Losing Him (Only His Series: Book 4) *OLD VERSION*

Chapter 37

Alex's P.O.V

Klaus hung up the phone as I approached him in the small dinner we met Hayley at. "Hope and Shawn are down for the count. They fell asleep as soon as Hayley started the car. I doubt they'll miss either of us over the next few days." I said to him. I looked down at a piece of paper ripped out of a small notebook, which has a list of addresses written on it.

"So... which of these Kingmaker offices should we hit up first? There's ten of them?" I asked him. Klaus stared at me worriedly, and after a moment, I finally noticed and looked up at him. "What?"

"Lucien has revealed his true nature. He's taken Freya." Klaus said anxiously. My eyes widen in shock as I took in this news. "And now, it seems her rescue depends on Elijah working with my ever-reliable brother Finn."

"Oh... And you want to go back to New Orleans to head up the hunt?" I asked him. Klaus hesitated for a moment, clearly torn between our two different missions, and though I looked disappointed, I nodded in agreement. "Fine. You should go. I'm sticking with Kingmaker, though. Lucien's working very hard to cover up these wolf kidnappings, and I want to know why." I reached for the list, the keys, and turned to leave. Klaus grabbed me by the wrist and stopped me then sighed.

"No. The wolves, Freya's abduction... it can't all be a coincidence. We'll let my brothers pursue the obvious path." Klaus said to me. He smiled weakly at me, and I was surprised by this reaction. "You and I... will pursue this one. No doubt all roads..." Klaus tapped his finger on the third address on the list, 122283 Forest Road. "...Lead to the same treacherous bastard."

~

Klaus and I have just gotten out of our car in the parking lot and were walking toward the office. "Does he just build these from a kit or something? It's the exact same for the last five offices. Same windows, same plants..." I said incredulously.

"And inside, same generic abstract art, same compellable receptionist..." Klaus said to me and I sighed.

"Look, are you sure you wouldn't be better off with your brothers? I can do the leg-work." I said and he smiled.

"And split up the team now? Just when I'm discovering how good you really are at carpool karaoke? I think not!" Klaus said to me and I laughed which made him laugh as well. "No, Lucien is playing a game here. Each unassuming little office building we search, the more sure I am of it. We keep going. Together." I smiled at him as he walked towards the building with me following. "Even if we have to scour one hundred of these poxy places."

~

We had just walked into the reception area of the office, where Klaus closed the door behind us before we approached the reception desk. The receptionist finished her call and hung up as she looked at us expectantly.

"Ah, hello, love! We're here for a spot of "search and potentially destroy." Klaus made eye contact with the woman and compelled her. "To tell - where are the areas off-limits to general staff?" Klaus asked her. The receptionist smiled evilly at them and sat back in her chair.

"You just wait right here... and I'll have someone out here to help you with your inquiry." She said to us and no doubt pressed the button under her desk. No doubt? I'm beginning to sound like my husband. The alarm that went off caused the reception area to go dark and red lights to flash as the room flooded with armed guards.

"Stay right there!" A guard said to us. They surrounded us, who didn't look as concerned as we were inconvenienced as the guards' assault rifles were aimed at them. We share a significant look like the guns' laser-sighted point right at our hearts.

"Shall we?" I asked my husband and he smirked.

"Ladies first." He said.

I roared at the guards as I stormed towards them, and though they all started to shoot at me, I was barely affected by the bullets as I started taking out the guards one by one, with Klaus following my lead and roaring as well.

The two of us break some of the guards' bones, snap the necks of some others, and impale them with their guns until finally, I throw the last one standing through the glass door of the reception area. Once we're done, Klaus gives the guard one last passing look before he and I make our way through the building in search of clues.

~

Klaus was making his way through another wing when he saw a frantic scientist in a white lab coat rush out of a locked door and almost run right into him. Klaus grabbed him from behind and snapped his neck before reaching into his lab coat pocket and pulling out the credentials needed to get into the super-secret areas of the laboratory.

He dropped the scientist's body onto the floor without another word and held up the key card for me to see as he laughed in amusement. Checking to make sure the coast is clear, the two of us made it through the locked door and into a laboratory. Inside we saw at least a dozen men and women chained up and attached to IV drips, while the corpse of a transformed werewolf laid in a cage. I looked horrified when I took in the scene.

"They're all wolves," I said.

I walked over to where a young man was chained up and saw what looked like a breathing mask over his face, only it has two vials on the other side full of the same reddish-orange fluid revealing that he's been harvesting werewolf venom from them. When I reached out to touch the man, his eyes open, revealing yellow-gold werewolf eyes, and he moaned in pain.

"Klaus, they're still alive!" I said to him, horrified.

He looked equally disgusted by what Lucien had been doing, but when he saw a clear plastic curtain behind him, he turned and opened it to find a dead woman bound to an exam table with lesions all over her face, neck, and chest. Klaus breathed deeply through his nose for a moment.

"This one's a vampire." My husband said and I looked at the girl. Klaus turned back to me and looked appalled by what we had found. "What the hell is Lucien up to here?"

~

Klaus was in the middle of gently removing the werewolf venom-removing apparatus from one of the werewolves' faces when I joined him. "Help me with this one," Klaus said to me. We worked together to help the werewolf, a middle-aged man, out of his restraints and gently help him sit down before I bit my wrist and offered it to him.

"No vampire blood..." He said to me weakly.

"That's okay. The others drank. I'm a hybrid. Go on." I said to him. The werewolf looked at us hesitantly, and I nodded in encouragement. "Go on." The werewolf reluctantly drank the blood while Klaus brainstorms what we've just learned.

"He needed their venom," Klaus said to us. He looked around, eventually finding a small refrigerator that he opened to find a vial of cloudy white liquid. "He harvested the venom he needed, then reverse-engineered a vaccine. Clever stuff."

"And her?" I asked him, confused. I jerked my head to the dead vampire woman who was still strapped to the exam table. "The dead vampire?" Klaus looked at the woman's body for a moment.

"It was the wolf venom that killed her," Klaus said to me. He found a syringe full of werewolf venom and examined it. "Just Lucien testing his cure."

"So, why does he need to test out something he knows already works?" I asked him puzzled.