"That's not how it works and you know it," she said, cringing as her head seemed to pound in tempo with her heartbeat.

"We're born to His f**king guards and he makes us weak! It doesn't matter what we do or how hard we try, he doesn't care! But I'm going to fix that soon, tonight if possible."

"Whatever the Master promised you is bullshit. You know most of them don't keep their promises to minions," she ground out between clenched teeth. She had to talk some sense into him, not that it would do her much good right now. If he sided with her right now the vampires would just drain him, drop his body and her predicament would still be the same.

Greg shook his head stubbornly, taking another step towards her until he was less than a foot from her. "He'll come for you and then the Master will make sure I get my reward."

"Who the hell are you talking about?"

"Caine," he spat out.

Her brows arched in surprise as she stared at him. Surely he was kidding. After a moment she realized he was dead serious.

This was worse than she thought, not just because she knew she was as good as dead, but this prick was doing something so monumentally stupid that by all rights she should bitch slap him for it.

One of the Council's fears, and the main reason the Council allowed Caine to help, even though they clearly didn't trust him, was Caine falling into the hands of a Master. As a Pyte he could decimate their numbers, but that wasn't their biggest concern.

The large army of stronger vampires he could make was. It was the reason the Council put a condition on his release. If he made even one vampire, never mind the one and only Pyte he could make, they promised they would throw him into a crate, fill it with cement and drop his ass off in the middle of the ocean where he would remain for eternity.

For the first time in years she was actually relieved that Caine had cut her out of his life and didn't care for her anymore. It probably just saved thousands of lives.

"He's not coming," she said evenly. "Whatever you have planned won't work, Greg. You know he hasn't spoken to me since I was a kid. This little plan of yours isn't going to work and when the Master finds out he's going to be seriously pissed off."

Greg shook his head ruefully. "Oh, he'll come, Danni. I'll make sure of it."

She sighed heavily. "I see. Then I should probably go ahead and get this out of the way."

"What-" he started to ask only to be cut off when she backhanded him. He stumbled back several feet, tripping over his own feet and falling on his ass.

"That felt good," she said with a smile, not caring one damn bit what they did to her now. As long as they didn't get their hands on Caine she could accept whatever the hell they had planned.

He glared up at her. "You f**king bitch!" he roared, jumping to his feet and charging after her.

She waited until the very last second to step to the side, sweep her leg out and strike out with her fist landing the blow right to his throat. He slammed into the wall behind her, choking and gasping.

Leaning over, she promised him, "If the Master is ever stupid enough to turn you I will happily stake your ass."

She landed a solid kick to his stomach as several strong hands grabbed her and yanked her back. Her arms were yanked behind her back and cuffed. They gagged her and shoved her to the ground. She did her damndest to cause as much pain as she could dish out, but there were too many of them and her vision was dimming as the pain in her head exploded. Just as the knife flashed in front of her she happily blacked out.

Chapter 3

"What the hell is going on?" one of the human males whose name Caine never bothered to learn, demanded.

"They must have been tipped off somehow," a woman who normally jumped anytime he came within ten feet of her, said.

Caine slowly walked the perimeter of the large room. The floor was covered in thick undisturbed dust and broken tiles. He gazed around the room looking for the exits that should have been there, but weren't. The room was a dead end and someone was f**king with them. He had a good idea who that someone was.

"Return to the compound," Caine said, sighing. He really didn't have time for this shit, well he did, but that didn't mean he wanted to waste his night fixing whatever the little ass**le f**ked up. He had several bags of type AB positive waiting for him in his room and a few books he wouldn't mind reading again. They weren't exciting plans, but they were his and he'd be damned if the little shit was wrecking them.

"We need to wait for Greg," another male said.

"He probably f**ked up again and Danni's fixing it. She'll figure it out and let us know what we have to do," another woman said.

"She should have been put in charge of this assignment, not Greg 'the f**k up' Mitchell."

Caine couldn't agree more, but now was not the time to discuss what should have been done differently. Wonder boy had screwed up again and this time he dragged Danni down with him.

He should leave her here to deal with whatever problems the little bastard created. It would serve her right for getting involved with the little prick in the first place. If she had listened to him all those years ago she wouldn't be in this mess right now. But no, she let that little bastard use her and she bailed his ass out time and time again. He would have let the little bastard fall flat on his face, but not Danni. The damn mission always meant everything to her.

As soon as he heard the little bastard had f**ked up again, yeah he switched channels and eavesdropped, he should have looked into the situation. But he didn't want to get involved with either one of them and he figured that she could deal with his bullshit and fix this problem. Obviously he'd been wrong.

"What do we do now?" a woman asked, sounding scared. Caine looked heavenward, praying for patience he damn well knew he didn't have. Why had he agreed to babysit the human unit?

Because as soon as he heard Greg was leading this mission he knew something was going to go wrong. Even as a boy Greg seemed to have a knack for causing problems and screwing over the people who fixed them. Everyone knew he was an incompetent f**k up, but that didn't stop his parents from pulling strings for him.

As much as Caine would like to go home and relax with a bag of blood, he knew he had to figure out what the hell went wrong here. First, he needed to find Danni and make sure the bastard wasn't going to try and blame his latest screw up on her. Then he was going to have to have yet another "word" with Greg.

"All of you get the hell out of here and get back to the compound," he ordered, eager to go have another "talk" with the prick. When they didn't move fast enough, he snapped, "Now!"

Thankfully that got them moving. No doubt they were going to bitch and whine to their parents once they reached the compound. Not that he cared. Actually, it might work out for him in the end. Maybe they'd start assigning some other dumb bastard babysitting duty. One could only hope.

Pulling out his knife, just in case he ran into an ambush along the way, Caine flashed the two miles of tunnel in under a minute. He paused ten yards away from the tunnel entrance and inhaled deeply and quickly cursed up a storm.

Fucking hell.

They'd run into the nest. He could smell Danni and Greg's scent, more importantly their blood among the heavy, cloying, earthly scent of vampires. From his position he could see there was a dead end where Greg promised there would be an opening. Granted, neither human would have seen that with their night vision goggles until they were relatively close.