CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Chaos.
Everything was chaos.
Lex's entire team, every member of security, Willow and her brother, and all trusted residents gathered around the training facility. Everyone was talking at once and several heated debates were taking place. In the middle of it all, the group of vamplings huddled because no one wanted to take their eyes off them.
Chase stood off to the side. He should be doing something. He should be finding his sister and the babies, but he was at a loss. He had no idea what to do, or where to look. There were enough people trying to figure all of that out already. The two people who cared the most, him and Lex, were the two that were most useless in that moment.
Lex walked over to Chase and they exchanged worried looks. Lex had been there when she went missing. Asleep. Chase should be angry, blaming him, but he couldn't. It was obvious that Lex was beating himself up enough already.
"I had to have been drugged," Lex said, turning to face Chase. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened." Lex shook his head and his eyes filled with tears.
"Do we really think it was Rebecca?"
"I don't know. It had to have been." Lex just kept shaking his head and looking at the floor. "She kept bringing us tea. Maybe that's how she drugged us."
"Look man, there's a lot of smart people here. We'll figure this out. Willow and Michael will do some magic, or some shit, and we'll find them."
"She was so pale." Lex looked up and met Chase's eyes. "She didn't want me to tell you, but the doctor said she lost more blood than she should have. She would have been okay, but she needed extra rest and fluids. This stress, no matter where she is, can't be good for her."
"Why didn't you heal her?" Chase remembered back to the first time Lex healed his sister. He'd been so angry at the time.
"She was afraid it wasn't good for the babies. I tried to tell her it would be fine, but you know how stubborn she can be."
"This stress can't be good for the babies either," Chase added.
"Our little girl was so small. So tiny." Lex was back to shaking his head. Chase wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he stopped.
"She's a midwife, so she knows how to take care of babies. If she'd wanted to hurt them, she wouldn't have waited for the birth. I'm sure they're being taken care of."
Lex nodded and Chase hoped he bought it. The thing was, Chase didn't believe a word he said. He wasn't so optimistic that they were all right. In fact, after the way Willow reacted when she came to him, he wondered if they were even alive at all.
Chase wanted to believe that he would know if something awful happened to her. The whole twin bond and all, that would surely let him know if she was alive at least. Wouldn't it?
It was all too much. Chase leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. He was losing it, and if he couldn't keep it together, he was sure Lex would fall apart for sure.
Gabriel joined them and put an arm around Lex's shoulder. "We're organizing search parties and the witches are gathering things they need to do, whatever it is they do. I think the two of you should go back to the house and wait there."
"What the hell for?" Lex pushed Gabe's arm off. "I need to be looking for them."
"No, Lex. You need to go home. What if she comes back? Someone needs to be there and it needs to be you."
Chase watched the two argue back and forth. His head spun and he was sure he was going to pass out. This couldn't be happening. They'd been through so much already. They lost their mother, then their older sister and father. They lost so many friends and neighbors. They almost lost each other. What the hell did the universe have against them?
Chase stared up at the ceiling as if he might find answers there.
"You okay?" Gabe grabbed his arm and shook him from his panic.
"Okay? Are you joking? Of course I'm not okay. What the hell kind of question is that?"
"Calm down, Chase. I didn't mean anything by it. I'm trying to help."
"Calm down? My sister is missing. Her newborn babies are missing. How the hell can I be calm? And if you really want to help, go find Ari and those babies instead of worrying about me. I'll be okay when she is back safe."
Willow came up from behind Chase and slipped her hand up his arm. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. Just the feel of her, the scent of her around him, was enough to bring him down a notch.
"Look, I know you're trying to help, but I'm good. Just go find my sister." Chase walked away, hoping Willow would follow. She did.
Chase needed air and to be away from all the noise. There was enough noise in his head. He couldn't take anymore. Once outside, he gulped down a few breaths and tried to clear his head. Willow's touch helped. She soothed him in a way he couldn't explain. He wanted to tell her that, but the words wouldn't come.
"I'm so sorry this is happening, Chase. Michael is gathering the ingredients we need to try a few different spells. We're going to find her."
He wanted to tell her she couldn't know that, to lash out at her, but he was afraid she would leave, and he wasn't sure what he would do if that happened. Instead, he just nodded.
"Hey," she said, grabbing his chin and pulling his face to look at her. "I know it feels like this is hopeless and that the most awful thing you can imagine might come true. I can't promise you everything will turn out well. What I can do, is promise you I'll do everything I can and that I'll be here the whole time. Even if you try to get rid of me. I'm not going anywhere."
It was exactly what Chase needed, other than to have his sister back, of course. He wrapped his arms around Willow and pulled her against him. Her warmth melded into him, leaving him just the smallest bit calmer. He kissed the top of her head and breathed in her scent.
