“She’ll think you don’t trust her,” Peter said.
“We don’t,” Diego replied without hesitation.
Ryder was torn. He wanted to have confidence in the young slayer because of her connection to Jesus, who was normally a good judge of character. But the lives of his friends and God knew how many humans were now at stake. He did not want to be wrong about his trust in her. That was too big a burden to bear.
Which made him wonder how Diana handled it when she was on a case, how she dealt with the fact that any delay or failure on her part could cost someone their life.
“Let’s go, Diego. I’d rather be damned for being wrong than damned for being right.”
…
Diana shook. Spasm after spasm wracked her body as she vomited the dinner she’d eaten earlier with Ryder.
As the violent tremors passed, she held onto the cold porcelain for support. Tendrils of chill made a glacial advance through her core. Her heart beat a little faster and the weird feeling from the night before returned, but not as powerfully. She wheezed, her lungs choking off her air, and a whirl of stars and circles filled her vision.
She closed her eyes and gripped the rim of the bowl hard for support. Willed herself not to panic. She’d been in worse situations as an FBI agent and she’d kept her head and her life.
Tapping deep into the well of reserve honed by years of training, she focused on her breathing first, reining in the runaway gasps into deliberate breaths, each one deeper and more controlled than the last.
As her breathing stabilized, so did the racing of her heart. The beats lengthened and resumed a more natural rhythm. That solid steady beat forced the frosty trails back into her core.
With a few more breaths, she opened her eyes. Her gaze was clear and focused, but unfortunately landed on the contents of the bowl a second before the odor hit her.
She tumbled onto her ass, away from the disgusting sight. The marble of the floor was cool against her palms and naked backside. Grabbing the edge of the vanity with one hand, she hoisted herself to her feet, swaying for only a moment. After flushing, she washed, and decided to make some tea to settle her queasiness. With Ryder gone, sleep would prove elusive, anyway.
She always slept better when he was beside her.
She hoped he wouldn’t be much longer, she thought and went to make herself some tea, but as she neared the kitchen, her cell phone rang. Maggie.
She answered, but before she could say a word, Maggie blurted out, “Do you think you can drop a bombshell like you did and not expect me to hit the lab as soon as I left?”
“You’ve been in your lab all this time?”
Guilt set in as her friend replied, “Kind of. I’ve spent every free moment trying to figure out what was in the samples you gave me.”
As tired as Diana was, she knew this was a conversation that couldn’t be done over the phone. “Where are you now?”
“Downstairs and heading up to your place. I’ll be there in a second.” Maggie ended the call.
Diana headed to the front door and as Maggie got off the elevator and approached, she reached out to comfort her friend, but Maggie surprised her by swatting her hand away.
“Don’t. Don’t think you can make it all better with just a touch. I need information, damn it.” With angry strides, she devoured the distance to the couch and plopped down on it, tension in every line of her body.
Diana approached and because she wanted to clearly see her friend’s reaction and not miss a nuance of it, she sat on the coffee table opposite Maggie. “That’s what’s in me, Maggie. It’s what’s been in me since the night of the raid when I got shot.”
Maggie slashed her hands through the air. “Not possible. Those cells and the lysis that’s happening. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before and it’s definitely not human.”
“No, it’s not. It’s what I was trying to tell you the other night, Mags.”
Her friend’s anger had been big and overblown and now it deflated like a balloon with a pinhole as understanding and acceptance came. “No one can survive that kind of destruction going on in their bodies. No one.”
Nodding, she said, “That’s right. It’s why I’m dying. Not all at once, but in little pieces.”
Maggie clutched her arms around herself and hunched forward.
Diana bent and embraced her. Buried her head against Maggie’s and whispered, “I need you now, Mags.”
Maggie sucked in a shaky breath and then expelled a rush of words as she raised her tortured gaze. “How? When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Diana stroked her friend’s back, calm despite the guilt at causing Maggie such grief. “The how and when go hand in hand. It happened the night of the raid.”
“When you were shot?” Maggie’s eyes roamed over her as if searching for some sign of the trauma she had suffered that night.
“The first shot caught me here,” Diana said and touched a spot on her back, high up on her shoulder. “Then the second ripped through my back and into my liver.”
“You should have bled out,” the physician in Maggie answered woodenly.
“I should have, only Ryder was behind me. Trying to protect me. The bullet went through him first and into me.”
Recognition crept into her features. “His blood and tissue contaminated you. Contaminated your liver, which controls so many vital functions in your body.”
“Not being a science geek like you and Melissa, it’s been a learning experience.” It had been growing tenderness in Diana’s midsection that had brought the realization the initial benefits from the contamination were giving way to something deadly.
“So Melissa knows?” Maggie straightened and wiped away the tears on her cheeks. The scientist and FBI physician took control and needed answers.
“Melissa knows. She’s devised a way—”
“Aphaeresis, I would assume,” Maggie jumped in.
Diana confirmed her observation with a nod. “It helped at first to remove the cells from my body, but now…not so much.”
Maggie was quick to pick up on what she hadn’t said. “But something helps more. Ryder. Because he’s a vampire and those are vampire cells.”
