The Beloved, page 20
“I don’t want this…” he moaned.
As emotion overtook him, Evan endured another spin of his inner roulette wheel of humiliation: Uncle calling him a pussy. His father telling him he was a waste just before the man died. The lieutenants at Bathe rolling their eyes at him.
Mickey pushing him down in the snow when he’d just wanted to protect his cousin.
It was hard to say exactly when Evan’s pain turned to anger. Later, he’d decide that the shift started as he looked at the ones who were like him, even though he hadn’t chosen this transformation.
There was no going back, was there. No undoing what had been done to him.
He was stuck.
So even though there was that true-north pull in the center of his chest, the fury he felt overrode the instinct to stay with the others.
On a surge of aggression, Evan got up and stood on his own two feet. Then he pivoted around and strode against the tide. As he passed the soldiers, they looked at him. He looked back.
He almost wanted one of them to stop him—and not because he was seeking to have his mind changed.
He wanted to… kill something all of a sudden.
The instinct was so foreign to him, he should have been shocked. He wasn’t. The urge seemed as natural as following the others.
And as he considered the disrespect his uncle had always paid him? It was going to come in really fucking handy.
Before he knew it, he was running, and he paid attention to the pounding of his boots, the resilience in his legs, the calm breath going in and out of his lungs. Emerging free of the bleak landscape under the bridge, he linked up with the alley he and that woman had come down, and he went faster and faster, until the buildings were a blur and so were the burned-out car carcasses and the decaying dumpsters he dodged around.
Without any thought at all, he found his way back to the female soldier’s shitty apartment building, and he knew the way inside the walk-up’s sturdy outer door. It was as if he’d been shown everything before, especially where the hidden locking mechanism was, and what code to punch in so the entry would give way. Once inside, he jumped down the stairwell to the basement instead of taking the steps, and as he landed in a crouch, he held his breath and listened. Then he jogged over to the flat’s door, and started to punch in a code—
The entrance opened.
A man with white hair, white skin, and eyes the color of eggshells looked at him. “What the fuck are you doing—we’re late. He hates when we’re late.”
The accent was British aristocrat. The vibe was sociopath. And the narrowed stare was suspicious.
The old Evan would have stuttered. New Evan’s voice was level as he caught the door and held it open. “I was told to get clothes and weapons first.”
“You better be fast.”
“I will be.”
The other slayer took off and Evan watched him go. Then he entered the apartment. The first door revealed a bathroom that had a dry toilet with a crack in the bowl, a tub with primordial sludge in its stained belly, and a mirror that reminded him of what the inside of the elevator in the office building had looked like, all frame, no reflection.
Just fragments left of what had once been whole.
He kept going.
Door number three was the winner. The size of the boots lined up against the wall told him it was the right place. Small. A woman’s—
Where was his sense of smell, he wondered as he glanced over his shoulder. Surely this place stank like a mosh pit, but his nose was fine?
Whatever.
In the closet, he found a gun safe the size of a refrigerator, and as he confronted the old-fashioned rotary dial, his plan threatened to fail when no number sequence came to mind. But then he saw a key pad and the combination appeared to him.
As he entered the digits, his hand did not shake—and he had a thought that he should be trembling. He should be majorly freaked out at the fact that he was about to steal weapons from someone who was obviously a killer.
And use them against members of his own family.
But he didn’t feel anything other than a focus rooted in rage.
The instant the lock tumbled, Evan yanked the handle and opened the safe. An interior LCD light came on and the display was more guns than he’d ever seen in one place. He didn’t know which—
His hand reached forward and chose two nine millimeters. Then it grabbed magazines. Everything went into the pockets of his stained jeans, and before he closed the safe back up, he took two suppressors.
In the second bedroom, he found clothes that fit him, as well as holsters.
When he stepped back out, he was better prepared than he’d ever been allowed to be, and he felt strong in the way he had as he’d run over here.
He went to the camouflaged door to the tunnel.
And as he entered the steel passageway, he hoped that thing with the scarred face was still in the basement at the other end.
He was going to need to practice first, and that enemy of his was going to be a good way to learn fast. Fortunately, his body seemed to know what to do in all kinds of situations.
Killing surely was no different.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I’d give you my jacket, if it fit.”
As Nate got off the bed, he shook his head at Nalla’s offer and finished buttoning up his leathers. Then he gave the waistband a yank to get everything in place, and went across to assess the window situation. The daytime shutters had all risen, and as he threw the latch and opened the closest sash, he got a blast of cold air—and the sight of an old maple tree.
He kept his cursing soft, and glanced at the reflection of what was behind him in the panes of glass.
He should have known—or at least noticed.
This had been Rahvyn’s bedroom.
There had been no cluing into it when he’d entered. For one, he hadn’t been up here for thirty years, literally. Not since he’d put some furniture together with that female. And since then, all of the stuff they’d set up had been replaced, another reason he hadn’t recognized things when he’d come in.
And then there had been that whole chestnuts-roasting-o’er-an-open-fire thing.
