Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

H ey, I was glad to hear from you. Why’s that such an insult?”

When Apex didn’t respond, the other vampire in the Chevy Suburban’s passenger seat looked over. And kept fucking talking. Like Mayhem had been doing for the last two fucking hours on the Northway in a blizzard.

Why was air free? Maybe if it cost money, the male would ration the shit.

“I mean, I’ve missed our little yappy-yaps like this.” Mr. Chatty leaned across the console. “I know you have, too. Fireside talks. Yup, they’re my love language. Uh-huh. Yeeeeeeah.”

Annnnnd the fucker was sporting a mullet. Because . . . of course he was.

“So. How ’bout them Yankees?”

When Apex didn’t reply, cue the tapping: The male turned his thighs into a drum set, his forefingers sticks on the muscles under those jeans, the tippity-tappity-ratta-tat-a-lum-a-lim-a-ding-bat the kind of thing that made Apex question his choices in life.

He should have driven the luggage and equipment up himself, and had the guy ghost to the coordinates.

On that note, Apex eyed the shoulder of the highway. If the weather weren’t shit, he’d pull over and tell the twitchy bastard to go on ahead, for the love of God. As it was? He wasn’t interested in bottoming for the succession of semis that were behind them.

“—or are you a Red Sox man, like some people we know? Huh? Helllllllllllllllllllllllo.”

Fuck, he had to say something. “I don’t like basketball.”

Mayhem’s head cranked in his direction, and those super pale peepers popped. “Okay, that would be baseball. But we can argue about the Golden State Warriors and the Lakers if you want.”

“I don’t like football.”

When the male just kept staring, Apex was forced to glance across the interior. Over the last thirty years since the prison had been liberated, nothing much had changed in the guy. He was still lean, in a bare-knuckle fighter kind of way. He was still brilliant, and hiding his IQ under a bushel of smartass. He was still—well, yeah, he’d grown his white-blond-and-deep-black hair out into that Lethal Weapon mullet.

Probably because he didn’t make time to go to the barber and had whacked off the shit around his face with a pair of safety scissors.

“What,” Apex muttered as the windshield wipers slapped back and forth.

Mayhem slowly shook his head. Like he was contemplating something that violated the laws of physics and wasn’t sure whether it was going to wipe out the planet. “I’m just curious how they let you drive a car, s’all.”

“Huh?” Before there could be a follow-up, Apex leaned into the windshield and focused through the sweeping wipers and the waves of flakes that ebbed and flowed in the headlights. “Fucking finally.”

The exit sign was the beacon he had been praying for.

As they drifted onto the ramp, Mayhem muttered, “And here I thought we would be driving north forever. Or maybe this trip’s just feeling like eternity.”

The SUV handled the unplowed decline like a champ. The stop sign at the bottom? Not so much. They sailed right through the no-go with a set of locked winter treads—a reminder that four-wheel drive did not mean four-wheel stop. Fortunately, no one else was out at midnight in the blizzard, so as they came to a halt in the middle of the plowed county road, it wasn’t a problem.

“When are you going to tell me what we’re doing?” Mayhem pushed a hand into his wool peacoat and offered something. “Life Saver?”

Apex put his head down on the steering wheel. “Okay, I’m not that and neither are you. Don’t get ahead of yourself—”

“The candy? And fuck that, even if you’d throw a drowning male a rock, I’m always ready to save someone.”

Lifting his head, Apex thought all about the ways stones could be used with the right follow-through. Then he waved off the offer of the colorful little tube and put the engine in reverse.

“I already told you, it’s just an IT job.”

“Yeah, but doing what?” A whiff of cherry drifted over as the male crunched on one of the disks. “Sure, the pay’s good. That’s all I know, though.”

The K-turn was fun what with snow blowing all around, the onslaught alternating between a pixelated wall of flakes, a blank wash of no-see-shit, and a black void with a potential drop-off at the shoulder.

