A knock on the door as she was turning to head to the shower had her opening it without looking through the spy hole. She could feel Janvier on the other side. Not saying anything, he cupped her face and kissed the life out of her, one of his hands in her hair, the other roaming her body. She wrapped her own arms around his neck, pressed herself to the warm strength of him, the loose T-shirt she"d put on no impediment to his caresses.
"Okay," he said when they came up for air, his chest heaving, "I really have to go now, cher." Janvier kissed Ash again despite his words, finding it near impossible to leave her. It felt as if he were leaving half his heart behind.
"We can do this," Ash said, her hands caressing his shoulders. "Teenagers do it all the time, right?"
"Right," he said, though he knew as well as she that what lived between them was too old, too intense to be anything as manageable as hormonal l.u.s.t. Even without a time limit, they would"ve always been a pair once they came together, more often seen together than not. "I have to go back to Club Masque."
Ashwini"s forehead furrowed. "Why?"
"I don"t know. Report came in from Trace, was too garbled to make out much except the name of the club." He forced himself to release her. "Do what you can about Felicity. I"ll call once I know what"s up at Masque." This time, he made himself jog to the emergency exit and the stairs. Waiting for the elevator was what had gotten the better of his self-control the first time.
"Watch out for Khalil!" Ash called out after him.
"I will!" he yelled back.
However, when he reached Masque-after a hurried stop at the Tower to pick up his kukris-he discovered it wasn"t Khalil who was the threat. Trace was outside the club, a blood-soaked cloth being held to his throat by Adele. Scarlet drops dotted the snow despite the club owner"s efforts to stanch the flow.
"I"m fine," the slender male said when Janvier reached him, his voice still a little wet with blood. "Situation inside-vamp named Rupert"s in full bloodl.u.s.t and pumped up so he"s stronger than he should be." Coughing up blood on the snow, Trace waved Adele and her cloth away. The claw marks on his throat said he"d come close to having his spine ripped out, but Trace was old enough that he"d survive.
"Did you call the Tower?"
Trace shook his head, dark green eyes pained but cogent. "It"s only one vamp, and I knew you and Naasir could take him, since we managed to trap him inside. Naasir"s on his way."
It was a good call on Trace"s part, with the Tower"s resources so strained. "Casualties or hostages?"
"The club was mostly empty," Adele said, taking a bottle of blood from a curvy Hispanic woman who"d run down the street with a box full of them, her indoor outfit of sleek black pants and blue velvet vest over a white lace shirt making it clear she was a local in the Quarter. "Trace, drink."
As the vampire drank in an effort to speed up his healing, Adele continued to speak, the ordinarily flawless cream of her skin splotchy. "Only people left inside were the ones in the private rooms, and they were locked automatically inside those rooms when I activated the alarm for trouble on the floor."
"That"s not good." Janvier slipped out his kukris, the curved blades an extension of his body.
"No." Adele gave Trace another bottle of blood. "There are mortals trapped in those rooms, and you know how quickly bloodl.u.s.t can spread. Khalil had a look in his eye I didn"t like last night-that"s why I was up and watching the monitors myself, with Trace for company."
Rupert. The name finally penetrated.
Merde.
"His woman," Janvier said. "A pretty, plump brunette?" He searched his memory for her name. "Lacey."
"Dead," Trace answered, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. "He tore her apart in front of us, did it under the sheets-looked like he was going down on her. Must"ve put his hand over her mouth to stop her screams."
"We weren"t paying attention to him." Adele"s distress was open, the club owner oddly softhearted for one running such an establishment. "I mean, it was Rupert. Worst kink he has is staying in the Masque rooms when he knows they"re monitored. A little exhibitionism, that was his thing. He never hurt his women; and this one, he adored. It was their first night being intimate."
Trace twisted the lid off a third bottle. "She didn"t stand a chance, and he was f.u.c.king out the door before Adele could initiate the lockdown." A string of harsh words. "I thought I could handle him, but he"s faster and stronger than he should be-no way Rupert should"ve been able to grab me, much less throw me off the mezzanine to the first floor."
Janvier had once seen a vampire in bloodl.u.s.t make an impossible leap across a canyon, almost as if he were flying. A large percentage, though, went into bloodthrall after their first kill, a torporlike state caused by their gluttonous feeding that made them easy to hunt down. It didn"t sound like Rupert was one of the latter. "Can I enter the club without going through the pa.s.sageway?" He"d be the most vulnerable there, the narrow s.p.a.ce negating the advantage of his blades.
