Night Unbound(99)

Bastien nodded. “I heard no signs of pursuit when he caught up with me.”
“Could they have tagged you with a tracking device?” Seth asked Cliff.
“Vampires have tracking devices?”
“They haven’t used any thus far. But, since they have the drug, we can’t rule it out.”
“If they did, I didn’t feel it.”
“I shall return momentarily.” Seth vanished.
The swish of tree leaves rustling in the breeze was the only sound for many long minutes. That and the frogs, insects, and other creatures that embraced the night.
Zach studied the vampire.
Cliff seemed to be calming a bit. Perhaps he had feared Seth would execute him for disobeying.
“You did a good thing,” Zach told him.
A faint smile curled Cliff’s lips as relief that someone thought so crept into his features.
“Don’t encourage him,” Bastien snapped.
“I believe you are the one who encouraged him.”
“I didn’t tell him to do this!”
“Are you not his mentor?” Zach studied the irate British immortal. “How many times have you broken, trampled upon, then set fire to the rules by which the other Immortal Guardians live, as well as the rules Chris Reordon has painstakingly created to keep those at the network safe?”
“You would lecture me on following the rules?” Bastien demanded incredulously.
Lisette nodded her agreement. “It is sort of the pot calling the kettle black.”
Zach shrugged. “I don’t pretend to be a leader. I’m just saying, if you want to protect your vampire followers, then lead by example.”
“They’re my friends, not my followers. I no longer command an army of vampires.”
“Yet those at the network look to you for leadership.”
“I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t bound your wounds when you were injured,” Bastien groused.
Zach grinned.
Lisette smiled up at him. “You two are so alike.”
Cliff laughed, finally at ease.
Seth reappeared with Chris Reordon.
Before anyone said a word, Chris stepped forward and waved a metal detector over Cliff. “Clear.” He stepped back. “So, Seth says you tagged one of the new vampires?”
“Yes.”
“You can tell me about it in a minute. Right now, we need to get you back to network headquarters so I can start tracking the bastard.”
“Down With The Sickness” overlapped his words.
At the same time, Bastien’s phone bleated.
He and Seth shared a look of concern as they answered their phones.
“Ami’s water broke,” Marcus and Melanie said in unison, Marcus to Seth and Melanie to Bastien.
“I’m on my way,” Seth told Marcus.
“We’ll be there soon,” Bastien promised his wife.
Seth put away his phone and looked at Chris. “Ami’s water broke.”
Zach spoke up. “Go. I’ll get Chris and Cliff back to the network.”
“Thank you. Come to David’s afterward. Dr. Kimiko said once Ami’s water broke, there would be no turning back, that we couldn’t risk putting the delivery off any longer for fear of Ami or the baby developing an infection. So she’ll have to deliver tonight, and I want every healer in the area on hand.”
Zach nodded. “We’ll be right behind you.”
Seth crossed to Bastien, grabbed his shoulder, and teleported them away.
Zach, Lisette, Chris, and Cliff stared at each other in somber silence.#p#分页标题#e#
“I hope she’ll be okay,” Cliff said softly. “The baby, too.”
Suddenly his insubordination seemed meaningless.
Zach commanded the others to close in, then teleported them all to network headquarters.
After the kindness Ami had shown him, he wanted to be there for her in case she should need him.

Chapter Fifteen
Over a dozen immortals and their Seconds occupied David’s living room in what felt to Lisette alarmingly like a deathbed vigil.
Every available chair, love seat, sofa, coffee table, and footstool was occupied.
Lisette sat in a flat-wing chair with Tracy wedged in beside her. Like children awaiting punishment by a stern parent, they held hands and tried to will strength and hope into the small mortal woman laboring in the next room.
Utter silence reigned, broken only by Ami’s labored breaths.
Zach, Seth, David, Marcus, Melanie, and Dr. Kimiko were all with her in the delivery room. Roland and Sean had been asked to linger in the recovery room, ready to rush forward in the event the babe should require healing once delivered. The other three healers might be either too sapped from pouring their healing energy into Ami or too busy trying to keep Ami from slipping away from them to heal the babe themselves.
Marcus whispered words of love and praise and encouragement to his wife and, by all accounts, had not released her hand since discovering her water had broken.