He glanced at the bodies. At the phone. At the bodies. At the phone.
Oh. Right. The network.
Dr. Lipton tucked a new page in the chart on her desk and reached for her cell phone.
Just as her fingers touched it, it rang. “Melanie Lipton” she answered. Several long seconds passed without a response. “Hello?”
“Dr. Lipton?”
Her heart leapt as those deep, rich tones washed over her. Sebastien Newcombe. She’d know his voice anywhere . . . even if something about it did seem a bit off. “Yes. Bastien?”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his words full of bewilderment.
Melanie frowned. He sounded drunk. Immortals couldn’t get drunk. “What do you mean? I’m in my office at the network.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
Melanie rose. Something was wrong.
A clatter came over the line.
“Sebastien? Are you still there?” She hurried out into the hallway.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I think I fell.” A moment of silence passed. “Yeah, I fell.”
Anxiety flooded her as she waved to one of the security officers who guarded the doors to the vampires’ apartments across the hall. “Get Mr. Reordon down here,” she whispered. “Now!”
The man reached for a walkie-talkie on his shoulder and began to mutter into it.
Melanie started toward the elevator at the end of the hallway. “Are you injured? Bastien?”
“Feels like it.”
“How badly?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are you?”
“On the ground.” Bastien’s words slurred.
“No, I mean . . . Look around you. What do you see?”
There was a pause. “Bodies.”
Oh crap. “What else?”
A large desk rested in front of the elevator doors. A dozen men garbed in black fatigues and sporting automatic weapons stood around it. Two more, seated behind it, rose at her approach.
“Is something wrong, Doc?” Todd asked.
She nodded. “If Mr. Reordon isn’t already on his way, get him down here now,” she murmured. Then, louder into the phone, she said, “What else do you see?”
“Trees,” Bastien muttered.
Trees? Yeah. That narrowed it down. He could be anywhere in the freaking state.
The numbers above the elevator doors lit up.
“Is anyone there with you? Another immortal perhaps?” She had heard that he had been forbidden to go anywhere without an immortal escort.
“Um . . . I can’t tell if those are vampires or immortals shriveling up over there. I think they’re vampires. I killed a couple of vampires, didn’t I?”
A slew of faint French erupted over the phone.
The elevator pinged. When the doors slid open, Chris Reordon—head of the East Coast division of the network of humans that aided Immortal Guardians—emerged.
“What’s up?” he asked with a frown.
Melanie felt only partially relieved. Chris could send Bastien aid, but the question was: Would he? A lot of animosity existed between those two. Animosity that had exploded into full-blown hatred when Bastien had breached these very network headquarters only a few weeks earlier, forcing his way inside and injuring dozens of guards after . . .
Well, after Melanie had called him to let him know one of his former vampire followers had had a psychotic break. She would never forget the look in Bastien’s eyes the night he had ended the young vampire’s life.
Hoping personal bias wouldn’t interfere in the execution of Chris’s duties . . . again . . . Melanie drew in a deep breath. “Something has happened to Sebastien Newcombe.”
Chris’s scowl deepened. “What?”
She drew his attention to her phone. “He’s been injured and . . . his words are slurred. His thoughts don’t seem to be coherent. He’s down and says there are bodies all around him and two of them are either vampires or immortals.”
Swearing, Chris held out his hand for the phone. “Bastien? Where are you?” A growl of pure frustration followed. “On the ground where?”
Melanie bit her lip.
Chris’s demeanor suddenly changed. “It’s Chris. Is this Étienne or Richart?” He drew a pencil and small notepad from his pocket and dropped the notepad on the desk. “What? How many?” He scribbled something down. “What side of the campus are you on? . . . Which building? . . . Okay. Take out the lights. I’ll send a cleaning crew over there ASAP. Bring Bastien here. I want to talk to him.”
Melanie frowned. Talk to him? He was injured and barely coherent.
“The holding room.”
That didn’t bode well.
Chris ended the call and handed her the phone.
“Why is he being put in the holding room?” she dared to ask.
Chris retrieved his own phone and began to bark orders into it.
“Mr. Reordon?” she persisted. “Why is Bastien being put in the holding room?”
Irritation swept his visage. “Because over a dozen dead humans litter the ground around him.”
The guards began to grumble. They held no love or admiration for Bastien either, some of them having been injured by him personally.
“Immortals are supposed to protect humans, not kill them,” Chris muttered as he ended the call. “Half of you come with me,” he told the guards. “Todd, get two dozen more down here with full firepower. I want both the elevator and the door to the stairwell heavily guarded. Tell the men to be prepared for anything.”
“Yes, sir.” Todd motioned to several men, indicating they should follow Chris, then reached for the walkie-talkie on his shoulder.
Chris started down the long hallway toward the holding room. Melanie hurried to keep up with him as the guards, fingers on the triggers of their weapons, fell in behind them, tense and alert.
“But . . . you don’t know what the circumstances were,” she broached. They wouldn’t hurt Bastien, would they? Or deny him medical care? Because it sounded like Chris intended to chain him up and interrogate him. Again. “He’s injured. What if—”
“Immortals aren’t supposed to harm humans unless the humans pose a serious threat.”
“Maybe these did.”
He snorted. “He’s immortal, Dr. Lipton. Humans can’t harm him. Not seriously enough to warrant a death sentence.”
She lowered her voice. “They can if they possess a certain very unique tranquilizer.”
He looked at her sharply. “The odds of that are—”
“He sounded drugged.”
“Not to me, he didn’t.”
“When you asked him where he was, he said he was on the ground!”
“That’s just Bastien being Bastien. He’s an ass. It’s what he does.”
Pounding erupted on the door to the holding room. The guards already stationed in front of it jumped and turned their weapons on it.
Chris picked up his pace.
Melanie had to jog to keep up with him.
Chris stopped before the door and swiped his key card. “New arrival,” he told the guards as he punched in the security code. “Stay sharp.”
A clunk sounded, then the door—as thick as that of a bank vault—swung open.
Inside the steel and titanium room, an immortal Melanie had never seen before waited for them, Sebastien draped over his shoulder. Around six feet tall, he boasted the raven hair and brown eyes (which still held a hint of amber glow) characteristic of all immortals save Sarah. The black clothing and long, dark coat he wore glistened in places with what she suspected was blood.
This must be Richart. As far as Melanie knew, Richart was the only immortal currently residing in the United States who could teleport.