What Lies Beneath

I sat on the bed while the boys looked over the list again. So many names were crossed out now. We all knew that there were a lot more people working for Knox than the names in there, but at least we were putting a dent in his staff. We'd killed a good chunk of people. Well, I say we. Landon had done most of the killing. Jaxon had helped. I was mostly watching. Landon didn't want me getting my hands dirty on our little murder spree. Kind of him, I supposed. Since we'd been out so much, we'd been dealing with the sun. It was interesting. It hadn't hurt, but it felt brighter. Much brighter. It didn't start hurting right away. It took a couple hours, and even then, it just felt a lot warmer. Landon got us out of the sun before it could get worse. He didn't want to take any chances with me. Jaxon too.

"We cleared out everyone in a two-hundred mile radius of Boulder." Jaxon said. "What do we do now?"

We'd spent the last couple days doubling back and taking out more people. We'd knocked out enough people to make Knox have a very hard time running his business. We took a day off to rest and gather ourselves, but we still didn't know where to find the man.

At the moment, we were back in Nevada, close to the California border. Since we didn't know where to go from there, we had to try and figure it out.

Landon shut the book and tossed it on the bed. "I have to assume he knows what's happening by now. There are men looking for us. All we have to do is find them."

"And then what? We kill them, and we're still not gonna find Knox."

"Maybe not, but we can terrify him. We've wiped out dozens of his men now. He's nervous. He knows we want him dead, and that means he's hiding. He probably doesn't know Mila is alive, so he thinks it's two people decimating his livelihood."

"What does that do for us?"

I stood up. "It gives us a way to surprise him."

Landon pulled me to his side. "That it does. He's going to try and swarm us either way, but at least we'll have a secret weapon."

We got in the van, not really sure where we were headed until I had the GPS in my hands. Landon thought that we should go for one of the businesses that Knox used as a money-laundering scheme. It was a drive, but that was something I was used to. I lived most of my life in a vehicle. The trip would land us in Redding.

Jaxon and I started playing games while Landon drove. He seemed amused with our antics. He couldn't play along, so I offered to make it up to him later. And Jax offered to take my place in making it up to him. I really wish Jax would knock that off.

"I think it's fair," he said.

"It is not," I told him. "We're newly married. We should be able to flirt a little bit."

"Yeah, you should. And as I have stated before as your brother, I have the right to punish this man for taking the innocence of my one and only sister."

"If anything, your sister stole my innocence," Landon interjected.

Jaxon just sighed. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, Vampire virginity or whatever. I don't care."

Landon really didn't like that. In my book, he'd only had sex once before me. So yeah, I got credit for that. I was the only person he'd ever had good sex with, so really, the whore before me hadn't counted at all. I won because I made up my own rules. Not that I would have cared too much if he'd slept with a lot of girls, but I liked that he hadn't. It made it special for us.

"Mila..." Landon sighed. "...one day I'm going to find a way to get revenge for that."

I shrugged. "Go for it, honey. I am not afraid."

"You should be."

"I have an idea," Jaxon said. "How about I tell your boy-toy about how you had a habit of covering your face with your dresses when you were little." "I'LL KILL YOU!"

He smiled, and Landon said, "You better tell me now."

I pouted while Jaxon betrayed me. "She was five, and she was really shy. She also liked wearing dresses. So when she started going to school so I could work, she would get nervous around people that weren't me. When someone she didn't like would talk to her, she lifted her dress up to cover her face. Her teacher told me that my little sis was a flasher. Then she had to start wearing shorts under her dresses."

"Fuuuuuck you," I said, glaring through the rearview mirror. "Not my fault you stuck me with a bunch of people I hated. They all just sang and played with toy trucks. I wanted to climb trees, and they thought I was dumb. I couldn't communicate with people like that."

Landon reached out and rubbed my shoulder. "Don't feel bad, baby. Nothing wrong with hating everyone."

"I'm a social butterfly," Jaxon interjected. "I don't know where she gets it."

Jaxon told Landon some more stories about me when I was a kid, while I silently decided how I was going to get my revenge on him. Maybe Nair in his shampoo bottle.

