by R. S. Black
I ran even faster when I finally caught sight of the flag. I bounded up the steps and was getting ready to knock when I heard a scream of outrage.
“What do ye mean, he hasn’t taken the bait?”
Pause.
I placed my ear against the door. The words grew low and muffled, but I was able to make them out.
“Now ye listen to me. I don’t care what ye have to do to make this happen, but ye will make it happen. If ye don’t...”
The door was suddenly flung open. Startled, I yelped and jerked back swiftly, trying not to appear as guilty as I felt.
“What were ye doin’?” Mary asked, a suspicious glint in her gray eyes.
“I’m here for the... umm, package.”
“Package,” the tiny voice in my head questioned. “You didn’t tell me about a pit stop at Grace’s.”
She stared at me for a long second. I shoved my hands down my pocket, trying my best to ignore my vexation at getting caught by her. Luc snarled that he was going to kill me when I got back if I didn’t answer him now.
I plastered on my best smile, going for innocence and naiveté. “Well, you gonna let me in or what?”
The static in my head died down. Let him stew. Served him right.
Mary didn’t seem to want to budge. As a matter of fact, her attitude turned downright hostile. She gripped the door, her mouth set into a hard slash. My smile slipped, and I cocked my head, aggravation burning a hot line through me. I lifted my brow and let her know that she had a second to move before I made her do it.
“If I were you, Mary,” Grace said, “I’d move away from the door.”
The girl finally stepped back, but her rigid posture screamed she wasn’t happy about it.
I walked in, glared at her, then turned toward Grace. “Sorry I got here early, but I wanted to make it to the club before it opened.”
The earpiece buzzed. “I think when you get home I’m going to tie you down to the bed and swat you for keeping more secrets from me.”
I coughed, clearing my throat. Grace gave me a questioning look. I patted my chest. “Just a prick in my throat,” I said with a stiff smile.
“Well, okay...” Confusion was still evident on her face as she gestured me toward the kitchen where she stood.
My ears rang with a peal of laughter I was determined to ignore.
Grace’s normally neat bun had come loose, and wisps of curls framed her face in a gray halo. She looked about as frazzled as I’d ever seen her.
“You look awful, Grace. You okay?”
She curled her nose. “Bloody order’s got me teeth on edge. When ye told me about the little girl, I thought of a plan to try to get inside. Find out if that was an isolated incident or indicative of some grand conspiracy.”
I perked up. So did Luc, by the obvious lack of noise on the other end of the line. “Oh yeah?”
“Mmm.” She nodded. “Many of us are inducted into the order at young ages. I was ten when I sealed in.”
I frowned. That seemed incredibly young to take on the huge responsibility of being a watcher. My doubt must have shown because she wagged her finger at me.
“You’ve no idea how valuable the little ones are to us. They’re almost always overlooked and able to get in places adults cannot.”
Made sense. But still... “What’d you do?”
“We grabbed a girl child, twelve, but she looks much younger. More like eight. We’ve got scouts all over her, we set her out as bait. But no takers yet. We need to get inside there, Pandora.”
I narrowed my eyes. What a perfect answer. Too perfect, maybe? Had she known I was listening? Or was it really the truth, and I was looking for trouble where there wasn’t any?
I clenched my jaw. The Gray Man had done his job well. I didn’t know who to trust anymore. Was Grace really telling me the truth, or had it been a brilliant ruse to throw me off the scent of what was real? My stomach churned. Was I losing my mind? It was beginning to feel that way.
“Well, anyway...” She flicked her wrist. “That’s not yer problem—it’s mine.” She turned and I followed. “I’ve got what you need. Here.” She grabbed a small leather-bound book off the kitchen table.
It was thin. I mean twenty, thirty pages thin. I frowned. “Is this it?” After hundreds of years, this was all the order had about the priests? It was almost anticlimactic. I’d expected something thick and nearly full to bursting.
“Aye. They’re an elusive lot. I do hope it can be of some help.”
