Bad Mouth(24)

“Tonight? Kade, I have to call the VLO. They won’t wait.”

“But you can wait.” He dared a few steps toward her. Her grip tightened on the gun, but even so, she began to lower the weapon. “Don’t call them yet. I need time.”

“Why? So you can plan an escape?”

His lips curved up in a bitter smile. “Do I strike you as the kind of man who would run from something?” He came closer, and the scent of him plugged directly into her memory. “Come to me tonight and I’ll tell you everything. Just fourteen hours. Please, Val.”

She never thought she’d hear that word from Kade. Tucking her gun back into the satchel, she walked past him and stepped out onto the balcony. Her boots crunched on the tiny plastic pieces of cell phone. She felt him follow her out.

“You saw the Ancients tonight?” she asked softly. He moved to the railing next to her.

“I did. They gave me some bullshit about dwindling vampire population and something about trying to spare my feelings.”

She half turned to him. “Kade, I’m—” No. She wasn’t going to apologize, and she wasn’t going to feel bad for him. He’d been about to murder another vampire out of spite. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but there’s only one person who can give you the answers you want, and you were about to murder him.”

He frowned. “I don’t know if I can be in the same room with him without tearing him apart.”

“We have a little over an hour before dawn.” She forced him to meet her gaze. “If you go now—with me—I’ll wait to call the VLO.”

His expression darkened. Her hands went to his forearms, and his gaze went straight to that point of contact. His tension seemed to melt like the early frost on a sunny morning.

“I’ll go.”

She handed him her cell. “Now call off the hit before your answers die with him.”

While Kade called his assassin friend, Val ducked into the bathroom. Her hands shook more than a mouse in a snake pit. She washed under barely tolerable hot water, trying to get the warmth back into her fingers. She knew better than to trust Kade, but she’d put her trust in him again. Trusting him not to run. Trusting him not to kill anyone. Trusting him not to harm her. She nearly jumped from her skin when a soft knock came at the door.

“All right,” he said when she opened the door to him. He started to reach for her but then dropped his hands to his side. “Let’s go. Car’s waiting.”

They didn’t talk on the ride to Wallace Dannon’s house, which was thankfully short. Kade’s gaze stayed on the road past the front windshield, but she doubted he paid attention to anything out there. After the last meeting with Wallace, she wasn’t sure any amount of talking could prepare him for round two.

Before he slid out of the car, he turned to her. His age looked out from his eyes, his face heavy with sadness. “Nothing the VLO does can be worse than this.” His voice dropped to a low murmur. “Before…all this. After dealing with the Ancients, I needed you.”

Her arms ached to comfort him the way he needed comfort. The desire nearly overwhelmed, but she denied it as she denied the familiar burn of tears under her eyelids. Letting him in wasn’t an option until she had answers from him about the murders.

Wallace nearly choked on his own tongue when they entered the sitting room his subjugate led them to. He gestured toward the short couch near the bar and sat a good distance away on the recliner across from them.

“How can I serve, my lord?”

Kade said nothing, his eyes glowing brighter in the dim lamp light. She would have to conduct the interview for him. He was struggling, and she couldn’t blame him.

“Mr. Dannon, we’re not here about what you witnessed at Lake Washington,” she began. The man licked his lips repeatedly, and his anxiety began to pluck her nerves. “When you served the Ancients, you and the other staff subjugates performed unspeakable acts against your own prince.”

Wallace couldn’t make eye contact with either of them. He seemed to shrink in his seat. “We never wanted to torture him.”

A deep growl came from Kade. She didn’t look at him but put her hand to his arm. “But you did, Mr. Dannon, and now I need to know why.” She kept her voice calm even though her insides were more like a spin cycle. Wallace took a long time to answer.

“We hated what we had to do.”

“That’s a f*cking lie,” Kade said, his words barely more than a snarl. Wallace’s head snapped up. He looked directly at Kade this time with pain and regret in his eyes.

“You don’t understand. You weren’t only a vampire to us. You were a born vampire. You were everything we admired, everything we worked so hard to be, everything we dreamed we’d become. My lord, we worshipped the air you walked through.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “We only did what we had to do, and when that wasn’t enough for the Ancients, we were violently punished.”

“The Ancients?” she asked. “They knew?”

“Who do you think made us do such terrible things?” He looked aghast. “We would never have dared to raise a hand against a vampire. We wanted to be one too badly for it to ever cross our minds.”

For a moment silence filled the room. A terrible, unbelievable silence as the truth sank in. When she finally found her voice, it came out in a horrified rasp. “You’re saying the Ancients ordered all of the subjugates to torture Kade?”

“Yes, and they made sure it happened. They made sure no one made a move to bond with the boy. And poor Annette,” he said, his voice breaking. “She couldn’t take it. She loved him more than anyone.”

“Who was Annette?” She prodded him when he didn’t answer. “Who was she, Mr. Dannon?”

“She was his surrogate.” He dared a look at Kade again. Kade, dark and frightfully silent, looked as if he were on the verge of implosion, his hands fisted on his thighs and his hellish eyes overwhelming the light in the room. “We were…close. The Ancients never turned her as they’d promised.”

“What happened to her?”

“When the Ancients took her, she was only a teenager. They chained her and forced the pregnancy on her, but after a few months they didn’t need to. She’d fallen in love from the moment she first felt him move, and after his birth she fed him herself. But then they began to keep her away from him. They were starving him. At first, she’d sneak in to him, but they caught her and sent her away.”

“You said they never turned her.”

“Yes. They killed her when she refused them.” He hung his head. “No one tried again after that. We just did as we were ordered.”

“Did they ever say why?”

“Never, and no one dared ask.” He frowned. “But they made it clear that he wasn’t to know their involvement. The punishment had to come from humans, always from humans. No one could harm him after they were turned.”

With a roar, Kade jumped to his feet, towering over Wallace. Val’s heart leaped into her throat. Would she have to witness the Legion’s murder? She didn’t have the strength to restrain Kade in such a fury. Wallace cowered in his seat, making no move to defend himself, but Kade gripped the sides of his head and fled the room.

“Oh, Kade,” Val whispered. “What are you going to do?”

Wallace’s eyes widened. “Will the Rex find out about this? That I’m telling you this?”

“No, but I don’t think that’s what you should be afraid of. Count yourself lucky.” She probably shouldn’t be telling him this with Kade in such a state of mind, but she wanted to make sure Wallace watched his back from now on. “If you hadn’t told the truth, you might have come to a grisly end tonight.”

Val raced outside, expecting to find the car gone along with Kade. Instead, the vehicle had received the brunt of Kade’s wrath. Crumbling glass hung around the seal of the rear window and littered the demolished trunk, which caved all the way to its floor like a semi had dropped into the center of it. Kade prowled along the driveway, his movements coiled with tension. He returned to the car when he saw her approach and had to wrench open the misshapen door to let her in. She wondered if it was drivable, but it started and they were on their way back to downtown Seattle.

Aside from the wind whistling through the damaged rear glass, the ride to her apartment building began as silently as the ride to Wallace’s. Then Kade took a deep breath and locked his gaze on the passing scenery. The urge to hold him battered her.

“Kade, I saw the text you got from Killian,” she said to distract his painful thoughts. “I wasn’t trying to spy. I thought it might be important.”

He turned to her reluctantly. “It was from Ezra, and it was important.”

“Wallace was supposed to die then, wasn’t he?”