Cole's Redemption (Alpha Pack #5)(43)
“I’ll do my best.” He tucked a finger under her chin and gave her a slow kiss, with tongue. And kept right on kissing until someone cleared his throat nearby, signaling for him to wrap it up.
“Newly mated guys,” Aric drawled. “Sheesh.”
“Like you can talk,” Zan retorted. “Besides, your mate is on the team, so she gets to go with you. How unfair is that?”
“Very. She can kick anyone’s ass from here to the East Coast, including mine.”
The man had a point. Zan hurried along his good-byes, and then he was forced to let her go and walk away. They loaded onto three copters and then waited while the top of the building slid open to let them lift off.
Aric powered up their Huey, with hired pilots taking the others, as usual. The redhead could fly anything with wings, and he flatly refused to let anyone else pilot his craft. Nick took the front with him.
Zan rode with Jax, Micah, and Nix in the back. The big copter was a flying tank, really loud, but the ride was uneventful as they streaked toward Missouri.
For Zan, lost in his thoughts, the trip seemed to pass quickly, and soon they were landing in a field not far from the house where the murders occurred. From there they were escorted to the scene by federal agents, and Zan recognized some of them from the ranch killing. This time, they received no lip from the Feds, though they got plenty of sour looks.
Horror couldn’t begin to describe the scene at the house. The carnage was unlike anything Zan had ever laid eyes on in his life, and that was saying a lot. Part of the horror factor was the cheerful backdrop of the family gathering that had been interrupted.
There were checkered tables laden with food. Burgers, dogs, brisket, potato salad, chips and dips, beer. All going bad in the morning sun, providing a macabre accompaniment to the main course.
Bodies were literally everywhere. Young and old and in between. Lying by the picnic tables, under the festive canopy among folding chairs. One older man was sprawled across the threshold of the front door, another on the porch.
“There’s more inside,” an agent said, looking like he might lose his coffee any second. “This beats f**k-all I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ve seen something similar, back in oh-four,” another one put in. “Seven people all murdered in their beds, all drained of blood like these folks.”
“Where was that?” Nick asked, looking at him sharply.
“Let me think. Tulsa, Oklahoma, that’s where it was. Never caught those bastards, either. Could be the same ones, though ten years is a long spread of time.”
Not to a vampire, Zan thought. But he wisely kept that tidbit to himself.
The team spread out and catalogued the bodies, making note of every detail, no matter how insignificant it appeared. The most telling evidence of a rogue attack was the raggedness of the teeth marks on each neck. Rogues were vicious and messy when they fed. They were simply hungry, all the time, and showed none of the neatness and precision of a typical vampire feed.
Another sign was that none of the bodies showed evidence of sexual activity, unlike a regular vampire feed. These killings were swift and all business. Almost like a mission.
“This would have taken a large force of rogues to carry out,” Zan mused aloud. Only Nick and a few of their team were nearby, so it was okay to speak freely.
“Is it just me, or does this have the hallmarks of a well-executed op?” Nick asked.
Zan nodded. “That’s what I was just thinking.”
They finished the search and were just about to give up on finding anything really useful when Zan spotted a crimson drag mark on the back porch. Dried rust-colored blood trailed across the boards, down the set of wooden steps. He followed the trail across the lawn, and the more distance that was put between him and the house, the thinner and sparser the blood was. It was just enough to keep him going, though, and he was determined to locate the source.
He followed a slope down to a creek and across it. Then he looked up to see the trail had led him to an old wood pile that might have been a storage shed at one time. He skirted the pile.
And it was there that the rogue was waiting, beside a human body. Zan barely had time to register his presence before the thing sprang at him, yellowish fangs bared and ready to kill. There was no time to call forth his wolf, so he morphed his hands into claws and launched a counterattack.
They met in a clash of bodies, Zan gaining a slight advantage when he knocked the creature to the ground. He jumped onto the rogue, made a stab at its black heart and missed, sending his claws between the ribs and into a lung. The thing screeched, and he cursed, hoping the Feds at the house hadn’t heard.
The rogue did some slashing too, catching Zan across a thigh. It stung like a bitch but wasn’t life-threatening, and he raked his claws across the creature’s throat, severing its windpipe. While it was busy frantically grabbing at its throat, Zan delivered the killing blow to the heart, stilling his enemy instantly. It died, eyes going blank, and he plunged in his claws and tore out the shriveled heart, then sagged in relief.
“What the f**k are you guys?” a voice blurted from behind him. “What was that thing?”
Fuck! Turning, he allowed his hands to shift back to normal, but not soon enough. This Fed, the one who’d mentioned the bodies in Tulsa a decade ago, was staring at him in complete shock. Nervously, he shifted his gaze from Zan to the vampire’s body, to the vampire’s kill, and back to Zan.