Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [241]
Ben held the sunglass-shaded gaze that pinned him from only an arm’s length away. “I never keep the true formula in the lab. I thought it would be safer kept offsite, with me.”
“You need to give it to me.” There was little inflection in the words, no movement in the powerful body that stood before him like an impassable wall. “Now, Mr. Sullivan.”
“I don’t have it. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Where is it?”
Ben’s tongue froze. He needed a bargaining chip, and the formula was all he had. Besides, he wasn’t about to sic these thugs on Tess by telling them he’d hidden the Crimson recipe in her clinic. He hadn’t meant to leave it there for long, only until he’d sorted out his options in this mess. Too late to call back that misstep, unfortunately. Even though saving his own ass was his primary concern at the moment, putting Tess in the middle of this was out of the question.
“I can get it for you,” Ben said, “but you’ll have to let me go. Let’s agree on this like gentlemen. We sever all ties right here and now and go our separate ways. Forget we know anything about each other.”
A tight smile curved his employer’s mouth. “Don’t try to negotiate with me. You are beneath me…human.”
Ben swallowed hard. He wanted to believe that the guy was just some kind of demented vampire fantasist. A nut job who was heavy on cash but light on sanity. Except he’d seen what Crimson had done to the kid he’d dealt it to the other night. That horrific transformation had been real, hard as it was to accept. And the ragged, searing gash in his neck was real too.
Panic started hammering hard in his chest.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on here. Frankly, I don’t wanna know. I just want to get the hell out of here in one piece.”
“Excellent. Then you should have no trouble complying. Give me the formula.”
“I told you, I don’t have it.”
“Then you will have to re-create it, Mr. Sullivan.” A brief nod brought the two armed guards inside. “I’ve taken the liberty of bringing your lab equipment here. Everything you need is in order, including a test subject for the finished product. My associates will show you the way.”
“Wait.” Ben shot a look over his shoulder as the guards began to remove him from the room. “You don’t understand. The formula is…complex. I don’t have it memorized. To get it right could take me several days—”
“You have no more than two hours, Mr. Sullivan.”
Bruising hands grasped Ben in an unyielding hold and pushed him back toward the descending stairwell that gaped ahead of him, as black as endless night.
Chase strapped on the last of his weapons, then checked his ammo supply one final time. He had one pistol loaded with regular rounds; another held a clip of the hollow-nose titanium specials that he’d been given by the warriors for the express purpose of killing Rogues. He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t need to use those, but if he had to blast through a dozen feral vampires to reach his nephew, he damn well would.
Grabbing his dark wool pea coat from the hook near the door, he stepped into the hallway outside his private quarters in the Darkhaven. Elise was there; he nearly ran into her in his haste to be on his way.
“Sterling…hello. Have you been avoiding me? I’d been hoping I could talk with you.” Her lavender eyes swept him in a quick glance. She frowned, seeing the array of guns and knives that circled his hips and crisscrossed his chest. He felt her apprehension, could smell the sudden, bitter note of dread mingling with the delicate scent that was simply her own. “So many terrible weapons. Is it very dangerous out there?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he told her. “Just keep praying for Camden to come home soon. I’ll take care of the rest.”
She picked up the tail of her scarlet widow’s sash and idly smoothed the silk through her fingers. “That’s actually what I wanted