Lover Unveiled, page 42
For a moment, before he left, he stared at the spot her car had been parked in. Now there were only oil stains and marks where the tires had traveled up and back so many times, and he imagined her parents parking here in the past, too. Pictured how many times the family, including her brother, had gone in and out of the door he had just used to leave her.
He truly understood where she was about Rhoger. He’d been there with Rahvyn. And fuck, if he believed in miracles? In fate? In the universe being a right and just place? He might trust that he and his first cousin could be still reunited and if Mae brought her dead back, there would be no regrets.
But he didn’t buy into that existential justice shit anymore.
And damn it, Mae was going to thank him for what he was about to do. Maybe not right away, but later . . . when nature was not interfered with and she was not in so much pain. Then, she would know he’d done the right thing.
Calming himself, he dematerialized out through the open shutter. But he didn’t go back to his place to get his shitbox ride.
He went downtown.
As he’d only been in Caldwell a month, he didn’t know streets’ names or anything. The good news was that the Commodore was the only twenty-plus-floor residential building around, and given that it had vertical light-up letters on its flank that spelled out “C-O-M-M-O-D-O-R-E”?
It didn’t take a genius to locate its roof.
And just like they’d planned, there was a lone figure waiting for him by the HVAC blowers.
As Sahvage re-formed in front of the guy, he kept his hands by his guns, but he didn’t palm up. No reason not to be civil, and besides, he’d gotten a sense of the Bastard over the daylight hours. While Mae had slept, he’d gone upstairs to find out who had been blowing up his phone.
And what do you know. The call he’d been waiting for.
“So you’re Sahvage, the male of the hour.” The fighter extended his dagger hand. “Balthazar.”
Sahvage nodded and shook what was offered. “You ready to do this?”
“Like I said on the phone, we should move fast.”
Glancing around, Sahvage had the sense that the building was surrounded. Shadows? he wondered. No . . . he could catch the scents, even though they were distant and distilled by the cold wind, and he recognized a lot of them.
“Your backups are in position,” he said. “I know we aren’t alone.”
“Just as we agreed, they’re on the perimeter and staying put unless things get fucked. I don’t want . . . well, like I told you, last night she came as soon as I got close to the Book.”
“Just point me in the right direction, I’ll take it from there.”
The male narrowed his eyes. “That wasn’t our agreement.”
“Even if it keeps you from getting killed?”
“She wants the Book, not us. So if I wake up dead, it’s going to be because I’m collateral damage. The same is true for you. We do this as we agreed or not at all.”
Sahvage met the fighter straight in the eye. “Roger that.”
As Balthazar turned away, Sahvage followed the male over to the entry to the stairwell that ran up the middle of the building. Inside, they descended the concrete steps at a jog, and when, a couple landings down, Balthazar paused at a fire door and seemed to be scenting the seam around the doorjamb, Sahvage realized something.
“You didn’t make a sound,” he said softly.
The Bastard glanced over his shoulder. “Huh?”
“As we went along. You didn’t make any noise.”
“I’m a thief.” The guy rolled his eyes and punched the handle to open things up. “You think I should have a marching band plugged into my ass?”
“Now there’s a Christmas card.”
Out in a corridor that smelled like rich people, and had a sleek, contemporary vibe, they strode forth quickly, and Sahvage tried to take a page out of Mr. Shhh’s book. But how did the fucker manage to not even have his equipment creak?
It was obvious where they were going.
The police tape gave it away.
As they came up to the door, Balthazar looked back. “Open foyer on the other side. I’m praying there’s no police equipment in the way. I’ll disarm the alarm and take us through the collection rooms.”
“I’m right behind you.”
Balthazar went in first, and Sahvage was a nanosecond behind him. No police equipment, just an open foyer as described, like the place was a museum.
“This way,” the Bastard whispered. “It’s down here.”
The rooms were small and windowless, and contained collections of strange things. Surgical instruments. Bat skeletons? And then—
Sahvage’s breath exploded out of his lungs as they entered a space filled with book displays—and his boots froze where they were. There, across the intricate floor, past a ruined section of shelving and a mess on the hardwood . . . was a clear box.
That housed an object Sahvage hadn’t seen for two hundred years.
As he blinked, he was back in Zxysis’s master quarters, the blood of his innocent cousin spilled on the sheeting of the bedding platform, the window open, the herbs and potions and candle wax over on the trestle table.
He had a feeling that the Bastard was talking to him.
But once again, the male wasn’t making any sound at all.
Sahvage approached the display on numb legs, and he could have sworn, as he came to a halt before the ancient volume, that the pages of the open tome ruffled as if in greeting. And he wasn’t the only one transfixed. Balthazar was next to him and staring at the Book with the same kind of captivation.
In fact, so enthralled were he and the other fighter . . . that they failed to note the blinking red light up at the motion detector on the ceiling.
It’s the alarm.”
