“Master, please, you have to remember that he was in charge here for a very long time, and we thought?—”
“Ingrid!”
Ingrid spoke in a soft whisper, but the words were brilliantly loud inside the sports car. “The servers were destroyed, and asfar as we can tell, your investment accounts and the coven’s are now at a balance of six dollars and sixty-six cents. Combined.”
Seamus slammed on the brakes, and Zack was glad for his seat belt and supernatural healing. He would’ve had a massive bruise for days otherwise.
The temperature in the car dropped. Ice formed along the dashboard and inner side of the windshield. The desire to scream and punch flooded Zack’s mental mind frame so hard and fast that he went numb.That’s not my emotion. It’s his.
“What?” Seamus said slowly, drawing it out to two dagger-like syllables.
“Master, please understand, I have been going through the systems with a fine-tooth comb. I have been searching and repairing and seeking to block any such exploits. I have hired the bes?—”
“How. Did. This. Happen?” Seamus demanded.
“Dmitri was one of the intruders. He established these systems, master. He spent more time with them than anyone. I’ve been working to create an entirely new system rather than rely on his, but such development takes time and—” Ingrid paused. “Forgive me, master. Dmitri broke into our server room, used an exploit I had not yet uncovered, and sent your funds in a thousand different directions. He must have had this programmed from the beginning to have it happen so fast. And the destruction of our servers means we will have to rebuild our hardware as well as our software. We won’t be able to do business reliably until we have our digital security restored.”
“And the other vampire?” Seamus tightened his hands on the steering wheel.
“One of the attackers was able to walk through shadows and manipulate them. He bound several security guards in shadows to allow his team to escape,” Ingrid replied.
Seamus snarled and moved his foot from the break to the gas pedal. When Ingrid continued to sputter, he punched a button that ended the call. His rage poured through his bond to Zack, and Zack struggled to push it down. He didn’t care about the money. Didn’t care about the disrespect. His heart hurt with betrayal and a desire for vengeance.Not my heart. His.
Seamus gave no regard for stoplights or speed limits and swore in an ancient tongue at every car that was minutely in his way. Soon they were hurtling on the interstate and headed for the suburb where the mansion was.
A strange pitch was rising and falling in Zack’s ears.That’s not my heart racing in my ears. That’s … that’s language. The realization helped him break apart the sounds, though he had to reach for his vampiric power in order to understand the speed at which the words were moving. He struggled to figure out the individual words until he noticed that they weren’t in English. Zack only knew a little German and Latin from studying his family’s texts, and his understanding was of the written form, not the spoken. But he was pretty sure this didn’t sound like either of them.
Vampires didn’t suddenly learn new languages upon their rebirth. Zack put a hand to his temple. The rage and the sounds were threatening to overwhelm him, and fighting them began to give him a headache. He glanced at Seamus, but as far as he could tell, his lips weren’t moving. He wasn’t speaking the words.What the fuck?
The drive should have taken them almost an hour, even in the dead of night’s slower traffic, but Seamus made it to the mansion in less than twenty minutes. He screeched to a halt in front of the mansion’s front doors, threw the car into park, and then stormed out of the vehicle, leaving the car on and the door open.
An electric tang was on Zack’s tongue, and he staggered out of the car and up the stairs to the front door behind Seamus. Already, his sire was inside and screaming at the top of his voice, “Anton!”
“That sounds like a problem,” Anton said in the distance.
Zack stopped just inside the door and held on to a side table with a vase of roses. The compounding pressure was building. He ached with the need to smash. To break. To rend. With a snarl, he shoved the vase off the side table. The crack of glass against the ground was satisfying but not nearly enough to sate the foreign desire.
“The traitorous piece of shit,” Seamus snarled under his breath, in an almost quiet echo in Zack’s ear. Then he raised his voice, “You traitorous piece of shit!”
“Love, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Anton arrived in the front foyer with a zip of speed. His eyes glowed faintly red with his power.
Seamus stalked forward, grabbed Anton by the throat, and threw him through a door with enough force to break the wood and send him into the room beyond. He said with echoey softness, “How long have you been planning it?”
But then he repeated himself again. “How long have you been planning it?”
Zack scowled and started to take a step behind Seamus, but then he caught the scent of spilled mortal blood, and his stomach yearned for it. Sinking his fangs into tender flesh would be fantastic and might further satisfy the burning need in his bones that came from the rage. He followed the scent to a sitting room not terribly far down the north hallway.
Takashi leaned against a doorframe. His tawny skin was paler than usual, and his worried blue eyes had deep bags under them.
Beyond him, in the room, were two teenagers bound to chairs. One girl was crying; one was frantically attempting to yank her wrists upward. A third girl was on the floor and wasn’t breathing. There was blood on her mouth. All three were dressed in school uniforms for Versinal Academy.
Zack frowned.
I can’t believe he would betray me like this, the echoey Seamus voice in his head said.
Zack put a hand to his temple.He hasn’t. I … I don’t think anyway.
And there was that strange language again. In his ears. In his head.
