by Ann Bruce
Someone slapped her. Hard. Her eyes opened and then narrowed when she saw to whom the offending hand belonged.
“Good,” Savage said as he bent over her, “I was afraid I gave you too much of the sedative and you would sleep through everything. He wanted you awake for the fun and games. Probably wants to monologue so you can appreciate his master plan before he kills you.”
Fear turned her stomach into a ball of ice heavier than lead. Then the tentacles of cold traveled to her lungs, wrapped around them, and tightened until she couldn’t draw breath.
He. Edmond.
She must’ve said the name aloud because Savage’s lips stretched into a grin that would’ve made her shiver with revulsion had she not been rigid with more than just cold.
“He’s not here. Out having an appetizer, I think. But you’re right. I brought you here for him. It’s such a pity you’re not just a pretty face.”
Looking amused, he chucked her under the chin. Something about that cavalier action, the presumed familiarity, the mere touch, made her anger rise, and the sudden heat of it cracked the ice from within.
“You son of a bitch,” she said, very low, very even, because allowing her hate to take over would only amuse him, like a dog performing tricks. “Ryan thinks you’re his friend. He trusts you.”
“I am his friend. That’s why he’s out on a wild goose chase and not here trussed up like you.”
“Why? Is Edmond paying you that much?”
Savage’s grin became brittle as his eyes hardened. “When the Council recruits you, they deliver a spiel about saving mankind, about how it’s a noble and worthy duty. What they don’t tell you is that your life expectancy is halved, the hours and pay suck, and you’re always lurking in shadows so the people you’re saving can continue on with their mundane lives, happy in their ignorance.”
“If you want money and adulation, try Hollywood.”
He laughed. “If circumstances were different, you and I would enjoy each other.”
She grimaced and shuddered. “In your dreams.”
“No, in a couple days, it might be in your dreams.” He paused a beat. “Well, maybe not, considering his plans for you.”
She froze. “He agreed to turn you.”
“Yes. The money was icing.” Savage leaned in closer, putting his lips too close to her ear, and she jerked her head away. He simply plowed his fingers into her hair and cupped her scalp, keeping her head still. His voice lowered conspiratorially. “Imagine what I can do with their power, their strength, their speed. Imagine what I can do with all the time in the world. The possibilities are endless.”
She glared up at him, willing him to know the hatred and fury welling up inside her. “Burn. In. Hell.”
He laughed again and drew back, straightening. “I suspect I will, but only after a few centuries, maybe even a millennium, of ruling my own little piece of this world.”
“Are the bruises even real? Or did you paint them on yourself?”
“They’re real enough,” said Savage, running a hand over the front of his chest. “But not nearly as bad as I said. No broken ribs, no knife wound. Since his healing powers currently are better than mine, Edmond donated the blood.”
Savage’s gaze moved beyond her, and Mercy saw his muscles tense, his entire body stiffening, his shoulders bunching. Then she felt the presence too. Her stomach lurched then roiled, even as it collapsed on itself, and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stirred as if disturbed by unseen fingertips. She didn’t need to look to know who’d noiselessly entered the room. Her eyes remained steady on Savage’s still, wary form. He was in league with the devil, but he wasn’t foolish enough to turn his back on him.
Mercy swallowed, but it was difficult with her mouth like the Gobi Desert. In stark contrast, the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet went hot and clammy. Fear was something solid in her throat. The cavalry wasn’t coming to save her because Savage was the cavalry.
* * * * *
Ryan knew Vanessa Helsen was damned good at blending into the shadows when she needed to do so. After all, his line of work had started with her ancestors. That he spotted her from three buildings away meant he needed to hurry. Not that his instincts weren’t already clamoring for him to do something, anything, to get Mercy back. Preferably something physical, something destructive. He smothered the urge, knowing Mercy couldn’t afford to have him make any more mistakes.
He’d left the Volvo three blocks back and gone the rest of the way on foot. He located her in the dark, narrow gap between two warehouses, crouched behind a stack of cardboard boxes. She was tall and deceptively slender. Her dark brown hair was cut short enough to be hidden under a skull cap because, as she’d once explained to him, it gave the enemy less to grab onto. The cap was black, matching the rest of her outfit. Boots, pants, long-sleeved shirt, and in concession to the chilly weather, padded outer vest. She shifted, and he caught the tiny gleam of silver on her outer thigh. The blade strapped to her left thigh wasn’t fully hilted in its sheath. It was an uncharacteristic oversight. The rest of her weapons were hidden from view.
One hand automatically going inside her vest, she spared him a quick backward glance when he deliberately made a small scuffling noise to alert her to his presence. He crouched next to her and tapped a finger on the sheathed blade strapped to his own thigh. She shoved her blade fully into its leather sheath, then handed him a wireless headset. Ryan separated the earpiece from the communication module. The former went in his ear canal and the latter clipped onto the collar of his shirt.
