I screamed, but it wasn’t my banshee coming out to play. I was bottled up with so many emotions that it was difficult to process any of them. In one breath, I was happier than I’d ever been thanks to my children, and in the next, I was distraught and furious, feeling constricted and strangled to the point I couldn’t breathe sometimes.
My gloom-and-doom mood wasn’t perking up, although talking to Sam three days ago had helped, even though he had shared bad news. It was hell without him. A wife needed her husband. I needed intimacy, the feel of him next to me at night, the smell of him whenever he was close to me, his lopsided grin, those sexy dimples, and fuck, his kids might not know who he was if our separation went on for a few months.
Then there was Norman Collier, who I believed wasn’t really a guardian. Maybe it had been the way the vampire had been staring at me, or the way he was cataloging every detail of the house, or how he stared at my children for far too long with no emotion on his face. Most people lit up when they saw babies. They didn’t look at them as if studying them for some science project.
I wasn’t all knowing and a clairvoyant, but my intuition was prodding me that something had happened to Steven. Webb hadn’t heard from him in six days, and Conrad tried to reach Steven three days ago. Jo had explained how his elder meetings could keep him behind closed doors for a week. Maybe so, given the state of the country. But if he was planning to overthrow the council, he needed to hurry up.
To make the mystery more bewildering, Alia Costner had informed Webb that she hadn’t seen her father, Victor, in about a week, which aligned with the same time frame since Webb had last heard from Steven. She also had left him several voice mails. I felt bad for Alia. Her son was in the hands of Adam Emery and Roman Brown. She’d been beside herself, according to Jo. I couldn’t blame Alia. I would be freaking the fuck out if any of my children had been taken. But I agreed with the majority. Matthew Costner hadn’t appeared to be in any kind of duress when he’d spoken at the press conference.
Nevertheless, his grandfather Victor Costner was a prominent vampire among the Council of Elders. They respected Victor and often asked him to help out with precarious or top secret projects. I’d learned recently that Victor and Steven didn’t always see eye to eye on things, and Victor had thrown Steven under the bus a few times with the council before Steven had become an elder.
Speculation among the SEALs was that Victor might be helping the council get rid of Steven. Just what we needed. More problems, more enemies. But I hadn’t trekked off to Maine because of the guardians, or even my sister and grandmother, but rather the dangerous atmosphere surrounding the naval base. With idiots trying to overrun the military installation, it wasn’t safe. In fact, every family had been moved to a more protected location.
I stopped in front of Jo’s house where the dry sand met the wet, kicked off my running shoes, and walked into the surf. The water was cold but refreshing against my heated legs.
Conrad ran up and joined me, only he didn’t take off his shoes. “Great run. Five miles this morning. You’re doing better.”
I chuckled. “If you call having to slow down to a walk better, then okay.” I could do three miles without stopping, but the last two I’d struggled and had to fast walk several times.
“You’ll get there,” he said, bending over and splashing water on his arms.
“What do you think today will bring?” I asked rhetorically.
Conrad didn’t have the foresight to see future events. I’d had visions since I’d met Sam but none since giving birth. Dr. Vieira attributed my powers to being pregnant with inhuman babies. But now that I wasn’t, I kept wondering if I would have magical abilities. So far, I still had my banshee scream. Did that mean I would continue to have visions and the mind control I’d experienced when I’d carried my babies? Or as Jordyn had mentioned, did my sisters and I have latent magical abilities we weren’t aware of because of our mother’s supernatural heritage?
“Earlier this morning, I finally connected with a guardian who is team Steven,” he said. “Jonah hasn’t been able to reach Steven either. But when he drove into the parking garage at the vampire administration building this morning, Steven’s car was there. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”
I held my stomach as acid swished around inside it. “Maybe not, but my intuition tells me otherwise.”
“Jonah is investigating. He’ll ping me when he finds something out,” Conrad said. “I suspect Steven is probably polling people to see who’s with him and who’s not.”
“You mean Steven is building his army?” I asked.
He smoothed a hand over his crop of windblown black hair. “I suspect he is. Each state has a police force of vampires along with scouts. Sort of like the guardians are cops, and scouts are detectives. Anyway, the vampire population has to work as a team if we want to deal with humans’ knowledge of our existence and change with the times.” He splashed more water on his arms. “Steven has always been well-liked in our community. Some of us believe he should be our leader. The days of council rule are over. They’ve done their job in keeping us hidden for centuries. We’re living in a new age.”
“Whatever he’s doing, he needs to make it happen quickly. We need to take down Intech—not Sam because of some stupid elder who has a hard-on for using my husband as a scapegoat.”
He chuckled. “We have many missiles coming at us. That’s for sure. But Steven will come through. He needs his son at his side if we’re going to win any war.”
I needed my husband by me if I didn’t want to go insane.
“Changing the topic, did Jonah confirm if a Norman Collier was a guardian?” I asked.
He dragged knuckles over his close-shaven beard. “He did say there was a guardian on staff by that name. Tall, dark hair, and dark eyes, like the man who came here.”
I didn’t know if I should be relieved or not.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, an ominous, powerful, and unrelenting feeling wrapped around my thighs, burning and stinging. What the fuck? It was similar to the feeling I’d gotten when looking at that house for sale, only stronger and deeper.
Something bad was about to happen. I could feel it in my bones and taste it on my tongue.
26
SAM
The scent of dew and pine mixed together in the morning air provided a welcome relief from the wolves’ dog scent that was burned into my nostrils. I was on my way to see Dane. Why the alpha had requested my presence in his office at such an early hour was beyond me.
The wolf didn’t sleep much. I’d often found him sitting on his porch at two in the morning when I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes closed for more than an hour at a time. My nervous energy had reached new heights since I found out there was a contract out on my head.
