Anarchy (Hive Trilogy Book 2) (18 page)

Ryder eventually gave a nod. “We are going to trust Sam on this one. I have no doubt his plan is solid. When are you ready for us to move out?”

“I’m going to need at least a week to get everything sorted. Especially if Charlie plans on curing the little girl.”

Oh, I planned on doing that.

“I want to bring Tess and Jayden,” I said. “I promised my BAFF that I’d never leave him behind, and he’d be the first victim of the Quorum if I did.”

“I second that,” Oliver said. “I won’t leave without Jayden.”

“Already counted him,” was all Sam said.

“And Tessa?”

The enforcers exchanged a single look. It was fast, almost unnoticeable, but I freaking noticed. My anger was at boiling point again, and I was wondering if my hair might be smoking from all of the heat in my head.

Kyle was the first to try to reason with me. “Charlie, you have to understand that a vampire is a massive liability for us to carry around. She can’t travel in the sunlight, she needs a ton more blood than we do, and she’s going to be pretty hard to control for the first few months. If we take Tessa, we are pretty much signing our own death warrants.”

No. Just … no. I couldn’t leave her here to the mercy of vampires.

Still, he made some really valid points.

Ryder had a look of sympathy on his face, which immediately told me I was going to be pissed by what he was about to say.

“How do you even know she’ll want to run with you, Charlie? She’s been going full-throttle for the last couple of months to get into the vamp world, and according to you, she was obsessed with them for most of your lives. She also loves Blake, so I think she’ll resist you. There’s nothing you can do but let her learn the hard way that this is not the world for her.”

Fuck! Dammit, why did he have to be attractive
and
intelligent? Really, was it just too much to ask that he blindly agreed with everything I said?

“Well, I’m at least going to give her the option to leave with me. She always said her main reason for being in here was so that we would be together.”

Markus snorted. “Vampires and ash are rarely encouraged to be together. She’ll be part of the elite, and all too soon will start thinking of herself in the same way that all vampires do. As the superior race.”

My bestie was not shallow like that, but there was a part of her that had always wanted to belong somewhere. She had that with me and my mom, but once I was gone that had all fallen apart for her. Maybe what the vamps would offer her, a large and secure family, would trump me. This reminded me of something else I hadn’t had a chance to tell the boys yet. It was time they knew what we were up against, if they didn’t already.

“I have a confession,” I squeaked, and suddenly every enforcer stopped what they were doing and all eyes were on me. Shit, I hadn’t meant to make it sound that serious. Taking a deep breath, I rambled:

“Jayden overheard some rumors about the vampires being big assholes, so I used my keycard to get into the file room. Jayden picked a lock with a bobby pin because he’s like MacGyver or something, and then we read some crazy shit then got caught and pretended to make out as a cover for being in the room and then we ran.”

Whew. Got it all out in two sentences and I felt better already. I’d been meaning to tell them for ages. There should be no lies between us all.

Ryder and Oliver shared a look, no doubt reflecting on the fact that I said Jayden and I made out. To my surprise it was Sam who spoke. I could see the thoughts churning through him.

“What did you find?”

I explained in detail the blackmail files, the oil industry payments, the blood bank, the photos of the Original bloodbath. As I went into detail about each, Sam’s face darkened, until he exploded:

“I’ve been searching for this information for a long time, but never guessed it would be in paper form, in plain sight in the damn middle of the Hive.”

Yep, that was why simple minds worked best. Like Jayden’s and mine. With a grimace, Sam dropped his gaze and began typing away on his computer. I started to tell the enforcers a few more things about that day, before Sam growled, interrupting me.

Stepping over, I dropped down next to him. “What? What happened?”

