Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (17 page)

“Ready?” she asked as she walked toward the door.

Sarah nodded and followed her out into the hallway.

“So, seriously, how old are you?”

Zillah stopped and turned to face her. “I will be five hundred years old this December. Five centuries old, and I only remember two of them.”

The concept of being that old didn’t even faze Sarah anymore, but the cryptic response made her raise an eyebrow. “Why only two?”

She started walking again, and Sarah had to struggle to keep up with her.

“Does it have anything to do with the scars on your back?” Sarah panted.

“Yes,” Zillah said. And then she was quiet. Despite Sarah flooding her with thousands of questions, Zillah remained silent.

“And I’m guessing it has something to do with Bane?”

“Yes,” Zilliah muttered, “it does. I do not remember what happened or three hundred years of my life because of him. Everyone says it is a blessing that I do not know what he did, but they still have to live with it. That alone is worth killing him for.”

Rhiannon met them in the hallway, and like Zillah, she was outfitted with what appeared to be a Kevlar corset, expertly buckled over the top of a high-collared yet deep-dipping, V-necked, skintight leather shirt. The major difference between the arsenal Zillah carried and the one Rhiannon had was that Rhiannon’s was more steel-based. Strapped to her back, she had what Sarah could only describe as a sword—a very intricately carved, menacing-looking sword. Her auburn mane was pulled back from her face, which made her look all the more deadly. It confirmed Sarah’s suspicions that while Rhiannon was soft and kind, she could also be brutal and lethal.

“Are we all here?” Achan asked. The entire crew must have bought stock in a leather company because that seemed to be the material of choice for ass-kicking vampires in that house. Both Achan and Judah were both clad in leather pants, military-style, black steel-toed boots, and had a Kevlar similar to what Zillah carried but packed with blades and hand cannons. Achan wore only a muscle T-shirt under his, whereas Judah wore a black, short-sleeved shirt.

“I think we are still waiting on Taris,” Judah said as he loaded a clip into a gun. He tucked it into his holster. “He had to run up to the main house to tell Kalin what we were doing.”

“He’s not going with you, is he?”

“Yes, I am.”

The booming voice came from the doorway. They all turned to see Taris walking—or more apropos, storming—into the room, and each one of them had a different reaction. Achan smiled, Judah narrowed his eyes, Zillah was indifferent, and Rhiannon shook her head adamantly.

Sarah simply stopped breathing.

Standing before her was a warrior, cool, reserved, and deadly. Though his attire mirrored that of Achan’s, there was something about him that was different. The muscles under the strange wording on his upper arm twitched with anticipation. His eyes were sharp and ready. Shaggy, dark locks draped around his face, and the combination of his rugged bone structure, piercing gaze, and the dark metal gauge rings in his ears made him look like certain death on two legs. She was speechless.

“Damn, killer! Where’ve you been?”

Achan approached him and gripped his hand, pulling him in for a strange shoulder-to-shoulder hug.

“You ready?” Taris turned to Sarah.

The question helped her find her breath again. “What? Me? Why, why am I going?”

“Leverage, love,” Rhiannon spoke up. “He’s your friend. You can talk him into coming with us. I mean, he wouldn’t come with us willingly, would he? Hell, I wouldn’t come with us.”

A chorus of chuckles resonated through the foyer.

“Okay, ladies, no time like the present. Let’s move.” Judah barked the order as he slipped his leather trench over his wide shoulders. One by one, they all moved out of the foyer and into the courtyard, where Achan climbed into the driver’s seat of a large black van. Rhiannon, Zillah, and Judah all piled in the back. Sarah was hesitant but grabbed the side rail and was almost about to lift herself off the ground when she felt a hand on her shoulder gently pull her back down. She turned and stared up at Taris. Despite his menacing appearance, his face was soft, his eyes full of yet another new emotion, one that she would almost swear was some kind of affection.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he whispered down to her, drawing his face closer to her ear. “I promise my life on it. I will protect you.” He leaned in closer, his lips barely touching her ear. “Trust me.”

