Dylan (Bowen Boys) (21 page)

“No one taught me. I’m
naturally talented that way.” Dylan stood up and pulled Jack into his arms. “You
guys are upsetting Jack. She can’t tell us how she’s going to get Reed out if we
have her pissy with us. She might just leave the lot of us on our own and go
get him herself. Foolhardy that would be, now wouldn’t it, love?”

“I should go alone.” He
shook his head. “I didn’t say I was, I just said I should. You don’t have the
training I do, and even if you did, it’s my fault the guy has him.”

“How on earth do you figure
that?” Caitlynne stood up as well with her hands on her hips. “You do know that
you’re not the only one here that can carry a gun? And last time I looked,
we’re all family here, and we work together. You slowed him down by shooting
him, kept him from taking all of you. I think what you did was brave. Stupid
but brave.”

Jack snorted before
speaking. “You wouldn’t know how to take orders from someone if you knew it was
the only way to get out of something. And as for the rest of you, I’ve never
seen a bigger bunch of bossy people in my life. But I understand the family
part. Sometimes. But I should have made Reed stay at the house where I knew it
was safe.”

Reed had met her downtown.
She needed to get a few things, clothes mostly, and he said that he knew of a
great shop on Pennsylvania. She knew he carried, and that he’d been trained a
little on how to defend himself, but this guy played a different ballgame than
any of them were used to.

“You’ll get him back to us. We
all will.” Corrine patted her on the shoulder. “You’re going to have to learn
to see yourself as a part of our family, too, dear. If you don’t, then I think
Monica and Caitlynne will have a little talk with you. You know how they are…bossy
women just like someone else I know.”

They settled down to plan. Khan
kept trying to contact his brother, but couldn’t. He said that the connection
was there, meaning he wasn’t dead. Jack was relieved to hear that. She looked
up when Caitlynne came into the study with them all. She didn’t look like she
was bringing good news.

“They found a body at the
Gentleman’s Hotel on Seventh an hour ago. It took them until now to verify who
it was. Kirby Mann was murdered. They’re saying a wild animal did it.” She sat
down and tossed a file on the desk. “I got that twenty minutes ago, and I was
reading it when the call came in. It’s from Mann. I suppose it could be called
his last will and testament. He confessed to every crime he ever committed all
the way back to grade school. He even confessed to being a part of the treason
that Small and Jackson were in on.”

“Do you suppose he knew that
he was going to be dead soon and wanted to meet his maker with a clean slate?” Caitlynne
shrugged at her question. “Where are his wife and daughter? They weren’t there,
were they?”

“No, just him. And I don’t know
where they are. I sent a car to the house, and there was no answer. Maid said
that the missus and the daughter had gone on vacation. She didn’t know where Mann
had gone. She said that there had been no calls, either.” Caitlynne laughed. “I
don’t think he was well-liked by his staff. They hinted that if he didn’t come
back, they wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”

Jack could believe that. He
treated his secretary with less respect than he treated her, and that was
pretty bad. When she looked at the file, she flipped to the back pages and
stood up. He mentioned Lucius.

“They’re dead. Sally and
Karrie, he believes, are dead. He sent them away so they might be safe, and Lucius
took them. Mann thinks he killed them as soon as he took them. He said that….”
She flipped back several pages to when he first mentioned him. “Apparently, Lucius
showed up when his wife was dying some years ago. Right after they’d found out
about the baby. Lucius gave her his blood and took hers. That explains how he
was able to find them, I guess.”

“So he saves his wife and
daughter, and what? Owes him for the rest of his life?” Jack nodded at Khan and
said that he’d been owned by Lucius since. “Why didn’t he just let someone know
what was going on?”

“Because he was getting everything
he wanted by helping out the blood sucker.” Jack sat down as she continued
reading. “Listen to this. ‘Lucius calls me human. I don’t think he’s ever said
my name in all this time. I believe we’re all just cattle to him. But he does
seem to have a weakness. His temper gets the better of him every time.’ A
temper could work in our favor.”

Dylan started to shake his
head, but Caitlynne agreed with her. “Yes. Because we both know that pissed-off
people make huge mistakes. Do you have a plan?”

She did, but she thought
that if she told them they’d be pissed, too. She simply shook her head. Jack
wanted to stew on it just a little longer before she told them. But they had
less than ten hours until sunset and getting Reed back. Then she looked at the
computer.

“Did Reed have his cell
phone on him when he left the office?” No one knew for sure. He was forever
leaving it behind when he left work. Picking up a phone, she asked for his
number and dialed it while calling for Sebastian or Marc to help her. She had a
feeling that they might be able to find him this way.

Marc went to his office to
work with the equipment he had there. “When you call it, I’ll be able to
pinpoint where he is to within a few hundred feet. If he’s turned off his phone,
then it will be considerably more than that.”

She knew that but wanted to
try anyway. It rang a total of eight times before going to voicemail. She let
the mailbox cut her off before hanging up, then called Marc back. He was
laughing, he was so excited.

“You want a job working for
me, you can have it. We know where he is. He’s at the Hotel Monaco in the Penn
Quarter. I’m not sure what floor or even room number, but that’s where Reed’s
phone is coming from.”

She hung up and looked at
the people in the room. Marc was coming back, but she doubted she’d have any
problems with him. These people, however, were going to be hard to convince.

“I know where he is.” Relief
settled over the room, and she looked at Dylan. “I can get him out of the room
now before the vampire wakes, but we have to be ready for him to be able to
defend himself, too.”

“What is it you have to do?”
Dylan smiled at her. “You know what has to be done, so simply tell us, and
we’ll stand where you need us.”

