Enslaved in Shadows (7 page)

“Do you think this has something to do with the missing vampires?” Oliver Deadcrest asked.

“Exactly. And t
his is why I agreed to offer her aid in exchange for information. There are no photos of her as she has been secluded away from the main population for over five years.
Apparently
,
her ex-husband Marcus Reinhold knew he’d be targeted so he kept a close eye on her. From speaking with her over the
phone,
she sounds strong and is willing to cooperate with our team to the best of her ability. She’s agreed to come down to the station. She wants to meet the team and I wanted to make sure everyone’s here front and center.
The assignment starts tonight.
”

The Shadow
Unit
had been put together as a result of immortals coming out to top government officials of the world. It’d been over twenty years since the first official vampire sighting, and ten years since the entire population of immortals had revealed themselves to the
highest officials in the world.

Governments all around agreed the world’s population would go into mass hysteria if they discovered that all things that went bump in the night and roamed during the day were real. The plan was simple
:
integrate and stay hidden from the world, live amicably in peace among humans and don’t fuck up. Unfortunately
,
many
immortals didn’t like the rules
,
so the Shadow
Unit
was put together to police the idiots and maintain order.
There was also a mass population of humans that were in the know but not affiliated with the government.
They found out in various different ways, and ultimately they didn’t try and capitalize on what they knew.
The c
onsequence
s
of outing an immortal were deadly.
There were still some immortals out there that felt
bowing out of a war with humans
was not in their best interest. But for the most part
the
Shadow
Unit
put themselves in and around the world in teams of nine. Dravaggio’s team handled two states in the sou
thern part of the
Unit
ed States,
Texas and
Louisiana.

Up until eighteen months ago they were not only on target, but
casualties were at their lowest,
u
ntil vampires started to go missing from House Deadcrest.

“Agent Stone, I want you to handle this in its entirety and keep me posted.”

Olly was the first to stand and speak against the captain’s decision as did Agent Stone.

“That’s bullshit and you know it Captain,” Olly began. “I should be the front man on
this. B
esides
,
Stone’s a wolf what the hell can he accomplish?”

Captain Dravaggio looked over at Olly and then back to Stone.

“Is there something you have to tell us Olly? Something we weren’t aware of when it comes to your kind?”
Royal families
,
although they could go out in the day had certain
protocols, which stretched,
into the vicinity of his team.
He would have preferred Oliver on the case but he was n
ewly integrated into the Royal F
amily. H
e and his daughter.
It didn’t matter that he’d been a part of the group for over a hundred years.
To House
Deadcrest
,
Oliver was a baby at best and still hadn’t taken the blood vows with his wife.
Oliver was still considered a Reg by design.

“Sir?”

“House protocol prevents your help in this does it not? Is Dagas still enforcing slave law?” Dravaggio growled.

Olly’s brows arched into his hairline and his face contorted with anger. Dravaggio could see the heat in his eyes when he sat back in his chair and mumbled yes.

“What was that Olly? I couldn’t hear you. Speak up.”

Olly’s eyes flared wide before he closed
them
and spoke louder so everyone could hear. Not that they needed to but Dravaggio wasn’t going to have his men thinking they could all speak out of turn.

“Yes.” Olly sneered.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes
sir.”

Dravaggio began pacing at the front of the room but continued speaking.

“I’m told s
he has one other family member -
her five year old daughter.”

Stone took that moment to curse under his breath, but so did the other men sitting at the table. Dravaggio knew they would disapprove but he didn’t care. The job would get done either way. This woman had information that could help them recover the missing vampires, case closed. Enough said.

“Obviously as all of you have expressed you can see the danger she’s in due to having Marcus’s daughter. Bottom line
is
he wants the girl back and he wants his ex-wife dead. I’ve checked the assassin boards and there is a five million dollar marker on her head. He’s not fucking around. Marcus Reinhold, we assume is mortal. We have reports that he’s been hospitalized on several occasions when he was a child.
We do know his family practices Obeah back in his homeland Belize.
I have some contacts in the spirit realm and I’ve made inquiries, but nothing has surfaced yet.
We need to know where he’s getting the VAB from.
Who’s he supplying
?
As I said and Olly pointed out
, also
this could very well have something to do with our missing
person’s
cases.” It did
,
but he didn’t say that out loud.

Dravaggio finished his debriefing and walked out the room.
He knew Stone wasn’t happy about the assignment, and didn’t care.
This was his case and the wolf was
going to do the job regardless.

* * * *

This shit was for the birds, hell the shit was for anyone other than him. Why did he get stuck with babysitting duty? All they needed was to get the information from the mortal and drop her and her luggage at a warded safe house. He could get the witches to conjure up a spell that would stop anyone from going anywhere near her or her child. Draven ran a hand over his face and continued walking towards his office. He’d joined the Shadow
Unit
almost five years ago and never once regretted signing on, but today he seriously thought he needed to rethink his job occupation. Babysitting was not part of his service delivery.

The bastard Marcus had to be mortal. There was no other explanation.
His family practicing Obeah was a good a reason as any to learn things humans shouldn’t know.
Stone decided he’d talk to his old contact Cyrian. He still ran Odessa’s. Maybe he’d heard of him and could give him inside information.