Curious, but running low on time, I forced myself to stuff the book into my back pocket. “Thanks.”
She grabbed my hand. “Call me if you learn anything new. Understand?”
I nodded.
“Or if you see—” She glanced over her shoulder at Mary who stood by the sink washing a plate with the slow, methodical movements of someone trying to pretend they weren’t listening when in fact they were. She leaned in to whisper in the ear without the piece in it. “You know who.”
I wondered if Luc heard her. I hoped not.
“What did she say?” I heard him ask. “See who? Pandora, don’t think I don’t know who she’s talking about.”
“I will.” Lie. I wasn’t gonna tell another soul about him. Then I said my good-byes and left. The second the door closed Luc grilled me.
He growled. “What did she give you?”
I smirked, very pleased with myself and liking the wire a little better. Without it, I would never have experienced the instant gratification of pissing him off. How fun. “Now, now, demon,” I purred. “A woman can’t spill all her secrets.”
I headed back toward the alleyway. There was a long enough lull in our conversation that I thought the batteries had died, when he quietly said, “Pandora, I saw purple in there.”
“What? Purple?” I asked, a second before what he meant dawned on me. “I thought you said paras were blue?”
“Up till now, that’s pretty much all I’ve ever seen.” He grew quiet. When Luc was nervous—and trust me, he was—I was nervous. “Where was it?”
“That’s what doesn’t make sense.”
I stopped walking and looked over my shoulder, peering down the empty street, the rows of houses almost seeming like malevolent specters the way the empty black windows stared back at me. I shivered.
“Put it this way,” Luc said, “you were a tower of blue in a sea of purple.” But I barely heard him as I turned and ran down the alley.
The eyes were back, and they were watching me.
Chapter 19
When I’d ported I’d lost the eyes. I didn’t know who kept following me, and frankly I didn’t care so long as it stopped.
I crouched in shadows on the building adjacent to Sanguinary, watching the cluster of people gathering around the still-closed doors. But I saw nothing out of the ordinary. No tall man. No kids. This plan of mine might very well turn dud if something didn’t happen soon.
“Where are you, Dora? I see you and black.” Luc sounded aggravated, I smiled.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad. I’m on a roof. Your thingy’s not broken.”
He growled.
I loved picking on him, made my night so much more enjoyable. “You know,” I said, “this wire is quickly becoming my best friend. I never knew it could be so easy to get a rise out of you.”
“I hate you.”
I grinned. “Although...”
I leaned back on my heels, studying a straggler walking down the sidewalk. He was a smallish man, wearing a trench coat and ball cap tucked down tight on his head so that his face was hidden.
You can always tell the look of a person up to something. My heart thumped with excitement, and I waited with bated breath, expecting to see him pluck some child out of the shadow at any moment. But when he entered the X-rated theater, I knew it was probably some married husband of three, trying to hide his late-night sexcapades from the ol’ ball and chain.
“Yeah,” Luc prompted.
I
pinched my nose, blowing out a disappointed breath. “Isn’t seeing nothing but purple inside Grace’s house sorta odd?”
I could picture him shoving his fingers through his hair. “Yes.”
“So is it fried, or what?”
“You didn’t maybe see anything weird while you were there, did you?”
I thought about it for a second. “Nah, nothing that I can think of. Housemaid, Mary, was channeling a bit of the Wicked Witch of the West, but...” I shrugged. “Wait. Were her and Grace purple too?”
“No.” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “They were red, orange. Human. The purple happened about two seconds before you left. It was almost like creeping fog the way it rolled over their heat markers.”
“So they’re definitely human.”
He sighed. “Would seem so. Either that, or the wire really is fried.” He took a deep breath. “And there was no one else there?”
“Not unless they were upstairs. I didn’t sense anyone else.”
“Hmm.”
I settled in and waited for something to happen. The wire fell silent. Either Luc had fallen asleep or he was eating. Personally I was fine with that.
