“Niko? Someone got to him?”
Arsen shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
He walks ahead of me and moves quickly through the room on the first floor while I stand lookout.
Arsen returned and shook his head.
“No one here. I don’t scent a single live Baetal.”
“Well, hell of a homecoming,” I said. “What happened?”
“No clue. But the dead vampire would be one.”
Slowly we climbed the wide centers stairs to the second floor, scanning for sudden movements, and letting our noses lead us to the dead vamp. Arsen opened the door and his body stiffened.
“Holy hell,” he said. "I will fucking kill him.”
“What?” I say as I push forward. I couldn’t imagine what would get Arsen this upset until I saw the vampire sprawled lifeless on the bed.
Red blood spilled from where a stake stabbed her heart. Surprise and horror fixed her face in a terrible rictus, wide eyes glassy without sight, and her mouth opened in a scream. And that was a horrible enough sight but who lay there was worse.
Claudette.
Arsen face turned beet red as he rushed forward. That’s when I see it, visible only from a glint of sunlight on racing from the window along a silver wire—a tripwire stretched across the floor.
“No!” I cried as I rushed forward. Then I hear a click and Arsen did too and stopped and froze his movements.
“Get out of here, Sasha.”
“No. I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“You have to go. This will blow.”
“No,” I say stubbornly. “Do you not understand? We are together, always. In life. In death. So you damn well better figure a way out of this mess because I cannot live an immortal life without you. I’d rather die.”
He looked at me, and the wire just under this foot and I knew he couldn’t extract it without setting off the bomb.
“You would?”
I nodded my head.
“Then come here, babe. Slowly.”
I did it because I understand. We’ll go out together. It has to be that way. He grabbed me with a grip as tight as a vise.
“Hang on,” he said.
I should know that Arsen is this strong, but it always amazes me the things that he does. He sprang up, dragging me along and then twisted to slam through the glass window at the side of the room.
Heat, smoke and glass chase us as a large boom shatters the peace of the neighborhood. We tumble and twist in the air debris following our trajectory out and down to the lawn the below. Arsen lands first, holding me tightly, taking the brunt of the fall.
The building explodes once again, this time into flames. Arsen sits up, clutching me tightly.
“Are you okay?” he says urgently.
“I’m fine. You are a soft place to land.”
Arsen looked around furtively and I spot the same time as he the curious stepping from their homes.
“We’ve got to go.”
“No argument here,” I said.
I clutched Arsen’s arm as we ran through Cambridge even as the blaring of fire engine horns and squeal of police cars surrounded us. But I didn’t hold on to him for me, but for him. Arsen’s face was white, and he kept mumbling, murderer, murderer, and I got anxious for him. I think it is not a good idea for Arsen to show up at the Draugur house in this state. He already had enough problems with vampires in our neck of the woods who thought he was weak. We didn’t need that on this side of the country, too. I look around for a place to stop as we stumble onto a main drag lined with a bunch of store fronts. I spot a coffee shop.
“Let’s stop there,” I said. “I need a drink.”
Arsen is in no condition to argue. Seeing Claudette like that, with a wooden stake in her heart, rattled him thoroughly. When we walk in I dashed us to the bathrooms.
“Get cleaned up. I’ll get us some coffee.”
After ducking in the ladies room and doing a quick washup, I walk to the counter and order up some venti lattes. This is the first time I use the magic credit card Arsen gave me. I spent a few anxious moments waiting for Arsen to come out of the restroom and briefly wondered if I should extract him. But finally the door cracks open, and Arsen, looking a small measure better joins me at the table.
He picks at the paper holder on the cup and says nothing for a long time.
I touched his arm looking for a reaction or reassurance.
“Arsen?”
Arsen huffed. “She was mine,” he says in the darkest tone I ever heard from his mouth.
I dislike he says this, but for his sake I keep my mouth shut. He doesn’t need my jealousy right now. He is not taking this well and I can’t help but think how much worse it would be if he lost his sister.
“I was her master,” Arsen says hoarsely, “Niko had no business murdering her like that.”
He held his head down, his eyelids lowered and I cannot see his eyes.