Vanessa gestured to the darkened building across the road and spoke in a low voice that wouldn’t carry. “The tracer I put on Savage’s vehicle says it’s in there.”
“Best point of entry?”
“Upstairs window on the north side. Lock’s busted.”
“See any movement?”
“No. Windows are all painted over. The vamp isn’t risking a blind falling down.”
“How long have they been in there?”
She hesitated, then said, “Twenty minutes. But the vamp’s MO is to take his time with his victims. Also, she was unconscious when Savage carried her from the house. If they wait for her to wake up, that could buy us some time.”
He felt a sharp pang in his chest. Ryan hadn’t realized he’d been hoping Vanessa had made a mistake, that it hadn’t been Nate Savage who’d betrayed them. They’d been friends, or as close as people in their line of work could come to friendship. They’d gotten wasted together when it became too much. And when he’d been new and on his first assignment, it had been Savage who’d saved him from having his throat torn out. How had he not known Savage had turned? How had he not even suspected? And now Mercy was paying the price for his blindness.
Bitter anger took over, searing through his bloodstream, and he wanted to seize Vanessa and demand to know why she’d allowed Savage to kidnap Mercy. But he didn’t. He already knew why. Because in the greater scheme of things, it was more important to catch and stop Edmond.
Ryan realized he was strangling the hilt of his own dagger and forced himself to unclench his fingers and even out his breathing.
“Why are you here? Did the Council send you after me?”
She nodded. “The Council was suspicious of you. I was suspicious of the person who sicced them on you.”
“Savage.” He didn’t make it a question.
She looked over her shoulder at him, a trace of uncharacteristic softness in her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Her lips parted as if she wanted to say more, but after a moment, she went back to the surveillance.
“Vanessa.”
She turned and regarded him warily.
“Promise me one thing.”
Her wariness didn’t abate.
“When we go in, no matter what happens to me, you get Mercy out.”
She was quiet for a long moment. “I can’t promise you that,” she said finally.
“Yes, you can.” Jaw tight, his gaze bored
into hers. “Vanessa, you owe me.”
Her lips thinned, as if it took effort to keep her words back. Then she gave a single curt nod.
Something inside him eased. “Thank you.”
“Don’t.” There was a wealth of warning and displeasure in that one word.
Head chillingly clear, hands steady, Ryan reached for his firearms and, even though he’d checked them before leaving the Volvo, did so again. “Let’s move.”
He started to rise. Vanessa gripped his wrist, and Ryan fell back to his haunches, his eyes going to the warehouse across the road. The door beside the garage door was inching open.
* * * * *
Hands and feet still bound with duct tape, Mercy sat up on the stone table, legs folded with her heels almost touching her butt, and stared down at the old-fashioned miniature in her hands, heart pounding heavily in her chest. A woman smiled back from the portrait within the heavy gold locket. The details were exquisite. Wavy hair black as ink, porcelain skin, slender nose, and violet eyes with an upward slant set in a heart-shaped face. The likeness was uncanny. She could’ve been Mercy’s twin.
After a lifetime of not knowing the people who contributed the genetic material that had formed her, it was strange to see someone who shared so many of her features. The strangeness wasn’t accompanied by the sense of recognition or belonging she’d foolishly expected as a child though. She’d learned to be alone too well.
“Who was she?” Mercy asked without looking up, yet very aware of Edmond’s scrutiny. They were alone. Shortly after Edmond’s arrival, Savage had volunteered to walk the outside perimeter.
“Angélique,” he murmured. “Your ancestor. Angélique could not bear children, but she had a younger sister who did. You look too much like her not to share the same blood.” He took the locket from her hands, his movements slow, careful, almost reverent. “Elle était mon ange de la nuit. She found me, saved me, killed those who…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head, as if to clear it of those particular memories.
He slipped the locket over his head, and it settled against the froth of lace spilling from his throat. He hadn’t changed out of the outfit he’d worn to the museum, and under the harsh overhead lighting, he looked so very young, barely twenty. But vampires didn’t age, did they? Assuming popular myth was accurate, they would remain looking as young as the day they were turned. Eternal youth but with more deadly side effects than Botox.
“She made me into what she was, and we were happy together. I loved her. We were meant to be together for all eternity. Elle était mon âme soeur.”
It took her a moment to translate and decide “soul mate” sounded too incestuous in French. Then again, everything about his bond with Angélique was disturbing.
He took a breath, as if bracing himself. “Then they took her away from me.”
He made it sound like the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets.
“Who are ‘they’?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
Edmond’s pale face went taut with anger. Had he been human, she supposed it would’ve flushed with color. “The Council.” He said it like the organization was one of the plagues of Egypt. “Back then, I didn’t know who they were. They were small in number and scattered. Narrow-minded, as they are still today.
