“And Jeremy was just standing there, watching it all.”
His hands stroked her hair, pushing it back from her shoulders. Gently, he massaged her neck, bringing her back to the present and all they shared. It would be so easy to relax into his touch, to go down the hall to the cramped bedroom and make love. His body called to hers in the way only his could. They were like mirror images of each other. He was more vampire than human. She was more human than vampire. Neither of them was entirely human.
Xandra let go of the breath she’d been holding. Somewhere, buried deep inside, she’d always known she was different. She’d always healed easily, always been stronger than the other children. But a young, horribly traumatized child survived any way she could. She’d repressed the memory so deep even she couldn’t access it, ignored her differences and pretended all was normal. Until the changes drinking Dante’s blood had made dissolved that carefully-constructed façade.
In the beginning, Jeremy had offered her his help, a purpose and a place to belong. Now she felt violated. She felt robbed. Not just of the mother who loved her, but of the truth about herself.
“He set her up,” she said, needing to say it once again to convince herself of what she felt deep inside was the honest truth. She looked up at Dante. The movement of his hands stilled. “The bastard. He knew he couldn’t keep both of us. He knew Mom would bolt and take me with her. And expose all his dirty little secrets. So he had her killed.”
“That way he could keep you,” Dante said.
More memories flooded into her mind. She remembered lying on a cold stretcher in the hospital after a run-in with a bunch of feral vampires. At the time, she’d merely thought it an isolated incident. Now she couldn’t help wondering if Jeremy had a more sinister purpose. As Dante had tried to warn her, Jeremy’s reinforcements never seemed to arrive in time. Was he trying to determine the effect of the feral vampires’ saliva on her blood?
Jeremy was a stickler for the rules. If she’d been injured (as she almost always was), he insisted on proper procedure, which included hospitals, tests and taking multiple vials of her blood.
“He’d found a way to have everything my mother had died for—a viable human-vampire-hybrid. A super-operative to satisfy his accomplices in the organized crime community—”
“And a living blood supply to continue his quest for immortality,” Dante said, finishing her thought.
“Tell me we’ll make him pay.”
Dante bent his head. His lips brushed the top of her head. She felt his heat, the call of his blood to hers. “Don’t worry, we’ll make him pay for everything.” He glanced around the tiny kitchen. “All we have to do is stay alive long enough.”
He stiffened, alerting her a fraction of a second before the noise. The sound of breaking glass shattered the silence.
Dante whirled, yanking Xandra from the chair in one fluid movement. He moved his larger body in front of her, shielding her from whatever was coming.
“The bedroom,” she whispered.
Grasping her hand, he moved along the hallway.
That’s when she heard Alix scream.
Dante flowed down the hall like a shadow. But he reared back when he saw the blinding sunlight streaming in through the broken bedroom window. Fingers of hot sun penetrated the hallway, stretching along the walls, grasping after the vampire hiding in the darkness.
Each of those questing rays was lethal enough to burn him severely. Xandra shook herself free of Dante’s grip on her wrist, intent on rushing into the bedroom.
But the moment her head cleared the doorway, a bullet whizzed by, imbedding itself in the doorframe and showering her with wood fragments.
Shielding his eyes from the sunlight, Dante returned fire. But partially blinded by the glare, his aim was off. The bullet lodged in the window frame.
“Give me that,” Xandra demanded. To her surprise Dante surrendered the gun. She positioned herself in the doorway, braced her legs and took aim.
Searing sunlight blazed across the room. Instantly, her eyes began to tear up. Xandra squeezed the trigger, hoping she’d seen enough to aim in the direction of the operatives escaping down the fire escape with Alix.
Below someone yelped. She prayed she hadn’t hit Alix by accident. The sun shining through the broken window burned hot enough to blister her skin. She blinked away her tears, shocked at intensity of it. She’d never taken the sun well, but it seemed to burn with a new ferocity.
Dante yanked her back with him into the relative shadow of the hallway. “You’ve had a fair bit of my blood,” he cautioned. “You might be far more sensitive to sunlight than you were before.”
“But—” It felt ludicrous to be trapped in the hallway by something as innocuous as sunlight, but that one brief exposure had been enough to turn the skin on her arm pink.
With his free hand Dante dialed his cell phone to call for reinforcements from the police force. Xandra peered more cautiously around the doorframe into the bedroom. The gunshots seemed to have drawn attention. Off in the distance she heard sirens. From the fire escape she heard the scramble of feet as the kidnappers made off with Alix. Behind her, Dante was arguing with his boss. “She does have information on the Mack Saunders murder,” she heard him say.
Xandra risked another furtive glance into the bedroom. The cramped room showed definite signs of a struggle. Broken glass covered everything. Both pillows were strewn across the floor. The blankets twisted between them like a fat snake. The lamp had been knocked from the bedside table. Alix obviously hadn’t gone without a fight.
Had Jeremy specifically sent men after Alix? Or had they merely guessed wrong about which bedroom Xandra would be sleeping in? Were they only now discovering that they had the wrong hostage? That wouldn’t go well for Alix, Xandra thought with a pang of worry.
