Lost Angeles (58 page)

“The first facility had been cleared out by the time we got to it,” he’s telling the others. “Patients, prisoners, medical records, equipment, all gone. But there was enough evidence to confirm that’s where they detained Mrs. Capello. Then we got… an anonymous tip… leading to a second facility, so we used demolition charges to secure the first site.”

His definition of “secure” and mine sure as shit aren’t the same, because next Asher pulls up GoPro footage of some spectacularly big explosions. There’s no sound, but we can see the way the camera vibrates before the ground under the compound shudders and then opens up, swallowing it whole. Lore draws closer to me, the light from the TV hitting her full in the face. She’s got one hand on my waist and the other wrapped around my wrist, fingers tightening down on the ink-needled words.

“The second facility was four hundred miles away and locked down tighter than a maximum security prison. Despite our…
intel
…” Another hesitation. Confirmation, if I needed it, that Asher’s not telling us the entire truth. “The infiltration didn’t go as smoothly as planned.”

Jess has her hands on her hips and her gaze trained on him like a guard dog. Whatever went down, it was serious business, but the way Reece refuses to meet my eyes, I know it’s not only about his team.

“What information did you get before you ended up ‘detained,’ Reece?”

He shifts his attention to me, frowning, but not at the interruption. “It’s big. Bigger than we ever realized.”

“How big?” Lonan wants to know.

Jess cuts in. “Big enough that they didn’t even feel the crater we made in the ground.”

“They have lists of your assets, bank accounts, real estate, political alignment,” Asher says now that he has my undivided attention. “They’ve also amassed an inordinately large amount of information on your family: Roman Scipio, Caspian Declan, Patrick St. John, Matthias Addison, Margot Vauclain. And they had a huge file on Lourdes.” He pauses, letting it all sink in. “I don’t know what their plan is, Xaine, but they’ve got your number, Lore’s number, and they sure as shit have
my
number now.”

“So basically,” I hear myself say, “we’re sitting ducks at the moment?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“Clear your boys out, Reece.” I am not saying one word in front of them about the plans I’ve made with Cas. Not that I don’t trust them, because hell, I’ve put Lore’s safety in their hands, but there’s no telling what information the Legacy might be able to torture out of them later.

Asher hesitates, then jerks his chin toward the door. The PFC guys head out, but there’s not a single grumble out of any of them, even Lonan. They understand clearance and the fact that we just leveled up several significant notches, I guess. I wait for the door to click shut behind them, leaving Lore and me, Asher and Jess.

I start. “Lore and I are going to disappear. Drop off of the Legacy’s radar.”

Asher leans the nearest couch, looking suddenly and disconcertingly tired. “That’s not going to stop them, Xaine. They’re going to hunt her down, and you with her.”

“Why?” Lore whispers.

“For the same reason that they’d prefer I was dead, too,” Jess says. “Because we survived. Because any one of us can blow the cover off all their dirty secrets.”

“But I don’t actually know anything,” Lore says. “I can’t really do any damage.”

“They don’t know that,” Asher says, shooting down her protest. “They have no clue what you might have gleaned in your time at that compound, and apparently their plans go all the way to the top of the government food chain.”

The time has come, the Walrus said, to spill all of the beans.
“That’s why I’m planning to do more than get Lore the hell out of here. A lot more.”

“I’m listening.”

I fold my arms over my chest. “They have to think she’s dead, and it has to be the most convincing fake-death ever. I don’t care how many explosives it takes and what we have to blow up to make it happen, but this time next week, it’s going to be all over the news that Xaine and Lore Capello died in a horrible, untimely, and gruesome accident. I want shrines set up and candles burning all over the planet so that not a single one of those Legacy fuckers can doubt for a second that it’s the truth. What Cas tried to do for her, but fuck subtle and understated. This is going to take showmanship. Production values.”

The world goes silent. Lore drags in a breath, nice and slow, and holds it. My eyes are on her, our bodies so close that I can scent her anxiety. She’s afraid, rightly so, and carrying a million other burdens that I’d shoulder if I could.

Jackson Trace was right again. Lore can’t spend the rest of her days under lock and key, and there’s only one way for her to have any sort of shot at living.

“If we do this right, it’ll cause more than a PR speed bump for the Legacy. With a good enough frame job, we could make it look like not-such-an-accident.” Thinking about it makes me sick, but I plow ahead. “One of their guys tried to put Lore on ice, and we have a hundred YouTube videos that caught it from all angles. Every news outlet on the planet wants a statement right about now, but I haven’t said anything… yet. We drop a word or two to the press about a secret vampire organization with political ties, the authorities start looking into things, the public goes a little apeshit. Then, if it looks like they actually killed me and Lore—”

“The Legacy will have to slow down,” Asher says. “They’d have to do damage control to keep their campaign from running right off the rails. I’m sure they don’t want a bunch of stake-brandishing, UV gun-buying, torch-carrying zealots on their hands.”

“Exactly. And I don’t care how big this thing is, they’re not
seven billion
big. Vamps or not, they’re still incredibly outnumbered.” And for once, Asher Reece and I are in full accord when we both say, “It would buy us some time.”

“Well, shit,” Lore contributes. “Guess I get to die again…
again
. Now I’ll never get to be famous.”

I can’t help the grin that hits my face, because we both know she would have been the most awkward celebrity ever. “I don’t know about that, love. Look what death did for Elvis.”

“Or Tupac and Biggie,” she says.

“I really hate to break up your little bonding-over-dead-people moment,” Asher’s impatient voice slips between us, “but how exactly do you presume to pull all this off?”

Summer blockbuster-style.

But all I say is, “I’ve got a couple ideas.”

Whispers sweet like poetry,

You’re glad to know you’re all of me.