She swallowed and nodded her head, pulling herself away enough so that she could look up at him again. He meant it. She could feel it. Regardless of the fact that they had spent the better part of their acquaintance snapping at each other, she knew she was safe with him. He gently took her hand in his and spun her around, helping her into the van before shutting the panel door and climbing up to the passenger seat.

“Let’s hit it, Achan,” he muttered under his breath. “If we’re lucky, he’ll still be there, and in one piece.”

Kalin sat in the center of Taris’ floor. Cool, pink tiles that held so many memories of so many lives lost surrounded her. She ran her delicate fingers over the grout where two large pieces of formerly white marble met. The thin lines were darker than the stone, standing out at a deep burgundy against the pale pink.

She felt helpless. Completely and totally helpless. She’d begged Taris not to go.

“I refuse to sit idly by and let my battles be fought for me anymore,” he’d said.

So she begged him to leave Sarah with her.

“She is the only person who can lead us to him and convince him to come back with us.”

And so she had kept her composure until he slammed the front door shut. Then she’d slumped down onto the floor. She’d warned him that she felt death. She knew it was coming. To whom, she couldn’t be sure, but she felt its hot presence, and the thought of losing everything now that they were so close to redemption was more than she could bear. So she’d gone to Taris’ room, to be in the one place where she knew—despite the death that had taken place in there—that there would be some semblance of life left. Hayley’s spirit still lingered. It was with her every day, tingling at the back of her neck, coursing through her skin.

Somewhere, deep inside Kalin, a spark had ignited. It didn’t billow into a raging fire, but grew until it was a smooth, steady lick of flame. She was tired of living, tired of going day to day, hoping that things would change. For the better part of her existence, she had toed the family line, acting the part of a strong, albeit silent, female model for the rest of her society. Women looked to her as an example, a paragon of all that was feminine and vampire. No more, she thought.
No more
.

Though Kalin loved her brother dearly, she was tired of living under his watchful eye. Despite his attempts to do everything in his power for her benefit, she was tired of being the one thing that held him back. Kalin knew it was her fault he wasn’t happily married by now. She knew it was ultimately because of her and her desire to be a mother, a true mother, that he was risking the lives of not only himself and Sarah but of the others, as well.

She tried to shake the feeling, but Death was never one to let down its guard or leave solely upon a will for it to do so.

Kalin resigned herself to what had to be done, to what needed to be done. For her own peace of mind. It was better for them to die off quickly than to spend eons of life waiting for a miracle that would never come.

Calmly, she left the room and returned shortly with a hammer. With a determined inhale and a slow exhale, she knelt down to the floor and began pounding at the edges of the pink-tinged tile. She managed to make it come up in large pieces, pieces that would be easy to put back together. One by one, she stacked them until there was an almost perfect square missing out of the floor. Around the tan-looking subflooring, there were pristine, white marble tiles. She scooped them up and carried them off to her room. She didn’t even bother to turn off the light.

* * *

The neighborhood in which Dr. Nicholas Patton lived looked like something out of a Thomas Kincaid painting. The trees that lined the narrow country road were colored with all manners of red, gold, and yellow. The mountain that hovered directly over the quiet street looked as if the Almighty had dotted it with a gigantic bowl of Fruity Pebbles. The houses were all nice, neat little cottages that had the same stone chimneys, the same front porches with nice little porch swings, and the same perfectly manicured front lawns.

It made Morrigan want to puke.

“Let’s hurry up and get this over with. I feel like if I stay here any longer, I’ll turn into Donna Reed.”

“And what’s so bad about Donna Reed?” Bane muttered from beside her.

Morrigan glanced up at Bane, who was systematically sealing and reopening the gash on the left side of his mouth. He would run his pierced tongue over the wound, wait for it to close up, and then pierce it back open with the tip of his fang. The look on his face screamed malicious intent, and she knew it was directed completely and totally toward her. She’d not only given him that busted lip, but had instructed him to keep it open as a reminder of the extreme irritation she felt with him when she discovered there was another doctor—and a male one at that—who could help them. Upon learning this, she promptly tied Bane down and gave him a kiss via the butt of a pistol.