“I want to know how they keep finding us!” Dante said, the accusation in his voice plain. “This place was supposed to be protected!” The reply from the other end of his cell phone didn’t sound any more conciliatory. “You know damned well why I can’t pursue them,” he said, then, “Never mind. Now we have a hostage situation.”
Whatever he’d said to his boss, she heard the sound of more sirens rapidly approaching.
“We have to go after them,” Xandra insisted as Dante ended the call.
He motioned to the sunlight that brightened the bedroom. “We can’t. But don’t worry, help is on the way.”
“But they’ve got Alix! We just can’t sit here and wait!”
“We don’t have a choice.” He pulled her against him. She sagged in his arms. He felt solid and sane in this world that had suddenly taken such a crazy turn. Every day seemed to bring a horrible revelation. Even the memories locked in her mind had deceived her. “Don’t worry.” His burnished voice rippled down her spine even now. “We’ll get Alix back.”
“This is terrible! What good am I if I can’t even go out in the sunshine?”
“We don’t know how long the effects of my blood will last.” He sounded far more reasonable than she felt. “There isn’t anyone else like you, Xandra. We’ll just have to see. It might only be a temporary situation.”
“But this is one time I desperately need my humanity.”
“You’re as human as you choose to be,” he said. And she wanted to believe him. Life had been so much simpler before, even though she now knew she’d been living a lie Jeremy had carefully constructed. In that moment she desperately wanted the comforting deception back.
Someone pounded on the door. “Metro Police!” boomed a male voice.
Skirting the bright pool of sunlight, Dante moved down the hallway to the front door. He wrenched the door open to find a trio of uniformed police wedged in the doorway with guns drawn. Holding up one hand, he flipped open his badge. She heard the slap of metal meeting leather as the guns were holstered. Dante led them back toward the bedroom. In seconds he had sent two of the team in pursuit of Alix. But would they find her in time? Now that Jer
emy knew for certain she’d been in league with Xandra and Dante, he wouldn’t be so pleasant.
“At least we have the computer.” Xandra walked up behind Dante. So far it seemed like the only thing in this operation that had gone right.
“Tell the chief we have proof of the underworld’s involvement in all of this,” Dante said to the remaining officer as he turned into the kitchen.
He stopped so suddenly Xandra ran into him. Peering around his shoulder, she surveyed the damage. The building next door blocked most of the light to the kitchen, but even in the dimness she could tell the table was empty. The computer was gone.
“Or not,” Dante said.
Chapter Thirteen
Xandra stared at the broken kitchen window. Glass littered the bistro table and covered the kitchen floor. Pieces of it lay scattered on top of the microwave and the coffee maker, the only appliances on the counter.
“Oh no!” It seemed inconceivable that on top of losing Alix, they had also lost their only proof of what Jeremy and his band of renegade scientists and underworld kingpins had been doing.
“They created a diversion by snatching Alix,” Dante surmised.
“So they could grab the computer?”
He nodded.
“But why not just take us out as well? That’s what I would have done.”
“I’m sure that was the plan, but I called for reinforcements.”
Xandra looked at the muscular uniformed officer crowded into the doorway of the tiny galley kitchen. “I guess it wouldn’t go down so well to take out one of the city’s finest, even if he was a vampire.” She realized with a start she wasn’t just talking about Dante or his department, but about herself as well. “No offense.”
He offered her a wry smile. “None taken.”
A ray of sunlight slanted off the red brick of the building next door. It penetrated the narrow alleyway between the buildings but barely grazed the kitchen windowsill. “What now?”
The police officer had moved down the hall to investigate the crime scene. Dante gave the sun a wary glance. “We’re kind of stuck here until dusk.”
“There must be something we can do.” She refused to sit there idly, whether she was ready to drop from lack of sleep or be burnt to a crisp by the sun.
“Xandra, everything that can be done is being done.”
“Are you sure? It’s not like the city cares a whole bunch about their vampire citizens. Generally, they think they’re more trouble than not.”
He acknowledged her blatant statement of prejudice with a nod. “Well, that’s debatable, but they do care about organized crime. And I’ve managed to convince them that Alix is a valuable witness.”
“And when they find out she’s not?”
“They won’t. By the time we get her back, she will be a credible witness.”
Xandra shuddered at the thought of what Jeremy might do to her friend. Hopefully, Alix would be smart enough to pretend that she’d been led astray by Xandra and Dante, deceived by their bond of friendship.
“I know Jeremy. He won’t hold back this time.”
“No,” Dante said. “But he knows the police force is after him now. And shortly he’ll know that we’ve accessed the files on his computer. So—”
“He’ll be all the more desperate.”
“I was going to say he’ll be careful not to anger the force.”
“Or he’ll want to cover his tracks by executing another informant. Just like he did with my mother.”
Dante enfolded her in his strong arms. She leaned against his chest and for a moment there was only the two of them standing in the kitchen. She would have given anything just to stay that way.
“Don’t think about it, Xandra,” Dante said, his mouth mere inches from her ear. His hand cupped the back of her head. He stroked her hair. “Believe that the police will do their job and we’ll get her back.”
