4 Vamp Versus Vamp (28 page)

“Oh, wait. How much do I owe you?”

He looked at the guys, then at me. “Your safety doesn’t have a price tag, Leka.” And with that he walked out.

Guilt rode me. He was such a good guy. It killed me that I couldn’t be with him. I knew if I
was
, I’d be longing for Kellan the whole time. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times when I thought of Kai while I was with Kellan. I didn’t love them the same, but I still loved them both, which never ceased to wrack my heart.

Chapter 27

It’d been a few days since Kai had installed the security in the new condo. Our furniture was set for delivery tomorrow, and yet today Kellan had insisted I come with him to an unknown location. I knew it was serious when Auggy called Drexel and told him to stay behind.

“Where are we going?” I asked, staring out at the break of dawn. He didn’t reply. Trepidation chilled my bones.

Trees whirled past as Kellan sped down the interstate.

“There’s something I need to tell you.” There was uneasiness in his tone.

My gut tightened at his words. “What is it?” My voice was barely above a whisper.

“I’ve been hiding something from you.” He glanced at me before facing the road again. “I’ve been sneaking around at night.”

My heart nearly stopped beating as serum drowned my mouth. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. I openly stared at him, wondering what I’d done wrong.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while, but wanted to wait until we had something concrete.”

“We?” Air escaped my lungs in a heave. “I… I don’t believe it.” My chest caved in as the world closed in on me. How did I not see it when we connected?

“Listen, Lexi.” He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not him. I’m not some image of sparkling perfection. I have an ego that needs regular petting. I have an appetite that will always require a human to satiate it. I have wants that don’t revolve around you. I’m sorry, but I refuse to be a puppet.”

“Wait!” I threw my arms out. “You’re not cheating on me, are you?” I stated more than asked.

“Of course not.” His features pinched as if he was annoyed.

“You know, if you’d open your mind more often, we wouldn’t be facing this issue.”

“Why would you think I was cheating in the first place?”

“Kellan, replay your side of this conversation verbatim and then ask me that question again.” He seemed to calm a bit, as did I.
My serum level lowered as my heart resumed its regular, irregular melody.
“And, by the way, I would never compare you to a fictional character.”

“That’s good to know.” His lips lifted slightly.

“So
who
have you been sneaking around with?”

“Auggy and Kalel.”

I rolled my eyes. “Why the dramatic buildup? I already knew that, remember?” He focused on the road ahead, not turning towards me. “There’s more to it. It’s not who you’ve been with, it’s what you’ve been doing with them, isn’t it?” He continued to stare out at the pavement. “O.M.G. Tell me you haven’t been trailing my grandfather.”

He didn’t flinch, didn’t move. He gave nothing away.

“Kellan?”

He pursed his lips rebelliously.

“Kellan!”

“Yes, okay. We’ve been scouting out the house he owns just outside Ridgeville.”

I ran my fingers across my forehead. “What did you find?”

“He’s planning something. We think it’s another attempt to grab you. The number of vampeens in and out of his compound has steadily increased every day this week,” he stated.

“How has this been working? Do you all go together and watch?” I eyed him sideways, twisting in my seat. At his silence, fear pummeled me. “Don’t tell me you go alone.”

“We do what we have to do, Lex. We take turns individually and together. We compare notes. We’ve invested a lot of time into this strategy.”

“What exactly is your strategy?”

He turned off onto an exit ramp. He glanced at me then, focused on the road again. “We’re sending you in to surrender, and then following behind you once they confirm you’re alone and let down their guard.”

“You’re going to throw me to the big bad wolf?” My chest constricted, air caught in my lungs. I swallowed my serum, which was quickly on the rise again. I was hurt and confused. Wasn’t he the one preaching about protecting me?

“If there was any other way, then we would do it.”

“What about brute force?” I countered.

“Too much security. We’d never be able to get through.”

A dark, ominous cloud seemed to cover me. I tried to steady my pulse, to stabilize my racing mind. “How do you expect to get past security once I’m inside?”

“You’ll be wearing camera earrings similar to the ones you wore in Spain. We’ll be able to see everything they do and crack through. What we can’t get through, we’ll force our way through.”

“You’re aware of what you’re asking me to do, right?”

He whimpered. The distressed noise revealed just how hard this was for him. “I don’t like it. In fact, I hate it. But there is no other vantage point; there’s no other way to take care of this problem.” He grabbed my hand, pulling it to his chest. “I swear on my life that you will walk out of there alive.”

I noticed he didn’t promise that I would walk out of there unharmed, only alive. For a male who preached about protecting what was his, I didn’t feel protected in that moment. This was a time where I was being forced to trust him.

“Is that what we’re doing today? You’re sending me in with only a moment’s notice?”

He came to a stop at a red light. His brows furrowed deep. “Of course not. I would never do that to you.” Abruptly, it looked like he was trying to hold back tears. “I wanted you to come so you could see what you would be walking into. If you don’t like it, if it scares you, then we’ll pull the plug. That’s what this is about.”

The light changed to green and he sped off again. A couple miles down the road, he turned off onto a nondescript street. The gravel gave way to a dirt road crowded by trees. Eventually we pulled up to an abandoned home; two vehicles were already parked there, though I didn’t recognize them.

He squeezed my hand and then released it. “Let’s go.”

I slid out of the car with a little trepidation. Kellan secured my hand and led me up to the front door, which seemed to be about the only thing intact still. He opened the door and walked right into the space.