Naasir jumped down from the roof at that instant, apparently having raced to the location by running along the "lower skyroad," as he called it. "There is a skylight," he told Janvier, shoving his hair out of his eyes.
Adele stirred. "It"s reinforced gla.s.s. You won"t be able to break it."
Sheathing his weapons of choice, Janvier met Naasir"s eyes, caught his nod, and then they were climbing, the other vampire in the lead. When they reached the snow-covered skylight, Naasir raised his hands and slammed down with his claws. Cracks spread out from the point of contact. Janvier used the b.u.t.t of a kukri to deepen the cracks, and then the two of them backed off . . . and ran to jump on the skylight, coming down in a hail of gla.s.s that sliced shards through both of them.
Rolling to a standing position, Janvier saw Naasir already pinned down, the once-urbane Rupert on top of him like a ravening beast, Rupert"s face a mask of blood. Naasir should"ve been able to take him without problem-except it appeared Rupert must"ve hit Naasir in midfall, causing the vampire to land on a huge shard of gla.s.s that had effectively skewered him to the floor.
All that went through Janvier"s mind in a split second. In position as he rose, he threw one of his blades with the flat spinning motion he"d learned during his time in Neha"s court. The lethally sharp and perfectly balanced kukri spun like one of Ash"s throwing stars, coming to a quivering stop in the wall behind Rupert.
Whose head toppled off his body a second later, the blade having sliced it clean through.
Growling, Naasir shoved off the body, which was spurting blood all over him. "Why did you do that?" he snarled, pulling himself off the gla.s.s shard with a look of irritation on his face. "I was about to break his neck."
"You"re welcome," Janvier said, pulling his blade from the wall. He wiped it on his jeans leg, but didn"t put it back in the sheath. As Adele had said, bloodl.u.s.t could spread with deadly speed. "Are you badly injured?" As far as he could tell, the gla.s.s had gone straight through Naasir, but hadn"t penetrated any major organs. It must"ve been the shock of the sudden injury that had kept him from reacting as fast as usual.
Naasir growled in reply. "My new shirt from Honor is torn and b.l.o.o.d.y."
Figuring that meant the other vampire was fine, Janvier ran to Adele"s control room with Naasir at his back and scanned the feeds. Two of the vampires were pacing in an erratic pattern, but Khalil appeared in control, his women unharmed. Hitting the b.u.t.ton that unlocked all the doors, Janvier glanced at Naasir.
"Go scare them out of incipient bloodl.u.s.t. And get Trace to keep following Khalil if his wounds allow it-if not, can you do it?"
Naasir gave him a feral smile and a nod. "I wouldn"t mind eating Khalil"s liver. I hope he gives me an excuse."
Knowing even Khalil wouldn"t mess with the silver-eyed vampire, Janvier returned to Rupert. "d.a.m.n it, what the f.u.c.k happened to you?" The cultured art collector had been a good man, as Janvier had said last night, but when he examined the body, he saw Rupert had been wearing a necklace of intestines, the flesh slick and b.l.o.o.d.y.
Pressing his fist to his mouth to control the gorge that rose in him, Janvier forced himself to walk to the private room with the blood-soaked sheets he"d glimpsed on the surveillance feeds. At first, he couldn"t see Lacey. It was the glint of light off the ring on her finger that alerted him to the fact she was on the floor on the far side of the bed, her outflung hand the only part of her he could see.
When he came around, he wished he hadn"t. The sweet, giggling woman who"d blushed at him while proudly calling herself Rupert"s had been disemboweled. From the state of Rupert"s face, it appeared the bloodl.u.s.t-ridden vampire had torn into her stomach with his fangs, then used his hands to pull out the ropes of her intestines. Her jaw was broken, her tongue ripped out.
It made no sense. None.
Until Janvier stepped on something that felt slippery beneath his boot. Frowning, he bent down and found it to be a tiny plastic ziplock bag. There was nothing inside, but he knew what tests would reveal. "Umber."
Ashwini met up with Ransom at Guild Academy a half hour after Janvier left the apartment. Her fellow hunter had responded to her message about a meeting earlier than she"d expected, and now the two of them sat on the lowest row of the tiered seating that overlooked the outdoor training ground. Ransom"s leg, his cast covered with signatures, including her own, was perched on a piece of wood she"d found to ensure the cast was protected from the snow, his crutches beside him.
