Shadows Strike(20)

The remaining chairs on Ethan’s side were claimed by Krysta’s brother Sean and his Second Nichole, the British immortal Edward and his Second Desmond, and Aidan and his Second Brodie.

Ethan thought Aidan downright peculiar. Seth had transferred the immortal to North Carolina last year just before the Immortal Guardians’ final showdown with Shadow River. Born around seven or eight hundred BC, the Celt seemed bizarrely entertained by . . . well . . . everything that went on around him. Ethan would swear the man had smiled through every battle in which they’d fought together. Hell, he was smiling now, faintly.

Although every once in a while, Ethan caught a glimpse of weariness in the elder immortal’s eyes. Not physical weariness. More of a world weariness. Perhaps the odd pleasure he exhibited was simply relief at having new challenges to dispel the boredom that doing the same damned thing every night for millennia could generate. Ethan had only been immortal and fought vampires nightly for a hundred years. He couldn’t imagine doing it for nearly three thousand. Alone. No wife. No girlfriend.

Ethan’s thoughts returned to Heather. Damn, he’d hated to leave her tonight. The way they’d met might have been fucked up, but he had really enjoyed her company. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so easily or so often.

Darnell, David’s Second, strolled into the dining room and seated himself in the last remaining chair near the head of the table. David followed. Even had David not stood six foot seven inches tall and had shoulders as broad as Ethan’s, the elder immortal would have commanded attention. Thousands of years old, he fairly oozed power. With skin as dark as midnight, the face of a pharaoh (as Ethan had once heard Sarah describe him), and a mass of pencil-thin dreadlocks that fell to his hips, he had been on the planet long enough to have witnessed biblical events.

David possessed multiple gifts, all of which Ethan would love to possess. David could heal with his hands, shape-shift, read minds, move things telekinetically . . . and he could withstand several hours of exposure to daylight. David was not someone anyone would want to cross. He was unbeatable in battle. And fiercely loyal to his immortal family and the humans who aided them.

David lowered his powerful frame into the chair at the head of the table and greeted them all with smiles. Adira instantly slid off Roland’s lap and began to toddle her way down the table toward him. Immortals smiled over their shoulders as she grasped the backs of their chairs to help her maintain her balance. When she reached David, Adira thrust her arms up toward him.

Smiling, David gathered her against his chest. “Hello, sweetheart. How’s our girl tonight?”

The front door opened. Chris Reordon entered, his crappy leather briefcase clutched in one hand, and swung the door shut behind him. “Evening, everyone,” he said as he joined them and took one of the only two seats left, which would put him at Seth’s elbow when Seth arrived.

Ethan glanced around the table and felt sorrow lodge in his throat. Stanislav and Yuri should be at this table, their Seconds—Alexei and Dmitry—with them. The Russian immortals’ deaths, at the hands of mercenaries, still struck Ethan like a kick in the gut at moments like this when they all gathered together.

Ed had told Ethan that Dmitry and Alexei were both serving as guards down at the network for now, neither yet ready to serve as another immortal’s Second.

David glanced at Zach. “Is Seth still in Mozambique?”

Zach nodded. “Last I heard.”

While Adira stuffed one of David’s dreadlocks into her mouth, David turned his head to one side and closed his eyes. “Seth.” A moment passed. “Yes.” He opened his eyes. “He shall be here shortly. He’s at the network.”

“That is so cool,” Sheldon said, voicing Ethan’s own thoughts.

David smiled.

Once again, Ethan bemoaned the fact that he had been born with such a boring gift. But his bloodline had been diluted so much over the millennia by ordinary human DNA that he was fortunate he had any gift at all.

“Where’s Cliff?” Ami asked. “Won’t he be joining us?”

Several others nodded. Cliff was the only vampire ever to be privy to their meetings. He really had become one of them in recent years.

Chris cleared his throat. “I thought it best that he not be present, considering what we’re going to discuss.”

Seth, the leader of the Immortal Guardians, abruptly appeared beside the chair at the foot of the table. Six foot eight, with long, black hair that reached his waist, he was the wisest and most powerful among them. Seth possessed all of the gifts the others held combined plus some they didn’t.

