The bed was unmade and rumpled from where the child had been at one point during the night, but there was no sign of her. Renata pivoted and raced to the bathroom they shared at the other end of the hall.
"Mira? Are you in there, mouse?" She opened the door and found the small room empty. Where could she have gone?
Renata spun around and headed back up the paneled corridor toward the main living area of the lodge, a terrible panic beginning to rise up her throat. "Mira!"
Lex and a couple of guards were seated around the table in the great room as Renata ran in from the hallway. He spared her only the briefest glance then went back to talking with the other males.
"Where is she?" Renata demanded. "What have you done with Mira? I swear to God, Lex, if you've hurt her - "
He pinned her with a scathing look. "Where's your respect, female? I have just come back in from releasing my father's body to the sun. This is a day of mourning. I'll not hear a word of your bleating until I'm damned good and ready."
"To hell with you, and your false mourning," Renata seethed, charging toward him. It was nearly impossible to keep from hitting him with a blast of her mind's power, but the two guards who rose on either side of Lex, drawing their weapons on her, helped to keep her anger in check. "Tell me what you did, Lex. Where is she?"
"I sold her." The reply was so casual, he might have been discussing an old pair of shoes.
"You...you did what?" Renata's lungs squeezed, losing so much air she could hardly draw another breath. "You can't be serious! Sold her to who - those men who came for Nikolai?"
Lex smiled, gave her a vague shrug of admission.
"You bastard! You disgusting pig!" The total, ugly reality of all that Lex had done crashed down on her. Not only what he'd done to Mira, but to his own father, and, as she saw with awful clarity now, what he'd done to Nikolai too. "My God. Everything he said about you was the truth, wasn't it? You were the one responsible for Sergei's death, not Nikolai. It was you who brought in the Rogue. You planned the whole thing - "
"Be careful with your accusations, female." Lex's voice was a brittle snarl. "I am the one in command here now. Make no mistake, your life belongs to me. Piss me off and I can have you erased from existence as easily as I sent that warrior to his death." Oh, God...no. Shock blew through her chest in a chill ache. "He is dead?"
"He will be soon enough," Lex said. "Or wishing he was, once the good doctors in Terrabonne have their fun with him." "What are you talking about? What doctors? I thought you had him arrested."
Lex chuckled. "The warrior is on his way to a containment facility run by the Enforcement Agency. Safe to say that no one will hear from him ever again."
Contempt boiled up in Renata for all that she was hearing, and for her own role in seeing Nikolai wrongfully charged. Now both he and Mira were gone, and Lex stood there grinning with smug vanity for the deception he'd orchestrated. "You disgust me. You're a fucking monster, Lex. You are a sickening coward."
She took a step toward him and Lex gave the guards a jerk of his chin. They blocked her, two huge vampires glowering at her. Daring her to make a reckless move.
Renata eyed them, seeing in those hard gazes the years of animosity that this group of Breed males felt for her - animosity coming most intensely from Lex himself. They hated her. Hated her strength, and it was clear that any one of them would welcome the opportunity to put a bullet in her head.
"Get her out of my sight," Lex ordered. "Take the bitch to her room and lock her in for the rest of the day. She can provide our night's entertainment."
Renata didn't let the guards within arm's reach of her. As they moved to grab her, she swept them each with a sharp mental jolt. They shouted and leapt away, recoiling from the pain.
But no sooner had they dropped back did Lex spring on her, fully transformed and spitting with fury. Hard fingers curled into her shoulders. His body weight slammed her backward, up off her feet. He was furious, pushing her like she was nothing but feathers. His strength and speed propelled her with him across the floor and into the shuttered window on the far wall. Solid, unmovable logs crashed against her spine and thighs. Renata's head cracked back against the thick shutters with the impact. Her breath left her on a broken gasp. When she opened her eyes, Lex's face loomed right up against hers, his thin pupils seething outrage from within the center of his fiery amber irises. He brought one hand up and caught her jaw in a bruising grasp. Forced her head to the side. His fangs were enormous, sharp as daggers and bared dangerously near her throat.
"That was a very stupid thing to do," he growled, letting those pointed teeth graze her skin as he spoke. "I should bleed you out for that. In fact, I think I will - "
Renata summoned every ounce of power she had and turned it loose on him, blasting Lex's mind in a long, ruthless wave of anguish.
"Aaagh!" His scream rang out like a banshee's wail.
And still Renata kept blasting him. Pouring pain into his head until he released her and crumbled to the floor in a boneless sprawl.
"Se-seize her!" he sputtered to his guards, who were recovering now from the smaller strikes Renata had dealt them. One of them raised his gun on her. She blasted him, then gave the second guard another dose as well.
Damn it, she had to get out of there. Couldn't risk using any more of her power when she'd pay dearly for every strike once her reverb hit. And she wouldn't have long before the crippling wave roared up on her.
Renata spun around, broken glass crunching under her boots from last night's chaos. She felt a small breeze cutting through the locked shutters. Realization dawned: There was no window behind her, only freedom. She took hold of the sturdy wood panels and gave a hard yank. The hinges groaned but didn't quite give way.
"Kill her, you fucking imbeciles!" Lex gasped from behind her. "Shoot the bitch!"
No, Renata thought, desperate as she pulled on the stubborn wood.
She couldn't let him stop her. She had to get out of there. She had to find Mira, take her somewhere safe. She'd promised her, after all. She'd made a promise to that child and God help her, she would not fail.