Francesca had to give him credit, his face and body language gave nothing away. But she knew the impact of her words. Tossing her head back, she laughed.
“You’re a crazy bitch,” he said grimly. “I’m just wondering if you were always psychotic or if the Change warped your brain.”
“I Changed for him. We Changed for each other, so we’d always be together and you’ve taken him from me. And for what? You’re as much of a Sentinel pet as the lycans. Now you’ll lose something irreplaceable. You’ve finaly found what you’ve been missing and it’s about to be ripped from you. I hope you’l see what’s done to her. I hope you watch while she’s cut and torn and broken. I hope her screams stay in your head—”
There was a split second in which she registered the gun in his hand. And then there was nothing.
* * *
Raze studied the baroness’s slumped head with icy detachment. She remained upright courtesy of the ingeniously heinous chair he’d found in her home—a chair with silver-plated spiked manacles at the wrists and throat, and a bottom and back with blades that protruded or retracted via a handle on the backside.
Turning away, he looked around the warehouse loft and considered what she’d left behind. There was an entire bookcase of recorded atrocities stored in jeweled cases. It was a colection that could never fal into a Sentinel or lycan’s hands, or questions would be raised that had no good answers. Some of what he’d seen would haunt him for years to come, minions who’d succumbed so completely to bloodlust that they were little more than ravening beasts. Raze wasn’t certain there was anything—even the Creator’s command that the Falen live endlessly with their vampiric curse—that could prevent a war if Adrian believed vampires were a threat requiring complete eradication.
After al, Adrian had broken other commandments without punishment.
“This place is a house of horrors,” Crash muttered behind him, tossing the disks into a crate to be destroyed. “And they were proud of it. They could’ve kept al this shit in a cloud or on a hard drive, but they wanted the visual of how many kils they had under their belt.”
Raze’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he puled it out. “Raze.”
“How extensive is the infestation in Chicago?” Adrian asked without preamble.
His back stiffened. “I’m taking care of it.”
“If you think that’s going to be enough to put me off, you haven’t learned anything about me in the last several eons.” The smoothly modulated tone of the Sentinel’s voice only made his words more disturbing. “Discovering a few hundred armed minions in a heavily populated metropolis is a big fucking problem. Tel Syre if he can’t get a handle on his ranks, I’l take the necessary steps to manage it myself.”
“Why don’t—”
“You and the six minions who arrived today have forty-eight hours to wrap it up and clear out.”
The line died, leaving Raze cursing at an angel who couldn’t hear him.
There were times when he thought there was no way to clean up the mess the Falen had made, times when he thought even damage control was out of their reach.
There were tens of thousands of vampires policed by less than four hundred combined Falen and Sentinels plus a few thousand lycans. The odds were against them in every way.
He’d felt helpless before, but now he had something he couldn’t bear to lose. He would hunt down the ones whose names he found here in Baron’s safe house, but that wouldn’t make Kim any safer. As long as they were connected in any way, she would be a target.
* * *
Back in his hotel room, Raze looked into the video feed of Vash’s office on his brand-new iPad and caught her up. “I got the list of Baron’s folowers off his laptop and most of the team is out hunting them now. They had me tailed from the moment I arrived at the airport. While I was kiling Baron at the balpark, the baroness was here in my room planting bugs.”
“So now we know why she wasn’t there that night.”
“Right. That’s what I couldn’t get: why the hel did they draw my attention? If they hadn’t dumped that body on my porch, we wouldn’t be on to them now.
Reviving Grimm’s doctrine was a ruse. They used it to round up enough minions to put on that show at Wrigley Field, but their real agenda was to get those bugs on me for future intel gathering. We found them in every room of my suite and on my iPad. They planted tracking devices on my bags. They knew every move I made and would have continued to know, if she hadn’t fucked up and gone after Kim this morning. The baroness hadn’t planned on my being there.”
Vash pushed her hair back from her face and looked grim. “I hate to say it, but your Kim is going to be a problem for you, unless you’re planning on Changing her and taking the risk that she won’t lose herself in the process. You’ve made a lot of enemies over the years.”
Everything inside him recoiled at the thought of losing Kim in any way, by his actions or someone else’s. “That hasn’t escaped me. But I wasn’t their only target.
They had rudimentary plans to lure you and Salem out, too, using one of Salem’s old hunts—like they did with me—and data on Charron’s kilers for you.”
“Wel, fuckin’ A.” Her amber eyes were hard and cold. “They’re lucky they went with you first. They wouldn’t have liked dealing with me.”
“I thought the same thing,” he said wryly. “In a related matter, Adrian caled me today. He’s ordered me and the team out of Chicago by Tuesday. To say he’s not happy about armed minions in the city would be an understatement.”
“Fuck him and the high horse he rides,” she snapped.
He smiled. “You’re just pissed because he’s got us by the bals with this one.”
“Whatever. The fucker shouldn’t always be right.” She took a deep breath. “Listen, I don’t want to distract you from what you’re doing, especialy while you’ve got Adrian breathing down your neck, but... Nikki’s gone missing.”
Raze froze. Torque’s wife. “What do you mean by ‘missing’?”
“She was supposed to pick up Torque in Shreveport last night but she never made it.”
“You’l need me.” It wasn’t a question.