“I apologize for the delay,” Seth said, seating himself. He smiled at Adira, who grinned back from her perch on David’s lap. “Hello, sweetheart.”

Adira babbled something Ethan couldn’t translate.

Seth nodded to the others. “Shall we begin?”

Chris opened his briefcase and drew out a laptop computer. “Some of you are already aware that there was an incident at the network this morning.”

A few nods.

Krysta glanced around. “We didn’t hear about it. What happened?”

“Shortly after dawn, Cliff suffered a psychotic break,” Chris announced.

Gasps and Oh no’s circulated the table as expressions filled with dread.

“He attacked Dr. Whetsman and did his damnedest to kill him. We had to take Cliff down with a buttload of bullets and tranquilizer darts.”

“Is he okay?” Tanner asked, his brow furrowed. He had served as Bastien’s Second—in a manner of speaking—back when Bastien had raised his vampire army, so Tanner and Cliff had been friends for years.

Melanie addressed the table. “He still hasn’t awoken. It took double the usual dose of the tranquilizer to drop him. And we don’t know what his mental state will be when he finally does wake up.”

Chris opened the laptop. “We had no idea what triggered the break at first. We assumed Whetsman was being his usual self and had just said something assholish. Then Zach read Whetsman’s thoughts and discovered that Whetsman had shot Linda.”

All eyes went to Linda.

“I’m okay,” she assured them. “Zach healed me.” She sent Zach a smile. “Thank you.”

Zach nodded.

Chris set a movie into motion on the laptop’s screen. “This footage was taken from various surveillance cameras on the premises. Here is where Linda confronts Whetsman. He forces her with a concealed weapon to accompany him to his vehicle, then leans in and shoots her, out of sight of the cameras.”

“What the hell?” Sheldon blurted. “Why did Whetsman shoot you?”

“Because I caught him smuggling vials of the sedative out of network headquarters,” Linda answered.

Silence reigned.

The video continued.

“Whetsman went back inside to get the vials he had to leave behind when Linda tried to thwart him,” Chris narrated. “He ran into Cliff—”

“Did Cliff hear Whetsman shoot her?” Sheldon asked.

Chris paused the video. “No. Cliff . . . hasn’t been sleeping well lately.”

Seth leaned forward. “He only sleeps in short snatches. His dreams are often so violent they wake him up, and . . . he hears voices now.”

“Shit,” Tanner murmured.

Chris nodded. “When it’s bad, he wanders the halls, looking for a distraction. It appears he had just awoken from one of his nightmares and was walking it off when he ran into Whetsman.” Chris set the video into motion once more. “We think Cliff may have smelled Linda’s blood or fear on Whetsman and . . .”

Cliff’s eyes flashed amber as he suddenly tore into Whetsman, shaking him like an animal would a chew toy. Chaos erupted onscreen as the guards fired their weapons, hitting the young vampire with enough bullets to make him drop the doctor. Which only seemed to piss Cliff off more. When the doctor ran, Cliff plowed through the guards, followed him upstairs, and caught him just before he reached the front door.

Damn. He messed Whetsman up before blood loss and the tranquilizer finally took him down.

Seth leaned back in his chair. “It appears Cliff has solved a mystery for us. We’ve wondered for some time now how Shadow River got their hands on the sedative they used against us. How they knew they needed to up the dosage in order to totally and instantly incapacitate one of us on the battlefield. Well, according to what Zach and I saw in his thoughts, Whetsman gave it to them.”

“Why, for fuck’s sake?” Bastien demanded.

“For money, no doubt,” Roland pronounced with a scowl.

“Actually,” Seth corrected, “he did it at Gershom’s bidding.”

The quiet that enshrouded them then grew so heavy that even little Adira seemed to feel it. Her face sobering, she leaned into David’s chest and stuck two fingers in her mouth.

When no one else spoke, Ethan said, “What?”

“Whetsman’s mind is a mess,” Seth told them. “His brain is riddled with scar tissue where large portions of his memory have been erased.”

“Erased?” Ethan asked for clarification’s sake. “Or buried?”

Seth and David had told them that they preferred to bury memories when necessary because erasing them completely could cause brain damage.