Claude looked beside Christian. “No, you didn’t.”
“Aye, I did.”
“That’s not what the dead man says.”
Annoyed, Christian flicked a glance at the empty space beside him. “Is that naked shitebag still following me around?”
“Yes.”
As much as Christian wanted to spew profanities at the ghost, he held his tongue. “I’m sorry I cut off your head. There’s not much I can do about it if I can’t even see you, so you’re not doing yourself any favors by following me around for all eternity.”
Claude wiped the blood from his arm. “He blames you for being stuck here.”
Christian raked his hair back. He remembered an old acquaintance who made his peace and moved on to the next world. Wyatt said it was possible, and he didn’t like the idea of a spook following him around, seeing all his secrets. “If you help us, the fates will have mercy and let you cross over. I think we all know who the good guys are here, and nobody in the afterlife gives a shite about your loyalties. This might be your only chance.”
“He wants to know how,” Claude said, “but he doesn’t trust us.”
“Are there any more of your people in the building? You’ll never see these arseholes again. They’re not your mother or your da—you have nothing that binds you to them. Last chance.”
“The roof!” Claude picked up a stake and sprinted into the stairwell.
Christian entered the room. Claude’s intensely bright flashlight had rolled partly under the bed. It illuminated the broken dresser, linens torn off the bed, and a broken impalement stick. A chilly breeze blew through the shattered window, but there was no glass on the floor. Christian smelled his hands, uncertain if the charred smell was coming from him or this room. The ceiling, bed, and walls had a few spatters of blood, but not a lot. He crossed the room to the far side and looked down at a young Vampire in jeans, his shirt torn halfway off. An impalement stick protruded from his chest, and his eyes were wide open.
Christian bent down and grinned darkly at the paralyzed man. “Wait until you see what I have in store for your remains. I have no pity for a man who would dare harm a child.”
He stood up and noticed a burned spot on the carpet and a pile of ashes. “Where’s the boy?”
Crush shuffled over to the bathroom and jiggled the doorknob. Harley’s savage barking could have been heard three blocks away. “That’s enough!” Crush commanded. “Down, boy.”
Crush hauled Harley out of the bathroom and instructed him to sit.
When Christian walked over, he saw Hunter sitting on the floor between the toilet and cabinet. One of his gloves was missing. “Where’s Kira?”
“I guess she took off,” Crush said.
The only one with answers was Claude.
Crush held a firm grip on the dog’s chain collar. “I’ll go tell Niko it’s clear. I need to lock Harley up before he bolts. We can’t stay in this room anymore—not with the door and window broken. Be right back.”
Christian wrapped the Vampire in a bedspread, tying the feet together with a strip of the sheets. Then he poked his head through the broken window to stare at the empty sidewalk below. Claude must have put up one hell of a fight by the looks of the room. After Crush returned for the boy, Christian hauled the body up to the roof to see if Claude was still alive. He found the Chitah crouched next to a man with a stake in his thigh. Not wanting to carry the bodies down six flights and be seen, they tossed them over the side of the building by the back door. Claude had suffered some nasty scrapes and bruises, but by the time they made it downstairs, he seemed okay.
When they reached the first floor to dispose of the bodies, they bumped into Shepherd.
“Where’s my son? Is he hurt?” Shepherd asked.
“The wee one is fine,” Christian assured him.
“Fucking Vampire had me cornered in the basement and I couldn’t get out. The impalement wood kept him at bay, but we had a brief struggle.”
Shepherd had a nasty mark on his face that was sure to bruise. He mentioned the basement had an incinerator with a pipe that led to the roof, so they spent hours burning those detestable men as much as the stove would allow. Afterward, Christian separated bones and body parts, loaded them into garbage bags, and scattered them in dumpsters in the surrounding neighborhood. It wasn’t the most efficient disposal, but they didn’t have the option of calling in cleaners. Nor did they have the option of leaving Vampire corpses in the human district. Not only would it open up a police investigation, but a medical examiner would document the physical and genetic differences. It was too much work to locate insiders who could scrub memories and erase records.
Afterward, Christian cleaned up in Viktor’s bathroom. There was no hot water, but it felt good all the same. Christian wasn’t as sensitive to temperature as everyone else, so a tub filled with ice felt no better or worse than a steaming shower. His hair still wet, he returned to the room next door where the team had gathered. With the power still out, they had aimed the flashlights at the ceiling.
“Any word on the lass?” he asked, wondering if they had found Kira alive.
“I couldn’t find her scent in the building,” Claude confirmed. “Not even in the hallway.”
Wyatt stretched from his lying position on the floor, a pillow behind his head. “Maybe she was thrown out the window on top of a moving truck. If she shifted, I bet her wolf or whatever could have stuck the landing.”
