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“Yeah, he’s worried but pissed off,” Valentine says, then sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “But there’s a way for us to track him; a way he didn’t want to use since he was positive nothing would ever happen to him, but I convinced him to do it.”
I ran towards him with wide eyes, feeling pissed off and relieved at the same time. “What?! How? Why didn’t you mention this to me?”
“Calm down, I had to check if he didn’t dig it out of his neck and luckily he didn’t,” he says, then pulls out his phone and shows me the screen. “You humans and your wonderful technology; we barely need witches anymore. Tracking devices. All three of us have it.”
I could have jumped into Valentine’s arms right then and there when he said that! By the flickering dot on the screen, I see that they still have him here in Clearview Point, but they’re in a secluded forest area that’s restricted to the public.
“Looks like my father has his fingers stuck in this town’s bloodshed as well,” I say, clenching my jaw. “When do we leave?”
Church throws a backpack toward me, and I don’t even have to open it to know what it is. “Right now. There’s enough in there for both of you to tag along if you wish,” he says, grinning but not looking at Xenia at all.
“No fucking way am I sitting this one out,” I say, nodding towards both of them. “Thank you for coming… for this.”
This time Valentine is the one who smiles. “You’ll be our Queen soon, Kitty Kat. Besides, we would lay down our lives for Gabriel; he saved us and took us under his wing. We’ll never be able to repay him for that.”
“Saved your lives? How?” Xenia speaks up, crossing her arms.
Valentine sighs. “That’s a story for another day. Just know that Gabriel isn’t the heartless monster they have made him out to be. Everything he’s done thus far is to protect his nest and the people who depend on him. The blood he spilled was for those he deems his family and he’ll never apologize for it.” He says, then walks out of my apartment.
Church eyes Valentine’s departure with a fixed look before he turns his gaze back on me. “We’re outside in the SUV when you’re ready,” he says, then follows Valentine’s lead.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, feeling relief burrowing deep in my chest and flowing out right into the tips of my fingers. Calling Valentine was the best thing I could have done. I realize that now, and it doesn’t go over my head that I depended on a vampire for help.
“Xen, we need…” I trail off when I see the wan, vacant expression on her face. She blinks, shaking her head, then turning her gaze on me.
“He didn’t even acknowledge that I was here,” she murmurs, tight-lipped. “All this time I’ve been worrying myself to death over what would happen once I see him again and he barely even saw me.”
I watch as Xenia fumbles with the strings of her hoodie, her cheeks flaming with either embarrassment or shame at admitting that she expected a different reaction from Church. She wanted him to notice her, it seems, and he barely even stole a glance.
Offering her what I think is a comforting smile, I place my hand on her shoulders and pull her close. “It could just be that he’s worried about Gabriel; don’t jump to conclusions yet,”
She shakes her head and shrugs me off. “It’s nothing. Let’s get going; the longer we wait, the more shit they get away with,” she says, then picks up the bag and walks out.
I don’t know whether to feel happy or sad about this. Xenia finally admitted that she wants Church without even saying the words, but Church couldn’t even spare her a second. What the fuck happened to him these last few months?
Ah, I can’t think about this now when we have Gabriel waiting for us. I’m just glad the two of us flushed those potions down the toilet when we were drunk, or Xenia would be downing them right now.
God, I want them to sort things out, I want her to experience what I have with Gabriel.
But with both of them being so fucking stubborn, I wonder which one will crack first.
It doesn’t take long for us to reach the spot where Gabriel is being held. Valentine parks the SUV about two blocks away and we walk the rest of the distance. The place is crawling with hunters, but Xenia and I are in sync when it comes to taking out oddly placed enemies.
We only use our tactical knives and sneak around the property, embedding them into the throats of the hunters surrounding the shipping container. But then one of them sees Church and fires off his gun.
The rest happens in slow fucking motion.
Three of them come at me at the same time, and I remove a throwing knife from my boot and aim it at one of their heads. Adrenaline pumps through me as I fight one off, dodging his blows while landing a few of my own before swiping his feet out from under him.
Removing a Karambit knife attached to my belt, one of them pulls me back by the hair, but I twist my upper body and plunge the blade into his neck, splattering warm blood all over my chest. The third one doesn’t get a chance to attack because Xenia shoots them in the head.
“Fuck, were we always this annoying?!” she calls out, firing more rounds at two hunters heading our way and I can’t help but laugh at the irony of that question.
Valentine and Church move quickly to eliminate the rest of the hunters while Xenia and I make our way to the front of the container. A movement to my left gets my attention, but it disappears so fast that I’m unable to see what it is.
I chalk it down to one of the vamps fighting off a hunter and slide open the lock, opening the container door. But what I see confuses the shit out of me.
“What the fuck happened here?!”
