“I’ll drive,” she said, and headed for the door.
“Whoa.” Lucifer grabbed her arm, then dropped it like it burned him when she turned around. “I’m in charge, remember? I’ll drive.”
She snorted. “You drive like an old lady, and we’re in a hurry. I’ll drive.”
Lucifer eyed her, and she could see the calculation in his eyes. “Fine,” he said at last. “Let’s go.”
LUCIFER ENTERED the coordinates on the SUV’s nav system, curious to see what it would turn up. Bastien hadn’t given him an address for Aubrey’s phone, but a location. He could have checked it last night on his own computer, but by the time he’d fed and gotten his two lovelies tucked away in their beds, both well sated and flushed with satisfaction, it had been nearly sunrise.
“That’s not far from here,” Eleanor commented watching the map come up. “And it’s not in the underground either.”
“A home? Maybe a place he lived in before he met Landry, and he didn’t want to give it up.”
“Maybe. How do we know the phone’s with him? Or that he’s still there? Maybe he’s gone to work by now.”
“Bastien will ping me if there is any change, but it hasn’t moved in a couple of days as of last night.”
Eleanor frowned. “Don’t you think that’s odd?”
He shrugged. “Hell, yeah. But it’s the best lead we have, so we’re checking it out. Assuming you plan to leave the garage someday.”
Eleanor gave him a narrow-eyed stare, which he pretended not to notice. In reality, there was very little about Elle that he didn’t notice. It had always been that way.
“You never complained before,” he commented, after they’d gone a few blocks.
She gave him a quick glance, but thankfully returned her attention to the road almost immediately. Elle drove like the proverbial bat out of hell. No wonder she thought his driving was slow. Anyone would be slow compared to her.
“Complained about what?” she asked, without looking at him.
“About my driving,” he said, feeling slightly insulted that she was complaining now.
“I didn’t want to prick your ego.”
He frowned. “And now?”
“Hell, now the damn thing is so big, a little prick won’t hurt it.”
“Cara, there is nothing little about my prick.”
She smiled slightly. “Yeah, I remember.”
Lucifer barked a surprised laugh, but sobered immediately when the nav console beeped a warning. Leaning in for a closer look, he enlarged the area on the map. “Definitely looks residential,” he murmured. He looked up and glanced around. “I don’t like this,” he said. “There’s no one here. No one on the streets.”
“It’s not the best neighborhood,” she told him.
“That’s it,” he said, pointing to a house on the right hand side of the street. It was in reasonable condition, especially compared to the houses around it. But the paint was still peeling on the trim, and the yard was mostly dirt with a few scraggly bushes hanging on near the concrete front porch.
Eleanor parked two houses down and turned off the engine. “What do you think we should do?” she asked.
Lucifer gave her an amused glance. “I think we should act like fucking vampires, and deal accordingly with whatever, or whoever, is waiting for us inside.”
She didn’t say anything right away, just narrowed her gaze on the house. “I don’t like it. This could be a trap.”
He wasn’t used to working with a partner, and, for his own part, wasn’t getting any vibes off the house or this situation. But he wasn’t above listening if someone else’s intuition had detected something that he might have missed. “So we go in slow,” he said. “But we have to check this out. Or at least I do,” he amended.
She flashed him an angry glare. “We’re in this together, Luc.”
He blinked, and stared. It was the first time she’d used the nickname that she’d anointed him with back in New Orleans. And it was the only nickname he’d ever had. Hearing it now made him long for things that he couldn’t have.
He gave himself a mental shake. This was no time for fond memories.
“Let’s go,” he said abruptly, then opened the door and stepped out onto the bare strip of concrete that passed for a sidewalk. He paused long enough to scan the house. His own power signature was dampened far down from its natural state. Not to hide his presence, but to conceal his strength. No need to frighten the locals before he even got through the front door.
“One vampire, three humans,” he murmured when Eleanor stepped up next to him. He did a slight double take at what looked like a martial arts stick of some kind that she had in her right hand, but didn’t comment. “All of the humans are active and moving around, so Murphy definitely isn’t in there.”
“You never thought he was,” she countered equally quietly, holding the stick against her right leg and tapping it slightly in a nervous gesture.
“No. But it’s always good to check. You don’t want to go killing the PC.”
“PC?”
“Precious cargo. The rescuee.”
She gave him a look of disbelief. “Really?”
He shrugged. “I read it in a book. It was a good book.”
She sighed. “Any useful notes in that book?”
He smiled to himself. “The lone vampire’s near the front door. I’ll go in that way. You come in the back, but not until I’m inside. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
He thought he detected a snarky note to her response, but it didn’t matter. He was all business now. He didn’t worry about himself. He’d already taken the measure of the vampire inside, and knew he could best him. But Eleanor was an unknown quantity to him. She had power and obviously some skill, given her position with Sophia. But there were humans in that house, too, and humans were unpredictable. Alone, unarmed, they were almost incapable of hurting a vampire. But even an unskilled human could rip a vampire in half with modern weapons.
He speared her with a hard look. “Be careful, Eleanor. Go.”
