It was Alyssa who finally broke the silence. “You said, ‘enthrall them.’ What does that mean?”
“When a vampire bites a person, two chemicals are passed into the victim’s bloodstream along with the vamp’s saliva,” Davina explained. “One helps heal the wound, so their victim won’t bleed out from the bite. The other is a form of sedative that makes the person docile. If a person’s willpower is strong enough, they can fight the drug, but that’s rare. After a time, the victim will not only gladly let a vampire feed on them day after day for years, but they’ll actually become protective of the creatures. They’ll die for them if necessary.” She shrugged. “Again, I have no idea if that will work on a brand-new werewolf. It’s terrifying to think about a vampire getting complete control over one of your kind that way.”
If the room had been quiet before, now it was so silent you could have heard a pin drop. Zane couldn’t help thinking of that girl Alyssa had told him about—the one they’d found in the landfill. With the way her blood had been drained, it could only mean that the vampires had killed her. He didn’t want to think what that would be like. And he sure as bloody hell didn’t want to think about it happening to Zoe and Chloe.
Jake started for the door. “We have to go. We can’t let either of those things happen to the girls.”
Zane caught his arm. “Like I said before, I want to get Zoe and Chloe back as much as you do—we all do. But we still don’t know where they are.”
Jake snarled, but Zane refused to let him go. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rachel and Diego move closer, ready to be backup. Zane didn’t blame them. Jake looked like he was on the verge of losing it.
“What about that parking garage Diego mentioned?” Jake demanded. “If we don’t have a better option, let’s go look there.”
“You mean the Curtis Unified Garage?” Davina asked.
Zane nodded. “Yes.”
She waved her free hand. “Don’t bother wasting your time. If Stefan had been on his own, he might have taken them there, but with Dario along, it’s almost a certainty they took the girls straight to the coven nest for sure. Especially after you killed two of their kind. Dario is going to want to talk to the elders and decide how they’re going to respond.”
“Do you know where this nest is?” Zane asked.
Davina tensed, her hand stilling on the cat’s fur. “Look, I don’t want those two girls getting hurt any more than you do, but this club has survived as long as it has because I don’t take sides. If the vamps found out I told you anything, they wouldn’t just kill me, they’d kill my daughter and everyone who works here.”
Zane ground his jaw. “They won’t hear anything from us. We’ll go in and rescue the twins, then deal with the vampires. They’ll be no risk to you or your club.”
“No risk?” She snorted. “You’re planning to attack a vampire nest as large as the one here in LA with four werewolves and a human, and you think you’ll actually accomplish anything. Now that I think about it, I don’t know why I’m worrying any of it will come back on me. You’ll all get yourselves killed in the first five minutes, so there won’t be anyone for the vampires to question about how you found their nest.”
Jake jerked his arm away from Zane to glare at her. “We dealt with the vampires downstairs easily enough. We’ll do the same with the ones in the nest.”
Davina muttered a curse under her breath. “That was three vamps, and even with Dario being one of them, it’s nothing compared to what you’ll face if you walk right into their nest. I have no idea exactly how many vampires live there, but it’s at least thirty—maybe as many as fifty. It would be a suicide mission, and that’s before you even get around to dealing with all the guards and enthralled people there.”
Zane wasn’t the only one to let out a growl of frustration at that. Davina was right. Going in would be a suicide mission. The four of them had gotten slashed up pretty good dealing with the small group of vamps and their human guards. While he and the others were healing up fine now, he didn’t want to think about how much worse it would be facing a whole nest of those things. There was no way they could do this on their own.
“I’ll call my pack alpha and tell him we need as much help as they can send,” Zane said, then glanced at Jake. “I know you don’t want to wait, but if we go in there without enough backup, it won’t help Zoe and Chloe at all.”
Davina considered that for a moment before letting out a sigh. “Okay, if you get more help from your pack, I’ll tell you where the nest is. Though I still think you’ll need more reinforcements than that.”
Rachel looked at Alyssa. “Do you think the task force might be willing to help?”
Alyssa opened her mouth to answer, but Zane cut her off with a snarl. The idea of Alyssa going anywhere near Dario and the other vampires sent a stab of fear right through his core.
“I don’t want her involved.”
Alyssa shot him a glare but didn’t say anything. If looks could kill… The expression on her face made his stomach clench so tightly he almost doubled over. But even that wasn’t nearly as painful as the idea of her going into a building full of those damn vampires.
Diego cleared his throat. “If Davina will sneak Rachel and I out of here so the cops don’t see us, we’ll call Gage and let him know what’s going on. Maybe you two should stay here and clear the air.”
Zane shook his head along with Alyssa, but Rachel cut them off. “He’s right. We need both of y’all to get your head in the game. And if Alyssa could get us some outside help, we’d be stupid to turn up our noses at it.”
Everyone walked out, with Rachel leading the way and Davina bringing up the rear with her cat in her arm, closing the door quietly behind them and leaving Zane and Alyssa staring at each other.
Bloody hell.
He didn’t have a clue what to say.
Chapter 10
Neither of them said a word, and the longer the silence stretched out, the more painful it became. But Alyssa couldn’t seem to come up with something to say right then. Her head was spinning too fast. After the past year and a half, she thought she’d be immune to shock and surprise, but she’d been wrong.
