“I cannot believe Crawford let you in,” she said. “I have answered your questions already, Ms. Craig. I am sure you can show yourself out.”
Val bit back an angry retort. “We’re not through with you yet, Miss Stavrou. You stated you were staying at the W hotel. We know your room had a clear view of the roof of the World Journal where the victim was found.”
“As I told you, it was too dark and much too far away to see anything, even if I had been standing at the window at the very same time the blooding took place. I do not know how I can offer you anything that might—” She leaped up from the chaise at bullet speed and bowed her head. “My lord.”
Kade had entered through the archway. He didn’t look like he wanted to ravish the Legion, but his red eyes were more luminous than usual. Somehow Selene made supplication look sexy, and Val hoped it wasn’t working on the vampire prince.
“Selene.” He stopped by Val’s side, which soothed her. She needed the appearance of unity, even if Kade was partial to the other woman. Please let him not be partial to the woman. Selene shot her a sharp, cutting glance before Kade caught the woman’s attention again. “You seem to remember protocol. Somehow you’ve failed to impress the proper decorum upon your subjugates.”
Selene’s eyes widened. “Crawford? He treated you poorly?”
“Just fix the goddamn problem before I do.”
“You did not harm him, did you?”
He threw his arms out in exasperation. “What is it with you females? No, I did not harm the goofy bastard. However, he is more educated now. So you were saying?” He motioned for Selene to continue.
Selene’s blatant concern over her subjugate put Val’s world on a sudden tilt. Vampires didn’t care about their servants, and Selene wasn’t the kind to think twice about a fat old man with poor etiquette. Humans were playthings for them. Weren’t they?
“I informed Ms. Craig that my statement has not changed. I saw nothing of the blooding the night I stayed in Seattle.”
Val’s frustration pushed up from her chest. This was Eva’s interview all over again. Kade would take Selene’s words at face value. Vampires always stuck together, and having Kade with her wouldn’t change a thing.
Chapter Eight
Val couldn’t have been more wrong. Kade didn’t simply nod and walk away. Instead, he approached Selene, his liquid gait reminiscent of the Ancients.
“You saw…nothing?” His voice grew deceptively soft, and his gaze turned heavy-lidded, hypnotic.
Distress skated across Selene’s expression. “I saw—I saw…”
“I don’t give a fuck what you said before, Selene. Forget what you said. Tell us what you saw that night. The truth. You know damn well I know when you’re lying.”
Selene looked from Kade to Val. “I did not see the face of the victim. She was turned away from me. The vampire was deranged and clearly new. He had the color of one who still has a heartbeat.” She gestured gracefully toward Val. “Your agents showed me pictures.”
“He was in one of the photos?” Val’s heart raced. Identifying the deranged would speed up the investigation considerably because most eventually gravitated to the vicinity of their pretransformation homes.
She pulled a file folder from her satchel and handed it to Selene. The vampire flipped through the pages, shaking her head at each one until she paused near the bottom of the stack.
“This one. No question it was this one.”
Selene handed the picture to her. Val closed her eyes. An ache pounded through her with each heartbeat and tears burned under her eyelids. Will.
“Val?” Kade’s hand at her back grounded her.
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
But she wasn’t sure she was just yet. Even after she’d discovered Will had illegally turned, she’d held onto the hope he could be captured and rehabilitated, but now he had committed at least two known bloodings. There was no going back and no redemption. When the VLO caught him, they would destroy him. She had failed him again.
“Someone else was there as well.”
“Who?” Val’s attention sharpened on Selene.
“I do not know,” Selene said. “Human, I think. I was quite sure at first, but when I heard only one body was discovered, I thought I could have been mistaken. I cannot imagine a human standing safely in the presence of a blooding.”
“Is that everything, Selene?” Kade asked.
“Yes, my lord.”
Val kept her silence as they departed and headed back toward Seattle. The hollow ache stayed planted in her chest. Kade seemed to sense her need for quiet reverie, or maybe he wanted to avoid a continuation of their earlier conversation. And she wanted to avoid thinking about Will.
“She didn’t act like your lover.” Of all the things she could have said. Sometimes she wished she had a better filter between her brain and her mouth. To her surprise, he laughed.
“That was a long time ago, when I was just a babe and older women intrigued me. I thought I could learn a thing or two. Turns out age isn’t all that important. Anyway, that bitch knows her place.”
She huffed at his word choice. “Do you talk about all your ex-girlfriends that way or just women in general?”
He only smiled. “You wouldn’t be so cross if you knew what she thought about you, my sweet.”
“I don’t care. She didn’t say what she was thinking aloud. And despite her lack of cooperation before, she was never anything but professional.”
“Noted.”
“You’re so very crude.”
“You’ll get used to me. Please forgive my lack of tact.” His mock courtesy was impossible to miss, but then his gaze softened. “Are you all right?”
Her heart kicked. “I will be.”
“Who was the guy in the photo?”
“William Parrish,” she murmured. “My ex-husband.”
He cursed under his breath. “Deranged?”
