The bartender gave Lucifer a sideways glance of disapproval for his Cajun accent, then looked at Eleanor in silent question. When she’d been human, Elle hadn’t been much of a drinker. White wine had been her typical drink. Now that she was a vampire? Lucifer didn’t know. Alcohol didn’t bother vampires. It tasted good, and left a nice trail of heat going down, but there wasn’t even a buzz left behind.
“Nothing for me,” Eleanor said in perfect French. “Water and ice would be nice.”
The bartender shrugged, filled two glasses with ice, and used his soda gun to top them off with water. He set one glass in front of each of them, then grabbed the whiskey and served up Lucifer’s double shot.
Lucifer took a sip, then spun around to survey the crowd. It was a blue-collar bar, and at least two-thirds male. The women were dressed a bit more upscale than the men, but that was par for the course. No one caught his eye, no one gave off a negative vibe. He spun back to the bar, downed his whiskey, and signaled the bartender for another.
Eleanor gave him a disapproving look. What? Like she was afraid he’d get drunk? Or maybe she just knew what he was about to do.
When the bartender brought him his second drink, he dipped quickly into the man’s head. He had no idea what Aubert looked like. For all he knew, this was Aubert. But, no. The bartender’s name was Chris, and he was pissed that Aubert hadn’t been to work in several days, leaving him to cover the missing bartender’s shifts.
“Aubert around?” Lucifer asked, knowing the answer, but wanting to focus Chris’s thoughts on their target.
Chris shook his head sharply. “Bastard hasn’t even called.”
“You try his cell phone?” Lucifer asked, sliding effortlessly into Chris’s head once again.
“Fuck, yeah. It’s the only number we have. He mostly shacks up with that boyfriend of his these days. Can’t get him at home anymore.”
Lucifer grabbed hold of Chris’s mind and did a little snooping. Chris didn’t know the number by heart, but it was stored in his cell phone, which he now handed over without being asked. Well, without being asked verbally, anyway. Lucifer rewarded him with a big smile, and slid the phone over to Eleanor. “The password’s 0420,” he told her, stifling a grin. Weed day.
She gave him a hard look, clearly aware that he was digging around the human’s head, but that didn’t stop her from quickly unlocking the phone and calling up the contacts. From the corner of his eye, Lucifer could see her flipping through the information. He knew the moment she found what she was looking for, and watched as she sent Aubert’s contact info to herself.
She passed the phone back to Lucifer, who pushed it toward the edge of the bar closest to Chris. “Thanks for the info,” he said politely, then downed his whiskey in a single gulp, and left a big tip before standing away from the bar. “Ready to go, bella?” He held out his hand in invitation, partly because he wanted to touch her. He was just that pathetic. But also because he knew it would fluster her. She’d avoided touching him ever since they’d arrived in Montreal, but she wouldn’t want to make a scene. Not here, and not now.
He smiled when Elle’s hand touched his, when he gripped her fingers and drew her against his side.
“Bastard,” she whispered, and he laughed, because he really was a bastard. And she knew it.
“Touché, bella,” he murmured, and then risked his life by pulling her even closer as they walked out of the bar.
He expected Eleanor to pull herself away as soon as the door closed behind them, but she didn’t. For just a few minutes, the time it took for his heart to go from zero to sixty and his cock to stiffen eagerly, she remained in his embrace, her forehead resting against his shoulder, the length of her body pressed against his. But then she closed her eyes and stepped back, turning away so he couldn’t see her face. But he’d seen enough. It had cost her to move away from him. She might not want to admit it, but she still wanted him. So what the fuck was holding her back?
“You have the number?” he asked, his voice rough with emotion, coming out harsher than he’d intended.
Eleanor shot him an embarrassed look. “Yeah. Shall I call him or—”
“Neither one of us is calling him. Give me the number, and I’ll have my guys track it. With any luck Landry’s keeping his boyfriend close and the cell signal will take us right to him.”
“Not if he’s in those tunnels. Cell signals down there are for crap, even in the built-out parts of the underground. If they’re in some leftover back tunnel, there’s no way.”
“It’s worth a try,” he said patiently. “They can’t be locking themselves in there with Murphy twenty-four hours a day. If nothing else, the boyfriend needs food, and someone must be going out to send all those torture pics to Sophia.”
“Fair enough. Here.” She handed over her phone, and Lucifer scrolled to the relevant number. He then used his own cell to call Bastien.
“Lucifer. You have him yet?” Bastien’s words were still flavored with his native French, no matter how long he’d been gone from that country.
“Good evening to you, too,” Lucifer said dryly. “And, no. Not yet. But we’re close. I have a number. Can you track it?”
“Mais oui. It’s already set up. Everyone is prepared to assist Lady Sophia’s quest. I’ll send the number to Miguel in DC, and he’ll transmit it to Duncan’s contacts in the FBI.”
So, Lord Duncan was involved, too. His territory included Virginia, which meant the various vampire techs employed at both the FBI and CIA headquarters were his people. Hell, for that matter, NSA headquarters were in Duncan’s territory, too. If anyone could track Aubert’s phone, they sure as hell could. The North American lords really were pulling out all the stops to help Sophia. Maybe this was their way of ensuring she didn’t leave the alliance in order to secure Colin’s release. Her departure would leave a gap the length of the Canadian/U.S. border. A gap nearly impossible to defend that would touch four separate vampire territories.
