"Jenna!"
She pivoted slowly toward him and the relief he'd felt a moment ago drained into his heels. Her face was stricken and pale. The front of her coat was torn in places and stained a garish, deep scarlet.
"Oh, Jesus." He broke away from Corinne and raced over to where Jenna had now paused. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he took her in from head to toe, his Breed senses overwhelmed at the presence of so much coppery spilled blood. "Ah, Christ ... Jenna, what happened to you?"
Her face pinched a bit as she shook her head and drew away from him. "I'm okay. The blood isn't mine. One of the Minions came at me in the cellar. I shot him."
Brock hissed, racked with worry even though she was standing in front of him now, assuring him that she wasn't harmed. "When I heard something had gone wrong here--" His voice choked off on a dark curse.
"Jenna, I was so damned scared that you might be hurt."
She shook her head, her hazel eyes seeming sad but steady. "I'm fine."
"And Corinne," he blurted, glancing across the way to where she still stood, looking small and forlorn, a dim shadow of the vibrant girl who'd vanished from Detroit all those decades ago. "She's alive, Jenna. She was being held here with the others."
Jenna nodded. "I know."
"You do?" He stared at her, confused now.
"One of the new sketches Claire Reichen had provided," she explained. "I only saw it as we arrived here, but I recognized Corinne's face from the picture you have of her back in your quarters."
"I can't believe it," he murmured, still stunned as hell by all he'd just heard. "She told me someone took her that night. She doesn't know who. I have no idea whose body I saw, or why it was staged to look like hers. My God ... I'm not sure what to think about the whole thing now."
Jenna listened to him ramble on, her expression patient and understanding. Far calmer than he was. True to form, she stayed in rock-steady control, the cool professional, even though she'd just been through a hell of an ordeal herself.
Emotion swamped him, his respect for her immeasurable in that moment.
As was his love for her.
"Do you realize what you've accomplished here?" he asked her, reaching out to smooth his fingers along her blood-splattered cheek. "My God, Jenna. I couldn't be more proud of you."
He kissed her and pulled her against him, ready to tell her right there and then how grateful he was to have her in his life. He wanted to shout his love for her, but the depth of his feelings had devoured his voice.
Then all too soon, Jenna withdrew from his arms, both of them alerted to the sound of footsteps approaching from nearby. Brock turned to face Nikolai and Renata. Dylan walked past them to retrieve Corinne and gently led her to the open passenger-side door of the Rover in the driveway.>Dylan let out a little whoop of triumph as the house went silent once again.
And then ... the faintest sounds of voices coming from the cellar deep below.
Female voices.
More than a dozen different voices, all of them screaming and shouting, calling out to whoever could hear them.
"Holy shit," Alex murmured.
Dylan's eyes went wide. "You don't think--"
"Let's go find out," Renata said. She turned to Jenna. "Will you be all right up here?"
Jenna nodded. "Yeah, I'm good. I can hold her until you get back. Just go."
In the momentary inattention, Sister Grace fidgeted on the little sofa, digging around in her sweater pocket. Jenna looked back at her, just in time to see her stuff something small into her mouth. She swallowed quickly, gulping the object down. The tendons in her throat constricted. Her mouth started spewing thick white foam.
"Oh, shit!" Jenna cried. "She's poisoning herself!"
"She's dead. Forget the bitch," Renata said. "Down here with us, Jenna!"
She turned away from the Minion, letting the convulsing body fall to the floor. Together she and the other women raced down the old stone steps that led into the dimly lit, enormous cellar, which looked to be carved out of the craggy rocks of the peninsula itself.
Deeper and deeper they went, the cries for help growing louder.