Lover Avenged

SIXTY-EIGHT

Xhex was willing to follow Ehlena directionally, but she didn’t feel comfortable having the female in the lead as they hotfooted along. In a burst of speed, she overtook Rehv’s mate.

“You tell me if we take a wrong turn, ’kay?” As Ehlena nodded, the Brothers fell in behind her to guard against a rear ambush.

As they went down the rock corridor, Xhex didn’t have a good feeling about any of this. She couldn’t sense Rehv at all, which from a vampire standpoint was not surprising-Ehlena had been the last female he’d fed from, so her blood superceded Xhex’s. The problem was that symphath to symphath she couldn’t get a bead on him. In fact, she was unable to pinpoint where he or anyone else in the colony was. It didn’t compute. Symphaths could pick up on anything with emotions, anywhere. So she should have been finding all kinds of grids.

She glanced at the wall as she hurried along. When she’d been here last, it had all been rough-cut stone, but now it had a smooth surface. Guess they’d improved things over the decades.

“The corridor is going to branch out in another hundred yards,” she whispered over her shoulder. “They keep the prisoners to the left, and their quarters and common rooms are all to the right.”

“How do you know?” Vishous asked.

She didn’t answer the Brother. No reason to mention she’d been in one of their jail cells. She just kept going, following the rows of black candles, going deeper into the colony, closer to where its inhabitants slept and ate and played with one another’s minds. And still she sensed nothing.

No, that wasn’t quite true. There was a strange kind of static. At first she’d assumed it was the softly flickering red flames atop all that black wax, the subtle currents in the air fluffing the lit wicks. But no…it was something else.

When they got to the hall’s three-way branch, she automatically headed to the left, but Ehlena said, “No, straight ahead.”

“Doesn’t make sense.” Xhex stopped and kept her voice down. “That’s where the HVAC rooms are.”

“That’s where he is.”

Vishous shoved his way to the front. “Look, let’s go where Ehlena says. We need to find him before the battle going on outdoors ends up down here.”

As the Brother shot off, Xhex’s ass was frosted that he was out in front. But short of throwing down over it, which was a waste of time, she was in the number two position and that was that.

They went at a clip, going into a network of smaller tunnels that led to the heating system and the air draw and all the blowers. The colony was built along the lines of an ant farm, a sustainable, underground living environment that had grown and expanded over time, with more offshoots burrowing deeper and deeper through the earth. The construction and the upkeep rested on the backs of the working class of symphaths, who were nothing more than slaves who were encouraged to breed so their numbers doubled over time. There was no middle class. Next up from the servants was the royal household and the aristocrats.

And never the twain would meet.

Xhex’s father had been of the servant class. Which made her beneath Rehvenge, and not just because he was royal. Technically, she was one step up from dog shit.

“Stop!” Ehlena called out.

They pulled up short, facing…the stone wall.

As one, they reached forward, running their hands over the smooth surface. Zsadist and Ehlena found fissures at the same time, the nearly hidden seam forming a tall square.

“How the fuck do we get in here,” Z said as he prodded the rock.

“Move back,” Xhex barked.

When they were out of the way, and clearly expecting something fancy, she hauled back, slammed her shoulder against the thing, and got nothing but molars that rattled like marbles in a box.

“Fuck,” she breathed with a wince.

“That had to hurt,” Z muttered. “You okay-”

The wall started to vibrate and they all jumped aside, training their weapons on the door that emerged from the stone and slid out of the way.

“Guess it was scared of you,” Vishous said with a hint of respect.

Xhex frowned, as the humming static suddenly increased until her ears rang. “I don’t think he’s in there. I can’t sense him at all.”

Ehlena stepped forward, clearly prepared to plunge into the darkness that was revealed. “I can. He’s right-”

Three sets of hands grabbed her and held her back.

“Hold up,” Xhex said, unclipping a Mag-Lite from her belt. As she hit the beam, a thin hall about fifty yards long was revealed. At the end, there was a door.

Vishous went first, and Xhex was right on his ass, with Ehlena and Z coming quickly behind.

“He’s alive,” Ehlena said as they came to the end of the corridor. “I can feel him!”

Xhex expected trouble at the steel panel-but no, it swung right open, revealing a room that…shimmered?

V cursed as Xhex’s light sliced into the chamber. “What the…fuck?”

Hanging in the midst of a room with liquid walls and flooring was a massive cocoon shape, the black outer wrapping of which moved and glistened.

“Oh…God,” Ehlena breathed. “No.”

Lash had been practicing his gifts at the Omega’s lair, and man, didn’t all that work come in handy on a night like tonight. As the two squadrons of lessers he’d called in from the neighboring town got to work fighting with the Brothers, he faced off against a beast the size of a Ford Expedition-and traded fireballs with the motherfucker.

Jumping away from the house, because the last thing this situation needed was a visit from the Plattsburgh Fire Department, he caught sight of a splinter group of vampires heading for the outbuilding across the way. They went inside, and when he didn’t see them again, he had a feeling that was the way you got into the colony.

Which meant that as nice as it was to play volleybomb with Puff the Magic, he needed to stop fighting and start going after his female. He had no clue why the hell the Brothers showed up at exactly the same time he had, but when it came to symphaths, he was willing to bet there were no coincidences. Had the princess known he was coming up here and tipped off the Brotherhood?

The dragon spat out another barrage of flames, and the blast illuminated the fighting that was going on all around the farmhouse’s lawn: Everywhere he looked there were Brothers squaring off against slayers with bare knuckles swinging, and daggers flashing and shitkickers flying. The symphony of grunts and curses and pounding, cracking impacts made him feel stronger, more powerful.

His troops were fighting his teachers.

How fucking poetic was that?

But enough with the nostalgia. Concentrating on his hand, he created a whirlwind of molecules, spinning them with his mind faster and faster until the centrifugal force spontaneously combusted. As the whirling mass of energy pulled together, he kept it palmed and raced forward toward the purple-scaled beast, knowing the damn thing had to take an inhale break after it threw out its bombs.

The dragon was no dummy and crouched down, viciously clawed arms coming up to defend itself. Lash stopped just out of swiping range and didn’t give the bastard a chance to pounce. He threw the energy ball right into the beast’s chest, plowing it over, knocking it out cold.

He didn’t hang around to roast s’mores over the smoking carcass. Sure as shit, after some deep-breathing recovery that dragon was going to pop up off the ground like the Energizer Bunny, and at the moment the coast was clear between Lash and the barn.

In a tearing rush, he raced for the outbuilding and burst into the empty, unremarkable space. In the far corner, he saw a horse stall, and he followed damp footsteps over to it. The treads disappeared into a black square.

Lifting the slab was grunt work and then some, but the sight of more prints down a set of stone steps got him juiced. Tracking them all the way to the bottom, he found himself in a stone corridor, and thanks to the red glow from black candles, he was able to follow their wet path-although his road map didn’t last forever. With all the warmth being thrown off, water dried fast, and by the time he got to a three-way branch, he had no clue which way the bunch had gone.

Inhaling, he hoped to catch a scent, but all his nose picked up on was burning wax and earth.

Threre was nothing else. No sounds. No rustle of movement. It was as if the four he’d seen going down here had disappeared.

He looked left. Right. Straight ahead.

On impulse, he went to the left.