The training ground in front of them was a mess of dirty snow and crushed ice from the early morning session that had already occurred. The Guild never cleaned up this yard, never put up shields against the wind or the rain. Sessions occurred no matter what the weather. "I remember getting my a.s.s kicked by Bracken one winter while hail pelted down on my head and face." She winced at the memory. "d.a.m.n, but that hurt."
"That"s nothing," Ransom said. "One year, we had a category three storm hit-full-on rain, gale-force winds, flying debris-and he made my group come out here and complete our session."
"Please. I once had to fight Bracken in a flood. The water was up to my thighs."
Ransom snorted. "Dude, there was that time cats fell from the sky, claws out."
They looked at each other and began to laugh. It was a ritual among all hunters who"d graduated from the Academy in the past twenty years, the attempt to one-up each other with Bracken training stories. The outdoor sessions were mandatory for every trainee, but the all-weather stuff was reserved for the final year-because vampires were tougher, more resistant to the weather.
"A hunter who melts at the sight of a little snow-" Ashwini began.
"-is a hunter who"ll soon be lying in a nice, quiet grave," Ransom finished, and then, in a hysterical imitation of the weathered Academy trainer, added, "Is that what you want, princess? Is it? I didn"t think so. Now, move!"
They laughed again.
"If he came out here now," Ransom said, "and told me I had detention and had to do a hundred rounds of the yard on my crutches, I"d say "yes, sir" and start moving."
"Me, too," Ashwini admitted. "I think he"s one of the few people on the planet I"m actually scared of."
"Only idiots aren"t scared of Bracken."
"Saki seems to handle him fine."
"They"re having s.e.x on a regular basis. An option unavailable to us." Ransom drank some of the coffee he"d brought out in a carry cup. "So, Felicity Johnson."
"Were you able to find out anything about her? We know she was a club girl who disappeared after hooking up with a rich sugar daddy."
Ransom took a doughnut from the box of four she"d managed to sneak past the other hunters who were here early-to prep for sessions they were teaching. Biting into it, he chewed and swallowed before answering. "That part is right," he said. "A few of the working girls I know said Felicity used to be one of them for a couple of months, starting about a year back."
That fit with when she"d dropped off the grid in terms of more vanilla jobs. "Pimp?"
"No, but the girls said she was vulnerable to male attention, that something in her made her crave their approval." Taking another sip of his coffee, he continued. "She avoided the pimps because she wasn"t going into the life long-term-she got out fast once she realized the johns might permanently hurt her if she wasn"t careful. Word is she worked under the table cleaning, and was down to her final cents at times, but she didn"t come back to the streets."
"She knew if she got into it too deep," Ashwini said, starting to see more of their victim, "she"d be stuck at the low end forever."
A nod from Ransom. "Working girls have a hard life and it shows. No way to glide into a new, better life if the old one is stamped onto your face and body. The thing is, none of the women I talked to had anything bad to say about Felicity-she got out, but she never forgot her friends.
"She helped out with free babysitting for one of the women two or three times, and when she hooked up with her rich lover, she lent another woman a little money so she could pay for a plane ticket out of town for a family emergency."
A good person, a loyal one, too. "When"s the last time any of them had contact with her?"
28.
"Seven months ago. Visit before that, she"d told them she was going to go with her lover to Europe, so they didn"t worry about it. The other women were happy for her, thought she"d made it, had the life she"d always wanted." He finished off the doughnut and his coffee at the same time. "They were surprised she dropped them cold, but knowing her as they did, they figured maybe her rich guy had her on a short leash and she"d get back in touch once things had eased."
But Felicity, Ashwini thought, was likely already in a desperate situation by that time. "Will the women talk to me?" she asked Ransom, conscious how protective he was of his friends on the street.
"Yeah. They want to find out who hurt her-I hope you nail the f.u.c.ker." Pulling out his phone, he sent her names and contact numbers, told her the women were waiting for her call. "I know I don"t have to ask, but be careful of them."
"I will." She stared out at the training ground, the rucked-up snow glittering under the sun. "Janvier"s working this with me. Can I take him along?"
"No problem. I cleared it with the women-Tower"s not going to have any interest in them aside from this case and, like I said, they really liked Felicity."
Enough, Ashwini thought, to stick their necks out. That told her a lot about her victim. "So," she said after a couple of minutes of comfortable silence, "how come you"re in so early? I thought you and Nyree would be celebrating. Hope my request didn"t mess anything up."
"Nah, I saw your message after our celebration. Easy enough to make the calls while Nyree was catching her breath." A glow in the green of his eyes, his handsome face happily smug. "Two of the librarians at her work came down with a bad case of the flu, so she went in to cover. I was meant to teach a cla.s.s this afternoon, but I swapped with Demarco for a morning session so I can take off when Nyree"s shift is over."
