Page 77 of Blood of Vengeance

Other men yelled from their positions—kitchen, clear. Utility room, clear. Living room, clear.

All fucking clear.

We met in the middle, all of us converging on the living area. The empty living area.

“What the fuck is this?” I kept looking around, expecting something. Anything. Some sort of proof the vamps had at least lived there at one point. Anger and irritation brewing inside me because we had been ready to kill these fuckers, and they had just…disappeared. Not good.

“They’ve moved on.” Cutter lowered his weapon, his words coming out with a growl that gave away his irritation. “Check every closet and cupboard for things left behind. Once done, we’ll move on to the barn.”

Four of us tore through the house, opening doors and cubbies, yanking out drawers and busting out medicine cabinets. We trashed every possible hiding space we could think of, even tearing down the attic access panel to investigate that sweltering space. We found nothing. Not a single shred of evidence that anyone—let alone vampires—had ever resided in the home.

“Clear,” I said as soon as we’d finished our final search, growing more agitated by the second. “Let’s move out.”

We exited in a stream through the front door with Zed in the lead. Once again, we crept across the property with our guns drawn, ready for a fight. Tension growing with every step. No enemy assault came, though, which was almost worse than if someone had opened fire on us. The silence, the lack of activity, the nothingness… We had come ready for a gunfight to what was beginning to look like an abandoned plot of land in the middle of nowhere. Where the fuck had they gone?

Once at the barn doors, Zed threw hand signals to lay out how the breach would go. Two men would open the swinging doors, the rest would stay back out of the way for two seconds then be first over the threshold. So long as they weren’t lined up with their own weapons drawn, we would make it in. If they were, well…

“Stay the fuck out of direct fire,” Cutter hissed at me as if reading my mind. I signaled that I’d heard him then waited for Zed to start us off.

Without a warning, the warlord had the doors swung out and open, giving us full access to the interior of the barn. The seemingly empty interior.

“Go! Go! Go!” Cutter rushed in first, leading the way into the space and immediately searching out every shadow and corner in case the enemy was hiding. Aiming his weapon in sharp, precise movements meant to verify there was no threat around us. Once again, we ended up in an empty building. Not a single vamp.

“Where the fuck are they?” Rush asked as he slammed what appeared to be an empty plastic barrel to the floor. “I thought we had them here.”

Zed shrugged, his voice tight and anger strong as he said, “They were on-site less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“They knew we were coming. They had to.” I crept through the building, keeping an eye on the hayloft above. My instincts screaming that this was the right place. This was the vampire nest, not the house. The smell, the energy—this building was their command post. We had just gotten to it a little later than we needed to.

Cutter stayed right behind me as if he, too, felt the energy of the place. As if he understood this would have been the site of the battle had we arrived in time. His movements stayed sharp, his eyes constantly sweeping the space—every corner checked, every shadow identified. Our wolves were on high alert even though it sure as fuck seemed as if we didn’t need to be.

After clearing the entire main floor, I made eye contact with Cutter and jerked my chin toward the ladder. He nodded once, slinking toward the vertical death trap. There really was no way to climb a straight ladder with your gun drawn, so I mounted the steps only a few feet behind him and hurried up. Both of us moving as quickly and quietly as possible. The shifters below also went silent, watching us with their guns at the ready in case they were needed.

The hayloft had no hay in place, but there were signs of life. Tables, chairs, a chalkboard with shadows of writing on it, and more surge protectors plugged into one another than I had ever seen. They snaked across the floor, linking from one to the next. All with little glowing lights indicating they had power.

“What is this?” Cutter asked in a whisper as he kicked one of the surge protectors. “Ten plugs each, one taken up by the next device, fifteen devices… They were charging 136 phones?”

“Doubtful. No nest is that big.” I moved past the devices and toward the chalkboard, moving it out of the way. “Back here.”

The footsteps of the other guys joining us in the loft registered as my eyes started putting together the scene before me. Under a low eave of the barn lay a table with documents and pictures strewn about it. No, not strewn. I moved closer, trying to make sense of what at first appeared to be a mess but wasn’t. Those pictures and documents were in a pattern, laid out intentionally and with care. This had been a planning room.

“Chiggy,” Rush said, pointing to the far corner. He was right—a picture of Chiggy lay with a red X over it. Another printed picture of his truck sat in a circle to the left.

“It’s like a fucked-up game of Risk.” I crept around the side of the table opposite Chiggy’s picture, looking at the rest of the printouts. “Motherfucker.”

Zed hurried to my side and growled as he took in the same thing I was. Pictures of the clubhouse, of each member, of our bikes and cages. Our houses. Mostly from above.

“Drone shots,” Diesel said, seemingly hitting the same conclusion I had just seconds before me. “They must have had a fuck-ton of drones flying to get all of these. Flying high, too. We would have noticed those cheap-ass drones that buzz like a beehive.”

Surge protectors, so many outlets, all the electricity needed. They hadn’t been charging their phones—they’d been charging the soldiers in their aerial army.

“They’ve been monitoring us for a long time.” Cutter moved a picture of the clubhouse, his finger pushing the edge along the table. “And we had no fucking clue.”

“It’s a puzzle.” Diesel looked over the pictures again, his brow furrowing. “They wanted us to find this or else they would have taken it all with the rest of their shit. It has to be a puzzle.”

We all turned back to the pictures, circling the tables and frowning at the chalkboards as every man began trying to figure out what the vamps had been doing. Why they had left so much behind for us to find. Why they had ever even started watching our club.

“The set. It’s not complete,” Zed said, pointing toward the pictures. “Every man’s accounted for on here but one. Where’s Flinch’s shit?”

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