Page 1 of Blood & Bond (The Bouchers #2)

T he room smelled like death. Even the chemicals they used to clean and the little air freshener in the corner couldn’t hide it. A morgue smelled like dead bodies. It was impossible to make it smell like anything else.

I stared blankly at the body draped in a clean white sheet.

Logically, I knew that they hadn’t made a mistake. They knew what my baby brother looked like. They had records of his DNA and fingerprints. Vampire Command didn’t make those kinds of errors. They wouldn’t have brought us all the way there if they hadn’t been sure.

I still couldn’t make myself believe it.

There were pieces of him on that table, lined up like they were about to sew him back together again.

It was revolting, abhorrent, and there was no need.

They weren’t hiding anything by placing him that way.

They weren’t helping anything. Every single one of us could see that our youngest brother—my father’s youngest son—had been chopped up like meat about to be sent to a butcher.

“You know who did this?” my father asked, his voice hoarse.

“Strike Team Three eliminated all of them,” the commandant replied. He sounded nervous. Good. “It took them less than a day to get back into the compound.”

“Why weren’t we informed?” I ground out. We should’ve known the moment he’d been taken.

The commandant’s face paled. “It was a fluid situation.”

“Bullshit,” I replied flatly.

“How much less than a day?” my brother, Chance, asked angrily. “A fucking hour? You can’t tell me this didn’t take a while.”

I forced myself to unclench my fists. Killing the commandant of the United States Vampire Command wouldn’t bring my brother back, even if it would feel really fucking good for a few moments.

“It took them twelve hours,” the commandant replied.

I couldn’t believe that we’d always considered him like an uncle.

Arthur had been friends with my father for longer than any of us had been alive.

They’d fought together before my father met my mother, and they’d stayed close through our childhoods.

Now, I could barely stand to look at the fucking coward.

“We should’ve been there,” my brother, Danny, said. “We should’ve known.”

“We did know,” my other brother, Beau, replied. “All of us knew.”

He was right. We had known that something was wrong, but we hadn’t known what.

There had always been a connection between the five of us, a little niggling feeling in the back of our minds when one of the others was hurt.

But it wasn’t as simple as knowing immediately which one of us it was or what the problem was.

The four of us had reached out immediately, checking on the others, and Zeke had been the only one we hadn’t been able to find.

“You’re sure this was some small group and not part of a larger?—”

The commandant cut our father off. It was either very brave or very stupid. “They were locals who noticed that the team didn’t get injured like they should’ve,” he said. “They knew what we were, and when given the opportunity?—”

“How the hell did they even have the opportunity?” I barked. That theory didn’t make any sense. “How the fuck did they keep him down?”

“That we don’t know,” Arthur replied.

“And no one thought to ask?” Chance scoffed.

“I give you my word?—”

“Fuck your word,” Beau said darkly, glaring at the commandant.

“Bjorn,” my father chided.

“It’s all right, Erik,” Arthur murmured. “This is unprecedented aggression.”

“What the hell did you all expect when you went public?” Danny asked incredulously.

“We went public sixty-four years ago, Daniel,” Arthur replied. “And since that time, targeted assaults have been minimal. The benefits of no longer having to hide our species from the rest of the world far outweigh the consequences of living openly.”

He was wrong. The assaults hadn’t been minimal. Vampires just chose to deal with them when they happened instead of running to daddy every time someone spat in their cereal. The only time anyone notified command was when they needed help cleaning up a mess.

“Tell that to our brother.” Danny spat.

“We’re doing everything in our power to make sure that this is an isolated event and not part of a larger plot,” Arthur said placatingly.

He was so full of shit. I couldn’t believe he was actually spouting that nonsense to our faces. No one in that room believed that some random group of humans had been able to take down a Vampire in his prime without serious planning and resources.

“You have all that you need from him?” my father asked after a moment of all of us staring at Arthur like he’d lost his mind.

“We do,” Arthur replied.

“I’ll expect him by dusk tonight,” my father informed him.

“I don’t know if it’ll be possible to…” Arthur sputtered.

“Tonight, Arthur. No later.” He reached out and touched my youngest brother’s head softly before cutting a small lock of hair.

I looked away.

It was all my mother would have left of her baby.

I couldn’t leave that room fast enough. That body on the table was no longer Ezekiel Boucher. It was a shell, nothing more. My baby brother was gone.

TWO MONTHS LATER

My stomach churned as I stood in the center of the room, spinning in a slow circle. We’d followed every lead and chased every piece of information and come up with nothing. Someone had paid for this facility—there was no doubt in my mind—but I still had no idea who it was.

The huts in the middle of the jungle looked like nothing from the outside.

An abandoned village that hadn’t been occupied in a long time.

It wasn’t until you looked closer that you saw the little things that didn’t fit.

A door with a dead bolt. A lone antenna on one of the roofs.

Clear paths that hadn’t become overgrown with the passage of time.

We’d come here when we realized that our investigation was getting nowhere, hoping to find anything that the other team had missed.

I hadn’t realized how viscerally it would affect me.

My brother had been held in this room with the moldy blanket and the bucket in the corner. How long had he looked at these walls, waiting for his team to rescue him? Had he thought that his brothers knew and hadn’t come for him? I couldn’t believe that.