"You better invite me to your wedding."
"Are you kidding?" Ransom grinned. "I plan to have one h.e.l.l of a party. s.h.i.t, I"m getting married." He shook his head, like a dog shaking off wet. "And I want to do it."
Well aware of his dating history, Ashwini squeezed his shoulder. "I"m happy for you, Ransom."
She met Janvier an hour later, at the little warehouse that housed the blood cafe in which Ellie had an interest. Blood-for-Less was closed for the day, but there was an employee out back handling donors coming in to sell blood. The stocky male vampire-who looked more like a schoolteacher than someone who should be in the Quarter-let them into the main sitting area and promised to send in the three women when they arrived.
Ashwini had picked the location because it wouldn"t put the women in an awkward position if they were seen. There was nothing strange about a working girl getting a bit of extra cash by selling blood. Right now, however, Ashwini"s attention was on Janvier. Deep grooves marked the sides of his mouth, his eyes dull.
Touching her fingers to his jaw in the muted light inside the blood cafe, she said, "What is it? What"s wrong?" That was when she noticed he"d showered, changed. His blades sat openly on his back, over a plain black T-shirt, his jacket and scarf discarded on the back of a wine red sofa.
"Sit with me."
Once they were down, he took one of her hands in his and told her of the horror that had occurred in Masque that morning. "Lacey?" Shock held her frozen; she couldn"t believe that the sweet, friendly woman who"d been so adorably besotted with her lover was gone, murdered at the hands of that lover. "You"re sure?"
"I"m sorry, cher. I wish I could tell you she felt no pain, but it would be a lie."
Still having trouble processing the horror of it, she focused on him, pressing a kiss to his temple and running her hand down his back. "I"m sorry you had to see that."
Leaning forward, his shoulders taut, he blew out a breath. "This drug is appearing more and more like a poison intended to cause this effect."
Ashwini heard more than Janvier said. She knew how protective he was of women, knew part of him would be going over and over every interaction from the previous night, trying to figure out if he could"ve prevented this. "Rupert was a good person until he took the drug," she reminded him, thinking of how she"d found herself liking the vampire from Lacey"s description of their relationship. "He made the choice to use the drug, no one else. Not even Raphael could"ve stopped him unless he was in the room at the instant Rupert decided to eat Umber."
Janvier put his hand on her thigh. "Thank you," he said after over a minute. "I needed to hear that-you expect the ones who go to vampires like Khalil to die, but this . . ."
She curled her hand around his arm, her head against his shoulder. Lacey had died in horrible agony, but as a woman who loved, Ashwini knew the worst pain would"ve been of Rupert"s betrayal. Lacey"s heart would"ve broken long before her body. "She was so harmless, Janvier."
He shifted to wrap an arm around her, pressing his lips to her hair. "At times, I forget I"m not human. Not today."
Ashwini wasn"t about to let that go. Lifting her head to pin him with her gaze, she held the raw honesty of the eye contact. "Humanity is what we make it." She"d seen too much horror done by mortals to believe them free of the taint of evil. "You"re sad about Lacey. You"re sad about Rupert, too. And you"re angry at the loss of life that didn"t have to happen." Two happy flames snuffed out because someone had decided to create a seductive poison. "That"s humanity and it lives in you."
His throat worked, his eyes red rimmed. "Be in my arms," he said at last. "I need to hold you."
She slipped into his embrace in silence and that was how they sat until they heard voices from the back of the cafe. Breaking reluctantly apart, the two of them were on their feet by the time Aaliyah, Carys, and Sina came in as a group.
It was obvious that Carys, a bra.s.sy blonde with cool blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose, was the leader. Aaliyah, dark skinned and model tall with delicate bones, spoke in a soft tone heavy with grief. Sina, in contrast, her emerald green hair cut in a blunt fringe above slanted eyes set in a broad, pale-skinned face, smiled easily but it didn"t reach her eyes.
"Please," Janvier said after the cafe employee showed them in, "take a seat."
The women hesitated, but then sat side by side on the sofa that faced the one Ashwini and Janvier sat back down on. When the cafe employee came in with a tray of orange juice and cookies, the three women exchanged raised eyebrows. Ashwini rose and thanked the young vampire, made a quiet request in his ear. The small bottle of blood appeared moments later.
This time, Sina"s smile was a.s.sessing. "Most people don"t realize I"m a vampire."