His stomach hurt at the memories of being in Belize; an experience that was burned into his soul. Burned so bad he still dreamt about
her
.
Another memory not only burned, but caused serious pain to him and his wolf. The same delicate flower eyeing him entang
led with a vampire named Chloe.
He’d wanted to take that night back a million times over, and never could.
Fuck, it was one night,
that’s it.
But that one night had a lasting impression that followed him from Belize all the way back to the states.

Marcus would be handed over to his government
,
and then tapped on the ass and sent on his way. Their laws compared to mortal law wasn’t soft by comparison, you fucked up, you died.
Most of the time.
It was
exceedingly
rare that second chanc
es were given, and if it was a H
ouse matter and
the
Shadow
Unit
wasn’t involved, well immortals prayed it never came to that. The
H
ouses had a way of digressing back to a time where their primal instincts ruled their decisions and sometimes death was a f
ar better sentence tha
n what a H
ouse decreed. He’d signed up with the Shadow
Unit
with the intention of doing some good for his kind, not babysitting a mortal with a child. When the teams were put
together,
they actually policed immortals ensuring that all went well, small crimes were dealt with as it was deemed necessary. The selling of VAB and other trinkets of concern were considered sacred and punishable by death.
Babysitting a human and her child was never once part of their assignments.

The sound of his phone took him from his thoughts and Draven picked up on the second ring.

“Stone.”

“Baby, it’s me. Just wanted you to know I have everything ready for dinner. Steaks extra rare just the way you like them. I’m stopping by the office on my way to my moms, but everything is in the oven waiting for you. Okay?”

“Alright. Thanks, and tell your mother I said hello.”

Melissa
. There hadn’t been a mate bond between them but they talked about it constantly.
His wolf wouldn’t acknowledge her as his mate, but the two of them decided a while ago
that
starting the process would be wis
e. His wolf would follow suit.
She was the one for him, whether his wolf bowed to it or not. There’d been plenty of wolves mated without the bond and went on
to live long fulfilling lives,
and he planned to be one of them with Melissa. It would take a while, years perhaps
,
but they’d have children of their own.

Stone rounded the corner and stopped dead in his tracks.
Impossible!
His nostrils flared to take another breath just to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
Can’t be?
That smell. He would never forget that fucking smell as long as he lived. Warm island breeze scented with coconuts and pineapples suffused in vanilla and nutmeg.
My island flower.
Stone shook his head in finality. It couldn’t be her. It’d been five years since he
’d
last seen her and buried his cock into heaven.
He’d left her in the jungle. Then betrayed himself and her the next moment he got
.
He hadn’t even gone after her when she left with h
er friend. He was an asshole
that night back at Odessa’s
, and it
still plagued him.

Every now and
again,
he would still wake up in the middle of the night haunted by that smell, saturated in it and having to take care of his
never-ending
erection when it came to dreaming about
her
.

Chapter 5

The phone in Jesminda’s hand startled her as she made her way through the front door of the office building. The building was tall and unassuming. There were no markers to identify she was in the right place.
The man on the phone had just given her the building number and cross streets.
She was finally
t
aking steps to get her freedom back. She could have stayed, watched all those people fall under the power of Marcus’s thumb. But what kind of person would that make her? She valued life, and didn’t want to see it destroyed, even if they were vampires. Jes palmed her phone in her left hand while adjusting the strap to her purse with the other. Coming here was the right thing to do.

“Yeah, baby.” She answered on the second vibrate she knew it wouldn’t be long before her daughter Faith phoned her again.

“Mommy, mommy! Auntie Bells is making sweet tea! I love sweet tea so much!” Her daughter sang into her ear.

She smiled;
glad Faith was in a
suitable
place
and
safe from danger. Safe from Marcus. That would only last so long before he went in search of her friend.
She hadn’t spoken to Bells in over three years.
She was thankful she still had a friend to turn to. She’d followed in her mother’s footsteps and become a statue of unfeeling emotions. She’d met Marcus on the plane back from Beliz
e. Had known his family was
wealthy
and owned the entire island of Caye Chapel.
They had cornered the market in building vacation homes and later selling them for millions.
He had let Bells come around for the first couple of years. After a
while,
he’d told her Bells wasn’t a
loyal
friend to her or her daughter. She hadn’t even put up a fight, not because it was true, but because she wanted her friend out of harm’s way.

Bells was a shifter from House Phoenix. She hadn’t known at first, but after the first year of Faith’s birth and the entire debacle back at Odessa’s, she’d come clean. Immortals were a secret to humankind, most of humankind anyway. And it was meant to stay that way indefinitely.
Otherwise,
the governments would try and control them. They’d signed a treaty and rules were rules. They were even trying to enact a secret law where immortals would have to register so the government could keep tabs on them and what they were d
oing. Bells explained all the H
ouses agreed against the ruling and this was how
t
he Shadow
Unit
s
came about. Policing their kind and along the way helping the government as best they could with new medicines and some forms of magic. They didn’t share all their secrets but just enough to be trusted and to ma
ke the governments comfortable.