Beaumont [Battle Bunnies 3] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) Page 10

  “Clay, come on.” Baxter pushed his ringed fingers through his hair in agitation. “What were you thinking when you went to that lab by yourself? And what happened to you?”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” Clay’s eyes blazed with an almost crazed look. “Everyone out. Get out of my room.”

  “Is there something the matter with you?” Beau asked.

  As usual, he was ignored. Basil tried to touch Clay’s shoulder, but Clay flung his hand away.

  “What’s going on? You’re acting crazy.” Basil’s shoulders slumped. “Clay, please.”

  “That’s right,” Clay bit out. “I’m crazy. Now tell me, did you do something right for once? Did you find anything at the lab? And if you did find something, did you manage to at least blow part of the place up?”

  “You know what, Clay?” Baxter slammed his hands on his hips. “If you want to act like this, fine, but we don’t have to tell you anything. When you decide to act like a real brother, give us a call.” Bax turned toward the door. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  With a heavy heart and one last glance at the brother he no longer knew, Beau followed everyone downstairs and sat with them at the dining room table. As they stared at each other in silence, the housekeeper came out with trays of cut-up fruit and frosty glasses of punch. Before she disappeared, she set a plate containing a piece of toast covered in sugar and cinnamon in front of Bax and a piece of lasagna in front of Beau.

  “It’s time to talk about what happened at the lab last night.” Basil began absently pushing around a piece of watermelon with his fork. “Who wants to start?”

  No one said anything.

  “Well, I guess I’ll start then,” Basil said. “Cealio and I found the east entrance. It was locked, as we suspected it would be, but it also had two guards standing outside with automatic weapons.” His hand clenched into a fist. “We were not able to gain entrance into the facility.”

  “We didn’t see anything,” Bailey said, indicating his mate, who sat beside him. “And I’m still not getting anything from Clay.”

  “How’s your hand?” Beau asked. There was a white bandage wrapped around it.

  “It stings a little, but Alberto said it should be healed by tomorrow.”

  “That long?” Basil asked in a voice that clearly said he was shocked. Beau couldn’t blame him. Bailey should have healed by now.

  As shifters, they naturally healed pretty quickly. Whatever the scientists had done to them gave them an even bigger advantage. It was pretty rare for any of them not to heal in a few hours, at the very least. It was practically unheard of for one of them to need more than twenty-four hours to heal.

  “The blisters were pretty bad,” Vey said in a tight voice. He smoothed his hand over Bailey’s head and then down through his long, dark hair, almost as if needing the contact with his mate. “I don’t understand why they were so bad, but they bled.”

  “We know you found Clay in the loading dock,” Basil said as he glanced at Beau. “Did you see anything else?”

  “No, but the lock on the gate concerns me.”

  “The lock?” Bax asked.

  Beau nodded.

  “Why?” Bax asked. “What sort of lock was it?”

  “That’s just it,” Beau said. “It was just your everyday, garden-variety lock that anyone could pick up at a local hardware store. If this place was supposed to have such tight security, why have such a cheap lock on the loading dock? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Basil said, and he didn’t look happy about it. “Did you get the feeling that you were supposed to be able to get in that way?”

  Beau blinked at his brother. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Look.” Basil folded his hands together and then leaned forward on his elbows. “They know we’re going after facilities we believe might be holding paranormals. It was only a matter of time before we found this one.”

  Beau started to see where his brother was going with this and it gave him a decidedly sick feeling in his gut, one that had nothing to do with his recent bout of nausea.

  “You think they were expecting us?” Just asking the question made him reach out for his mate’s hand.

  “I think there is a possibility.”

  “There’s always a possibility,” Bax said. “You’re making it sound like a definite thing.”

  Basil shook his head. “I don’t have proof, Bax. Just a feeling.”

  “Yeah, well.” Bax swallowed hard, giving sound to the fear they were all feeling. “Your feeling is giving me an upset stomach.”

  “Baby, you’re pregnant.” Dominic chuckled. “Everything gives you an upset stomach.”

  “Ha!” Bax deadpanned. “Funny man.”

  “We’re getting off track here, people,” Basil said. “Bax, what did you and Dominic find?”

  Beau wanted to know that, as well, especially considering they hadn’t wanted the building blown. It had to have been something big. The only reason Beau could think of not to blow the place was if it still had information they would need to go back for or captive paranormals.

  “We were able to make it as far as the security office without being seen,” Bax started. “The place was—”

  “How did you make it that far without being seen?” Basil asked.

  Beau sat up straighter, interested in the answer as well.

  “Um…” Bax glanced at Dominic, who gave him a little nod. “I’ve always been able to slide past electronic surveillance.”

  Beau’s jaw dropped. “Damn.”

  Bax chuckled nervously. “Right?”

  “I can blend into any background,” Beau said. “Ever since Dario and I mated, if I’m holding on to someone, I can slip them past, too.”

  “Nice.”

  “Guys, we can discuss abilities later,” Basil said. “Right now, we need to finish discussing the mission and what went wrong.”

