Redemption (Jane #4) (4 page)

I stood next to Felipe as the
passenger and his driver walked up to us. The passenger, an older
man with salt-and-pepper hair and a distinguished air, held out his
hand to Felipe.

"I am Captain Adamo
Albertini." His thick accent made him pronounce "captain" as
"capitahn". It was sexy, sexier than Felipe's, and I leaned a
littler closer to my boyfriend as I felt a small flutter in my
stomach.

Felipe returned the handshake
and introduced himself and the rest of the team. He saved me for
last, and when he said my name, Albertini raised my hand and kissed
my fingers in true gentleman style. I grinned like a schoolgirl and
gave Felipe a why-don't-you-do-that look. He narrowed his eyes, but
an amused smirk played at the corners of his lips as the captain
introduced his own men, last name only. The young man with the
machine gun was named Romano and I gave him a good, solid
don't-mess-with-my-boys stare when I saw him look at us with
disgust again. He frowned at me with an almost imperceptible
downturn of his mouth, but I think he got the hint.

Once introductions were
finished, the soldiers grabbed their packs from the trucks and
followed us to their new barracks. All but two of them were male,
so Felipe and the men took them to the human dormitory where a
section had been set aside in the male quarters. Though the captain
had protested, Bellini chose to station the women in two rooms
available across from me--after years of being empty, my hall
seemed to fill up rather quickly. Bellini used the public excuse
that he wanted their behavior to rub off on Marta, but I knew he
really wanted me to befriend them and have some allies on the
infantry squad.

Once the women were separated
from the men, they were as pleasant as I had hoped they'd be. They
were both in their mid-twenties and unmarried. In fact, they
informed me that the majority of the team was unmarried. Only the
captain and his lieutenant were tied down. The rest had been
hand-picked for the team, one of the reasons being that they were
single.

Though I hadn't realized it,
the team was specifically created to support the vampires' efforts
to make the world a safer place for mortal races and, as such, it
carried a fairly high mortality rate. Their training was brutal and
their missions were worse. Rossi, the short-haired woman, informed
me that she had been part of a team that was decimated while taking
out a trio of werewolves who had holed up in the Alps. She pulled
up her vest, showing me three identical scars slicing across her
abdomen.

"They sliced through my
stomach and uterus. I couldn't have children now even if I wanted
to."

I frowned, working up an
apology, but she just smiled and waved me off. "It doesn't matter.
I plan on dying doing this. I love this job."

Her grin was a little too big
and a little too wild, but she had heart and I could tell that she
knew how to do her job. If I had to have any crazy solider lady by
my side, I'd want it to be her. The other woman on the team was
quiet little De Luca. She had a soft, polite smile that could
disarm you in a moment, but I could tell from the scar peeking just
above her collar that she was battle-hardened.

Unlike the boys, who had to
bunk two to a room, the girls each got their own room. That was one
of the benefits of being the minority gender in a typically male
profession. And Annie, Marta, and I had gone out of our way to make
sure the girls' rooms were as comfortable as they could possibly
be. They each had armchairs that they could relax in and miniature
coffee pots were placed on top of their dressers. Sadly, they would
have no time to relax in their rooms at that time. We were due to
meet the men in the debriefing room in ten minutes. By the time
they had stashed their riot gear and rucksacks, we had to leave.
But we still made it to the room before the boys. Who says women
are always late?

"Settle down, please." Captain
Albertini's voice rang out loud and clear as he stood at the front
of the room, flanked by his second and Father Bellini. More chairs
had been brought in to accommodate the tripled group size and the
table had been shoved to one side. We all fit in where we could,
the three of us girls choosing a corner out of the way. Felipe took
a seat in the front row after throwing me a small smile, and I
noticed that Romano seemed to have attached himself to Felipe's
hip.

Good, I thought. It would do
the young man some good to learn a few manners from someone with
Felipe's class.

"I have something for you all
to watch. James, please start it." Albertini pulled down the
projector screen and signaled to a man in the back before moving to
the side to take a seat with the others.