“She betrayed you. She was the one feeding Niko all that information about us.”
“You can’t know that,” he says with venom in his words.
“Why was she here? In Boston? I told you I saw her walk out of Niko’s compound. You dismissed me.”
Arsen reached out his hand and took mine.
“If I dismissed you, I am sorry. Claudette, for all her faults, devoted her life to the clan.”
“No. She loved you. And you turned her away. What’s worse is that you mated me. You left her no options. She turned to the one vampire she thought could help her in her quest to win you back. Your enemy.”
Arsen looked away and sighed. “I suppose.”
“The problem is Niko is still twisting in the wind, and he knows we tracked him down. He’ll be twice as hard to catch.”
He nodded staring into his coffee.
“A stake,” he muttered. “A fucking stake. He knew we were coming, and he did that.”
“Arsen,” I say gently, “he did because Claudette told him we were coming.”
“Don’t tell me,” he says as his eyes flashed with anger, “that is was her own fault she died.”
This was doing no good, and I had to get Arsen to focus on something else.
“Arsen? Who is taking care of your sister now if Claudette isn’t with her?”
“Well, any number of people.”
“Don’t you think you should check on that? Because if Claudette slipped away to make a clandestine trip to Boston, maybe she wouldn’t raise red flags by arranging your sister’s care with someone else.”
Arsen’s expression turned from remorse to concern from zero to sixty flat and he whipped out his phone.
“Henri, Arsen. Who is with my sister now?”
His mouth formed a tight line.
“No. It is not Claudette. Ask around. When the last anyone saw Claudette? No. I’ll wait.”
Arsen sipped his coffee grimly while he waited for Henri to answer. I watched him carefully. I had never seen him like this, so on edge, and close to losing control. What I would do if Arsen went into a rage as vampires could do. Well, humans could too, but they didn’t have a vampire’s supernormal strength, and a deadly capacity to deal death when it suited them.
I was no match for Arsen, and in this moment my inadequacies tore at me like a scavenger at a piece of carrion. Much of this is my fault and I am at a loss at how to make any of this right. I do not regret Claudette’s death. She was an annoyance, and a trouble maker, and she cared more about her own agenda than for her people. Her only saving grace and her downfall was that she loved Arsen, but that passion twisted into ugly circumstance that drove her to desperate acts.
I pulled out my phone and checked out the commercial flights to Boston.
Arsen lifted his head.
“Okay. Thank you. Tell the rest that Claudette is dead. We found her in the Baetal Chapter House. Yes. Baetal. And arrange for some people to care for my sister. Thank you, Henri.”
Arsen put his phone down slowly on the table.
“No one saw her after we left.”
“There is a commercial flight to Boston in the evening. She would have gotten here ahead of us. But Arsen, that meant she’d have been planning this before we decided to leave.”
Arsen’s expression grew grimmer. “She used the commotion of us leaving to hide her departure. He raised his hand and smashed it on the table and the other patrons of the coffee shop turned their heads toward us.
“Bitch!” he spit.
The alarm siren in my head rang double time now. I never, even heard Arsen refer to a woman with any pejorative. I lay my hand on top of his.
“Arsen, I won’t tell you to calm down.”
“Good,” he says curtly. His eyes were glowing now, not a good thing in the middle of crowded coffee house, and I’m getting desperate to get him to cool down. Arsen was a countdown away from a major firework display. It cannot happen here where humans would see a preternatural creature spilling his ire on the world at large.
“We should go,” I say. Maybe I can get him to walk this off.
But his phone rang, and he picked it up and his expression turned even darker.
“Good,” he said. “We’ll meet you there.”
He looked at me with a gaze so cutting I shivered.
“That was Jackson. He’s in town. One of his sources said Niko will be at an event in town. It’s probably why he came here.”
Here we go with the “shit Sasha doesn’t know” again. This was probably some super-secret vampire convention that every vamp knew but me. This was getting old.
“What event?”
“You’ll see,” Arsen said. He stood and grabbed my hand.
“Let’s go. I want to scout out the best position to observe Niko.”
