Glacier Read online

  “Great. Vamps have a rebel website now?” Pest grunted.

  Mandy nodded. “They did. Olivia and I were sent out with Danti. He’s an assassin we live with. We—”

  “You have a companion?” Pest growled. “My brother is putting his ass on the line for you and you’re fucking someone?”

  She stared at him. “No. I live with nine other assassins. I’m not having sex with any of them. Can I finish now?”

  Pest nodded, looking chagrined as he shoved fries into his mouth.

  “Danti pretended to be Zander, the master who’d been invited to the website. We were under orders to find out if they were plotting against the council and how many nests were involved. As soon as Danti paid the money and got the password, we logged on. They had some videos of illegal activities on the site. Mild propaganda. Kind of like, ‘we could do this to anyone we wanted if the council wasn’t around anymore; watch and get motivated’ type of crap. It was sick.”

  Glacier stopped eating and got up, approaching her. “What kinds of videos? Lycan kids fighting?”

  She shook her head. “Not kids, but there were a few videos of adult Werewolves fighting each other. They were collared and looked abused, half starved, as if they’d been in captivity for a while. Werewolves go into heat. And the prize to the winning male was a human female.” She hesitated. “For sex. They had videos of that on there, too. They threw those women in with the mindless men after they’d fought. The council wanted to shut that shit down fast. I told you they don’t want to draw the attention of the VampLycans. That would have done it. Missing Werewolves and human women combined? Big red flag.”

  “Fuck.” Pest stopped eating, too.

  “Mostly though, it was abuse of other Vampires.”

  “I didn’t think the council would give a shit about that.”

  Mandy stared into Glacier’s eyes. “They do when masters are creating new Vamps at an alarming rate just so they can pit them against soldiers they’ve made for the sole purpose of fighting, and making bets on how long the Vamps survive. The answer, from what I saw, is less than five minutes, by the way. Lots of videos of that shit going down were loaded. There are laws about soldiers. Strict ones.”

  “Like what?” Glacier took her hand and led her to the closest counter, lifted her, and sat her on it. He took a seat next to her.

  “Have you ever seen a soldier? Know what one is?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  She hated them; a shiver ran down her spine. “They’re very unstable, and the longer they’re alive, the more dangerous they become. Especially if they’re hurt. They don’t heal the way I do. They become more unbalanced every time they’re injured. The council demands any master seek permission to create soldiers first. I’ve been sent to monitor those situations twice. The first time, it was a master of a large nest who’d survived an uprising by his own. It’s against the law for a nest to kill its master. The master didn’t just want his Vamps exterminated, but to go out in a grisly way. The council agreed. Five soldiers were made. Myself and six other assassins were sent to make sure none of the soldiers survived after their task had been completed. We also trapped the nest inside the building where they slept to avoid any escaping.”

  “Why not just have other Vamps kill them and be vicious about it?”

  She looked down at Pest. “Soldiers are more brutal than your average Vampire. As in, they literally bite into you and take out chunks. Think gory, blood-spraying kind of nightmare shit where they’re soaked in blood. They don’t remove the heads of their Vampire targets. They just keep biting, tearing their prey apart, until not enough is left to survive. They are insane. It’s like the vilest way possible for our kind to die. It’s a form of punishment for the worst crimes. The master destroyed the soldiers after they killed everyone in his nest.”

  “You said there were two situations.” Glacier reached out and took her hand, as if he knew remembering wasn’t easy on her.

  She gripped his hand back, holding on. “The second time, a master had created three of them without permission. He was just a shithead who was curious to see if he could make them and what they could do. Problem was, he left them alive for too long after running his tests. They degraded enough to stop taking orders, attacked all four members of his nest and killed them. The master fought them off but he got trapped when part of his basement hideout collapsed, pinning him under a beam. Fortunately, he had his cell phone and got a signal. He had to call for help. We came. But seven humans died as a result before we were able to kill the soldiers. It was hell…”

  Glacier slid closer, released her hand, and put his arm around her shoulders. She liked that he tried to comfort her. “You don’t have to say anything else.”

  “No. It’s fine… It was the smell of death that drew us. Their soldier bodies had rotted that much, plus the sickos had dragged their victims into the storm drain, where they were hiding. I’d been trained how to deal with soldiers and warned about what they were like to battle. Nothing prepared me for the real thing, though. They just don’t go down, or react to pain the way someone else would. It just drives them into more of a frenzy. I never want to have to take them on again. I had nightmares for months after that.”

  “Were you hurt?”

  “I wore protective gear that kept them from biting me but I suffered broken bones. Those fuckers are strong.”

  “You have protective gear against biters? Damn. That’s kind of cool.”

  She smiled at Pest. “Yes. We do. Vampires love to swarm. Being repeatedly bitten and bleeding from multiple wounds will weaken anyone. Think metal mesh sewn between the soft inner material and the tougher exterior of a uniform. We just have to watch our joints, where there’s no mesh.” She raised one arm and bent her elbow. “Plus, a throat plate around our necks and a helmet that locks to it. It protects my throat from bites and my head from being removed. Part of an assassin’s job at times is extinguishing a nest.”

  “I don’t want to hear how dangerous your job was.” Glacier released her shoulder and slid off the counter before he turned, holding her gaze. “Why did you bring up that website? Is that the only video connection you could think of? Do you think Marco had opened something like that?”

  “Here’s the thing. We investigated for weeks. Danti had to make friends since the other online members had bogus names. He used Olivia and I as bait to get other Vampires to meet with him.”

  Glacier looked wary. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Danti said he owned two well-trained lovers he had grown tired of after twenty years. Whatever fetishes they had, he swore we were into. We needed face-to-face meetings to identify who the players were.”

  Pest whistled. “You had to fuck masters?”

  “No.” She sighed. “Danti introduced us to the men though, and made promises to gift us to each new friend soon. After we had identified ten of them, the council had all of them arrested for questioning. They gave up Barkley Brimstone. He was arrested and imprisoned, since he refused to give up the true names of other masters who had joined his website. Rumor had it that he admitted to making alliances with over fifty masters in the U.S., and even more in other countries.”

  Glacier leaned against the counter. “So?”

  “Yeah, so?” Pest started eating again.

  “Danti had to pay half a million dollars to join that website. Think about the kind of money Barkley made on membership fees. He also bragged about how close he’d been to locating all the council members.”

  “Don’t all Vamps know who they are?”

  She met Glacier’s eyes. “Definitely not. It’s to protect them from the Vampires they piss off. I don’t even know all their real names or locations. I’m guessing they’re like Corski, and must be masters in the cities of assassin houses, but it’s just an assumption.”

  “Who the fuck is Corski?”

  Glacier answered Pest. “He’s the master of New York City, where Mandy is stationed, and also the coun