“When we get there”—Apex straightened the wheel and headed them forward—“I’ll give you more details.”

Apex had to give the guy some credit. The computer specialist was still rolling with the information void, which could have been his personality or maybe was due to the fact that he didn’t have any better alternatives when it came to work or people who wanted his company. Some things didn’t change, after all. Mayhem had been the only person in that fucking prison who had just wandered in and decided to stay awhile. He’d literally blown fifty years in that hellhole just . . . because.

The fucker was quirky to the point of stupidity. He also had a skill set that was mighty handy when you were wiring a drafty old Adirondack mansion like it was the White House.

“Can we at least start with where the ‘there’ is?” Mayhem said.

“Here.”

“How existential—”

“No, we’re here.”

Apex banged the turn signal, even though there was no one around to care, and piloted them into a break in the pine trees. Someone had been doing the plowing, so it was easy to get to the grand entrance to the property.

“Holy shit,” Mayhem remarked, “what is this place? A ranch that mines human kings and gold bars, right outta the dirt?”

The guy might have had questionable taste in haircuts, but he had a point. The wrought iron gate was all kinds of filigree and fancy with a golden monogram in the center, and looming, spear-topped poles on the top that looked like they’d been made to display decapitated heads. The setup did not belong in the Adirondack Park.

But no one was asking Apex’s opinion on the shit. Most especially not the male he worked for.

“Do you know a code or are we hitting the gas and just plowing through this gate?” Mayhem put his palms together. “ Pleaaaase . For my birthday? Can we bust it open?”

Apex pulled up to a screen mounted on a pile of rock, put the window down, and stretched his arm out into the blizzard. As he entered a six-digit sequence and the two halves split down the middle to open, his passenger cursed.

“You are such a snooze.”

He hit the gas when there was enough room to pass. “We are not here to vandalize the place.”

“So is now the time when you tell me what we are doing?”

“Almost.”

On the far side, the lane continued onward, and the snow persisted even in the dense forest, the fluffy pine boughs not slowing down the fall. He kept the speed steady, even though everything was plowed and the road ahead was clear.

Just as they came up to a curve, he had the strangest premonition. Later, he would wonder how he knew—except had he really? At the moment he started to turn the wheel to the left, he only had a sense that something was coming, something important, that was—

The red taillights of a vehicle that was stopped in the center of the lane were glowing like a pair of evil eyes.

“Looks like the plow guy gave up,” Mayhem murmured. “Hey, maybe I can—”

“No.”

“You don’t know what I’m going to—”

“You’re not plowing anything.”

“That’s not what your mama said last night.”

Don’t kill him , Apex told himself. At least not before he syncs the sensors up with the monitoring program.

Opening the door—because either he got out of the SUV or “shotgun” was going to move out of the vernacular and into the locked-and-loaded-at-his-passenger zip code—he stepped free of the warmth and took his parka with him. As he walked toward the parked truck’s ass, he pulled on his Patagonia and tried to shield his face from the onslaught. The blizzard was going balls wild, the snow slicing into his eyes, going up his nose, trying to get into his mouth—

Meanwhile, that strange feeling that had kindled just under his skin . . . got louder and louder, until it was practically screaming.

Walking down what turned out to be a Ford, he noted the driver’s side door sported the same crest that was on that gate.

There was no one in the cab.

Open the door , some voice from somewhere said in his head.

“What we got?” Mayhem said off in the distance. “Ghost plower?”

Apex watched as his hand reached forward and landed on the latch. Freeing the catch, he pulled the panel open, and—

The scent tackled him like something physical.

And even though he knew exactly who it was, he leaned forward, squeezed his eyes shut, and breathed in through his nose. Just to be sure.

As he was exhaling, Mayhem came up to him. “I said, what we got?”

At that moment, a pack of dogs started howling, somewhere in the forest. Like they were bringing something down.

So they could eat it.