He poked among the trash with the point of his pencil, looking for what might be the most useful. Not the Payday candy bar wrapper, sticky with caramel. But a couple of wadded-up sheets of paper might be promising, and—better—a scrap of paper with an address scribbled on it.
He picked up the paper with the address, spread out the wrinkles, and closed his eyes. The room fell silent, and Nik had to block out the weight of his friends’ gazes so he could focus. He didn’t try to analyze the images that came to him, but sketched blindly.
When that paper had given up its history, he grabbed the first wadded up sheet and again smoothed it out, resting his palms on it. He jerked at the image that came to him, but blocked out any analysis of it. He just drew. Again and again, until there was nothing left but the candy wrapper, which yielded several images, but a face he’d seen from one of the other papers, so he drew it again.
He tossed the sketchbook on the table, along with the pencil, and leaned back, waiting for the headaches and lethargy that always followed the use of his Touch. Sometimes, even a nosebleed. Nothing happened. Surprised, he leaned forward and grinned at Robin—until a fang sliced into his lip.
A slow smile spread across her face. “It didn’t make you sick.”
“Nope, and I could control the speed of the images and how long I saw them. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
“Quite a lot, actually.” Cage had been flipping through the sketchbook. He held up one image. “I do believe that’s our buddy Frank Greisser. The man with him might be one of his New Orleans people.”
The sketch showed a business-suited Greisser talking to a shorter, slimmer man in a blue sweater and slacks. The man’s dark hair reached his shoulders. “Anybody recognize him?” Nik asked. “He’s in another sketch, along with a guy that shows up three times.”
The three-time guy was tall with an athletic build, but his features were unremarkable. Everyman. “He’s human,” Nik said. “I knew because he ate the candy bar.”
“I recognize him.” Robin snatched up the drawings of Everyman and compared them. “He was one of two guys guarding the women when I got a look inside the warehouse yesterday. Messy eater. He was dribbling roast beef gravy on his shirt.”
Gadget flipped through the sketches. “So what’s next?”
Nik looked at Robin and Cage. “The three of us will leave for New Orleans immediately after daysleep. We’ll have a six-hour drive to figure out how to handle my rendezvous with Frank Greisser’s people and find out what they want from me.”
And, he hoped, get Shay and the others out alive.
Cage frowned. “I don’t think we should wait until tomorrow night—that’s when they expect us. Let’s leave now. It will at least get us in position earlier.”
Robin held up her car keys, then tossed them to Nik. “You’re driving.”
Chapter 11 * Nik
“Love, if you don’t stop nibbling on my earlobe, I will crawl back there and give you what you’re asking for.” Cage glanced back at Robin, who’d tortured him from the back seat most of the six-hour drive from Penton to New Orleans. “We’ll be leaving Nikolas to handle the big bad vampires by himself while we do nasty things to each other.”
“Don’t make me kill you both.” Nik kept his voice calm but he wanted to scream at his fellow posse members. Shay and the other women were within reach, yet the rescue team members were cooling their heels in the rental car, watching the warehouse. Or he was cooling his heels while the lovebirds flirted.
Robin squeezed Nik’s shoulder and settled back in her seat. “Sorry, Niko. We’ll get her back, and we’ll keep her safe.”
“Bloody right.” Cage leaned forward to watch a passing car, but it continued west of the warehouse. “They aren’t expecting us until tomorrow night, so it’s a good time to verify what they’re up to. I know their end game is to survive the pandemic. That way, Frank Greisser can be the savior of vampirekind and have a legitimate reason to kill everyone in Penton. We need proof that this breeding scheme is a reality so Aidan can convince other scathe leaders to join our cause.”
Nik nodded. “I get it. Shay and the other three women might know what’s going on, but they also might not. They’re probably scared to death.” He’d still feel better if they got the women out now. The last time he’d seen Shay she’d been a fiery teenager who he could imagine had grown into a strong, passionate woman. Who probably hated his guts.
