His voice is cold, the shiny copper shell encapsulating a small measure of gunpowder. “I don’t have to lie, Xaine.”
Click.
“If you look close enough, it’s all there, stamped across her face with bits of each and every ancestor that came before. Including, but not limited to, my very own sister, who, like me, very much resembles our mother.” A pause, presumably to reload. “Except, she has my father’s eyes.”
She. Elizabeth.
Click…
She. Lore.
Click. Click…
She—
Boom.
There’s no breathing after that, no thinking. There’s nothing but the hard rush of white noise as memories battle to the forefront. Elizabeth is there, a ghost staring back at me, smiling at me from beneath a tangle of dark curls.
Cas is still talking, but his voice has faded into the background, his words a steady monotone at the far end of my nostalgia tunnel.
Blood relations. Cas and Lore… are blood relations.
Another line drawn between another pair of dots.
Somehow, he managed to track her, find her, hunt her down, and now he’s trying to lay some sort of claim to her. As family.
As his family.
“…you’re not going to be able to look her in the eyes and tell her you love her, Xaine. Not now. Not knowing what you know. Not when every time you look at her, all you’ll see is Elizabeth’s corpse staring back.” Cas is still talking, spitting vitriol and bitterness in a slow recitation of all my faults. “And even someone, something like you surely realizes that Lourdes deserves far, far better than your ruined memories.”
The space inside my head explodes, even if blood and bone and gray matter remain where they should. Absolutely everything shifts. He’s had two centuries to dig into my shit, and I’ve had two centuries of digging myself out of the shit he’s piled on top of me. No more. I’m done.
It ends today.
Starting with shooting the messenger.
Before I even process it, I’ve circled the desk and clamped a hand down on Jess’s neck. When I lift her off the ground, crimson blood seeps around my fingernails. She pries at my hand. Her stiletto-shod feet kick ineffectually at my shins. I can feel her desperate attempts to breathe, the faint rasp trying to work its way along her windpipe under my fingers.
Lore’s suddenly there, tugging hard at my wrists. “Xaine, stop. Let her go—”
“Lourdes?” Cas’s tinny voice filters through the office.
The second I peer down into Lore’s wide eyes, everything clicks back into place. I drop Jess on the floor. Turn as she slithers down into a heap on the carpeting. My next step is toward the phone, but the second I go for it, Lore is there, reaching as well.
She wraps her fingers around my hand. “Please, let me talk to him.”
I keep my grip on the phone. I don’t want to hand her over to Cas, even if I know I should. There’s obviously some sort of unfinished business here—
“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Cas shouts, and the words grab Lore’s attention quick as anything. She withdraws her hand like the Swarovski gems burned her fingers, slapping a palm over her mouth and staring at the tiny talk box like Satan just crawled out of it. “Xaine?”
Every speck of Lore’s body language tells me she’s changed her mind, maybe doesn’t want to stick her head in the lion’s mouth yet, so my next words are aimed at Jess. “I’m giving you ten minutes to gather your shit and get the hell out of my building, chica, or I’ll toss you out the nearest window.” I tilt my head toward the phone. “You get that, Cas? You send in any other moles, and I’ll return them to you in pieces. Understood?”
There’s a long pause, then a terse “Understood” from the other end.
I click off the speaker and putting the gem-studded monstrosity to my ear. It’s just him and me now, with two hundred years of revelation sprawled out behind us. Jess huddles where I left her, her cool facade cracked all to hell, dark mascara trailing a graceful line down one perfectly rouged cheek.
Then my attention returns to the woman standing next to me, physically as close as two people can get without Tab A going into Slot B. My attention’s on Lore, but my words are for the man on the other end of the world.
“Oh, and Cas?” I say.
“Yes?”
“Thanks.” I smile softly. Looking at Lore. Remembering Elizabeth. Achieving the first small measure of peace that I’ve known in two centuries. “I never thought I’d get a do-over.”
And I disconnect the call.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lore
I never thought I’d get a do-over.