  “You mean besides finding Clay unconscious in the loading dock area?” Beau asked. “Because if you ask me, that was totally what went wrong. We had no business going on that mission the way we did, and if Clay wasn’t being so pigheaded, we wouldn’t have been forced to rescue his furry ass.”

  “I agree,” Basil said, “and that’s something else we’ll be talking about. But right now, I’m more interested in what Bax and Dominic found, or didn’t find.”

  “That’s just it,” Bax said. “We didn’t find anything except an office building and a few normal human labs, just like the blueprints said would be there.”

  Beau was confused. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “It was too perfect, Beau,” Bax explained. “If you add in the fact that the lock on the one unmanned side of the building, the same side of the building where we found Clay, was a piece of crap, then Dominic and I not finding anything seems mighty weird to me, especially when you consider the fact that we had intel that this place was a hot bed of scientific experimentation.”

  Beau gasped as what his brother was saying finally clicked for him, and he didn’t like the way it was adding up. “You think we’re being set up.”

  “One hundred percent,” Bax replied. “Hell, one hundred and twenty percent.”

  “Then why didn’t you have us blow the place?” Bax asked.

  “Because I think the answers we want are still there,” Bax said. “I also think they are keeping paranormals there.”

  “But why would they do this?” Dario asked, entering the conversation for the first time. “If they are trying to lure you somewhere, then why would they lure you to a place where other paranormals are being held when they know you want to rescue them?”

  Basil’s fist slammed down onto the table top, making the glasses around the hard wooden surface jump and clatter, a couple of them falling over. “Because we weren’t supposed to be there yet.”

  “What?” Beau whispered.

  “They knew we were coming, and if we had followed the original plan, they would have been t
here, waiting for us, but because Clay flipped his lid and went early, they weren’t expecting us.”

  “Then how did Clay end up the way he did?” Dominic asked a valid question, one Beau had no answer for.

  “Beau, you found him hidden behind some wooden crates?” Basil asked.

  Beau nodded.

  “Was there anyone else around?”

  “No.” Beau frowned. “Well, not anyone I saw, anyway.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that what happened to Clay had nothing to do with breaking into the facility and was just a coincidence?” Bax asked.

  Beau’s eyebrows shot up. “A coincidence that Clay gets attacked inside the locked loading dock of a facility we’re planning to break into?”

  “He was not attacked,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Beau glanced up to see Alberto standing there. “But the blood…”

  “It was his blood.” Alberto walked to the end of the table and sat down. He had shadows under his eyes as if exhausted but unable to rest. “Barclay passed out after choking on his own blood.”

  “Alberto, brother,” Dario said. “Should you be telling us this?”

  Alberto’s lips thinned as he glanced down at his hands. “I have my patient’s permission to give you the very basics with the understanding that you must return to the facility to retrieve what he needs.”

  “What do you mean, what he needs?” Basil snapped. “What’s wrong with Clay?”

  Alberto sighed deeply as he glanced up. There was such sadness in his eyes, Beau couldn’t breathe. “He’s dying.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Dario was in no way surprised when every bunny in the room leapt to their feet at Alberto’s bombshell and raced out of the room. He shook his head in resignation as he got to his feet and followed after them, Vey and Dominic joining him.

  “One of these days,” Dario mused, “I would really like to understand the hold this man has over my mate.”

  “He’s family,” Dominic said.

  “I understand that, I truly do,” Dario replied. “I have family of my own. What I don’t understand is why they allow Barclay to treat them like dirt and then turn around and run to his rescue when he coughs wrong.”

  “You heard Alberto,” Vey said. “Clay is dying.”

  Dario stopped halfway up the stairs, his mind taking off in about a hundred different directions at the same time. “How long has he been acting strange?”

  Dominic just stared at him.

  “Okay.” Dario huffed. “How long has he been acting stranger?”

  “Well,” Vey replied, “he’s always been a little off, but that’s a personal opinion. I think I’ve really noticed him acting stranger over the last few weeks.”

  “And it’s getting progressively worse,” Dominic added.

  Now Dario was even more curious about Clay’s behavior. “What do you mean?”

  “When I first arrived on the scene, Clay did everything within his power to keep Bax and I apart, right down to putting himself physically between us. Once we mated and I proved that I would never leave Bax’s side, it was like he became my best friend. Don’t get me wrong, we still butt heads, but he accepts that Bax belongs to me. He hasn’t given me any grief over my mating with Bax since…well…since you came on the scene.”

  “How many missions have you all gone on?” Dario was trying to connect the clues and he felt as if he didn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle.

  “Three of four, I think,” Vey said. “Why? What are you thinking?”

  Dario wasn’t sure what he was thinking. The clues were still being elusive. “Is there anyway Clay could have been captured? Brainwashed? Poisoned? Something to explain his odd behavior?”

  “Anything is possible,” Vey said, “but I really think Clay would die before he would be disloyal to his brothers. They went through too much together for him to betray them now.”

  “Okay, so brainwashing is probably out, then,” Dario said, “but what about poisoning or something?”

