Black Rook (18 page)

A reply came almost immediately in the form of a photograph. He opened it. Rage clawed at his chest and burned in his gut.

Rook. Face scraped up. Duct tape over his mouth. Eyes closed.

“Shit.”

His phone rang. He nearly dropped the thing, his hand shook so badly with the force of his hatred for whoever had done this. The display said it was from Rook’s phone, but Knight knew his brother wasn’t on the other end of the line. “Who is this?”

A female laughed long and loud, and the bottom of his world fell out. Brynn’s vision had already happened. They were too late.

“Who the hell is this?”

“Now play nice, Knight,” she said. “You wouldn’t want me to take your bad mood out on baby brother, would you?”

“Is he alive?”

“Of course he’s alive. You wouldn’t very well stay docile for me if he was dead. He’ll make excellent leverage.”

Docile. Leverage. What was she talking about? “What do you want?”

“You.”

He stared blankly at the oak trees on the opposite side of the lot. “What?”

“I want you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You know, I didn’t think you were this stupid. I want you, Knight. I want you to get into a car and start driving south and not tell anyone you’re leaving.”

“Why would I—”

A muffled scream came over the phone, and Knight cursed. Even behind duct tape, he knew Rook’s voice. The scream died into a whimper, then silence. Knight clutched his phone hard enough to crack the case. His beast reared up, demanding someone pay for hurting his flesh and blood.

“Would you like to ask any more questions?”

He had too many questions still to ask, but would not risk Rook being hurt again. “No.”

“Wise choice. As I said, you tell no one you’re leaving town and once you’re on the road, don’t answer your phone for anyone but me. If I suspect for a single instant that you’ve cheated or that you’re playing me, I will kill your brother. He will experience true agony before he dies.”

“I understand.”

“I hope you do, for Rook’s sake. Now get going.”

He had to try three times to hang up, his hands were shaking so badly. He fumbled the phone twice before he got it into his pocket, overwhelmed by his seething temper and utter frustration. This was insane. Leaving like she asked was suicide, but he didn’t know who she was. If she did find out he’d cheated her rules, she could hurt Rook. Kill him. He couldn’t allow that. He didn’t know why this mystery woman wanted him, and the only way to find out was to play her game.

“Please, don’t let this be a mistake,” he whispered to any god who was listening. “Please.”

***

Rook could barely contain his boiling rage at the woman grinning over him—the same woman who’d spoken to him in the forest. Not the one who’d jumped him. That vampire bitch was perched on the camper’s narrow counter, eyeing his neck like a snack cake. A combination of nylon rope and duct tape had him secured to a metal chair, which was bolted to the camper floor. But it wasn’t the rope and tape that kept him from unleashing his beast and tearing them to pieces.

It was the thin silver chain looped around the bare skin of his throat and wrists that kept his beast down. His skin burned beneath the poisonous silver, and a dull ache had already started at the base of his skull. A sharper ache matched it from his left hand, where the vampire had taken great glee in ripping the nails off his pinkie and ring finger during the phone call to Knight. Rook hadn’t wanted to scream.

He hadn’t been able to stop himself.

He didn’t understand what was happening. The camper reeked of bleach and lemon cleaner, destroying any real hope of sniffing out his location. Something buzzed in the rear, creating white noise that blocked out everything except the hateful sounds of his own ragged breathing.

“What do you think, Rook?” the smiling bitch asked. “You think Knight will behave and do as he’s told? Does he love you enough to trade himself for you?”

Rook wanted to rip her smile right off her face one lip at a time. To punish her for this. For all of the deaths he’d seen back at Potomac. He had no idea how many had died. Had they all been slaughtered, just like Stonehill? Was Devlin dead? Grief fueled his rage, and neither emotion had any outlet. He couldn’t move because of that damned silver.

“He wants to know who we are,” the vampire said. “You can see it in his eyes. He’s so confused.”

“Let him wonder. Let him wonder why we killed those mongrels in Connecticut. Let him wonder about his friends on the riverbank. Let him wonder about the new lady in his hometown.”

He bristled. Did she mean Brynn? Or was the nut job talking about Shay? He’d kill them if they harmed Brynn.