And with good reason. He’d been the poster child for the moody, angry teen boy. Instead of letting his father help him manage the psychometry, he’d acted out. Then he’d run like a coward. If he hadn’t met a guy named Jack Kellison and let himself be talked into enlisting in the Army, he might still be running.
Hell, if he hadn’t found Penton, he might still be running.
Being turned vampire had never been part of the plan.
They’d left Penton within an hour of Robin’s return from her scouting trip, with Nik driving a rental car procured by Melissa Calvert’s human husband, Mark. The late-model SUV sliced through the darkness, solid and generic black, its windows tinted.
The night was humid, clear, and a windy forty-five degrees, not unusual for Christmas week in New Orleans. They’d come straight to the warehouse and backed into a nearby delivery road with a good view of the building. The high, narrow windows of the solid red-brick rectangle were so dirty, the glow of inside lights was barely visible. A board had been nailed over the window Robin had broken on her earlier visit.
The two narrow lanes of Tchoupitoulas Street wound west of downtown New Orleans like a snake, following the curves of the Mississippi River that lay just out of sight over tall earthen levees, railroad tracks, and warehouses. This time of night, especially, traffic was limited.
“How long do we wait?” Nik glanced at his phone. “It’s two-thirty. Sunrise is, what, six-fifteen? Six-thirty?”
“We need to be at your friend’s house by six a.m., to be cautious,” Cage said, glancing at his watch. “Are you sure the place is still safe?”
“Should be.” Nik loved the old renovated double in Mid-City. “My friend Kell owns it, so there should be nothing to tie it to me. The first floor flooded during Hurricane Katrina and had to be stripped down to studs, so we rebuilt it as storage, with all the living area upstairs except for a small guest apartment. Only one window on the first floor, but the whole front storage area should be light-tight, with both front and side exits.”
“Perfect.”
Robin leaned forward, sticking her head over the seatback between them. “Look. That car’s slowing down.”
They fell silent, eyes glued to a small sedan that pulled up outside the warehouse door. A man got halfway out before stopping to tie a shoelace. Normally, Nik wouldn’t have been able to see him clearly enough to identify. But good old vampire-vision let him visually cut through the shadows.
“That’s the human whose image I pulled off some of your trash, Robin. The one who ate the candy bar.”
Cage propped his elbows on his knees, squinting. “Yes, it is.” He pulled the car rental slip out of the glove compartment. “Anybody got a pen?”
Robin found one, and Cage wrote down the license plate number, then pulled out his own phone. “Just in case he doesn’t come back out, I’ll text his info to Will. He or Gadget seem able to hack into anything. This guy’s name and address could come in handy.”
“Assuming he has a valid driver’s license under his real name.” From his days in Special Ops, Nik had a half-dozen passports in different names, none of them his.
“It probably is,” Cage said. “The humans don’t think about it, and all but the youngest vampires are too technologically backward to know what can be faked these days.”
Robin cleared her throat. “Says the man who hasn’t driven a car since World War II.”
“Cars have become bloody complicated things.” He eyed the SUV’s dashboard. “Why an automobile needs a computer is beyond me.”
Nik
leaned over the steering wheel. “He’s coming back out.” The man exited the door, climbed back in his car, and sat for a moment before the rear lights flashed to indicate he’d turned on the engine.
“Okay, now we’re in business.” Cage said. “Let’s see where our friend goes. Don’t let him spot you.”
Nik waited until the sedan had taken a curve several hundred yards east toward downtown before turning on his lights and pulling onto Tchoupitoulas. They followed at a distance, silent now as traffic grew heavier. Nik allowed a couple of cars to get between them, but sped up as needed to keep the gray sedan in sight.
There were many things about his hometown Nik missed. The food. The architecture filled with history and painted a rainbow of colors. The sound of ships’ horns echoing off the river, or streetcars clanging along the St. Charles Avenue route. The music coming from almost everywhere you turned. The rich scent of magnolia blooms wafting through the humid summer nights.
