Tall, Silent & Lethal (Pyte/Sentinel #4)(44)

Ephraim and Chris had banned Marc from the nursery at night, telling him to get some damn sleep, but the kid never listened. As soon as his father and brother went off to patrol the town or had a meeting, he would sneak right back in the nursery. He’d give into Jessica’s demands and snuggle up with her in the rocking chair or on the floor where he would watch over the younger children for the rest of the night.

It was too much for a young child to bear and she was going to put an end to it just as soon as she figured out how to get through to the kid. The problem was, every time that she tried to talk some sense into Marc, he wasn’t able to look past her injury to hear what she was saying to him. Most of the time, it would actually make matters worse. He would get a tormented look on his face when her injury made itself known and storm out of the room, only to double his efforts to make it up to her.

What she wouldn’t give to hear Marc give one of them a smart-ass remark or find him slacking off and playing video games. She would love to see him-

“What the hell?” she murmured when an unexpected chime brought her attention back to the laptop perched on her lap.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she mumbled in disbelief as Tattletale opened a file to the left of the screen and then systematically grabbed every file, image and video that it could match to the image that it had found and grabbed from Facebook less than thirty seconds ago.

She watched in disbelief as old grainy images were posted in documents only to be cleaned up seconds later. Handwritten script and typed documents appeared beneath the pictures in what appeared to be German and a few other languages that she didn’t know. Before she could even consider running the documents through an interpreter program, Tattletale was translating everything in the blink of an eye even as it continued to search the internet, grabbing government documents, personal documents, bank account information, immigration documentation, only to finally end with another chime as it made its last match against the Sentinel blood supply system, letting her know that there was nothing left to find.

Not that she needed anything more, not with this much information. She hadn’t expected to find anything when she’d started her search a few hours ago, mostly because of her father-in-law, who’d never stayed in one area long enough and had constantly changed his name to avoid discovery. She’d assumed that other Pytes would develop the same habits, to keep people from noticing things like the fact that they didn’t age, but apparently there was at least one Pyte who didn’t give a damn about keeping his identity a secret.

Christofer Petersen, better known as, Christofer Herrmann according to the SS file opened on the right side of her screen, didn’t appear to be trying to hide what he was at all, she realized. Swallowing back a curse, she picked up her Sentinel phone and swiped her finger across the screen. A split second later she unlocked the phone with a code, praying that it wasn’t too late.

*-*-*-*

Townson, Massachusetts

“Stop!” Cloe screamed as she struggled to break free, but the bastard wasn’t letting her go.

His arms tightened around her, constricting her breathing to small gasps as she struggled to shove him away, but it was impossible. No matter how hard she tried to push him away, there was no give. The grip that he had around her was suffocating her to the point that each hurried breath her body desperately tried to take in pulled in less oxygen. Black spots were already dancing along the edge of her vision, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of the constrictive hold that he had on her or the blood that she was losing, the blood that he was taking from her.

She hadn’t been given the luxury of confusion or disbelief when he’d attacked her and sank his fangs into her neck. The pain of those sharp teeth tearing through the flesh of her neck hadn’t allowed any delusions. The memories of having her back sliced open all those years ago had also taken over, forcing her to acknowledge what was happening to her.

Christofer was the thing nightmares were made of and right now he was gorging on her blood as she struggled to shove him away, but it was no use. The hold he had on her wasn’t allowing her to shove him away. He had her arms trapped between their bodies and no amount of screaming, scratching, shoving or trying to yank her arms free worked. She used her legs and tried to move, to kick him, knee him, push off the floor to try and shove him away, but she couldn’t move, not with him lying on top of her the way that he was.

“Christofer, stop!” she gasped, struggling in vain to break free from his hold only to have his arms tighten around her to the point that she thought her ribs were going to break and breathing became a thing of the past.

Then it hit her…..

She was about to die.

The realization should have triggered tears, panic, prayers for help, pleading for another chance, making promises to do whatever it took to save herself, but instead all it did was piss her right the hell off. This had to be a f**king joke. After everything that she’d gone through this was really how it was going to end?

She couldn’t believe that she’d survived hell, lost her family, struggled to survive, lived her life always watching over her shoulder, careful about who she let get close to her only to be attacked and killed by the only man that she had stupidly allowed herself to believe made her feel safe and protected. It was just so goddamn wrong, her mind registered as she bit down hard on his bare shoulder and dug her nails as far as she could in his chest, needing the action to get through the next few seconds when the bastard violently shook his head, tearing into her throat.