Shattered (19 page)

By the time
James came out with the leash and oversized collar he'd purchased, we
had Brindi shifted over to drive Jess' SUV and a few seconds later
Jess was pulling James along as she started sorting through all of
the different scent trails in the area.

Carson had
politely turned his back as Jess had shifted forms, and now he came
over to stand next to me.

"It's
risky. Nobody who knows much about dogs is going to believe that Jess
is any kind of normal breed, she's much too big."

"Yeah, I
know, but short of grabbing a couple of gang members off of the
street and torturing them, I'm not sure we have any other options.
I'll go with the two of them and if anyone asks I'll tell them that
we shot her up with canine growth hormone when she was a puppy. I
just hope wherever they took James' mom is nearby. If it's outside of
the gang's territory altogether then we're never going to find it."

Once we had
Jess on the ground and on four legs it actually didn't take us very
long to find the headquarters for the gang. Even better, both James
and Jess were positive that they could smell James' mom going in and
she hadn't come back out yet, so they hadn't moved her.

Jack's people
arrived while we were still casing out the old industrial building as
best we could from the outside, and Alison and her three passengers
showed up only fifteen minutes later. Once everyone was there, I
followed Jack as he slowly worked his way around the outside of the
building. There were enough other abandoned buildings in the area
that we were able, for the most part, to just move from one building
to the other and stay out of sight.

"What's
your suggestion for the best way to get her out?"

Jack didn't
respond to my question for several seconds. "Everything about
this operation smells funny, Alec. We don't have the prep time we
need. James could get the call with the drop time and place at any
moment, so there isn't any way to get hold of the floor plan for that
building before we're going to need to make our move. If this was St
Louis it would be a different matter, but I have absolutely no
contacts here."

I nodded. "I
had the same thought. I think we're just going to have to rush in and
hope for the best. If we go in through all of the doors at the same
time it will give us the best chance of taking them by surprise and
getting to James' mom before they can hurt her."

"Maybe. If
they haven't done much in the way of remodeling then you're probably
right. If that's the case then we'll probably be charging into a big
open space. If they've changed the interior layout then our best bet
would be to sneak in quietly through whatever door is closest to
wherever they are holding her."

"That
makes sense—which do you think we're up against?"

"I was
hoping to be able to get a better idea from out here, but they've
blacked out all of the windows, probably in an effort to keep law
enforcement in the dark regarding whatever they've got inside there.
That probably means that we're dealing with a relatively large, open
area. If they were storing the goodies inside of some kind of
interior room then there wouldn't be any reason to raise their
profile like that by darkening the windows."

"So we go
in all at once using all of the entryways."

Jack nodded
slowly, still considering. "Yeah, but we cut the power first so
that they are as disoriented as possible."

"That's a
good idea."

"Thanks.
In a perfect world we'd use flashbang grenades to make it so they
couldn't see or hear either one, but we used my last batch three
weeks ago taking out another nest of vampires and my contacts haven't
come up with another shipment yet."

"Are those
hard to get your hands on?"

"They are
if you want to make sure that they can't be traced back to you. I
figure that the police will be going over the mess we'll be leaving
behind with a fine-tooth comb. We don't want to give them anything to
go off of that we don't absolutely have to."

"What
about the drop? How do you want to play that? Wait to go in until
they contact us in the hopes that at least a couple of people leave
to go watch the drop site?"

"Yeah,
that's not a bad idea. It probably won't make much of a difference,
but it can't hurt."

Jack turned
away from the window and started pacing. "Don't tell James this,
but at this point I'm less worried about getting his mom out of there
and more worried about containing this so that it doesn't get out to
the larger vampire population. The smells you guys are describing
from the rank-and-file gang members don't feel right to me. I think
we've stumbled into something much bigger than just a kidnapping.
Every bone in my body is telling me to pull back and take the time to
do a proper assessment of the situation, but we just can't afford to
do that, not unless we're willing to see James' mom die and virtually
guarantee that the rest of the vampires in this country will find out
about us."

"So we go
in?"

"Yeah, we
go in and hope that we can manage to achieve the objective, but
before we do that we need to make sure that we've got contingency
plans in place."

"What do
you mean?"

"It needs
to be more than just our group that knows what's going on out here.
I'll go give some of my contacts in the rebellion a call and tell
them if they don't hear from me tomorrow that they need to round up a
bigger group to salvage the situation. You need to ask Carson to do
the same and then call that girlfriend of yours. If we all die in
there an hour from now it's going to be vital that the cavalry comes
into town within the next few days."

"Okay,
that makes sense. How do we make sure all three groups can coordinate
if it comes to that?"

"We'll
leave someone out of the attack, we'll send them off somewhere safe
with your phone, my phone and Carson's phone. All our contacts have
to do is call our phones to get the latest information. I'd suggest
Brindi, but I'm not sure she'll be able to hold things together if
you don't come back from this mission."

"You're
right. I'll ask Alison's mom to sit things out. We can send both
Brindi and the phones with her. She's not much of a fighter anyway."

"Okay,
let's get to it then. We might not have much time left."

Alec Graves
South Central Los Angeles, California

I found Carson,
explained Jack's worries, and then retreated to another dirty,
abandoned building to make my own phone call. Jack had told me to
'call my girlfriend' without realizing that I didn't have her phone
number, just Isaac's.

It was probably
for the best anyway. Isaac was more likely to be the one calling the
shots. I dialed Isaac's number and then waited until he picked up.