“Melissa’s dad had been investigating them for years before his death.”
“So he knew about Ryder also?” Maggie was quickly getting the picture that this was far larger and more involved than she had imagined.
“It’s long and complicated,” Diana warned, but now that she had involved Maggie, it seemed only fair to explain everything if that was what Maggie wanted.
“I’ve got the time,” her friend replied, easing Diana’s concerns. As briefly as she could without leaving out important information, she provided Ryder’s history, his turning, and his Danvers keepers. Of how he had released Melissa from her obligations, but how Melissa was still involved. Then she returned to the night of the raid and how her connections to Ryder had saved not only her, but David and one other agent.
“David said he thought that two men had helped pull him out, only…” Even as Maggie relayed that information, the expression on her face showed that she realized there had been more that David had not said. “He was troubled by that. By surviving when most of the other men in the raid were killed.”
But it had been more than survivor’s guilt, Diana knew. He was troubled because he had seen the vampire faces of Blake and Diego as they had rescued him that night. He had called her on it when she had visited him in the hospital immediately after, but she had held back telling him the truth. He hadn’t been well enough to hear it and she hadn’t been prepared to tell it.
“You have to tell him, Di. The guilt has been eating away at him along with the fact that he might never walk again.”
“But you love him anyway. You’re prepared to deal with him being in that chair,” Diana pressed.
Maggie nodded sadly. “The chair doesn’t change what I feel for him, even though he thinks it does.”
Funny,
but her situation with Ryder wasn’t all that dissimilar. She was different now, much like David was. That difference was holding her back from either accepting what awaited her in her human world—death—or what was possible by accepting that she could handle becoming a vampire.
Maggie must have sensed her indecision. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need me to do. I’ll work with Melissa if you want. I’ll be there for you when it’s time, if you want. All I ask is one thing.”
Diana didn’t need her friend to tell her what that one thing was. “I promise I will tell David. When the time is right, trust me.”
Maggie wrapped her in a tight embrace. “I trust you,” she said as they held each other and their friendship sustained them.
Chapter Twenty-three
Michaela was as fast as any vampire, and following her proved a demanding chase through Central Park, across town, and down the West Side, to the World Trade Center area.
If Michaela knew they were after her, she gave no hint of it—until the 9-11 Memorial. There, she stopped abruptly and waited for them. She stood akimbo, her arms braced on her hips and a disgusted look on her face as they dropped down in front of her.
“You have no reason to follow me,” she challenged and glanced around, as if checking for possible collateral damage if a battle ensued.
Ryder did the same. At this time of night, the area was deserted. But he had no intention of starting a fight.
“Who are you going to see, Michaela?” Diego asked.
“You expect me to tell you the location of one of our Council members?”
Ryder chuckled. “You know where we live. Who our wives and lovers are. Our friends. But you still don’t trust us.”
She frowned for a moment, then tilted her head defiantly. “There are many reasons I don’t trust vampires.”
Diego blew out a disgusted breath. “Another unreasonable spawn of the Slayer Council. Do you think everything they do is above reproach?”
Michaela lost some of her bravado. “You can’t begin to understand.”
“But I do, slayer,” Diego said, his voice intense. “I know what they are. The only reason I survived the hate of people like them during the Inquisition was because of a vampire’s love.”
Michaela barked a laugh, and dragged a hand through her short strands of hair. She paced for a moment before facing them, hands on her hips. She motioned to Ryder. “Fine. I can’t take an elder with me, but I’ll take him.”
Ryder was relieved when Diego agreed. “A fair compromise. But if anything happens to my friend, anything, there will be hell to pay.” He jammed his face close to hers and released the vampire.
Michaela didn’t even flinch.
Ryder admired her courage, even if he felt uncomfortable with the slayer’s distrust and impulsiveness. But she was involved with Jesus, and the ADIC’s judgment and friendship with Diana had to count for something.
Even if it only meant he wouldn’t get a stake through the back.
Ryder patted Diego on the shoulder. “I’ll call you later.”
“Within the hour,” Diego instructed.
Michaela confirmed it with a nod. “This won’t take long.”
In a blur of speed, Diego took off, leaving Michaela and Ryder staring at each other, awkward as two people on a blind date.
“We both know something clicked with you after Detective Daly’s report. Mind telling me what, and where we’re going?”
“We’ll walk there. It’ll give me time to fill you in.” She jerked her chin at some waterside apartment buildings several blocks away.
“Okay.” Ryder matched his stride to her shorter one.
“How much do you know about the slayers and the Council?” she asked.
“Not a great deal. I haven’t spent much time in the vampire world.”
“The slayers are elite, extreme, and ruthless, even toward their own. The penalty for the most serious infractions is almost always death.”
“Nice crowd you hang with, Michaela,” he said wryly.
A small smile played about her lips.
“It was either join them or continue the search for my mother’s killer on my own. As it is, I’m both hunter and hunted.”
She stopped short in front of what looked to be luxury condos, but instead of entering through the doorman-protected doors, she scooted around the side of the building and picked her way down to the water’s edge.
