Angel's Pain (3 page)

It was Crisa's. So all she could do was wait.

Fortunately for her, the two most irritating mortals on the planet were extremely gifted healers. That shit they did, they did very well, though she would die before she would acknowledge it to either of them. Roxy was already far too cocky, while Ilyana was petrified of her, and Briar preferred to keep it that way.

Still, she thanked them silently when the pain in her head began to ease and finally faded to almost nothing.

She rested only for a few moments, then got up when someone tapped on her door. She opened it to see Jack, with his dirty blond hair that was always a little too long and his slightly scruffy whiskers, making him seem like a rebel, wearing the satisfied smirk of a man who'd had far better sex than he deserved.

“We're getting ready to move out, Bri. You got your stuff together?”

“Two minutes,” she told him.

He nodded, his eyes doing a quick survey of her face.

“Your headache better?”

“Gone,” she told him.

“I figured. Crisa's is, too.”

She frowned at him.

“Reaper filled us in. I'll help you keep an eye on her. Don't worry.”

“I wasn't. And I don't need your help ‘keeping an eye' on Crisa, because it's not my job to keep an eye on Crisa. Jeez, who appointed me the keeper of the nuthouse?”

He shrugged. “Need help packing?”

“Go jump your freaking princess again or something, and stop pestering me, will you?”

“Okay.” He winked and left the room.

Why the hell, she wondered, was everyone so determined to see things in her that didn't exist? She wasn't
worried
about Crisa. She didn't give a
shit
about Crisa—or anyone else, for that matter. This pile of do-gooders just couldn't seem to accept that about her. They didn't understand it, sought to project their own moral bullshit onto her. But she didn't believe in it. Never had.

She was out only for herself, her own best interests and the fulfillment of her own needs. And right now those needs included only two things. The basic need to devour living blood in order to survive, and her sole purpose for wanting to.

She had to kill Gregor for what he'd done to her.

Revenge was the only reason she continued waking up each night. It was her life force. And once it was done, well, hell, she would probably be done, too, despite her tough talk to Roxy about being a true immortal.

There really wasn't, as far as she could see, much of a point to it, after all.

“I
understand you've been looking for me,” Gregor said, speaking as if he were perfectly calm. As if every cell in his body wasn't coiled tight at the notion of what he was about to do.

“Yes, that's true,” Special Agent Dwyer confirmed. He kept his hands thrust into the deep pockets of his raincoat, shoulders hunched, collar turned up against the icy drizzle that pelted them both where they stood in a rest area off a major highway in the middle of nowhere.

3:00 a.m. Gregor was at the peak of his wakefulness. Dwyer was having trouble keeping his eyes open, despite the fact that he reeked of the coffee he'd been guzzling.

“So?” Gregor asked.

“Look, I appreciate you comin' in, Gregory.”

“Gregor,” he snapped. “Nobody calls me Gregory. Not anymore.”

“Sorry.” Dwyer had jerked backward a bit at the barked correction, and Gregor was glad to see it. It wouldn't do to have this man thinking of him as just another mortal operative under his command. He wasn't mortal. And he wasn't just another anything. He was a vampire.

He was a god.

“Sorry,” Dwyer repeated. “Still, it's good you decided to come in for this meetin'. It'll go a long way toward convincin' the powers that be of your sincerity.”

“Fuck the powers that be.”

Dwyer went silent, his head coming up slowly and his eyes seeming to reflect uncertainty for the first time during their clandestine meeting.

“I know full well there's a burn order on me, Dwyer. Frankly, I'm surprised you haven't tried to take me out already.”

“No one's goin' to kill you, Gregor.”

“You're right about that much, at least.” Gregor lifted a hand, snapped his fingers. Immediately, the drones came lumbering out of the wooded area behind the rest stop.

They were not pretty, and they couldn't even begin to pass for human. Their size, their lumbering gait, the blank, not-quite-right look in their eyes. They were a step evolved from the popular version of Frankenstein's monster, but only in that their heads were not visibly stitched onto their necks, nor did they have bolts sticking out on either side of their throats.

Aside from those minor differences, though, they were pretty close.

A woman came out of the restroom, saw the drones lumbering across the slightly sloped lawn toward her, a dozen of them, and ran shrieking for her car. Change jangled like hailstones onto the pavement as a stunned man stared, his hand seeming to lose its ability to grasp the coins. A car that had veered into the parking area suddenly accelerated, nearly running other vehicles off the road as it sped back to the highway.

