“Francis,” Brock barked.
“Sir?”
“Shut up.”
Francis pressed his lips together and used his hand to make a zipping motion across them and then mimed putting a key in his pocket.
I need a new assistant, Brock thought to himself for the fiftieth time that day.
“Did I hear correctly that he has a full-blooded werewolf?” Chief Master Sergeant Orson asked.
Brock nodded. “It appears so.” He glanced at Francis and smirked. “Hollywood got it right for once. Apparently werewolves are very strong.”
“Knew it,” Francis whispered, but then quickly snapped his mouth closed.
“I don’t know,” Brock said. “Cain claims the hybrids will be extremely powerful. The prospect of having an army of supernaturals such as these is … enticing. It would push our military might far ahead of any other nation.”
“But?” Prescott inclined his head.
“Well, the vampire obviously has to have an ulterior motive. People in power always do.”
The males in the room chuckled. They should know. After all, they worked with politicians and leaders of powerful corporations and government agencies. Most of them were narcissistic assholes, and the rest were sociopaths and psychopaths. They just had more resources to hide the bodies and more money to buy silence.
“Do we have people inside that we trust to feed us information on him?” Orson tapped his fingers on the table in an annoying rhythm.
Douglas nodded. “What about the scientist?”
Brock snorted. “No. He’s as fascinated with Cain as this one.” He pointed at Francis, who simply blinked cartoonishly.
“We need someone in there, then.” Prescott rubbed his chin, seemingly lost in thought, and stared at the wall, which held the seals of each military branch.
“I’ve got someone,” Douglas spoke up. His lips turned up in a grin. “My daughter.” When the others opened their mouths, probably to disagree, he cut them off quickly. “She’s a scientist working in stem cell research. I’m sure she could figure out a way to B.S. her way into the project without making the vampire suspicious.”
Brock glanced around the table and saw that the others were considering the idea. He thought it was a great idea. A woman could often get information from a man that another man couldn’t. Whether it was attraction that made a man susceptible to a woman’s wiles, or just the fact that they were often easier to talk to than men, he didn’t know. But it was worth a try.
“Pull her in,” Brock said. “I’ll get her clearance.”
Francis slowly raised his hand and said in a small voice, “I could—”
“No!” Brock, and everyone else in the room, said at the same time.
The general pushed away from the table and stood, and the others followed suit. “We’ll meet again in two weeks. Hopefully by then your daughter will have some information for us.”
Douglas lifted a hand. “That’s a little fast.”
Brock lifted a brow at the other man as he asked, “Has the president been calling you in the middle of the night, threatening to take your rank away?”
Douglas pursed his lips. “Point taken.”
As they filed out of the room, Brock prayed to every god he could think of that Cain would finally make some sort of progress that he could present to the commander-in-chief. For some reason, the man was practically salivating to get his hands on these so-called hybrids. As he’d said before, he understood what an asset they’d be, but he knew there had to be some other reason the president wanted these vampire/wolf mixes. But no matter how much digging Brock did, he couldn’t find anything that might reveal the president’s motivations. He had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that whatever the reason, it wasn’t for the benefit of their country. “Why the hell didn’t I retire when I had the chance?” he muttered under his breath as the weight of his obligations pushed harder on his shoulders.
Chapter 11
“There are things in our past so painful that our minds protect us. Memories that are better left buried in the dark recesses of our subconscious. But sometimes our curiosity, our natural need to know, becomes stronger than self-preservation. Then we start digging. We begin to push through barriers that were never meant to be breached. We start breaking down the walls around those memories, not realizing the nature of demons we are releasing. By the time we do, it’s far too late.” ~Nissa
“You shouldn’t be here, Nissa of the high fae.” Anuva, the djinn, stood rigid, his long, forest-green robes reaching the floor. The robe’s cowl only revealed the djinn’s severe face. He looked no older than a human male in his twenties, but his silver eyes spoke of a being so old he’d seen scores of civilizations rise and fall.
“That is not the greeting I expected, Knowing One,” Nissa challenged. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask how I knew to come here.” Typically, Nissa was not an aggressive female. She believed in the human saying: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But she had been searching for certain elusive information for too long. She was tired of going in circles, and her usual inexhaustible patience was gone. Every clue she followed led to the same conclusion—her memories were gone. Jen suggested Nissa had hidden them from herself. That could have been true; the fae had that ability and sometimes used it in extreme circumstances. Alternatively, Nissa’s memories had been altered or stolen. Whatever it was, she needed to get her memories back quickly.
