“We’ll send a crew right over. I’ll be with the team. We need to talk.”
“We’ll be here.” Pasha gave him the address, then ended the call and took a deep breath. “As you heard, the clean-up crew is coming.”
“Good,” Adonis said. “We need to be prepared for them if Crichton’s gotten to them.” Before Michael could say anything to Danai about her appearance in the fight as a vampire would arrive, Adonis asked her, “Where have you been? You should have stayed at the hotel until we were ready to leave.” He sounded angry, but he tempered his ire as if he worried about her mental state.
“Carissa called me. She’s been trying to get a hold of any of us. Dad was calling everyone in the family and finally reached her and gave her my number.”
“Carissa? We thought everyone had died.” Adonis sounded incredulous. “Yet one of the vampires said others had escaped. She truly lives? And her baby?”
Zachary was glad to hear the other family members had made it out alive.
With tears in her eyes, Danai nodded. “She and her baby. Her mate sent her away once Crichton attacked and the hunters were losing the battle. Grandma and Grandpa were away fishing, and Carissa warned them not to return to the city. Cousin Laura and her mate, Jeremy, had taken their twins to Disney World. Jeremy tried to return to help, but he was too late. Before any vampires were aware that he was in the area, he returned to Orlando to protect his family, awaiting orders from our dad, if he still lived.”
Adonis took a relieved breath. “Then the whole family hadn’t been exterminated.”
“Enough of them. Seven families in all—twenty of our family members,” Danai said.
Which meant Zachary and the others here with him today that were ready to take down the threat wouldn’t succeed unless they added more hunters to their numbers.
“Did you tell her what had happened to us?” Adonis was cautious about how he spoke to her about it this time.
“I did.” Danai’s eyes were filled with tears and Michael wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze, telling her without words he was there for her no matter what.
As much of a hunter as he was, Zachary couldn’t believe that Michael would accept Danai for what she was. Zachary was proud of his brother for being so openminded about this.
Everyone watched them for a moment as Danai sobbed against Michael’s chest. Zachary thought she still wasn’t comfortable with what she had become. And Zachary was certain that she was still afraid of how this would affect her relationship with Michael. He shushed her and rubbed his hand over her back. It was one thing to comfort her when they could all die with the fight that was coming with the vampires, another to agree to mate her though.
Rachael joined Adonis and the two of them embraced. “How do you feel about coming home to this?” She sounded sympathetic.
Adonis shook his head. “It’s unreal. We were all very close, celebrating the little things and the bigger things in our lives. It’s just…unreal.”
Pasha was watching Danai with Michael, her mouth gaping a little, as if she couldn’t believe Michael would accept her sister, despite what she had become.
“Where is Carissa now?” Pasha finally asked.
“Hiding. She killed as many of the bloodsuckers as she could, then her mate forced her to leave the house with the baby, knowing they wouldn’t survive the onslaught,” Danai said. “She fled with the baby and had to hide with a human couple, unsure as to where our family had gone. She warned our grandparents to stay away, and her sister and brother-in-law that it was too late to do anything about it. To keep the twins safe. Carissa didn’t want to leave the city, hoping we’d return soon, and she would fight with us to end Crichton’s stranglehold. She also feared we had been lost wherever we went to and might not ever return. So she’s been killing a vampire here and there when she can do it as sneakily as possible while the humans care for the baby.”
Pasha shook her head. “She needed to take care of the baby and leave. They have to know a hunter is still after them and they would be after her.”
“She’s a huntress at heart. She feels she owes it to our kind, to our family, and to her fallen mate,” Danai said.
“She’s all right with what you’ve…become?” Pasha asked.
“Yes. She wanted to see my new teeth when I’m angry. And she thought it would give us an edge when we need it so badly. We’re horribly outnumbered, Pasha. We need whatever advantage we can have in the fight against evil,” Danai said.
Pasha nodded. “Where is she now?”
“At a condo a mile down the road. I said we’d come for her as soon as we could. We have to ensure the baby’s safety though. I hate leaving the three-month old with the humans, when they can so easily be brainwashed. Then we spied Crichton’s neon green Mercedes—showy, showing off that he doesn’t fear our kind—and I had to follow him,” Danai said.
“He had a black Camaro earlier. And you’re not to go it alone,” Adonis said. “We need you and your fighting skills if we’re going to make this right. We could use a couple of more hunter families.”
“Crichton has brought in a bunch of new vampires from other places and turned several people. With our enhanced hunter strength, we can easily kill the new vampires. The ancients he’s brought in from elsewhere, they’ll give us trouble,” Danai said.
“We shouldn’t stay here at our parents’ home,” Pasha warned. “As much as I want to declare that this is our family’s home again, the vampires in the area can easily get in since they have been invited in. We have no way to safeguard against it.”
“As soon as the clean-up crew has taken the bodies away, we will leave,” Adonis said. “We have to safeguard the clean-up crew in the meantime.”
They heard a police truck pull up outside and Rachael looked out the window. “Looks like the police, six men, unless they are really vampires in disguise.”
“Make yourselves scarce,” Rachael said to Adonis, his sister, and Zachary. “If they turn out to be vampires, come join us in the fight.”
Adonis kissed Rachael’s lips, then rested his forehead against hers. “Call us if you need us.”
Then Zachary, Adonis, and Danai vanished, but they wouldn’t be far, just in the den or someplace close by.
Chapter 8
Pasha opened the door for the police officers as they approached her parents’ home. “The bodies are mostly in the living room.”
“I’m glad to see some of the family has come back,” O’Connor said, the man she recalled who had always overseen vampire clean-up jobs. “We knew some of you weren’t accounted for. But we also kept finding some of Crichton’s dead vampires here and there. So we assumed some of you were still in the area.”
“We were in another fight, another place. I’m glad to see you are your same old self.” She felt a bit of relief that at least the vampires hadn’t turned the police force yet. She didn’t comment on who was in the area still, warring on the rogue vampires though. “We weren’t sure if you would have been turned.”