Grabbing the Savage by his neck, Saxon dragged him into the shed and closed the door.
* * *
Night had descendedwhen he reemerged from the shed and bent to wipe the blood from his hands while he inhaled the fresh air. It hadn’t taken much to get the Savage talking, but his stomach churned as he tried not to recall the sound of breaking bones. There were many things he enjoyed about being a part of the Alliance, and there were some things he didn’t, but he would do whatever was necessary to protect others.
Rising, he surveyed the blood-splattered snow as he recalled the Savage’s words. The creature had revealed there were only eight of them here, and no one had fled the property when they saw him arrive. The two in the bunker retreated when they saw him kill the others and mistakenly believed they would be safe.
That was the most he got out of the Savage before the bastard’s spine healed, and it came at him again. With nothing to restrain the Savage in the bunker, it had leapt from the cot Saxon tossed it onto and attacked him. He hadn’t meant to kill it, he still had plenty of questions left for it, but the thing left him no choice.
Saxon studied the night and the stars overhead as he braced himself to return to the bunker and the carnage below. He’d prefer to return to Elyse; she was probably worried about him or convinced he’d abandoned her. He needed to see and hold her again, but he couldn’t leave here without searching the bunker first.
An owl hooted in the distance; the forlorn sound called to the battered wariness of his soul as he inhaled another lungful of fresh air. With a sigh, he returned to the shed and climbed into the bunker again. At the bottom of the stairs, he stopped to take in the three cots lining the walls and the gap where he’d removed the fourth cot from its place. That fourth cot still lay in the middle of the aisle.
The narrow space was about twenty-five feet long and eight feet wide. He recalled Elyse’s words about different Savages spending the night in the cabin with her and suspected they slept in shifts on the cots as they rotated in and out of here while watching her.
His boots clicked against the concrete as he strode down the center aisle. He tore apart each bed in search of something helpful. He found a couple of cell phones and some skin magazines tucked beneath the cots, but nothing about who they worked for, what their goal was, or what they were doing with Elyse.
He refused to touch the magazines, but he searched through the calls and text messages on the phones. There was no reception and no names in the phones; the last call or text any of them sent was three days ago. They all always called the same number, which was the only one in their contact list.
Unsure what to do with them, or if anything could be done with them, he pocketed the phones. Technology wasn’t his thing, but maybe Declan could do something with them.
He returned to the first Savage he killed and knelt to search the creature’s pockets. When his fingers brushed against another phone, he pulled it out. He scrolled through the calls and texts, but this vamp hadn’t spoken to anyone since last week.
Removing one of the other phones from his pocket, Saxon compared the call history and saw this vamp had called the same number as all the others.
Their check-in? He wondered as he put the phones in his pockets. He finished going through the rest of the bunker, but he didn’t find anything else of use.
Climbing the stairs, Saxon took out all the phones as he trudged through the woods while circling the perimeter of the cabin. With the sun down and the storm over, the temperature had plummeted.
Wet from being in the snow and his fight with the Savage, his frozen clothes adhered to him. The sweatpants pulled the hairs on his legs with every step he took, and he’d long ago lost the feeling in his feet. He probably had frostbite, which would heal when his limbs defrosted, but until then, he was becoming a walking popsicle.
He traversed a lot of land, but the bars on the phones never increased. They must have left the property to report in. Feeling secure in the knowledge the Savages hadn’t warned anyone about his arrival, he turned the phones off and started back toward the cabin.
The creak of the back door opening caught his attention, and he hurried forward when Elyse poked her head out. She huddled deeper into the blanket around her shoulders as she flashed a light around the clearing.
“Saxon?” she called in a low whisper.
The distress in her voice propelled him faster across the clearing. “I’m here.”
Elyse searched where the voice came from, but her flashlight only illuminated twenty feet or so in front of her. Then some of the shadows shifted, and Saxon emerged. He glided toward her as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but when he climbed the porch, her beam illuminated the blood splattering his clothes and face.
Her hand flew to her mouth as fear churned in her gut. “Are you okay?”
He started to reach for her, but she staggered away from him. “I’m fine.”
“There’s so much blood.”
“It’s not mine.”
She refrained from kissing and yelling at him for staying away for so long. His frozen clothes stuck to his body, snow and ice caked his hair, and he may not be aware of it, but icicles of blood and snow dangled from what he wore. She didn’t know how he was still standing, let alone walking and talking.
“That’s animal blood?” she asked.
“No. I discovered where your guards were spending their nights, and two survivors lurked within.”
She lowered her hand. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes.”