"Willow, I…"
She put a finger up to his lips and shushed him. "Let's get you back to the house and take a moment to breathe. I told Michael to meet us there. We can do our thing from there." She wasn't asking. She directed him and he followed. It was easier not to have to think about anything. He trusted her to make the right decisions, and right then, it was the best he had.
***
"Twelve hours. They've been missing for twelve hours." Alexander's voice broke and he fought back tears. "Why haven't you found her? Why can't I sense her?" He turned to Dex for the last part. "Can you feel her?" Lex grabbed Dex's arms and held on.
"I'm sorry." Dex shook his head and steadied Lex as he held on to him.
"We haven't even named the babies." Lex crumbled into a chair and covered his face with his hands. "She has to come back so we can agree on names."
Chase wasn't sure what he expected from Lex, but this wasn't it. Maybe he thought he'd be screaming, barking ordering, taking control, but then Chase thought his own reaction would be more in line with the same. He wasn't judging Lex. He needed to deal with this any way he could and Chase suspected when the initial shock wore off, Lex would step up and take control.
Until then, he was just devastated.
Just like Chase.
Samuel, who had previously been the new dictator of Vampire City, had been scarce. It would have made sense for him to take over things while Lex was unable. Instead, it was Gabe. Not that Gabe wasn't a logical choice. He pretty much did everything Lex didn't do and was quite capable. Chase just wondered by Lex's own cousin couldn't step up and handle things. This was his family, after all.
But Gabe didn't love Ari.
He wasn't as motivated to find her as Lex would be.
"We have everything we need to start the ritual, except some of Ari's blood," Michael said, coming up from behind Chase. "It can be blood mixed with her, as in from someone she's recently bloodshared with, though it isn't ideal. Since she's just given birth, maybe you have something with her blood on it? Or the babies?"
Chase and Lex looked at one another with confused looks. Neither had any idea where any of the towels or sheets that might have Ari's blood on it were. Rebecca took care of all of that.
Great.
"I haven't taken her blood in weeks. I was afraid it wouldn't be good for the babies," Lex said, back to shaking his head. "I'm sure I don't have any in my veins."
"Okay, look," Chase stepped up and took the lead. "The sheets and towels have to be somewhere. Unless she thought ahead enough to burn them, and maybe she did, but maybe she didn't. So where would something like that go?" Chase turned to Jameson, who was serving tea and cookies to those around the room.
Jameson looked up, startled, with a cookie on a napkin in midair. "I, uh, well… if she didn't burn them, they would be in the basement by the laundry chute. I would have washed them this morning, but with everything going on, I didn't even go down there."
Ari always liked Jameson. She treated the old man like a grandfather, something he and Ari had never had. Chase wasn't sure who he could trust anymore after being betrayed by the midwife, but he knew Jameson was okay.
"Show me." Chase waited for Jameson to put his tray on a table and lead him down to the basement.
Chase followed Jameson down a long winding staircase that ended in the basement. It looked the way you might expect the basement of a vampire king to look. Which by the way, was in stark contrast to the rest of the house. Where everything else was modern and sophisticated, the basement was like a dungeon, which they actually had down there.
"This way," Jameson said, leading Chase into a room, well lit, and nothing like the rest of the basement. It was a modern laundry room, with several washers, dryers, and a laundry chute coming out of the wall.
Chase and Jameson went about going through the previous day's washing to see if anything with Ari's blood on it might be there. They made it to the bottom of the large basket with no luck.
"I'm so sorry, sir. There doesn't seem to be anything useful here. She may have tossed them into the furnace, or took them with her."
Chase imagined that getting a grown woman and two newborn babies out of the house had to be difficult enough. Rebecca probably wasn't toting an armful of sheets and towels with her as well.
"Show me the furnace."
Jameson led Chase to the furnace, down the hall from the laundry room. That part of the basement was all old stone and medieval looking. The furnace was running. It was an old model, the kind you could open and burn evidence in the fire. Chase opened the front and flames snapped out, crackling in the dark room. If Rebecca burned anything in there, it was long gone.
A quick flash of her tossing in the babies went through Chase's mind and he promptly pushed it back. They assumed that she didn't want to hurt the babies since she'd waited for them to be born, but none of them really knew what that crazy bitch was up to. If she just wanted Ari, maybe she would have waited for the birth to make it easier. The possibility that she had already killed the babies loomed in the back of Chase's mind, haunting him.
He closed the front of the furnace and looked at Jameson. Without a word, he knew the old man had wondered the very same thing.
"Any suggestions?" Chase asked Jameson, but the old man just dropped his head and shook it.
So no blood meant no ritual.
They could still do some spells, but this was the big one. This was the one that could fight through magic and possibly find her when the spells likely failed. If Rebecca put enough thought into this to burn the sheets and towels, to get rid of any evidence that might be used by the witches, then she was smarter than they thought. She'd been planning this right under their noses.