Those words tumble around in my head for a long moment, twisting and turning until my brain reboots. The haze recedes until I’m standing in Reille’s office again, enveloped in an oppressive silence.
Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?
Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to dispel the echo of Caspian Declan asking that very same question. Right now, I’ve got a hand clamped over my mouth so hard that my fingernails dig into my cheek. My throat feels tight, like I’m holding back a scream, and now there’s no doubt in my mind that he was the harbinger of my nightmares. I should have taken the phone. Should have asked him about everything. Now, I have more questions and less answers.
“Lolo?” It’s Jess’s voice, full of concern, that brings me back to myself. Blinking twice, I bring her face into focus, and I can tell she wants to reach out. “Lolo, are you—”
“Get the fuck out, Chiquita,” Xaine growls.
“Screw you, pendejo,” she shoots back. “Lourdes is my responsibility—”
“Not anymore,” he tells her. “Your boss understands my terms, and my terms are that you get the hell out of here and never come back.”
“I—”
“Now!”
A second later, the gem-studded cell phone shatters against the wall next to Jess’s head, a fortuitous near-hit that causes her to start and duck. She doesn’t say anything else, but turns and steps through the door, pausing long enough to pin me with a sympathetic look as she whispers, “I’m sorry.”
Then we’re alone, me and Dark Prince Apocalypse. Xaine’s glaring at the doorway, but the minute I shift my stance, I’m the one pinned by that furious gaze.
But all he asks is, “You okay?”
I manage a nod and a small, “Yeah.”
“You sure?” he prompts. “You backed out of the conversation pretty damn quick.”
Before he can ask why, I frown and say, “You didn’t have to throw the phone at her.”
“I didn’t throw it at her. I threw it near her.”
Semantics are the least of my worries right now. I’m starting to wonder if my life isn’t some staged reality TV program, like The Truman Show, only worse.
“So, you know Cas,” I say, “and you know Reille, and she knows Cas, and she knows you, and he knows you both.”
Xaine rakes a hand through his hair, scraping back the dark strands hanging in his face. “Yeah. We’re all one big happy family.” Except, there’s enough bitterness in that statement to tell me that nobody’s happy about anything in this situation.
“And Elizabeth?” I ask. “Who’s she?”
He hesitates then, turning to look out the windows. The glass isn’t UV tinted at night, so the glow of the streetlights carve space under his eyes and his cheekbones. “My wife. Cas’s sister.”
“And she’s dead?”
“Yeah, sweetheart.” Xaine’s voice softens. “Long dead.”
My throat closes up, because I’m not sure if I even want to ask the next question, but I do, I need to ask. “Why did he say what he said? What did he mean when he said—”
“That you have his father’s eyes?” Xaine finishes for me, tacking on a bitter laugh as he falls into the office chair and starts digging in the drawers. “Because apparently, sweetheart, you do.”
If you
look close enough, it’s all there, stamped across her face with bits of each and every ancestor that came before.
“That’s not possible, right?” I say, shaking my head in denial.
Xaine turns his back on me, rifling through a file cabinet, talking off-the-cuff. “I know it seems impossible, but you need to understand something. Cas doesn’t make mistakes. Ever.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“Not this time,” he says with a headshake. “I sensed it, in the hallway the night Benny juiced us up. I was dreaming of her, and you stepped right in, like the perfect understudy—” He cuts himself off again, maybe realizing how shitty that sounds.
“No, he’s wrong about this.” I tell him. “And I’m not a do-over. You don’t get to—”
“I know that, sweetheart. I was jerking Cas’s chain.” Xaine slams the drawer shut harder than necessary, yanking open another one to root around inside as a strained silence falls between us. “Christ, for a woman as picky as Reille is about where she keeps her shit, this office is a fucking mess.”
