Chapter 19
Christian violated so many traffic regulations getting to the mothers’ retreat it was a miracle he didn’t have a swat team on his tail by the time he arrived around twenty minutes later. With preternatural speed, he rushed inside the Adirondack style lodge and upstairs to the third floor where the three V clinic patients resided.
The maternity ward seemed eerily quiet. There were no voices, no laughter, nothing but the sound of a T.V. coming from one of the patient rooms down the hall. Christian paused in the family waiting area. Everything appeared normal. The cheery surroundings, outfitted with light green Berber carpet, wallpaper with babies asleep on fluffy white clouds had always been a happy place for parents and family members, staff too. Now a feeling of doom hovered overhead like clouds ready to unleash deadly twisters. His staff would have never sounded that alarm unless someone was critically injured or worse.
On his next intake of breath, he scented blood. Human blood. His own ran cold, because the smell was fresh and very strong. Steeling himself for what he might find, Christian followed the scent trail to the nurses’ station but found it empty. He rushed toward the wing occupied by the three patients. As he rounded a corner, the sweet, metallic smell engulfed him and he saw someone lying face down, half in, half out of a patient’s room wearing blue scrubs. He knew with a sinking heart it was Blake. Surprise along with regret and anger boiled up inside him at the sight of his nurse lying face down in a large pool of blood. He could hear no heartbeat but he knelt down and checked his pulse anyway. There was none.
A ring of deep crimson, almost the size of a basketball, covered the back of his scrub shirt and Christian knew he’d been shot. Now he picked up the faint scent of gun powder, previously masked by the smell of human blood which always overwhelmed a vampire’s olfactory abilities when it was fresh and abundant.
His nose told him Blake was not the only casualty in the building. Since there was nothing he could do for the man, Christian hurried on following the blood smell. In the other two patient rooms, he discovered Nathan’s three security guards and two female humans on the floor, face down. Friends or family members he surmised. All were dead, shot in the head or chest. The scene was like a rabid execution style killing. Unfathomable. Surreal.
He knelt and gently turned the head of the woman closest to the door in the last room he checked. The girl couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, nineteen years old. What possible reason could there have been to take her life or any of these lives?
The senseless horror before his eyes spawned fury born of grief. His brain synapses must have taken a brief hiatus because nearly a minute passed as he stood there taking in the irrational, heinous scene before he realized his three patients were missing.
He knew they were gone, taken by whoever did this because their scent was ambient, not prevalent. He searched anyway but the floor was void of people, except those three rooms bathed in blood from the bodies of six unfortunate souls. He found no signs of a struggle. Nothing seemed out of place. Patient’s beds were unmade as if they’d merely left them to use the restroom or take a walk. Personal belongings on bedside tables, drawers and closets were untouched. None of what he viewed made any sense. There should have been signs of a struggle. All three pregnant females were mature, possessing strong physic and telekinetic abilities. Each of them could have thwarted a human abductor with a gun, unless fear had gotten the better of them. A distinct possibility with so much carnage. He could think of no reason the women would have left willingly. Their mates and children were nowhere near this place. Perhaps they complied to save the lives of the humans, but the six dead bodies suggested otherwise.
Still Christian held to a thread of hope that his patients had found a way to escape this horror. He was about to continue the search downstairs when he heard a vehicle approaching the house. Having no idea who might be arriving, he raced down the stairs into his great room just as the front doors flew open. Asa and Noah rushed inside.
“What the hell’s going on?” Asa demanded as he stalked toward him.
Noah followed. “Both of our cellular phones sounded the emergency alarm. We came straight away. I attempted to call you while Asa drove. Obviously, your alarm sounded as well?”
Christian had been in such a rush to get inside, he’d left his phone in the truck.
He met his partners near the middle of his great room seeking words for an explanation that simply didn’t exist. “Yes it did. I’m afraid there is no easy way to say this. The three body guards for our patients along with Blake and two human females have been murdered. Shot. Each of them. They’re upstairs.”
“Shot? My God! This is inconceivable!” Noah exclaimed. “What about our patients?”
“Blake?” Asa spoke his name as a question. Bewilderment claimed his features along with horizontal lines of distress across his forehead. “This—this, I don’t even have words. Our patients? Are they okay?”
“I think we’d better sit.” He gestured toward couches and chairs made out of sassafras with southwestern-style upholstery situated in the center of the room.
Once they were all seated he got right to disaster number two. “Our three patients are missing.”
Both men appeared tongue-tied and shocked. Christian knew them well. They were devastated and like him trying to hold it together in order to make sense of this slaughter and kidnapping.
