Page 55 of A Touch of Crimson
If he’d fallen that far in the eyes of his Sentinels, the trials they would face in the days ahead would be insurmountable.
14
Vash wiped the blood from her mouth with the back of her hand and bared her fangs at the lycan she’d pinned to a pine tree with a silver-coated blade. Forced into his human form by the silver’s poisoning of his blood, he slumped naked with his head hanging, breathing shallowly.
“You know whose blood this is,” she said again, nursing her own myriad collection of deep bites and gouges. She waved the rag with the telltale bloodstain on it under his nose. “Which one of your packmates took the pilot from the airport in Shreveport?”
“Fuck. You. Bitch,” he gasped, gripping the hilt of the sword but too weak to pull it free of the wood behind him.
“We’ll be at this all day.”
He looked up at her from beneath a hank of red hair that was lighter than hers by a few shades. “I’ll be dead in an hour. And you’ll have nothing.”
“You really don’t want to keel over before you tell me what I want to know.”
“Barking up the wrong tree.” He managed a croaked laugh at his lame pun.
“You’re a real comedian.” She gripped his chin and forced his head up. “I see recognition in your eyes. If you’d just spill the name, your pain would be over.”
He flipped her the bird. “See this, too?”
Vash stared at the lycan with a clenched jaw, wondering if he could possibly be responsible for the death of her mate. It was a question that haunted her with every lycan she met. She had to believe the responsible party was still alive and out there somewhere, waiting for her to exact retribution for the atrocities committed against her beloved Charron. “How many vampires have you killed, dog?”
“N-not enough.”
“He’s young,” Salem said beside her, momentarily distracting her with his latest blinding hair color of primary blue. It was fortunate for him that he possessed classical bone structure; there was a regal quality to his handsome face that transcended whatever crayon hue adorned his head. He was also a badass motherfucker. If he hadn’t been, the bull’s-eye on his noggin would have seen him killed long ago.
She examined the lycan’s face. Beneath the agony and exhaustion that marred it, she could see youth. Perhaps he was too young. “How old are you?”
“Suck my dick.”
Bending forward, she aligned their gazes. “I’m teetering on the brink of releasing you, stupid. Don’t fuck it up.”
The redhead glared. “Fifty.”
Not him. He would have been a five-year-old pup at the time of Char’s death. She yanked her blade out of the tree and watched the lycan crumple to the forest floor. “Go to the asshole who kidnapped my friend. Tell him Vash is coming for him. Tell him he can meet me like a man, or he can cower like a dog and find himself with my blade in his back.”
The lycan’s skin began to ripple with the shadow of fur, a last-ditch attempt to save himself by shifting into his lupine form. In the process, his altering flesh would knit back together faster than it would without a shift.
“You’re letting him go?” Raze asked, his massive biceps bulging as he cleaned the lycan blood from his blade.
“If he makes it out of the woods alive, he deserves to die another day.”
She turned away and began tracking the path the two lycans had taken as they fled from her. The two Fallen captains fell into line behind her.
A mile away, Raze caught her arm and looked down at her through his sunglasses. Vash was a tall woman, but the captain towered above her. “Syre wanted us to bring the lycans back to Raceport.”
“That one isn’t going to crack, not even for Syre. If we want him to be useful, we need to give him his freedom.”
“The chances of him making it back to civilization are practically nonexistent,” Salem pointed out drily.
Her returning smile was grim. “He’s motivated. He was willing to die to protect whoever it is we’re after. He’s going to want to get back and give a heads-up that we’re coming, and when he does, he’ll lead us right to the one we want. If necessary, we’ll help him along and make sure he survives long enough to give us a trail.”
They located the remnants of the lycan’s clothing two miles farther. In his pants pocket, they found his wallet. Pulling out his Mitchell Aeronautics identification card, Vash smiled and waved it. “I thought so. His home address is Angels’ Point. I knew Adrian was involved. Now maybe we’ll be able to prove it.”
“Mr. Mitchell.”
Adrian paused as he moved past the Mondego’s registration desk. “Yes?”