It’s meant to change the subject, to shift the tenor of the room, to be some punch line that makes me smile, puts me at ease, but instead, it makes me realize that Xaine’s serious. Utterly and completely stone-faced serious. Somehow, I’m related to Caspian Declan. God knows how he figured it out. There have to be ten generations between then and now, and Jess must know the whole story, too—
Because she works for him.
And I let all the answers I ever needed walk right out the door.
Muttering to himself, completely determined to not look at me, Xaine’s not paying me a single speck of attention right now. Making a break for it, I duck into the hallway and head for the elevator at a trot. My finger hits the button with more vehemence than necessary, and I wait anxiously for the car to make its way to the top floor. Behind me, I can still hear Xaine digging around in the office, slamming drawers and shuffling papers until—
“Lore?”
Shit.
The elevator dings, silver doors sliding back, and I’m wedging myself inside before they’re fully open. As I stab at the door-close button, Xaine skids into the hallway.
“Lore!”
But it’s too late; the doors glide shut, and I hear the hard slam of his body against the metal on the other side. Without so much as a hiccup, the car begins its descent, and when my stomach drops out from under me, I’m not sure if it’s gravity, nerves, adrenaline, or all of the above. I hit the dimly-lit lobby five seconds later. One foot over the threshold and I turn back, pulling the emergency switch, trapping the elevator car there and leaving Xaine to take the stairs down. The water feature throws rippling reflections across the walls, turning stars into streaks of light that decorate every darkened surface as I make my way out the way we came in. Presumably, it’s the only way in or out until they reset the security.
Garage smog hits me the moment I step foot outside Scion’s air-conditioned interior. I hadn’t noticed before how stuffy it was, or the scents of hot concrete, asphalt, leaked oil, and car exhaust. A wave of nausea rolls through my gut as I look left, then right. I spot Jess’s receding form as she heads down the aisle, walking in too-tall heels that’ll have her in blisters well before she makes it to her car. There’s nobody down here; normally the place would be crawling with vampires that didn’t rate VIP entry and nightclubbers looking to get bitten or laid, but after the lockdown, the police cleared everyone out, including the employees. I can count the number of cars on one hand, and that includes the Zenvo and Asher’s Hummer. Jess’s Honda is parked at the far end, near a white delivery van.
I start forward, immediately wishing I’d taken Xaine up on his offer to lose these infernal shoes. I’m not a girly-girl by any means, and stilettos never were my forte. Still, I’ve got an extra two feet of leg on Jess, and I’m quickly closing the gap between us. Once she’s within shouting distance, I open my mouth to call her name, but then—
Wind chimes.
The soft tinkling of metal on metal stops me in my tracks, sends a hard chill down the column of my spine, and dredges up the very worst of my broken memories. Pressing myself against a concrete pillar, I cast around for the source of the noise. My pulse kicks up a frantic tattoo as panic snakes through me. There’s no one else, but I can still hear it, even over Jess’s shoes and the van door sliding open.
“Back it up, pendejo!” Jess yells. “The entire damn place is empty and you gotta crowd me—”
“Here we go, boys.” The voice hits every one of my trauma buttons. My stomach threatens to revolt as everything inside me clenches into a knot of fear. “Looks like we found Declan’s lapdog. Chihuahua by the looks of it.”
Whatever insult she would have hurled next is lost to a sudden, wordless shriek. I duck out far enough to see three men in dark clothes tossing Jess into the back of the van. Two of them jump in after her, the third turns to climb into the driver’s seat, and I get a glimpse of his face—that face—the same guy who grabbed me from the record store a year ago. The chains loop from his ears to his nose, dangling with silver charms that still look eerily like teeth. His face is as pale as I remember, and his eyes are as cold. Reflective.
Mirrors into the soul.
Like in a nightmare, I’m frozen in place, unable to move, unable to yell, unable to do anything but listen to the tinkle of wind chimes again as the door slides shut and the engine turns over.