"Alec, I'm
sorry I missed your call last night. My phone was sitting on my desk
and I didn't think to check it before I headed outside. We've been
working nights around here and by the time I finally turned in,
checking for missed calls was the last thing on my mind. What did you
want to talk about?"

"We've got
a problem in LA. One of my people got picked up by a gang that seems
to be run by vampires. It took us the better part of a full day to
get here, so there's a chance they've broken her and know all about
our kind."

Isaac was
silent for several seconds as he tried to process the possible
implications of what I'd just told him. "That's a big deal,
Alec."

"Yeah, I
know. I was hoping to be able to get somebody in place here before
now. That's why I called last night, but that's all water under the
bridge at this point. We're going to go in and try to save my person
and kill all of the vampires in the gang's headquarters, but there's
no guarantee we'll manage either of those objectives, so I wanted to
give you a heads up.

"If I
don't give you a call in the next twenty-four hours you'd probably
better start assuming the worst. Carson and Jack are both alerting
their contacts and we'll leave all of our phones with Alison's mom so
you can coordinate through her, but your best bet at that point may
just be to alert the Coun'hij and let them take care of things."

I could tell
from Isaac's voice that he didn't like that idea. "That would
give Kaleb and the rest the moral high ground again. I'd rather not
do that."

"I
understand. I think there would be some benefit to the resistance
taking them out, but whatever you choose you'll need to work quickly
and come loaded for bear. If they take us out then you're not going
to want to go halfway."

"Especially
considering that by then they'll definitely know what they're up
against."

"Yeah,
especially considering that. I'd fall back into a holding pattern and
wait for more bodies to arrive if this was just another extermination
mission, but where they have James' mom already I don't feel like
that's an option."

"I
understand that. I'll start rousting people out of their beds and
building a consensus so we're ready to move if we don't hear back
from you in the next couple of hours. Better to have everyone headed
towards California and find out that you didn't end up needing us
than start too late and have the vampires at our throats as a
result."

"Yeah,
that's probably smart. Thanks, Isaac. Here's to seeing you on the
other side."

Isaac cleared
his throat. "Yeah, here's to that. Before you go though…well,
I know it's not really any of my business, but I'm going to text you
Adri's phone number. You can do whatever you want with it; I won't
tell her you have it unless she asks me about it directly.

"To be
honest, I've been thinking that I needed to do this for days now. I
didn't want to interfere, but there's just something about the two of
you that makes me want to see you work things out. I can't explain it
more than that, but there you have it."

"Thanks,
Isaac. I'd like to give her a call before we go after James' mom."

"Okay, I
think she'd like that. Don't go jerking her around though. She
deserves better than that."

"I won't.
Honestly, the biggest reason I haven't called already is that I
figured Dream Stealer would have convinced her I was pond scum again
before you guys even stopped for lunch."

"No, I
think Dream Stealer is starting to mellow out a little bit where
you're concerned. I'd better go get started though if we're going to
have any chance of getting out of here in the next two hours."

Isaac was as
good as his word. Five seconds after he hung up from our call a text
came through with a number on it. I took a deep breath to calm my
nerves and then dialed Adri's number.

"Hello?"

Her voice
sounded just like I remembered. She sounded like auditory paradise
and for a second I couldn't get any words out. Now that I was
actually going to talk to her, all of the things that could go wrong
loomed over me.

"Adri,
it's Alec. I'm sorry I didn't call before now. I guess I had a lot of
excuses running around inside of my head, but the truth is I was
scared. Scared that Taggart had convinced you I wasn't worth your
time, scared that if I called I would mess things up."

"No, it's
okay, Alec. Honestly, I knew that Isaac had your number but I didn't
call you either. I was scared that if I called you would think less
of me or something. What made you change your mind?"

That was a
better response than I'd been worried I might get. Adri really was
one of a kind.

I cleared my
throat. "I'm about to go after a group of vampires and I
couldn't stand the idea of entering danger again without calling and
telling you that I meant every word I said the last time we saw each
other. I know that things are going to be difficult. Dream Stealer
hates my guts and it's going to take me some time to get Brindi back
to where she can function independently, but I'm not going to stop
fighting to make us a reality."

"I'd like
that, Alec, I really would—just don't let this habit of big
declarations of your feelings followed by prolonged periods of
silence continue. I know it's going to be hard for the two of us to
get to know each other. We're in the middle of a war and we both have
responsibilities. Operational security will probably get in the way
from time to time, but we have to keep the flow of communication
going. This weird mystical link between us isn't going to see us
through the long haul if that's all we have together."

I was smiling
so hard I couldn't get any words out. She was right. I felt like we
had something, but the truth was that what we had was more along the
lines of the potential to be something. That was okay though, because
she was still as eager as I was to see if we could turn it into
something real.

The few seconds
of silence seemed to make her uneasy. "Did I just make a
complete idiot out of myself?"

"No, Adri,
you didn't. I'm glad you said what you said, it's what I needed to
hear."

"Okay
then, I think that's a first as far as not making an idiot of myself
goes. Maybe there's hope for me after all."

"I'm sure
of it."

"You
probably need to go."

There was a
longing to her voice that made me smile almost despite myself. With
everything else going on it didn't seem fair for us to take time to
just be with each other, but that didn't stop me from wanting it
either.

"I don't
want to."

"Yeah, me
either, but I can hear people moving around outside of my room. We
both have duties we need to get back to. Don't worry though, I'll be
here when you get done beating up on the bad guys."

Alec Graves
South Central Los Angeles, California