She could only nod. Will had wanted the change so badly, she should have guessed he’d try desperate measures. Maybe by that point in their marriage, she hadn’t cared enough.
“I’m sorry, Val.”
“It—it’s not your fault.” That cost her deeply to say. But his sincerity seemed genuine and surprising, considering his aggression toward everything human, though she didn’t comprehend his reasons for that aggression. Then again, she had reasons for her hostility toward vampires. Maybe she shouldn’t point fingers.
“It’s not your fault either.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “He did this to you, not the other way around. His choice and his consequences. Not yours, Val. Don’t carry his burden.”
Her shocked gaze locked on him. How’d he know? Every day over the past two years, she’d drowned, not in perpetual sorrow, but in guilt. And no one saw it, not even Graham. To have someone, anyone—a vampire included—attempt to ease her self-recrimination made her want to buckle to the floor in relief.
“I won’t let the derangements continue.” His expression held conviction. “The rest of the Immortalis might turn a blind eye, but I’m aware. We’ll put an end to it.”
She wanted to believe him, but could a vampire like him turn against his own? Acknowledging derangements this rampant reflected on them all, the Dominorum most, but especially on the Rex.
“Do you have another interview lined up or would you like me to drop you off somewhere? No sense in taking a cab from the Towers.”
She hadn’t lined another up, in part because she didn’t think they’d get results from the first one. “I’d like to go to the VLO headquarters. I have a bit of work to do before heading home,” she said. “Thank you, Kade, for everything.”
He said nothing to the driver, but the human made a U-turn and drove in the direction of her building. She looked at him in amazement.
“How’d you do that?”
“Compulsion. I’m sure you’ve seen Olen and Evangeline converse without speech.”
She had, but she’d also felt it when they
did. He nodded as if he could read her thoughts.
“Between vampires it takes more power to push through their barriers, but humans have very little. A child could break through them.” He noticed her discomfort and chuckled. “Don’t worry. You’ll know without a doubt. The sensation is unmistakable.”
When they pulled up in front of her building her legs didn’t want to budge. Leaving the warm comfort of Kade’s presence didn’t feel like a welcome idea in her current state of mind. Hell must have frozen over.
He loped around the car, opened the door for her, and helped her from her seat. When he slowly brought her hand to his lips, she thought he would kiss the back, but he pressed the kiss into her palm. Her skin tingled the length of her arm and right up to the top of her head.
“Be well, Val.” The deep rumble of his voice hypnotized her. “Will you call me tomorrow?”
“Yes.” She could fall forever into his eyes. They were magnetic. When he smiled, a charming crinkle appeared at their corners. She’d never known a little laugh line could be that incredibly attractive.
She stood on the curb for several minutes after the car pulled away, her fingers stroking the feel of his lips on her palm. She barely knew Kade, but she wanted to. She wanted to find a reason to like him. Or maybe it was too late for that; she liked him too much already.
Chapter Nine
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Kade leaned against the back of the sofa and stared blindly out the open balcony door. Restlessness prowled inside him, but he didn’t want to move. His heart had stopped beating again, the blood stilling, moved only by his minimal muscle movements, and he missed the warmth in his veins.
Over the centuries, he’d never once given his prejudice a second thought, but he’d never met a human like Valerie Craig. His negligible contact with humans had primarily been with his childhood house staff and appointed subjugates, who he never bothered knowing by name. They had done nothing to pull the kind of compassion and confusion from him Val had. She challenged him when no one else would dare, and her determination, misguided as it was, had claimed his respect from the start. She was like Ezra in many ways. They’d get on well. For once, he got what his friend saw in humans. At least in some humans.
As for Ezra…He reached for the cell in his pocket. It hadn’t finished the first ring when Ezra’s gruff voice came over the line. “Find anything?”
“Yes, my friend,” Kade answered. “Selene saw a human at the downtown blooding two weeks ago.”
“She’s sure?”
“She said no, but I believe she was sure. Thrown off maybe because he was at a blooding.”
“So it was a male.”
“Yes, and there were two males at the blooding near Ptolomy’s estate. I’m sending you a copy of the video. Get the team on the wire. I want the word out and ears on the streets.” Kade growled with frustration. “Call me the second you find anything, no matter how small. A description. A name. An address. Even a rumor. I don’t care.”
Ezra’s end went silent a minute. “I thought we’d killed ’em all, brother.”
“Yeah.” Kade dropped his head into his hand. “So did I.”
“Are you going to tell Ms. Craig what you find?”
“Hell no. The VLO won’t understand some bloodings are necessary. She won’t understand. She values human life too much to forgive what I’ve done. What I’ve had to do and what I must continue to do.”
“You care?”
Kade thought hard, the turmoil in his gut nearly intolerable. “Yeah,” he rasped. “I think I give a shit.”
“Bravo, my prince.” Ezra laughed. “You don’t know how happy this makes me.”
“Fuck you.”
Ezra’s laughter echoed in his mind long after he ended the call. Good to know this painful, twisting shift in his worldview brought his friend such delight. He snorted. Someday the man would see the error of his ways.