She leaned in closer, eerie eyes gazing into his with delight and madness. Green eyes speckled with copper, not unlike a loup garou. Impossible. But something about her was horribly familiar, he just couldn’t figure it out. “Your kind will be extinct soon, mongrel. Let that comfort you while you mourn the deaths of others.”

As she pulled back, something wafted over the cloying stink of bleach and lemon. Something that made his guts tighten with dread.

The odor of bitter orange.

She was the Magus.

***

Brynn didn’t know if choosing to wait in Thomas McQueen’s office was smart or idiotic. He worked at his desk with a calm patience she envied. She barely managed to sit in her chair and not fidget. Granted, having a book to read would have helped with her wandering attention. Jillian had excused herself a few minutes ago, and Brynn considered doing the same. Thirty minutes of waiting had never felt so endless. Her entire world felt suspended as she waited for news of Rook.

The office phone rang, and he snatched it up. “McQueen.” A pause. “No, not in half an hour or so. He said someone needed his help.”

The call must be for Knight.

McQueen frowned. “Of course. If I see him first, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. Bye, Doc.” He hung up, then hit speed dial. “Knight, it’s me. Call me when you get this.”

He stared at his desk phone, then at his cell, as though willing one of the instruments to ring. “At least I know where
one
of my sons is,” he said softly, to himself. He must have forgotten he had an audience.

The cell rang. He did a double take at the display, then answered. “Devlin?”

Devlin was calling and not Rook? Brynn didn’t have a chance to ponder the meaning behind that, because McQueen’s face went perfectly still. The temperature in the room seemed to drop as some kind of silent shock came over him. Brynn knew. Without asking, she knew her visions had come true. She felt instantly sick.

“How many dead?” McQueen asked in a stony voice. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Get them here, Devlin, as fast as you can.” A pause. “You didn’t see what happened to Rook?”

Brynn twisted her hands in her lap, heart aching, bursting with questions and the need to help Rook. To get him back from whoever had taken him. To bring him back to his family—and to her. She should do something, but she didn’t know what.

No, that wasn’t true. She’d seen the exterior of the camper in her vision. She knew exactly what it looked like. She knew what the vampire looked like.

She could help. She
needed
to help. She’d prove her value to them and to herself.

“We’ll get search teams out there,” McQueen said. “Right now, your priority is keeping the wounded and survivors safe until we can get them here to Cornerstone. Find a place, then call me back with the location so we can come get you.” Softer. “Be safe, Dev.”

He hung up, dialed another number. “Knight, call me
right now
. Potomac was attacked. Rook’s missing, and we’re collecting the wounded. Call. Me.”

Brynn somehow managed to sit in silence while McQueen made several more calls, which brought seven new loup garou into the office, plus Jillian. He left a message for Joe Reynolds. The crush of silent loup around her should have scared Brynn, but she was too frightened for Rook to care about her own safety. The only thing she’d done wrong was have her vision too late to prevent it. Was this why she’d had a vision of Knight crying? He still hadn’t reappeared, and that worried her on a completely different level.

McQueen stood up and turned away, toward the window overlooking the auction floor. He seemed to take several deep breaths. The loup shifted and fidgeted, affected by the intense emotions rolling off their Alpha as he struggled to control himself. He needed Knight. And when McQueen finally turned to face his people, the strain was evident in his normally calm demeanor.

“Around eight-thirty this evening, I received a call from Devlin Burke. He and Rook were visiting the West Virginia run this evening when they were attacked by the same people who decimated Stonehill.” Murmurs and gasps cut off quickly when he kept talking. “Potomac had a population of one hundred and forty-two loup, humans, and half-breeds. All but eighteen are dead, and three of those are critically wounded.”

Brynn covered her mouth with her palm, afraid of releasing the angry tension building in her throat.

“They left more survivors,” Jillian said.

“The attack happened suddenly, but the alarm sounded fast,” McQueen said. “Some of the enforcers were able to shift and defend, and it helped drive them off. Devlin was injured, but he’s trying to place the scents to what he remembers from Stonehill. As of now, he thinks there are four individual hostiles.”