Caught up in your strong embrace,

I think I’ve always known your face.

Guitar in my lap, I sit on the stage where it all began. We waltzed in here hours ago under the guise of a belated wedding reception, and I swear that waiting is all I’ve done since. In the beginning, there was a good bit of action. They smuggled in Asher’s supplies via giant catering racks and amp cases, men scurrying here and there to put all the things in place for this, the end of my story.

Our story.

Footsteps sound on hollow wood, and I know them by their very cadence because his walk is a metronome, perfectly in sync with the world as I know it. My head turns, a smile alighting on my lips before Xaine even comes into view.

Bleeding blue and colored red,

You’re every thought inside my head.

Pleasure plays a ruthless game,

All you do is speak my name—

“
And I run to you
,” Xaine sings, finishing the line for me as he emerges from behind the stage curtains.

“That works.” I set the guitar aside and peer up at his exceptionally scowly face. “Is there a problem?”

“Nope.” When he holds out his hand, I allow him to pull me to my feet so that we’re face to face. “Everything’s going according to plan.”

“Then why so serious?”

“I’m really going to miss that water feature.” His gaze slides to the glittering blue-green tank under the dance floor and trawling up one wall. After a moment, he turns back to me. “You have everything you need?”

I cock my head toward the familiar pink bags parked at the edge of the stage. “I’d just unpacked them, too.”

“Remind me to buy you some new luggage,” he says, shooting them a really dirty look. “Those things are bad luck.”

I start offer up some quippy comeback, but a door against the back wall slams open and I tense up. Xaine does more than that, pushing me behind him before Asher steps into the light.

“Fucking A, Reece,” Xaine mutters, easing his arm down. “What ever happened to ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’?”

“My big stick isn’t any of your business.” It sounds like it should be a joke, but there’s no humor behind it. Asher and Jess have opted to stay and fight, to take each day is it comes and each enemy in much the same way. “We’re all set. Not much left to do but set the charges, slip out the door, and blow the place up. You two should head to the back and get ready to exit. There are eyes on this building, so we’re going to use the service entrance in the alley leading to the restaurant next door. We can use a covered rolling rack to get you out to the van.”

“You’re smuggling us out as
food?
” Xaine sounds disgusted, and the look on his face is pretty priceless. When laughter burbles out of me, he gives me a look like I’ve lost every marble I ever owned. “What’s so funny?”

“Beloved husband of mine,” I sober up enough to squeeze out the words, “I
am
food.”

“Yeah, well I’m not.” And he looks honestly insulted by the comparison.

“How sweetly the tables do turn,” I grin, sliding my hands into his back pockets. He takes that as an invitation to put his tongue down my throat, and in two seconds flat we’re falling into what’s recently become a very good bad habit.

“For god’s sake, I didn’t sign up to babysit two horny teenagers,” Asher says.

Xaine lifts his head long enough to toss out, “Nobody asked you.”

Everyone tenses when the door slams open again. Squinting into the darkness, I make out the barest glimpse of bright orange hair and the flash of something metallic hitting the light. The moment the newcomers step into the illuminated circle around the stage, I frown. Rather than her usual clubbing gear, Tamsyn is drowning in a sweater big enough for a small pony, and Jax Trace is wearing an unbuttoned gray dress shirt that flutters around his midsection. The white beater underneath is stained a rusty red. The same crimson is splattered in darker patches down his once-neat black slacks.

I squint at him again. “Is that—”

Jax cuts me off. “Blood? Yeah, but don’t worry, it’s not mine.”

“…a sword?”

Because it is. It’s a fucking sword, and it’s clamped in his hand like he’s been
using
it, and recently.

Jax lifts the metal weapon a few inches, looks at it, and gives a nod in the affirmative, as if owning and wielding something like that is yet another thing he does. “Yes.”

“Just checking.” Oddly, I’m fine with it, because really, life doesn’t any get weirder than it’s been for the past few weeks. It can’t possibly.

Slightly more perturbed, Xaine blurts out, “What the ever-loving fuck, Trace?”

Jax doesn’t get the chance to answer, because there’s the whine of a UV charge and the definitive
click
of a hammer being pulled back. Jess stands right behind him with two guns to the back of his noggin.

“Light or lead,
pendejo
?”

“Shoot him with both,” Xaine tells her, but she’s looking to Asher for an answer, and he only shakes his head.

“It’s all right.
He’s
all right.”

“
He
is covered in blood and smells like death, so he’s not quite as right as he could be,” Jess corrects Asher, but she takes a step back and lowers both weapons.

“Technically I smell like
un
death.” Jax glances down the front of his shirt. “And if it’s
un
blood, does that mean I’m not actually covered in it?” Jess gives him a curled lip and a disgusted nose-wrinkle, and Jax waves it off as if two guns to his head is nothing. “Shoot me with both if you want, but you’re going to want me conscious to hear what I have to say.”

“Don’t you mean we’ll want you
alive
?” Asher frowns, then starts muttering into the radio communicator he’s got strapped to his wrist.

“Oh, I’ll be alive,” Jax says. “But two gunshots to the head might take a few days’ recovery. And in the meantime, the big, bad vampire coalition—”

The power abruptly cuts out, plunging us into pitch-black darkness. In the distance, I can hear the glass plates slamming into place over the windows: the building’s going into lockdown again, exactly like the night of the concert.

“—is here,” Jax’s disembodied voice finishes with no small amount of
I told you so
.

“We’ve got hostiles in the building,” Asher tells the rest of the PFC crew via radio as the emergency power clicks on. The pale imitation of light bathes the room, leaving shadows pooling in the corners. “Everyone watch your asses and work your way toward the service entrance.”