“Wait, I didn’t get to chime in.” Dante said. sending her a mental grin.
Rena sent her a mental eye roll. Of course she would figure out how to do that mentally.
“Enough. All of your brothers and your mate are fine. Back to the problem at hand.”
Aran had ended it, after giving them a chance to blow off steam. It had been close, but they had reacted as they had been trained to do. It would take more than that to get rid of them.
Ash began giving them a running commentary. They were on the steps going in to the basement. The lights were off, but they could smell human blood. They found the light switch. Then the commentary stopped. Nothing but silence.
“Aran.” Sergey’s voice rang out in her mind. “You have to see this. The created is gone. We swept the place from top to bottom. There are no explosives.”
“Wave two, hold your spots. I am going in.” Dee watched as Aran left Rena with them.
He moved with lethal grace as he approached the door, blending in with the environment so that she lost sight of him.
The link was silent as they waited for him to announce what they had discovered. “Wave two, come down Ash will come up to provide a look out for us.”
They traded places as Ash emerged, blending in with the surroundings. They stepped into the cabin, making their way to the basement. Dee took the time to look at the surroundings of the floor they were on. It was wide open with the possibility of at least two bedrooms from the attached doors. It was a beautiful place for a well off family to come and spend time. Nothing seemed out of place.
When her feet touched the basement floor and her eyes took in the walls, she knew the upper floor was a sham to hide all that had happened down here.
There were pictures everywhere. All of the pictures were of them; the brothers, or Dante, even Rena and herself. All of them were captured in bright color as they went along their day, unsuspecting.
As she picked out pictures of herself, she told herself that it had to be done with long range cameras, telescopes maybe. There was no way that this created could have been so close to her without her knowing.
Her mind mocked her, calling her a liar. It said she was quickly retreating to the land of the living dead. The land where people saw, but refused to believe. How did someone with a long range camera or even someone with a powerful scope take a picture of her in the coffee shop she frequented in the bathroom as she was washing her hands? The coffee shop that had no windows in its bathroom.
A created could, because he had the ability to blend in. Whatever he was wearing or holding would have blended with him. The brothers were armed when they blended and what they held blended as well.
He had stood behind her as she washed her hands and she had never known. She had never heard the click of the camera taking her picture or seen the flash of the bulb. She never felt his breath on the back of her neck, but he had been there. She was sure of it. Had he touched her or given her a barely there caress that she had wiped off like an annoying insect?
No, she wouldn’t lie to herself or even dwell on it. There were more important things here than that pic of her at the sink. The walls were covered in blood and the pictures, many of them mostly of her and Rena, had been brutalized. The created wanted her to see them and to be afraid.
Still she couldn’t focus on that, because Vance lay in a chair with part of his intestines hanging out. Tina lay on the floor beside him looking abused.
Chapter Thirty
Nicolas was on his knees, working on Vance. Sergey and Hale were untying Vance from the chair. They managed to lay him on the ground without causing Nicolas to lose a beat as he worked on him.
Niko and Dante were bending over Tina’s body. “Aran, I think she has been violated.”
“The created?”
“I don’t think so. Nicolas will have to let us know, but I think Vance did it.”
“Why would Vance rape her? That makes no sense.”
“I don’t know what happened here, but I am sure the created was behind it.”
Dee nodded, knowing all too well how twisted the mind of this created was. “What next?” Her voice was emotionless. He wouldn’t stop and she knew it. They were in his sight and he would only do more and more until he had driven them apart or someone got accused of a crime.
Fighting felt useless.
“We go on.” Aran’s voice came out soft, but with a whip of authority to it.
The softness of his voice disturbed her funk, making her turn to look at him. He grew in size before her eyes. He was no longer the male she had been used to talking to. He was no longer the male that was mated to her best friend.
He was a commander, the ultimate alpha male. He was the male that the other alpha males listened to. Her eyes grew big as he topped over eight feet before he stopped growing. The thin veneer of civility was gone. His face had changed shape like his body.