Figuring I had some time, I grabbed the book with eager anticipation and flipped it open to the first page. It was difficult trying to decipher the chicken scratch; obviously the order hadn’t yet come into the twenty-first century, preferring handwritten notes to press print.
I sighed.
Pontifex Mortus: An ancient sect of warriors trained in battle and skilled in every weapon known to man. They are highly efficient assassins, oftentimes able to catch their prey unaware.
I bitterly twisted my lips. I’d experienced that firsthand.
A Priest’s killing is distinguishable by their use of the biblical passage Revelations 21:8.
My shoulders slumped. None of this was new. My excitement waned with each sentence read. The order seemed to know even less than I did. And they called themselves the watchers. I snorted.
“I could do better than this,” I huffed.
The book went on to speak about their appearance, height. I growled, aggravated.
Then I flipped the page, and my stomach churned with a case of gut-wrenching butterflies.
Names. Over time we’ve gathered clues and insights, repetition of names and aliases. Which is which, we haven’t a clue, likely guess these are the true names:
Asher. Dahlia. Cain. Axel. Ari. Two remain, as yet a mystery.
I frowned. Dahlia was a female name. There was one Cain and three names beginning with A. I reached into my shirt and pulled out the necklace, staring at the silver A inscribed on the medallion. So who was my Billy?
I couldn’t picture him as an Axel or an Ari. Asher. I grinned, heart thumping forcefully. Maybe.
“Asher,” I said slowly, tasting the vowels of the name. My pulse hammered. Was that his name? I couldn’t explain it, but somehow it felt right.
I turned the page, and my jaw fell in shock. “No way.” I flipped page after page, and it was all the same. Every page aside from the first two had been blacked out with marker.
Stunned, I sat that way for a second, shaking my head in disbelief. But after two more minutes of flipping back and forth, I finally had to admit it was no hallucination.
“What the hell did they do?” Angrily I snapped the book shut. Did Grace know what had been done to this book? Who’d done this, and what were they trying to hide?
“What?” Luc asked.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and shoved it back into my pocket. There were ways to reveal hidden words, even under the thick stain of black marker. It was scientific, and I didn’t quite understand the how of it, but I was going to figure out a way.
“Nothing,” I said, clenching my jaw.
Another ten minutes passed and still nothing happened. This was horrible. Maybe it was time I cut my losses, head back to my trailer and try again tomorrow. Besides, I was beginning to grow twitchy, and I was already beyond aggravated. Two nights back-to-back in the city. I didn’t like it. I turned to go and stopped dead in my tracks as a dark shape stepped out of the shadows before me.
I gasped, my heart jumped to my throat, and I shivered at the hard glint inside Billy’s cool brown eyes. Or was it Asher?
“Dora?” Luc said. I swallowed hard, pulse racing out of control. “Are you okay? Answer me.”
His hot gaze started at my feet and worked its way slowly up to my face. He was carrying a large pink box with a white ribbon tied around it. Somehow—call me crazy—I didn’t see Billy as the gift-toting type. Was the man pulling a Joker on me? Was there some psychotic Jack-in-the-box inside with a miniature Uzi waiting for me to flip off the lid to trigger it? It was sick and perverted, and man, I wish I’d thought of it first.
He looked at my face now, a small smile on his, as if he enjoyed watching my suspicion.
I had no idea where the receiving end of the microphone was, so I squished my forearm along the length of the wire, hoping to cover it up when Billy spoke first.
“Neph,” he said. The word curled off his tongue with a seductive burr. Heat suffused my body, made things tighten down low.
“Pandora!” The earpiece buzzed with a loud crackle of static. “Is he there? Is that him? You’d better answer me. How come I didn’t see color? I’m gonna kill Kemen.”
Well, jeez. Obviously I’d covered nothing. I dropped my arm. Luc was right. How had Billy gotten the jump on me again? Piece of crap infrared was fried.