As Mrs. Cambourg stood up from the sofa with her phone in her hand, Erika was already on it, not just going vertical, but putting her hand on her holstered service weapon.
“Someone’s on the second floor.” The woman turned her cell’s screen around. “What do I—”
“It’s probably just one of the crime scene techs.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Or at least that was what Erika was hoping, and if it was? She was going to dress down whoever hadn’t checked in properly.
“I want you to lock yourself in and stay up here,” she said. “I’m going to go down and check.”
“But is it safe?” the woman asked as she cradled the phone to her chest.
“I’ll be right back. I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
“Okay.” Mrs. Cambourg pointed to an archway. “You want to go through that corridor and take the stairwell down a level. Should I be calling someone?”
“I’ll handle it. Don’t worry. Just stay up here.”
As Erika strode off down the hall, there was a series of soft shifting sounds in her wake. When she glanced back, the archway area was being closed off with a matte gold panel.
Good. That meant she didn’t have to worry about anyone else.
Besides, it probably was just an investigator who had failed to check in properly.
The staircase curved around, modern art glowing on the walls. There was one painting she particularly liked, but it wasn’t as if she was going to waste time checking out the chromatics of the damn thing.
Like she knew anything about art anyway.
But she sure as shit knew how to protect herself.
When she came to the bottom of the stairs, at the triplex’s second floor, she unholstered her service weapon, but kept it at her side. The last thing anyone needed was her blowing a colleague out of the water. At the same time, shit was getting weird in Caldwell, so she wasn’t taking chances with her own life.
All of the bodies that she’d seen with missing hearts were what was on her mind as she rounded a corner and saw, through a couple of rooms, a pair of men standing over the Lucite display box in the book room. They were . . . enormous. Dressed in black. Looking like they were capable of handling themselves in any situation.
So yeah, definitely not investigators.
They turned around at the same time.
Erika’s training dictated that she was supposed to make both of them; take a mental snapshot of their features that she could use later for ID purposes. And she also needed to put in motion the backup protocol.
Instead, she stared at the one on the left. He was . . . the man from the footage from the trailer, the thief who had brought the watches there . . . the one who Mrs. Cambourg believed she had dreamed about. And God, he was still impossibly beautiful, if you could use that word on anything so masculine: His face was all perfect angles and jawline, and his eyes, as they narrowed and swept her up and down, were both cunning and . . .
“I’m almost not surprised you’re here,” she heard herself say. “You seem to spend a lot of time in this place.”
As she spoke, he tilted his head—in a way that reminded her of a German shepherd, a predator who was curious about how fast his prey might be able to run.
“Detective Saunders, CPD.” Erika pointed her gun at him and took her cuffs out. “I’m going to ask you both to put your hands on your heads and turn around. You’re under arrest for trespassing—but something tells me the charges are not going to stop there.”
Neither of them moved. And that was when she realized she recognized the other one as well.
The fight club, she thought with a surge of adrenaline. He was the one from the footage with Ralph DeMellio.
Holy shit, talk about your BOGOs.
Before she could repeat her commands, the one on the left, the one she really needed to stare at in a solely professional way, said softly, “I’ll take care of this.”
Erika deepened her voice. “Put your hands on your heads and—”
• • •
As Balz went into the human woman’s mind and froze her where she stood, he actually wanted her to keep talking. Somehow, she managed to turn simple words into a symphony in his ears, and that wasn’t all she did.
Her scent speared into his nose and went directly into his blood.
Physically, she was not all that tall. Five six, maybe five seven. And she had a practical vibe to everything about her, from her flat shoes to the tight ponytail at the base of her neck, from her lack of makeup to her level, hard eyes. And talk about professional clothes. The shield on her dark blue blazer flashed with every breath she took, and her loose slacks gave him no clue as to what her body looked like.
But like that mattered?
It was . . . all of her . . . that got to him.
And that wasn’t the half of it.
As he penetrated her mind so he could shut the present down and patch over her memories, flashes of . . . unspeakable past violence and tragedy popped up. Like even though the images, sights, and sounds were part of her long-term storage, they were always just under the surface for her.
She had faced things that no woman, no man, should ever have to survive.
And yet she was totally unafraid as she stood up to him and Sahvage, two vampires who were heavily armed and outweighed her by four hundred pounds. Then again, considering what she had already lived through? There was going to be little that rattled her.
“What the fuck’s going on here?”
As Sahvage’s impatience cut through the silence, Balz snapped back into action. “I got this. I got her.”
“Do you? ’Cuz from over here, it looks like she got you.”
In spite of the high stakes, Balz needed one more moment—and then he stripped the woman of any recollection of coming and finding them here. After that, he inserted the thought that it was just an alarm malfunction.
Alarms malfunctioned all the time.
Nothing wrong, nothing out of place.
As she pivoted around to leave and put her weapon and those handcuffs away, it was clear that she was comfortable with guns and confident in her ability to use them properly—and what do you know, Balz got hard in his boxer shorts.