Dingy walls with moldy wallpaper met us in the foyer. The wood floors of the home were scuffed and warped in several areas, stripped of their former glory. Kellan had obviously been here before because he led me upstairs and to the right, directly into the master bedroom. Auggy, Kalel, and another officer had maps laid out over an old stained mattress, the only item in the room. Their combat boots looked warm next to the mildewed carpet. A black and green layer of mush sat in every corner and along the baseboards. Had I been human, I would have keeled over by now probably. No wonder it was abandoned.

Gazing around the space, I felt bad for the house. I could tell it had beautiful bones. Sadly, the land was worth more than the property itself in this state, and with the hazardous germs everywhere, no one would set foot in here without a HAZMAT suit.

“Where’s the closest army base to here?” I asked.

The men all looked up at me, having cut their discussion short.

“We have a satellite office outside Columbia,” Auggy stated. His eyes quickly returned to the maps.

“And the Bladangs?”

“The lake house or
downtown Charleston,” Kalel snapp
ed.

“I think one of you should buy this property and convert it into an army bunk slash satellite office.”

All of them gave me an open stare, brows lifted at me this time.

“Any target they may have is likely to stay in the bigger cities where there’s plenty of food.” Auggy crossed his arms over his chest, sighing as if I was bothering him with trivial things he didn’t want to waste time on.

“Which is precisely why they would never be found in the country.”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Kalel said. “We have more important things to focus on. Come here.”

I approached the bed. Kellan was right behind me. To me, the many maps looked like a cluster of lines and dots.

Auggy pulled one to the top of the pile. “This is Cesar’s local compound. We found out he’s been hiding out here about a week ago. We’ll be running on foot approximately 21.2 miles northwest to the target location. That’s what’s circled in red in the middle of the map. The smaller blue circle down here is
us
.” He pointed out the circles. I tried not to smirk. It wasn’t like I was blind.

“Here’s the important piece, babe.” Kellan dragged the map closer to me. “All of these dots are vampeens. We marked them where we first saw them on the map. The chart at the top shows the marker to day guide with a daily tally to the side; that’s what these numbers are here. There’s a different color for every day we scouted.”

I swallowed hard. I knew my eyes had widened. “How many are there?”

“We haven’t been out there this morning, but as of last night, two hundred and thirty-two.” Kalel extracted the map, gathering the others with it into a pile.

“In one house this size?” I couldn’t withhold my dismay.

“Your grandfather has years and numbers,” the unfamiliar officer said.

“This is Chek. He’s Auggy’s top guy for infiltration,” Kellan said.

The male was short, even next to Auggy, with a Middle Eastern heritage. Jet-black hair hung over the tops of his ears and over the collar of his black Lacoste polo shirt. Dark copper skin made the Hawaiian-born Kalel look pale. Chek wasn’t highly muscled, but I could see a hint of definition in the lower parts of his arms. His chocolate eyes were keen, aware of everything.

Chek nodded a
‘
hello.
’

“Hi.” I waved my hand once.

“We believe Cesar has an underground unit similar to the Bladangs’. We’re not sure how far out it extends. For all we know, we could be standing above it now.” Kellan pulled me into his side protectively.

“The original purchase documents are dated in 1909. There was an extensive reconstruction project that commenced, but no permits or county docs indicating what was completed. Of course he used human workers so they’re all deceased and useless.” Kalel sighed. I could see the frustration in his features.

Chek took a map from the pile and set it in front of me. “This is an architectural drawing of the perimeter from what we could see. We can’t get too close, which is why we need you to go in. Once we have the specs of the inside, we can get in. Going in blindly, though, would only be a bloodbath.”

“Won’t it be a bloodbath anyway with all those vampeens roaming outside?”

He averted his eyes to the paper between us. “Every war has a built-in number of sacrificial lambs.”

“Wow. That makes me feel better.”

“There’s no way to avoid it. Every man who agrees to a contract with us knows the risk, just as every human signing up with the military knows the chance of peril.” Auggy’s deep voice was gruff, rough. It fit his words this time, the way he spoke of death as an everyday occurrence that was no big deal. Those were the thoughts spoken by someone who was accustomed to it, a tough vamp with an even tougher attitude.

“How close will we get today?” I asked, wanting to focus on something different.

“All of us will get you within a mile of it. Then Kalel and Chek will take you the rest of the way. We’ll have a radio if you need backup, but it’s for emergencies only,” Kellan advised.

I took a deep breath. “Well, let’s get this done and over with.” The guys started to leave. “Auggy, a word, please.”

The military brute turned back to me; he was unreadable. “Yeah?”

“Have you apologized to my aunt yet?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” he bit out.

“When it comes to my family, it most certainly is. She was distraught after you left with the High Authorities that day, and given the amount of time she’s spent with me lately, I’m assuming you haven’t dug your head out of your ass and made up with her.”

He growled. “Like I said, none of your damn business.”

“Augustine! Do you love her, for crying out loud?” My hands gripped my hips; I felt my forehead creased with lines from my frown.

“Of course I do,” he huffed.

“Then stop acting like the hard-ass you are and let love be your soft spot. She deserves a good man, and if you’re not willing to make the sacrifice for her, then she’ll find someone else who will. My aunt has never wanted for male attention.”

He looked me up and down. “You’re bossy for such a little thing.”

“And you’re being stupid for a guy with brains.”

He puckered his lips. “I’ll call her later. Can we go now?”

“Yes.”

I followed him through the upstairs to a staircase in the back. The stairs led down and dropped us off in the kitchen. He pushed through a swinging door into what I guessed was a sitting room at one time. The back door was open already, indicating it was the way the others had left.