Another hour later, Jaxon got a look on his face. "You notice that?"

"What?" I said.

Landon looked in the mirror. "So I'm not just seeing things?"

"What?" I said again.

"We're being tailed," Jaxon growled. "Don't look, but that SUV behind us has been on our asses since we crossed into Anderson."

"What do we do?"

Landon switched lanes. "They won't do anything with all the cars around us. Not if it can risk exposing them. When we stop again, they'll attack."

Jaxon sat back in his seat. "So we stop somewhere we can fight them."

Landon grinned. "We're thirty miles out from a building Knox owns. It's a factory and restaurant that makes its own jelly or something. If we lead them there, then we'll cause damage where it hurts."

Landon pressed on the gas, and the SUV behind us sped up to match the pace. I was terrified they'd pull something on the road, but they just followed behind us. The windows look black, and I was impossible to see inside. There could only be about eight people in there at best. The boys took out two dozen alone. Our odds were good, but it didn't do much for me. We'd been in the van all day, and we weren't ready for a fight. At least, I wasn't. Landon was always ready for a fight.

"If it's another demon/human mix, we're all good," Landon told me when he noticed the tension. "The real issue is who's going to be at the factory. Odds are that those are humans. They won't fight, but they'll call the cops." "So we run?" I asked.

"Yes, but I would prefer to be running to something. If we can manage, leave one alive for questioning." "Gotcha." Jax nodded.

We reached a building with the address that I saw in the ledger. It was decent-sized, and around back was where the trucks were kept. I could see some of them with backs that were open and stored halfway full. No one was out moving things, and I wasn't sure if that made me feel better or not.

Landon was doing his best to comfort me, but I think he was right. Death and killing were too much for me. If only I had the option of avoiding them.

Landon pulled up along the street as the sun was going down. If there were more vampires around, now would be their time.

"Don't be scared," he told me. "If you need to run, run."

"Yeah," Jax agreed. "Do what you have to do to keep alive, La. Landon and I can handle this."

I shook my head. "I'm fighting with you guys. We're in this together."

The SUV pulled over, and there was no instant hail of gunfire. There were no knives being thrown. There were six men, all in suits, and they were walking to us.

"What the hell," I said as we were getting out of the car.

Landon held me behind him as he and Jaxon made a human shield in front of me.

The men stopped in a line, and one spoke to us. "Mr. Crane."

"Yes," Landon said. "What do you want?"

The man that was speaking was the tallest of the bunch. He was bulkier than Landon, but I had faith that my husband could kill him without effort. The only issue was that we didn't know what kind of backup they had. For all we knew, the car was rigged to explode and take care of Knox's biggest problems all in one move.

"Mr. Knox sent us. He would like us to formally invite you to his estate."

Jaxon blinked. "What?"

"Mr. Moody, our employer, realizes that you and your family believe that you've been done a disservice."

"A disservice?" Jaxon growled. "You assholes killed me and my sister."

The man stayed calm. "We understand your anger. We are only here to ensure your safe arrival at the Knox estate."

Landon cut in. "Is that why there are six of you?"

"All we want is your safety."

"So, we're really not getting a choice in this then."

The man shrugged. "I'm sorry, sir. You'll need to come with us immediately."

"Or?"

"Or we'll have to use force."

Landon nodded. "I would be more than happy to see that force, sir."

The men didn't hesitate to come at us. I couldn't help but notice that they didn't have any weapons that they were going for. They might not have been lying about bringing us in. If we were dead, would they be punished? I didn't think we would find out.

The men divided evenly with the three of us. My fighting skills were basic at best, but it was enough to get me to a safe distance. I cleared away from my boys, and one of the men was stupid enough to run faster than the other. He came at me, and I ducked a punch.

The other man was catching up as I was kicking the first one between the legs. He went down with a wheeze that I laughed at. His buddy was not amused. He caught my wrist and swung me around. I kicked backward, making contact with his leg.

I could see Landon. A man was already dead, and it was safe to assume he wasn't a vampire. Landon was breaking the arm of another man when I was hit in the stomach.