Before anyone could say
anything, Khan spoke. “She’s right. And so is Dylan. If she’s sure she can get
him out, I think we should do what she says. Unless someone else has a better
plan than the one she’s going to tell us, then we’re ready to help.”

“You’re not going to like
this, but it’s all I have.” She pulled up the hotel on the computer and looked
at the rooms. “He’s more than likely going to be holding Reed in the same room
with him. If that’s the case, then he’s going to be tied to something, more
than likely a chair. Is there any reason why he won’t be able to shift if we
need him to heal or something?”

“If there are cuffs or even
plastic ties at his wrists and legs and they’re too tight, then they will sever
his hands and feet off if he shifts because his cat is much bigger than his
human. Then there’s the added problem that if he’s tied to something heavy and
the bonds don’t break, then he’s going to be tethered to it.” She nodded at
Khan, then looked at Dylan.

“If I asked you to stay here,
would you?” He smiled, and she had her answer. “Yeah, I thought so. But when we
go in, you’ll do as I say when I say it? All of you?”

She had some hesitations,
but George said that if any of them disagreed, he’d have to kick their ass. She
believed him, and apparently so did the others. She had their promise before
she launched into the plan.

“We’re going to have to go
in and pull Reed out. If what you say about being put to sleep by the vampire
is true, then he won’t be able to wake until he’s far enough away from his
spell or the vamp is dead. I want to make sure that the Mann’s are really dead
before I kill him. I don’t know if he has them stashed somewhere, and I don’t
want to find them months later.”

Everyone agreed, but
Sebastian posed a question. “Then what do we do? There are as many ways to kill
a vampire as there are snowflakes. How do we know which one will work?”

Jack agreed with him. It was
hard to know what would work and what was Hollywood hype. She laid her gun on
the table and then her knife, and had a feeling that they’d be useless, and
told them so. They were both your run-of-the-mill Glock and knife. She wondered
aloud what to take with them.

“Once he wakes, he’s going
to go after me with everything he has. Do I fill these with silver and hope
they work on him like they did on the wolves? I doubt a cross would do me much
good, other than something to pray to if he starts to look like he might win.” Picking
up the gun, she rolled her wrist, testing the weight as she continued. “We
can’t take it all, but we need something. I’m for less is better normally, but
in this situation I’m thinking I might have enough time to try two, maybe three
things before he rips my head off.”

“You’ll have me and the
gun.” Dylan took the gun from her. “My cat and yours as well. That gives you
four. What else?”

She looked around the room and
thought of all the shit she’d seen in the movies when she’d been able to catch
one. What had done the most damage and had taken out the most vampires? She
looked at the crossed swords over the mantel.

“Those real?” Walker looked
at them, then at her, grinning. “If I could take off his head, I’m pretty sure
that’d stop him for a while, if not forever.”

She and Dylan went to the
hotel on his bike. He’d gone to the garage with her, and when he skirted around
the bike to the truck, she asked him if they could go on it. She rode on the
back of it wrapped around his body and felt the air rush around them. The
others were coming in the cars.

Caitlynne went in first and
talked with the manager. Dylan and she stood nearby. The manager said that
there was no one in the hotel by the name of Lucius. They had no last name, so,
starting at the top, they were going to go door to door and ask everyone to
leave. Monica had said to use the story of an electrical problem because it
would cause less panic.
Yeah
, Jack thought,
telling them that a big
vampire was about to be killed by a bunch of werepanthers would be hard to
swallow
. As soon as they got off the elevator, the scent of blood burned
her nostrils, and she looked at Dylan.

“It’s not fresh, but it is
panther.”
He touched her mind and sent her his love.
“You can do this, I
know you can.”

Going to the only door on
the floor, she leaned her head against it. There were no sounds coming from
inside, so she used the passkey to get into the room. The smell there was
stronger, much stronger than she’d found in the hall. Moving to the two rooms,
she went to the one to the back of the hotel suite and opened the door quietly,
then shut it again when she saw how dark it was.

“You sure you can see him?” Dylan
had been joined by Khan, and they both nodded. “Go in and get him out then.
Don’t make a sound. If you wake him before I get in there, shift and run like
hell.”

Dylan pulled her to him and
kissed her. She felt his desperation, and she knew that he’d felt hers. Closing
the room’s curtains, they went back to the bedroom door and opened it. Someone
was sitting in a chair, slumped over. She went in first, Then they each took an
arm to the chair and picked him up and took him out of the room without a
sound. She moved out of the room with them and watched as Walker checked him
out. With a short nod, Khan and Walker took Reed out of the room and to the
elevator. She picked up a chair similar to the one Reed had been in.

“You ready?” She nodded as
he handed her the swords. When he shifted and moved into the room in front of
her, she closed the door behind them. They were caged with a monster and hoped
to Christ they could get out again.

Chapter Sixteen

Dylan watched her. She sat in the chair
as if she had not a care in the world. He, however, was terrified out of his
mind. They were actually going to question a vampire in his own den, then kill
him. He looked out the window and knew that the sun was going down. Only a
couple of hours to go now before Lucius woke. Dylan felt her touch his mind and
waited for her to tell him that she’d made a mistake in doing this, hoping that
was what she would say.

“When I was nineteen, I was a sophomore
in college and this man approached me. He said that he had a job for me to do. He
said that if I did it and I lived he had a job for me and that the firm he
worked for would pay my student loans and help me get set up in a nicer
apartment. Would have had to have been better, I was living in my friend’s
garage at the time.”

He lay down and tried to relax to the
sound of her voice.
“What did he want you to do? I’m assuming that he wanted
you to do something you were good at.”

She laughed, and he found himself
smiling. He knew that she was talking to him to calm him. He didn’t want her there,
but he also knew that of all the people he knew, she was the best suited for
his job.