"I'm…'kay," Lachlan tried to say. He opened his eyes and found they were both hanging upside down. "'pollo."
"I'm okay too," Apollo said, despite the blood dripping down his face. His eyes were glowing gold and angry. "They fucking hit us."
Lachlan tried to reach for the seatbelt clip, but his arm was pinned awkwardly.
"Don't let them take you," he said urgently, panic waking him up.
People were talking outside the car before Apollo's door was ripped off its hinges.
"Let me go! Don't you stick that in me, you fucking…"
Apollo's cries were cut off, and Lachlan roared in anger. He pulled against his seatbelt straps, trying to reach for Apollo. Their attackers ignored him as they cut the seatbelt, holding an unconscious Apollo. They caught him before he could fall and dragged him out of the wreck.
No, no, no.Lachlan couldn't let this happen. He found the knife in his boot and cut his seatbelt. He slammed into the broken dash and tried to free his pinned legs. He tore his shins up but finally got them loose.
Cursing, he pulled his way out of Apollo's door and crawled free. Cars were piled up around them, and one van was zooming off into the distance. Lachlan managed to quote the number plate back to himself three times.
He found his phone with a cracked screen and pressed his contacts in frustration. The phone began to ring, but before anyone answered, darkness crept in around him, and he slumped to the wet asphalt.
6
Lachlan woke with Valentine standing over him. The eldest Greatdrakes raised a dark brow.
"Oh, good. You're awake at last. Where the fuck is my brother?' he asked.
"Let him wake up before you start interrogating him, bro," Reeve chided.
Lachlan's brain was scrambled as he tried to remember how he got into the infirmary. The car, the crash...Apollo.
"Apollo!" he groaned and sat up. "They took him."
"Easy, Lachie. You are pretty bashed up," Charlotte said from where she stood at the end of the bed. Lachlan had been stripped down to his boxer briefs and had Charlotte's healing bandages over his shins and another on his side.
"They hit us hard but with precision. They didn't want to kill Apollo. They injected him with something. Left me to die," Lachlan rambled and rubbed at his face. He rattled off the registration number of the van. "It was a white van. Same make and model as the one last night. Fuck. I need my phone."
"You need to drink this," Charlotte said primly, handing him a vial. His heart clenched when he saw it was one of Apollo's'Ouch No More' specials. He downed it and gagged before chasing it with a glass of water.
"Layla is already pulling footage from the traffic cameras and is tracing the van," Charlotte told him. "Take a breath and then tell us everything."
"Especially the part about Apollo nearly getting kidnapped last night and no one fucking telling his family," Valentine snarled softly.
"He didn't want to go home. It's why I brought him here," Lachlan snapped back. He quickly told them everything about the club, the kidnapping attempt, and trying to locate whatever the fuck Sanguis Vitae was.
"They are meant to have disbanded after Catherine Medici's death," Valentine said, recognizing the name immediately. "What? I'm a magician, and I went through a period of being interested in Nostradamus and how legitimate he was."
"'Meantto have disbanded' doesn't mean they did. They clearly have funding, and they weren't going to stop until they had your brother," Lachlan said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed so he could sit up properly.
Reeve ran a hand through his messy brown hair. "How did they know to hit you here?"
Lachlan pinched the bridge of his nose and swore. "The van. I had some recruits tow it here so I could go over it. I have the body in it of the guy who tried to kidnap Apollo the first time."
Valentine clapped his hands, making Lachlan wince. "Get your pants on, Lachie. I need to see this van. If the magic signature is still fresh on the suicide spell, I might be able to figure out what we are dealing with."
"Apollo..."
"Layla is still tracing the van from the highway. Until then, we follow our own leads. If Layla can't find him, we have someof Apollo's hair that we can use to track him," Valentine replied, handing Lachlan a pair of clean jeans.
"Why do you have his hair?"