Kade rose with a groan. It cut deep, this tearing between his past and his present. Perhaps he could prove himself right in his bigotry if he could only press his fangs into the tempting pulse at Val’s throat. Then he’d know all of her transgressions. Her sins would lie before him like a bloody feast, and the idea sickened him. He didn’t want to know her sins. For the first time, he wanted to be wrong about humans.
He longed to have anything but this personal adjuvant curse he’d been born with. Ezra’s talent dealt with the future and possibilities. That skill had potential. Seeing the unchangeable past was a useless ability. All it did was make him remember. It made him hate.
Val didn’t make him hateful. She had turned his reality upside down. How he saw her was nothing like the ones whose pasts were flayed open to him.
But he couldn’t allow such thoughts. If he let her in, she’d find the truth, a truth that would change everything between them. She might know of his tendencies toward his subjugates, but she had no idea he’d slain humans. And he had no remorse.
She could never find out.
He had to locate the humans on Ptolomy’s videotape, and that human from the rooftop and kill them all before the fuckers started talking.
Chapter Ten
The walls vibrated from the force of a slamming door. Val raised her weary head from her desk, sure she���d have a red spot smack in the center. She glowered at Graham’s sour expression.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“You’re the one storming into my office and trying to break down my door. What is your problem?”
“My problem? You ran off alone at night with a crazy, sadistic bloodsucker, and I have the problem?” He nodded curtly, his lips tight. “Yeah. I talked to Alice. Thanks a lot for sharing, V. You know I never would have let you near Rollins if I’d known about him.”
“Let me? Since when did you start bossing me around? If you’ll remember, we didn’t exactly have a choice of who we had to work with.”
“Why’d you go alone? What’s going on between you two?”
For a moment, Val was taken aback. This was the most possessive she’d ever seen Graham. His expression, his stance…it was as though he’d gone off the deep end. He knew damn well they weren’t a couple. “Nothing’s going on, Graham. Stop acting like a jealous boyfriend. You’re supposed to be a professional.”
“Excuse me for caring about you, but I’m not gonna let him hurt you.”
“He would never hurt me.” The second the words had left her mouth, she knew they were wrong. Knew she should never had said them, let alone thought those five words could be anywhere near the truth.
“Never? How well do you know this guy? You’ve known him all of three days, and you know what he’s capable of?”
“I—” She sighed. He was right. She didn’t know Kade at all. It only felt like she’d known him longer. Admitting that made her unusually snippy. “Look, this argument is going nowhere. I have work for you, so I’d appreciate it if you did your job.” She tossed a stack of files toward him. “Read the notes and check all these leads. We’re looking for a human who witnessed the downtown blooding up close and personal.”
His scowl darkened, but he dropped the subject. “Another human actually at the blooding? Is any of this even possible?”
“Apparently so.”
He picked up the files. “All right.” He hesitated in the doorway, his fingers flicking the edge of the folders. “I really do care about you, Val.”
She looked up from her paperwork. “I know you’re only trying to protect me. Thank you, Graham. You’re my best friend.” She was pretty sure that wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but he seemed satisfied enough.
She checked the clock—two in the afternoon already. Before Graham’s unwelcome interruption, she’d napped at her desk for a good hour and a half. If only the work could have magically happened while she slept the afternoon away. She rolled her shoulders and began sifting through the witness statements, hoping someone else had mentioned the presence of a third or fourth being
. It was a long shot at best. She would have remembered a detail that important.
A rhythmic knock at the door startled her. When she glanced up, a handsome man grinned at her from the doorway. He looked Nordic with his shoulder-length, platinum-blond hair, extraordinary height, and broad shoulders. She half expected to see him pull out a giant hammer and call thunder and lightning from the heavens. A thin scar crossed from his right temple and through his eyebrow, stopping at the bridge of his nose.
“Well, well, well. You are beautiful.” Harsh—not the words, but his voice grating through his throat. Her eyes went there, but he wore a thin, muscle-hugging turtleneck. He’d followed her gaze and guessed at the question. “Terrible accident.”
He pulled up a chair in front of her desk and drew his collar down. A thick scar circled the base of his neck.
“Nearly lost my head,” he said.
She blinked a few times and realized she’d been staring slack-jawed at the man. “Uh, who are you?”
“Forgive my poor manners.” He reached forward to shake her hand. “My name is Ezra.”
Ezra. So this was Kade’s best friend, a Dominus as well. His eyes were a very light red and radiated more friendliness than a department store Santa. She’d encountered satisfied vampires, composed vampires, excited ones, wild partying ones, but a happy vampire? She’d never seen one with such a wide-open welcome in his smile.
“Have I caught you at a bad time?” He cocked his head.
“Oh, I’m sorry. No. I’m just surprised to see you here. You don’t look like an Ezra.”
He laughed. “I get that a lot. Long ago, I was adopted by a traveling missionary and renamed. Too young to remember what name I was born to.”
“Hopefully a good adoption,” she said. He gave her a solemn nod. When he remained silent, she cleared her throat. “Well, what brings you to the VLO?” She took a sip of her coffee that had grown cold while she’d napped.
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