Maybe it was a good decision that he was taking a leave of absence now. He appeared to be having a hard time concentrating and remembering even the most basic details.
“Given the fact that he’s male and under that age of thirty-five—” at least he appeared to be “—I’d think he’d be closer to the target demographic than my cousin.”
Especially since he’s a vampire.
“Yes, of course, you’re absolutely right.”
Carter spent the next few minutes going through his ideas about the forum, which didn’t seem so monumentally different from what it was now and it certainly didn’t warrant her coming in on her vacation, but whatever.
“Here,” he said, thrusting a stack of papers into her hands. “These are my notes. You can review them and let me know what you think.”
Just as she took them, an alarm sounded in the distance, as though it was coming from another floor in the building. She stiffened. It wasn’t because of something Mitch did, was it?
As if in answer to her question, her phone vibrated. One look at the screen and a noose of panic squeezed around her insides. Her mouth went dry and she suddenly had to pee.
911.
Jackson’s code for get the hell out of there.
“What now?” she said, trying to sound mildly irritated as she edged toward the door. “Did someone pull the fire alarm?” All she wanted to do was get out of the building before they found out she was involved. Were Darkbloods here? Did something happen to Mitch?
Carter pushed himself to his feet. “It’s the security alarm, not the fire alarm. Someone went somewhere they shouldn’t have.”
Mitch. If they caught him, that meant they’d be coming for her.
“Probably one of the beta-testers,” she said. “Don’t bother getting up. I’ll go check it out and let you know.”
Making sure her employee badge was clearly visible on her belt loop but flipped to the nonpicture side, she strode as quickly as she could without running, past the security guard stationed near the elevators, and headed toward the stairs. Jackson had told her that in the event of an emergency she shouldn’t take the elevator. The stairs took her straight to the parking garage, whereas the elevator dumped you in the lobby first. If she and Mitch got separated, she was not to wait for him. She was to get out of the building and let Guardians handle things.
But when she opened the door to the stairs, another shrill alarm sounded.
“Miss, you can’t go down that way.”
She heard shouting in the distance coming from the direction of the beta-testers then saw the security guys on the far side of the section of cubicle walls. They were pointing to her.
Like hell I can’t.
She charged through the door and bounded down the stairs.
Ever since a friend had told her how much extra exercise you could get each day, she’d been taking the stairs. Those four thousand extra steps a day really added up. And she was about to add another five hundred. Nowadays, she rarely took the elevator, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to do it now. She could easily do these sixteen stories in heels. In sneakers, it was a no-brainer.
With a hand on the railing, she took the steps three at a time, getting to each landing and spinning around the corner to take the next set of stairs. With her gaze focused on the next step in front of her, she ran at a blistering pace until three flights down, the steps seemed to blur together. She missed the next tread, slipped forward and would’ve fallen on her face if she didn’t have her hand on the railing. One reason she always walked stairs, never ran them.
Damn. She’d have to slow down.
A door far above her slammed, the sound echoing ominously through the stairwell like the chop of a guillotine.
One, two, thud. Heavy footsteps touched one or two of the steps before they got to each landing.
Or maybe she wouldn’t slow down. She picked up her pace again, trying to concentrate on the steps in front of her, but not too hard. That was when she always messed up.
The guy behind her was close enough that she heard him grunt when he hit that last landing. He couldn’t be more than six or seven floors above her. Oh, God, she still had four more to go. She’d have to go faster and hope—
The metal door on the landing below her flew open. Even though she wanted to stop, her momentum kept propelling her downward.
What had Lily taught her to do if she was grabbed from the front? Hitchhiker thumbs to break away from a wrist hold? But what if he grabbed her by the upper arms or—
No one came through the yawning opening and the door slammed shut.
It was like when she was a kid and the front door would suddenly blow open. Her mother would laughingly say it was the ghost again. Of course, it was just because the door hadn’t been closed tightly enough and the wind blew it open. However, in this case, it was an interior fire door, too heavy for the wind to impact. Had someone on the other side shoved it open then changed their mind?
The sound of footsteps above reminded her to keep going. Her pursuer was gaining on her. Not watching where she was going, she stumbled as she reached the landing.
Something that felt like a hand caught her elbow, steadying her.
“Keep going to the garage level. You’ll see the Caddy.” It was Jackson’s voice, whispering on the wind, moving past her.
She craned her neck looking for him, but all she saw were stairs and concrete. “Where—where are you?”
“Go!” His voice was now coming from the landing half a flight up.
She spun around. Other than a fluorescent lightbulb flickering and buzzing, nothing was there.
Jackson couldn’t be shadow-moving. Not only would she be able to see him, but there wasn’t enough darkness in the stairwell for him to meld with the shadows, just harsh, industrial lighting. It was as if she was talking to the air. Or a ghost.
The footsteps of her pursuer were getting louder. She guessed he was only two floors above her now. Shit. He was practically there.