I sat there next to the girls
as the film started to roll. It was a home video, taken sometime
recently. We could see soldiers moving in from the sides and the
screen was bouncing like the cameraman was running. The video was
grainy, but it was easy to tell that we were watching a squad
assault a warehouse. When the group burst through the door, the
screen went green and black, a feature of night-vision.

We watched as seated bodies
rose from the center of the building and moved toward the rapidly
approaching soldiers. They collided with fierce aggression and I
could hear screams and shouts from the weak microphone. I watched
with horror as a soldier was ripped to pieces, his arms literally
torn from his body. The vampire responsible for the demise of that
soldier turned toward the camera, a snarling smile breaking across
his face.

As he approached the camera, I
froze. I'd seen that face before and it still haunted my
nightmares. My gaze shot toward a chair in the front. I could see
Felipe, his shoulders tense, hands clenching the arms of the chair
so hard the wood was starting to splinter. A faint growl echoed
across the room and the soldiers nearest to him shied away, their
eyes anchored to my boyfriend.

He rose, the chair still
clenched in one hand, and stalked toward the projector, pressing
his face right up against it. Conrad had reached the camera by that
time and his facade took up the entire screen, a snarling,
sneering, green monstrosity.

I stood up and made my way as
quickly as possible around the mass of bodies. I reached him just
as his hand shot out toward that vile face. I grabbed his wrist to
prevent him from tearing the screen from the wall. He turned on me,
his face a mask of hatred and pain. His eyes were bloodshot and his
teeth were fully extended. I could hear his heart thumping in his
chest, angrily trying to beat through his rib cage. Despite the
risk of losing my hand or a large amount of blood, I reached for
Felipe's face, stroking his cheek with a finger.

"We're going to get him. He
can't run forever." I kept my voice soft and even, speaking to him
as if I were talking to an aggressive dog, or trying to talk some
suicidal office worker down off a ledge.

Felipe's nostrils flared as he
bared his teeth and he growled once more, but the color was fading
from his eyes and his teeth were receding. As his breathing and
heart rate slowed, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me from the room.
I followed, not daring to fight as he dragged me down the hall. He
stopped after we rounded a corner and he jerked me to him, wrapping
his arms around me so tightly I thought he might crack a rib.

His face was buried in my
shoulder and I was focusing so hard on breathing that it took me a
moment to realize he was sobbing. I'd known Felipe almost a year by
that point, and I'd never once seen him shed a tear or even well
up. This was a new development, and I didn't like it. I put my arms
around him and together we slid to the floor. Stroking his hair, I
tried desperately to think of something to say that was comforting
and filled with wisdom that would make him go "ah ha!", but my mind
was a complete blank. All that existed in the world at that time
was me, Felipe, and his tears.

Though it seemed like we sat
there for an eternity, it was probably only a few minutes. His
shudders lessened and I heard his breathing start to regulate. I
pressed my face to his neck and kissed his skin, tasting the salty,
coppery tears that had streamed down his cheeks.

"I love you, Jane. You know
that, right?" His head was still buried in my shirt, so his words
came out muffled, but I had no trouble hearing him and it brought a
huge grin to my face despite the tragic situation.

He pulled back and cupped my
face in both of his hands, peering into my eyes. Faint streaks of
blood stained his cheeks and nose and trailed around the corners of
his mouth to drop below his chin. His eyes were puffy and still
slightly bloodshot. I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his.

"I love you, too, baby."

He smiled and I knew that,
despite everything, we would be ok. He sighed and put his arms
around me again and we sat there for a few more minutes.
Eventually, he stood up and pulled me to my feet. His face was a
mess and my shirt was stained with pink tears, so he headed to the
bathroom while I went to my room to get changed--there's a reason I
wear cheap t-shirts most of the time. It's hard to get bloodstains
out of dry clean-only attire. After he had composed himself, we
headed back to the conference room to figure out how to kill the
man who was causing us so much misery.

