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She slapped her hand over his mouth. “Stop it. I swear to the moon and stars, you males are all the same.”

He grinned a boyish smile. “What’s that?”

“Always thinking with our dicks?” He pressed a kiss against her palm, still lying against her mouth. “I’m kidding. Well, I do love hearing it then, too. I admit, I love anytime you open your mouth.”

“That could totally be turned into another dirty thing, mo ghaol.” This time, she licked his palm, making his eyes glow brighter red.

He lifted her by the hips, turning her like she weighed nothing and shifted her until her legs straddled his on the sectional. “I like making you dirty, baby girl.”

She liked getting dirty with him even more. Before they could do more, his eyes closed, and she felt the familiar vibrations that meant one of his Clan had summoned him. Thana stayed silent and still until he looked at her. Anger and despair clouded his handsome features.

“Eliana is missing.” His words dropped like a stone.

“Shit. Where was she last seen?” Thana flashed to her feet. She materialized a pair of leather pants and a top, along with custom, well-worn boots, in a blink. Severin followed suit quickly.

“Enzo said they were all at the hotel, but she went to the bar to get a drink. Not unusual since she’s a fully grown vampire female. However, her twin felt their connection go dark. Not gone, but dark, like she was badly injured or something.” Severin rubbed his brows.

“Or like something happened to prevent her from reaching them.”

Severin nodded. He flicked his fingers, strapping two double swords onto his back. She allowed herself to stare at him for a millisecond longer, taking in his sexy form before moving closer. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 21

Severin grabbed her hand and led them both to the suite, where Uriel, Enzo, and Castle sat around the large table. Their faces were grim. Enzo kept rubbing his chest as if a part of him had been ripped away. She understood how he must’ve been feeling. Anytime her own twin Thane got hurt, she too would feel pain.

“I’ve checked the security footage from every one of the cameras in the hotel. They were either wiped or manipulated. However, you know I have skills that can go deeper. I caught a flash of two figures leaving. One was Eliana. The other was a tall, thin man in a suit, wearing glasses. He definitely wasn’t Ellie’s usual type, and from the way she walked out, she wasn’t going of her own free will.”

Uriel pointed toward the monitor on the wall behind him. The video he described began to play, showing the scene.

“Look, there by the exit. That’s a cargo van. Can you zoom in and see if there are plates we can track?” Castle asked.

Uriel rolled his eyes. “I already did. The vehicle was reported stolen from Connecticut five days ago. However, I’ve been tracking the van through the Mass Vehicle Surveillance Networks. With high-speed, AI-powered cameras mounted on highway overpasses, streetlights, utility poles, and police cruisers, they automatically photograph thousands of license plates per minute, letting me narrow down their direction. I’ve also been able to locate where they made the switch from that particular van to the next.”

Thana marveled at the modern system’s use of machine learning to do more than read alphanumeric plates. “It’s crazy to think that a hundred years ago our backbone for traveling long distance was the railroad and roughly a third of the households had a single telephone. And look at us now. Airplanes take people all over the world, and new technology can catalog a vehicle's make, model, color, and unique features such as roof racks, bumper stickers, or body damage. While it makes things easier for situations like this, it’s also going to become even harder for our kind to hide what we are sooner or later.”

“Especially when you have local police and federal databases syncing this data into nationwide, searchable cloud databases. The most prominent private provider dominating this space across thousands of US cities is a company called Flock Safety. You literally can’t go anywhere without seeing a Flock camera. It’s why I’ve taught all of my Clan to blur their images when they are in human form.” Severin nodded toward the screen.

Thana blinked, utterly amazed at his foresight. She needed to speak with Savage. In New York, he was the most feared Boss on the East Coast, but as Severin pointed out, times were changing. They needed to adjust how they lived, or it could become their ultimate demise.

“Have they stopped moving with Eliana?” She asked.

Uriel held a tablet in front of him. His eyes followed whatever flashed across the screen so fast she wasn’t sure he’d heard her, or that he was too focused on his task. Severin put his hand over hers, keeping the urge to repeat herself inside her tight throat. They were all on edge, desperate to find their lost sister.

“Got ’em,” Uriel growled. He set the tablet on the table, snapped his fingers, and the big screen lit up again. “There they are.” Uriel stood and strode to the screen, circling the building with his pointer finger.

“They took her to what is called the Nike Missile site associated with the New York defense area on Hart Island, located in the western Long Island Sound. The northern end of Hart Island holds three underground double missile magazines. These massive concrete bunkers safely housed up to twenty supersonic Nike Ajax missiles. Supposedly, the underground storage magazines still exist but are completely flooded, heavily overgrown with vegetation, and sealed off with thick concrete plugs and steel reinforcements to prevent entry.”

“You say supposedly? What do you know?” Severin asked.

Uriel gave a grim smile. “Those fuckers have been working on their projects for a lot longer than any of us have suspected. Mind you, I don’t think they’re aware of our kind, yet. However, they’ve been happily dissecting humans with special abilities they found all over the world. This is only one of many. Through the Dark Web, I’ve found the name The Society being bandied about. That’s what these fuckers are calling themselves.”

“A society of sickos. I wonder how they were able to clear out the underground missile sites or magazines without anyone above ground being aware?” Thana moved closer to the image on the large screen, pointing at the obviously overgrown structures.

“They did their best to hide all the clearing right here by adding more foliage than what’s on this side. To the average onlooker, it would come across as a spot that gets more sun, but if you’re like me, you’d notice that it’s all fake.” Uriel enlarged the spot he meant. “And if you were to try and use heat-seeking spyware, you’d assume they malfunctioned due to the old missiles or shit.”

“That makes sense. So, we could assume they probably commandeered other abandoned military sites. For now, we need to move.” Severin flashed to her side.

“I’ll reach out to Savage,” she offered.