Bonded by Blood

chapter TWENTY-FOUR

MACKENZIE PADDED DOWN the hallway of the loft in bare feet and stepped into the kitchen. She had tried to sleep, but Dom’s bed seemed so big and empty without him. Maybe a cup of tea would help. She put on a pot of water and rummaged through a few drawers until she found an impressive stash of teabags. Yes, chamomile.

After pouring the boiling water into a mug and adding the teabag and some weird natural sweetener she found in a cupboard, she walked back to the bedroom and noticed her phone was vibrating with a text message. She picked it up. Corey.

Fun last night. Do it again soon.

She punched in his number and smiled when she heard his voice. “Hey, Corey. Just got your message. You’re up late.”

“Yeah, well, Vanessa wanted some ice cream. And you know me—I live to serve.”

She laughed and took a sip of the still-too-hot tea. “I could tell you were going somewhere. Hey, thanks for having dinner last night on such short notice. It, ah…meant a lot to me.”

“No prob. It was fun. You guys seemed pretty into each other. That doesn’t mean you’re planning on dumping him soon, does it? Oh, that’s weird…” His voice trailed off as if he was focused on something else.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just some idiot behind me. He pulled a U-turn after he passed me and now he’s tailgating me. Like, big-time. So you’re not going to pull another family curse excuse and break up with this guy soon, are you? What the—” He swore under his breath. “What an idiot.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“The guy behind me. He can’t be more than a foot or two off my back bumper.”

Mackenzie’s stomach seized up. “What kind of car? Can you see the driver? What’s he look like?”

“Hold on. We’re coming to an intersection. Lemme see if I can tell.” Corey paused for a moment before he continued. “Two dudes wearing sunglasses. They’re in a Jeep—the kind with no doors. What freaks. It’s gotta be like forty degrees out.”

It’s them. But he’s not Sangre Dulce. This can’t be happening.

With the phone cradled against her shoulder, she yanked on her jeans and stuffed her feet into a pair of sneakers. “Corey, don’t ask me why, but you have to get out of there. Keep driving, stay on the main roads and for God’s sake, don’t go home or stop anywhere.”

“What the hell? What’s going on, Kenzie?”

“I’m not sure. But I had a similar thing happen to me the other night. Trust me, Corey, you’ve got to lose them. Hold on a sec.”

She threw the phone on the bed, heard the tinny sound of Corey yelling at her through the small speaker, and grabbed the loft phone. She stabbed out Dom’s cell number, but it went straight to voice mail.

Damn.

“Corey, what’s going on now?” she said as she jammed her arms into the sleeves of her leather coat.

“Oh, shit. One guy is getting out.”

“You’re not still stopped, are you? I told you to drive. Drive. Get away from that intersection and don’t stop at any others.”

“Kenzie, what the hell’s going on?”

“Listen to me. They…they want to kill you, all right? You’ve got to get away from them.”

“Kill? What are you talking about?”

“Just f*cking go!”

He gunned the motor—finally.

“Surprised ’em, Kenzie. They weren’t expecting that. Oh, man, he jumped back in. They’re following me again.”

“I want you to get onto I-5 North toward Seattle. Don’t go home. That will give me a chance to figure out something. Please tell me you have a full tank of gas.”

“I’ve got a quarter-tank.”

“Damn. How close are you to getting on the freeway?”

“I’m taking it now.”

“Good. Just keep driving. No stopping no matter what, okay? I’ll call you back in a minute.”

She picked up the loft phone again, but this time pressed the button that connected to the field office.

Please, Cordell, pick up. She knew he was over there but she didn’t want to take the time to run all that way. Goddamn it, pick up.

“Mackenzie?”

Thank God. “Cordell, I can’t get ahold of Dom. Two Darkbloods are chasing my brother Corey. He’s not Sangre Dulce, so I don’t know what the hell is going on. He’s north of Tacoma heading this way on I-5. We’ve got twenty or thirty minutes tops before he gets up here unless they take him out on the freeway.”

“Holy mackerel, they’re usually not that bold.” She heard his fingers clicking away on a keyboard. “They prefer to work in the shadows. Your brother should be safe enough if he stays on the freeway. Here, lemme send Dom an emergency text message. Oh, great.”

“What?”

