by J. D. Robb
“Eve-”
“Roarke. He’ll kill again and soon. Maybe tonight. He has a taste for it now. You saw that, and so did I, the first time we met him. I’m telling you I saw more of it today. I see what he is.”
This was the core, he knew, whatever she said. Whatever the other truths, this was the heart of it for her. “He’s not your father.”
“No, but there’s a breed, and they’re both of it. The smoke, the blood, the insinuation: Is he or isn’t he an undead, bloodsucking fiend? That may tingle the spine, rouse superstitions, even tease the logical to entertain the illogical. But it’s what’s under it, Roarke. It’s, well, shit, it’s the beast that lives there that has to be stopped.”
“The one you have to face,” he corrected. “How many times?”
“As many as it takes. I want to walk away from it. Hell, I get within five feet of him, I want to run from it. And because I do, I can’t.”
“No.” He traced his thumb down the shallow dent in her chin. “You can’t.” That, he knew, was what he had to face-again and again. Loving her left him no choice. “But this rush-”
“He’s flying on the moment. Whatever drugs he’s on, they’re not as potent as the kill. As the blood. If I don’t try this, and he gets another, how do I live with that?”
He searched her face, then lifted a hand to her cheek. “Being you, you don’t. You can’t. But I still don’t have to like it.”
“Understood. And…” She took his hand, squeezed it briefly. “Appreciated. Let’s just count on me doing my job, and the rest of you doing yours. We’ll shut him down, nail down that lid, before he knows what the hell’s going on.”
“He best not get so much as a nibble of you. That’s my job.” He leaned down, caught her bottom lip between his teeth. After one quick nip, he sank in, drawing her close, taking them both deep.
Her initial amusement slid away into the dreamy until she could float away on the taste of him, glide off on the promise. When she sighed, eased back, her lips curved up.
“Good job,” she told him.
“I do my best.”
“Maybe later you can put in some overtime.”
“Being dedicated to my work, I’ll be available.”
“But for right now, let’s go get the team together for a full briefing. I don’t want any screwups.”
“Lieutenant.” He caught her hand before she reached the door, and tugged her back around. Out of his pocket he drew a silver cross on a silver chain, and dangled it in front of her.
“Knew I forgot something.” But when he draped it over her head, she goggled. “What? You’re serious?”
“Indulge me.” He planted another kiss on her lips, this one brief and firm. “I’m a superstitious man with a logical mind that can entertain the illogical.”
Staring at him, she shook her head. “You’re full of surprises, pal. Just full of them.”
She used a conference room for the briefing. On screen was a diagram of Bloodbath, and a second of the apartment-or the area of the apartment Eve had seen. Both were sketched from memory, with input from the others on the team who’d been inside the club.
As was often the case with underground establishments, no recorded blueprints or work orders could be located.
“There will be alternate exits,” Eve continued. “It’s likely at least some of the staff are aware of them, and will use them. Detaining and arresting waitresses and naked dancers aren’t priorities.”
“Speak for yourself,” Baxter shot out, “on the naked dancers angle.”
“Moving civilians out,” Eve said, ignoring him, “without inciting a riot is a primary goal. Anyone wants to make collars for illegals, that’s a personal decision and can be determined at the time. A couple dozen busts will add weight to the op, and hang on Vadim as manager. Anything and everything we get on him is a plus, but not at the expense of the primary target.”
She scanned faces. “Nobody moves in, nobody tips the scales until I give the go. My communicator will be open for said go. Nothing, I repeat, nothing, is to be recorded from that source. I’m not having this slime skate on a technicality.”
She paused, ordered the computer to show the diagram of the club only. “Our warrant covers only this area. No personnel are to move outside the club area in search or pursuit without probable cause. All weapons low stun.”
Once more, she switched the screen image. Now Dorian Vadim’s face filled it. “This is primary target. Unless specifically ordered or cleared, he is not to be detained or apprehended. If I can’t pull this off, we have no cause for arrest. Suit up,” she ordered. “Vests all around. Report to squad leaders for transportation to target.”
She laid a hand on her sidearm. “Let’s go kick ass.”
As she bent to check her clutch piece, Baxter tapped her shoulder.
“What?”
“Got something for you.” He held it out as she straightened.
“You’re a laugh a minute, Baxter.”
“Yeah, you gotta admit.” He gave the wooden stake an agile toss.
Because she was amused despite herself, she caught the stake in one hand, then stuck it in her belt. “Thanks.”
He blinked, then roared with laughter. “Eve Dallas, Vampire Slayer. One for the books.”
Ten
She went in alone, the way it had to be, as a cop, as a woman fighting her own demons.
She walked the now-familiar path down from the world to the underground, through the fetid tunnels with misery skulking in dirty shadows.
She’d come out of the shadows, Eve thought. So she knew what hid there, what bred there. What thrived there.
Light killed shadows, and it created them. But what loved the dark would always scuttle back from the light. Her badge had given her the light, Eve knew. Then Roarke had simply, irreversibly, blasted that light straight through her.
Nothing could pull her back again, unless she allowed it. Not the nightmares, not the memories, not whatever smear the man who’d made her had left in her blood.
