"Yes, I know the b.i.t.c.h." Hanging up after making sure Carys didn"t have any other useful information, she turned to Janvier and told him Carys"s news. "Penelope knew what Giorgio was the entire time. I fell for her sweet "we"re all loyal to one another" act." So, she thought, had the brave woman in the hospital bed; Brooke"s only crime was that she"d loved a monster.
Even Dmitri had put only a light watch on the cattle, more to make them feel safe in the hotel where they were currently staying than to lock them in. It would"ve been simple for Penelope to slip out. "I bet you she"s been luring women for him, playing chauffeur. That"s why no one ever saw Giorgio with Felicity."
Janvier"s eyes blazed.
Not needing him to speak to understand the cold rage in his bones, Ashwini added the information about the black SUV to what she"d already given the data team. It wasn"t much, but if Giorgio or one of the women had a black SUV registered in his or her name, it might give them another way to track the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.
The property information came through three minutes later. Turned out the aunt had two properties, both tied up in a complicated legal framework that made actual beneficial ownership unclear. "We"ll take the one on the Lower East Side," she told the tech, she and Janvier having reached his bike. "It"s closer to the hospital."
"Naasir says he can handle the one on the Upper West Side," came the response. "Illium"s going with him."
"Tell them to call if they find anything." Hanging up, she shared the address with Janvier, and the two of them roared out.
Her phone had another message on it when she checked it after they parked a block down from the three-level freestanding house that had belonged to Penelope"s aunt. "The vehicle"s registered to Marie May," she told Janvier as they got off the bike. "Guild"s put out an alert." It would go out to cops, Tower personnel, any hunters in the vicinity.
Janvier, having hung their helmets on either side of the handlebars, stared down the street. "I don"t think that"ll be necessary."
Following his gaze, Ashwini saw it. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h." A black SUV with tinted windows was parked directly across from the house.
No way in h.e.l.l was that a coincidence.
"We can"t wait," she said. "He"s already had those two women for hours."
"Front or back?" Janvier asked, sending in a request for urgent backup.
She looked at the building. "You know that climbing thing you do? Can you get up to that third-floor window, figure out a way to get inside?"
Janvier followed her gaze to the closed but not particularly secure-looking window. "Child"s play."
"You go in, work your way down. I"ll enter through the front." She caught his scowl, shook her head. "I"ll go in like I"m following up on Penelope, making sure she"s all right after the trauma of discovering Giorgio"s crimes."
"It"s still a risk."
Ashwini smiled. So did Janvier. Then they split.
She walked down the sidewalk and up the steps to the front door of the house, while Janvier went left and over the fence of the house on the corner. By the time she rang the front doorbell, she figured he had to be climbing the side of the house.
When no one answered on the first ring, she leaned on it, acting irritated for the benefit of the surveillance camera trained on the doorstep. Meanwhile her stomach churned, her ability picking up something so horrible that she had to shove it aside or she wouldn"t be able to function. Glancing at her watch at the continued lack of an answer from within, she took out her cell phone and rang Penelope. She heard it ring inside the house before it was silenced. The door swung open five seconds later.
No gold choker or silk top this time, but the thigh-length robe of deep blue was richly embroidered.
"Oh, hi!" said the brunette, her eyes glittering and her cheeks flushed. "Sorry about the wait." A small laugh. "I was shaving my legs."
Ashwini didn"t glance down, simply smiled as if she"d swallowed the excuse. "I wanted to check up on you," she said, wondering what lay in the darkness of the hallway behind the woman who played aide to a s.a.d.i.s.tic psychopath. "Brooke told us you might be here when we couldn"t find you at the hotel with the others."
Penelope"s mouth thinned at the sound of Brooke"s name, but she recovered quickly. "Oh, I hope I"m not in trouble-I wanted to be in my own home." She opened the door a little wider. "You can tell everyone I"m fine. And Brooke?" Bright, hard eyes. "She"ll be okay?"
"Yes, the doctors say she"ll make a full recovery." Ashwini patted the brick cladding. "This is a great place."
