As soon as we got to the hospital, I could sense that something was wrong. The nurses were giving us worried looks, not meeting our eyes, even though we had all been here before when we first brought her. I smelled the air, trying to figure out what the fuck was up when we entered her room and found two men in their looking through everything.
“Hey! Who the fuck are you?!” Dino pointed as he yelled and grabbed the younger-looking one, immediately putting him into a chokehold, while Bricks lumbered to the older one. The younger one crumbled, desperately scratching at Dino’s arm around his neck, gasping for breath. I sniffed the air, smelling that the one on the floor was a rat shifter.
The older one, who smelled fully human, seemed like he had some balls when he got into a fighting stance as he looked Bricks up and down and lifted an eyebrow. Before Bricks could do anything, Rabid came in, eyeing the younger one, whose eyes bulged like his head was being torn off.
“Let him go, Dino.”
Dino dropped him like a sack of potatoes, and he crumbled to the floor, gasping for breath as his fist hit the tile floor. The older one straightened up, seeing that we were not going to fight if we didn't have to, and he chastised his younger companion. “That's it, Ken, you're going through training, and that's that. No more excuses. We could’ve taken them if you had any combat skills.”
Ken, who was still on the floor, gasped out, “I told you. I'm not like Celine. I'm more delicate.” The older man rolled his eyes before he looked at us.
“Where is she?”
Duce, always the eloquent one, shoved his way forward and pointed a finger at him. “Wait, wait, wait. Who the fuck are you?” Then he turned to the guy on the floor, Ken. “And how do you know, cupcake?”
Ken, still on the floor, mouthed the word cupcake to the older guy. The older guy shrugged, turned back to us, and scoffed. “I guess you don't know anything.” He moved to the side, trying to get around us, but Bricks walked in front of him, daring him to try and get past.
Rabid leaned against the wall, looking like he was perfectly at ease. "It would be wise to answer our question."
The old guy faced him, not fazed by any of our tactics. "Look, it's obvious that she used her real name with you all, which means that she has a high level of trust with you, but I’m not at liberty to talk about who we are and why we want to talk to Celine."
Ken stood up, patted his clothes to get off any dirt, and something beeped. He pulled out his phone, clicked a few buttons, and hissed out, "Damn it! She manipulated the signal." He yelled at the phone, "You're being a very bad pretend sister!"
I tried to move closer to Ken, looking over his shoulder to see that he had a military-grade tracker up, but the red dot wasn't moving. "Pretend sister?" Ken jerked away from me as I spoke.
"Do. I. Know. You?!" Ken cried out, shaking his shaggy brown hair around as he looked around the room expectedly. His bright yellow-gold eyes dimmed, his shoulders slumping as he stuck out his lip in a pout as he moped. "Celine would've gotten the joke."
The old guy with salt and pepper military cut hairstyle, a stance that said he was not a stranger to rigid training, and a keen assessing eye I typically see from higher-level military, rolled his dark brown eyes and threw his chin at the door. "Let's go. There is nothing here that will tell us where she went. Plus, they know nothing."
I felt compelled to speak up, to get my theory confirmed. "We already know you and Celine work for the government and that she’s a siren princess."
The old guy froze in his tracks, as he turned to me with wide eyes and a stiff back. "She told you that?!"
I smirked at him. "No, we heard it from her mother, but you just confirmed it, so, thanks."
Ken and his eyes met, doing the silent talking thing when he turned back to us. "So, her mother got ahold of her and told her about James, right?"
We all looked at Rabid. He looked to the ground, thinking about it before saying, "Yes. I think they fought about James. I think… I think he was the blood-lusted vampire, right?"
The old guy slowly nodded, still hesitant. "Yes. It's my understanding that you helped her get out of that bar undetected. Thank you." He paused, thinking hard before blowing out a breath and lowering his arms. "Look, James is extremely dangerous, especially to Celine." That got all of our attention.
He continued. "He got hooked on Celine's mother’s blood a long time ago, and royal siren blood is five times stronger than a typical siren. He won't stop hunting her until he has her. He's a psycho vampire who believes that since he’s an old descendant of the first vampire, he’s immune to the rules. He will do whatever he can to get what he views as his."
Rabid let out a growl at his choice of words, but the old guy didn't let it phase him. "I know you guys were a kind of deterrent for him, but now that she’s out on her own, she's in real trouble. I need to find her now. It's why we're looking all over this room, hoping she left a clue as to where she went."
"She isn't that dumb, Glenn. If she can manipulate the signal for the tracker on her phone, she wouldn't-"
"What is this?" Dino asked as he stepped on a piece of paper underneath her bed. Glenn glared at Ken like this was all his fault. Ken took a big gulp before lifting his hands in an ‘oops’ gesture. Dino opened the crumpled-up paper and scanned the contents. His eyes widened as he shoved the paper at me but directed his words to Rabid. "Looks like you didn’t fuck this up for us forever. Even when she’s mad, she’s still defending us."
I looked down at the paper, reading the swirling script. I resisted ripping the paper up, shoving it into Rabid hands before I did something stupid. Rabid, on the other hand, was fast and loose with his emotions right now, and after he read it, he ripped it in half. He then threw the two pieces at Glenn like they were poisonous.
Glenn glared at Rabid before piecing them together and exhaling a tired, haggard breath. I looked at Glenn, an icy vengeance filling my veins as I thought about my mate going up against this fucker alone. "Do you know where the siren harbor is?
Glenn looked at each of us, weighing out his options before he looked back at me. "I can get you in the right direction, but it's covered by magical fog that wards people away from it.”
As Glenn found some paper and a pen and wrote down some coordinates, I glanced at Rabid. He smiled with all his teeth, appearing like a crazed man as his eyes shifted from the light brown to the sharp yellow. "My wolf is begging to go on the hunt and tear this fucker limb from limb.” The rest of us growled in unison, all of our wolves feeling the same way. They won't be able to hide from us when we hunt as a pack.
As soon as Glenn handed me the paper, Rabid went to the bed, closed his eyes, and sniffed her fresh scent. His wolf was the best at tracking far distances with only a whiff of a scent, but we all did the same thing, ensuring we got our bases covered. His wolf rumbled out, “Mate,” then spun around and stalked off, finding a trail.
