The Dark-Hunters (355 page)

Thankfully, they didn’t have to go more than about ten blocks before they reached the famed Seattle Serengeti Club. The windows were tinted so dark that she couldn’t tell if anyone was inside or not. There didn’t appear to be any cars in the area that could belong to the club or its workers.

“Is it open?”

Ravyn put his car into park and got out. He didn’t answer her until he’d opened up her car door. “It opens at dusk and the owners live here.”

Before she could ask about the odd note in his voice, he took Patricia from her lap and carried her through the back door of the club.

Wondering why the door wasn’t locked, Susan followed him down a short corridor, toward an office area.

“Excuse me!” an attractive redhead snapped as she saw them. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

Ravyn didn’t hesitate or stop as he carried Patricia toward a door off to his right. “Get Dorian. Now.”

The woman sneered at him. “And who are you?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just go get Dori.”

Arms akimbo, the woman looked like she wanted to lash out at him. She cast a dire go-to-hell look at Susan before she left.

Ravyn paused at a door. Susan stepped around him to open it, then stepped back for him to enter what appeared to be a clinic. He laid Patricia down very carefully on the hospital bed that was closest to the door.

“Is there a doctor here?” Susan asked.

“Yeah.”

Just as she started to blink, a man appeared directly in front of her. Out of nowhere. He just poofed into the room like some weird TV show effect. With shoulder-length black hair, he bore a striking resemblance to Ravyn. “What are you doing here?” he demanded between clenched teeth.

Ravyn’s face was completely stoic. “The Addamses have been attacked by Daimons. Patricia needs medical attention immediately or she’s dead. The others will be here as soon as they can make it.”

The man, whom she assumed must be Dorian, slid an irritated gaze to Susan. “I don’t know her.”

“She’s a new Squire.”

There was a loud commotion outside before the door flew open. Jack came in along with a short African-American woman who rushed to the bed. By the way the woman started examining Patricia, Susan figured she was the doctor.

“Who else was hurt?” the doctor asked Jack.

“Most of us. But Mom was the only one who got seriously damaged. Will she be okay?”

The doctor didn’t answer. “You need to wait outside with the others, Jack.”

He went white.

The man, who still hadn’t identified himself, took Jack by the arm and led him toward the door. “I think we all need to leave Alberta to her work.”

Susan felt for the boy as tears gathered in his eyes. “It’ll be okay, Jack,” she said, praying she was right. Having lost her own mother at Jack’s age, she couldn’t stand the thought of him losing his.

Ravyn gave her a knowing look. “Yeah, Jack. Alberta won’t let anything happen to your mom. She’ll be back on her feet, yelling at you, real soon.”

Jack nodded bravely as he walked out of the room.

Susan followed Ravyn into the hallway where he drew up short. Looking around him, she sucked her breath in sharply to see a group of extremely handsome but angry men.

An older man who appeared around the age of sixty curled his lip at the sight of Ravyn before he spat on the floor at Ravyn’s feet. “You know better than to come here. Ever.”

An air of exhaustion settled over Ravyn, as if he didn’t want to deal with this right now. “It was an emergency.”

That didn’t seem to appease the man at all, and it was then she realized this was the sanctuary his family owned. “You should have let the humans bring her.”

“Dad—”

He hissed at the man who’d joined them in the clinic. “Don’t defend him, Dorian. If not for the laws of sanctuary, I’d already be tasting his blood.”

Ravyn’s features hardened as he approached his father. Anger mixed with hurt deep inside him. They hadn’t seen each other in more than a century, and still his father couldn’t look at him without curling his lip. Ravyn remembered a time when he had respected this man. When he would have done anything for him.

Part of him hated his father for the fact that he’d just stood by and watched while Phoenix killed him all those centuries ago. But another part was the little boy who’d once thought the world of this man. The little boy who used to ride on his wide shoulders and play chase with him. That part had wanted some kind of comfort over the death of his family.

Instead, they’d killed him, too. His father had even kicked him as he lay dying on the floor and spat on him. He looked at the spittle beside his boot. His father still spat at him.

And that awoke a potent rage inside him. It was what he focused on now. “What galls you most, old man? The fact that I betrayed you, or the fact that I had the balls to set it right when you didn’t?”