The others also crowded closer. “Your discovery gave me an idea about where I’ve been going wrong in my search for information. I was going too deep, and needed to step back to the simple and old ways. There used to be this site which was almost like a notice board for the underworld. Jobs of an unscrupulous nature would be posted there, and people would apply for them. I never would have thought that this would be how Sanctum was hired. But looks like I was wrong. They tried to cover it up. They seem to have use of a technology expert with a skill-set almost as good as mine. Almost as good.” He did not sound boastful, just factual. “I’ve found encoded messages for the hit on Portland Hive, and Charlie. Tracing those back leads me to…”

He paused, his fingers flying across the keys again, and I was about to punch him in the arm when he finally continued: “Shit, traced it twice now, and both times leads back to our Hive. The hit was ordered by someone in here, someone with a high level clearance. They’re punching about twenty levels above Ryder’s security pass. And they have a lot of cash.”

Well, damn, we all knew who had the most money and clearance in this place. The Quorum. Those sneaky bastards had been behind it the entire time. But what was their end game?

The silence was too much for me. I had to start talking. I needed answers. “Why would the Quorum order me to be kidnapped? Why didn’t they just take me out when I first got into the Hive? Or in the culling? It would have been easy to end me in those battles. Instead they made my run through quite smooth.”

Lucas …
shit.
Was he in on this too? Why warn me that they were after me then?

Ryder stepped closer to me. “I have had my suspicions for some time that the orders for Sanctum were from someone on the Quorum. I went over the log of events on that night, and the council was ferreted away very quickly, almost as if one or more of them knew in advance.”

Kyle nodded. “When you mentioned you were looking into Allistair, I figured you had suspicions on the Quorum.”

“Who is Allistair?” I asked.

“The creepy looking head of the fourth house,” Kyle said without missing a beat.

Right, fugly. I stood then because I needed to move. Of course, maybe I just needed to be closer to Ryder. The moment I stepped into him, and that familiar scent of spices and cedarwood wrapped around me, I felt better, calmer even, able to organize my jumbled thoughts. Speaking them out loud helped even more.

“So we’re saying it’s probably not all of the Quorum, which is why I’m still living in the Hive and not dead or locked away in their laboratory. Still, one of those bastards hired someone who almost killed Jayden, and tried to coerce Ryder to their side so he’d help to kidnap me. They’ve been behind the scenes this entire time, manipulating everything … playing with our lives.”

Tension filtered through our group, built on fear and pissed-off-ness.

Kyle snarled: “The thing with Tessa is starting to make much more sense. I know we were only guessing at it before, but I have no doubt now that they allowed her change because of you.”

I lurched forward as worries for her came back full throttle. I’d been trying to suppress the fact that my bestie was now part of the “nightmare club.”

“Do you think they’ll hurt her?”

If that was the case, even if she refused, I was knocking out her undead ass and dragging her out of here by her hair.

“No, they won’t,” Markus said. “She’s much more use to them alive. They’re going to try and manipulate her, use her to ferret out your secrets. You have to assume anything Tessa knows, the Quorum will now be able to access.”

Which was pretty much everything. She was my best-friend-sister, I told her everything.

“She doesn’t know about your blood, right?” Markus finished, locking me in his stare.

Everything except that.

I shook my head. “No, I never had a chance to tell her.”

In hindsight, maybe I’d held that back for a reason. I sort of knew that with her close proximity to Blake it wasn’t knowledge to just hand across.

Ryder shook his head a few times, as if trying to sort his thoughts. “This complicates things. Even if Tessa doesn’t know of her blood, I still don’t want Charlie in here one more second than necessary. If a Quorum member is after her, then she’s not safe anywhere, even with us on full-time guard duty.” He turned to Sam. “I know you need a week, but I won’t give a second more than that.”

Sam gave a decisive nod, but his eyes looked lost. Again I was struck by how much I hated that we were blindly trusting him. Don’t get me wrong, Sam was family, but this was a life or death situation and my gut said he was hiding something. As if he’d read my mind, Sam’s dark gaze shot up and our eyes clashed. His look suddenly changed to something more biting. Was that … fear? Before I could say anything, the moment was gone.

In a smooth movement, Sam stood, closing his laptop. “Don’t worry, a week is enough time. I’ll get everything rolling. Be ready to go at a moment’s notice.”

After running out some of my aggression on the roof, I showered and went to find Tessa. A few feet from the medical ward, I heard her voice, demanding and shrill.