Asa swiped a hand across his mouth and chin. “I don’t understand how the hell this happened. Dominic and Nathan’s men were professionals. How could whoever did this break in here to begin with, then overpower three armed humans with combat training and three mature vampires?”
Christian wondered the same things. His gaze slid toward the wide oak staircase, his thoughts to the sick, inane scene upstairs. “I have no idea how they got in without keys or tripping the alarm unless they were let in. If I were to guess the body guards and the human visitors initially tried cooperating with the killers hoping to save the women and themselves. Otherwise the body guards would have returned fire. That seems the most logical explanation since there were no signs of a struggle.”
“Pregnant females of our kind are not helpless. Why didn’t one or all enchant the killer or killers? All were mature vampires. Any of them could have used their preternatural abilities to disarm whoever threatened them. We all know the human body guards were really just a second line of defense. None of this makes any damned sense,” Asa ground out.
Noah disagreed with Asa’s line of thinking based on his next comments. “What if initially they didn’t perceive the person or persons as a threat? We believe the killer or the cooperative of the killer to be a staff member. Who has keys to this place?”
Christian answered. “Us. Blake, Katie and Betty. Since we can rule out Blake that leaves Katie and Betty. I think we can all agree Betty isn’t our killer. Katie seems improbable too, but I’m beginning to think about anything is possible at this point.”
Asa cursed. “I agree both nurses are improbable murders, but we haven’t checked the place for points of a break in. Right now, I’m more worried about finding our missing patients.
We need to contact their life mates immediately. There’s no possible way to guess where they’ve been taken, but via their mating bond, the women might be able to give their men information to lead us to them.”
“We need their cell numbers. The clinic will have them,” Noah said.
“They should be in their charts upstairs,” Christian pointed out.
Asa said, “Okay, we’ll get to that in a minute, but I think we need a few minutes to breathe here and figure out how to break this to them. We’re upset and not thinking as clearly as normal. When the men get this news, upset and won’t even marginally describe what they’ll be feeling. Let me call Betty and have her round up those numbers that way I can casually ask about Katie. If she’s there we can rule her out as a suspect. Onto the other disaster of the hour, how in the hell are we going to tell these men their life mates are missing?”
Asa was right. Christian wanted to rip limbs from the person responsible. Especially in light of the fact all three of them had assured the couples this plan would protect them from the danger occurring at the V clinic.
He and Noah waited as Asa made the call then he placed the phone on the couch next to his thigh. “She’ll call back in a few with the information. Now we can rule her out because she’s still at the V clinic.”
“We could anyway,” Christian said.
Noah concurred with an, “Of course.”
“Betty said Katie took a late lunch. When Betty calls back she’ll let us know if she’s returned.”
“There is another very real possibility we’ve never discussed,” Noah began. “Which might explain why the women weren’t able to fight their assailant.”
“What possibility?” Christian prompted.
“Here’s what we know so far. Six humans, three of which were skillfully trained body guards are dead, our patients are missing and according to your findings, no signs point to anyone putting up a fight. We’ve always assumed the killer is human. What if he’s not?”
Christian glared at the man as his words sank in. “One of us?”
Noah shook his head. “No. One of our species, but definitely not one of us.”
“A feral!” Asa spat. All were silent for a spell as that horrible possibility sank in.
If that were true it would explain much, Christian mused. Most vampires were no match for a feral who by a cruel twist of nature had superior physical, psychic and telekinetic abilities. One could have easily thwarted the security system. Moving with preternatural speed and armed with a gun, they could have shot every human before any of the guards were able to draw a gun and return fire. To thwart the women and the guards, all they had to do was throw up a telekinetic barrier. In the space of seconds all of the carnage and mayhem he’d witnessed upstairs could have been easily accomplished by a feral vampire. This possibility was the first thing in a long time that made some sense. There was only one problem—motive.
Christian continued his line of thought out loud. “If you’re right Noah, why would a feral male or female be interested in pregnant women? Males want young healthy females of our kind to impregnate. Feral females love creating legions of male fledglings for sexual purposes. So, what would either sex gain by kidnapping our women?”
Noah hummed. “That is a mystery. Ferals rarely kill their own kind unless threatened. However, ferals are insane, so sky is the limit on motives. Besides, what other creature on the planet could kill three armed, combat trained men and abduct three mature vampires? The fact we have six bodies upstairs screams feral to me.”
Christian said, “I’ve been doing some thinking late at night when I can’t sleep. Noah, the other day you suggested the perpetrator might have created this cocktail for the purpose of some sort of experimentations. I’m beginning to think you’re right. Whether the person responsible is a feral or not, I think the killer wants to use our three patients for further testing. We know we’re dealing with what appears to be some sort of genocidal drug here, so it only stands to reason they’re searching for a way to destroy us en mass, which means they need test subjects.”