"Isn"t it? My aunt left it to me." Lower lip quivering, Penelope hugged herself, her distinctive gold and diamante nails vivid against the dark blue of the robe. "I can"t believe Giorgio did those things, hurt Brooke. I loved him."
She was, Ashwini thought, a pathologically good liar. She was also now a step outside the doorway, having instinctively followed Ashwini when she shifted back. Continuing to smile, Ashwini leaned in toward her and said, "I can blow a hole through your gut in the time it takes for you to scream, so don"t."
Penelope froze midbreath, her mouth open like that of a blowfish.
Remaining close to block the expression on Penelope"s face from the camera, she said, "Is Giorgio inside that house?" She dug the gun into Penelope"s side when the other woman didn"t answer quickly enough, no mercy in her with the memory of Brooke"s battered face at the forefront of her mind.
"Y-yes."
"Who else?"
A twist of her lips. "Nothing but two wh.o.r.es I picked up off the street."
Ashwini flicked off the safety. "Don"t lie to me. I don"t like you and I"ll have no hesitation in putting a bullet through your pretty face to mess it up."
Smugness wiped away, Penelope whimpered. "You can"t do that."
"Self-defense. Who do you think the Guild is going to believe? Me or a dead blood junkie who sold out her sister?"
"Brooke isn"t my sister! She"s a piece of trash who shamed our master."
"One last chance." Ashwini shoved in the gun hard enough that it would bruise, her voice ice-cold. "Who else is inside the house?"
Goose b.u.mps on her skin, Penelope crumbled. "The other master," she whispered. "The old one."
"Who watches the surveillance feed?"
"The master," she said. "He"ll see you." She began to smirk.
Ashwini reached out as if to hug Penelope and stabbed two fingers into a particular part of her throat. It made the brunette"s eyes go wide, a retching sound escaping her before she slumped. Slinging an arm around the dazed woman, she gave up any attempt at stealth and shoved the door fully open to see no one lying in wait.
She dumped a moaning Penelope in the hallway and, pulling out the belt of the woman"s elaborate robe, used it to hog-tie her, hands behind her back and ankles lashed to her wrists. A slash with one of her blades and she had another piece of the robe to use as a gag. "Wouldn"t want you calling out to your precious Giorgio at the wrong time," she muttered. Finished, she set Penelope on her side to make sure she could breathe.
The entire operation took her under a minute and her skin crawled the whole time, but she figured Giorgio was too much of a coward to come at her straight-on. No, the pencil-d.i.c.ked b.a.s.t.a.r.d would be hiding somewhere, ready to ambush her like he"d ambushed the women who had trusted him.
Ignoring the daggers Penelope was throwing at her with her eyes, she slid away the knife she"d used to cut up the robe and pulled out her secondary gun from an ankle sheath. Both guns held out, she took a step toward the first closed door on this floor.
Having scrambled up the side of the building, Janvier got to the old-fashioned bay window and looking through the parted curtains, confirmed the room beyond was empty. He could"ve broken a pane to get in, but the noise might alert anyone up here-so he used a trick he"d learned from a jewel thief, and broke the hinges instead, using a sharp blade and vampiric strength.
Grabbing the falling half of the window, he lowered it quietly to the floor, then slid in, his kukris in hand the instant his feet touched the carpet. One ear open for Ash, he scanned the room to find it comparatively bare, though there were a few feminine accoutrements lying about.
Including a pretty yellow scarf with purple b.u.t.terflies half hanging out of a drawer.
His mind flashed to the photo of Felicity with her friends, all with c.o.c.ktails in hand . . . and Felicity with that scarf around her neck.
This had to be where she, Lilli, and the other victims had lived before Giorgio put them in the crates. The place where they"d tried to become "good enough" to move into Giorgio"s Vampire Quarter house. Clamping down his rage, and taking a quick look around to make sure he wasn"t missing anything, he stepped out into the corridor.