“Right now Dom’s on Bainbridge Island in a small pocket with spotty cell coverage, but as the data lines run on a separate system…” Mackenzie fidgeted as he rambled on and on about text messages sometimes getting through when a call cannot. “Look,” he said as if she were in the room with him. She imagined he was pointing to the screen. “DeGraff’s team is at the Washington/Oregon border and Foss is near the Canadian border. If he can stay ahead of them, maybe he can drag it out until we can get to him.”

She told him about the gas situation.

“Damn, that doesn’t give us much leeway.”

“If I can get him downtown, can he come here?” The words flew out of her mouth almost as fast as she could form them. “Dom said once that this place is cloaked. I don’t know how that works. Would my brother be able to find it? Would the Darkbloods be able to follow him inside?”

“He’d never find it. Neither could you if you were outside.”

“What if I brought him to the loft?” Mackenzie brought a hand to her head, trying hard to control her desperation.

“Won’t work. It’s cloaked, too,” Cordell said.

“What if I got him close? Would you be able to uncloak it to let him in?”

“The only way we could do that is if he’s far enough ahead of them when he gets close. We’ll need at least ten minutes to safely drop the shields and get them back up. And even then, I’d need Dom’s authorization code.”

If Dom hadn’t been able to get far enough away from the Darkbloods chasing them the other night to uncloak the place, there was no way Corey would be able to do it in his piece of shit commuter car. She’d have to figure out a way to stall them. The beginning of an idea brewed in her head.

“I’ll be in touch,” she said and slammed down the phone.

She rubbed her temples when she felt a slight vibration inside. Dom.

It’s the only way. He’s my brother, Dom. I can’t just stand by and let him be captured by those monsters like our father was. I love you. I’ll be careful, I promise.

She wasn’t sure how much of her thoughts he’d be able to pick up on from this distance, but what she did know was she needed to get the heck out of the loft before Dom was able to contact Cordell. He’d likely give him instructions to lock her up again, then her brother, with no one to help him, would meet with the same fate their father had. And Stacy. And Martin.

After double-checking that she had Cordell’s number on speed dial, she ran out of the loft and took the stairs down to the building lobby, not wanting to wait for that ridiculously slow old elevator.

“Corey, how are you doing?” she asked as took the stairs down two at a time. “They still behind you?”

“Yeah. They dropped back a little, but they’re still there.” He sounded more confused than worried, but at least he was doing what she’d told him.

“Where are you?”

“Going past Fife.”

Damn. Still too far away. She startled the security goon at the front desk when she flew into the lobby.

“Wait, wait,” he yelled.

She ignored him and ran for the exit. As she burst through the door onto the sidewalk, a shock of static electricity shot through her body. “What the—” She spun around, but the door she’d exited through was gone. All she saw was the side of a building.

OUTSIDE HER HOUSE, the street looked quiet enough, but she asked the taxi driver to circle around to the alley just to make sure. Except for Mr. Marsh’s beat-up green Mustang propped up on jacks and the iridescent eyes of a cat on the prowl, the taxi’s headlights illuminated nothing else. She paid the driver and climbed out, but when she turned to ask him to wait until she got inside, he drove away, oblivious to the fact that she hoped to God a pair of Darkbloods weren’t lurking around for her. Pulling out the specially loaded Ruger from her purse, she took a deep breath and watched the taillights disappear around the corner. The textured grip fit tightly in her palm, giving her some measure of comfort.

Yes, I can do this thing. I must. Now hustle. Get in, get out, get Corey.

If only it wasn’t so dark. She stepped onto an overturned milk crate and reached over the ivy-covered fence to unlatch the gate. Neighborhood kids must’ve busted out the bare bulb on the Marshes’s toolshed again. The gate clicked shut behind her and a lonely-sounding dog barked in the distance.

All the lower windows of her house were black, but when she noticed the dim glow of the upstairs hallway light through the curtains, her heart stuttered with panic. It was the light Sam always left on. Crap, she wasn’t home, was she? Mackenzie had gotten so used to Sam staying over at her boyfriend’s place, sometimes she forgot she even had a roommate. Okay, whatever. She’d be in and out so fast it wouldn’t matter.

