Oliver, who had wandered in late to the party, clearly the only one who had known what his man was shrieking about, shrugged. “It’s true, you kind of asked for it.”
Sam sighed. “Some of this shit better be useful.”
Now Jayden had his game face on. The “I will cut you” face. He rummaged through the packages and threw five huge boxes across the room to land at our feet. They were all identical, about four feet high and two feet wide. Sam raised an eyebrow and produced a pocket knife, cutting open his box. His brows rose as he pulled out a heavy duty, army spec camping backpack, the kind with a metal cage and chest straps and even a sleeping bag tied to the bottom.
“I figured at some point we would need to run. Got us all hooked up,” Jayden said, and was glaring at Sam, awaiting his reply.
“Thisisgood,” Sam mumbled.
Jayden put a hand to his ear. “What’s that, Sammy? I didn’t hear you?”
Sam actually smiled then. “This is good. Thank you.”
My BAFF looked at all of us and we took turns thanking him. Smug bastard. I loved that guy.
What can I say, after all the shitty events of the past few days, the next two hours were like Christmas. Jayden took turns handing all of us our presents. I got some completely inappropriate lingerie, including some star nipple pasties. But I also got some cute skinny jeans, regular lacy thongs, tight t-shirts – one of which said “coffee before talkie” – and a bunch of other cool camping shit, not to mention an absolute top of the line set of throwing knives.
“Jayden, you’re the shit!” I exclaimed.
My smile broadened as I noticed Markus sitting in the corner coloring in his adult-man coloring book. It had different cars and guns in it. I hadn’t even known the Scottish enforcer liked art, drawing and stuff, but Jayden did. There was a true friend there under all the flamboyance. Jayden was one of a kind.
I was distracted by Ryder. He got some hot denim jeans and cargo pants, leather combat boots and a sexy-AF black leather jacket. We all got a set of black army fatigues with tons of small pockets for storing cool shit.
Watching Becca open her packages was hilarious. I’d never seen someone turn so red. When she opened the push-up bra, she literally inspected it like a scientist would, squeezing all the padding.
“There must be an inch of padding. That’s like … false advertisement.” She gawked and we all laughed.
Becca, Jayden, and I all got new makeup kits, and of course Beccagot false eyelashes and we both got green contacts. Jayden thought of everything.
“You have a future in personal shopping. I’m just throwing that out there,” I told my BAFF.
“I know, right!” He winked, slipping on his Gucci loafers.
We had swapped out those who were on patrol duty a few times so that everyone got to enjoy their gifts, but all too soon it was time to put our shit away and get down to business. And not the fun, sexy kind. Nope, this business was going to be dangerous, scary, and there was a high possibility I was never going to get a chance to use my sexy new lingerie.
Ryder gathered all of us together, even calling the boys in from patrol. Everyone had to be here to chime in on the plan. We were going to iron it out, make sure it was concrete, and then put it into motion.
“Sam is going to take Becca, all her necessary lab equipment, and everything else needed for a month or more of lockdown, across to his secret house. Becca believes that in using Charlie’s blood she can create a synthetic cure or vaccine for the vampire virus, and that we’ll be able to use it in a mass amount to take down all the Hives.”
We were all hanging on Ryder’s words. I don’t think anyone was even breathing so as not to miss anything. Because this was it. Finally we were going to be taking action.
He continued: “I was up early this morning, and managed to get a secure, coded call through to Lucas.”
Involuntarily I lurched toward him then, my hands lifting of their own accord. Ryder noticed, and answered before I could reach out and grasp onto his shirt. “Tessa’s fine, and so is Blake.” I relaxed back again, realizing how truly afraid I’d been for her. “From what I could infer, they’re playing their part, acting as if we have all betrayed the Hive, and that they hate ash. Lucas said there’s not much he can do right now. They put him in the pit for a few days and now have him under strict surveillance. It’s only his money and power stopping them from killing him. He did have some ideas of how we could get the cure into each of the Hives at the same time.”
I was excited to hear Lucas’ ideas.
“Every three months, all of the Hives receive a shipment from the blood banks, and at the same time there’s a turnover of human feeders. The government requires all volunteer feeders be changed quarterly to keep them healthy. The new feeders all have to report to a few select hospitals across America. There they have their blood checked, catalogued, and then they are shipped out to Hives across the country.”
Damn, I knew so little about this world. Why did I not pay attention in these classes? I hated when I wasn’t as informed as I needed to be. “So the humans who we and the vamps feed from could be from anywhere?” I asked. “How is it that Tessa managed to get into Portland Hive? She never said anything about her blood being tested.”
Jayden answered me, and I realized that we actually had a very good source of information sitting right here in this room, the very ash who’d been front line in the feeding center. He did the paperwork, he would know all about this stuff. “Tessa had all the paperwork. It was correctly filed and everything. I think maybe someone in the Quorum, Fugly perhaps, forged it and rushed her through so she was always there to be used as a weapon against you. Right from the start it was all in play, even before they knew what you were.”
Fuck! Made sense, but still…
Oliver posed the next important question. “How many of these hospitals are there across the world? Because this sort of plan needs to go down on the same day. Otherwise the Hives will lock down and we’ll never get to the vamps again. Our timing must be perfect.”
Jayden answered: “Two in America: Texas and California. They transport blood and humans out to North and South America. There are three in the UK and Europe: London, Belgium, and Sweden. And finally there is one in Indonesia, which only deals in bottled blood, not humans. It’s massive though, shipping out to Australia, Japan, and China. These are the only other countries with Hives, and each only has one. Their human governments are not as lenient as the American one, and vamps were mostly killed off there, allowing only a small percent of the vampire population to live.”