What she did now, for the job, for two women, for herself, was only another way to cast the light.
She moved toward the ugly pulse of red and blue, the bone-rattling thrum of violent music.
The same bouncers flanked the arched door, and this time they sneered.
“Alone this time?”
Still moving, she kicked the one on the left solidly in the groin, smashed her elbow up and out into the bridge of the second’s nose.
“Yeah,” she said as she strode through the path they made as they stumbled back. “Just little old me.”
She walked through the jostling crowd, through the sting of smoke, the crawl of fog. Someone made the mistake of making a playful grab for her and got a boot down hard on his instep for his trouble. And she never broke stride.
She reached the steps, started up their tight curve.
She felt him first, like the dance of sharpened nails along the skin. Then he was there, standing at the top of the stairs, mists swirling dramatically around him.
“Lieutenant Dallas, you’re becoming a regular. No escort tonight?”
“I don’t need an escort.” She stopped on the step below him, knowing it gave him the superior ground. “But I’d like some privacy.”
“Of course. Come with me.” He held out a hand.
She placed hers in it, fought off a jitter of revulsion as his fingers twined with hers. He led her back, away from the crowd, then keyed in a code on his private door. “Enter Dorian,” he said for the voice command, and the locks gave.
Inside candles were lit, dozens of them. Light and shadow, Eve thought again. On the wall screen various sections of the club were displayed, the sound muted, so people danced, groped, screamed, stalked, in absolute silence.
“Some view.” Casually, she stepped away from him and stepped over as if to study the action on screen.
“My way of being surrounded and alone at the same time.” His hand brushed lightly ov
er her shoulder as he walked behind her and over to his bar. “You’d understand that.”
“You talk as if you know me. You look at me as though you do. But you don’t.”
“Oh, I think I do. I saw the understanding of violence, of power, and the taste for it in you. We have that in common. Wine?”
“No. Are you alone here, Dorian?”
“I am.” Despite her answer, he poured two glasses. “Though I planned to entertain a woman later.” This time his gaze traveled over her, boldly intimate. “How interesting it should be you. Tell me, Eve, is this a professional or a personal call?”
She let herself stare at him, into those eyes. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. I know you killed those women.”
He smiled slowly. “Do you? How?”
“I feel it. I see it when I look at you. Tell me how you did it.”
“Why should I? Why would I? Lieutenant.”
As if impatient, she shook her head. “I don’t have a warrant. You know that. I haven’t given you your rights. I can’t use anything you tell me. You know that, too. I just need to know what you are. Why I feel the way I do around you. I don’t believe in…”
There was no mistaking the hunger on his face as he walked toward her. “In what?”
She could hear her father’s voice whispering in her mind. There are things in the dark, little girl. Terrible things in the dark.
“In the sort of thing you’re selling out there.” She gestured toward the screen. “Turn that off, will you? It feels crowded in here.”
“You don’t like to watch?” he said, silkily. “Or be watched?”
“Depends,” she answered with what she hoped sounded like false bravado.
“Screen off,” he ordered, and smiled again. “Better?”
“Yeah. It’s better with it off.”
“That’s the signal.” Feeney nodded to Roarke. “All units, move in. Move in. She’s playing him,” he said to Roarke. “She’ll walk him right into it.”
“Or he’s playing her.” With Eve’s voice in his ear, Roarke rushed into the dark.
Into the terrible things.
“Hold it.” There was the slightest hesitation in her order as she slapped a hand against Dorian’s chest and shoved. “I have obligations. I have loyalties.”
“None of which fill your needs.”
“You don’t know my needs.”
“Give me five minutes to do as I like with you, and you’ll know differently. You came to me.” He trailed his fingers over her cheek. “You came to me alone. You want to know what I can give you.”
She shook her head, stepped away. “I came because I need to understand. I can’t settle, I can’t focus. I feel like something’s trying to crawl out of my skin.”
“I can help you with that.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Yeah, I bet you could. But I’m not like Tiara Kent. I’m not looking for cheap thrills. And I’m not like Allesseria Carter. I don’t need your goodwill. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Aren’t you? Aren’t you afraid of what I could make you?”
She looked at the portrait. “Like that?” Her voice was just a little breathless. “I’m not that gullible.”
He lifted one of the wineglasses, drank deeply. “There’s more in the world that slips in and out of what’s deemed reality.”
“Such as?”
He drank again, and his eyes went even darker. “Such as powers, and hungers beyond the human. I’ll take you there. I can show you a glimpse without causing you harm. You should drink. Relax. Nothing will happen to you here. It’s not my way.”
“No, you go to them. Kent practically spread rose petals on a path to her bed for you.”
“Hypothetically, invitations are required.”
“In an occupied building,” Eve agreed. “Not in an abandoned one. Like the one where you dragged Allesseria, where you killed her.”
“Does it excite you to think so, to look at me and see her death?”
“Maybe it does.”
“You seek death.” He laid his fingertips under hers, lifted her hand. “Surround yourself with it. Isn’t that what I sensed, what I saw, in you that first moment our eyes met? It connects us, this…fondness for death in a way the man you give yourself to can never understand. He can’t reach that dark bloom inside you. I can.”