He had to see her again.
Somehow—
A bumping sound brought his head around.
Sahvage had removed the display case’s top and was straightening back up, his hands outstretched. As he moved in for the Book, his eyes were locked with total absorption, his body tensed, his—
“Oh, no you don’t,” Balz gritted as he lunged forward as well.
The two of them grabbed hold of the Book at exactly the same time. And as that spoiled-meat stench roiled up in the air, they both started pulling—and Balz felt like he was in a tug-o’-war for his very life. Sure, Sahvage had fronted like he was all go-team, but right now, nothing about the fucker suggested he was on board with the original plan.
He was going to take the fucking thing.
Bearing his fangs, Balz snarled, “You fucking douche.”
“This is evil. This needs to be destroyed!”
“What are you—”
“You don’t want this!”
“I need it to save my life!”
Somehow, in spite of the fact that both of them were leaning back, all their weight put into the pull, all of their muscles engaged . . . the Book was not torn apart. Even though there should have been, there was no ripping release of structural integrity, no break at the spine, no give anywhere.
It was like an I-beam—
Let it go.
From out of nowhere, like it’d been piped into the room—or maybe it was Balz’s skull?—Lassiter’s voice permeated the growling fight.
Let it go.
“No!” Balz barked. “Fucking no way!”
He refused to live with that evil inside of him for the rest of his life—
If you want to live, let it go.
From out of nowhere, the image of that detective he had just sent away came to the forefront of his mind.
But was this the evil talking to him or was this . . . actually Lassiter, trying to save him?
How did he know the difference between the brunette’s seductive misrepresentations and reality?
“Fuck!” he yelled.
There were some battles where losing was not an option. This was one of them.
As Sahvage’s body strained and sweat broke out across his chest and face, he locked his molars and kept pulling. Across the pages of the open Book, the Bastard was doing likewise, every ounce of power in that male’s body and mind determined to take control as well.
There was the temptation to reach for a weapon. One bullet to the other fighter’s head and this physical argument was fucking over.
But Sahvage couldn’t risk having the Book ripped out of a one-handed grip. Without knowing many details about the Bastard, he had a feeling that Balthazar was fully capable of dematerializing at the drop of a hat. And if the male did?
Sahvage was not getting a second chance. In two hundred years, he hadn’t crossed paths with the fucking thing. It was not happening again, and with that summoning spell out there?
Sure as shit, given his fucking luck, it would find its way to Mae—
All at once, and without warning, the Bastard released his grip. Just opened his hands and let the goddamn thing go.
With no more opposing force working against him, Sahvage’s backward momentum was so great that he slammed into the opposite wall, the impact knocking him stupid for a split second.
Meanwhile, across the now-empty display case, Balthazar looked down at his hands as if he didn’t understand what he’d done—or maybe that they’d acted independently.
His eyes lifted and he spoke with resignation. “Where are you taking it?”
For some reason, maybe because Sahvage recognized the numb despair in the other fighter’s face, he found himself answering.
“Where no one can use it ever again.”
“I need it. To get the evil out of me.”
“There is no evil in you.”
“You are very wrong about that, and the Book is my only hope.”
If only Rahvyn were still alive, Sahvage thought. She used to take care of problems like that in their village back in the Old Country.
“I’m sorry,” Sahvage said. And meant it.
With that, he dematerialized out of the room. Out of the gallery. Then it was out of the corridor and into the stairwell.
But he didn’t go up. That’s where the Brotherhood was—or had been. He went down, ghosting through the concrete landings faster than a heartbeat. At the bottom, he opened a fire door and expected to find all of the Brotherhood with their guns pointing to him. Nope. Just a sleek marble lobby with a couple of humans at a set of desk areas and two women coming in with shopping bags.
As he jogged across that shiny floor, he heard someone shouting for him.
Outside, in the darkness in front of the building, he expected the Brotherhood again. Or the brunette. Or shadows.
Nothing.
For a split second, he looked around and wondered what the fuck had happened to all the characters in his play. The stage was really fucking empty. But like he was in a position to argue with shit finally breaking his way?
Feeling like a bank robber on the heist of a lifetime, he closed his eyes and took to the cool spring night.
As he left the downtown, he had a bizarre thought.
It was almost like Balthazar had let him go.
• • •
Up in the book room, Balz fell to the floor and put his head in his hands. “Fuck. Fuck . . . fuck.”
When he looked up again, he was not alone. Lassiter was right in front of him, and the fallen angel slowly lowered himself down so they were eye to eye.
“Hi.”
Balz swallowed hard. “I don’t know what I just did.”
“Yes, you do.”
“How do I know this is actually you? I don’t know what to trust anymore—and that includes myself.”
“Give me your hand.”
As the fallen angel extended his own palm, Balz had a thought that if he touched what was being offered to him, he might well be trapped forever in—
Fuck it.
Balz clasped what was in front of him and braced himself for . . .