***
"I don't think the midwife pulled this off by herself." Gabe paced back and forth among a small group of the security team. Willow stayed quiet, watching, waiting for the right time to speak her mind.
"Why do you think that?" Dex asked, leaning against the door frame. These were the King's most trusted, the ones he considered friends. Willow was sure they weren't involved, but she'd used her magic to keep track of them nonetheless. Just in case.
"A few reasons," Gabe said, still pacing. "For one, this wasn't an impulse. This has been planned for a long time, maybe even before Lily got pregnant."
"How can you even know that? We have no idea if the target was Ari, the babies, or if they're just being used as bait. And if the target was the babies, then there was no way to know, so it couldn't have been planned that long ago."
"True, but we also can't rule it out. If Ari was the target, Rebecca might have found a way into the trusted circle to gain access. It is possible that she'd been planning this for some time."
Dex shook his head. "Ari has to be the target. What does she want with the babies that she couldn't have gotten from Lily and Micah's baby?"
"I don't know." Gabe stopped his pacing for a moment, looked out the window, then resumed his back and forth path across the room. "I don't see how that chubby little woman could have gotten Ari and two babies out of this house, against their will, on her own."
"If she drugged Ari, it explains everything. We already know that Lex was drugged, through the tea, so Ari probably was too."
"And she dragged a drugged Ari out of the house… with two babies?" Willow snorted. Vampires weren't as smart as they thought they were.
"And no one noticed that?" Gabe turned to stare at Dex for a long moment, then continued. "It's possible that she got Ari to go along willingly."
"How do you figure?"
"If she had the babies, threatened her, Ari would have done anything she wanted."
"What about Cole?" Willow asked. "Has anyone found him yet?"
"As far as I'm aware, no one has seen him. Maybe that means he's involved. I don't know." Gabe sighed. "But when we find him, I want to speak with him immediately."
Dex closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. The possibilities were endless and pointless to explore as far as Willow was concerned. They could run scenarios about what might have happened all night. It didn't help them find her.
They were right about one thing though, there was probably an accomplice. Willow would have been able to tell if Rebecca was a witch. No matter how much cloaking one did, there was always some trace, some scent left behind. There was none of that with Rebecca.
There was something off about her scent, but it wasn't of a witch. That much Willow was certain. So by that alone, she at least had the help of a witch in all of this, if not from others as well.
Samuel stormed into the room and slammed the door behind him. "Give me an update."
It was just like that asshole to be gone all this time and then show up acting like he's running the show. He got away with it though. Dex updated him on what they knew so far. He eyed Finn in the corner with a curled lip. He obviously wasn't happy that the king let him out of the dungeon.
No one seemed to care anymore about what happened to the vamplings. They were back, and currently safe, so the focus was turned to the disappearance of Ari and the twins. Willow thought it was a mistake. Something gnawing at the back of her mind told her the two were connected.
She tried talking to Michael about it, but then Finn was released, and he was gone. She hadn't mentioned her suspicions to anyone else. It made more sense to find some evidence, or at the very least, formulate a solid theory, before she brought it to the vampires attention. They didn't take her seriously, so it wasn't likely that they'd want to listen to her.
It just didn't make sense to her that those kids were taken, released, out of nowhere, and then Ari and the babies are taken. It was too much coincidence. It was also way too easy. While everyone's attention was on the kids, Rebecca had the opportunity to sneak in and do what she needed to do, unnoticed.
The thing was, Rebecca didn't have access to the kids. In order for her to be involved with what happened to them, she needed help. And not just any help, she needed help on the inside. As in, someone on the security team, someone trusted.
Samuel thought that someone was Finn. Willow knew that was bullshit. Finn seemed like a good guy. Michael was an excellent judge of character, and she trusted him. Even if she didn't know Finn that well herself, Michael would know if there was something up with him. She had to believe that.
"You're awful quiet, witch," Samuel said with his usual smug arrogance. He stepped in her direction, likely trying to intimidate her. At nearly seven feet tall, and the face of a hardened criminal, Samuel had no hard time intimidating people. At least most people. Willow wasn't one of them.
"Is there something you'd like me to say?"
"How about your thoughts?" He smirked and Willow knew there was no way he was interested in her thoughts.
"My thoughts on what?" She was going to play dumb and maybe he would leave her alone. No matter what she thought of all this, it wouldn't be Samuel that she confided in. He was the last person she would tell what she was thinking.
"Of course." Samuel huffed. "Useless as usual. I don't know why Alexander keeps you around." He turned to go back to Gabe and Dex, barking orders about where to go and what to do next.
Willow watched him with narrowed eyes. It wasn't just about not liking the asshole. There was more to it. As much as her twin was a good judge of character, Willow was a good judge of bad character. And Samuel was right in her wheelhouse.