Page 61 of Tainted Blood

“I need to get Alexius. We need to get this human.” I grabbed my phone to text Alexius, only to see the time.

“No, no, no, no!”

I had five minutes until dawn. Only five minutes until I would be pulled to sleep and unable to tell anyone what I had just learned. I sent Alexius a text but kept it short before I tossed my phone on the desk and grabbed a memo pad, furiously writing as I tried to get down everything. The timeline of this human from the moment he walked into the lounge during clean up and what he did after. At the end, I wrote BUNKER and hoped Alexius, Isaiah, and Marcus understood. I was certain they would, but I didn’t know for sure.

Part of me wanted to scream in frustration because I knew my instincts had been right, but I was out of time. I was still writing, trying to put down all my thoughts, when dawn dragged me under.

27

ALEXIUS

Alexius’s phone buzzed as he was walking back to the mansion with Marcus, trying to race the sun. They were cutting it close, the dawn threatening them as they rushed back from the building farthest on the property. They had believed they could do it in time, and technically they could, but it was cutting things close. He couldn’t stop and check it until they got inside, and once they did, Marcus looked at him.

“Time to tell Isaiah the bad news,” he said, a yawn coming from him. “Damn. Hate that. I’ll stay up with you and Isaiah as long as I can. I have a few hours before I have to retire.”

“Any time is appreciated. I assume the rest of your team has already retired?” Alexius pulled his phone from the inside pocket of his jacket as he spoke.

“Yes. I take risks like that all the time, but my rule for them is to be in a light-secure location thirty minutes before sunrise. I don’t gamble with their lives. It’s taken me a long time to build that team for Isaiah. I even have two vampires who can defuse bombs and remove them. Can’t have a car bomb going off and taking my sire with it.”

“Of course not,” he agreed, looking down to see the text. It was Everly, an uncharacteristically choppy text message saying what he assumed meant she had priority information. There were two ominous words he wished she could have elaborated on.

"Read notes."

He looked at the door and growled to himself.

She’s asleep. Maybe this would have been handled hours ago if I let Isaiah find someone to help her… but I don’t trust anyone in this building right now, not even the team Marcus is leading. I don’t care how loyal they are to Isaiah.Idon’t know them.

“Everly learned something and sent this right before dawn while we were coming back. She’ll be unconscious now.” He shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Can you ask Isaiah if he’ll meet us in my suite? I want to see what she might have found out, and one of you might be able to help.”

“Still not very strong with computers?” Marcus sounded as if he wanted to laugh, so Alexius wasn’t offended by his question.

“Not at all. I certainly know my way around their basic functions, but I don’t want to invest my time into… Did you know people go to schooling for several years to learn everything Everly does? I’m not interested. I hired her. She knows how to do things quickly, while I would have to spend the entire night figuring out how to evenstartwhatever she’s been doing.” He respected her for that. Admitting this particular weakness wasn’t a great boon for his enemies if any were listening at that moment. It was a well-known fact.

“I’ll get him. You know he won’t mind.”

Alexius nodded, breaking away from Marcus to get to his suite before anyone else and to give himself a bit of extra time. He wasn’t thinking only about the information she might have found. He was thinking about the timing of her text and how she must have been working right up to dawn.

He was right. Going into the office, he found her slumped over the desk. He lifted her without thinking, knowing she had narrowly avoided falling to the floor. There was so much to worry about, but he wasn’t going to leave her like that for the others to see or for her to potentially fall while she slept.

Taking off her shoes, he got her under her blankets, then lingered for a moment at the door, but when a knock came to the suite door, he closed the bedroom door and went to let Isaiah and Marcus in.

“So, she found something, then dawn hit her,” Isaiah said as he walked in. Alexius closed and locked the door once Marcus was inside. “I’ve been tied up making sure the staff knows how strict the rules have to be and trying to make sure no one can sneak in there and dose one of them with shit blood floating around. I should have checked on her before dawn hit to see if she had anything.”

“I told her to text me, and she did, but it was right as the pre-dawn glow was about to become proper dawn. She couldn’t have had more than a few minutes before the sun dragged her down,” Alexius explained. “I haven’t had the chance to see if she left us anything, though. She said in her text to read her notes…” He walked into the office, knowing they were following him. He found the memo pad in the center of the desk, seeing the jagged line her pen made when she must have fallen asleep.

“She really worked down to the wire, didn’t she?” Marcus mumbled, looking at it as well.

Alexius didn’t reply as he read over what she had written—a timeline of events, each line having a line of numbers that he wasn’t able to understand.

“Do you get that?” he asked, pointing at it while he tilted the pad for Isaiah to see it.

“File name and time stamp. She’s given us the evidence of her timeline, at least as far as she could make it. You should have let me put someone in here with her to help.”

“I don’t trust any of them,” he said.

“I’ve never wanted to call you petulant until this moment. Two thousand years and you find a way to surprise me,” Isaiah said so dryly, deserts couldn’t compete.

“Look here, she noted when I left the lounge… and when the mystery human walked in. She put ‘staff halls,’ and if the few people who know of him didn’t see him, no one else would question his presence…” Marcus hissed. “Little shit.”

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