Tall, Dark & Heartless (Pyte/Sentinel #3)(128)

Caine growled, but didn't attack him so he kept going and thankfully the Pyte kept on following him. He nearly sighed with relief when he saw Chris round the corner with one arm thrown over Kale's shoulders, limping pretty badly as they followed to make sure the Pyte didn't step out of line again.

"Where's the human?" Kale asked as he helped Chris down the stairs, making sure to give the pissed off Pyte plenty of space.

"Passed out near the front door," Ephraim said, keeping his eyes locked on the male stalking him.

"Looks like he split," Chris said, wincing as he reached up and placed a hand over his ribs. Ephraim could smell the bone marrow from here. Chris had at least four broken ribs.

Kale sniffed the air and glared accusingly at Chris. "She's going to blame me for this bullshit! You know that, don't you?"

"You deserve it for not taking better care of me," Chris said with a sniff which was immediately followed by a groan.

Kale's eyes narrowed to slits. "Bastard."

"We'll have to hunt him down later," Ephraim said, chancing a look over his shoulder to make sure the human wasn't sneaking up on them. He'd never had this much of a problem scenting the air before, but then again this house was a dump. When he walked in the house with Chris and Kale he'd been worried about losing the element of surprise on the Pytes, but after a few seconds he was more worried about losing his lunch as a hundred foul odors competed for his attention and he knew the Pytes were probably having the same problem and wouldn't scent them until it was too late. That was probably the reason the human got the drop on the couple.

"What's wrong with her?" Kale asked as Ephraim stepped onto the cracked hardwood floor.

"Sick," the Pyte said on a harsh whisper and Ephraim nearly sighed with relief that the Pyte was coming out of it, but that of course meant new problems. With Chris hurt they couldn't take off after Caine and of course the Pyte might just try and kill Chris and Kale to save the woman and escape. He could understand that the man had no choice when he was in bloodlust, but if he laid another finger on his son, Ephraim was going to make the man pray for a death that would never come.

"Pytes can get sick?" Chris asked, shooting him a questioning look.

As far as he knew they couldn't. Since he made his transformation he'd never been sick and neither had Madison. Hurt, weak, hungry, yes, but sick? No.

"Then let us take her to a doctor to get looked at," Ephraim suggested as he stepped through the open doorway and started the slow process of going down the set of cracked brick stairs.

The Pyte followed and thankfully there were only a few people hanging out in the rundown neighborhood so he didn't have to worry about starting a panic when people saw the Pyte's still healing bloody chest. They were going to have to give him blood to help him heal and make sure that he didn't slip back into bloodlust. The woman was going to need blood, too.

The Philadelphia Compound was going to have to handle the two Pytes, because there was no way that he was driving them to New York or Boston when his mate was waiting for him in their new home and days away from giving birth to his sons. He also didn't like the fact that his family was now scattered and no one had any real protection. Jill and Grandma were in New Hampshire with only Priests in the house for protection. Madison, Marc, Izzy, and Jessica were in the new house with Joshua, who was locked up but he couldn't trust him to protect the family right now and his son was hurt and needed a doctor.

"Why don't I take them in so that you can go home?" the shifter suggested when they reached the nondescript Sentinel van.

"What's the bounty for these two?" he asked, not buying the shifter's bullshit that he wanted to help for their sake for even a second.

The man was a mercenary and the only thing besides junk food, and surprisingly Izzy and her babies that he seemed to care about, was money. No one knew why the shifter was obsessed with it, but it seemed to be his main focus in life. Ephraim knew that if he handed the Pytes over to Kale, that the Philadelphia compound would never see them and that made him wonder who the shifter planned on turning the Pytes over to.

"I'm not going to give them to a Master," Kale said, obviously reading into his silence correctly.

"Then who?" Chris asked, probably already realizing that the shifter had a plan for these two.

Kale shrugged as he led Chris to the side of the van and released Chris so that he could lean against it. "To the Council, who else?"

A wave of sympathy shot through Ephraim as he looked at the half-crazed Pyte who couldn't seem to take his eyes off the woman in his arms. According to Eric this male had been warned what would happen if he turned anyone and from what he knew, the Council had every intention of following through with that promise. The twenty years he spent in a cell being tortured paled in comparison to what the Council had planned for this man. He truly could not begin to imagine the horror of being encased in cement and dropped in the middle of the ocean where he would most likely spend eternity.

"Give me my woman," Caine said, reaching out for her, but Ephraim pulled back and quickly opened the back doors of the van. He knew that if Caine got his hands on the woman now that he would run and-

"I don't give a rat's ass what you do to me, but she's sick," Caine said, sounding more like a man and surprising the hell out of Ephraim. The man should be very concerned with what the Council had planned for him. Then again if this was Madison he'd be doing the same damn thing.