"Sofia," Traci called, fear in her voice.
Sofia stopped at the edge of the driveway, horrified by the bloodied and broken bodies spread across the expansive area in front of her. It looked like a war zone and smelled like a cesspool. Her chest was tight and her breath short, but she knew there was one way to find out what happened to Damian.
"Come with me," she whispered. She grabbed Traci's hand, and she picked her way through the death until she found the vamp she sought.
"Sofia!" Dustin's voice was filled with fury.
She knelt beside the vamp. While he looked dead, he was alive enough for his memories to reach her. She braced herself and touched him. The night's battle lit up her thoughts, and what she saw made her gasp.
Czerno himself had been there for the well-timed ambush. He and his vamps had fought half the night and created the battlefield full of destruction before the dozen Guardians assigned to the safe house were overwhelmed. Damian appeared, a fragmented vision, as if the vamp had been peering through a foggy window. Czerno was already there and with him, a secret weapon, one that made the vamp believe they'd win before he'd been shot down. The vamp before her went down before she saw the outcome of the meeting between Damian and Czerno in the safe house, but she saw what the vamp expected to happen. Damian was meant to be kidnapped, not killed.
Dustin wrenched her to her feet.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" he demanded.
"Dusty," Jule cautioned, placing a hand on his shoulder. Dustin released her, glowering. There was only one thing that could make such a cold man so upset. Jule leveled a glare on her.
"Traci?" Rainy's voice was surprised and furious.
"You have thirty seconds, sweetheart," Jule said with a calmness that chilled her to the bone. "Or I'll give you to Dusty."
She didn't want to know what happened after that. She'd seen the dark side of Dusty in his home videos in the library before she told Damian about Claire.
"Damian was ambushed. Czerno knew he was coming here and had a small army of vamps. He had a secret weapon, but I don't know what it was," she said quickly.
"Where'd they take him?"
"He doesn't know."
Jule freed a gun from the small of his back and pointed it at the vamp beside her. She turned her head away, jumping as the shot rang out. Jule met her gaze calmly, and she resisted the urge to run. She didn't like the reminders that the men around her were capable of such violence.