The Recruit: Book Two (16 page)

When Will didn’t reply she changed the
subject.  “Do you believe Richard thinks we’re taking advantage of his
generosity in staying so long at the farmhouse?”

Will shook his head.  “No.  You’re welcome
to stay as long as you’d like.”

“I’m glad.”  She said softly.  “We can’t go
back home and we’re quite fond of the farmhouse.  Barb has become like a sister
to me.  She’s a lovely woman.  Do you know her well?”

“No.”

“She lost her brother to the vampires.  He
was her only sibling and they were very close.”

She sighed.  “We like living at the
farmhouse.  It comforts us to be close to our Hannah.”  She reached out and
briefly stroked the wooden cross.

“We love being in the place that brought
her so much purpose and joy.  And we love being close to the person who made
her happiest.”  She squeezed Will’s arm gently.

“I was mean to her.”  He said gruffly.  “I
yelled at her while she threw-up from exhaustion, and forced her to do extra
push-ups during training.  I accused her of sleeping with another recruit.  And
I told her she was just a fling to me and broke her heart here.”

“In the end she knew that you loved her.”  Natalie
replied.

He stared at the small, brown dog still standing
against his leg, his throat aching and his chest hurting so badly he could barely
breathe.

“You loved her and she loved you.  That’s
all that matters.”  Natalie said firmly, unknowingly echoing Hannah’s words to
him while they had lain together in her childhood bed.

He finally looked at her.  Her dark eyes,
so similar to Hannah’s, were filled with such intense warmth and pity that he
could feel his fierce control crumbling.

“I miss her so much.”  His voice cracked
and he began to cry.

Natalie drew his head down into her lap and
he collapsed against her as sobs wracked his large body.

“I know, dear heart.  I know.”  She
whispered.  She stroked his dark hair as Reuben curled up on the ground next to
them and Will cried bitterly.

“How much longer are we going to wait?”  Reid
whispered.

Chen gripped his swords and glanced at him.
 “As long as it takes.”

“It’s almost midnight.  If they were going
to show, they would have by now.”  Reid sighed impatiently.  They had been
there for nearly four hours and his body was aching from sitting in the same
position.

Chen didn’t reply and Reid shifted
nervously.  “I don’t like this.  Are we really going to hide behind a stack of
pallets while vampires have a goddamn boy scout meeting not twenty feet away?”

Chen grinned in spite of himself.  “Yes. 
It could be worse – you could be Will and Mannie.”

Reid glanced upwards.  To the left of them
a set of steel stairs connected to a balcony that overlooked the entire
warehouse.  The concrete balcony jutted out from a small room that had
obviously been the main office.  The warehouse was large and dismayingly empty,
and there had been very few places to hide.  Chen and Reid had taken refuge
behind the towering stack of pallets while Mannie and Will had flattened themselves
on the floor of the balcony, using the short concrete wall that surrounded it
to conceal their large bodies.

Reid adjusted the small earpiece in his ear
and said, “Any movement?”

After a moment he replied, “Okay, hang
tight.  Chen says we keep waiting.”

He cracked his knuckles.  “Constance says
there’s nothing.”

Because of the emptiness of the warehouse,
the rest of the team had hidden themselves outside.  Mallorie and Selena,
Constance and Ryan, and April and Alex were planted in various positions around
the warehouse. 

“Why are we even in here?”  Reid grumbled. 
“Our plan was to use Mallorie and Selena as bait, and catch a straggler or two
after the meeting was over.  We don’t need to risk being caught in a goddamn
warehouse full of fangers.”

“Richard believes we could learn some
valuable information by listening in on their meeting.”

Reid snorted.  “If it isn’t a goddamn trap
and we all end up as blood bags for these assholes.  Or worse – turned into one
of them.  We’ll be fucking lucky if they don’t smell us or that dickhead Lycan
up there.”

He glanced upwards again.  “I think that
damn Lycan almost wishes it’s a trap.”  He said quietly.

Chen didn’t reply and Reid pinched the
bridge of his nose before whispering, “You know he has a death wish, Chen.  Don’t
pretend you don’t.  He wants to die and he’s going to get all of us killed
right along with him.  I don’t trust him.  Hannah’s death has changed him and
Richard needs to cut him loose.”

Chen placed his finger to his ear,
listening intently as Will’s low voice came through his earpiece, “Tell that
piece of shit I can hear every goddamn word he’s saying.  I have no intention
of dying anytime soon, and if he says her name once more I’ll rip his balls off
and feed them to him.”

Chen cleared his throat.  “Will says he can
hear you and he doesn’t believe this is the time or place for this type of
discussion.  He says he’d be happy to go for a beer with you later to discuss
his suicidal tendencies.”

