“You really think it will come to that?” Gideon growled.
“I think he’s power hungry enough to lose sight of what’s sane,” Ashe replied. “God only knows what his endgame is, but it won’t be pretty.”
“I hate not being there to back you up,” Gideon said in a hard voice. “You sure you don’t want me to come back?”
“No. Now it’s more important than ever that we have things in place. I don’t want the Sabins stuck in that hellhole the rest of their lives for something they didn’t do.”
Gideon’s tone was gruff. “Just promise you won’t let anything happen to you. I know I give you hell, but it’d fucking break me if I lost you, man.”
Coughing to clear the lump of emotion in his throat, he said, “Same here. But if something happens and you don’t hear from me, make sure you contact Alex. I’ll be counting on you to get that evidence before the Council.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Gideon muttered. “Because if it does, I’ll have to kick your ass.”
“You’ll have to get in line,” Ashe responded with a low laugh, and then he disconnected the call.
Since he couldn’t access the blocked number that had called him, Ashe slipped his phone back in his pocket just as a group of scantily dressed women strolled by, sliding flirtatious smiles in his direction. He gave them a bland smile in return, completely uninterested, another thought working its way through his brain as he headed back inside. In addition to earning her forgiveness, he would have to find a way to put an end to Juliana’s doubts about his ability to be faithful. Because his devotion to her was a given.
Knowing that the best thing he could do was open up and tell her how he felt right now, before she had the time to rebuild her defenses against him, he hurried up the stairs, his hands shaking with nerves as he unlocked the door and entered the room. Then his heart nearly shot its way through his chest, because he knew, in an instant, that something was wrong. The room was too silent, the bathroom door hanging open. He ran over, thinking that maybe she’d fallen on the slippery floor and hit her head, but the bathroom was empty. Spinning around, Ashe scanned the rest of the room and noticed that Juliana’s bag was gone.
With bile rising in the back of his throat, he tore out of the room, trying to convince himself that maybe she’d just gone down to the bar for a drink. But by the time Ashe had searched the entire building and made his way back to their room, without finding any sign of her, the truth was sharply, painfully clear. Juliana had either run from him…or she’d been taken.
He prayed to God it was the first, terrified it was the second…and knew damn well that either way, she was gone because of him. He’d screwed up and let her slip right out from under his nose—but he wasn’t going to stop searching until he’d found her.
With the pounding rhythm of his heart roaring in his ears, Ashe grabbed his bag and raced downstairs, shoving his way through the crowd as he hurried from the bar, out into the quiet darkness of the night, determined to do whatever it took to get her back.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THINK, DAMN IT.Stop panicking and start using your damn head!
Right. He knew that was what he needed to do, but as he prowled around the side of the bar, Ashe could feel his control slipping. Struggling to stay focused, he pulled in deep breaths through his nose, searching for any trace of Juliana’s scent. But there was nothing. Just the faint stench of spilled alcohol and the briny scent of the nearby Mediterranean.
Desperation started pumping through his veins.
“Please let her have run away,” he prayed under his breath. “Please don’t let her have been taken.”
But as badly as he wanted to believe she might have given in to her anger and run from him, it didn’t fit. Juliana was too smart to risk her safety that way. Which meant that someone had gone into that bloody bar and taken her. But who? If it’d been another group of assassins, wouldn’t they have left her body in the room? The Förmyndares, then? Was that who had her? Had they finally caught up with them?
Taking his cell phone from his pocket, he made a quick call to Gideon and told him to check in with the Förmyndare headquarters to see if any captures had been reported. Disconnecting the call, he returned the phone to his pocket and edged around the back corner of the building, into the darkened alley that ran between the bar and a row of warehouses that looked as though they’d been converted into apartments. Scanning his surroundings, Ashe ran down the middle of the alley in one direction, then turned and went in the other direction, still frantically searching for her scent.
“Goddamn it,” he snarled, ready to head back out to the main road and keep searching there, when the wind surged and he thought he detected the scent of another vampire. Scanning the alley, he caught sight of a man stepping out of the thick shadows at the far end of the bar, Ashe’s night vision picking out features that seemed vaguely familiar.
He narrowed his eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he growled, crossing the space between them in a long, aggressive stride.
Instead of backing away, the man stepped forward, hands raised in front of him, and Ashe got a clear view of his face. Cleft chin, straight nose, and shaggy, reddish-brown hair. The build was right, too. Tall and muscular, his body moving with the same predatory strength of all male vampires, lean muscles coiling beneath a white shirt and black jeans. So like a Deschanel…but with a monster’s heart.