To the left was what proved to be a bathroom when he pushed the door open. It, too, was empty. As was the room next to it. That room had a tiny decorative balcony on the side not visible from the street, but it was so small he could see no one was on it from a glance through the sliding doors. That left the right-hand side of the floor.
It had two doors, and the first one was locked. Sliding away one of his blades, he took a small metal wire from his pocket, another little trick he"d learned from his larcenous friend. Ten seconds later, there was a small click that said he was in. The sound was tiny, but Janvier knew some older vamps had hearing that was preternaturally acute. Putting away the wire, he waited, listening at the door.
Sounds from within, but they were odd, m.u.f.fled.
He very carefully nudged the door open while keeping his body out of the way. When there was no other sound, he pushed it fully open and slammed his back against the corridor wall again.
More m.u.f.fled sounds, louder now.
He glanced in, saw a woman bound hand and foot, something stuffed in her mouth and her curly black hair a tangle against the thick gray carpet. Mascara ran down the clammy white skin of her face, terror in her eyes. Lifting a finger to his lips, he checked the rest of the room and found no evidence of another individual. He looked out into the corridor to ensure it remained clear, then went down beside her.
"I"m going to untie you," he said quietly. "But if you start crying or making any other kind of noise, I might not be able to get you out." There was no knowing if Giorgio had guards in this place and Cornelius was a powerful angel, even without Lijuan feeding him energy. "Nod if you understand."
A frantic nod.
Janvier took out the gag first. It turned out to be a balled-up sock.
"My friend, Marta," she whispered through her dry mouth and cracked lips. "The brunette who brought us here took her."
"We"ll find her." Cutting the ropes, he led her to the room with the sliding doors. They proved to be locked by a keyed dead bolt. It took him precious seconds to pick the lock, but when he slid the doors open, he saw his hunch had been right: rusted but with no indications of dangerous wear, there was a large pipe on the outer wall that went all the way to the ground.
It had enough joins to provide a grip.
Shrugging off his leather jacket, he gave it to the woman who"d confirmed her name was Bridget. Her skintight jeans and little boots would protect her legs from the cold, but she wore only a bustier on her top half. "I"m going to help you over the railing to that pipe." Thinking of her hands on the icy metal, he remembered he had Ash"s gloves in his jacket pockets, told her to slip them on. "Climb down as silently as you can."
"What about Marta?" she asked, having wiped the backs of her hands across her face. It had further smeared her makeup, but her eyes held more anger than fear.
"I"ll get her. It"ll go better if I don"t have to worry about you as well."
Giving a jerky nod, she pulled on the gloves. "Should I call the cops after I get down?"
"They"re already on their way. Can you operate a motorcycle?" At the negative shake of her head, he said, "Go down the street and hide behind the house on the corner." He"d noticed it was empty when he came through. "Our backup should arrive within minutes."
She didn"t speak again until he"d helped her out. "Please help my friend."
"I will." Waiting just long enough to see that she was steady on the pipe, he went back out to the corridor and quickly looked in on the rooms he"d already cleared. The final door on the right was a master bedroom, opulently male in design. Janvier smelled the same cologne he"d smelled in Giorgio"s home, saw a cravat on the bed, a shirt with a fall of lace at the cuffs on a chair.
Of Giorgio himself, however, there was no sign.
He started down the stairs to the second level.
41.
Looking right as she moved down the hallway, Ashwini found a s.p.a.cious living area. Her eye went immediately to the tumbler of red liquid on the antique sideboard, beside a crystal decanter of the same.
Blood.
Nothing else had that same consistency, a consistency that was obvious to her even from her current position. Stepping inside with care, she scanned the large room. There really was only one place anyone could hide and that was behind the sofa by the windows. Instead of walking over, she dropped to the floor and looked beneath the cream-colored sofa with curved wooden legs. Nothing.
She confirmed that by crossing the room and taking a second look.
Now she had a choice to make. Go through the door from the living room to the room on the other side, or enter the other room from the corridor. Eyes narrowed, she looked around and found an ornate chair that was heavy but that she could carry without dragging it on the floor. She moved it to under the k.n.o.b of the internal access door, blocking it as an exit route, then returned to the corridor.