  “Again, possible,” Vey said, “but I’m not sure if that explains why Clay was so insistent that we go on this mission. There has to be something about this particular facility.”

  Dominic reached up and rubbed the muscles tensing at the back of his neck. “What, though? We didn’t find anything.”

  Dario started to get a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Maybe you just didn’t have time.”

  He didn’t fully understand the look Vey gave Dominic, but he understood exactly what the man was doing when he cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted down the hallway, “Basil!”

  The bunny shifter came racing out of Clay’s bedroom as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. “What?” he asked as soon as he reached them.

  “We need to go over those blueprints again,” Vey said as he turned and started back down the stairs.

  Basil frowned. “Why?”

  “Because we missed something somewhere,” Dominic said as he started down the stairs after Vey. “Clay went to that facility for a purpose. We need to figure out what it was.”

  “Right, like he’s going to tell us.” Basil snorted. “He’s in bunny form and he refuses to shift back and talk to us, and Bailey said he’s blocking him. He just sits there on the bed, curled up with that damn duck.”

  “That’s why we need to look at the blueprints,” Vey said. “Let’s go over everything we know about the place, and then everything we suspect. There has to be something we’re missing, something so obvious that we’ve overlooked it or didn’t see it.”

  “Says you,” Basil snapped. “I went over those blueprints with a microscope. We didn’t miss anything.”

  “Then maybe it was something that wasn’t there that should have been,” Dario countered as he headed downstairs. “Have you thought of that?”

  “What are you talking about?” Basil asked as he followed Dario down the stairs.

  “Once, about a century ago, I was with a unit of soldiers. We were tracking down a group of rogue vampires who had attacked a train. They killed everyone onboard—men, women, and children. Drained them dry. We tracked them to an old warehouse near the docks in New Orleans. Not the good part of town, if you know what I mean.”

  When Basil nodded, Dario continued. “We scouted the place before we went in. Everything looked as it should have, or so we thought, but by the time we figured out that there was something wrong, we were too late. Half of my men were slaughtered before they had even taken ten steps inside the building.”

  “What did you miss?” Basil asked.

  “It was an old warehouse on the bad side of town. We expected the debris scattered around the floor of the warehouse. We didn’t even think twice about it.”

  “So?”

  “The debris hid the fact that the floor had been cut away, leaving an open pit below. Once the debris was stepped on, it gave way and my men fell to their deaths, impaled on wooden spikes in the pit below.”

  Basil’s eyes rounded. “Sweet mother of mercy.”

  “We expected the debris because the building was old, dilapidated, and abandoned. We never thought that it could be hiding something so deadly.”

  “Did you get them?” Basil asked in a quiet voice. “Did you get the vampires that did it?”

  Dario nodded. “Not that day, but eventually we did. They paid for their treachery with their lives.”

  “Okay.” Once they reached the bottom of the stairs, Basil rubbed his hands over his face before planting them on his hips. “I get what you’re saying. I still don’t think we missed anything, but there’s always a possibility, and it’s better to be sure than fall into a pit of wooden spikes.”

  “Exactly.”

  Dario walked with Basil back to his office. He grabbed the blueprints while Basil grabbed his laptop. Together, they walked to the dining room where Vey and Dominic were already working, tossing ideas back and forth. Vey was writing everything down while Dominic paced.

/>   “What have we got so far?” Dario asked.

  “Not much,” Vey replied. “We can assume that they were setting the Battle Bunnies up, luring them in with the promise of freeing paranormals being held captive.”

  “Sounds logical,” Dario agreed. “What else?”

  “Well, obviously, Clay running in early fucked up their plans,” Dominic added. “But, honestly, I don’t think they know that we were even there. Bax and I searched the security office. None of the surveillance equipment had even been turned on.”

  “At least, none of the equipment that you know about,” Dario pointed out. “There could have been hidden surveillance. In my experience, just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

  “Bax would have known.” Dominic said it with such conviction that Dario believed him.

  “Okay, so, assuming they weren’t expecting us yet, and they don’t know we have already broke in, then they are probably waiting for us now.” Dario met the eyes of those in the room. “Correct?”

  They all nodded, which didn’t make Dario feel any better.

  “Then let’s figure out how to get into that facility without them knowing we are there, because I don’t know about you, but I want to know what they are hiding.”

  Dominic’s dark eyebrows rose. “You think they are hiding something?”

  “Oh, hell yes.”

  Dominic frowned as if he hadn’t connected the same dots Dario had. “I thought this was a trap.”

  “It is,” Dario agreed. “But any good trap has to have the right bait.”

  “Well, shit.” Dominic thrust his hand through his hair. “Any idea what that bait is?”

  “No.” Dario shook his head. “But I believe it’s connected to Clay and his illness.”

  “You think he’s been poisoned then?” Vey asked.

  “Poisoned?’ Basil snapped as his face drained of color. “You think Clay has been poisoned?”

  “We think it’s a possibility,” Dario explained, “One of many that might explain why Barclay has been acting so strange.”