Son of a bitch.
A deep, snarling roar ripped up from the depths of Ashe’s chest as he dropped his bag on the ground and charged toward Raphe Delacourt. Though he had seen Delacourt from a distance on several occasions, and had viewed numerous photographs of the infamous criminal, this was the first time he’d ever been face-to-face with the bastard.
“Where is she?” he growled, tackling Raphe to the ground and throwing a hammering right hook at the vampire’s jaw. “What have you done with her?”
“If you ever want to see her alive again, you stupid fuck, then stop fighting me and listen! I’m not the bad guy here. It’s my mother! She’s insane. She’s the real power behind my whole goddamn operation, just using me as a cover. She’s the one who took Juliana. Not me!”
“You lying piece of shit,” Ashe bellowed, smashing another punch across Delacourt’s face.
“I’m not lying,” Raphe snarled, blocking Ashe’s next punch. “I know where she is, but we have to hurry!”
“The only thing I have to do is beat the living shit out of you!”
Ashe landed another bone-crunching punch, and Raphe suddenly twisted in some kind of Brazilian jujitsu move that threw him off. They both hurried back to their feet with their arms raised, but while Ashe’s hands were fisted, Raphe was holding one with his palm out, the other wiping blood off his chin. “Just wait!” the guy shouted, turning and spitting a mouthful of blood from his split lip onto the concrete. “Damn it, I’m here to help you. I swear it on my honor!”
“You don’t have any honor!” he ground out, landing another punch against the bastard’s face. With a foul curse, Raphe blocked his next punch, but Ashe came in hard and fast with a punishing sequence of blows, pinning the asshole against the rear wall of the bar. Trapping him there, Ashe braced his forearm against Raphe’s throat, cutting off his air. It wasn’t a move that could kill a vampire, but it was still painful as hell. And he was pissed enough to make it hurt, rage flowing through his veins like a liquid flame. It was poisoning his mind, everything colored with a red, orange-tinted haze, flavored with fury.
“Listen to me—” Raphe wheezed, clawing at his arm.
“I said enough!” he barked, pressing his arm down tighter against Raphe’s throat as his talons slowly slipped from the tips of his fingers.
He could have easily ended it then, digging his talons into the skin under the bastard’s jawline and ripping open his venom sac, releasing the Medeiros poison into his system. The only thing that held him back was Delacourt’s eyes. They were a dark, muddy gray, proof that Ra
phe hadn’t fed before coming to confront him. In their world, that was a sign that he’d come in peace, and not aggression. That he’d purposefully constrained his strength as a show of good faith—one that Ashe couldn’t ignore, no matter how badly he wanted to.
Only an idiot would confront a Förmyndare without first loading up on a blood high.
An idiot…or a man who was telling the truth.
But he couldn’t forget what Juliana had suffered because of this asshole.
“Do you know what those bastards did to her after you’d torn her apart?” he snarled, shifting his hold on the vampire so that the tip of his thumb talon was pressed against the kill point on Raphe’s throat. “They cut her open because of you!”
For an instant, Raphe’s eyes flashed crimson, then returned to that same cloudy gray. “What are you talking about? Her punishment was banishment!”
“Yeah,” Ashe sneered, getting right in Delacourt’s face. “But not until after your mother had them cut her fucking womb out! And you stood by and did nothing, just so you could save your own ass.”
“I did everything I could,” Raphe argued. “Who do you think sent the damn guards to work at the Sabin compound? I’ve been arranging for her protection for years!”
“Bullshit. You’ve been living the high life for the past decade, while she suffered in that miserable shit hole.” He lifted his knee, jamming it against Raphe’s groin. “I should just smash these in,” he sneered, applying more pressure, “because you aren’t a man. You’re a fucking little mama’s boy, too dickless to stand up and do the right thing.”
Delacourt’s face was going red, a thin circle of crimson beginning to glow around his pupils. “You think I want the life I’ve had? Like hell. I’ve been pushed around by that woman since the day I was born.”
“You could have fought back,” Ashe argued, keeping his talon jammed under his jaw.
Violent emotion twisted Delacourt’s features. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Ashe’s nostrils flared. “So now you’ve finally found the balls to make a stand? Is that what I’m supposed to believe?”
“It’s…complicated.” Raphe shoved the words through his gritted teeth. “I’m screwing up my life with this stunt, but I don’t want to see Juliana die any more than you do. I can’t just stand by and let my mother kill her!”