I coughed, but I didn't stop fighting. If they won, then Knox would have us where he wanted. The bastard thought that we'd seen what he'd done as a minor inconvenience. Not murder, not torture. Something small.

I came back at the man with my knife, and it landed in his shoulder. Landon was on me in a moment, killing the other man and taking it upon himself to fight the one who'd hit me. It was sweet, really. He just wanted me safe. He was much better at all of this than I was, but I had a feeling he'd be changing that soon.

Landon broke the man's neck, and it was over just as soon as Jaxon did the same with his attacker. Then we were in a pile of bodies, none of which I'd put there. The boys hadn't even broken a sweat, and wasn't that scary. "Ow," Jaxon said as he wiped blood from under his nose. "Dick," he said to a corpse.

Landon was checking me over as Jaxon approached. "We should get out of here soon," he said. "Someone is going to see."

My brother agreed. "We're heading to his place, right?"

"Of course. Let's check the SUV for an address. Maybe some weapons."

The boys went through the thing while I piled the bodies in a truck, closing and locking it up. They wouldn't be found until the next workday, but that wasn't my problem. We'd be gone by then, and Knox would get word that his boys were dead. If we were lucky, and we never were, then he wouldn't know we were coming for him. There had to be precautions in place for that. You don't send that many people if you thought you were gonna have a nice chat.

I found the new strength I had to be very interesting. Everything felt so natural that I didn't think anything of moving six huge men on my own until it was over. I had no trouble with it. Being a vampire is kinda cool. Landon took my hand when I got back to them. He smiled and said, "Got it." I looked at the paper, and sighed. I had no clue where Crescent City was.

It turned out that three of the men were vampires, so said Landon after looking them over. He'd stuck them in the heart so they wouldn't wake up. He said that it meant Knox was getting desperate. He was probably making more vampires for all the ones we'd taken out. But new vampires weren't as much of a threat. They needed to be trained. Demon blood made them stronger, but they still needed to know how to fight.

"Wonderful. What now?"

Jaxon closed the side door. "We drive till we can't anymore. Then we rest up, eat, then kill us a demon bastard."

I looked to my brother. "What are you going to eat? You'll need more blood soon."

He'd only fed off dead people, and I didn't know why. Landon had gotten along by feeding from humans for hundreds of years. The tools were there, but Jaxon wasn't using them.

"I ate when we killed that demon yesterday," he reassured me with put-on confidence. "I meant a burger."

"I can give you blood if you need it."

Landon cut in. "Vampire blood hardly does anything for another vampire if you're not their Familiar." "But it'll keep him going."

"La..." Jaxon put his hands up. "...I'm good I had some demon a couple days ago. We need to head out though. Let's go till sunrise and catch a hotel. We rest up and leave. That okay with you two?"

I looked at Landon, letting him be the one who decided.

He said, "Sounds good."

We got in the van, and Jaxon took over the driving. Landon and I sat in the back as he went over some of the stuff that he found in the SUV. There were a lot of pictures of us, and that was upsetting. Some of them were from right after we'd started this little adventure. Some were a week ago. There was information on me and my brother that they must have dug up from hell.

"He really didn't just wanna talk, did he?" I asked.

Landon set the files down. "I don't think so, love."

"Why would he send them to collect us and not just kill us?"

He shrugged. "He's desperate. Maybe they were just supposed to take us somewhere else to kill us. Or maybe he really does just want to talk. Or talk before he kills us. He's a sadistic bastard, Mila. I cannot count all the things he might want to do to us."

That didn't sound good at all. "What are the odds we make it out alive?"

He smiled again. "Poor, since we're all dead at the moment."

I nearly laughed. "Fabulous point, my dear, but you know what I mean."

"I do. And I think we'll make it out. We might be missing some parts, but I think I'd still be hot with a hook for a hand."

He was trying to make a heavy situation light, and I appreciated that. But it only meant he was worried about something. It could be me, or the situation. Either way...

I decided to go for funny. "I will have to call you Captain Hook."

"That's fair."

Jaxon joined in. "I bet chicks would dig an eye patch on me."

Landon was kind about it. "I bet they would."

"Yeah, call me El Capitan."

"Not happening."

"Spoil sport."