He did not, however, miss the constant heavy traffic navigating New Orleans’s curving streets twenty-four/seven. He had to concentrate to keep their target’s taillights from getting lost in the crowd of other small, dark sedans. Cage and Robin helped him with an occasional “right lane” or “left turn.”
Finally, they were again able to catch up, with only one vehicle between theirs and his. The man slowed and turned left on a side street off St. Claude Avenue, then took a quick right into a narrow driveway. Nik continued past the renovated shotgun house where the guy had stopped, finding a spot on the street a few doors down near what looked like a popular bar.
“Lot of people out and about on a weeknight at almost three in the morning.” Cage glanced around them at the foot traffic moving between two or three nightspots.
Nik nodded. “Faubourg Marigny. Mixed residential and commercial. Lots of clubs around here. New York isn’t the only city that never sleeps.”
Robin opened her door and climbed out of the SUV. “Our dude has gone in his house, so time’s wasting.”
Cage was close behind her. “And you’re going to do what? We need to devise a plan.”
She ignored him.
Nik got out of the SUV, locked the doors, and pocketed the keys. Robin was going to do whatever Robin did. That’s how she rolled. Cage still hadn’t figured out he wasn’t the alpha in that relationship, poor guy.
“I’m going to be a helpless, drunk chick asking for directions. When he gives in to my womanly wiles, you and Nik—the vampire muscle—can take over.”
Cage shrugged. “Works for me. Nik, since time is short before sunrise, do you want to wait for our human to talk or do you want to pull the information from his head?”
“First, let’s make sure he doesn’t have anyone in the house with him.” Nik stuffed his hands in the pockets of his combat pants and wished his friend Kell was here with him. Kell would have mapped out a detailed plan that left nothing to chance. He wouldn’t be following an eagle shifter and an arrogant vampire into an unscouted location, to improvise.
No other car sat in the drive of the house, a pale blue bargeboard structure with white gingerbread trim across the front and layers of crown molding above and below the tall front windows. Nik hoped that meant their human was home alone.
They crossed behind the car to the sidewalk, careful not to crunch audibly on the crushed oyster shells that covered the drive. The black wrought-iron fence had an ornate gate going to rust, but it wasn’t locked, and Robin waited at the foot of the front stoop while Nik and Cage got into position on either side, camouflaged by tall tangles of banana trees.
Robin squared her shoulders, pulled up the bottom of her red t-shirt, and knotted it high enough to show a ribbon of lean, tanned stomach.
She knocked, then leaned against the door facing.
Footsteps sounded from inside—hard soles on a wooden floor—and the door opened. Nik verified it was the man from his sketches and then looked past him into the house, or as much as his vantage point would allow. He didn’t see anyone else.
“Howdy there.” Robin slurred her words and affected a heavier-than-usual Texas accent. “I’m here from Austin and tryin’ to find the Quench Forter…” she giggled. Nik shook his head, hoping she wasn’t laying it on too thick. “I mean French Quarter. I was there and I don’t think I am anymore. Am I?”
Robin leaned in closer to the man, who wore a bemused half-smile. “You are a nice, tall man. I like tall men. My name’s Kelly. What’s yours?”
Nik caught Cage’s eye-rolling across the span of the stoop. Robin was five-two on a good day in boots with heels. Every man was tall to her.
Her ploy seemed to be working, however. “Hello there, Kelly. I’m Jon. And yeah, you’ve wandered out of the Quarter. It’s back that way.” He pointed in the direction they’d come from.
Robin slumped farther into the door frame. “Could I get some water? I’m feeling dizzy.”
“Uh, sure. Okay.” Jon frowned and turned to go back inside. Cage moved like a vampire on a mission, with Nik right behind him. The man still had his back turned when Nik shut and locked the front door, his .45 out of his shoulder holster and a round already chambered.
He spun. “Wh—who are you? What do you want?”
Cage gave him a broad smile, fangs catching the light from the ancient chandelier, a wicked-looking blade in his hand. “We want to have a talk, Jon. All about pregnant women and vampires.”