Turning back to the bed, he looked at Nalla. She was sitting up in the messy covers, her hair falling over her shoulders in waves of blond, red, and brown. Her cheeks were flushed and her fleece was disarrayed. Between one blink and the next, he pictured her underneath him, tilting her head to the side, offering him the vein he’d taken so roughly.
“I’m fine,” she said as she brushed at his bite marks.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course.”
As he gathered up his weapons, and started putting his holsters back on, she cleared her throat. “I have a favor to ask.”
“Anything.” He cinched up his gun belt. “Name it.”
Her eyes traced his bare chest, lingering on the forties strapped under his bare arms. “I might want to get a tattoo. Will you introduce me to your guy?”
Nate stopped for a second. Then he found himself glancing down her body—and thinking it was a crying shame they’d been interrupted. Or… maybe it had been for the best, actually. He was in over his head—and out of time.
Which was fucking ironic for someone who couldn’t die.
Yet.
“Yeah,” he said roughly. “I’ll totally take you in. You’ll like them.”
“Tomorrow night?” she blurted.
“Ah, yeah. Sure.”
“Where will I meet you? I need to get a new phone, in case you don’t remember, and I don’t know if I’ll be keeping my number.”
“I’ll get a replacement for you. It was my fault.”
“That’s okay, Uncle Vishous will take care of it.”
Nate frowned. When it was just the two of them, it was easy to forget who she was. But “Uncle” Vishous? Shit. Just what he needed—Zsadist coming after him with the whole Brotherhood as reinforcement.
“So where do we meet?” she prompted.
“Needle.” He felt like kissing her goodbye. “At Twenty-first and Main. Amore is their name, and I’ll set it up for midnight. They always open the shop for me after hours, but if there’s a problem, I’ll get word to you.”
“Amore.”
“Italian for love. Or so they tell me.”
“You sure this isn’t too much trouble?”
He thought about the promise he’d made to her sire. To stay away.
“No, not at all.”
Over at the foot of the bed, he picked up what remained of his combat jacket from the floor—which was just a pair of sleeves connected by the collar and a couple of streamers of hide.
At least his battered burner phone had been in the ass pocket of his leathers.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said as he went over to the window he’d cracked.
“Yes. Okay. Thanks.”
In comparison to where they’d been only a matter of minutes ago, the distance between them felt colder than the draft that had killed the actual warmth in the room. But again, he was not going into the Rahvyn thing with her. No fucking way.
“Take care of yourself,” he murmured.
“That sounds like a big goodbye. Not a ‘see you later.’ ”
“I also happen to mean it.”
Closing his eyes, he had to calm himself so he could ghost out and—
Before he was aware of making the decision to go back to her, he was striding across the rug. And the next thing he knew, he was taking Nalla around the waist, and bringing her to his mouth.
The kiss returned them to where they had been, panting and straining, ready to break out of their clothes and get good and goddamned naked. When he finally eased her back down where she’d been on the bed, he liked the dreamy smile on her face so much more than the reserve that he had known was hiding hurt.
Yeah, he couldn’t leave her like that.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at midnight,” he vowed.
“Needle.”
“Amore. Go to the side entrance.”
He kissed her once more, and this time, when he stood in front of the open window, he was able to close his eyes and concentrate.
Flying away from the farmhouse in a scatter of molecules, he re-formed on his own property, between his log cabin and his barn. For a moment, he glanced at the red outbuilding. A wild impulse had him picturing what was in there, under its cover. But then he picked up one boot and glanced at the snowpack in his treads.
All-season tires only went so far, and besides, if you couldn’t floor your horses, why bother taking your toy out at all.
Heading for the cabin’s front door, he had places to go, but first a shower and another set of clothes—
As soon as he opened things up, he went for his gun and pointed it at the male across the interior. The good news was that his guest wasn’t an enemy. At least… not in the conventional sense.
His father, Murhder, was sitting in the ratty old armchair in front of the cold hearth. The Brother’s black-and-red hair was braided high on his head, like he’d come ready for some ground game aerobics, and he was dressed to be out in the field.
“We need to talk about what happened down on Market last night,” the Brother said grimly. “And after that, we’re going to cover why the hell you aren’t answering your phone—and then, for shits and giggles, our chaser is going to be why you’re half naked and holding a burned jacket in your hand.”
Fucking perfect, Nate thought.
But at least he could get this goodbye out of the way. Even though it was the one he’d been planning on finishing with.
* * *
At the downtown induction site, Evan exited the tunnel by jumping out and landing in a crouch with both of the guns he’d boosted front and center. With quick eyes, he scanned the well-lit parts of the basement. The elevator was still sitting open and at the ready, but there was no alarm anymore. Other than that?
Nothing out of place, no one in the space.
Leaving the shadows, he was prepared for an attack, and when he came up to the Otis box, he was surprised he wasn’t shooting. Peering in, he saw that someone had discharged a bullet into the control panel.
