Zanaikeyros - Son of Dragons (Pantheon of Dragons #1)(70)
He tightened his fist, grimacing at the pain.
“You would have shown me what?” she muttered, still staring numbly at the grisly design. “Told me what? Introduced me to whom?”
Dan grunted as he dipped two fingers, from the opposite hand, into the blood now pooling in his palm, squatted down, and began to draw the same disturbing diagram on the bunker floor. “A better way to live,” he said evenly. “Why I’ve never lost a case. The fact that we don’t have to exist like helpless sheep, powerless, waiting to be victims. I would’ve introduced you to…to…” The ceiling above their heads began to creak, and his pained expression grew more tense. “There are thousands of us, Jordan—tens of thousands—judges like Theodore Moran, generals, senators; hell, even the local manager at the bank. We’re everywhere, and we’re not alone.” He completed the diagram on the floor, dipped his fingers back into his blood, and stepped toward her, extending his forefinger toward her forehead. He was prepared to draw another sign—presumably the same one as before—on Jordan.
Right between her eyes.
Jordan drew back and slapped his hand away. “Stop it!” she shouted. “You’re scaring me, Dan!”
His expression looked more desperate than dangerous as he held up his bloody hand in a placating gesture and began to plead with his eyes. “It’s for protection, Jordan. Nothing else. Please, trust me on this.”
She was just about to argue—to vehemently protest—to give him the third degree, when a deep, resonant voice—a familiar haunting rasp—resounded inside her head: Dragyra, back away! Do not let him paint you.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Reconnaissance mattered.
Collecting information, knowing the enemy’s whereabouts, and enumerating each individual adversary in order to gain a tactical advantage…mattered.
And that’s why Zane didn’t object when his lair-mates asked him to stay outside, to take the post closest to the back of the estate, beneath a thick row of oak trees, where he could watch and listen.
Axe had already shorted out the state-of-the-art security system, and there was nothing as simple as cutting a few wires to it. He had manipulated the electrical impulses streaming through the cables; he had literally sent his own kinetic energy into the intricate grid, read each complex pathway in order to grasp the setup, and altered the sensitive connections with his mind.
The alarms would not go off.
Nakai, on the other hand, had rendered himself invisible and simply walked the entire property—including the interior of the house—sending blueprints, the various positions of the seven guards, and information about potential obstructions back to the remaining Dragyr.
And that’s how they’d formulated their plan…
The mansion itself was a ranch-level home, built as a basic rectangle, with only three entrances: the front foyer, the back vestibule, and a side door on the east that entered through the last port, within the five-car garage. Once inside the house, there were a series of long, dimly lit halls. The first hall led to the kitchen and a great room; the second hall led to a series of offices, libraries, and bedrooms—including to a central staircase that led to the basement, which then led down to the bunker—and the back hall, flanked the entire house, leading to the other main arteries. In a nutshell, there was one guard positioned at the front entrance—Axe would take care of him; two guards on the far east and west ends of the opening hall—they would have to split these sentries; and two guards on either side of the staircase that led to the underground bunker. In short, Jace would take both guards in the west—the one in the hall and the one by the stairway—and Levi would neutralize the humans in the east. Beyond that, there were only two more sentinels to contend with: a large burly bastard right outside the bunker hatch, and a heavily armed guard patrolling the back vestibule. Nakai would take the former, and Zane would handle the latter.
Once all the humans were removed from the equation, Zane could proceed through the back door, skirt along the main artery to the center hall, and head down the narrow stairway.
He could enter the bunker.
And that’s how he’d found himself waiting, as the golden sun waned in a serene purple sky, hiding behind a thick gathering of trees, watching the back-door sentry, all the while knowing he was less than a hundred yards, as the crow flies, from the rear of the bunker, and listening, with his preternatural hearing…
Zooming in on every single word spoken between Dan and Jordan—sweetie, baby, butterfly—he was about to go insane. Especially when the conversation turned ominous and threatening…dire and just plain weird.
Give me a knife—what the hell was that all about?
A better way to live…why I’ve never lost a case…there are thousands of us, Jordan, tens of thousands…we’re everywhere, and we’re not alone.
Even without the benefit of his sight, Zane’s keen, predatory mind was calculating a dozen clues per second: the peculiar, faraway cast in Dan’s voice; the subtle but unmistakable grunts of pain—he was cutting himself with that knife; and the sudden emergence of three far more telling, detectable scents…
First, a coppery mixture of sweat, blood, and Lysol: Was he smearing his blood on the floor? The chemical reaction was far too distinct—it indicated three separate compounds.