She fumbled with her keychain, trying to find the large, oval-shaped key that unlocked the back garage door, when a sudden thought nagged her. What if Sam’s loser boyfriend was staying here tonight? What if Sam hadn’t dumped him after Dom beat the crap out of him? Sam had never brought him here before, but still… Even if the guy wasn’t a loser, he was still evidently a vampire and Mackenzie was still Sangre Dulce. She gripped the gun tighter. Nothing she could do about that. She’d deal with it if she had to. All that mattered was Corey. With the key in her left hand, she awkwardly reached for the lock.

Branches rustled behind her. A twig cracked. She froze. The air was still—it wasn’t the wind.

The hairs on her neck bristled when she heard another sound. A growl. Low at first, but it instantly escalated into a high-pitched cry. Cold panic seized every nerve. She lost her grip on Hello Kitty and the keys tumbled to the ground with a jangle.

But when another shriek joined the first one, she let out a heavy sigh and cursed.

A damn cat fight. Stupid unfixed male cats. They surprised her every time. A set of shiny eyes stared at her from under the bushes then disappeared.

Her hands were still shaking when she unlocked the door. Once inside the garage, she flicked on the light and there it was. Her motorcycle—alone—which meant no Sam, no boyfriend. The bike appeared to be in pristine condition. The pearlescent paint unmarred, the chrome shiny. Dom must’ve had it fixed for her, she thought as she dashed into the house.

Please let Sam’s boxes still be in the dining room.

They were. She pawed through the contents, scattering tiny plastic bags everywhere, before she finally found what she was looking for. Yes. One of Sam’s large, sterling silver, gothic crosses. She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the sharp points. You have to have faith for that to work on me, Mr. Vincent. God, she wished that was all it took. A cross, a little faith and the evil vampire would cringe and leave. But that was just a movie. This was real life. After saying a quick prayer, she looped the leather cord around her neck, tucked the cross inside her T-shirt, and within minutes, she had pushed the Triumph into the moonlight and was racing through her neighborhood.

Weeds grew from the cracks in the driveway leading up to Corey’s old high school, unused since the area’s two rival schools had been merged into one big high school on the other side of town. She had just finished stashing her bike in the bushes when her cell phone rang. Dom. Taking a deep breath to steel herself, she flipped it open.

“What the hell are you doing, Mackenzie?” His accent sounded a trace thicker than normal. “Where are you?”

“At the old Seaview High School near my house. In case I have to shoot, it’s the only place I could think of that Corey could easily find. I didn’t want them in our neighborhood or in a public place where people could get hurt.”

“No. Do not take them on, Mackenzie. Get out of there. Leave. You’re no match for them. I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

She tried to block out the desperation she heard in his voice, because she knew she couldn’t do as he asked. “I don’t have that much time. Corey’s almost out of gas and the Darkbloods are right on his tail. They’re too close for us to get Corey past the cloaking shields at the field office. Since he’s not Sangre Dulce, they must want him for something else. If they get to him, we’ve got to assume they’ll take him to their research facility, which you haven’t—”

“Goddamn it. They don’t want Corey. They want you.”

“He’s my brother, Dom. He’s all I have. I can’t just sit back and let those monsters take him.”

“You have me. Dios mio, you have me. Don’t do this, Mackenzie. Wait and we’ll find him together.”

She heard the sound of a ferry’s horn through the phone line. He was too far away. “When Corey pulls up, I’ll shoot the two Darkbloods, he’ll jump on the back of my bike and I’ll take him to the field office. Without the Darkbloods on our tail, Cordell can drop the cloak. This is the only way.” A set of headlights flashed through the trees. “He’s here. I’ll call you when I have him. I love you.” She snapped the phone shut and loaded a round into the chamber of the Ruger.

COREY WISHED HE could talk to Mackenzie one more time to double-check that she was in place and ready, but naturally his phone battery had died after he hung up with her a few minutes ago. For the millionth time he glanced in the rearview mirror. They were still there.

His sweaty hands slipped on the steering wheel as he turned onto the winding, tree-lined entrance of Seaview High School. He downshifted into second and the crappy little engine jerked him forward, rattling loudly as it accelerated up the hill. On both sides of the cracked pavement, the trees and brambles disappeared into the darkness beyond the twin glow of his headlights. Mackenzie should have plenty of places to hide, he thought as he scanned left and right. Nothing but black. He was halfway up when the Jeep’s headlights flashed behind him. She’d better be here, otherwise they’d have him for sure.

