Page 69 of Blood Magic

I shook my head. “You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I fucking want to know. I was there for a long time, Kaitlyn. Believe me, you don’t need to baby me. What the fuck did Axton do?”

I dropped my gaze. “His human guards found their resting place and dug them up. The sun…” I swallowed convulsively, sick to my stomach.

But I didn’t need to tell him. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. “Before I was taken,” he told me, his voice raw, “I hated vampires. I killed them. That was what I was raised to do. I didn’t torture them—just killed them. I thought of them as…mutated corpses who didn’t have the sense to stay down and rot away in their graves, like normal people.”

“I know,” I murmured.

“Farrow helped me as much as she could. I know of twice that Axton punished her for it.” He tightened his lips. “I’m sure there were many more times I didn’t know about.”

“In the end,” I told him, “the assholes started shoveling the dirt back over them. If I find them quickly and get them some…” A ripple of distaste washed over me, but it was less than it would have been just a week ago. “Some blood, maybe it will bring them back. I’ll save them if I can.”

He watched me, and something in my eyes made his face go carefully blank. “Tell me the rest.”

Max hurried into the room, and I was glad of the interruption. “Joe filled me in. I transferred the images to my computer and am working on them now. I know I can find the two vampires, but it’s going to be harder to get Detective Moreno’s location.”

“Max, you have to find him quickly.”

“Um, there’s a brick wall and blood? It might take me a minute even with all those super awesome clues. Also, Ferguson collected his wife. I don’t know what will happen with those two, but both of them seemed a little odd.”

“I’ll check in on them tomorrow.” I started to pace, too anxious to sit for long. “Maybe he’s in Axton’s basement, but I don’t think he’s near that house.”

Zach got to his feet. “He took a friend of yours?”

I nodded. “A close friend. A police detective I work with.”

He stood with his hands loose at his sides, motionless, blank. “He offered to trade the detective for me.”

“Yes.” I clenched my fists. “He could have tried to take you from me, but he’d rather force me to return you.”

His smile wasn’t really much of a smile at all. “Axton is all about control.” He gestured at my cross tattoo. “Can you spell my tats to affect the vampires before you take me back? They never worked for me, but I heard how yours hurt him when you punched him.”

I brought my hand up to look at my cross tattoo, surprised. “I never spelled it. It works like a silver cross on a chain. They don’t like them.”

He looked away. “It’s not your tattoo, then. It’s you. He believes there’s something inside you that’s different. He’s right.”

I shrugged. “Max, get to work. Let me know the second you find anything.”

He didn’t say anything snarky, just nodded and hurried from the room.

Zach hadn’t been free for long, but with a lot of good food and a little freedom, he’d already begun to look healthier. Brighter. But now he sort of curled in on himself and everything about him dimmed and darkened with the hopelessness and knowledge of what was to come. He could have run. He didn’t have to stand there offering himself back into his torture so that a man he didn’t even know could be freed—but he did.

“I’m ready,” he said. “But don’t give me to them until they take you to the prisoner. Axton would rather kill him than make a trade. And you’re right. He won’t be in Axton’s house. Call them. Tell them to—”

“Zach,” I interrupted, but gently. “I’m not handing you over to that bastard. I’m stashing you somewhere safe until he’s dead.”

It was like he heard me, but he couldn’t understand my words. “What?”

“I’m not giving you to Axton.” I knew Axton was fucking with me. He wasn’t going to make an easy trade, no matter what he said. If I got Rick back, it would be because I found him and took him. “But you know Axton. Are there any places you think he might have taken the detective?”

He didn’t answer, not at first. His body was tense, his face pale, his eyes terrible. He’d resigned himself to the fact that he was going back, and he wasn’t quite sure what to think now that I’d told him he wasn’t. And finally, when he did speak, he surprised me. “You’ll take me back, Kait. The man he is torturing. Your friend. He’s not in the life?”

“No.” I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, hoping the sting of pain would distract me from thinking about the detective’s torture. Then I shrugged. “He is, a little. He works with me. He’s seen demons at work. Spirits.”

“But not vampires or shifters?”

“No.” I took a deep breath, realizing that Rick’s blissful ignorance was now a thing of the past. The vampires—especially Axton—would have been gleefully eager to show him the real world.