He must’ve been waiting for us, sure in the assumption that we’d reach him in time.

I swallowed against the bile rising in my throat and moved to the wall, running my fingers over the rough cement.

There had to be something in that room. Anything that could point us in the right direction.

We’d hit wall after wall, and if I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought that command was actively trying to keep us running in circles.

That didn’t make any sense, though. They had as much stake in finding out how the hell these people had captured Zeke as we did.

Their soldiers were all over the world, entering into conflicts that command agreed to support.

If there was a group out there targeting Vampires, all of us needed to know about it.

Crouching down, I moved along the walls, staring at the lower section as I went. My fingers caught on something that I hadn’t immediately seen, and I pulled them away, reaching for my flashlight.

It was bright enough in the room to see easily, but the symbol wouldn’t have been noticeable if I hadn’t felt it.

It felt like the wind had been knocked out of me when it came into focus.

When Zeke was young, he’d been obsessed with becoming a rancher. It was all he talked about for a solid year. At one point, he’d even packed up his belongings, fully expecting my parents not to notice that he’d run away to play cowboy. He’d begged them for a pair of spurs.

He’d also designed his own crude brand for all the cattle he was going to buy someday. An intertwined Z and B.

I traced my finger over the letters.

“Boucher,” someone called from outside. “You about done? It’s going to take us a couple of hours to get back.”

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I called back.

None of them had wanted to spend more time in the room than they had to. I didn’t blame them. It stunk of blood and fear.

Leaning closer, I fanned out my fingers and lightly scraped them along the concrete. There had to be a reason Zeke had left his brand there. It wasn’t anywhere near where the blanket had been discarded— there .

There was a little lip. Taking out my knife, I carefully slid it alongside the piece I’d caught my finger on. Almost immediately, a small crude rectangle of cement fell to the dirt floor, leaving a small hollowed-out space in the wall.

My heart pounded as I reached inside. It stopped when I felt the little objects beneath my fingertips.

Slowly, I pulled the first one out. It was a St. Christopher medal, tarnished with age and dirty with blood and who knew what else.

I didn’t recognize it, but I knew someone would.

I reached into my vest and pulled out the plastic bag that came with my travel blood.

It was double wrapped to protect from spillage, and I’d never found a use for the extra bag before, but I always saved them.

Gently, I dropped the medal inside and reached for the next item.

It was a piece of light pink ribbon about three inches long that had once been silky but had been worn down over time, probably by someone smoothing it between their fingers.

Next was a silver ring with some kind of crest on it that I couldn’t read. Very old. Someone’s family heirloom.

I gritted my teeth and pulled out a small lock of hair next, the memory of my dad cutting Zeke’s weighing on my chest like a boulder. It was very dark, almost black, and tied together with thin string.

A broken tooth, next. The root was still half-attached. Closing my eyes, I told myself it wasn’t Zeke’s. I’d read his autopsy report. It hadn’t said anything about missing teeth.

Then another ring. This one smaller than the last. Plain gold. A wedding band.

My fingers reached the bottom of the hole, and I slid them side to side. There was something—paper—in there about halfway back. Pinching it between my fingers, I pulled it out.

My world tilted as I saw the faces staring up at me.

Oh Gods. My hands began to shake.

The photo was tiny, square, and printed in black and white, but it was impossible not to recognize my baby brother’s beaming face.

He was wearing a shirt that my mother had bought him for his birthday, and his arms were around a man who was laughing at the camera.

Zeke’s hand rested lovingly on the side of the man’s throat. They both looked deliriously happy.

I fell to my ass.

I couldn’t look away from him. I’d never seen my brother look like that, his face so fucking relaxed and happy.

I would’ve known without the note on the back, but I was still floored when I turned the photo over and found my mate written in Zeke’s handwriting.

My baby brother had been mated, and I’d known nothing about it. How was that even possible? I’d known the moment our brother, Beau, had found his mate. I’d felt it, like someone setting their hand on my shoulder.

I wiped at my wet face with the back of my arm. I could hear my unit moving around restlessly outside. I needed to finish what I was doing so we could head back to camp.

Carefully, I slid Zeke’s photo into my front shirt pocket so the dirt and gore from the other items didn’t soil it further.

When I reached into the hole again, I found another ring and a toothpick. I wasn’t sure what the significance of the toothpick could be, but I put it away with the rest of the items. If nothing else, command may be able to get some DNA off of it.

Before rising to my feet, I gently placed the cement block back into the hole, covering it nearly seamlessly.

How many Vampires had been held in that room without knowing that there was somewhere to hide a sign that they’d been there?

How many had stared at those walls, hoping someone would come to rescue them?

Even worse, how many had stared at those walls, knowing that no one was coming?

Arthur’s assurances that it was an isolated incident were utter garbage. Whoever had killed my brother had killed countless others, and we still had no idea why.

Brushing off my trousers, I strode to the doorway and stepped out into the sunlight.

I’d go back to camp with the others, but I wasn’t going to stay there. I’d done everything I could, and now it was time to go back home.

My family needed to know that the other half of Zeke’s soul was somewhere out in the world, suffering without his mate.

Everything else could wait until we’d found him and brought him home.