Dylan (Bowen Boys, #3)(29)

Pouring himself a healthy drink in one of the plastic water glasses, he thought of his boss. Bowen the Bitch, as he’d taken to calling her early in her career as his boss, wouldn’t put anything out there unless she was positive about it. She was a ball buster for sure, but she also knew her job. But she didn’t have Crosby. Or so she said.

He wondered if she was there, put into the big house of Bowen’s so that no one could find her, and she was singing all sorts of shit. It would be like the two of them to get together and try to bring him down. He glanced at the email addressed to Bowen the Bitch and realized that now, if she did have Crosby or not, it was useless to him as a way to save some face. Crosby had already given it all to her.

He poured himself another glassful after drinking the first one down. After deleting the email, he started a new one. This one he was sending as soon as he was finished with it. No more dicking around. He was going to walk away from this shit with a clear mind and a cleaner slate. Kirby wrote until he couldn’t see the keys, then finished off the other half a bottle of the tequila and crawled into the lumpy bed. He would rest a few hours, then get up and do it again until he was finished.

~~~

“What do you mean he isn’t at his home? Did you go to the correct address?” The wolf nodded. “Let me see it.”

Timmy Huston handed him the paper that Lucius had given him three days ago. It was the right address. He looked at the wolf, which was still in a supine position on the floor when he gave Lucius the paper but quickly looked back now, knowing which of them was the inferior.

“Did you go inside the house?” Lucius asked.

Timmy nodded, keeping his head down.

“What did you find? Maybe he simply went out for a cup of sugar from the neighbor’s house.”

“I watched it for two days before coming here. I even tried to track him. His scent went to the garage, where he pulled something from the floor. Then he walked back to the house. I caught his scent out to the front sidewalk, then nothing. He might have taken a cab or gotten a ride. I couldn’t follow it because of the many cars on his street.”

Lucius kicked him. When the wolf shifted and landed on his feet after hitting the wall, Lucius hoped that he’d try and attack him, but he only stayed where he was. But now he was upright and not in a subservient position. Lucius thought about killing him but was leery of the wolf. He’d survived the kick, so Lucius knew killing him might not be easy.

“You’ll find him or I’ll kill you.” The wolf snarled in response. “If you think that frightens me, you’re stupider than your predecessor. And he was an idiot.”

Lucius watched him pace. He wished now, like he did with the human, that he’d taken his blood. He’d had the wife’s and thought that that had been enough, but now he knew it hadn’t been. He also had a feeling that the human knew that he’d killed his wife and child. He’d not meant to, but their excessive whining and crying had driven him over the edge.

The trial was in five days. Just five days for everything to go away so that he could get Small into the White House. He knew that the man had confessed. He’d even read it…but the man was going to get him what he wanted, and that was war.

War was so wonderfully filling for his kind. People could disappear from a field of combat and never be missed. He and others like him had been so plentiful because of the ability to turn so many without fear of being caught.

He smiled after the wolf left, thinking about the many children he’d created and left. He and others of his kind hadn’t even bothered to train them, knowing that they would be dead within a month or so. Some would have survived, and those were the ones that he called to him when he needed something done. They were the killers, the ones that would do anything to anyone to get what they wanted. The strong.

He knew Small was an idiot and a fool. But he knew that he could control him, because he was greedy and only looked out for himself. He’d promise him anything and everything for his help. He would tell him that he would live forever. Lucius knew that he’d be dead once the last of the information he wanted was in his hands.

Small would never be president or even a janitor in the building again, or anywhere for that matter, but he would get into the one place that Lucius could not. Because he’d been inside of it, he would know the building as well as his own, and that was what Lucius was counting on. Counting on him knowing where the secret entrances were, and how to get around the guards. The man had been a thief to his country; he had to know a great deal.

Someone, many years ago, had put a spell on the building. The very foundation and bricks had been protected by a powerful wizard, and now no one of his kind could enter, not even with permission. And it was Lucius’s fault.

Lucius supposed that he shouldn’t have pissed the man off. But he’d been talking about his plan, telling anyone that would listen to him what he was going to do once he made that stupid man cause a war of all wars.

“You would actually create war?” Lucius had nodded, drunk off the blood of a wolf he’d just had. “You would feed off the dead like an animal?”

“No. We cannot feed off the dead. The blood must be fresh, the heart still beating. We would collect those, the ones that lay dying in the fields, and drink from them. The feast would be plentiful.” He had closed his eyes in appreciative bliss. “They would be dying, anyway. What difference would it make to them?”