He wanted to forget the place where he'd been born. The wild place that had called to him like a possessive, destructive lover every moment since he'd left.
"What do you say, my man?" Lucan asked as Kade's silence grew long. He didn't see where he had any choice. He owed it to Lucan and the Order to take care of this unexpected, unpleasant business. No matter where it led him.
Even if the search for a vampire with an uncontrollable itch to kill ended up leading Kade home to a ten-thousand-acre stretch of land in the Alaskan interior. Home, to his family's own backyard. Grim with the idea, he gave the Order's leader an accepting nod. "How soon do I leave?" Forty-five minutes later, Kade was wearing a track in the rug of his private quarters, his packed duffel sitting on the end of the bed. A satellite phone lay beside the black leather bag, and for the third time in the past ten minutes, Kade reached for the device and punched in the number he hadn't called since the night he left Alaska.
This time he let the call ring through.
It was a shock to hear his father's strong voice come on the line.
"Been a while," Kade said by way of greeting, to which his father only grunted. It was a lame effort at contact after a year of being out of touch by his own doing. Then again, it wasn't as if his father had ever accused him of being responsible or reliable, or anything else for that matter. The conversation was awkward, a strained attempt at hi-how-are-you as Kade worked up the nerve to ask how everything was going back home. His father talked about the hard winter, the only benefit of the season being the fact that it kept the sun in hiding for all but three hours at midday. Kade recalled the extended darkness of the north country. His pulse kicked eagerly at the thought of so much night, so many hours of freedom in which to run.
It was obvious that his father hadn't yet heard about the recent slayings. Kade didn't mention them, nor did he speak of the mission that was sending him north. Instead, Kade cleared his throat and asked the question that had been burning in his gut since the moment he heard there had been trouble in Alaska.
"How's Seth doing? Is everything all right with him?"
Kade's blood went a bit cold in the hesitant silence that preceded his father's reply. "He is well. Why do you ask?"
Kade heard the suspicion in his father's voice, the mild disapproval that always had a way of creeping into the elder male's voice whenever Kade dared to question matters concerning his brother. "Just wondering if he might be around, that's all."
"Your brother had Darkhaven business to attend to for me in the city" came the terse reply. "He left a few weeks ago."
"A few weeks," Kade echoed. "That's a long time for him to be away. Have you heard from him at all recently?"
"Not recently, no. Why?" On the other end of the line, his father seemed to go silent with impatience.
"What exactly is this about, Kade? A year without any contact from you, and now you want to interrogate me about your brother's comings and goings. What is it you want?"
"Forget it," Kade said, instantly regretting that he'd made the call in the first place. "Just forget I called. I gotta go."
He didn't wait for his father's reply. Frankly, he didn't need to hear it. Kade ended the call without another word, his thoughts swirling with the grisly images he'd seen in the tech lab a short time ago and the knowledge that his brother had not been accounted for in potentially a number of weeks.
His brother, who shared the same dark talent as Kade.
The same dangerously seductive wildness--the violent power--that could so easily slip out of control. And had, at least once, Kade acknowledged with grim recollection.
"Goddamn it, Seth."
He tossed the phone onto the bed. Then, with a furious growl, he whirled on his heel and slammed his fist into the nearest wall.
Chapter Four
The Arctic storm had pounded the Alaskan interior for two days straight, dumping three feet of snow on the small town of Harmony and its far-flung neighbors along the river and plunging daytime temperatures all over the region to fifteen below zero. Ordinarily, weather like that tended to do one of two things to folks: keep them knuckled down at home, or send them flocking to Pete's, the local restaurant and tavern.
Today, despite the howl of the wintry wind and the skin-biting cold as the third and final hour of sunlight faded into midday dusk, nearly all of Harmony's ninety-three residents were packed into the logcabin Congregational church for an impromptu town hall meeting. Alex sat beside Jenna in the second row of pews, trying as hard as everyone else to make sense of the recent carnage in the bush, which had brought six dead, brutally savaged bodies into makeshift cold storage at Harmony's airstrip and put the whole town into a state of anxious unrest.
Alex knew that Zach Tucker had tried to keep the news of the attack on the Toms settlement quiet, but despite the vastness of the interior, word traveled fast--faster still, in this isolated eleven-square-mile chunk of land that hugged the shore of the Koyukuk. Bad news, particularly the kind involving multiple unexplained deaths of a violent nature, tended to reach folks' ears as if flown there on a raven's wings. In the forty-eight hours since Alex's discovery of the killings, and Zach's decision to transport the bodies from the crime scene into Harmony to await the clearing of the weather so the Staties in Fairbanks could come in and take over the investigation, the feeling around town had gone from one of shock and dismay to one of suspicion and dangerous, mounting hysteria. Forty-eight hours had been all the townspeople could take without demanding some answers about just who--or what--had so viciously attacked Pop Toms and his family.>"Turns out he wasn't actually much of a dog person," Kade said around the continued shrieks coming from the direction of the office.
Brock's mouth quirked at the corner. "So I hear. Anything else?"
"Yeah, unfortunately. Asshole's been trafficking Breedmates, just as our intel suggested. His client was a Minion, but he didn't know anything more than that. Never saw the mind slave up close and couldn't describe him at all."
"Shit," Brock said, running a big hand over the top of his head. "So I guess Homeboy was a dead end, huh?"
Kade cocked his head as the last of the howls cut short behind him. "He is now." Brock exhaled a rueful chuckle. "Let's get this place cleaned up and shut down. Got a text from Gideon, asking us to call in when we can. Something about a situation up north."
"Up north, as in upstate?"
"No, man. Farther north than that." Brock met his gaze and held it for longer than was comfortable.