“I can’t wait until nightfall to search for her.”
“People are searching for her.”
As if on cue, the officer wandered back down the hall, radio in hand. Talking into the radio, he requested a fingerprint team at the site. For a moment there was silence. And then the radio crackled to life.
“Subjects in sight,” said a male voice.
Dante whirled toward the sound. “Tell them to proceed with caution. They have our witness.”
The officer relayed the order.
“Fall back, but keep them in sight. Wherever they’re taking her, they’re to surround the place, be discreet and wait for my orders.”
“Understood, sir.”
He turned back to Xandra. “Any idea where they’ll take her?”
She racked her mind, trying to think of places where Jeremy would take Alix. “He’ll be obvious about it. He’ll want to make sure we know where to come when darkness falls.”
“So he can get his hands on both of us.”
“That would be the plan.” After all these years, she knew how Jeremy’s mind worked.
His amber eyes flickered back and forth as he considered her words. “If that’s true, then he’ll be willing to wait until nightfall. Hopefully, Alix will have the sense to play along, knowing we can’t come after her until then.”
“But what good does that do if he’s just waiting for us?”
A spark of malice glittered in those golden eyes. “Maybe we should do what he’s expecting,” Dante said. “And deliver ourselves to him.”
“What? Allow ourselves to be captured?”
He nodded. “Think about it. Jeremy knows we’ll come after Alix. He probably won’t harm her until we show up.”
“And then he’ll put on a good show of scaring her,” she continued his train of thought.
“Right.”
“So we do what? Allow ourselves to be captured? I can’t see the point.”
“A very controlled and planned-out capture. We do have the resources of the police force.”
Dante’s plan was starting to make an odd kind of sense. “He’ll be expecting us to do something like that.”
“Perhaps not. Because any minute he’ll be calling to give us orders to come alone.”
The apartment phone rang, startling not just Xandra and Dante, but the police officer as well.
“That would be our ransom call,” Dante said.
As he crossed the kitchen toward the phone on the wall above the counter, he waved to the officer, who called in a request for a call trace. Dante’s hand hovered above the phone.
“No, let me talk,” Xandra said.
Dante lifted the receiver and handed it to her. But he kept his head beside hers, so with his sensitive hearing he could monitor what was being said.
Xandra picked up the phone. “Wheeler,” she barked into the receiver.
“Ah, well now, isn’t this a surprise.” Jeremy’s voice. “I was expecting your vampire friend, Dante.”
“Enough, Jeremy. What have you done with Alix?”
A long pause from the other end of the phone, so long Xandra was afraid he had hung up. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the police officer motioning for them to extend the call long enough for the technicians to trace it.
Dante mouthed, “Alix!”
“Like I said, I want to know where you’ve taken Alix.”
“Miss Greenberg hasn’t been harmed,” he said, then, “for the moment.”
Her temper unraveled, despite Dante’s warnings. “And you’d better keep it that way!”
“Now that, my dear, is up to you.”
She let the threat drop. She’d deal with Jeremy once she had Alix back safely. “Let her go, Jeremy. Alix knows nothing. She has no part in this.”
“Oh, I imagine Miss Greenberg knows far more than she’s letting on. And that makes her dangerous.”
“You involved her in this, you son of a bitch!”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Jeremy said in his most obsequious voice. Her fingers tightened on the receiver. She wanted to slam the
phone against the counter.
Dante was shaking his head fervently, warning her against further loss of her temper. The police officer behind him mimed stretching signals. Above all, she couldn’t anger Jeremy enough to hang up the phone.
Xandra drew in a long, calming breath. “Just tell me what you want.”
“Now you’re being more reasonable,” Jeremy said, still clearly mocking her.
“Yes, let’s be reasonable.”
“Fine.” There was a long silence. Again, Xandra thought he’d hung up. The officer was still sending her frantic signals to continue the conversation.
“You still there, Jeremy?”
“I’m here,” he barked.
“I just want to get this over with,” she said.
“You just want to trace the call.”
“I just want Alix back,” Xandra said, refusing to take the bait.
“And I trained you to say just that kind of thing,” Jeremy said. “Don’t think I’m fooled. As for tracing the call, it won’t do you any good. It’s a cell phone that I’ll only be using once. And I intend to keep on moving.”
He was goading her again. For Alix’s sake she had to keep her head. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want you to meet me out by the old candy factory on the edge of town. Just you and Rodriguez—no one else.”
“I know the place,” Xandra said. “What time?”
“Come at dusk.”
Now that was odd. Why would Jeremy want her to come at nightfall when she’d be able to bring Dante with her? Because he wanted Dante as well, came the answer. She shuddered. Or maybe because once night fell he could use his feral vampire operatives rather than more legitimate forces.
But Dante was nodding his acceptance of the plan, so she said. “Okay, we’ll see you at sunset. That’s all you want? Us to come at nightfall?”
“That’s all.” The line went dead.
Xandra swore softly.
“It’s okay,” Dante said. “You did really well.”
She shook her head. “I’ve been trained in hostage situations, but I find it incredibly hard to keep my wits about me when it involves someone I care about.”
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