“Angélique wanted a baby, a child to love, to complete our family. But they didn’t understand. They called her a murderess but it wasn’t like they thought.” His tone turned pleading, as if wanting Mercy to side with him. “The children kept…dying before the transformation completed, so we had to keep trying.”
Mercy stilled, gooseflesh breaking out as her skin became icy. Oh, Jesus. She breathed deeply through her nostrils. Bile rose threateningly in her throat and burned, but she managed to keep from embarrassing herself.
Angélique sounded like a candidate for several life sentences in solitary confinement, but she’d been allowed to roam free and even managed to find a man after her own black heart. A soul mate, as Edmond had said. Mercy shuddered. Bonnie and Clyde. Angélique and Edmond. Who knew serial killers were pedantic enough to buy into the whole soul mates thing?
Mercy took a breath. Edmond had said “we.” He had helped Angélique in her sick quest, and in his quest to bring her back, he had tortured and killed at least five women in the last year. She was to be number six. Her laced fingers tightened until the knuckles went white. She didn’t want to be number six.
Her gaze went to the brass urn Edmond had carried in with him and placed beside her, and she tried not to shudder. She purposely kept her eyes from straying to the primitive stone triangle lying next to it, not wanting to remind Edmond of its presence.
* * * * *
Vanessa flattened a hand against Ryan’s chest and kept it there, as if afraid he would go after Savage, all the while yelling like a berserker.
He wanted to, but he didn’t.
Alive, Savage could provide intelligence.
Vanessa took out a semi-automatic and a silencer and screwed them together. Savage moved past them. Coolly, she extended her arm, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. There was a soft pffft. Before Savage’s newly injured knee could even buckle, Ryan flew at the man. His fist struck Savage’s ribs, where he recalled the bruising had been ugly, and the knife edge of his other hand cut across the Adam’s apple.
While the bigger man choked and gasped, Ryan slammed him against a wall, face first. He seized a wrist and twisted it high up the center of Savage’s back while he fisted his other hand in short black hair. When he felt the other man’s muscles tense, Ryan lashed out his foot, aiming for the bleeding kneecap, drew back Savage’s head, and slammed it into the wall again. There was a crunch, like celery snapping, and he didn’t know if it was the knee or the nose. Maybe both. With his own knee, he struck near the small of Savage’s back, aiming for a kidney. Savage’s yells were muffled, and his back arched as he tried to throw his body away from the wall for either escape or maneuvering distance, but Ryan only twisted the captured wrist until something popped out of place.
More muffled sounds of pain. Even then, Ryan didn’t let go. He’d seen the other man continue to fight while hurt worse. Besides, he had nothing to use to restrain Savage. He didn’t carry handcuffs like a cop because he destroyed the monsters he went after, not arrested them.
Quickly, methodically, he divested the other man of his modified firearms, silver knives, wooden stakes, incendiary grenades, and the retractable silver garrote wire, of which Savage was particularly fond.
Finished, Ryan applied pressure on the sprained wrist. Savage moaned.
“He needs to be able to talk,” Vanessa said in his ear via the earpiece.
“He can and he will,” Ryan promised grimly.
* * * * *
“How did she die?” Mercy forced herself to ask, dreading the answer but knowing she had to keep him talking to give her a chance to do something…anything.
“They found our home, and those cowards put a stake through her heart while she slept.” His eyes closed and anguish crossed his boyish features. “I…escaped. When I returned, only ashes remained of ma belle Angélique.” His lips trembled. “Two hundred years, and every day I feel the pain as if it were only yesterday.”
For a moment, she expected him to put the back of his hand to his forehead.
“Two centuries?” She tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice and didn’t quite succeed. “You’ve been trying to bring her back for two centuries?”
He stiffened, his eyes darkening with guilt. “I-I foolishly tried to…forget her.” Those ridiculously long sweeps of lashes lowered, but there was a spasm of emotion on his pale countenance. “But there are no others like her.”
And how long had it taken him to reach that conclusion? How many women had there been before he realized the supply of psychopaths in the world was—thank, God—severely limited? And how had he auditioned the potential replacements?
He spun around suddenly, his cape flaring
. Seizing her chance, Mercy snatched up the stone knife and hid it between her hands. It was heavier than it looked and surprisingly smooth. She didn’t want to know if the smoothness was a result of passage of time or frequent use. Edmond spun around again, his cape flaring once more, and she wondered if he simply liked the theatrical flair of it.
Edmond went to the urn, laid his hand upon it, caressed it like it was a lover. “I was wrong to think she could be replaced. I was wrong to think there could be another like her,” he murmured, his fingers stroking the urn, back and forth, back and forth, back—