Page 19 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal (Kennedy Rain #4)

Jared led the way to wherever his “residence” was located.

Nora walked beside him, exuding grace and confidence.

Her silk robe hugged her slender body and softly reflected the light from the battery-powered lanterns and intermittent torches we passed.

She was regal even in the vampires’ den, and she was far more composed than Blake.

I cast a worried look at him. The farther we descended, the more his movements became…

Stuttered was the best description I could come up with.

I wasn’t super happy to be heading down the stairs either, but I wasn’t fighting a wolf for control of my consciousness.

The presence of an Aged vampire, the violence in the past half hour, his instinct to protect Nora—all of it had him struggling to remain human.

I wanted to help.

My heart thumped hard in my chest, sending a spiral of heat into my stomach. I bit my lower lip, resisting the urge to reach for his hand.

I do want you. It’s a problem.

I bit my lower lip harder.

Needing a distraction, I glanced back to see how Christian was doing. He was still behind us, but he didn’t raise his eyes to meet mine. Overall, he just seemed tired. The fight with Arcuro had only been a few days ago. We both needed more time to recover.

Guilt weaved its way between my ribs. Proximity to me tended to put Christian into dangerous situations. But he’d chosen to stay at The Rain, and I hadn’t asked him to chase after Nora or to rush into the compound with Blake’s wolves.

But I had asked him to help me free Deagan. That was my fault. He had a guilt-driven need to protect me, and I’d leveraged that to…

Actually, I hadn’t leveraged it. He’d told me no. Melissa was the one who’d changed his mind.

Thinking of her made me think about the thought I’d had in my living room, the one that I hadn’t quite been able to grasp. It was the beginning of an option though. A way to fulfill my bargain without betraying Garion. I just had to—

I jarred to a stop on the next step down, not because I’d come up with a plan but because I’d been so lost in my thoughts I’d almost crashed into Jared and Nora.

Jared spoke to Marco and another vampire I didn’t recognize. I missed the conversation’s beginning but picked up the ending where Jared ordered them to “keep vigil.”

I snorted. When he looked my way, I shrugged and smiled.

Without one flicker of an expression, Jared entered the dark room to the left.

No, the dark corridor. A curtain of black swallowed me.

I jarred to a stop a second time. That’s when I realized my body didn’t protest the sudden movement.

It wasn’t protesting these stairs, and it hadn’t hurt when I’d smiled a moment ago.

Considering I’d been backhanded by a vampire Heir hard enough for Jared to have to “mend my skull,” the lack of pain was remarkable.

“Are you okay?” I jumped when Blake placed a hand on my lower back, partly because I hadn’t known he was so close but also because his touch was dangerous.

It made me want his arm around my waist, pulling me closer, and I wasn’t quite sure if I had my walls erected tall enough to conceal my emotions from the paranorms.

“I can’t see,” I said.

Behind us, a light cut through the dark—Christian’s phone. I’d left mine at home. Blake’s and Nora’s would have vanished when they shifted, and if Jared had one, he obviously wasn’t sharing.

Irritation flashed through Blake’s eyes. That was good. Irritation was safe. Rage was not. Still, I was surprised when Blake didn’t insist I stay with him. He even stepped aside to let Christian take up position beside me, then he fell in as the tail end of our procession.

Christian’s phone wasn’t the best light. It barely lit our path, but the compound bordered on dark even with the lanterns, candles, and torches. Our eyes had adjusted enough to follow Jared’s and Nora’s silhouettes without stumbling.

We bumped shoulders as we walked. It was comforting to have him there, especially since the paranorms walked without a sound. I didn’t want to compare the place to a coffin, but… Yeah. It had that feel up until the surface beneath our shoes changed from stone to metal grating.

I frowned at that transition, then looked ahead when a deep, echo-y clank rumbled around us. Jared had turned the handle on a heavy-looking door and pulled it open. He and Nora entered. Christian and I followed and—

My brain stuttered as it processed the gaping chamber in front of us.

The space was a massive, hollowed-out cylinder of reinforced steel and concrete.

Curved walls rose high above us and plunged down into the shadows below.