The metallic clang of a blade being withdrawn from its sheath cut through the atmosphere. She squinted, blinked, but still, she saw nothing. Not anywhere. This had to be a vampire trick she didn’t know about.
“Give me one minute,” his voice hissed. “If I don’t come out by then, leave without me.”
THE DARKBLOOD WHO’D been pursuing Arianna didn’t know what killed him, even after Jackson stabbed him with the dragon blade and stood over his body for a moment to make sure he was charcoaling.
“Yep. You’re toast.”
Jackson’s skin tingled with energy as he spun on his heel and continued running up to the sixteenth floor, where he shoved open the door. It banged on the wall behind it. No need for subtleties when no one could see you. Being invisible did have its perks.
How long can I sustain this?
Hopefully, long enough. He ran down the center aisles of cubicles. Papers fluttered on desktops and the leaves on a large palm waved as he sped past them.
He first noticed it with Lily in the field office, though he hadn’t been sure. When he’d looked down at his hands, they were semitransparent, but she hadn’t seen him. And when he had Mitch by the throat, it almost happened again. He felt the same strange sensation. He was pretty sure he would’ve gone see-through except Arianna’s presence seemed to ground him in place, calm his spirit. The invisibility seemed to happen when he lost control. It had to be a reverting thing. Seeing Mitch’s text that he’d been compromised made Jackson go ballistic.
It didn’t take long for him to locate his partner. Two Darkbloods had him cuffed and were leading him to a bank of elevators. Would his invisibility last long enough to take these guys out? Glancing at his hands, he noticed his transparency seemed to be fading.
Shit. At least h
e still had the element of surprise. Would that be enough? Were there others lurking around?
The shorter one clicked his earpiece. “Yes, ma’am. I’ve got the intruder. Bringing him down now.” Pause. “Yes, Karl should have her by now.”
Arianna. Anger heated his veins again and he felt the energy zing along his skin.
Sorry to break it to you, dickwads, but Karl is a pile of ash in the stairwell.
A quick glance around revealed that no one was watching. The beta-testing must be going on in a different part of the floor.
He withdrew his blade and in seconds, the two DBs were charcoaling at his feet.
“What the fuck?” Mitch, though clearly exhausted from the silver around his wrists, looked around wildly.
“It’s me. Jackson.”
“But—”
“Shut it. I’m frickin’ invisible.” He grabbed the keys from one of the partially charcoaled bodies and quickly uncuffed his partner, taking care not to touch the silver. No telling what even the smallest energy drain would do to him in this state. “Did you download the data yet?”
Mitch’s eyes went wide. “You’re…an Unseen?”
“Yeah, can you fucking believe it? What about the hard drive?”
“They discovered me…right after I hooked it up to that guy’s computer. The portable hard drive…is probably still there.”
“Good,” Jackson whispered. “Get out to the parking garage and take Arianna back to the field office. I’ll meet up with you there.”
“How is all this even possible?”
“Don’t say anything about the Unseen thing, okay? I’ll explain later.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER, with the hard drive in his pocket, Jackson entered the field office. Before coming here, he’d stopped off in Pioneer Square and took blood and energies from two random humans, but he still felt like a zombie, as if he hadn’t slept in days. Turned out, being invisible was almost as big an energy drain as getting exposed to silver. He needed more blood, more energy, and he wanted to sleep for a year.
He hated trusting other people with a secret like this, but it wasn’t as if he had much of a choice. He just hoped Mitch was true to his promise and wouldn’t say anything for a while, giving him a chance to get his shit together and leave. Which meant saying goodbye to Arianna, as well. When he’d gotten back to the parking garage, he’d texted Arianna, who was already back at the field office. Safe.
At the security checkpoint, he deposited the last of his weapons into the portal and watched as the conveyor belt moved it along. Putting his arms up, he heard a low humming sound, then a swoosh of air.
“All clear,” the guard said.
The fact that he’d somehow manifested the ancient ability to become invisible told him the reversion process was definitely under way. No more wondering if this shit was happening or wasn’t. It was pretty goddamn obvious. It was rumored that the Old Ones had special abilities that today’s vampires didn’t have. Except for Alfonso, who’d recently discovered he had a few latent abilities, Jackson didn’t know of anyone else. But Alfonso’s situation was different. He’d spent much of his life inside the Alliance and had actually been addicted to Sweet. But he got that under control decades ago. Jackson was addicted to all blood and energies. Its hold on him never waned.
“Step forward and put your toes on that red line,” the guard said.
He mindlessly did as he was told, noticing a box affixed to the wall in front of him. It hadn’t been there the last time he went through security.
Ever since a member of the Alliance’s elite assassination team, the Order of the Red Sword, breached the field-office perimeter, security around the place had quadrupled. A guard had been killed and Lily’s old apartment in the attached residential tower had been compromised. But rather than abandon the field offices, which were centrally located in a forgotten part of Underground Seattle, they’d stepped up security to almost epic proportions. Even people who had a legitimate reason to be here had a hard time getting in.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a retinal scan,” Tomas said from the guard’s station on the other side of the bulletproof glass. “Lean in, put your forehead against the padding and look straight ahead without blinking.”
