Page 47 of Griffin Undone
Shit!
I lunged for the controls, stopped, rewound, then started again. On the screen was a grainy black-and-white image of an alley behind one of the downtown business-district buildings. As I watched, a group of six hooded men slunk down the alley one by one, passing under the camera until only the leader could be seen. The leader turned, raised his hand, and then faced forward again, obviously signaling the others to wait. I zoomed in, replayed the feed, and froze the image as the shifter looked back.
Maddox.
A frisson of hate sizzled through my body. I forced it back and restarted the video feed.
The shifters waited. I waited along with them until a slender young woman passed the alley opening. Maddox lunged, clamping a hand over the girl’s mouth. He wasn’t quite out of the camera’s frame before he sank bare fangs into the woman’s vulnerable vein. She screamed silently, her muscles pulling taut, eyes rolling up into her head, terror freezing her features as the creature at her throat drank and drank and drank.
When the female went lax long moments later, the Anigma dropped her fragile body to the ground. She twitched, once, twice; then her head lolled to the side, eyes open and unseeing, the rise and fall of her chest so shallow I could barely perceive it as her dying body struggled in vain for life. Maddox shook his head and said something over his shoulder that I couldn’t read, but I knew what it was. They’d expected the attack to trigger the woman, except she wasn’t Archai, damn it. How had they targeted her? Why?
Those empty eyes screamed at me to find out, to avenge her senseless death just as I sought to avenge my parents and the countless others Maddox had murdered through the long centuries.
Those screams got louder when Maddox gripped the woman’s slender wrist and dragged her farther into the alley, his free hand going to his pants zipper. I’d lived with violence for almost a thousand years, had seen it all—but that didn’t make all of it easy to witness. I wanted to close my eyes, tell myself that what I was seeing hadn’t happened.
But I wouldn’t. She deserved my testimony, no matter how far after the fact it came. I would stand as witness for her.
And I did. What followed sickened me. Each time one of the males entered the frame, usually straightening their clothes or wiping blood from their mouth, a fist of despair hit me in the gut. In far less time than I’d have thought possible, the horror ended when two males produced a body-sized black bag and moved toward the shadows. They returned with the bag half-full, carried over one of their shoulders, the other toting a smaller bag with what I guessed was evidence the team didn’t want to leave behind. Maddox surfaced again, a handheld radio at his mouth, and a minute later a dark van pulled up. No tags. The team swarmed forward and disappeared into the vehicle.
And were gone.
I drew a shaky hand down my face, swallowing repeatedly against the flood of bile in my throat. My stomach was having none of it. Finally I gave in, turned away from the screen, and threw up in the wastebasket near the desk. I’d seen the evidence before, the aftermath—how many women had Maddox attacked simply for being close to me through the years? Being “present” when it happened…God.
I threw up again.
A long time later, I forced myself to rewind the feed. When I came to the first sight of the girl, that single moment when she turned to look down the alley as she walked by, I stopped the tape and zoomed in. My body shook with anger at the innocence evident in her young face. Capturing a still from the feed, I shut it off, then opened a messaging app on my computer.
“Come on, Brody. Gimme what you got.” Typing a request into the app, I hit Send and waited, knowing my contact would be on the other side, no matter the time of day or night. I had never met the man, but neither had I ever been let down by him. If I needed to find a missing person, Brody was my source. In seconds I had a response.
Parameters?
I attached the still.Find her. Tennessee/Kentucky, missing and/or attacked. No other intel available.
I hit Send.
Twenty-four hours tops,Brody responded immediately.
LMK.
You got it, Cap’n.
Once Brody sent the okay, I made my way to the workout room, stripped down to my fatigues, and took my fury out on the heaviest punching bag available.
ChapterTwenty-One
Kat
Iwasn’t sure what woke me. One moment I was falling asleep on the couch, the TV flickering in front of me, warm and comfortable and content, and the next I was jolted awake, my heartbeat ramming my ribs with the force of a freight train. No light, no flickering TV, and the lair was no longer empty; I knew that somehow.
The pillow below me didn’t feel like the slippery leather of the couch, either. The cushions weren’t stiff. I lay on a bed, not the living room sofa where I’d fallen asleep.
How did I get to my bedroom? Was I even in my bedroom?
Easing the blanket down from where it rested on the side of my face, I shifted to my back, then carefully to my opposite side—and latched on to the sight of glowing amber eyes shining in the darkness.
It took a moment for my dry throat to croak out a single word. “Arik?”
“Shhh…”His voice whispered into my mind even as those beautiful eyes closed. I could’ve sworn I heard pain in the soft sound.