He lunged at Ravyn only to have Dorian catch him. “Don’t, Dad. He’s not worth it.”

Ravyn smiled sinisterly. Dorian had no idea just how right he was. “Yeah,
Dad,
I’m so not worth it.”

“Get out,” his father snarled, his voice thick with hatred, “and don’t come back here ever.”

“Don’t worry.”

Ravyn started for the door until he realized that Susan was still following after him. What the hell was she thinking? “You need to stay here with the others.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Susan…”

“Look,” she said sternly, “you’re the one who dragged me into all of this. No offense, Otto, Kyl, and Jessica look at me as if they want to kill me. I want to kill Erika and you’re the only one of them who seems to be bulletproof. So between my choices, you look like the safest bet for my continued survival.”

Even though his features were angry, there was a glint of humor in his black eyes. “Trust me, I’m not. I’m headed out there into the lion’s den. If you stay here, the bad guys can’t get you. But if you go with me, they can.”

Maybe he was right, but something in her gut told her that she needed to stay with him, and if there was one thing in her life she’d learned to trust, it was her gut. “Ravyn—”

“Listen to him, human,” a brittle voice said from behind her. “Getting innocent people killed is what he’s best at.”

Grief so profound that it took her breath flashed into Ravyn’s eyes before he hid it. “Go to hell, Phoenix.”

Susan turned to see a man behind her who was an exact duplicate of Dorian. The only reason she knew it wasn’t him was that this guy had on a pair of jeans and a denim button-down shirt instead of the pleated pants and black shirt Dorian had been wearing.

Phoenix narrowed his eyes before Ravyn opened the door and stepped through it. Susan headed out behind him just as Otto and Leo were coming in from the back alley.

“Where you going, Ravyn?” Otto asked.

“To check on Cael.”

Leo frowned. “We were going there t—”

“No,” Ravyn said in a tone that brooked no argument. “We’ve already got one Squire MIA and I’m sure he’s dead. No need to get another one of you killed. I’ll handle it.”

Otto scoffed. “Are you insane? You can’t fight beside Cael. You’ll just weaken each other.”

That didn’t seem to faze Ravyn at all. “I’ll have a good fifteen minutes before being in his presence weakens me. So will Cael. Believe me, the two of us can do a lot of damage to anyone who might attack us in that amount of time. I’m pretty sure we’ll be all right.”

Otto shook his head. “Then I’m going with you.”

“So am I,” Leo said.

Ravyn growled at their unreasonable insistence on joining him. He couldn’t stand the thought of anyone dying so needlessly. If he had more time, he’d waste it arguing with them. But he already had a bad feeling about one of the very few friends he’d had all these centuries. The last thing he wanted was to see Cael dead, and he was too tired to argue anymore. He needed to get over there and find out if Cael was still alive. And if Cael was dead, then he wanted to hunt for the ones responsible. “Fine.”

Without another word, he got into his car, only to find Susan getting in on the passenger side.

“What are you doing?”

She gave him a blasé stare. “I told you. I’m going with you.”

Like he really wanted that. In truth, all he wanted right now was to be alone to deal with the turmoil of this day. “I thought you’d ride with Otto since, in direct contradiction to common sense, they’re going, too.”

She let out a very undignified snort. “And I told you that the man acts like he’s looking for a reason to kill me. Not to mention he, unlike you, isn’t Kevlar.”

Ravyn sighed as he started the car and dropped it into gear. He might be bulletproof, but he wasn’t completely invincible. They could chop off his head and kill him easily enough. But he decided not to worry her with such trivial details.

“Where are we going?” Susan asked.

“Ravenna.” Cael lived over by the university, in the basement of a less than refined club that was owned by a family of Apollites. Ravyn had been telling Cael for years that he was playing with nitro by having the enemy so close.

Sod off,
he’d always say.
I like danger. Besides, all I have to do is throw on some clothes, walk upstairs, kill a few Daimons, and come home. You can’t beat that.

Ravyn only hoped his friend wasn’t paying for that arrogance now.

“You okay?”

He glanced over to Susan. “Fine.”

“You know when people say fine, it generally means ‘leave me the hell alone because I don’t want to talk about what’s really bothering me.’”