“What about Rook?” someone asked.

McQueen’s jaw twitched. He glanced at Brynn, then back to the people behind her. “He disappeared during the fight. They haven’t found a body, so we’re going on the assumption that he was taken by the hostiles.”

Several of the enforcers behind her cursed.

“Bishop is unavailable until sunrise,” he continued, voice rougher than before. “So I’m putting Jillian Reynolds in charge of recovering the Potomac survivors. Devlin is moving them to another location. He’ll call when he’s there, but you need to get a head start. Take as many vehicles as you’ll need to comfortably transport the wounded. One driver and one extra body per vehicle.”

“Understood, Alpha,” Jillian said.

“Winston will take you to the car lot. He’ll know where to find more people if you need them. Everyone in this room except for O’Bannen and Ms. Atwood are going with you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And start spreading the word around town that Knight needs to report back to me. This takes precedence over whatever else he’s doing.”

More verbal confirmations followed, and then the loup began to file downstairs in a long, thundering echo of footsteps. Brynn glanced over her shoulder. The room was empty except for herself, McQueen and O’Bannen, who looked furious at being left behind to continue watching her.

“Ms. Atwood.” McQueen came around the desk and sat in the wicker chair next to hers. “I need you to tell me everything you remember from those visions. Any detail you can recall, no matter how small.”

“I’ve told you everything I remember.”

“Please try.”

The desperation in his voice, the panic of a father whose child was in danger, made Brynn close her eyes. She couldn’t say no. She thought of Rook, of her inexplicable connection to him after only knowing him for two days, and used it to pull back the memories of those brief glimpses, searching for something she’d missed. The first vision was useless; they knew from where Rook had been taken. She concentrated on the second, on the exterior of the camper.

“It had a foundation,” she said. “The camper, so it wasn’t in a campground. It has to be part of a residential trailer park of some kind.”

Movement around her nearly broke her concentration, as did the sudden clacking of computer keys. She pushed those noises away and focused. She had to do this for Rook.

“There are numbers on the side by the door, really faded. Thirty-two. It’s probably the address.”

“What color is it?” O’Bannen asked.

“Mostly turquoise with a thick white stripe about two-thirds of the way up. One door that I can see, a square window with rounded corners. Two windows next to the door, but the camper seems larger than what I can see. And it had a rounded front end.” She looked across the desk where O’Bannen stood hunched over McQueen’s computer. “What are you doing?”

“Search engine magic,” O’Bannen said without looking up. His fingers danced across the keyboard. “Computer tech is my specialty. Tell me if any of these look like your trailer.”

Brynn rounded the desk and scanned the photos O’Bannen had brought up of various turquoise trailers from different decades. “There, it looked like that one.”

“Nineteen fifty-seven Airfloat. Good place to start, but there are probably still hundreds of those trailers out there, in and around trailer parks.”

“Will you be able to get us an idea of where to start looking?”

“Us?”

She turned to face McQueen. “I’ve seen this place. If we pass by it, I’ll know. I could describe it down to the number of bolts in the siding, but it will never be as precise as the picture in my head. Please, Mr. McQueen, I owe Rook, and I cannot sit here and do nothing when I could be out there looking.”

“Without more information, you could be out there chasing ghosts,” McQueen said.

“I realize that.” She closed her eyes and called up the third vision, determined to find something else. Something beyond the awful image of Rook held captive. “There are fliers on the wall behind him, tacked up. Take-out menus, perhaps.”

“Can you see anything on them? Even a phone number?”

“Three-oh-one. The area code is three-oh-one.” Relief struck Brynn in the heart. No one kept take-out menus from three states over. This could be the break they needed.

“That’s Maryland,” O’Bannen said. “I can definitely narrow our search down now. Maybe not be to one place, but ten are better than a hundred.”

“Do it,” McQueen said.

“Alpha, please let me help,” Brynn said. “Maybe the minute we leave, whoever has Rook will call and make a ransom demand, and it won’t matter because they’ll bring him to us. But there is nothing useful for me to do here, and I’m sure O’Bannen would appreciate the chance to do more than just babysit me in your home’s library.”