She let her fingers curl to his for an instant, then eased back again. “I don’t know what connects us, but I felt something when I heard your voice come in on Allesseria’s ’link message to me. It was a mistake to say anything, Dorian, a mistake not to make certain the ’link was down and the transmission broken before you spoke to her. We’ll have your voiceprint match by morning.”
He lowered the glass he’d lifted to his lips. “That’s not possible.”
“Would I be here now otherwise? Risking all this so I could see you tonight? This goes down tomorrow, and my part in it’s over. I need answers for me. Why would I tell you we have evidence building that could take you down, give you time to poof? I have to know. For me.”
“I have an alibi,” he insisted.
“ Kendra Lake? Another spoiled rich girl running on hormones, vanity, and chemicals. She won’t help you. She’ll crack, we both know it. She’s on the juice, she’s your lover. It won’t hold.”
“You’re lying.” He gulped down the rest of the liquid in the glass, heaved the glass aside. “You’re lying. You bitch.”
Okay, Eve thought, time to change directions.
Outside the apartment it was hell. Screams and shouts echoed through the mist some clever soul had boosted up when the small army of cops had burst in, announcing a raid.
Roarke flung one attacker aside, dodged the swipe of a knife from another. Preferring fists to stunner, he used them viciously. Despite the cacophony, he heard Eve’s voice clearly in his head.
“She’s losing him,” he yelled to Feeney. Whirling, Roarke sprinted for the stairs through streams of stunner fire.
“Caught me,” Eve said. “I’m lying about any pretense I find you attractive or compelling on a personal level. About the rest, that’s a wrap. You not only ran your mouth where it could be heard on Allesseria’s ’link, EDD’s working on cleaning and enhancing a few seconds on screen during the trans. You moved partially into view.
“Added to that,” she continued, “we’re about to link you to one Pensky, Gregor. Shouldn’t have used a former known associate as a fall guy. Even a dead fall guy, Dorian. Little slips, they’ll kill you every time.”
She glanced idly around the room. “I bet you saved some of Tiara Kent ’s blood for a souvenir. I get that warrant in the morning, I’m going to find it, and the jewelry you took off her dead or dying body. You scum. That’ll put you down for three counts of murder. Anything else you want to add to the menu?”
“Do you think you can threaten me?” His eyes were black pools. “Play with me?”
“If you’re trying for thrall, you’re missing. I’ll have you locked on Allesseria in a matter of hours. The rest will tumble right into the pile. You’re done. I just wanted the satisfaction of telling you personally before-Don’t,” she warned. She laid her hand on her stunner when she saw the move in his eyes. “Unless you want to add assaulting an officer to the mix. In which case, I can haul you out of here. Sun’s down, Dorian.”
“Yes, it is.” He smiled, and to Eve’s absolute shock, showed fangs.
He leaped, almost seemed to fly at her. She drew her weapon, pivoted, but she wasn’t quick enough. Nothing could have been. She got off two shots as he hurled her across the room. He took both hits, and just kept coming. She felt it in every bone as she hit the stone wall, and though the stunner spurted out of her hand on impact, she managed to roll, then kick up hard with both feet. The force knocked him back far enough to give her room to flip up.
She braced for the next attack, but instead he hissed like a snake, cringed back. She flicked her gaze down, saw he was staring at the cr
oss that had come out from under her shirt.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” He snarled as he circled her. “You actually believe your own hype.”
Whatever he’d drunk had juiced him up good, she determined. So good, she’d never be able to take him in hand-to-hand. She held up the cross as she tried to gauge the distance to her stunner, and her chances of reaching it.
“I’ll drink you dry.” His tongue ran over his long incisors. “Almost dry. And make you drink me. I’ll change you into what I am.”
“What? A babbling lunatic? Why didn’t Tiara change?”
“She wasn’t strong enough. I drank too much of her. But she died in bliss under me. As you will. But you’re strong, strong enough to be reborn. I knew it when I saw you. Knew you’d be the first who’d walk as I walk.”
“Uh-huh. You have the right to remain silent.”
He sprang, leaping like a great cat. She blocked the first blow, though she felt the force of it sing down her arm, explode into her shoulder. But the second sent her sprawling. She thudded hard against one of his metal tables, and tasted her own blood in her mouth as she rolled painfully onto her back.
He was standing over her now, fangs gleaming, eyes mad. “I give you the gift, the ultimate kiss.”
Eve swiped the blood off her mouth. “Bite me.”
Grinning, he fell on her.
Outside the door, Feeney pulled out his master and a bag of electronic tricks to bypass the locks.
“I’ve got it.” Blood seeped through the ragged tear in Roarke’s jacket where a knife point had slipped through. He flipped out a recorder, closed his eyes to focus first on the tones of the beeps.
Quickly, he played his fingers over the keypad in the same order, then held the recorder to the voice command.
“Enter Dorian,” the recorder replayed.
“Hey, Dallas said nothing was to be recorded.”
Roarke spared one glance over at Feeney’s wide grin. “I’m a poor team player.”
They pushed in the door, Roarke going low as he knew Feeney preferred high.