened to by treating him like he was a prisoner in a barbaric dungeon. Maddox needed to trust them, and strapping him down wasn't the way to go about gaining his trust.

"I want him taken to the new facility then," Micah said. "Place him inside one of the new Plexiglas rooms, but I don't want him tied down like this." He pointed at the restraints. "Do you understand me? Fuck, but a prison cell would be better than this bullshit. He's Trace's goddamn father and an ancient who's been in hibernation for God knows how long. He's not a fucking animal." The more he talked, the angrier he grew. "I don't care about your busted up room, and I don't care if your staff is afraid of him or that you think he's a savage. I will not come back here and see this shit again. You got me!"

An amused chuckle rumbled from the bed, and Micah turned to see Maddox grinning from ear to ear, his gaze trained on Micah.

So, Trace's father could understand English just fine, could he?

"You ass." Micah smirked and shook his head. He liked this guy.

Maddox's reply was to chuckle louder.

Stepping up to the side of the bed, Micah met Maddox's gaze. "Fine. Don't talk. But I know you can understand me."

Maddox stopped laughing, but a shit-eating grin stayed plastered on his puss as his eyes narrowed. He looked almost insane. And who knew? Maybe he was.

"I'm going to have you transferred to another facility," Micah said. "Someplace where you won't be restrained like this." He tapped his fingers on the heavy leather binding around Maddox's wrist. "But I won't tolerate any more outbursts. No more making like a gladiator and busting shit up. This is the twenty-first century, not medieval times. We clear?" Until he got answers about how long Maddox had been hibernating, he would have to assume the worst about the last time Maddox had set waking eyes on the world. "You deserve better treatment than this."

Maddox frowned and looked away as if he was uncomfortable with Micah's compassion.

How strange. But then, for a vampire as old as Maddox, who had obviously been someone of power and influence at one time, he might still hold old codes of honor. One of which could include shying away from pity.

Mental note made. No more pity for the big guy. He turned toward the doctor, who remained a few steps away. "Get him out of these goddamn restraints and moved to the new facility now or, so help me God, I'll see you on shit duty for a month."

Without another glance toward Maddox, he marched out the door and down toward the trauma unit. No doubt the two victims from the lab had been taken there, where they would be under constant surveillance.

He passed through the double doors and stopped at the front desk. "I want to see the two vics brought in from Arizona earlier this evening."

With a nod, the nurse on duty buzzed for a doctor.

This was the wing where enforcers went when shit got bad in the field. Severin had done his time here after Gina shot him, and Sam had started out here after he changed her into an immortal. Princess Miriam had even paid the unit a visit after her first cobalt overdose, before she stabilized and was moved to a room where she met Io. Hell, was it some kind of requirement that relationships had to start inside the walls of the trauma unit? Did death have to seem imminent for a mating to take place? It sure looked that way if recent history was any indication, but damn, there had to be a better, easier way.

One of the doctors who had treated Samantha through her transformation approached him. "Hello again, Micah," she said. "How's Sam?" Her name badge read Dr. Fae Snow.

"She's good."

"I'm glad to hear it. I hear you want to see our two new guests, is that right?" Dr. Snow was all business. Efficient.

"Yes, please."

She was already leading him down the hall. "We've got them in induced comas," she said as she walked briskly through a set of doors, along a short hall, and into a round room. In the center sat an array of desks, personnel, and monitors. The patient rooms were situated on the periphery, with nothing but windows so that each patient never lacked eyes on him or her.

Dr. Snow led him to a room on the right. "This is Kieran. That's as much as we know about his identity."

"What the hell?" Micah stared at Kieran's exposed arms and torso. His beige skin was covered in dark—almost black—tattoos. As if they had been burned into his skin.

"I know," Dr. Snow said. "That's some impressive artwork he's sporting, isn't it?"

"I'll say." He peered closer and cocked his head to one side. These weren't ordinary tattoos. If he wasn't mistaken, they were warnings, but in a primitive language he'd only seen a handful of times. But clearly, Kieran was marked as an outcast. Ostracized from his clan.

Micah needed to do some research, but it looked like Kieran held some interesting powers that had spooked his clan badly enough to brand him.

Dr. Snow checked his vitals. "He was belligerent when they brought him in, suffering from hardcore cobalt withdrawal like nothing I've ever seen. We're keeping him in the coma until we've cleansed his tissues of the worst of it." Dr. Snow placed her hand on Micah's shoulder to get his attention. "Let me show you the other one. He's much worse."

Micah followed her to the next room over, and his heart broke. This one was merely a boy, not even through his transition to adulthood. He was tall and lanky, with dark hair and tender features. He couldn't have been older than nineteen or twenty and looked like he was being held together by a thick, white bandage. Crimson bled through from, what appeared to be, a gaping wound that started at his sternum and ran down his torso. He imagined the wound extended to the boy's groin, but the sheet was drawn up to keep him covered.

"What happened to him?"

Dr. Snow shook her head and bit her lip. Clearly, whatever the boy had endured was gruesome. "It looked like they had begun to dissect him or something. He had been cut open. I have no idea how he survived this long, and it will take a miracle for him to live."

"I believe in miracles," Micah said. "What do you need to make sure he makes it?"

With a huff of frustration, Dr. Snow shrugged. "Blood, and lots of it."

"Done. I'll donate some now and tell everyone on my team to come and do likewise."

Vampires didn't have blood types. Theirs was universal, even for the mixed-bloods, which this boy was. Micah sensed he was half-human.

"Do you have a name for him?" he asked.

"Intel matched up facial indicators to a record of a kid attending the University of Chicago named Savill Hawke. Real loner. Not a lot of friends. The file says he's a musical prodigy. He's in the music program and hasn't been to any classes in about a week. One of the day staff checked out his apartment but no one answered. I'd say he's our boy, but I'm not positive."

"Have you contacted the parents to see if they can confirm ID?" Micah said.