Page 46 of Fanged Desire
“Oh my god. These are profiles! Names, parentage, medical history – everything.”
At her shrill words, I cast a glance her way, and Addison met my gaze, wide-eyed and shell-shocked as she lifted a single sheet of paper.
There was a blurry image paper clipped to the corner. A thin, smiling woman with chestnut hair and a small button nose. I didn’t need to read the text to know who I was looking at, her resemblance to Addison was uncanny.
“Penelope.”
Back at Addison’s apartment, the atmosphere was rife with tension.
Once I was sure we hadn’t been followed, the drive back had been quiet, simmering with unspoken agitation. Addison had clutched the stack of stolen papers like she was afraid they’d fly away, staring at the picture of her sister with a hollow, aching expression.
Now, with the stolen files spread out on Addison’s living room floor, the significance of what we’d found was horrifying.
I flipped through the pages, eyes narrowing at the sheer amount of information before me. Names, dates, medical histories… random humans meticulously cataloged. Notes had been added to each page in neat, sloping handwriting, specific information circled and recircled in red ink. It was unsettling, to say the least.
Ethan hovered beside me, brow furrowed as he poured over the scattered pages. “These people… who are they?”
“Looks like a creepy hobby,” I muttered, flipping another page. “Medical records, diet, parentage… like she’s been keeping tabs on them for years.”
Addison sat in silence, clutching Penelope’s page, absentmindedly stroking her fingers over the picture of her sister. Her eyes were glued to the paper, her face pale, lips pressed into a thin line. She hadn’t said a word since we arrived.
I turned my attention back to the piles of papers in front of me, balancing on my elbows as I stretched out on the ragged carpet.
As I skimmed through a particularly dense record, something clicked.
I leaned closer, finger tracing a name and a face. The hollow eyes of a missing person from Addison’s evidence wall stared back at me. I lifted another page. Another missing person. And another.
“Addison,” I rifled through the rest of the papers, snatching another from Ethan who shot me a scowl in response. “You were right. These are the people from your wall. The disappearances – they’re connected.”
No response.
I glanced up, frowning. Addison was still motionless, her eyes locked on the page she held. I pushed myself off the floor, moving to sit beside her where she sunk into the sofa. “Addison?”
Slowly, she looked up, brown eyes shimmering with unspilled tears. She wordlessly handed me the paper, her hand trembling slightly. At first glance, it looked like all the others – medical data, personal details – but my eyes caught on something circled in red:A-gene.
“What’s this?” Addison’s voice was barely a whisper, her finger trembling as she pointed to the ominous term. “What the hell is the A-gene?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head, scanning the page. “But whatever it is, Cathy seems real interested in it.”
Addison’s jaw tightened, her fingers clenching the edge of the sofa “She’s been investigating people with this… this gene. And Penelope’s one of them.”
Ethan, still going through the stack of papers, glanced up, muttering wryly. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
Addison’s expression darkened, something fierce and frustrated flaring in her eyes. “We have to go back. Now.”
I blew out a breath, careful not to provoke her as I replied, “There are way too many guards around. And we don’t even know if Penelope is in there – they could be holding her somewhere else.”
“We have to try!” Addison stood abruptly, turning to face me as pearled tears began to catch on her lashes. Her voice cracked on her next words, and something in my chest fractured along with it. “They have my sister! We have to go back.”
As much as I wanted to reassure her, to rush back to the mansion and kick the front door down if it meant she’d stop looking at me like that, there was no way I’d be able to pull off a rescue mission on my own. And if that wasn’t enough, there was no way I could take on an entire estate full of Elven creatures without triggering what could very well be a full blown war between the elves of the city and my own vampire coven.
I’d made sure the guards I’d run into wouldn’t remember my face, but that quick fix was flimsy at best. I couldn’t exactly take on all of them without fully transforming, and there was no way I could hide my identity once I did. We were looking at impossible odds, and I was looking at Addison, who deserved so much better than a half-wit vampire with a broken moral compass and nothing of value left to give.
Addison must have read it plainly on my face, because she dropped to the sofa again, burying her head in her hands. “What else are we supposed to do? Penelope is in danger.”
“And you could be too, if you’re not careful,” I countered, kneeling beside her and reaching for her hand. “Look, I get it. You want to find her, but barging in there isn’t going to help. We need to be smart about this. We’ll go back, but only when Cathy and her guards aren’t around.”
At my words, Addison’s shoulders sagged, and she let out a long, shaky breath. I could almost see the adrenaline draining from her body, leaving behind a weariness she’d been holding at bay for far too long.
