The Breed Casstiel's Vow (8 page)

           
Cass snapped himself out of his thoughts and addressed his team. He had been
their leader faithfully for 33 years, he wasn’t about to let them down now.
They deserved a lot better than how he had treated them today.

           
“I just lost my cool, I know you’re both professionals, I’ve just been off my
game lately with everything that’s been going on,” it was the closest they were
going to get to an apology.

           
“It’s
alright,
we’ve all been jumpy over this mess. So
what’s the game plan?” Jax asked, wanting to quickly smooth over the conflict
between his two close friends.

           
“Don’t make it a habit,” Kain steam rolled all of Jax’ ‘peace on earth’ plans.

           
“I won’t,” he assured them, “now, I want to be able to give this girl more than
an ‘I’m sorry’ and a blurry photo, so let’s hustle up and figure something
out.”

           
“We still have nothing off of the video feeds and as far as we can tell this
Quinn guy never left the subway line,” Kain offered, getting over his anger.

           
“Alright that’s a small start. Tomorrow as soon as sun sets we’ll go into the
subway and check out every square inch of it. Ghost check and see if the subway
connects anywhere to any abandoned tunnels,” Cass caught him as soon as he
stepped into the squad room, “remember a couple years back we found that rapist
hiding down in there with a bunch of homeless humans?”

           
“Yeah, I remember that nasty son of a bitch,” Jax spit out.

           
“Yeah well maybe he’s not the only one taking advantage of the abandoned subway
lines. Honestly if this guy can move as fast as we think he can then he
probably slipped out of the subway without even making a blip on our cameras,
but I’d rather be thorough,” he wanted to find something for her, desperately
needed to be her hero.

           
“There is a way to reach the abandoned subway tracks, I’m pulling up the map
now,” Ghost confirmed, at his usual perch on the computer screens. 

           
“Well there we go,” he sighed, “It’s weak, but it’s a plan, and at this point I
don’t see what else we can do besides go door to door and ask citizens if
they’ve seen him. Let’s question Tessa, maybe there’s a detail in what happened
during the disappearance that can help us out a little further.”

~

Tessa found herself
focusing on the fire place again, after her shower she had been sucked in by
the warmth and beauty of the crackling flames.

           
After a few minutes she felt her eye lids grew heavy, and with the sounds of
Law & Order in the back ground, she slowly drifted to sleep.

           
“Tessa get your ass up,” Nora huffed as she shook her again, “the guys are
here.”

           
She cracked open a blurry eye lid, then immediately jumped up from the sofa as
she noticed two massive men standing behind Nora.

           
“Morning sleeping beauty,” Jax held open the door for her, while holding back
fits of laughter.

           
“I’m just a hard sleeper,” she snapped, cranky from her short nap.

           
“That is an understatement,” Kain smirked.

           
“We were about to check for a pulse, but then we noticed the drool,” Jax busted
out laughing as they entered the elevator.

           
By the time they made it to the squad room at the end of the hall everyone,
including Tessa, had had a good laugh at her expense and were in much brighter
moods. 

           
“Coffee?”
Casstiel offered as they entered the defense
department.

           
Tessa quickly averted her eyes as her heart skipped a beat, “No thanks, do you
have anything else?”

           
Ghost pointed to a mini fridge parked in the corner and she made her way over.

           
“Man you guys practically live here,” she exclaimed finding it packed with
goodies.

           
“We literally live here,” Cass corrected as he poured coffee for everyone.

           
“Are you serious?” Nora asked before taking a sip.

           
“Yeah, everyone who works here at the embassy lives here, except for a few
people here and there,” Jax replied, dumping sugar into his cup.

           
“Because you want to or because you have to?” Tessa asked as she twisted the
cap off of a mountain dew bottle.

           
“Both really, well, for vampires anyway,” Cass began explaining, “if there’s an
emergency here at the embassy while its day time, if I didn’t live here I would
never be able to make it here. Living here though, we have UV protection over
the windows so that I can be anywhere inside, and there’s underground tunnels
connecting every building.”

Tessa admired the pitch of
his voice, and how easily he became the focal point of the room.

           
“Yeah I guess that makes sense,” she nodded slowly and wondered if anything
could really happen in a secured fortress like this.

           
“Don’t you guys get paid enough to have your own place though?” Nora asked.

           
“We don’t get paid at all,” Jax replied.

           
“You’re kidding?” she was stunned, “How do you pay your bills? How you do eat?”

           
“Well for one we don’t really have any bills, since we live in the embassy
everything is paid for by embassy money. It’s honestly easier than having to
keep making aliases through the years, that’s a pain in the ass. Secondly we
don’t tend to die very
often,
members of the Breed
usually live a good long time. I’m heading into the four hundreds, and Ghost
here is damn near a thousand-”

           
“Eight hundred,” he corrected automatically.

           
“Right, eight hundred, and the boys are pushing seventy. When you live that
long you tend to pick up on a lot of financial tips. I promise you not one
member of the Breed is broke or strapped for cash.”

           
“I don’t have a dollar to my name and I’m Breed,” Nora argued.

           
“You don’t, but Memphis does. That cat is loaded and I guarantee you when
you’re ready to be on your own he’ll give you enough money to make sure you
never have to save for anything,” Jax informed her.

