“Charlie!” Tessa called, and it tore my insides to leave her. But some motherfuckers were after my mom and that was the final piece of information I needed to snap. It was like I was back in the culling again, seeing red, hell bent on murder.
We didn’t have time to get the other boys or try to communicate with them. We had to assume every move we made was being watched and listened to. We moved as fast as possible without arousing suspicion. Ryder led the way, right into the locker room. Inside, Sam was on one of the weight machines, but he dropped it and jumped up when he saw our faces.
Ryder reached out and grasped his friend by the shoulder, leaning in closer and talking to Sam in another language, which I was pretty sure was French. My jaw was on the floor right about then. How could I not know he spoke French? My boyfriend’s hotness had just skyrocketed. Dear God. That body and he speaks foreign languages.
As Ryder finished Sam nodded swiftly, and strode across the gym, flipped open his laptop, and within seconds was typing like a crazy person.
Suddenly the siren over the locker room, which told us that there was a call coming in, started wailing. I met Sam’s eyes and grinned as he winked.
Jason, one of the call room ash, came running in. “We’ve got another suspected ash. On Alberta Street, may have attacked a human.” He was out of breath.
Thanks to Sam, the world’s best hacker, we’d just been handed the perfect excuse to get out of the Hive.
Ryder nodded at the panicky ash. “Thank you. Don’t bother to call out anyone else. We’re on it.”
We suited up quickly, tossing on bulletproof vests, and guns, before jogging out the door.
In the Humvee, Ryder sat shotgun and Kyle drove, while Sam slid in beside me. We peeled out in a rush of screeching tires and engine acceleration. I noticed when we were halfway across the grounds that the gate wasn’t opening like it normally did.
“What’s happening?” Ryder leaned forward, his eyes locked in. I knew what was worrying him—dispatch always radioed the gate to open it for us. If they hadn’t, that must mean…
Mother-effers. “They’re stopping us!” I pounded the back of the seat.
Sam was hammering away on his laptop as Kyle slammed on the brakes. We had been barreling along and had to slow or we’d have smashed into the fence.
“They’re not blocking me,” Sam said, and I breathed out a huge sigh of relief when the gate opened. “But they didn’t dispatch through like normal.”
Thank God he’d thought to bring his computer with him. Maybe he had anticipated this happening. Why hadn’t they dispatched it through? Was the Quorum not even trying to pretend they weren’t targeting us now? The thought was partly liberating but mostly frightening.
Kyle gunned it. A guard had stepped out of his tower to stop us, but when it was clear we were not slowing this vehicle, he did the smart thing and jumped out of our way.
“Where did they say the ash was? Legacy hospital?” I asked, playing my part for the listening vampires. It was also the easiest way to let them know that was where my mom worked.
Sam played along. “Yeah, just near that on Alberta.”
After the longest eight minutes of my life, Kyle hopped the Humvee onto the curb outside of the emergency room where my mom worked. I had the door open and was halfway out before the car had even stopped. I was powering toward the entrance when a familiar scream rang out into the night and had me changing direction toward the smoker’s alley. That shriek had sounded an awful lot like my mom.
The boys were close behind me, and as I turned the corner the scene was definitely not what I had expected. There, standing in the alley was the guy, the blond Viking-looking vampire who had saved me from my attack over a year ago. He had my mother in his arms, cradling her gently, and there were three mangled bodies at his feet.
“Mom!” I screamed, shaking off my stupor, stumbling toward her.
She looked stunned to see me, but that didn’t stop her from tearing herself from Viking dude’s grasp and running at me. In the dull light I noticed her scrubs were torn, and I could smell fresh blood on her. Looked like there were some gashes on her arm.
No surprise that she looked like she had put up a fight. There was nothing more badass than a single working mom.
“Charlie, thank God you’re okay!” Pulling me in for a hug, my eyes wandered back over to the blond vampire who was standing there, barely moving. Why had she been hugging him?
“Who’s that?” I gestured to the Norse god before us.
My mom sighed and met his gaze before turning to me. “Charlie, this is Carter, your father.”
What the…?
The one who saved me from my attack was my father?
I was happy to see I wasn’t the only one standing there dumbfounded.
Ryder, Kyle, Sam, and I were all frozen, mouths open, staring at Carter. An Original vampire. In real life. Alive.