There was a muffled thump from above them;
flakes of concrete floated down as Will slammed his meaty fist into the floor
of the balcony.

Reid scowled as Chen shifted his small body
into a more comfortable position, ignoring the soft cursing that was drifting
through his earpiece.

Reid suddenly stiffened, staring at the
floor and listening intently before glancing at Chen.  “They’re coming.”

Chen nodded and quietly relayed the message
to Will.  Five minutes later, the doors of the warehouse opened and a flood of
vampires filed in.  Reid, his body tense, peered cautiously through the slats
of the pallets.

It was the largest group of vampires he’d
ever seen.  There had to have been at least seventy-five of them, and he
watched as two of them started to fight.  Hissing and snarling, the larger one
jumped on the smaller one and knocked him to the hard cement floor of the
warehouse.  He wrapped his hands around the smaller one’s neck, squeezing
furiously as the vampire beneath him kicked and struggled.

The other vampires watched with deadened
disinterest as the larger one suddenly twisted the squirming vampire’s neck to
the left.  With a roar of anger, he ripped the vampire’s head from the body and
threw it across the warehouse.  The vampire’s body and head disintegrated into
ash, its blood seeping into the cement floor as the victor stood, panting
harshly and wiping the spittle from his chin.

“Are you done?”  A short blonde woman,
dressed in a cream-coloured blouse and a pair of jeans, frowned at him from the
front of the warehouse.

There was an old and dusty table behind the
vampire and she leaped on to it nimbly, clapping her hands sharply.  “Brothers
and sisters – listen to me!”

More squabbling was starting to break out
and she clapped her hands again before whistling piercingly.  The vampires drew
still and stared sullenly up at her.

“Jesus, can we not have one fucking meeting
where someone doesn’t die?”  The woman rolled her eyes in disgust.

“Listen closely.”  She studied the vampires
below her.  “You have done very well in capturing and turning the humans.  Soon
we will gather with the others in the region and begin the uprising.  Samuel is
very pleased with – “

“Fuck Samuel!”  Someone shouted from the
crowd and the woman scowled as derisive laughter drifted through the crowd.

“You would be wise to hold your tongue when
it comes to Samuel.”  She advised loudly.

“All we ever hear is what Samuel wants. 
There are many of who are beginning to question whether he even exists.”  A
short and stocky vampire shouted.

The woman bristled immediately.  “I can
assure you that Samuel does exist, and he will be displeased to learn that his
people do not trust he will – “

“His people?  His people?”  The vampire mocked. 
“We are not his people.  He cannot command us the way he would command a flock
of sheep.”

There was a low murmuring of agreement and
the vampires began to shift restlessly.  Reid glanced at Chen, wondering just
how in the hell the vampires even managed to stop from killing each other long
enough to form an uprising.  The small man stared back impassively as the
sounds of the vampires squabbling grew louder.

“Enough!”  The woman suddenly shouted.  “We
are so close to defeating the humans and your petty fighting will not – “

The back door of the warehouse suddenly
banged open and a vampire entered.  He was dragging a squirming, shaking body
behind him.  The person’s arms had been tied behind their back and their head
covered with a black fabric sack but it was easy enough to tell that the
muffled screams were female.

“Fuck!”  Reid mouthed to Chen, his eyes
wide and his hand clenched tightly around his gun.  He wondered frantically who
it was – Selena or Mallorie.  Perhaps April?  He knew it wasn’t Constance; she
would have shifted by now.

Chen pressed his hand to his earpiece,
listening to Will as the shrieking woman was dragged to the front of the room.

“We’ve found a spy!  A human spy!”  The
vampire chuckled as the crowd of vampires parted and let him pass.  He hoisted
the woman on to the table beside the female vampire. 

“We hold for now.”  Chen breathed as he and
Reid squinted through the pallets. 

“Fucking goddamn humans.”  The male vampire
said as he leaped gracefully on to the table beside the trembling woman.

“Well, let’s see her then.”  The female
vampire ripped the hood from the human’s head.

Reid stared blankly at Chen.  “Who the hell
is that?”  He mouthed.

Chen shrugged and they both turned back to
staring at the woman on the table.  She was young, early twenties maybe, and her
platinum blonde hair was short and spiky.  Her arms were plastered with tattoos
and Reid counted four piercings on her face alone.

The female vampire gave a grimace of
disgust.  “This is an ugly one.”

“Fuck you!”  The young woman spat.  The
vampire slapped her hard across the face.  Her head rocked back and she would
have tumbled from the table if the male had not caught her and steadied her.

