“God help us all,” Ethan muttered as his cell phone rang.
Unworried, I watched him answer it. All of our electronics were secure. We’d developed our own networking system long ago and we guarded it closely. We waited as we heard one side of a very terse conversation. When Ethan hung up, he was frowning.
“Who was that?” Astrid demand of her mate as he ran his hands over his face and gnashed his fangs.
“My Father. Apparently Leila, Alexander and Nathan have gone missing now.”
Raquel hissed her displeasure and perused the weapons with deadly intent.
“Well fuck a duck,” Astrid yelled and burned a hole in a priceless rug with her wrath. “What the Hell is going on here? Wait… I know Leila is your sister. Who are Alexander and Nathan?”
“Two of our brothers,” Raquel stated with steel in her voice. “If they’re trapped like Gareth, then they’re also aging and dying.”
“Motive?” Ethan asked his sister.
“Don’t know,” Raquel spat and began to arm herself with smaller guns and knives that were more easily concealed. “Not really caring at the moment. I just want to find who’s behind it and destroy them—permanently.”
And then my dick got hard. I needed to bed my mate soon or I was going to explode.
The unending erection Raquel always caused was now killing me. If she pulled out any more weapons, I was going to jump her in public. Decency be damned.
“The timing is curious,” I said as I chose a few daggers for myself. I turned my back to the group. No need to embarrass myself with my teenage dick. “I don’t believe the disappearances coinciding with the Summit are a coincidence.”
“Neither do I,” Ethan said flatly as Raquel nodded her agreement. “I’m just unsure about what they’re after… and who’s after it.”
“I’d say we start with the Old Guard and figure it out from there,” Raquel said decisively. “Are we paying anyone for intel within the group?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “We have three or four that will talk if the price is right.”
“I’ll put my father on it,” Ethan said as he quickly typed out a text.
“Put Pam on the Angels,” I instructed. “She’s one of them and they’re all terrified of her.”
Pam was the King’s mate and Astrid’s foul mouthed Guardian Angel. She was one in a million. She’d been the favorite of the King’s wives all those many years ago and had been the one who’d lost her life when he’d tried to turn her. The King was devastated for centuries until she came back to him as an Angel. Of course no one would use the word angelic to describe Pam. She was more like an exquisitely beautiful steamroller, with the mouth of a sailor and a heart of gold.
“We have about fifty Vamps from the American Dominion here for the Summit,” I said thinking out loud. “I’m going to contact our control room at the Cressida House to relay the situation and to stay alert. It’s safer and more secure if we have all the intel feeding from one source,” I added. “However, we still have no solid motive.”
Ethan nodded and resumed texting Pam and his father.
“Ahhh, but I think we do have a motive,” Astrid disagreed as she put a few grenades in her pockets. “You all just aren’t paying attention to the right clues.”
“Please enlighten me then, my beautiful mate,” Ethan said as he tucked his phone in his pocket and waited for whatever outlandish reasoning Astrid would alarm us with.
“I read romance novels,” she stated as if that was all we needed to know.
“I know. Heathcliff told me,” Raquel chimed in with a giggle as she slid a particularly evil looking katana into a harness on her back. “I heard animal blood was rank.”
“Tasted like butt,” Astrid confirmed with a wince. “Not that I’ve ever tasted butt or ever will,” she assured us.
Ethan was simply confused.
“What does butt have to do with a motive?” he asked, hanging on to his composure by a thin thread.
“Well, aside from the fact the Old Guards sound like a bunch of gaping assholes… very little,” she informed him with an innocent grin.
I shook my head and grinned. My cousin loved driving her besotted mate to the brink.
“Astrid,” Ethan began tightly.
“Fine,” Astrid huffed. “This is like the stories with awesome ruling families in them—could be the mob or a motorcycle gang or ranchers or sexy billionaires or even Vampyres. You know, all the dudes in the stories are hotter than my Uncle Satan’s underpants and all the gals are totally smokin’ and brilliant.”
“Does this story about your reading preferences have a point?” Ethan asked with more patience than I could have mustered up.
“Yes. Yes it does,” Astrid replied.
“And were you planning on getting to the point, my love?” Ethan inquired.
My wicked cousin laughed joyfully. “Yep. I just wanted to make sure I annoyed you enough first so you would want to spank me later.”
“You have succeeded beyond your hopes,” he replied with a gleam in his eye that made me roll my own.
However, Raquel just laughed and gave me a sly look—which made my damn dick even harder.
“Okay, so there are bad guys and good guys,” Astrid explained. “The bad guys always are coming up with stupid, douchey plans to destroy the good guys. Bad fuckers like to monologue and wear all black. Often times they have very bad breath. Occasionally they have lots of scars and tattoos, but in the motorcycle romances the good guys are all tatted up too. In fact, sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s good and who’s bad.”