At the top of the hill, the old gymnasium loomed ahead like a darkened hulking box and around back was the bus turnaround where he and his friends had spent many days smoking weed. Several pairs of fluorescent green eyes flashed in his headlights and two hunching shadows lumbered out from the covered walkway. Raccoons.

He whipped the car around the corner of the gym to face the direction he’d come from, parked it and opened the door. Before he could climb out, two quick staccatos cracked in the night air.

What the hell is going on? Was his sister totally nuts?

He jumped out and heard what he hoped was the low rumble of a motorcycle engine and not a Jeep coming up the driveway. For a split second, when light shined through the underbrush, he considered locking himself in the car. But he realized it was the single headlight of a motorcycle.

In a moment, she’d swung the bike around and was idling next to him.

“Kenzie, oh my God. Did you actually shoot those guys? Please tell me you didn’t.” He had a really bad feeling about this.

She whipped off her helmet and shoved it at him. “Here. Get on. Hurry.”

“You just scared them off, right?” He put it on and started to reach into the car to turn off the ignition, but he stopped and turned back around. “Wait. Why can’t I just drive myself out?”

“Forget about the car. Let’s go.”

“Tell me you didn’t shoot them. You were just supposed to scare them off.”

The whites of her eyes flashed with anger and she smacked him alongside the head with the palm of her hand. “I said get the hell on. Those guys following you are the same kind of guys who killed Dad. Now get your ass on the bike.”

“Jesus, Kenzie.” Both his ears vibrated painfully under the too-tight helmet.

What the hell did this have to do with their father? He’d never seen his normally calm and sensible sister like this. He climbed on behind her and held onto her waist. Dragging her inside foot, she cranked the throttle and leaned into a sharp turn. He did his best to lean with her.

Surprised to see the Jeep idling in the middle of the driveway, Corey could just make out a figure crouched over the steering wheel. Oh God, she did shoot them. Mackenzie actually f*cking shot that guy.

“Don’t look, Corey. Keep your eyes straight ahead.”

Thank God, the guy was moving as they drove past. At least the dude wasn’t dead. They could go and figure out—

Mackenzie’s back slammed into his chest and the bike skidded to a stop. What the hell? His head, heavy from the helmet, cracked against hers.

A dark figure dressed in an ankle-grazing trench coat filled the driveway in front of them. Mackenzie patted the pocket of her leather coat, but it was too late.

Without seeing him move, the man suddenly appeared next to the bike, towering over them. Corey couldn’t make out any of his features, but the dude’s breath—or maybe something on his clothes—smelled rank and coppery, like blood. Corey’s easily activated gag reflex made him choke and he tasted barf in the back of his throat.

Mackenzie cranked the throttle and the man grabbed the handlebars. The engine revved high in protest, the tires squealed on the pavement, but they remained immobile. No friggin’ way. How was that even possible?

“Stupid bitch,” the man growled. “Think you’re clever with those silver bullets?” With one hand, he held the bike still and with the other, he twirled a gun, Mackenzie’s gun, on his forefinger.

In one swift movement, he snatched them off the bike and dragged them along the pavement to the Jeep as if they were rag dolls. Corey tried to keep his feet under him, but he ended up being dragged on his knees over the asphalt. By the time they reached the vehicle, both pant legs had ripped and it felt as if a layer of his skin covered the driveway. His hands and knees stung with embedded bits of gravel.

Mackenzie hadn’t fared much better. From what he could see in the pale light, her hands were raw and bleeding, too. He half-expected to hear her whimpering, but that sister of his was tough.

Their captor threw them on the floor of the Jeep and handcuffed them to the back of the seat. Mackenzie shoved her body against his until he was jammed tightly against the side, as if to shield him. Corey heard the stomp of the man’s boots, a metallic click—oh God, a knife?—and then a dull thud right before the man climbed into the Jeep alone. Corey shivered as he managed to pull off the helmet with his free hand.

“You okay?” she mouthed in his ear.

Not able to form any words, he simply nodded.

“I’m sorry, my love,” she whispered.

How bizarre. She’d never called him that before.