Jackson did so, expecting to hear the sound of a buzzer letting him through the door. He waited. Waited.
“Um, there seems to be a problem.”
The last sandwich Jackson ate turned to acid in his gut. “There is?”
Of course, the eyes. They must look different. It was how you could tell a vampire was controlled by his cravings. The pupils never retracted fully. And later on, after consuming only blood, the whites turned gray. He tried to remain calm. He still ate food, his whites were, well, white, but it was his damn pupils. They felt stretched even now. Or maybe his eyes looked different because of this invisibility thing.
“It seems we don’t have a retina pattern on file for you yet, Mr. Foss. A memo went out last week to all agents about this. Sorry if you didn’t get it.”
He rarely read his email or checked voice mail—that was the problem. But he was only marginally relieved.
“It’s one of the new security protocols we just implemented. When you get a chance, you’ll need to stop by the clinic to get that taken care of, but for now, I’ll go ahead and buzz you in. It doesn’t officially go into effect until next week.”
Voluntarily go to the clinic? He could guaran-damn-tee that wouldn’t be happening.
The field office was hopping when he finally stepped through security and collected all his gear from the conveyor belt. Several Guardians had found a den of Darkbloods on the Eastside, another pair had been spotted inside one of the clubs trolling for victims, and now this business with Xtark.
“Nice work, man.” Dom clamped him on the shoulder.
“I can’t wait to see what’s on this thing,” Cordell said, taking the hard drive from him.
Jackson didn’t stay for the unveiling. Instead, he went in search of Mitch, finding him at the juice bar in the gym. The guy was so predictable, it was pathetic. No doubt, he’d be drinking something green and nasty. When he pulled Mitch into a nearby conference room, he got a whiff of grass or hay from the paper cup in the guy’s hand. Yep, the green healthy stuff. The only thing green Jackson put in his mouth was lettuce with ranch dressing, and even then, he had to force himself.
Jackson closed the door and turned around. “I really appreciate you burying this for a while.”
“Dude, how’d you do it? It was epic how you came in and took those guys out. They had no idea what was happening. Something hits each of them, and they begin turning to ash. Freaked me out. I thought I was next in line to fry.”
God, how he wished it was as cool as Mitch thought it was. “I wouldn’t get your undies all in a knot. It means I’m reverting. That’s why I’ve asked you to hold off making your report on TechTran until I’m gone.”
“Reverting?” Mitch’s gaze darted around the room. He suddenly looked uncomfortable. Yeah, everyone knew how serious that was. “How do you know?”
Jackson ran a hand through his hair when all he wanted to do was to pound a hole in the wall. “I’ve suspected it for some time now. The fact that I was able to make myself invisible proves my suspicions are correct. I’m losing control, Mitch. My blood and energy needs are insatiable and you know what that means.”
“What are you going to do?”
Jackson shrugged. “What can I do? I’ve got to leave the Agency.”
Mitch pinched the bridge of his nose. “You can’t. I mean, what will the office do without you?” He was an academic functioning in the real world now. Sometimes what you wanted to have happen on paper didn’t work in real-world situa
tions. “But where will you go? What about Arianna? She’s back in your room, waiting for you.”
“For the first time in my life, I’m going to think of someone else for a change, rather than myself.”
He strode to the wet bar and poured himself a shot of tequila. It burned going down, but he hardly noticed it. Then he poured himself another and tried to ignore his shaking hands.
He supposed that was what love was. Caring about someone else so much that you’d put their needs above yours. He’d been searching for love all his life, to be accepted for who he was and not judged by the failures of his youth, but now that he’d found it, he needed to let her go. Once the reversion process was complete, it wouldn’t be safe for her to be around him. That was what happened to the young man he saw executed. Rumor had it that he not only drained his human girlfriend, but killed her sister, too. There’d been warning signs, but he’d ignored them.
“That’s bullshit, Jackson. There’s got to be something you can do.”
“Yeah, a silver bullet to the brain is one option.”
“I’m serious.”
“Options are only available to non-Guardians. Think about it, Mitch. How many Guardians have you known who’ve reverted…and lived to talk about it?”
“I’ve never known any personally, but I’ve heard of a few.”
“And what happened to them? Any of them in the rehab centers?”
“I assume so.”
“No, it doesn’t happen. A warrant goes out to bring in the individual. Those requests are handled by the local field office. That’s you guys. You’d all be tasked with bringing me in. Then, at that point, a writ of execution is drawn up. Petitions, if any, are heard. Though why they bother with that formality is beyond me. I’ve never heard of the Council being swayed on the matter. Then the order is carried out swiftly and without mercy.”
Now it was Mitch’s turn to look like he was going to punch a wall. “But that’s bullshit.”
“It’s life.”
“So you’re going away? Leaving the Agency? Leaving Arianna?”
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