The mayhem caused by the appearance of the monsters lasted only seconds. And yeah, Gregor thought, maybe the witnesses didn't really think of them as monsters. But there was no question something about them wasn't quite right, no question that there were a lot of them, no question that they were big, oversized, powerful and intent on…something. That was enough.

And he liked to think someone might have had the word
monster
whisper through their mind.

“What is this?” Dwyer asked. He was already pulling a gun from inside one of those deep pockets, no doubt the one he'd intended to shoot Gregor with, and backing toward his car. The rest of the place was now deserted.

“This is what I believe you would call an ambush, Dwyer. But don't worry. I'm not going to have them kill you.” He smiled slowly. “Not right away, at least.” And then he ducked behind the concrete building to watch as the drones closed in.

Dwyer lifted the gun, fired off a round, and one of the drones dropped in an oversized heap on the ground and lay there, moaning and bleeding and too damned dumb to do anything about it. Nor did any of his cohorts rush to his aid. They had one purpose. Obey their master.

They kept coming. Dwyer kept shooting. A few fell, but the rest came on faster. Dwyer grappled for his car door, yanking it open, stumbling backward into the car while still firing.

A wounded drone grabbed at his ankle. He fired again and tugged himself free, yanking his leg inside, slamming the car door, hitting the locks.

He thought he was free as he struggled to fit the key into the ignition.

The idiot.

A drone tore the driver's door from the car and sent it sailing through the air. Another gripped Dwyer by his gun-wielding arm, squeezing his wrist until the pistol dropped uselessly to the ground. Then he picked Dwyer up easily as the terrified man struggled.

Why did he fight, Gregor wondered, when he knew he was beaten?

One paw to the side of his head and Dwyer was fighting no more. Gregor stepped out from behind the concrete bunker that housed the public toilets and tasted victory.

“Tie him up and put him in the Jeep,” he commanded.

“I'll take him from here.”

The lug with Dwyer over his shoulder gave a mindless nod and carried the agent to the Jeep Wrangler, tossing him into the back like so much dirty laundry, then binding his wrists and ankles.

Gregor looked around the parking lot. There were three dead drones, a handful more wounded. There was too much here to clean up. Bullets, casings, blood. “Leave the dead,” he said. “Leave it all, but tend to your wounded. Stanch the bleeding the way I've shown you. Remember not to bind the wounds too tightly,” he said, recalling how one injured drone had lost an arm the first time he'd tried to show them basic vampire first aid. “Once you've stopped the bleeding, help them back to the mansion. Understood?”

They nodded dumbly, and the healthy ones began lumbering toward the bleeding ones, tearing their shirts to make tourniquets on the way.

“Be back before dawn,” he added, because that was how dumb they were. You had to tell them specifically what to do. They couldn't think or reason for themselves.

It was a lot of trouble to make more, though. And getting candidates from the CIA's stockpile of potentials would be impossible now.

He climbed behind the wheel of his Jeep, started the engine and glanced back in the rearview mirror at his unconscious former employer. “You're going to tell me about this spy you've planted in Reaper's gang, my friend. You're going to show me how to communicate with her, tell me exactly how it works and what you've learned.”

To his surprise, Dwyer sat up slowly, rubbing his head with his bound hands. “I'm not tellin' you anythin'.”

“Oh, hell, of course you are, given time.” He lifted a dart gun, loaded with a human-sized dose of his favorite tranquilizer, just in case the spook tried anything.

“I've become very adept at torture, Derrick.”

“So I've heard.”

“And I know you were Rivera's immediate supervisor. I know you were the one who recruited him in the first place, and I know you've fought your organization every step of the way on his behalf ever since.”

Dwyer averted his eyes. “You don't know shit.”

“Yeah, I do. I've seen the files. You argued against the brainwashing…excuse me—
programming
—from the start. You tried to cover up the fact that he'd become a vampire when you first found out. You tried to talk them out of trying to retake him, and you were vehemently against the plan to use me to do it. You were against all of it. On his side, all along.”

The older man was shaking his head slowly from side to side, but his denials wouldn't convince Gregor of anything, and he had to know it. Gregor
knew.
This bastard had been secretly advocating on Reaper's behalf from the beginning.

“You've been biased all along. What I don't know is why.”

“You're insane.”

“Perhaps. But you're Reaper's friend. Whether he knows it or not, you're his only friend in the agency. Aren't you, Derrick?”

“I'm no one's friend. I'm in charge of gettin' him back, and then I retire. Period.”

“Yeah. Right. You came out tonight to kill me.”

“I came to talk.”