Noah stared at him with a troubled expression. “Sadly, you could be correct and I can only deduce the killers aren’t happy with the results they’ve viewed thus far from their drug. We’ve only had one adult casualty and not all of the affected patients aborted. Even if they had been more successful, killing a handful of pregnant vampires and their unborn children are like—”
Asa interrupted. “Like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun.”
Noah cleared his throat. “An apt description, yes. We still have no idea the far reaching effects of this drug. But I think we can all safely say these bloody bastards want to destroy vampires.”
Christian scratched his temple as a motive dawned. “You could be right. We are unquestionably the leading vampire fertility specialists in the world. Destroying our practice and our patients’ faith in us would result in a huge contraceptive measure for thousands of couples unable to conceive. Tiffany’s poisoning still makes no sense to me. Why her if our killer wants to destroy vampires?”
“Who out of the three of us has a life mate?” Noah asked.
Christian got his point. He looked away hoping to disguise his tangled emotions, namely guilt. If Noah was right Tiffany nearly died because of him. Anyone she encountered at the V clinic those couple days after he fed from her would have recognized his bite marks for what they were. Staff probably assumed he had designs on her as either a human lover or a life mate. Either way they’d have known killing her would hurt him and seriously distract him from his work and ferreting out a demented killer of vampires. If that were the case, they were dead wrong. Christian wouldn’t rest until this murderous bastard was caught.
Asa’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. It was Betty. Christian rushed to get paper and pen for Asa, who took down the numbers of the life mates. He heard the whole conversation. His gut pitched when Betty confirmed what none of them could believe. Katie had been gone since twelve thirty and it was now nearly two thirty. If she was taking an extended lunch hour she hadn’t told Betty or any of them.
“If Katie’s behind this,” Asa began. He just shook his head, his expression thunderous.
Noah said, “We can address that issue in a moment. We must get in touch with the life mates to see if the women have spoken to them.”
Asa proceeded to call their patients’ life mates. As expected, all three men’s reactions were explosive when they learned their pregnant spouses were missing. Not a one had heard from their life mates in the last hour nor could any mentally reach them when Asa asked them to try. Asa calmed them the best he could and told them to get here pronto.
While they waited for the men, he and Asa took off, first to examine the crime scene for potential clues, then they searched the house for break in points. They came up empty handed on both accounts. All exterior doors were intact. No windows had been broken. With the exception of brute force or keys no human could get in without approval from nursing, making Katie more and more the likely suspect because she worked here from time to time and had a set of keys. Christian couldn't see her doing all this mayhem by herself. Someone had to be working with her. But who? Could Noah also be right about a feral vampire being involved? It was almost too much to conceive that Katie worked with one. But at this point Christian could believe about anything.
Noah volunteered to make calls. First Betty to reschedule their afternoon appointments, then human resources for Blake’s contact information and finally the police. They were going to have to be very careful involving law enforcement agencies, but it had to be done. Six snuffed human lives were not something that could be covered up, even by a vampire.
Christian would break the news himself to Nathan about his men. How he and his partners would explain the other deaths to families, Christian had no clue. A bridge to cross in time.
When he and Asa returned about a half hour later, Noah sat where he’d left him, staring at the phone in his hand. Their gazes locked and Christian’s stomach plummeted when he viewed Noah’s stricken expression. “What now?”
He inhaled a sharp breath then cleared his throat. “I first called Betty to reschedule our appointments, but I didn’t even get that far. We have another disaster happening right now at the V clinic. Miss Peebles body guard, Mr. Townsend has been shot. It occurred in our parking lot, about an hour or so ago, shortly before she returned my call. A bystander called 911. Betty has been on the phone with me the whole time, updating me. She said Mr. Townsend is being transported to Ochsner Medical Center. Witnesses claim it was a carjacking and that a woman shot him and stole Mr. Davenport’s SUV.”
Asa scraped his fingers through his hair, his other hand knotted into a tight fist as he let loose a litany of curses. “Why the hell didn’t she say something earlier?”
“She didn’t know until the police came into the building to question potential witnesses.”
Noah’s words sliced through Christian’s soul with the brutal force and accuracy of a Samurai sword, nearly buckling his knees. Oh my God. Tiffany! “Where in the hell is Tiffany?”
“I have no clues there, Christian, but I’m afraid it gets even worse. I called the security company who monitors our outside entrances and parking lots and had them check the footage for the last couple of hours. The shooting was videotaped. I’m afraid we were correct in our assumptions. The car jacker was Katie.”