Vampire in Atlantis

Chapter 37

Brig closed his phone, smelling something fishy even though he was a long damn way from the ocean. First off, Smithson hadn’t been quite the upstanding citizen the higher-ups had been touting. Brig was an old hand at working the military communication channels, and he’d gotten the gouge—the unofficial but critically important scoop—on Smithson’s background on the call he’d just taken.

Second, there was a kid in that cave. A human kid. A kid that one of St. Ives’s men had thrown a knife into. If the vampire hadn’t killed the murdering bastard, Brig might have done it himself.

Third, there was the vampire that had just blown through the side of the trailer like a shoulder-launched missile. Brig had interviewed a lot of men and women in his day, and he could sniff out integrity like a bloodhound with a brand-new nose.

That vampire had integrity, and he’d cared about nothing but saving his woman. Not plots or conspiracies or any other damned thing.

The phone rang again.

“You have a go, Colonel St. Ives,” a familiar and abrasive voice said in his ear.

“There’s a kid in there, sir. A human boy. The vampire’s hostage, from what intel could discover. A complete innocent.”

With hardly a pause, the voice continued. “Collateral damage. Regrettable, but unavoidable. You have a go.”

Brig stood there, staring at the phone for a long time after the line went dead.

“Fuck that,” he finally said. “Lieutenant? We’re moving out.”

He had a grandbaby to meet, and he’d be damned if he’d meet him or her with another child’s blood on his hands. It was way the hell past time to retire.

He headed out of the trailer, laughing at the man-shaped hole in the wall, and then he stood and watched his men as they loaded up and fell back.

“Good luck, Daniel with one name,” he finally said before he went to find his jeep.