Divine had named the boy Luc and had loved him like her own. She’d been heartbroken when Damian had come to visit on the boy’s tenth birthday and decided he needed a father and should go with him. She’d been absolutely devastated, though, when she’d gone to visit Damian and the boy some months later only to learn that their camp had been raided by Lucian’s scouts and the boy hadn’t got away. He was dead.
Her old fears of her family had immediately resurfaced and the first wave of her anger with them had been born. Luc had been only the first of her grandsons that Divine had raised. Damian had brought her eight of them in all during those first two centuries. She’d raised each as her own, with all the love she could give them, and then had been forced to stand by as her son took them away to finish their upbringing himself. Some had become no-fanger after leaving her, some had not, which Abaddon had said was normal. He had claimed that some children were like that, their no-fanger needs simply not kicking in until puberty.
Of course, now that Marcus had explained nanos to her, she realized that couldn’t be the case at all. Those boys must have been birthed by mortal women. If they became no-fangers later, it was because Damian must have tried to turn them. She now wondered if that was the real cause of their death, because not one of the grandsons she’d cared for had survived to adulthood. Each of them had died, supposedly slaughtered by Argeneau spies or hunters. And then Damian had stopped bringing her the children he spawned, claiming that she made them weak.
Once he’d stopped bringing her children, Damian’s visits had grown more sparse. Some centuries she’d seen him more often than others, but they had gone as much as eight decades between visits at times. In fact, Divine had often been amazed that he was able to find her when he did come around or send for her. She was constantly moving, after all.
Divine sighed and dashed irritably at her eyes. Thoughts of her grandsons always made her teary. But it was more than that right now. Looking back with the new information she had, she was seeing a lot of the lies that had been told her and wondering just what in her life had been true. She was also wishing she hadn’t been quite so gullible and accepted what Abaddon had said. In fact, she really didn’t understand why she had. She’d loathed the man. Shouldn’t she have doubted every word out of his mouth?
Influence seemed the obvious answer. All she could think was that he’d used mind control, influence, and mental nudging to ensure she believed him. It didn’t matter though, whether he’d used influence and such, or she’d just been blind and stupid, the end result was the same. Divine was left with the ruins of a life; no home, no family, no friends, and unable to claim her life mate. It also left her with a son who, if Marcus was to be believed, was a killer like his father. And so were his sons.
Divine shook her head. She’d never seen any evidence of that. The women who had been around when she’d visited had— Frankly, she’d not thought much of them. They’d all looked unkempt and emaciated, and had always been high as kites when she’d visited, as had her grandsons. Now she had to wonder about that too. Were they druggies, or just kept drugged up when she was around so that she couldn’t read fear or terror from their minds? Narcotics muddied the thoughts enough to make them incomprehensible when read.
Were those poor women really victims like she had been to Damian’s father, Leonius? Divine’s mouth tightened. Marcus had said that Damian went by his father’s name and named his sons Leonius as well so that he had to call them each by their birth order number. She had heard him call them by numbers over the centuries. For instance he’d called Rufus, the rude grandson she usually wanted to swat, Four on more than one occasion, although in front of her he usually just called them all boy.
Her thoughts returned to the women. Divine couldn’t bear to think her son was treating those women as his father had treated her. She intended to find out and set them free if that was the case. She intended on finding out the truth of everything if she could.
Spotting a gas station, Divine slowed and pulled in.
As she’d hoped there was a pay phone here, against the side of the building. She needed to call Damian and find out where he was. She didn’t want to drive all the way to the last place he’d been only to find he had moved on.
Divine had always had a good memory. She suspected it had something to do with the nanos. Certainly she didn’t recall Damian’s number because she used it excessively. She usually called him once a month or so. At least she had until a couple days ago when he’d suddenly called saying he was in the area and needed to see her.
The phone barely rang once before it was picked up, but it wasn’t Damian who answered, it was Abaddon. The sound of his voice immediately set her teeth on edge. “I want to speak to my son.”
“I’m sorry, Basha, he’s playing with one of his little female friends right now,” Abaddon said sweetly. “Can I take a message?”
Divine didn’t bother insisting he use the name Divine, but simply growled, “Are you still at the house I woke up in the other day?”
“No,” Abaddon said at once. “We’ve moved. I felt like seeing the Cirque du Soleil perform, and your son was amenable, so we headed to Vegas. We’re about half an hour outside that city.”
Divine went still. That seemed a happy coincidence, but she doubted if it was. After all, she knew Abaddon had some of Damian’s sons watching her. They’d probably told him that she and Marcus were in Vegas, and that was the real reason he was here. The only question was why? The boys could call in their reports. He didn’t have to remain close by.
Grinding her teeth, she asked, “What’s the address?”
When he finished rattling it off, Divine hung up without a good-bye and returned to the SUV to check the GPS. The address he’d given her was half an hour out of the city, but on the other side from where she was now. And it looked like it was in the middle of nowhere, she noted, making the GPS image bigger.
Setting that address as the destination, Divine started the SUV and shifted into gear. She would return it to the hotel parking lot after confronting her son. If she survived the confrontation. Divine suspected one of them wouldn’t. If he was killing people, Damian was a menace, and while she hadn’t technically brought him into this world, she’d raised him, was responsible for him, and would take him out if she had to.
Twenty-two
Divine brought the SUV to a halt and shifted it into park, but didn’t get out. Instead, she simply sat and stared at the building the GPS had brought her to. It looked like an old abandoned warehouse, though why anyone would store anything way the heck out here in the middle of nowhere, she didn’t know. The only thing she could think was that the land was probably cheap as spit. Although, from the looks of it, even that hadn’t been enough to make it worthwhile once the gas prices had started to skyrocket. By her guess, no one had used the building in at least thirty years . . . until now.
Another palace for her son, Divine thought grimly. In the past, she would have blamed her uncle for Damian’s having to live like this. Now she wondered if Damian didn’t actually choose places like this because of the lack of neighbors. There would be no one to hear the screams if he really had followed in his father’s footsteps and was torturing women in that building.
Mouth tightening, Divine finally got out of the SUV and headed for the building. There were several doors to choose from, half a dozen bay doors that trucks would have backed up to, and one door customers and employees would have used to enter on foot. She chose the latter.
Divine didn’t bother knocking, but simply reached out and turned the knob, not surprised when it opened unimpeded. Damian had never been overly concerned about security . . . something that had always frustrated her since she’d thought perhaps her grandsons’ murders might have been prevented had he troubled himself with even a modicum of security.