“Bane, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Donna Reed…if you like to fuck apple pies.”

“Apple pie wouldn’t talk back,” he muttered to himself.

“What did you just say?” Morrigan turned her navy eyes to him. He shook his head and kept working at the cut on his lip. “That’s what I thought. Now, you are sure this is the right house?” She nodded her head toward the bungalow in front of them. The lights were out, and they could see no sign of activity inside. The doctor had either turned in for the night or gone out. Either way, she would just wait.

From behind them, a raspy voice chimed in. “Thirty-two.”

“Thank you, William,” she said, refusing to turn around and look at him. She avoided looking at any of the hired help if she could.
Disgusting excuses for human beings
. Better off dead than alive, their particular breed of scum-sucking, backlot living made her stomach turn. William’s teeth had been so neglected that they were turning black. His blond hair hung down to his skinny shoulders and was caked with dirt and grime. He was just the kind of sucker she knew would take this job. It was the same with the other two, who were just as nasty and dirty.

But if you promise a rabid dog a bone, it will do just about anything, won’t it?

“Well, gentlemen,” Morrigan said as she looked down at her designer shoes, the ones she made Bane replace after her stiletto-meets-internal-flesh incident, “let’s get this over with. Remember, we need the doctor alive. I do not know how many times I have to stress this. Alive. He’s no good to our cause if he is dead.”

“What if he’s not home?” one of the greaseballs from behind her asked.

Morrigan had never possessed a huge patient streak, and as of late that patience was growing thinner and thinner by the day. She pulled a blade off Bane’s vest and hurled it at the man, embedding it deep in the flesh of his upper arm.

“Then you wait for him, you oxygen-depleting maggot!”

The man tried to pull the blade out, gritting his black teeth, refusing to scream. The fact that he didn’t cry out must have earned him a little bit of respect from Bane. He turned around and wrapped his hand around the handle to give it a quick pull.

“No harm, no foul, right?” he said as he wiped the blood off the steel and replaced it in his vest. “Where are you going?” he asked Morrigan when she turned on her heels.

“I’m going to wait in the car.”

“I thought—”

“Ah, but therein lies your problem, Bane. You aren’t supposed to
think
. Now run along and do what I told you.” She turned on her heels again and clicked her way to the running BMW.

* * *

Bane watched her back the entire way, seething. He sealed the cut on his lip and was about to reopen it when he had a change of heart.
Fuck that
. Once she was in the car, she stared at him, her eyebrows raised. She lifted a hand and gave him a single wave with her fingers, as if telling him to go on, motioning for him to carry out her orders like he was a small child.

“She’s a bit pushy there, isn’t she, pal?” William sidled up to stand next to him.

“She’s a bitch,” he muttered. “A cold, heartless bitch.”

“Aren’t they all,” William replied with a chuckle.

“Not all of them,” Bane said. In tandem, they all made their way up the sidewalk. Bane’s body was hot and angry. Two hundred years of a nagging housewife was getting a little bit old. On impulse, he fired a single shot into the Colonial-style porch light before busting through the front door.

Taris was twitchy.

And they all dared to hazard a guess as to why.

“You feel him, don’t you, T?” Achan looked over at him. He was nervously releasing the clip and putting it back into place.

“It’s not just him.”

Because of their bond with the other Nines, everyone could feel the tingle in their skin that they were close, but Taris and Bane were blood. The burn was more palpable. If the bond had been fresh, he could have pinpointed his exact location.

All was silent after that. Sarah guided them to the street on which Nick lived, and the instant they pulled the big black van onto the narrow road, Taris began to fidget. For the majority of the twenty-minute ride, he had been stone still and quiet. The only exception was the one time when he had broken into her thoughts and whispered, “Trust me. My life protects yours.”

The silence was making her nervous. Actually,
nervous
was not the word for it.
Terrified
would have been a better adjective. Her apprehension was only made worse when Taris made them stop the van.

“What’s going on, Taris?” Rhiannon asked.