By the time we got back to the
room, the projector had been shut off and the chairs and tables had
been rearranged. Felipe kept his eyes on the floor and led me to a
couple of empty chairs near the wall. Father Bellini and Captain
Albertini were handing out packets of information stuffed into
those yellow folders with the tie clasp on the end. Bellini gave
Felipe and I meaning stares as he handed us our folders. I smiled
at him, a big fake thing that told him that everything would be ok,
somehow. He just raised his eyebrows a little and moved on to the
next person.

I pulled the information from
the packet. It was a lot like what we normally received for an
assignment, but much more detailed. That in itself surprised me,
because our team of information gatherers was very thorough.
Apparently, the military had us beat in that regard. Or maybe the
combining of resources led to a lot more research. Either way, it
took us hours to get through it all, and that was before we even
began discussing it.

There was so much information
in the packet, I knew I wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of
it sitting in that uncomfortable chair, so I plopped myself on the
floor in an open space and spread the papers before me. Felipe,
seeing what a genius I was, came to join me and together we
arranged the information in a way that made it much easier to
digest. What we found shocked us and I sat there staring at the
piles for several minutes before I could fully comprehend what was
happening.

The first paper in the folder
was the most important. It was a map of a town on the far side of
Sardinia. Not large by any means, it housed about 5,000 citizens
and was considered a "sleeper community", the residence of those
who worked in the larger city nearby. According to the map, it had
a grocer, a school, a gas station, and two churches, one of which
held a sanctuary beneath it. When I saw the symbol for the
sanctuary, I paused and nudged Felipe.

"What is a sanctuary doing in
such a small town?"

"The city next to it is a very
popular vacation spot. There is a sanctuary there, too, but one was
built in the town to aid with the influx of visitors." He laughed
as my eyebrows crept upward. "Sanctuaries aren't just for those
vampires who live there. They provide housing for travelers as
well. While most vampires are better off financially than a lot of
humans, many are still not rich. The sanctuaries provide an
affordable place to stay for those who need a vacation."

"Have
you
ever taken a
vacation?" I let my doubt bleed into my voice. Felipe didn't seem
like the type to just lounge on the beach for a week.

"No. Too much to do."

I turned my head so that I
could look at him full in the face. "When this is all said and
done, we're taking a vacation. You need a break from the hectic
life of a finely honed killing machine."

He smiled and it looked
beautiful on his face after all we'd been through. "Alright, as
long as it's just the two of us. And we're not staying in the
sanctuary. We'll get a beach house or something."

"You got a deal." I leaned
over and kissed his cheek and we went back to analyzing the
information in front of us.

The map of the little town was
important because it showed the suspected locations of the vampire
covens located there. As I started to examine it further, my mouth
fell open and my heart sank. Red dots marked the areas of
infestation, and every section of town had at least one. In this
sleepy village of 5,000, at least a third of the houses were used
by vampires. Digging further into the papers, I discovered that
some of the homes still held families and those families were under
the control of the rogues.

Captain Albertini stepped up
to the front, pointing to a large map of the area that he had taped
to the wall. "As you can see, this village has been infested with
these vile creatures."

Ronin cleared his throat,
giving Albertini a narrowed stare. The captain smiled in return, an
expression that made my skin crawl. He seemed like the type of man
who knew exactly what he was saying and meant every word of it.
Briefly, I wondered if he really felt that way about vampires, and
if so, why he was working with them, but he continued speaking so I
didn't have time to ponder that.

"Nearly half the population is
under their control. They live side-by-side with families and the
mayor himself is housing Conrad." Albertini slapped the map with a
pointer he pulled from his pocket, indicating a larger house on the
edge of town. It was surrounded by a thick, white wall. "The
sanctuary has been overrun, as well. The priest and vampire
stationed there have been murdered, along with a young couple who
was vacationing at the town when Conrad and his crew arrived. This
is our target, and Conrad is officially enemy number one."