“More blood!” she screamed.

My hand froze on the door handle. Tessa, you stupid, stupid bitch. How could you want this life? Breathing to center myself, I entered the room and saw Tessa chugging a bottle of blood. My eyes were immediately drawn to the shine of her hair. It had been beautiful before, but looked absolutely stunning now. The pale blond ringlets were tight and glossy.

But unnatural. I preferred when she looked more real.

Now she was like a perfectly crafted doll, skin flawless and smooth. Not a single mark of her previous life remained, not the tiny scar that had been on her chin from when she got hit with a softball in gym, or those couple of persistent freckles which she did her best to cover with concealer. Nope. Nothing.

I flinched as her swirling-silver eyes swept over me. She squealed, dropping her bottle and pushing a nurse aside to reach out and grab my arm. She yanked me into a rib-crushing hug.

“Charlie! My bestie.” Her voice was full of happiness and I didn’t want to bring the world crashing down around her, but the roil of emotions inside guaranteed there was no way I could fake anything in regards to this.

My voice wavered, tears so close to falling. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” I choked out, my senses filled with her odd new smell, all vanilla and coppery blood. “I can’t believe you did this to yourself … to me.”

She released me from my hug. “I figured you would be pissed for a few days. But once you realize how amazing it is having me around you’ll see this was the best idea ever. Where’s Jayden? Have you seen how incredible my hair is?” She was actually grinning and it had my stomach churning. No real surprise that she was bouncing like a five-year-old on a chocolate high. I had always been the responsible part of our duo. She was the naïve, carefree one.

My voice was clipped: “Jayden is working in the blood feeding center. Ash are given ten hour a day jobs and made to live separately from the vampires. We live in cramped dorms and you will get your own fancy suite. I’m only permitted five minutes to visit you today and then you’ll be taken away to your new life and we’ll barely see each other.”

She scoffed, rolling her eyes. “Charlie, don’t be such a mom. I’ll go meet with whomever to sort out my new apartment and stuff and then I’ll come over tomorrow for movies and pizza.” She bounced again.

Then her face dropped as soon as she caught her mistake. “Blood and movies, whatever. Pizza is overrated.”

Now my arms were crossed because my BFF just talked shit on my favorite food. Pizza would never be overrated. Knowing my time with her was almost up, I had to move forward and deal with the most important reason for my visit. There were eyes on us, so I did the only thing I could and pulled her in for another hug.

“Meet me on the roof tomorrow night, at midnight,” I whispered, and as I released her, turning to walk away, her perfect face was prettily creased in frowns.

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying, because something told me Tessa would not be running away with us. Tessa seemed to like her new life just fine.

Craptastic.

The next day we were on the rooftop getting some sun. Two of the enforcers remained on rotational Charlie guard duty, and all of us had started to notice a pattern of random vampires outside the hallway of my apartment. It was a floor completely dedicated to ash housing, so they had no reason to be there. Bloodsuckers were keeping tabs on me.

We continued to keep all of our conversation inside the Hive general and light. We had confirmation that the bastards had bugged my apartment. The boys swept for them and found a few. We didn’t bother to destroy them; they would only replace them again, and we didn’t want them to know we were on to them. The ones they’d killed in the locker room were different. They expected the enforcers to be suspicious and to keep up security in there, but bugs in the apartment of the Hive, well, they knew we’d only sweep in there if we were suspicious of something.

For now, Jayden was laying low and staying out of our little rooftop planning session, but was ready to go with us at any moment.

Shit was most definitely going to hit the fan soon.

That morning, as we all sat in a little huddle, I decided it was time to inform the rest of them of my plans. I met Ryder’s gaze, knowing it would make him rage.

“I’m going to sneak into the girl’s room tomorrow in the daytime, when she’s sleeping, and feed her my blood. Then we can bust ass out of here.” Finding the bugs in my room, and vamps in my hall, had really shaken me. I felt like they were closing in on us, and I did not want anyone caught in the Hive’s deadly clutches. I didn’t care about Sam’s timing, I wanted out of here.