Our metal platform extended out over that void, and I felt off-balance as every sound—the scrape of footsteps, the creak of the opening door, a metallic clang that might have come from the ancient ventilation system—bounced back at us in distorted echoes.

“This is a missile silo.”

I didn’t realize I said those words out loud until Nora and Jared both looked back at me.

“Yes,” Nora said, sounding as if she was explaining something simple to a child. “That’s why the vampires built their compound here.”

I ignored the lofty arch to her eyebrows.

“Yeah. I just thought that…” Actually, I’d never really thought about all the stone and rock that surrounded us in the compound.

Every time I’d ended up down there, my focus had been on other things.

Things like surviving. “Never mind. I just didn’t know what a missile silo looked like. ”

“Typically,” Jared said, “there is enough room for a missile.”

Christian snorted beside me.

Had Jared just made a joke? I wasn’t sure but I narrowed my eyes on him anyway. Then I channeled my inner robot and, in an excellent impersonation of both Jared and a concrete pillar, I said, “Noted.”

Christian outright laughed this time. A small grin erased Nora’s condescension. And was that a hint of annoyance in Jared’s eyes? I decided the answer was yes and counted that as a win for me.

Jared continued on, following the catwalk along the wall. We were about midway down in the silo—or up, depending on your perspective. Christian turned off the light on his phone. We could see now thanks to the soft glow of small, rectangular panels attached at intervals to the walls.

“Why build the tunnels and chambers when you have this?” I asked. Dynamiting through earth and stone was a hell of a lot more difficult than building rooms into an empty space.

“Vampires did not trust the silo would remain forgotten by humans,” Jared said. “Arcuro ordered the compound built. He used it as a way to punish individuals who disappointed him.”

Disappointed him. Yeah, it had never been a good idea to get on Arcuro’s bad side.

The catwalk ended at another heavy metal door.

Jared opened it with all the strength it would take to move a cardboard box, and we entered another corridor.

Unlike the previous one, the glow from the wall lights pushed away the darkness.

It also looked more silo-like with a tiled, once-white floor, gray walls, and thick power conduits which snaked along the ceiling.

We passed through one more door before we reached our destination, a large room that had most likely been an office or command center. Now it looked like some weird personal museum.

I didn’t know what to make of it. Didn’t know what to make of Jared.

Most of the room’s consoles and equipment had been stripped away, leaving behind gouges in the laminate floor and holes with hopefully not live wires in the wall.

The only relic that remained was a set of off-center computer monitors.

They were on, rotating through grainy views of the land above us.

The decoy house was difficult to make out, and it looked much farther away than I’d expected.

My attention didn’t linger on the monitors.

Jared had far more interesting things displayed on an eclectic collection of surfaces.

Like the square side table that held a small metal device screwed into a block of wood—a telegraph machine maybe—and an extremely old typewriter perched in the center of a bar-height table.

My gaze swept across other items—a huge, antique radio, a record player with a massive and slightly dented horn, an old rifle with wood worn smooth from actual use.

“You fight in the Civil War?” I joked. It was a legit question though. The rifle was old enough. Jared was old enough.

“In a way,” he replied. He motioned to a couch clustered with a pair of leather chairs. “Sit.”

No one moved. We were still taking in the room, even Nora. When I caught her gaze and raised my eyebrows, she responded with a very human shrug.

“I’m as surprised as you are.”

She moved toward the sitting area first. I followed, sidestepping a metal ladder that was bolted to the floor.

It rose straight up and through a circular opening in the ceiling.

Did Jared’s weird collection continue up there?

Curiosity urged me to climb the rungs and take a peek, but I needed to get myself together and focus on more important things.

As soon as I sat on the couch, I realized I should have chosen a chair.

Blake’s gaze was locked on the seat beside me.

I could already feel the cushions dip with his weight, causing me to lean toward the heat of his body.

He’d rest his arm along the back of the couch.

I’d glare at it and then at him, pretending to be annoyed by his proximity.

He’d grin and remain right there beside me.

“Sit there.” Nora pushed Christian toward me. He stumbled and half sat, half fell onto the couch beside me.

I threw a what-the-hell look at Nora. She just took a seat in one of the oversized chairs, crossed one leg over the other, and managed to look completely put together in her borrowed silk robe.