Back near the entrance, Penelope was flopping around, hair all over her face as she attempted to move, one bare breast and thigh exposed. Confirming with a glance that the other woman wouldn"t be going anywhere, Ashwini opened a door on the left. It proved to be a closet filled with velvet and lace coats, along with what appeared to be a hooded black cape. Closing it, she cleared the two other rooms on the left while keeping an eye on the open doorway that led into the room off the living area.
The first room on the left was some kind of rumpus room with a television and surprisingly laid-back furniture. Either Giorgio hadn"t gotten around to updating it or it was for the women. The other room was a toilet covered in fancy tile. So, likely, the remaining room hadn"t yet been updated. Dead certain someone was in the room she"d left for last, she made her way to the door.
At the same time, she swapped out her guns for knives. They"d make far less noise and not alert anyone else in the house. Then she drop-rolled into the room-to a rushing attack from a supernaturally pretty vampire with waves of golden hair. But Giorgio wasn"t used to fighting for his life. He went for where her body should"ve been, rather than where she actually was.
She"d come up into a crouch and thrust a knife into his gut before he could stop his headlong rush. His blood stained his white shirt scarlet. Well aware how quickly vamps his age could shrug off a gut wound, she thrust a second knife directly into his heart seconds after the first, then rose to stab a third into his neck from the side.
It severed his jugular, blood pumping out in hot spurts to splatter the warm yellow walls of what turned out to be the kitchen, but he still kept coming, trying to gurgle something that sounded like "wh.o.r.e."
"Better a wh.o.r.e than a s.a.d.i.s.tic piece of s.h.i.t like you," she said and, grabbing the hunting knife from her belt, slammed it into his brain through his left ear, then twisted.
A shocked look on his face, Giorgio collapsed at last.
Ashwini knew he wasn"t dead-she"d made certain of it. She wanted Giorgio to suffer immortal justice. It could last years. The blade in his brain should keep him down for a day at least, but she wasn"t going to risk it, with all the weirdness in this case. For all she f.u.c.king knew, Giorgio was part reborn and would shamble back to life as soon as she turned her back.
Raiding the kitchen in lieu of using up her own knives, she methodically put carbon-steel steak knives through his palms, forearms, and shoulders, careful not to make skin-to-skin contact. After which she brought a meat cleaver down on his thigh, snapping the bone. She did the same to his other femur.
Unlike Giorgio, she took no pleasure in causing the injuries. Her only motive was to keep him in place. Except for the last two knives she"d found-narrow and sharp filleting blades.
"This is for every woman you"ve ever hurt," she said and pinned the b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es to the floor, the knives slicing easily through his pants. "I hope that f.u.c.king hurts when you wake up."
Judging him contained, she got up and headed out into the hallway again.
The sirens she could already hear told her backup would arrive long before Giorgio had any chance of rising. Taking the stairs to the second floor, she went up on silent feet . . . to see Janvier coming down from the third floor. She jerked up her head. He said, "One girl safe," in a low tone, then zeroed in on the blood on her jacket.
"Giorgio"s."
Touching his fingers to her jaw, he looked down the corridor. "Cornelius must be on this floor if he"s here."
"He is." The nauseating ugliness she"d sensed even from the outside dominated the air here, acrid and old. Fighting the sick feeling in her gut, she slipped her guns back out. Knives wouldn"t do much good against an angel, but a brain full of lead might slow him down enough for Janvier to behead him.
They went down the corridor side by side, clearing two rooms before Ashwini"s churning stomach told her they were at the right one. Communicating that to Janvier with a single glance, she didn"t argue when he nodded at her to open the door so he could go in first. As a vampire, he had more chance of surviving a p.i.s.sed-off angel than she did. And she had a better chance of keeping him safe if she went in with guns blazing behind him.
Turning the k.n.o.b, she shoved it open before swinging around to go in behind Janvier. He went in as low and as quiet as she had in the kitchen and came up ready to defend against an attack . . . except there was no attack.
There was, however, an angel in the room.