“Okay,” Lucifer told Bastien. “Get back to me when you can.”
“Everything good with you, mon ami?”
“Oh, hell, yeah. Remind me to tell you about it sometime.”
“Ah, your vaunted charm has failed at last?”
“Hanging up now,” Lucifer growled, and then disconnected to the sound of his friend’s quiet chuckle. He slipped his cell into the inside pocket of his jacket and faced Eleanor. “We’ve done all we can for tonight, and besides, I need to feed. I want to be at full strength for tomorrow, just in case this hunt gets ugly. What about you?”
She blushed, and once more Lucifer was both charmed and irritated. Charmed that she could still blush about such a basic bodily function as drinking blood, after all these years as a vampire. And irritated for the same reason. She was hung up on denying everything about her vampire nature . . . for him. Because she’d been convinced he wouldn’t want her once she’d been turned.
“I fed last night,” she murmured, and a sudden sharp blade of jealousy stabbed Lucifer hard as he pictured his Elle cuddled up to some human male, feeding, fondling the man’s dick . . . Fuck!
Eleanor’s blue eyes went big and round as she stared up at him, clearly sensing his anger, and just as clearly not understanding why.
“That’s good,” he said gruffly, then tossed her the keys to the SUV. There was no way in hell he was taking her on a blood hunt with him. No way in fucking hell. “Take the Escalade. I’ll find my way back later, after I’ve fed.”
“You don’t know Montreal. Maybe I should go with—”
“I know how to find blood in a strange city,” he snapped. “This isn’t my first hunt, you know.”
Her big eyes were shooting sparks at him now. “Fine,” she snapped right back at him. “Knock yourself out.” She spun away and muttered, “Or maybe I’ll get lucky, and someone e
lse will do it for you.”
Lucifer stood on the sidewalk, and waited until the SUV turned the far corner, then he called Bastien back. “You get a location on that phone for me yet?” he growled.
“Having that much fun, huh?”
“Just give me a fucking location.”
“Sending it now. I don’t know Montreal that well, so I can’t tell you what it means. But our guy said the phone hasn’t moved in the last 48 hours.”
Lucifer studied the map Bastien sent him. “That’s good. Tell Aden we’re getting close.”
“Bon.”
Bastien hung up as Lucifer hit the disconnect button, his thoughts already on Aubert, and what it meant that his cell phone hadn’t moved in the last two days. It could be great news, assuming Aubert was with Landry. Or it could be very bad news . . . for Aubert. Maybe he’d served whatever purpose he’d been intended for, and Landry had disposed of him, as in made him dead. Or it could simply mean Aubert had dropped his phone down the sewer, and the location was a dead end.
His jaw tightened with impatience. More than anything, he wanted this damn hunt to be over with. He wanted to go back to Chicago and pretend he’d never found Eleanor. As if. He stared broodingly down the empty street where she’d driven off earlier. He had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy to put her out of his head, or his heart, now that she’d reappeared and torn open old wounds. Wounds that had taken years to heal, and then only imperfectly.
He sighed, impatient with himself. He was mooning around like a lovesick teenager. The bar door opened behind him, and two young women emerged, both attractive, both sober enough that he wouldn’t be taking advantage. He grinned when they caught him watching, and they gave him happy grins in return. He could detect the light scent of perfume and sweat on their skin, and the longer he watched them, the scent of their increasing arousal. Perfect.
“Ladies,” he purred, and pulled them into his embrace.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
SOPHIA HUNG UP the phone, setting the ornate gold and ivory receiver on its matching base. It was ridiculously anachronistic, but it fit the elegant décor of her office, with its 17th century antiques. That wasn’t the reason she used it, though. That had been at Colin’s insistence. It was a land-line, secured and encrypted, and the one she used for her most critical communications. He’d begun to come around to the idea of a dedicated cell phone, with the improvements in encryption technology. But he hadn’t been ready to make the change yet. If anything, he argued that enemies were much more likely to look for cell signals—since everyone used them these days—than to bother with jacking in to a physical line. She found herself smiling at the thought of arguing with him one more time on the subject, until reality crashed in on her fond musings, and she was dragged back to the nightmare of her existence.
Someone knocked on her office door. Both the urgency of the knocking and the stress in the voice calling out her name told her she’d been sitting there staring at nothing for too long.
“Come in,” she called, recognizing the mental signature of Danika. Tambra was still hung up in Calgary, with the hearing delayed until Monday evening, in recognition of the vampires’ specific requirements. Tambra had called once, but Sophia had been on another conference call and unable to break away.
She couldn’t fault Danika, however. The young female had stepped up to fill the void with quiet efficiency. Spinning around before the vamp could push open the door and find her lord staring into space, Sophia forced herself to concentrate on a set of reports that Danika had left with her last night. They were the latest reconnaissance from Vancouver Island where it was beginning to look like Berkhard had set up his camp. If true, it was bold of him to be so blatant about it, though he might have chosen the location specifically because there were so few vampires living there. This was in part because vampires weren’t too crazy about islands in general, no matter that Vancouver Island was very large with a significant population that could, in fact, have supported far more than the vampires who lived there. But the vampires of the region preferred the city of Vancouver on the mainland instead, which was where Sophia had her headquarters.
