Rafe flips open the phone, giving a terse greeting. I can hear Asa’s voice come over the line. “We have a problem here.”
“Hmm?” Rafe looks up to meet my eyes, checking to make sure I’m listening.
“The generator has been damaged. According to Jon, it will take days to fix.”
“Crap.”
“He also reports that the same vampire from room six was here at Gen-One. He thinks the power was sabotaged.”
“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rafe says, speaking way more quickly than usual. “Tell Jon to call the maintenance guys and Jerry out. We’ve got a big job ahead of us.”
Rafe clips the phone back to his waist and looks at me. “If that bastard is going after the power, what’s next?”
I think back to what I know of Ivan before answering. “He’s setting the stage. He wants us scared.”
Chapter Twenty-two
After working outside for several hours, moving above-ground cables, I’m feeling stiff and cranky. Jerry, our sixty-something engineer, has successfully directed us on how to reroute the primary power supply. Everything will come through the backup system until the repairs can be made.
“Looks like someone came in and started pulling cables out with their bare hands,” Jerry says. “Guess the power don’t hurt your kind?” He raises one eyebrow with his question.
Jerry’s a sharp old bastard. He’s been here since we opened and not much gets past him. Good thing he’s not at the main building often or I’d have to tamper with his keen intellect more than necessary when he retires.
“No, you’re right, it doesn’t. We act like conduits and pour the energy back into the ground.”
Jerry nods to himself, like another piece of the puzzle snaps into place for him.
“Four days, Jerry, that’s what you said, right?” I ask.
He looks around at the mess, nodding his head. He runs a hand through his short hair, mussing it up as he thinks. “Yup. I’ll need some strong backs and nimble fingers working ‘round the clock.” He looks back at me with a twinkle in his hazel eyes. “It’ll get done, don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
I smile at the sentiment. Nice to know someone can get a complex job done without my help. “Great. You need anything, let Rafe or me know.”
Leaving Jerry to his job, I head over to Jonathan’s secluded cabin. It’s closest, so Asa, Jon and Rafe, have gone there to warm up. I pull the hood up on my subzero parka, stomp the circulation back into my feet, and head off into the darkness on the paved walkway. A gut-wrenching howl rips through the air. The fine hairs on my body stand up at the eerie sound. Tones of remorse and sadness filter through on the long note as it dies down.
Up ahead in the darkness, the door to the cabin whips opens, slamming into the inside wall. Pounding footsteps on the wooden porch echo out. The rectangle of light from the cabin briefly illuminates a man running away. Reaching out with my senses, I connect with the frantic emotions of the runner.
It’s Jonathan. The energy pouring off him feels chaotic. That howl meant something and only he knows what. Two more figures, taller than the first, emerge from the cabin in pursuit. I change my course, angling through the woods at a run. Trees stream past me in the black. Outdoor spotlights, attached to Jon’s large heated kennel, wink behind tree trunks and bounce up off the hard-packed snow.
Sprinting past the buildings, I hear movement up ahead and dive deeper into the woods to get to it. The lights no longer reach the snow in front of me. A faint glow from the moon illuminates the pines as I dash and dodge between them. Bursting through the trees, I slam to a halt a few feet from Jon’s hunched form on the ground. He’s cradling something to his chest. A ring of six wolf crossbreeds pace around his kneeling body as he rocks back and forth. A high keening sound rends the air as Jonathan tosses his head back, yelling out his despair.
Rafe and Asa break through the woods, into the small ten-foot clearing. They skitter to a stop and take in the scene as well. Jon kneels in frozen gore, holding the remains of one of his wolves. The compacted ground reveals no obvious signs of a struggle, but plenty of night-hued blood. Jon’s dog must not have been out here too long, or the carcass would