Ashe broke away with a vicious snarl, his body rippling with fury. “Talk,” he growled. “And make it quick.”
“Several of my mother’s guards kidnapped Juliana tonight,” Delacourt scraped out, rubbing his sore throat. “My mother’s been researching your family ever since you started asking questions about the Sabins. Her spies have been watching the houses of everyone you know. When you visited that place in Toulouse today, her spies followed you back here. Just like they followed your brother to Nice.”
Retracting his talons, Ashe paced from side to side with restless aggression, keeping his gaze locked on Delacourt’s face. “Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m the one who’s been helping you, you jackass. I got Juliana out of the Wasteland, and I warned your brother about those guards that attacked you. You have to believe me, you arrogant son of a bitch, because I’m your only hope!”
“Where did they take her?” he demanded, almost wishing this bastard was lying, the idea of Jules being at the mercy of Lenora’s crazy henchmen making him want to rip something apart with his bare hands. And he’d be happy to start with the asshole standing in front of him.
“She’s at one of my mother’s homes on the outskirts of Marseilles. It’s not far from here, but we have to hurry. My mother’s on her way back from Rome as we speak.”
Ashe made a hard, thick sound in his throat, his eyes narrowed to sharp, piercing slits. “If you’re so intent on saving Juliana, why didn’t you stop them?”
Raphe’s jaw tightened with frustration. “I must have done something to tip my mother off, because she tried to divert my attention tonight. By the time I figured out what was happening, I tried to get here in time to stop them, but I was too late. Hell, I even tried calling your cell phone, but it wasn’t working.” He pulled his car keys from his pocket. “The only good news is that they’ll have to wait for my mother to arrive before they get to work on her.”
The idea of them “getting to work” on Juliana made Ashe want to retch, his fear like an actual physical thing in his body. “What’s the address?”
Raphe told him, and Ashe grabbed his bag. “If you’re lying,” he said, slanting a deadly look toward the vampire, “I’ll track you down and feed you your own entrails.”
He started to head back out to the main road, intending to borrow the first car he came across, hotwiring the engine, but Raphe grabbed his arm. “Wait! I have to go with you.”
“Not gonna happen,” he snarled, yanking his arm out of Delacourt’s hold.
Frustration roughened the guy’s words. “Don’t be an ass. You need me. I’m the only way you’ll get inside that place without her guards ripping you to shreds.”
Curling his lip, he sneered, “You’re actually willing to go in there and fight for her? Why the hell should I believe that, when you’ve never been willing to fight for her before? Why the fuck should I trust you?”
“Because I could have gone ahead and killed you both several times now,” he shot back. “Thanks to my mother’s watchdogs, I’ve known where to find you all week. But I didn’t because I want her alive, damn it! Just as badly as you do!”
Ashe could see the truth of those words in Delacourt’s furious gaze, jealousy coiling like a sinuous snake through his system. He choked it down, shoving it to the back, knowing it would just screw with his head when he needed to stay sharp for Juliana. Exhaling with a soft, serrated curse, he scraped out seven words that he’d never thought he would be saying to Raphe Delacourt. “Then I guess we’re doing this together.”
* * *
THEY MADE THE TRIP in record time, Delacourt’s low-slung Lamborghini Gallardo handling the winding French roads with sharp precision. With his elbow braced on the passenger’s-side door, Ashe rubbed his hand over his mouth, struggling to put his chaotic thoughts in order. To make sense of this surreal madness.
“If you’re the one who’s been helping Juliana,” he asked, sliding his gaze toward Delacourt, “then why couldn’t you just give her the damn evidence that she needed?” They were clipped, hard-edged words. “And why didn’t you just tell her it was you? That you were the one helping her?”
The vampire’s chest rumbled with a bitter laugh. “First of all, telling her I was the one trying to help her would have sent her screaming in the other direction.” He slid Ashe a wry look. “Why the hell do you think I’m bringing you along with me now? She’d never believe I was trying to help if I went in there on my own.”
“And here I thought you were bringing me because if the shit hits the fan, you won’t be able to handle your mama’s guards all on your own.”
His response was dry. “Well, there is that.”
“And the reason you couldn’t just give Juliana the information she needed to prove there were assassination orders out on her family?”
Shifting the car into a higher gear, Raphe said, “I couldn’t give you more because I didn’t have anything more. I had no idea which account my mother placed the payment from. I only knew she was the one who did it.”
“Why now?” he asked. “Why her sudden determination to see them destroyed after all this time?”
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