Page 17 of Avenger of Sins

Caleb sat on the roof,rain pissing down on him. Just an annoying drizzle, no thunder or lightning, no storm. It ran down his long hair and slipped under his collar, dripped from his nose. At least he didn’t need to wear glasses anymore thanks to Gray; otherwise he would have been blind from the raindrops on the lenses.

The trees standing a short distance from the house were the same wet gray as the sky. A shockingly blue pool sat in the backyard, surface rippling as the rain fell on it. In front, the unnaturally green lawn provided its own splash of color. Lydell must have an army of gardeners, swooping in to yank out any weed that would dare to interrupt the grassy wasteland, then covering it in chemicals to kill anything left.

Night was somewhere below, hopefully out of the rain. And hopefully not scaring any agents who weren’t strictly supposed to know about her.

Caleb tried to settle into the inhuman patience of a drakul, but his mind kept going to John. Was he okay? Lydell had better stay the fuck away, or he’d…

What? Whatcouldhe do that John would approve of and wouldn’t get them in trouble with Kaniyar?

I don’t like being helpless,he thought at Gray.

“We are not helpless,”Gray responded.“We are waiting for Ryan and the other mortal.”

Pittman’s dead, isn’t he?

A wave of indifference, followed by,“Perhaps. I do not care. I did not like him.”

Pittman hadn’t been a fan of them, either. He thought Kaniyar should have chucked them into some black ops site, and put John in jail.

Still, the guy probably didn’t deserve to have his brain taken apart before Ryan killed him. And the loss of her long-time assistant wouldn’t help Kaniyar. Hopefully she wouldn’t get any bright ideas about tightening the leash she had on them.

A small car pulled up to the gate, a red delivery service sign strapped to the roof. A driver wearing a red baseball cap that matched the sign stuck his arm out the window as Agent Chris-Chris came over. Caleb couldn’t make out either his face or what he was giving the agent, but a few seconds later he pulled away. Agent Chris-Chris, probably glad for an excuse to get out of the cold rain, hurried up the drive and into the house with the delivery.

Caleb scanned the grounds again, then walked to the other side of the roof and did the same with the backyard. Agents patrolled the woods, but there was no sign of Ryan.

Surely Ryan wouldn’t just walk up to the house. He wasn’t stupid.

Jo was either more impetuous, or else her mind had broken under the weight of Ryan’s telepathic instructions. Or she was just that desperate for their blood, and Ryan let her try for it.

Was their blood addictive in some way?

“Mortals will ingest anything to make themselves feel better,”Gray observed.

True. And being juiced up on drakul blood would probably feel pretty good to anyone with a paranormal ability. A sliver of what being a drakul was like: powerful, confident. Running over rooftops, hunting demons, feeling as though they could do anything they wanted.

That was how Yuri and Drugoy had gotten into their head. That high. Just drinking the blood probably wouldn’t be half as good, but for someone in a bad place psychologically, they might find themselves chasing after that feeling of power. Especially if they felt helpless otherwise.

Well, Jo was the poster child of being in a bad place psychologically right now. As for John…

He was fine. They’d gotten together before anyone realized about the blood. He wasn’t some power-hungry fuck-up like Drugoy’s renfields.

“Drugoy and Yuri are dead,”Gray said, no doubt irritated by Caleb’s fretting.“We are hunting Jo and Ryan. The rest is mortal nonsense; let it go.”

Right. Ryan. Still no stupider than he was five minutes ago. The property was locked down like Fort Knox, so how did he plan to get inside past all the agents, the cameras, everything else?

“Perhaps he is not even here. He may have decided to kill the other mortal instead.”

Harlow? Maybe. But he works for a private military contractor—those guys have as much firepower as the actual army.

Caleb bit his lip, considering. He was thinking about this the wrong way around. Asking how Ryan could get to his victims, instead of how Ryanwould.

Ryan was a telepath. He might be able to conceal himself from the perceptions of the agents patrolling, just as he’d donewith Jo at Foster’s place. But he’d still show up on camera. So sneaking in using his usual M.O. wouldn’t work.

What then? The weak link was always people; he’d read that somewhere. If you had a high-vis vest and a clipboard, you could go just about anywhere, and people would assume you belonged there.

Just like he’d assumed the obvious delivery driver was just doing his job.

He scrambled down from the roof and reached the gate in a few seconds. Agent Chris-Chris was just getting back to his post; he startled when Caleb materialized beside him.

---