All waited silently as he plodded toward them, half-dragging his leg behind him. He stopped a few feet away and regarded them all with what appeared to be fear. His throat moved in a swallow. Moisture welled in the eyes he turned on Seth. He started to speak, but couldn’t seem to find his voice.
Seth reached out and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “What is it, Alexei?”
Again he swallowed, and a tear spilled over his lashes. “I can’t find Stan,” he choked out.
Lisette tensed. She did a quick survey of the faces around her, only then realizing that Stanislav wasn’t with them.
“I think . . .” Alexei rasped. “I think the explosion may have taken him.”
Seth’s hand tightened on Alexei’s shoulder. Was he reading the Second’s memories?
“He saw them. . . . He saw Yuri fall and took off toward him,” Alexei said. “Then the building exploded, and all hell broke loose. I can’t find him.”
Releasing Alexei, Seth looked toward the remains of the armory, then turned his distressed gaze on the immortals. “Have any of you seen Stanislav since the explosion?”
Lisette held her breath, hoping someone would say that they had, that he had just needed some time alone.
But no one spoke.
Shaking his head, Seth stumbled back a pace.
This would kill him, she thought, losing two immortals in one day.
Swinging around, Seth strode through the smoke toward the armory.
Tears blurred her vision and obscured his form.
Dmitry crossed to Alexei and drew him into a rough embrace. Both men wept for the friends—the brothers—they had lost.
“Have your men help him search,” Zach murmured to Chris over Lisette’s head. “If the explosion killed Stanislav, there won’t be anything left of the body.” The virus would have seen to that.
Lisette’s breath hitched in a sob.
Zach tightened his hold. “So look for his weapons,” he instructed. “Pieces of the Kevlar suit he wore. Anything that can give Seth the proof and closure he’ll need.”
Chris didn’t just pass the orders along to his men. He went with them and helped them begin to comb through the still smoldering rubble surrounding the armory.
Thank you, Lisette told Zach, her throat too tight to speak.
Zach rested his cheek on her hair and rocked her gently from side to side. I’m so sorry, sweetheart.
Closing her eyes, Lisette let her tears fall.
Everyone bunked at David’s place that night. All seemed to need to be near one another, though none knew what to say.
Lisette didn’t think she had ever heard such painful silence in the large home. Even the baby seemed subdued, resting in Ami’s arms and peering out at them with somber eyes until Ami and Marcus retired, taking her with them.
Lisette didn’t sleep. (She wondered if anyone did.) She and Zach just held each other.
And when tears would occasionally slip quietly down her cheeks, Zach would cuddle her closer and make soothing sounds.
No one knew where Seth was. He had disappeared after Chris and his men had found a piece of Stanislav’s mask and one of his swords, the blade having been broken in the blast.
While such had convinced the rest of them that Stanislav had perished in the explosion, Seth seemed steeped in denial. Buried by grief. Unable to accept two losses in one day.
Lisette didn’t know how to help him.
David strode through dense trees and brush, letting the night sounds envelop him.
He couldn’t seem to still his thoughts. Felt pulled in too many directions.
The immortals back home wandered aimlessly from room to room like lost children. For some, this was the first time they had had to cope with the death of an immortal friend.
Not so for David. He had lost many over the millennia.
It never got easier.
For Seth . . . David thought each loss was harder than the last, as if Seth believed he should have found some way by then to lend the Immortal Guardians true immortality.
Stepping out of the forest, David crossed a road and passed through what remained of a metal gate that creaked as the wind pushed it an inch this way and that on damaged hinges. The pungent scent of blood and death still hung in the air as though even the breeze could not usher it away.
David walked past decimated buildings and scorched earth.
Chris had already taken care of the cover-up. Large propane tanks had been moved in, the electric central heaters and stoves replaced with gas. Then the tanks had been ignited with grenades and incendiary rounds.
Disgruntled employees had been blamed for the death and destruction. Among the mercenaries’ ranks, Chris had discovered nine men who had been facing criminal charges for actions taken overseas. All had repeatedly voiced their fury over Shadow River’s distancing itself from them instead of defending them. So they had become the patsies.