“Tell me what you’re doing here.”  The
female vampire hissed at her.  She grabbed a fistful of the woman’s short hair
and yanked her head back before smelling her neck.  “Tell me now or I’ll slit
your throat right here and let my brothers and sisters feed from you.”

The woman refused to answer and the vampire
traced one long, bright red, fingernail across the smooth column of her
throat.  The crowd of vampires surged forward, pushing and shoving as they tried
to gather around the small table.

“Last chance.”  She whispered sweetly. 
“Tell us why you’re here or – “

“Oy!  Heather!  Are you done with your new
friends yet or what?  I got the munchies.”

Chen and Reid turned, their mouths dropping
open, as three more humans entered the warehouse. 

“What the fuck is going on here?”  Reid
breathed as Chen crowded up next to him, staring at the newcomers.

Two of them were males.  They were young,
black and obviously identical twins.  They were dressed in ridiculous looking
outfits.  The one on the left wore a bright orange and yellow Hawaiian shirt
with lime green board shorts.  The one on the right was dressed in a white
tank-top with a pink hoodie zipped up over it.  Cargo pants, roughly three
sizes too big, covered his bottom half.  He reached down and hitched them up
absentmindedly.

A third figure stood slightly behind them. 
Reid assumed it was a male but he was wearing a long dark green cloak that
covered him from head to toe. The hood of the cloak was pulled up, hiding his
face in shadows.  He stood quietly, his arms folded loosely under the cloak, as
the twin on the right pulled out a roll of mints and popped one into his mouth.

“Seriously, Heather - we gotta kick it.  I
need food.”

There was a moment of shocked silence
before the female vampire hissed quietly, “Bring them to me.”

The vampires closest to the back grinned
and crept forward slowly.

“Yo, hold up.”  The twin in the Hawaiian
shirt held his hands up.  “We ain’t lookin’ for trouble.  We was just hoping
you guys might have some, you know – “

He held his fingers up to his mouth and
mimed inhaling.

When the vampires just stared at him, he
shrugged.  “Nothin’ huh?  Dammit, Tyrone – smoking pot is a lost art these
days.  Ain’t no one doing it anymore.”

“You and your stupid pot smoking, Luther.”  The
other twin scoffed.  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, black
rectangular box.  “You’ve killed so many brain cells you can barely take a piss
without sprinkling your own goddamn feet.”

“Fuck you, Tyrone.”  Luther drawled without
malice.  “Even with my pot smoking I’m still smarter than you.”

“Enough!”  The female vampire shouted. 
“Bring them to me now!”

The twins started to back up as three
vampires broke from the pack and ambled towards them.

“Now would be a good time, Tyrone.”  Luther
glanced at his brother.

Tyrone, smiling hugely, pressed a green
button on the box he was holding in his hands.

He frowned when nothing happened. 

“Tyrone!  Now, you idiot!”  Luther shouted.

“I did!  It’s not working!”  Tyrone shouted
back.

The vampires giggled and continued to move
forward as Luther ran to Tyrone and tore the black box from his hands.  He
pressed the button frantically.  “Well shit!  You fucked it up!”

“I did not fuck it up!”  Tyrone snapped. 
“We worked on it together.  If anyone fucked it up it was you.  Give it back to
me!”

He reached for the box and Luther held it
up over his head.  “No, let me look at it!”  The two boys began to wrestle over
it as the figure behind them stepped forward.

Chen glanced at Reid; the blond man was
gripping his gun and starting to rise.  Chen placed a hard hand on his arm.

“We have to help them.”  Reid whispered.

Chen shook his head.  “There are too many.”

“Fuck!”  Reid wiped the sweat from his
forehead.  “They’re just kids.”

“We cannot help them.”  Chen repeated
softly.

Reid looked back between the pallets.  The
man in the cloak was standing in front of the twins now.  They were still
grappling and cursing at each other for control of the black box. 

“Maybe the wires are loose.”  Luther
snapped, pulling the gadget from Tyrone’s hands.  He popped the back off and
began to fiddle with the jumble of wires tucked inside of it.

Reid winced, looking away as two of the
three vampires suddenly shot forward. There was a soft ringing noise and Chen
grunted softly.

Reid peered back through the pallets, his
own mouth dropping open as he took in the scene in front of him.  One of the
fangers was standing completely still, blood dripping from its mouth as it
stared down at the silver sword embedded in its chest.  The other had been
decapitated.  Its body fell forward with a soft thump as the man in the cloak
yanked his sword free of the vampire’s chest.  The two vampires exploded and
before the third vampire could react, the man in the cloak ran forward and cut
its body in half.