Chapter 10
The street is packed with people, tight as a Manhattan train at rush hour. The party were Niko was sighted has spilled out into the city at large and taken over. The atmosphere fairly vibrates with excitement. The air is full of the scent of sweat and sex and alcohol and the deep, bone shaking rattle of bass so intense you can't hear the rest of the music. Not that anyone here seems to care. The buildings of this old, neglected district crowd close to the road, but the spaces between them have been strung with lights and flags by the enthusiastic party goers, for whom this fun night out seems to have evolved into a Dionysian revel. The lights cast a Sulphur yellow glow on the world like an old photograph. There is alcohol in everyone's hands, and on the pavement and sticky hoods of cars and splashed on every wall. Weed and ecstasy are shared as freely as the booze, and it isn't hard to find the acid and cocaine once I look for it. It's a legendary party, and one I'd love to be part of, if I didn't have more violent delights on my mind.
"I thought this was supposed to be a rave?" Arsen says, moving through the crowd with surprising grace for a man of his size. "Feels more like Mardi Gras."
"I'm surprised Jackson's contacts spotted anyone in this mob," I say, following him with slightly less success. Someone drops their beer and I barely dodge getting soaked. "You seeing anything?"
He shakes his head.
"Crowd's too thick," he says, shouting to be heard over the music. "He could be standing right next to us and I wouldn't know."
He's right. Even my vampire senses are useless in all this. All I can hear is the bass and the joyful shrieking, and my nose is full of the scent of piss and beer.
"Maybe if we get a little higher," Arsen suggests. "We could climb on that car?"
"And make ourselves targets?" I point out. "No. We're not going to get anywhere searching like this. Let's split up. I'll take the north side of the street, you take the south. We'll regroup when Jackson and his hunters show up."
"We should stay together," Arsen says, frowning hard. He stops walking, interrupting the flow of the crowd. A couple of people throw him dirty looks, but he's big and intimidating enough that most people just slide around him like a boulder in a stream. He crosses his arms over his broad chest.
"Arsen, don't be ridiculous," I say, not backing down. I mimic his posture, arms crossed. "We won't cover enough ground together and you know it. I'm not planning to tackle the asshole on my own the minute I see him. But if we're going to get the weasly little son of a bitch we need to be smart."
He tries to stare me down for a minute, but I know I'm right. He breaks first, looking away.
"I just don't want you getting hurt," he admits, barely audible over the thunderous music. "After almost losing you that way, can you blame me for not wanting to let you out of my sight?"
I smile, stepping a little closer to touch his cheek.
"I'm a big girl, Arsen," I tell him softly. "I can tie my own shoes and everything. I'll be alright."
He smiles back at me, covering my hand with his own.
"I know you will," he says. "I underestimated you once and it nearly cost me everything. I won't make that mistake again. I know you can handle yourself. I just don't want you to need to."
He laces our fingers and pulls my hand to his mouth to press a soft kiss to my palm.
"I'm not going to hold you back," he promises. "I don't think I could if I tried, honestly. You're a god damn force of nature."
"Damn right I am," I reply proudly.
"Just don't ask me to stop trying to look out for you," he pleads. "I've got your back, always."
"I know you do," I say, and I pull him closer into a brief, warm kiss. My heart flutters with giddy happiness at the change in his attitude. I don't mind him wanting to protect me. But that he's willing to respect my strength too is so much more important.
We split up and I move to the edges of the crowd, staying near the buildings and keeping an eye out not just for Niko but for Jackson as well. I scan the buildings, looking for a convenient fire escape or balcony I could climb to and get an overhead view. I spot a likely one, but there's a couple not-so-discreetly fucking right next to it and I can't bring myself to interrupt them.
"Hey. Hey bitch!" Someone in the crowd yells. "You in the tight ass leather pants!"
I spare a glance in the stranger's direction, just to make sure it isn't someone I know. It isn't. It's some random party-goer, of the white-guy-with-dreads variety. I quickly look away, but he seems to have taken the millisecond of my attention as encouragement to continue.
"You alone?" he demands with a brainless grin. "Babe your ass looks amazing in those pants. Let me get my face up in those cheeks, I won't come out for days."