Chapter 12 * Shay
The days had taken on a sameness, the changes in her body the only break in Shay’s routines. But since Simon’s announcement of Nik Dimitrou’s pending visit last night, things had gotten weird. Make that weirder.
Shay had finished her escape hatch in the top of her cage this afternoon, but she’d found no chance to try it out. The warehouse had become a vampire version of Grand Central Station. Fangs coming and going as soon as dusk hit.
Not to mention the bird that had showed up about lunchtime. Not just a bird—a golden eagle. Jon’s shift at guarding the scary caged pregnant women was winding down, and Eric had arrived with Parasol’s roast beef po-boys for everyone. Shay learned she could claim to crave just about any food and Simon’s human minions would scramble to get it. A kidnapped pregnant human had to find amusement wherever she could.
Everyone chowed down today at lunch. Even Tina had stopped crying and moaning about morning sickness and had wolfed down her sandwich.
Tap tap tap, crack.
Shay had been the first to notice the sounds coming from the last in the row of grimy narrow windows that stretched along the top of the warehouse. Eventually, they’d all stopped eating and watched as a small crack in the edge of the pane became a bigger one, followed by a crash when the glass fell inside and exploded into shards on the concrete floor.
“What the hell?” Jon had jumped up, smearing gravy all over the front of his shirt, but he seemed unsure of what to do when the eagle stuck its head through the opening it had created.
Shay doubted the whole bird could have squeezed through that oblong little window, but it stuck its head inside, its dark gold beak clicking as it looked around the room. It stayed for at least three or four minutes before it emitted a loud hiss that echoed around the warehouse and flew away.
Thinking on it hours later, Shay decided what had been so creepy about the whole thing was that the eagle didn’t just glance around the room like it was curious about what might be there. It looked at each person in the room for several long seconds each, as if memorizing details. And the hiss seemed directed at Jon and Eric, standing open-mouthed by the sofa while holding up their dripping sandwiches.
The whole idea that the bird was studying them was ridiculous, of course. Although so was being made pregnant and held captive by vampires. The world had become a ridiculous place, and not in a funny way.
Finally, Jon had left and only Eric remained to guard. He had covered the broken window, then settled in for a nap facing the door—probably so no eagles could sneak in on him.
“Shay?” Tina spoke in a soft whisper. “You doing any climbing today?”
Shay moved to sit cross-legged on the rug next to the wall of her cage that adjoined Tina’s. Earlier, she’d shown the girl the big escape hatch and had passed her precious clippers over so Tina could begin her own. They all needed to stick together, especially Tina and her. The other two women were so far away, they had to shout to communicate.
“Not today. Let’s see if they settle back into their normal routine.” Now that she’d calmed down, Tina had proven to be good company. She was smart and a touch goth. The vampires had nabbed the fifteen-year-old living on the streets and panhandling for money in the Quarter.
“You think your friend will show up tomorrow night? Do you think he can help us?” Tina sounded too hopeful. Shay wasn’t convinced Nik Dimitrou would show up or, if he did, that he’d help them. He might flip sides to help Simon and his creepy boss.
Shay paused while Eric snorted in his sleep and waited until his snores resumed. “They seem to think he’ll be here tomorrow night, so he obviously agreed to talk to them. I just hope it gives us a chance to escape.”
“How well did you really know the guy?”
Shay gave a bitter laugh. “I was honest about that.” Not that she’d had a choice since Frank had hypnotized her. “We dated in high school, when I was about your age. I was crazy about him, and thought it was serious. He dumped me, dropped out of school, and disappeared. End of story. He’s a stranger now.”
Shay would bet the 32-year-old Nik Dimitrou was just as sexy as his 16-year-old self, but she hoped he’d become less self-absorbed and moody. Otherwise, it didn’t bode well for him being the knight who was going to ride in on a white steed and save them.
“Well, I think that he—” Shay chopped off her sentence when Simon breezed into the warehouse, breathing fire. It was early for any of the vamps to show up—barely dark.
Illumination (The Penton Vampire Legacy Book 5) Page 10