Five
Odhran
I stood a few feet behind Adryan, leader of the American Vampire Clan and an all-around crazy motherfucker.
If I didn’t need him and his kind’s help in breaking into the structure we were currently scouting, I would’ve kicked his ass and been done with it already.
The psychotic, arrogant bastard was currently staring at the farmhouse down in the valley across from where we were stationed. I could sense the dark rage pouring off him. I knew that feeling well. It had been my companion for a very long time.
And I knew the only reason he was here with us, to finally help us, was because his mate had been taken and handed over to the Assembly.
His very human, very fragile mate.
We arrived in Vermont half an hour ago and were currently canvassing the area. Although Adryan mentioned his soldiers had been here watching the property for a while now, the Lycans wanted to do their own reconnaissance.
I thought over what we’d learned about the place. There were just too many inconsistencies with the property: the deed being transferred many times, the names changing, and a lot of shit seeming to have been buried to avoid whatever it was they were hiding.
And that was a facility owned and run by the Assembly, the corrupt and twisted organization that needed to burn to the fucking ground.
The information we found out on what they’d done with the Otherworlders once they captured them was speculation, given the fact that we’d never met anyone who had escaped. But we’d done enough research, heard enough rumors throughout the years, decades, hell, centuries, that we had a good idea of the monstrous things they did.
My chest clenched at the very thought of my wee Larkin in their clutches. Gods, not just recently, but for decades.
Banner, King of the Scottish Lycans, had flown in for this particular ambush, to take down these bastards who were hurting our kind. He stood beside Adryan, and the two males spoke low.
I could hear a growl come from the head vampire’s chest as he spoke about his mate.
If there was hope that Larkin was in an underground facility under that dilapidated barn in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont, I was going to fucking go in guns blazing.
“Let’s fucking paint the floors red,” Adryan said, and everyone moved into action.
Aye, paint it bloody red.
I stood in the center of an underground corridor that had been built below the barn. It was a state-of-the-art facility, but no piece of electronics, technology, or space-age shit could stop us.
The blood of my enemies covered my chest, arms, and face. And I reveled in pride and pleasure.
And I wanted more of it. I wanted to watch the life drain from every single piece-of-shit Assembly member’s eyes. I wanted to hear them plead for mercy, which I wouldn’t give.
I stood still, silently watching the situation unfold.
After infiltrating the barn and slaughtering any of the Assembly members who came after us, we found the entrance to their facility underground. We decimated any enemy who came at us, bodies littering the floors and blood covering my body. The violence gave me strength, the purpose to do whatever I had to do to get to Larkin.
And after all of that, we now found ourselves at the end of a corridor, the door where I knew my female was being blocked by James, one of Adryan’s soldiers, but who now revealed himself to be a traitor. Not only had he kidnapped Adryan’s mate, Kayla, but he’d turned her over to the Assembly. The fucker had been working with them for far too long, leading a double life, and giving information to the human organization that tortured our kind.
If I didn’t know Adryan was going to end the fucker’s life, I would have gladly ripped his throat out.
And then there was the other male, a human who held Adryan’s mate and kept a knife to her throat. He called himself Salvatore and was a high-ranking member of the Assembly, and a motherfucker I would gain a lot of pleasure from taking out.
But the bastard must have known he didn’t stand a chance, because he shoved Kayla forward with so much force she stumbled and lost her footing. Adryan was in front of her a second later, pulling her up and dragging his tongue along the wound that Salvatore had made when he pressed the knife to her throat.
And then Salvatore was gone, disappearing behind the door he’d originally come through… the door I had to get through to find Larkin.
Adryan handled James the only way a brutal, savage sociopath vampire knew how to.
There were fires burning all throughout the facility from the destruction of the other Lycans and vampires who’d followed us in and tapered off in different directions. The smoke was starting to clog the tunnels, and I could see dark tendrils coming out from underneath the door.
I held my glowing blue eyes with Adryan’s red-hued ones.