She nodded, and slipped away through the darkness, disappearing into the shadows between the houses before she’d gone twenty feet. Lucifer marked her progress, following the spark that was her life force, tracking her as easily as if she’d been flashing a neon signal. He wasn’t her lord. He wasn’t anyone’s lord. Yet. But he had the power that would make him a vampire lord someday. And Eleanor had his heart. Despite the years and the misunderstandings that separated them, that had never changed.
A dog barked as she rounded into the back yard, quickly silenced. She wouldn’t have hurt the animal, so she either knocked it out or simply reminded it of its place in the predatory food chain.
Once she was in position, waiting, he strolled up to the front door and knocked. No need to break down the door; they were expecting him. And, besides, there was always the possibility that this was a human’s home, which would mean he couldn’t enter without an invitation.
All movement ceased inside the small house. They might have been expecting him, but they hadn’t expected him to knock. Maybe they’d thought to ambush him when he crashed into the home’s natural barriers against vampires.
There were harsh whispers from the humans as they asked for orders, presumably from the vampire, since he couldn’t imagine any vampire putting himself at the whim of a human.
“Come in,” a male voice called, and it contained enough of an amplified push that he knew it was the vampire.
Lucifer wanted to grin. He loved this shit. He slammed the door open with a hard punch of force, blowing the thing off its hinges, and letting his power flare. The vampire was waiting for him, but his eyes widened in realization when he detected the true depth of Lucifer’s strength. The enemy vamp took a step back, as if to
retreat, just as a crashing noise announced Eleanor’s arrival on scene.
“Too late, asshole,” Lucifer growled. He shoved his awareness into the other vampire’s brain, and sucked away his consciousness. The vamp fell to the floor in a heap, every ounce of self-will gone. If Lucifer didn’t remind him before morning, the vampire wouldn’t even retain enough self-awareness to conceal himself from the sun.
The entire confrontation, from the moment Lucifer exploded into the house, until the enemy vamp was limp on the floor, was only a matter of minutes, during which Eleanor had been alone in confronting the three human conspirators. Gunfire rattled from the kitchen, where all three humans had been hanging around a small table. He heard Eleanor curse, and strode toward the sound. A moment later, she cried his name in warning, but it was already too late.
When he stepped into the doorway a human female turned on him with a snarl, an AK-15 in her arms and already lifted in his direction, her finger squeezing the trigger. Lucifer raised his shields, while, at the same time, reaching into the woman’s brain and—Shit!
A blur of movement had him staggering back as Eleanor threw herself between him and the gun-wielding human. Lucifer acted without thought, pulling Eleanor into the protection of his shields and killing the woman’ in a move more brutal than what he’d intended. But, you know? Fuck her. The human woman didn’t matter, only . . .
“Eleanor,” he said frantically, pulling her into the circle of his arms, shielding her with his body and his power, even as he made sure the remaining humans were neutralized. “Are you hurt? Are you shot?”
She pushed at his chest, and squirmed free of his arms, until she was standing on her own two feet. Though he noticed that her fingers did grip his leather jacket for a few minutes, and she was breathing heavily, until her heart slowed its headlong race, and settled into a regular rhythm.
“What the fuck, Elle?” he demanded, his relief at her apparent health transferring readily into a raging anger that she’d risked herself to protect him. He could take care of himself, damn it.
“I was protecting you,” she snapped, shoving away from him completely.
The rage that rolled through Lucifer in that moment was so hot, so boiling, fucking hot, that he was surprised he didn’t combust and burn to ash in an instant. But years of discipline took hold of him, and he shoved it aside. Eleanor was fine—though she might not be after he got finished with her later—and he had a job to do.
“Are any of the other humans alive?” he growled.
“One of the men. The other one fired on me as I came through the door, so he’s dead. But this one’s unconscious. I hit him over the head to get him out of the way.” He noticed for the first time that the short stick she’d been carrying was now a full-length bo staff. As she talked, she tapped each end of the staff against the adjacent wall, and, that quickly, it was a short stick again. “He’ll wake up before too—”
“He’ll wake when I want him to,” Lucifer snarled, obviously not doing as good a job of controlling his anger as he’d thought. He checked the enemy vampire who remained safely drifting in unconsciousness, but maybe not for much longer. The vampire wasn’t as strong as Lucifer, but he was no lightweight, either. “I’ll do the vamp first,” he said. “Keep an eye on the human, just to be safe.”
“Safe for what?”
“Safe until I can question him,” he said impatiently, hoping she wasn’t going to go all politically correct again about his interrogation techniques. Not waiting for her response, he knelt next to the vamp, who was lying on the truly filthy carpet, and placed a hand on his head. It wasn’t really necessary for him to touch the other vamp in order to rummage through his thoughts, but it seemed natural to do so.
He frowned as he sank into the vamp’s brain, searching through the last few days, snagging and discarding bits of information faster than he could absorb. It was a scatter shot search, grabbing everything that might be relevant. He’d examine those bits of data more thoroughly later, and probably discard most of them. It wasn’t unlike searching through piles of memos, skimming the titles, keeping some, tossing others, then moving on.