At the corner of the property, a couple of utilitarian-style metal doors were guarded by several locks and roving security cameras. She approached one door and pushed an intercom button. The camera on the wall shifted in their direction, its one-eyed stare almost condemning.
The intercom crackled to life. “Are you crazy? You brought him here?”
Michaela shot Ryder a passing glance, then answered, “I trust him.”
“Your mistake,” the voice said, and the metal door remained closed.
She lifted her face toward the camera and stood on tiptoe so it would be impossible not to see her determination. “You need to hear what I have to say.”
“Why?”
“It’s about Bartholomew.”
That must have been the equivalent of “Open Sesame,” since the lock immediately snicked. She flung open the door so they could pass. Beyond was an antiseptic foyer in glaring white light and devoid of any furnishings. At the far wall was an elevator guarded by more cameras, and as they neared, the lenses focused on them. After a slight pause, the elevator door opened.
Inside, there were no buttons with which to choose floors, and as the doors closed, a jolt of speed had them racing upward.
“Talk about overkill,” Ryder murmured.
“Benjamin has always been overly cautious. Most of his family was killed in a vampire attack when he was a young boy.”
“When you say most—”
“His parents and sisters were murdered after vampires raped the women. He and his little brother survived.”
“This Bartholomew you mentioned is Benjamin’s little brother?”
Michaela nodded. The elevator jerked to an abrupt halt, as if designed to unsettle anyone in it. When the doors opened, Benjamin stood there, a crossbow in hand and a muscle shirt barely covering his torso. The tattoo of a Celtic cross across his large chest was visible beneath the edges of the shirt.
As Ryder stepped out of the elevator, Benjamin trained the crossbow on the middle of his chest. “Watch your step, Ryder. This has a hair trigger.” With a very lethal-looking silver-tipped arrow, nocked and ready to fire. Ryder had no doubt it was laced with silver nitrate for additional suffering. He held his hands in the air and inclined his head at Michaela.
“I’m just here as backup,” he said.
Benjamin nodded and turned his gaze on her. She walked over to the coffee table in the middle of a living room that lacked a female touch and screamed of interior designer. Big leather chairs done in white and a collection of bright artwork gave it a high-fashion look, but the flat-screen television that covered almost an entire wall made the space a little more human.
Sitting on the edge of the couch with a squeak as leather met leather, she laid the photos on the table and Benjamin walked over, the crossbow still aimed for Ryder’s heart. But as Benjamin examined the photos, his hand visibly shook, and little by little the weapon lowered.
Ryder kept his distance as the thirty-something man sat next to Michaela, laid down the crossbow, and examined the photos with unsteady hands. The ones that seemed to intrigue him most were those of the footprints and sole patterns.
As Benjamin analyzed them, Michaela explained.
“A homeless man was killed last night. Throat slashed like the two dead vampires. These photos are from the crime scene.”
“It’s not possible, Mikey. Bartholomew couldn’t have done this.”
“Afraid to admit humans can be as horrible as us monsters?” Ryder asked.
Benjamin surged off the sofa, his slate blue eyes swimming with pain
. His fists clenched at his side while his body vibrated with anger and the muscles of his jaw worked furiously. “Bartholomew couldn’t have done this because my brother is dead.”
Okay, Ryder totally had not expected that.
He glanced past the man to Michaela, who had risen and come to stand by her Council member. In an awkward gesture, as if she was unused to offering comfort, she patted Benjamin’s arm.
“Did you intervene, Benjamin?” she asked. “Is that what Evangeline wanted to talk to you about earlier?”
“Evangeline claimed she wanted a report. I think she just wanted to hang you out to dry with the vampires. As for Bartholomew, I don’t break the rules for anyone, not even my brother.”
“Care to fill me in, Michaela?” Ryder was clearly missing a vital piece of the puzzle.
“Few are accepted as slayer novitiates. The training is rigorous and many are lost in battle along the way,” she began. Benjamin jumped in.
“Very few reach the final initiation. Even then, they’re carefully selected, and any who fail…” He sucked in a deep breath and fought the emotion threatening to overwhelm. “Those who fail are terminated, to protect the secrets of the slayers and to keep them from misusing the powers they’ve earned along the initiation steps.”
“And you call us evil.” Ryder would have rather killed himself than hurt anyone he cared about.
The man lunged at him, but Michaela jerked him back. “This accomplishes nothing, Benjamin.”
The man yanked free of Michaela’s restraint, then marched back to the coffee table and dropped down on the sofa. He picked up the photos again and rubbed the back of his neck, his agitation still running high.
Michaela approached him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “How can we find out who was supposed to do the termination?”
In a weary voice, Benjamin said, “We can’t.”
“So you don’t really know if someone carried out the death order?” Ryder asked.
Benjamin’s head bowed and his shoulders sagged. Defeat filled his voice. “Every now and then I thought I sensed him, but I told myself it was just my imagination. My guilt at having failed him. For not standing up for him. He was my brother and I should have done something to protect him.”
To Love and Serve Page 14