“Bull. So tell me, Dwyer, what's the point of having a plant in Reaper's little gang if you don't intend to bring him in? What other reason could you possibly have for wanting to keep tabs on him?”

“None.”

“You know I don't believe you.”

“I know.”

“And you know I'll find out.”

“Not from me, you won't.”

Sighing, Gregor pulled the Jeep up to the towering arched wrought-iron gates of what had once been known as the Marquand Estate. His, now.

As Gregor waited for the aging gates to open, thanks to the electronics he'd repaired, Dwyer stared at them through the rain spattered windshield, then beyond the tall leafless trees that lined the drive to the castle-like mansion beyond them and the cliffs beyond the mansion.

“For the love of God, this is—”

“Yes. The former home of Eric Marquand. He abandoned it once the DPI learned of its existence, knowing he'd never know peace here again. It fell into government hands. The CIA lost interest in surveilling it but wouldn't allow it to be sold for a long time. And then they did. I bought it for back taxes a few months ago. Thought it would be…I don't know, nostalgic to have one of the truly ancient ones' former homes. A place where vampires battled DPI agents. A place where Rhiannon and Roland de Courtemanche and Eric himself once walked. His laboratories are still in the basement, you know.”

“No.”

“No one would expect a new generation of the Undead to take up residence in a place the CIA knows all about. But since they've stopped paying it any attention, what place could be better?”

Dwyer said nothing. Gregor drove through the gates when they finally opened widely enough, then waited to see to it that they closed again before driving on over the bumpy, poorly tended driveway to the mansion itself. He loved the grandeur of the place. Three stories, all made of rough-hewn stone blocks, each one too large for three ordinary men to lift. The place was magnificent. More so with the modifications he'd been working on.

He stopped right in front, opened the hatch in the rear of the Jeep and gripped Derrick Dwyer by his bound wrists, tugging him out. Dwyer didn't fight much. The lump on the side of his head, and the blood on his face and neck, told Gregor why. The man was hurting, possibly dizzy as well, and no doubt weak. He was also, Gregor thought, cagey, sharp, intelligent and probably biding his time and making an escape plan.

He dragged his captive up the stairs to the front door and flung it open.

He strode inside, tugging Dwyer behind him by the dangling end of the rope that bound his hands. The older man had no choice but to follow, feet dragging, stumbling often. Perhaps it was for real, or maybe it was an act designed to lull Gregor into complacency, into taking his weakness for granted and making a fatal mistake.

As they entered the hall, the young boy got up from his spot on the floor in front of the fireplace, his toy soldiers—the only playthings he was permitted—scattering out of formation as he rose.

He stood still, staring, wide brown eyes unblinking, thickly fringed and nearly void of any innocence they might once have possessed.

“Well?” Gregor demanded.

The boy swallowed visibly, his throat swelling as he did. “Hello, Father. Welcome back. Was your evening a good one?”

“That's better. And yes, actually, my evening was quite a pleasant one. Get your ass to my office and fetch my keys. Can't you see I've brought a prisoner that needs locking up?”

“Yes, sir!”

The boy spun on his heel and raced out of the room as fast as he could manage to move. Gregor chuckled softly under his breath, careful not to let Matthias hear it. Better to keep the child afraid of him. He would obey far more easily that way.

“You have a child?” Derrick's voice was a bare whisper, and yet loud enough to convey the horror he clearly felt at the notion.

“Obviously.” Gregor tugged the rope and moved through the great room, onward down a hallway to a cellar door.

“But…where is his mother?”

“Dead. To me. To the rest of the world, too, if she ever dares come near Matthias again.” Then he smiled slowly, refocusing himself on the task at hand. “But that's not your concern, is it? Your attention should be solely on deciding how much torture you intend to suffer before you tell me what I need to know.”

“I don't know anythin' that can help you.”

“Mmm, but you do. You know how to communicate with this
Crisa.
You know how to use her to keep tabs on Reaper. You know how to bring her in, I imagine. I want to know all that. And I want to know more. I want to know
how
you managed it. Does she work for you?”

“She doesn't even know who I am. She's an innocent, Gregor.”

“I really don't care.” They'd moved down a flight of stairs into what had once been a basement laboratory. Much of the equipment was still in place. Scales and burners and bottles and jars, microscopes and other gadgets Gregor couldn't begin to identify. He opened a door off one side of the lab. The room might have been an office once. An aging desk stood along one wall, and empty file cabinets lined another. There was a chair, its leather upholstery split in several spots. Other than that, the place was empty. But the room was windowless, and its door had a good lock. It was the perfect place to store a captive.