Take Courage, My Heart

Chapter Twenty-Three

I spent most of the drive back to Vancouver asleep or zoned out. Leander had put on music in the car and also seemed out of it. Every now and then I looked at him from the corner of my eye. He was mostly in thought, with an elbow on the window and a hand supporting his jaw. His other hand –the one on the wheel– was either in a white-knuckle grip or rapping the wheel with his thumb in the rhythm of the music.

I didn't even realize when we entered the town. I kept thinking of that place. Of how Leander had killed Turner and all his men. Of the boys who had run out of the facility as soon as the first gunshot echoed. I couldn't stop thinking of all the boys that had been kept downstairs, who would have gotten forgotten there had I not pulled Leander down there before leaving.

Leander parked the car, and we headed upstairs to the penthouse. Everyone was in the hallway waiting for us when we entered, having seen us in the security cameras that Ezra and Kei had hacked. Leander looked at them and ignored all the questions that came out of their mouths, going straight into the computer room and unarming himself.

"I was profiled for a nest the moment I got into that place, maybe even before that. The reason Vincent found me in the forest was because he had been called by Turner to come get me," I explained as we followed Leander in the computer room.

"They sold you to him?" Annerose asked her tone of voice low as her eyes moved from me to Leander and then back to me. I couldn't ignore Leander's slight flinch.

"I don't know if money was exchanged," I said and took out the piece of paper I had taken from Turner. "He worked with other vampires as well. And this–" I handed over the paper to Ezra– "is some associate of his that works in an... auction? When I first got into that place, a guy showed me around," I started explaining, telling them what I had said to Leander about Kevin before we reached the facility. "On the website, he is now listed as reformed. When we asked Gerald about him– about taking him with us he said that Kevin had been taken to some auction."

Ezra and Kei were already by the computers, typing away as I spoke, but when I finished Keisuke stopped typing and looked back at me from over his shoulder. The look in his eyes was horrified.

"They are auctioning people," he breathed out and I inhaled with a shiver.

Kevin had been nice to me in the few days I had been there. As nice as anyone could be in that place. And he had been one of the boys that Gerald to some extent trusted to show new guys like me around. Nonetheless, he had ended up being given to vampires just as I had been. Or maybe worse. Auctioned. Like old dusty furniture that nobody wanted any longer.

"Fuck Vincent," Leander muttered, the first words I had heard him say since we left Gerald Turner's office and dead body. His voice was rough with emotion and his posture remained stiff, back to us and eyes focused on the glass case in the room. "Find this auction. We have to find them now."

"Leander..." I mumbled, knowing how much going after Vincent meant to him. He didn't acknowledge me, instead, he stepped up to Ezra and Kei and handed them over the hard drive he had removed from Turner's computer.

He had extracted it quickly, before we had left the office for good, opening up the tower of the Director's computer and working carefully so as not to break anything. He had very clearly done something similar before. At some point in the century, he had been alive.

He handed the drive and walked out of the room without a second word to any of us. I watched the door close behind him and frowned, confused but also understanding. Leander had been after Vincent for a century. He had wanted Vincent dead since the day Leander had been sold into his nest. And now as we were arguably close to getting to him as we had found someone who had worked with Vincent and had access to that person's hard drive we were focusing on an auction. Going after this auction to get Kevin and any other human that was trafficked that way still served the purpose of Leander's crusade. We still would be saving people. But we wouldn't be going after Vincent. Not right now. Not as a priority.