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“So let me get this straight. You and me and three ghosts, are supposed to chase down a delivery truck, deep in Savage Territory, and rescue these girls?”
“Sure. Why not? I mean what else do we have to do? Besides, this is the series of images that came to me even though I focused on Loghry and his mansion. I think we should do it.”
He stared at her for a long moment. She could see the wheels turning. “And I have a contact on Savage Border Patrol, an officer I trust, who would like nothing more than to disrupt the trafficking in his territory. Officer Fergus, do you know him?”
Emma shook her head. “I never knew a lot of shifters. Max kept his relationship with me separate. But there’s something I forgot to tell you.”
“What?”
She held his gaze firmly, then smiled. “The storage unit facility belongs to Loghry.”
He smiled as well. “So there it is.”
“Yep, there it is.”
“Then, let’s do it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
While Emma armed up, Vaughn stood on the patio outside the master bedroom and used his cell to contact Officer Eric Fergus of the Savage Territory Border Patrol. Fergus was the alpha of one of the most powerful packs in Savage. Among wolf leadership, he held a lot of sway.
Vaughn had barely gotten two words out when Fergus said he was in. He’d do whatever Vaughn needed him to do to rescue the girls. He’d heard about the set-up in the Graveyard and was glad to learn Vaughn and Emma had made it out alive.
The mention of Loghry’s storage unit facility had the wolf growling. “That bastard. I hope I get the chance one day to take him down. He puts spells on our female shifters and they disappear into his sex clubs until they’re broken. Those who find their way back to Savage, take years to recover.”
Vaughn made arrangements to meet Fergus in fifteen minutes at the forest edge near the storage facility. Fergus would bring two of his best men as well as a backup force. “In the meantime, I’m headed to Crescent for weapons.”
“Good. See you in a few.” Fergus had a gruff voice and was muscled as hell. Vaughn could count on him to see the mission through.
He checked his Glock then secured it back in its holster. As he was putting his phone into the pocket of his jeans, Emma emerged from the house. She had her sidearm in place, her shoulders squared. He held his hand out to her. “Ready for this?”
Emma smiled crookedly. “Hell, yeah.” She patted her Sig Sauer.
When she climbed up on his right boot, he pulled her tight against him. He took her into the air, flying north in the direction of Crescent Territory. Lily had already called him back to let him know that Brannick had changed locations. Apparently, the safe house was no longer safe, and he would meet Vaughn in the alley behind his favorite Chinese restaurant, not far from the Border Patrol station.
Vaughn flew high in the air to avoid detection by any low flyers or anyone on the lookout for either Emma or himself.
Emma kept watch as well and more than once alerted him to a Crescent officer hovering near the rooftops of buildings they passed over. He also kept his shielding mechanism active. If Loghry happened to be in the area, he wouldn’t be able to see Vaughn, or even Emma, because of Vaughn’s shield.
His cloaking ability wouldn’t make him invisible to vampires, however, so that when he finally descended into the alley behind the restaurant, Brannick saw him right away. He offered a slow dip of his chin.
His gaze went to Emma. “Is this the witch you told me about, the one you helped rescue those girls?”
“Yes.” He introduced Emma but wasn’t surprised when Brannick kept his distance.
The vampire had a hard look with dark brown hair combed straight back. His green eyes always looked pinched. He had deep lines beside his mouth and rarely smiled. He was clean as a whistle in terms of corruption and was known for his cool head. But rage simmered within Brannick, evidenced by the frequent flare of his nostrils.
Fate had delivered a series of hard blows to Brannick, more than any of Vaughn’s fellow officers. He’d lost his pregnant wife and a young daughter to the alter nightmare thirteen years ago when a tainted supply of a brand name soft drink had been corrupted with vampire serum.
Enraged, he’d tried to punish the cartels for all the ways they worked to create more alters in the human portion of Phoenix.
Both Connor and Vaughn had tried to warn Brannick. But fury had fueled his vendetta. In turn, the cartels had targeted his extended family. His parents had been killed and his sister trafficked and sold to a dark witch coven in Elegance. She’d been used as a human sacrifice, something Brannick had been forced to witness.
He’d pulled in his vengeance, but he’d had a lot of grief to deal with afterward. The truth was, they all did. No one came to Five Bridges without having suffered severe losses. Every pregnant woman who went through the alter lost her baby, no exceptions. Fetuses and children couldn’t survive the horrendous changes the alter metamorphosis created, no matter which of the five species the human became, whether vampire or spellcaster, shifter, fae, or dead-talker.
A loud explosion hit the air, though probably a good mile away. Vaughn turned in the direction from which the blast had come. “What the hell was that?”
Brannick gestured toward the west. “Five Bridges is expanding. According to the latest stats, we’ve added five thousand alters in the past ten months. Unprecedented numbers. The U.S. finally agreed to give us another square mile off Crescent and Revel Territories then another square mile off Elegance in the east and Savage to the south.”