“And sometimes it just means they’re fine and there’s nothing else to say.”

She made a face as she considered that. He could tell she wasn’t buying it. “Maybe, but can I ask a question?”

Ravyn shrugged. “Free country, which means I don’t have to answer it.”

By her pinched features he knew that she didn’t care for his answer. But after a few minutes, she turned toward him. “Knowing how they were going to treat you, why did you take Patricia to your family when you could have taken her to a hospital?”

Aggravated at the reminder of how much his family hated him, Ravyn tightened his grip on the leather steering wheel. He’d forgotten about the fact that Susan was a journalist, which made her observant and nosy—two things that were lethal to a man who didn’t like to talk about his past or his present. Damn, he’d have to be more on guard around her.

He also knew that when dealing with such beasts, it was pointless to hedge. She would just pursue him until she had an answer … or he killed her.

Nah, they had enough problems without him doing that. Besides, she was oddly appealing to him. Especially the gentle curve of her lips and the way they turned up ever so slightly whenever she was waiting for him to answer her.

It was almost enough to make him drag this out …

But in the end, he answered her with the truth. “One, she wouldn’t have been safe at a hospital. The Daimons can come and go there since it’s public domain, and I have a feeling that they would have been back to finish her off since she’s so significant in the Squire world. The only protection a human has against them is to be in the privacy of their own home. No Daimon can enter a private residence unless they’ve been invited in. Two, and most importantly, can you imagine trying to explain away the bite wound on her neck? I think the average doctor might get a little concerned to see what appears to be human teeth and yet not human teeth shredding a woman’s neck. This was the easiest way to get her help without attracting unwanted attention from someone like, oh say, a journalist.”

“You might just have a point with all that,” she admitted in a grudging tone.

Susan fell silent as she watched the streetlights cut across Ravyn’s face. He really was a good-looking man. But it wasn’t just that that she found appealing. There was something more to him. Something that was in pain and at the same time feral. It made her want to soothe him, especially since she understood what it was like to be alone in the world.

Don’t think about it.
Her mind was right. She had much more important things to focus on at present than how good he looked and how attracted she was to him.

Her thoughts went to Erika. “So how do you think they got into your house?”

“Hell if I know. Someone would have had to have been inside the house to invite them in. She swears she didn’t do it, and it damn sure wasn’t me.”

That wasn’t comforting.

“Have you any idea what’s going on with the Daimons tonight? Is this normal for them?”

“No,” he said sincerely. “It’s highly unusual for them to attack like this. Normally they pick off a few humans and we kill them before they get much age on them. Since their goal is to keep living, they usually run from us, not toward us. And I’ve never seen them attack a Squires’ facility before.”

She digested that and wondered why it was different now. What was the catalyst? Could it be the Stryker person that Kyl had mentioned earlier or was it something else?

“What about this Cael? I take it he’s a friend of yours.”

“Yes.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Almost three hundred years.”

“Wow. I’m impressed. I guess long-term relationships don’t scare you, huh?”

He frowned at her teasing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He still looked perturbed and she strangely found that amusing, too. She didn’t normally tease people she didn’t know. Yet there was an air about him that just begged her to nettle him. It must be that same suicidal tendency humans had to jump whenever they stood on the edge of a cliff.

Or maybe it was the fact that she liked the way his face softened whenever she amused him. It was extremely beguiling and made her wonder if he’d always been as stern and serious as he was now.

Ravyn slowed as he drew near the Happy Hunting Ground. Yeah, he’d always loved that tongue-in-cheek name for a well-established Apollite/Daimon bar that catered to college students. The college crowd thought it was a play on the singles scene. What they didn’t know was that the black dragon shadow flying against a yellow sun on the club’s sign was a welcome mat for an Apollite to his Daimon brethren, to let them know they were safe here. Originally Cael had been sent in to shut them down, but the Apollites had quickly offered to make a bargain with him. They would be respectable so long as he protected them. They had even invited Cael to live on the premises. For reasons unknown, Cael had accepted. Now the Daimons tended to stay away. And it was open season on those Daimons who hadn’t gotten the word there was a Dark-Hunter in the basement, and who were unlucky enough to wander into the Happy Hunting Grounds to snack on some young college student.