Page 76 of Dark

“I fight so that those who cannot will never have to live in fear.”

Which I’d found out much later was the first line of the Tracer code.

Eyebrow Piercing leered. “Your brother says hello.”

Ten minutes and one black eye later, I was shackled and being dragged down a series of corridors, the floor shifting underfoot to a swirling mosaic of polished stone in midnight blue, obsidian, silver and white, all the colors of the night sky. Eyebrow Piercing shoved me through a foyer filled with rich leather furnishings and custom woodwork, its alcoves decorated with fine mahogany tables and stained-glass Tiffany lamps like there wasn’t a freaking dungeon just down the hall.

Massive oak doors swung open to reveal the audience room that according to Sofia, doubled as a dueling chamber and banquet hall, often on the same night, a cavernous space easily the size of a ballroom. At the center of the floor, an intricate celestial design rotated around a glittering crescent moon, flecks of gold inlay catching the starlight streaming in through the open atrium ceiling some thirty feet up. Fat potted palms stood in clusters around white marble columns. A dark granite water feature built into the south wall gave the air a heavy, tropical feel.

Lounging in leather chairs on a raised dais at the center of the room sat a council of quite possibly the most dangerous werewolves in North America.

Three, I knew by name.

Aleksandr, by all appearances, could have passed for a man in his twenties despite having been one of the original humans infected during the Yukon gold rush. Cool and sharp-featured, he was a powerful truth mage, which had kept him alive through several coup attempts on the Council.

At the tip of the crescent moon sat a young Tracer with a wicked scar running the length of his jaw. He was as tall as Dallas now, but with a build closer to Brody’s. With his hair grown out and those angular cheekbones? Dude looked like one mean motherfucker.

“River,” I said through my teeth.

In answer, my youngest brother flipped me off.

A chuckle sounded. “Ethan, you haven’t changed a bit. Come now. We’re all family.”

Yeah. So about that. In a pale button-down shirt and linen slacks, Guillermo Montemayor was the picture of cool sophistication right down to the handmade Italian loafers I wanted to shove down his throat. I hadn’t seen our uncle in almost ten years, since the Thanksgiving Sofia grabbed the carving knife off the turkey platter and chased her brother from the house for something he’d said to River.

Given the way things had turned out, maybe she should have done it sooner.

Visibly on edge, Brody and West didn’t look up as I was frog-marched past. Beside them, Ellie and Hayden stood flanked by a pair of Tracers.

Hays? I thought silently, sending an image of a chocolate muffin.

A soot-black wolf snapped it out of the air. Then gave me a total WTF look.

She was fine.

Chains clinked against the stone floor as Tracers dragged a bound and struggling Topher suspended by a shock collar between steel restraining poles. And behind him—

Jake, Hayden’s former booking agent, glared as he passed me. Understanding formed in a rush, rage clouding my vision. And suddenly it was all I could do to keep from lunging for his throat, consequences be damned.

Guillermo flicked back his hair. “Now that we’re all here…”

Topher shivered as the guards forced him up to the dais, expression twisting between ecstasy and despair. I gritted my teeth. He’d been drugged, forced into submission, most likely some combination of sedatives and neural manipulation. He would talk, willed to do so, even as some part of his consciousness silently screamed in the background, aware every second he was being violated. I glanced over at my brothers. A muscle ticked in Brody’s jaw. West studied the pattern on the floor. River just smirked. He’d probably watched his asshole friends do this a hundred times by now.

“Tell us everything you revealed to my guards.”

Topher spoke in a slurred voice, powerless to refuse. “I woke up chained in a shipping container. They moved us around. Safe houses. Salvage yards. We all had trackers implanted. A few tried to run. They were caught. Destroyed. Eventually most of us stopped trying to escape.”

Guillermo leaned forward. “Who was holding you?”

“Our handlers were shifters. But the ones who brought the girls every four weeks and forced us to change them were vampires.”

Murmurs broke out. Guillermo held up a hand to silence them.

“Always females?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”