Octavian nodded, but he studied her closely. She wore sunglasses, but he couldn’t escape the feeling that she didn’t want to meet his gaze. Was it really just the sun that made her squirm?
“When are you leaving?” he asked.
“Tonight,” Charlotte said. “When it’s full dark. Until I get used to it, I’d rather travel at night.”
“You’ve got enough money to get you to New York?” he asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, perking up as though she sensed his doubts. “I’ll go straight to the shadow registration office, like I promised. I don’t want to be a rogue, Peter. I don’t want anyone hunting me.”
Octavian narrowed his eyes. “Cortez is going to be hunting you,” he said. “You know that. But we’ll help you. I’ve got to take care of Keomany’s ashes and then reconnect with Nikki, but give me a week and I’ll meet you in New York. The UN Security Council and Task Force Victor are going to want to know everything you can tell them about Cortez. We can’t afford to have him building some kind of secret vampire underground. We’ve worked too hard to establish peace.”
Charlotte nodded. “Cortez killed me. I didn’t want this life. I’ll help in any way I can.”
“Good. I’ll see you there,” Octavian replied.
He thought he should say something more, tell them that he hoped they did not end up like Keomany, but he knew it would serve no purpose. They were no longer human, but they did not have to share the earthwitch’s fate. If they worked at it, they could both have some semblance of ordinary lives. It would be a pretense, but many people lived their lives behind masks. It could be done.
For a while, at least.
The wave of chaos that had spread out from Hawthorne would draw even more attentions from the demons and monsters and forgotten gods that had been banished into other realms, the forces of darkness that had been kept out of this plane for over a thousand years. There had been a number of incursions in the time since the Tatterdemalion, with Navalica only the latest. More would be coming, and he knew now that he had to be in the thick of the fight against them. If they were lucky, Amber and Charlotte would not be a part of that fight. But he feared that one day the whole world would have to take up arms against the darkness. It was a war he prayed would never come.
“Take care of yourselves,” he said.
He climbed into his car and set the bottle of Keomany’s ashes on the seat beside him, plumping a faded Sorbonne sweatshirt around it to keep it from rolling onto the floor. Then he started up the car, gave Amber and Charlotte a wave, and drove away.
Octavian thought that his spirits would lift when he crossed the town line and left Hawthorne behind him, but instead, his mood darkened. He had talked to Nikki twice yesterday and once this morning. She had taken the news of Keomany’s death even harder than he would have expected. They had been good friends in college but off and on since. This morning, her tone had been different, as though she sensed something in his voice, suspected that there were things he was not telling her.
For an ordinary woman, she had always had excellent intuition.
He needed to see her. To spend time in her arms and try to sort out what he really felt. He wondered about what he had felt for Keomany—if there had been anything real there at all—and what it might mean for him and Nikki. Of late he had begun to question more and more if it was possible for him to sustain a real relationship with an ordinary woman, with all of the threats lurking in the shadowed corners of the world.
It was a question they would have to answer together.
EXHAUSTED and worried about Peter, Nikki rode the elevator to the twelfth floor of the Loews Hotel. She hadn’t slept well the night before, woken too early, and then fallen back to sleep after her wake-up call, which had made her late for her sound check at the World Café. She always enjoyed playing Philadelphia and seeing the hope and enthusiasm in the faces of the college kids who came out to hear her. She wanted to give them a good show tonight, which meant getting something to eat, taking a nap, and trying not to think about Keomany’s death, or the tension between her and Peter before he had gone off to save the world again.
Listen to you, she thought. “Save the world.” What a bitch.
She knew she was being a bitch. Peter had obligations that were much greater than whatever he owed her and their relationship. But knowing that and fully accepting it were two different things. Some days it was all right, but right now she just wanted him with her . . . wanted him to put his arms around her and tell her that he loved her, and that everything would be all right.
“Could you be more selfish?” she said aloud in the lonely confines of the elevator. Keomany was dead, and all she could think about was the growing distance that she felt between herself and her boyfriend.
Peter had promised to catch up with her by Atlanta, at the latest. That was four days from now. Four days was nothing. They had been apart from each other much longer in the past. All she had to do was pour herself into her music, sing her heart out, give her audiences the performance they deserved for shelling out their hard-earned cash.
“Get it together, woman,” she whispered.
The elevator slid to a stop on the twelfth floor. Stepping off, she went the wrong way and then laughed at herself. She really did need to focus.
Wondering whether she might find something edible on the room service menu, she let herself into the mini-suite the club management had provided. The maid had been in, and the citrus-chemical scent of her cleansers filled the suite.
Nikki put her key card on the little coffee table in front of the love seat and kicked off her shoes. The room service menu waited on the desk over by the window, next to her laptop, but first she needed to peel off her clothes and slide into the cotton pajama pants and Boston Celtics T-shirt she had worn to bed last night.
As she walked into the bedroom, its curtains still drawn from the morning, she dragged her clingy black top over her head. A sliver of sunlight sliced into the darkened room between the curtains, enough for her to seek out the sleepwear she’d shed in such a hurry.
Only as she slipped off her bra did she recognize that something was not right. The maid had been in. She had cleaned the bathroom. Made the bed. There would be mint chocolate candies on the pillow.
A figure coalesced in the deeply shadowed corner.
“You are lovely,” he said, in a rasping Spanish accent. “What a pity.”
Nikki froze, flushing with the heat of fear.
“Who the hell are you?” she breathed.
Though he was all in darkness, somehow she knew he smiled then.
“I am Cortez,” he replied.
His fangs tore into her throat before she could scream.
She wept as she died.
Wondering why.
Look for all
the Peter Octavian novels
from Ace Books
OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS
ANGEL SOULS AND DEVIL HEARTS
OF MASQUES AND MARTYRS
THE GATHERING DARK
WAKING NIGHTMARES
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
EPILOGUE
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Waking Nightmares Page 34