What was troubling, and what had originally generated the suspicion that Berkhard might be moving in there, was that no one had heard from any of the island’s vampire contingent in over a week. Moreover, the first scout that Sophia had sent to surveil the situation had never reported back.
It was beginning to look like Sophia would have to check the situation out in person, with the full understanding that if she did discover Berkhard dug in on the island, she’d have to root him out by force. And that, in turn, meant that the final confrontation between her and Berkhard could very well happen in the next few days. She hated the idea of going into battle without Colin by her side. And maybe that made her weak, but no one would question Raphael’s preference for having Juro by his side when he went to war. It was only because she was female, and because Colin was her mate not her vampire lieutenant, that she would be judged lacking.
She sighed, and glanced up where Danika was waiting patiently to be acknowledged.
“Was Eleanor’s call not good news, my lady?” Danika asked timidly. And that very timidity made Sophia long for Eleanor’s presence, or at least Tambra’s. Someone who wasn’t so afraid of her that they hesitated to ask a simple question.
“Good news?” she repeated, trying not to show her irritation. The girl would probably back her way out of the room in fear for her life, as if Sophia was a wild animal. Returning her nominal attention to the Berkhard recon brief, she said absently, “I suppose. She and Aden’s hunter have a lead anyway.” Shifting her focus, she indicated a set of photographs that appeared to have been taken using an aerial drone. “Are these the latest images of the Victoria compound?”
“They are,” Danika murmured, then circled around to stand next to Sophia. “You can see here, my lady . . .”
Danika continued her narrative, shuffling between recon images and pointing out salient features, but Sophia was no longer listening. She already knew what she had to do with Berkhard, and she was already plotting the best approach in her mind.
But her heart wasn’t in it. That aching organ was focused far away, in Montreal.
Chapter Six
ELEANOR WAS SURPRISED to find the living room empty when she emerged from her bedroom the next night. Lucifer was older, and so he woke before she did, and he’d been up and about before her every morning so far.
She’d no sooner had the thought than the door to his half of the suite opened, and there he was. Half-naked. No, not half, completely naked, wearing only a towel.
“Eleanor,” he said casually, rubbing a second towel over his wet hair.
Her mouth went dry as she tried to think of something to say, but her brain had completely fuzzed out. Nothing but white noise filled her ears. What little brain power she could summon was focused almost entirely on the towel hanging precariously around his narrow hips, and how easily it could be dislodged, what with him rubbing so diligently at his hair.
“Eleanor?” he said again, dropping his arms to study her, the hair towel held loosely at his side.
She dragged her eyes up, past the washboard abs, the hugely muscled chest and arms, and met his golden-brown gaze. “Lucifer?” she managed to say, hoping it sounded more casual to him than it did to her.
“Everything okay?” he asked, sound vaguely disinterested, as if he didn’t really care about the answer.
“Fine,” she said, stung by the attitude, even though it was exactly what she’d wanted from him all along. They were colleagues, partners in this investigation. Nothing more. It would have been easy with any other man she’d ever known. But this was Lucifer. She swallowed her sigh, and asked, “Did you get a location on Aubert’s cell phone yet?”
“I did. I’ll be read
y in ten minutes.”
“Great,” she said, sucking in a breath as he dropped both towels in the open doorway and disappeared into the depths of his suite. He’d never had a proper sense of decency when it came to nudity. Of course, with his body . . . . She tried not to think about how very healthy he looked, how very well fed, damn it. He must have found someone last night after she left. Not exactly a shock, since he’d said he was going to. He’d obviously picked up a woman to feed from . . . maybe even from the same bar. The patrons in the bar had seen them together, looking like a couple, but that wouldn’t have stopped Lucifer. Even without his vampire powers, he was devastatingly handsome. And too fucking charming for his own good.
She heard her teeth grinding. If they didn’t find Colin soon, she wasn’t going to have any fangs left. And then she’d starve, and it would be Lucifer’s fault. She growled at the ridiculous overdramatizing, but it wasn’t far from the truth.
True to his word, Lucifer strolled through the open door of his bedroom just short of ten minutes later. He wore 405 jeans that cupped his package like an offering (the bastard!) A heavy black belt with a silver buckle held the jeans on his narrow hips, and a black long-sleeved T-shirt was tucked in neatly behind it. He was pulling on his leather jacket as he walked, his boots heavy on the hardwood floor. “You ready to go?”
Eleanor’s jeans were black, and she wore a turtleneck sweater against the unseasonably cold weather. She wore boots, too, but hers were more elegant, with soft leather and a delicate buckled strap hanging low on the ankle. She nodded.
“Keys?” he asked, holding out his hand in flat demand.
Something snapped inside her. But it was a good thing. It broke his hold on her thoughts, and blew away the fog of her obsession with him. This was Lucifer. She knew him. Biblically. And he was being kind of a prick.
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