Scorched Ice (Fire and Ice #3)(64)

Standing at the edge of the roof, he peered down the back of it. Completely void of anything, even windows, it was nothing but a concrete wall. He stared down at the wall before lifting his head to take in the mountains surrounding them. Their craggy peaks stretched high into the night sky in a natural wall encompassing the land and fence surrounding the building.

His gaze searched over the clearing around him as he picked up pinpoints of light and details about the night no human ever would. Turning, he studied the fence to his left and the mountains looming above it. He saw nothing out of the ordinary there; he detected no movement within the forests. Even the animals knew this was a place of evil and stayed far away from it.

Moving back to where he’d left the others, he slid down the front of the building and dropped onto the ground beside Quinn.

“Anything?” she asked.

He took hold of her hand, pulling her closer to him. He’d discuss this new development in her ability with her later, when they were alone.

“This is the only door I can see,” Julian replied.

“We have to find the other ways in and out,” Luther said.

“We will,” Julian said.

***

It was almost two hours before Dani, Luther, Hadie, Prue, and Carla returned. Julian had sent them with a dozen more vampires to search for another exit. When they returned, everyone met in the middle of the minefield. While the group had been gone, the rest of them had worked to locate and set off more of the mines. They’d cleared a pathway across the earth and removed the injured vampires from the field.

The Commission could already be looking to flee from one of their other exits, but Julian had stayed here in the hopes his presence would keep the bastards focused on him. However, he suspected that after what they’d seen Quinn do, they would be far more interested in her than him. They wouldn’t evacuate here until they were certain they were going to lose, and right now they had no reason to think they would.

Dani wiped away the sweat on her forehead when she stopped before him. “We found one.”

“It’s about two miles from here,” Luther said. “And the door appears to be as fortified as this one. We couldn’t get it open. It’s not in the middle of a mine field, or at least none of us blew up trying to get to it.”

Julian tipped his head back to peer at the night sky. Dawn was still a few hours away; they had enough time to launch an attack. “It’s their panic route. They won’t risk accidentally blowing themselves up if they’re fleeing in a hurry,” he said.

Luther lifted his glasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose before settling them back into place. “They probably have more than two exits.”

“Most likely,” Julian agreed.

“So what do we do now?” Dani asked.

“We’ll send a group to start trying to get at them from the exit you found. It will cause them to divide their forces inside and weaken them.”

“Or we could drive them out another exit,” Melissa said.

“We still have the group we sent out to find a back road. Hopefully, they’ve found it by now. We could search this place and these mountains for the next month and possibly never find all of their exits. The longer we wait, the more time we give them to prepare for us. They’ll also have a better chance of getting away from us during the day. The five of you can’t watch everything when the sun is up, and the people in this building most likely outnumber you.”

“True,” Melissa agreed.

“I’ll go with the group we send,” Luther said. “Show them where the other exit is.”

“I’ll return with him,” Dani offered.

“Hadie and I will go back too,” Prue said.

“We’ll all go with them again,” Carla said, and the other vampires who had gone searching with them nodded their agreement.

“Good,” Julian said.

“What are you going to do here?” Luther asked.

Julian grinned as he gazed at the barricaded door again. “I have a plan to get inside.”

“I hate your plans,” Quinn muttered.

He refrained from telling her that she would probably really hate this one.

Luther lifted an eyebrow at him. “Care to fill us in on it?”

“Let’s just say it’s going to take a lot of group effort,” Julian replied. “You’ll know if we get inside.”

“I’m sure we will,” Luther said.

“How much time will it take you to reach the other entrance again?”

“Twenty minutes give or take.”

“We’ll wait a half an hour before launching an attack on the building.”

“Plenty of time,” Luther replied. “Let’s go,” he said to the others.

Quinn took hold of Julian’s hand as the group turned and made their way back toward the woods. “They’ll be fine,” he assured her, pulling her close to kiss her temple.

“Yes, they will.”

“Come on, let’s get more of this field cleared while we wait.”

Over the next half an hour, they worked side by side, tossing hundred pound rocks onto the field to set off more mines. All of them seemed to be concentrated across the middle of the field. They found none within the first fifty feet of the gate or within thirty feet of the building. He didn’t trust The Commission not to throw one or two surprises in, so he continued to have vampires working to clear those areas too. If they had to retreat, they would need as clear of a pathway as they could get.