It took a few minutes, but when he returned to the dirty living room, he knew everything this vampire did about the plot to kidnap Colin Murphy. The vamp—whose name was Torres—was of no further value to him, and, in fact, posed a risk if he returned to his masters. So, Lucifer reached out with a fine filament of power and drilled into the vamp’s heart, burning the organ to dust in a matter of seconds. He stood and took a fastidious step back to avoid the mess, and then, turning his back on what used to be a vampire, he headed for the kitchen.
He passed Eleanor where she stood in the kitchen doorway, giving him a dagger stare of disapproval, presumably over his killing of the enemy vampire. How the hell she could work so closely with a full-fledged vampire lord like Sophia, and still maintain these delicate human sensibilities, he didn’t know. Vampire lords to a man—or woman—were cruel and efficiently ruthless in their dealings with vampires and humans alike.
But he didn’t have time to get into a discussion of vampire ethics right now. There was still a human to question, and time was running out. All of the gunfire would have attracted attention, and he had no doubt that the authorities were already on their way. He had minutes at best to question the human, gather Eleanor, and get out of the neighborhood before the police arrived on scene.
The lone human survivor of the initial skirmish didn’t pose any risk, not the way the vampire, Torres, had, and he was a lot more fragile. So, Lucifer slid carefully into the man’s brain and brought him back to consciousness, even repairing the tiny blood vessels that were bleeding as a result of Eleanor’s love tap with her bo staff. He didn’t do it because he gave a fuck about the man’s well-being, but because he wanted the guy able to answer questions intelligently.
Keeping him semi-conscious to minimize resistance, he slipped into the man’s brain telepathically. Rather than dig around the way he had with Torres, he simply “thought” questions at him. Torres would have fought tooth and nail against divulging any shred of information, whereas this human was already thoroughly primed to cooperate.
Lucifer pursued a broad line of questioning first, asking for anything he knew about Colin Murphy’s disappearance. The man’s name was Jack Anderson and as it turned out, he knew quite a lot. To begin with, the dead man, the one who’d fired on Elle, was Chase Landry’s lover, Aubert. That explained the cell phone’s persistent pinging in this location.
Lucifer nodded to himself at the discovery. It made sense that Landry—or whoever was running him—would require at least some human assistance. And who better to trust than his live-in lover? Jack and the now dead Aubert had initially been part of the initial daylight guard contingent. They’d been replaced after only a few days, and had never actually seen Murphy, because the prisoner’s cell remained closed and locked the entire time.
They’d been picked up in the city, and driven to an entrance to the underground, where they were eventually hustled into an unused and unfinished side tunnel. And all while blindfolded, unfortunately. Jack only knew that it wasn’t one of the regular tunnels because he’d worked in the mines for a while when he was younger, and he recognized the wet earth and stone smell of a freshly-cut tunnel, as well as the gritty feel of an unfinished floor. For all of that, however, the area where he assumed Murphy was being held was in reasonably finished shape. The walls were crude, but the doors were heavy, and had secure locks.
Lucifer lifted his head as the distant sound of sirens intruded into the mental conversation he was having with the human guard. Time was running out, and he still had to wipe this man’s mind before leaving with Eleanor.
Taking a precious few seconds to sweep the human’s memory for every face he’d seen in the tunnels, he then wiped all knowledge of the last twenty-four hours, wanting to be c
ertain that there were no remaining recollections of Eleanor or himself. Let Chase Landry and his cohort deal with the human authorities. There would be nothing and no one left to tie Lucifer or Eleanor to the scene.
When he was finished, he dropped the man into a deep, unconscious state, slid carefully out of his mind, and, finally, stepped back and took a quick cell phone image. It wouldn’t hurt to run an identity search on him, and maybe discover where he worked, and whom he hung around with.
Lucifer didn’t waste any time after that. Grabbing Eleanor’s arm, he pulled her from the house, keeping her close as he blanketed the two of them with a “no-see-me” suggestion for any minds in the vicinity, and went directly to their SUV. Eleanor yanked her arm away at the last minute to go around to the driver’s side, and Lucifer was glad she had those extra steps to travel, because he was sure she’d have left him behind if he’d been a few seconds too slow.
He almost grinned at that thought, but he was still too angry with her for trying to defend him at the cost of her own life. And she was just as furious with him, although he couldn’t have said why. He’d done nothing wrong. He was a vampire and proud of it, and he was under no obligation to pretend to be less than he was, or something other than what he was, just because she persisted in clinging to human sensibilities—sensibilities that might work for humans, but could get a vampire killed.
The cold silence between them lasted all the way back to the hotel, while they turned the vehicle over to one of Cal’s guards, while they crossed the lobby to the elevator, and during the ride up to the penthouse floor, with the small box fairly vibrating with their combined anger.
Lucifer nodded politely to Cal, when the human met them in the narrow vestibule outside the penthouse doors, and he held the door open for Eleanor, despite her outraged glare. As if common courtesy was now a crime.
Lucifer (Vampires in America: The Vampire Wars Book 11) Page 13