*-*-*-*
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Stop that!”
Fucking Pytes, Kale thought with disgust.
He watched Caine and Chris force Cloe’s hand beneath the stream of cold water while Danni did her best to hold Cloe near the sink when she clearly wanted to bolt away from Ephraim and that damn bag of blood that he was trying to get her to drink. Letting Ephraim take the lead on this one had been a mistake, one he wouldn’t be making again, he decided, sighing heavily as he shut off his iPhone and shoved it in his back pocket.
Not that he could fault Ephraim with the way he’d handled retrieving the Pyte, he couldn’t. He’d gotten everyone in and handled a situation that you couldn’t pay him to touch. He didn’t do emotional bullshit, didn’t have time for it, so when they’d realized that one of the heartbeats in the house was slowing down and who it belonged to, he’d been more than happy to leave it up to Ephraim to deal with.
It had given him the distraction that he’d needed to see what was going on in the basement. He’d have to admit that he hadn’t expected to find a vampire, one of the Sentinel’s blood deliverers, switching out a bag of blood for the unconscious woman lying on the bed. He sure as hell hadn’t expected to find a freshly turned Pyte on his first retrieval mission for the Council.
He’d come for one Pyte and had instead discovered two. While Chris had been playing twenty questions with the vampire and checking to make sure that the woman was okay, Kale had stood by the bed, gun in hand while he’d struggled against the urge to kill her before the turn was final. He’d had a chance to rid the world of one of them, he’d been tempted, oh so f**king tempted to take it.
If Chris hadn’t stepped in his way and picked the woman up, he would have killed her. If it had been anyone else who had taken up the responsibility of protecting her, he would have killed them just to get to her and kill her before it was too late, but Chris was untouchable for a reason.
Izzy.
She loved her mate, adored the annoying bastard so when Kale was on patrol with Chris or on a mission, he made damn sure to return the bastard to Izzy without so much as a scratch on him. So, for Izzy, he hadn’t gone through Chris to get to the woman. The fact that he’d doubled his pay without lifting a finger should have comforted him, but it didn’t.
He had no problem wrangling in the Pytes that were already in existence, especially if it meant making sure that they were kept out of Masters’ hands, but he had a real f**king problem with creating new Pytes. If it was up to him, he’d rid the world of every last one of them, but since it wasn’t up to him or evenly remotely possible, he’d settle for making a few bucks by delivering them to the Council….
As long as the Council didn’t try to build its own army that is.
If they ever tried that bullshit, Kale would make every last Sentinel pay for unleashing that horror on the world. But, for now he was going to content himself with being paid to hunt Pytes, retrieve them and deliver them to the Council. This way he would know how many of them there were, where they were and of course, bring him that much closer to his goal.
At least he didn’t have to worry about these two Pytes creating any little bastards that he’d eventually have to put down before they hit their immortality, he mused, shaking his head in disgust at Ephraim’s attempts to explain their world to this woman. He really should have saved the whole “we heal from everything” part of the speech until the end. Even Kale knew what the woman was going to do as soon as Ephraim had made that little announcement.
Sure enough, as soon as Ephraim had finished explaining how Pytes could heal from absolutely everything, and he would know, the seriously pissed off, but curious, woman had stormed into the kitchen to find out for herself. He’d known exactly what she was planning when she’d eyed that large butcher knife and he could have easily stopped her, but….well, he really hadn’t cared enough to try.
“Lying bastard!” Cloe yelled, struggling to get away from Ephraim, who was still trying to get her to drink some blood.
He probably should have explained that Pytes only heal quickly if they’d fed recently or drank blood after they were injured. Otherwise it could take a while for their injuries to heal. Since this woman had only been turned a few days ago and refused to drink blood, she didn’t have enough blood stored away to handle even a tiny scratch never mind that huge gash on her palm.
“Get the hell away from me, you bastard!” Cloe snapped at Ephraim as she continued to struggle to get away. The trio, who were only f**king this up more, were trying to slow the bleeding down before Cloe could slip into bloodlust from blood loss and they had to deal with more bullshit.
A small chime brought his attention back to his phone and the job that was waiting for him. He didn’t have time for this bullshit. He had a job waiting for him and he needed to get going. He looked over at the Pyte who should be handling this and sighed.
The bastard sat on the loveseat, looking bored. Christofer’s focus was on the floor to ceiling glass window and his eyes were a calm crystal blue instead of the fiery red that he’d expected. Kale was curious how the Pyte managed to control that reaction, looking as though he didn’t give a rat’s ass that his mate was being manhandled by three other men, but he knew the truth. The Pyte was just barely holding himself back. The scent of fury poured off him in waves. His heart was pounding against his chest even as he appeared relaxed, bored.
Interesting…..
Curious to see if he could break through that façade, and admittedly a little bored himself, Kale walked over to the small group, keeping his attention on the Pyte in front of him, reached out and with the very tip of his finger. He’d barely touched Cloe’s arm when he suddenly found himself soaring through the air courtesy of a seriously pissed off Pyte.
Chapter 26
“Get him off me!”
“Man the f**k up!” Chris snapped as he tried to pull Christofer off Kale and failed, judging by the way he was suddenly sent flying through the large room.
“Grab his legs!” Ephraim ordered Caine as he moved to grab Christofer by the arms and-
Went flying across the room to join Chris, who was just getting to his feet before stumbling and falling back on his ass next to his father. With a muttered, “Should just let him tear the shifter apart,” Caine grabbed Christofer by the legs and yanked him back and-
Landed on top of Chris and Ephraim with a pained grunt just as the two of them struggled to get back to their feet. Sighing heavily, Danni moved to make an attempt to pull Christofer off Kale, but all three men on the floor yelled, “No!” in unison.