Keeping his guns up, he went silently over to the emergency exit. Sidestepping the door that had been blown out of its hinges, he leaned around the jamb and assessed the stairwell. It was dangerous to go up it, but he was as ready as he would ever be for that scarred vampire who was after him. On the ascent, he was careful to remain as quiet as possible—but he didn’t know whether that was his mind being smart, or his body making decisions for him.
He was hoping it was the latter as the autopilot thing was probably better at keeping him alive.
Or… less dead?
Whatever, whichever, who the fuck cared. He just kept going. At the first-floor landing, he paused and glanced at the big 1 that had been painted on the concrete wall. This fire door had had a limited breach, just the lock blown, the black blast ring localized by the bolting mechanism. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the panel hard, the hinges resisting because of the warping from the explosion, and he jumped out once again.
The lobby was still dim, and as he rounded the corner, he looked to that oily trail that led out from that fucking elevator.
His body paused, even though he told his feet to keep walking. As his head turned from side to side, he saw nothing out of place, nothing lurking, nothing… anywhere. The only difference was that the plywood panel that had been blown off the entrance had been put back on somehow.
The scarred killer had left. Evan could feel it.
Now he moved fast, but he still kept things as silent as he could, putting his new high-performance boots down carefully because there was debris and cracked mirrored glass that would be loud if he walked on it. At the building’s entry, he stopped for a moment. When nothing pinged his instincts, he used the side of the door that had stayed in place. The last thing he needed was the other plywood sheet falling in again.
As soon as he was out, his head jerked left. Right. And up.
Reholstering one of the guns, he fell into yet another run and retraced the path he’d taken the night before, shooting out onto Market, dodging cars that honked at him, ignoring pedestrians that looked his way. He felt nothing of the cold, and still no hunger or need to take a piss. He had plenty of anger, though, and it seemed, like his physical abilities, to be getting stronger by the moment.
Maybe it was just an effect of the toxic shit in his veins.
He didn’t care.
Up ahead, the blue glow of Bathe was like a semicircular rainstorm that misted out into the street, and he avoided the illumination by sticking to the opposite side of things, skirting the edge of the light show. The alley on the far side of the club was what he was after, and he jaywalked at a run and shot down into its shadows.
The side entrance to the club, which led into the VIP lounge, was smack in the middle of the building’s long wall, and he continued past it.
In the rear, there was a shallow parking lot, with wedges of dirty snow framing the beaters that were parked with all the organization of dropped Legos. In another couple of weeks, the available spaces were going to be taken up by even more of the plow’s work, those brown-and-black piles growing like tumors.
But not everything was out of order. There was a pair of vacant spaces set in the midst of the mess, and they had been properly cleared of ice and snow, and salted with a heavy hand, to the point where the spots’ yellow lines even showed on the ground.
Evan tucked himself into a fan-shaped shadow created by one of the security lights being out. Fishing a hand into the pocket of the black coat he’d stolen, he took out one of the suppressors. Even with his eyes forward on the back lot, his hands found the end of his gun’s barrel without any inefficiency, the rims of the two pieces joining as if they were something you clicked into place instead of screwed—and then, as he rotated the extension until it locked in, he heard the nearly imperceptible metal-on-metal sounds in spite of the bass that reverberated out of the club, and the whistle of the wind, and the loud whrrrring of the HVAC system.
No smell, still. But God, his hearing.
From his hideout, he watched a lone man stroll down the sidewalk. The guy’s clothes were high-class club, but he looked out of it, like he’d scored something that hit him a little hard. And then there was a car that passed by, a junker.
Overhead, a plane came in very low, and as he glanced up, he wondered if it was about to crash into the bridges—
His head ripped around to the alley he’d come down, and every inch of his skin prickled like he’d been dragged through poison sumac.
Before his eyes could confirm what his inner radar reported, he shifted his defensive position to a dumpster at the far corner of the lot. Making sure he stayed out of sight, he was surprised by how calm he was.
Given that he’d been stalked.
Something was coming down the club’s flank, and it was looking for him. He just hadn’t sensed them before now—
Right as he was wondering if he needed to start shooting, a pair of headlights swung across the back of the club, and Evan went to ground to avoid the glare. After the blast of illumination passed him, the sedan he’d been waiting for parked in one of the two cleared-out spots.
As he noted the silver Mercedes S660 with its tinted windows, the surge of triumph he felt was tempered by the reality that he was being hunted.
He glanced down the alley. The—vampire?—was coming closer. Meanwhile, no one was getting out of that luxury sedan.
Tick-tock.
Which was going to win—
His stalker passed by the door to the VIP section, and in the low glow of the light above it, the identity was confirmed, the scar on that face as obvious as the gun that was pointed in Evan’s direction, like the entity could see him.
Right on cue, just at the tipping point when Evan was going to be forced to pull his own trigger, three men got out of the long Mercedes.
It was his uncle’s lieutenants—the ones who had disrespected Evan last night. And Uncle had to be in that car, in the rear on the opposite side—