He licked his lips, snagging my attention back to him. He looked mouthwateringly delicious tonight. Billy was dressed in black tailored slacks, a dove-gray gray button-down shirt, red satin tie, and a black felt fedora. I frowned, hating to see all his glorious silver hair covered up that way. But I couldn’t deny the look was dark, dangerous, and uberyummy. So at odds with the delicate pink box in his hands. I licked my lips.
Here kitty, kitty. Come to, mama, Lust purred.
My pulse sped. “What’s the box for?”
“Dora...” Luc’s voice was cold with warning.
I shook my head; wire was so not my friend at the moment.
“You.” Billy held it out toward me.
Okay, now it’s every girl’s fantasy to have a hot stud buy her a gift for no good reason, but this was Billy. Let’s get real. I eyed it, still expecting it to blow up in my face once I opened it.
“What is it?”
He smiled. When he’s snarling at me, Billy is hot. But oh, my God. When he smiles, it feels like the world takes a giant breath and then blows it out with a stomach-churning sigh.
“Open it.”
I snorted. “Do you think I was born yesterday?” Not that I didn’t want to open the box. I absolutely did.
“Pandora, listen to me... use that ring. Do you hear me? Don’t you let him trick you. I swear, if you don’t listen to me, he won’t have to kill you. I’ll do it myself.”
Inwardly I seethed but said nothing.
Billy narrowed his eyes and moved in closer, walking a slow circle around me. Did he know I was mic’d up? Could he tell? And if he could, how?
The book in my back pocket felt like it was burning a hole through me. I only hoped he didn’t grab it and try to read it. Awkward wouldn’t even begin to do it justice.
His body heat pressed against my back like a warm blanket. I trembled, but not with fear. It was the excited agitation of prey caught in the cross fires of a predator and the exquisite unknown of certain death or escape.
Then his breath was on my ear, the gift box pressed against my spine. I leaned into him. I couldn’t help it. “Get dressed,” he said, voice thick with gravel.
“Huh?” I blinked. But I was dressed, what was he talking about?
He walked in front of me and thrust the box in my hands, simultaneously flipping off the lid. I dropped it, hissed, and jumped back. I crouched on the balls of my feet and eyed it as if it were a cobra ready to sink its fangs into me. I had a kn
ife in my hand. I hadn’t even realized I’d pulled one out. I hated surprises.
It took me a second to realize that aside from a ghastly pink dress folded neatly inside there was nothing else. I frowned. “What is this?” I snarled.
“Pandora,” Luc snapped, but I could hear the frenzy of his fear in my name.
“I’m fine,” I said without thinking, and then shot my gaze toward Billy, nerves fluttering in my throat. His face was impassive, but there was a gleam of knowledge in his eyes.
“Get dressed,” he said again.
I stood and planted my hands on my hip, glowering at him. “You aren’t the boss of me. And I am not putting that”—I stressed with repugnance, pointing at the hideous dress—“on.”
He licked his lips, and I had to fight to remember why I was so mad at him when he looked so yummy and delicious. The man was wicked, no doubt about it. He crossed his large arms over his equally large chest and gave me a droll look. “You will.”
I snorted. “We’ll just see about that.” I dusted my hands off on my pants. “Why don’t you go get Belle to play dress up for you? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”
I’d meant to come off snarky, but it sounded more jealous than anything. I wanted to scream with frustration at my inability to remain detached where he was concerned.
“Who?” He looked confused, and my stomach flopped so violently to my knees my legs grew weak for a second. Was he serious?
His dark brows drew into a sharp vee, then he waved his hand in dismissal, once more in control of himself. “You’re gonna put that on, and I’m gonna tell you why you’re gonna put that on,” he said.
I lifted my brow. “Oh, yes. You tell me why you think I would ever choose to willingly do anything you asked of me.”
“Because I know how to get inside.”
Hot, pulsing excitement shivered down my spine. He knew how to get inside. How? When did he figure that out?