Then all the adrenaline pours into my system, and I run for the Zenvo, digging Xaine’s keys out of my pocket. It takes all of two seconds to get the supercar running and thrown into reverse, then I’m tearing out of the structure at top speed, spotting the van’s tail lights as it turns the corner. Left foot hits the clutch, right hand drops the car into third gear, then fourth after I hit the gas. Left hand reaching out to jab at the Onboard communication system, and when I bark out “Call Asher Reece” the robotic voice responds with “Dialing G.I. Joe.”
Asher picks up immediately. “What?”
“Hey, it’s Lourdes. I need you to grab Xaine and get in your car. I’m headed east, following a white van. Remember that guy I told you about at the precinct? The one with the teeth?”
“Yeah, but—”
“He’s here. He just kidnapped my roommate.”
There’s a pause then, and I imagine Asher blinking at his handheld. “What the hell, Lourdes, are you tailing them?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Xaine?”
“Somewhere between Reille’s office and the lobby.” But when I think about it a moment longer, I feel compelled to add, “He could be as far as the parking garage.”
“Well, that sure narrows it down,” Asher fires back at me. “Where the hell did you get a car, anyway?”
I wince at that. “I might have sorta stolen the Zenvo.” In response, I only get Asher’s stunned silence. “Are you done asking irrelevant questions? Will you get your ass out here?”
“Car chase in a stick shift.” He’s on the move now, feet hitting the floor at a solid run. “Who do you think you are, Wonder Woman?”
“These are the same guys who kidnapped me last year. We need to stop them before they hurt Jess.” I’ve caught up enough that I actually have to slow down and drop back so they don’t notice the million dollar machine shadowing them. Asher’s yelling Xaine’s name into a space that echoes, the stairwell most likely. There’s an answering shout a few seconds later, then the scuffling of feet.
“C’mon, we’ve got to go,” Asher says.
“Where’s Lore?” is Xaine’s muffled demand, so they must both be in the garage now.
“Chasing a bunch of vamps through downtown.”
“Where the hell is my car?”
“She stole it, apparently, to save her roommate.”
“It’s not technically stealing if he gave me the keys,” I offer as they get in the Humvee and Asher fires up the engine. “And good fucking thing, too—”
“N
o sense of self-preservation whatsoever,” Xaine mutters.
“I think running away from you was probably the smartest thing she’s done yet,” Asher says.
“Oh, yeah, right into a vampire gang. That’s great. Over a piece of shit, lying roommate who’s been working for the enemy.”
“There has to be a reason.” My hackles rise in Jess’s defense, because I know deep down that she’s a good person; I can feel it, as instinctively as I did with Jax Trace and Asher.
And Xaine.
Two blocks down, the van pulls into a gritty parking lot and cuts the engine. I immediately pull over to the side of the lot and do the same.
“They stopped at a warehouse, corner of Broadway and Seventh.” The lighting down here is sketchy at best, but I can still make out Jess’s form as they pull her from the car, thankfully still kicking. Not screaming, so they must have shoved something in her mouth. Wind chimes again; I can taste bile at the back of my throat as I force myself to unbuckle my seatbelt.
“Stay in the car, Lourdes,” Asher says.
“Get here as fast as you can,” I mutter as the kidnappers drag Jess inside and slam the door shut behind them.
There’s a muffled “put it on speakerphone, shithead” before Xaine’s voice comes through again, loud and clear and pissed. “What the hell, Lore? You’ve got a serial killer stalking you.”
My hand freezes on the door handle, because apparently seeing the guy who tried to kill me a year ago was enough to make me forget all about the guy who’s trying to kill me now. “Remind me to start carrying a gun. I should really carry a gun.”
“Nobody’s giving you a gun,” Asher says. “You’ll shoot your eye out!”
Xaine shouts over him. “You wouldn’t need a gun if you hadn’t taken off without me.”
“I wouldn’t have had to take off if you hadn’t ordered Jess out. And, to be fair, this wasn’t supposed to turn into a field trip.” Swallowing hard, I add, “I’m going inside. It’s the gray door right next to the van.”
“Don’t go inside!” both of them yell.
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