I look as pointedly as possible at a brick wall in the opposite direction from the asshole and keep walking.
"Hey, hey bitch! Come back!" the guy begs. "I got a tab of molly with your name on it! You don't even gotta let me touch the ass just let a guy look, man!"
I am contemplating interrupting the couple fucking in front of the fire escape ladder just for the sake of getting away from this noisy asshole. He isn't the first guy to holler at me tonight, but he's probably the most annoying. I ignore him, which is generally the best course of action with this kind of dickbag, and try to focus on my mission, searching the crowd for familiar faces and the buildings for decent vantage points.
A hand grabs my hip and for a moment I think the catcalling asshole has progressed to actual assault, in which case I fully intend to feed him his own teeth. I realize I've guessed incorrectly when they spin me around with shocking strength. Niko smiles at me with sharp teeth and undisguised malice.
"Hello beautiful."
"Just the man I was looking for," I snarl, reaching for a weapon.
"Careful," Niko says, and I feel the sharp point of a stake against my back. "We wouldn't want anyone's hand to slip."
I slowly let my hand fall away from the hilt of my knife, my mouth twisted with sour regret. I don't know what pisses me off more. That he snuck up on me or that I haven't stabbed him for it yet.
"Good girl," Niko says, which instantly takes the cake for thing pissing me off the most right now. "Let's enjoy the party, shall we?"
> He takes my right hand in his right, his left still at my lower back with the stake, like he's about to escort me onto a dance floor. Instead he leads me into the crush of the crowd. I scan quickly for Arsen, hoping I can signal him discreetly. I glimpse him, or someone who looks like him, for just a second through the crowd but he doesn't see me.
"I don't know what you're planning," I tell Niko. "But I'm not leaving this party with you."
"Well that would be a shame," Niko says lightly, digging the stake a little harder into my back. "It would be a shame for all these nice people around us too. Collateral damage is such a sad inevitability, isn't it?"
That's it. I won't put up with him threatening a bunch on innocent strangers.
I dig my heels in, forcing him to come to a stop. The stake stabs into my back almost hard enough to draw blood, but I ignore it. He frowns at me and I meet his eyes. I want him to know how deadly serious I am.
"Do it," I tell him. "Or let me go. You can end all of this now, one way or another."
There's strange look in his eyes as my brazen demand. He almost, for a moment, seems sorry for the path we've taken.
"This will only end one of two ways," he tells me, and his playful malice has been replaced by a dreadful certainty. "I will succeed, or I will die."
"It doesn't have to be that way," I insist, a strange pity squeezing my heart. He is my maker after all. And I don't like the thought of anyone marching needlessly to their death. "There's still time to change things."
Niko laughs, and the moment of severity is gone, his devil-may-care smile returning.
"Darling," he says with faux affection. "I would never have begun this endeavor if I was not fully willing to gamble my life on it. I'm prepared to die. Are you?"
A burst of light and noise interrupts our conversation. There are cheers from the crowd. Someone's setting off fireworks. They explode above us, casting everything below in shades of red and green and silver. Niko stares up at them, and the surprised wonder on his face is almost enough to make me forget that he's a murderous monster. Almost.
I grab the wrist holding the stake with one hand and with the other drive my elbow into his solar plexus hard enough that I hear the wind rush out of his lungs. He wheezes, bending over me, but keeps a solid grip on my arm. Solid enough that I can't pull away. So I stay in close, twisting and digging my sharp nails into the tender point of his wrist until he drops the stake into my waiting free hand. I jerk it towards his chest, but not fast enough. He catches my arm, twists it behind my back, takes the stake. As he swings it towards my ribs, still gripping my wrist, I slam my heel into his knee and hear him gasp in pain. That would have inverted the joint of a human, but it hurts almost as much for a vampire. I kick it again for good measure, wrench my arm out of his grip and go for one of my knives. But I've barely got my fingers around the handle before he wraps both arms around me, pinning my arms to my sides and dragging me back against him. His hips grind against my ass hard enough to make my breath catch. He laughs, soft and breathy against my ear.
Girl, Immortal (Girl, Vampire Book 3) Page 8