           
“Really?” she asked in disbelief, “I know he owns a restaurant down south, but
I never thought he was rich.”

           
“
A
restaurant?
As in one?” he scoffed, “he owns
a restaurant chain, with about ten
total
. Best BBQ
I’ve ever had.”

           
 “No one at the embassy gets paid to work here, because no one at the
embassy needs money. It would almost be an insult to ask for money,” Casstiel
explained.

           
“Wow,” Tessa sighed wishing for a moment that she were Breed.

           
“Anyway, let’s get down to business, the sooner we get these questions over
with the sooner we can get the info we need and hopefully be able to get a hold
of your brother,” Cass was suddenly all business.

           
“Right,” she agreed as a bundle of nerves suddenly exploded in her stomach. For
a moment she had forgotten why she had come here, and what had to happen.

           
Everyone pulled up chairs to the same desk and looked around tensely for a
moment before Cass broke the silence.

           
“Alright we’ve reviewed the statement that you gave Sebastian explaining
everything. Now the night that your brother disappeared you weren’t living at
home with your parents?” he asked in a surprisingly soothing voice.

           
“Right, I was living on campus in a dorm,” she replied remembering for a split
second the complete hole in the wall she had been forced to share with a
roommate.

           
“Ok so what made you want to come home? Did you have any weird feelings about
that night?” he continued.

           
“No not at all,” she shook her head and tried to remember every detail, “I
wasn’t supposed to come home until the weekend, but I ended up finishing my
essay two days early and handed it in. I didn’t really need to go to the last
class after that, so I decided to home a little early.”

           
“Ok so you drive home, why were your parents going out? Was it something they
had pre-planned, or just a spur of the moment thing?” he prompted.

           
“It was their anniversary, they always go out to the same restaurant,” Tessa
answered as small smile spread over her lips. She loved the sweet romance
between her parents.

           
“Ok. Now what was your brother up to that night?” he asked.

           
Her smile disappeared instantly.

           
“He was in a Fraternity and lived at the frat house,” she felt fear settle into
her bones. She didn’t want to talk about what happened next, but she knew she
had too.

           
“So you expected to have the house to yourself when you got home?” his voice
became light and soothing, something she would never have expected from him.

           
“So then what happened?” he prompted gently.

           
“I decided to grab a glass of water and raid the fridge before heading up to my
room,” her voice began to shake as she started explaining. She hadn’t talked
about the night of Quinn’s kidnapping in almost two years.

           
To everyone’s surprise Casstiel reached across the table and grabbed her hand.
For a second she jolted and almost pulled away, but when she looked into his
eyes a steady calmness fell over her and she relaxed into his touch.

           
Somehow it made it easier for her to open up and share this pain.

           
“I got the water from the sink and was looking out onto our property, when I
saw it. This thing ran across our backyard right against the line of trees. At
first I thought someone’s dog had gotten loose, but then I really looked at it
and it was too big to be a dog, and it couldn’t be a wolf,” Tessa was starting
to panic a little as the images of that night flooded her mind, but he gave her
hand a squeeze and kept her steady.

           
“I started to freak
out,
I mean what the hell was this
thing? Then I saw it slow down and I realized what it was running towards.
There were two more of those things, werewolves I guess, and they were circling
a body,” she explained in one breath, not bothering to pause as the feelings of
anxiety began biting at her.

           
Her heartbeat quickened as she ran through the scene in her mind as if she was
watching a movie.

“I don’t know how I knew
it, but I knew it was Quinn. I could just feel it in my heart. His face was all
bruised and he was bleeding everywhere. Something in me just… snapped. I know
it’s stupid, but I grabbed a knife and ran to the back door. I just couldn’t
let them kill my brother, I had to do something.

           
“As soon as I stepped out on to the back steps one of them was waiting for me,
like they all had known I was there. It wasn’t crouched down on all fours like
the other ones; this one was standing up on his hind legs, like a man but
bigger, with bulging muscles and these huge jagged teeth. Our eyes locked and
my body froze. I saw the other three dragging Quinn into the woods, but no
matter how much I tried to go after them I just kept staring into that wolfs
eyes.

           
“He was the scariest thing I had ever seen in my life. His eyes were all black
like a demon. My body wouldn’t listen no matter how much I screamed for it to
move. His voice entered my head and told me to stay calm and that everything
was going to be alright and that they weren’t going to hurt me, but I wasn’t
worried about me, I was worried about Quinn,” Tears sprung into Tessa’s eyes
but she fought them back furiously as she felt Casstiel's thumb rub across the
back of her hand.

           
“After they pulled him into the woods, the wolf in front of me ran off after
them. I tried to chase them but I was so tired and weak, it was like he had
drugged me or something. I ended up passing out on the grass, and waking up to
my parents freaking out when they got home,” she took a shaky breath and looked
around.

           
Everyone stared back in wide eyed horror.

           
“That’s it, you know the rest,” she finally said to no one in particular. Her
chest was still shaking from her nervous breathing, air lightly flitting
through her lungs.

           
“Werewolves pelt is usually the color of their hair when they are in human
form, do you happen to remember what color any of them were?”

           
“The one that was in front of me was black. The darkest color I’ve ever seen,
and his eyes were just as black… he looked so evil,” she shuddered at the
memory, goose bumps springing up along her arms at the thought of those
obsidian pools.