“Are you hungry?” Cyn asked the most important question. “Have they fed you?”
Brief contempt filled Alexandra’s eyes before she nodded.
“Okay.” Cyn walked over slowly, watching the vampire watch her. When she got close enough, she pulled a small knife from her belt, holding it up for Alexandra to see. “I’m going to cut the cloth,” she explained, flipping the blade out. Alexandra studied the gleaming edge, then nodded acceptance.
Cynthia slid her fingers beneath the gag, a little behind the woman’s ear, inserted the sharp knife and gave a quick tug, slicing the thin cloth easily and stepping back. Alexandra collapsed forward with a sobbing breath, quietly rubbing her abraded mouth and cheeks with her bound hands. “Thank you,” she managed to whisper.
“No problem.” Cynthia studied the much smaller woman, surprised to find herself actually feeling sorry for her. She’d expected to hate her, to hate the woman who seemed to hold Raphael’s heart so firmly in her delicate hands. But she couldn’t hate this helpless creature. Oh, she was beautiful to be sure. Cyn could see the beauty even under the bruises, the grime, the terror of nearly a week at the mercy of the brutal Albin. But she was too pitiful to hate. She was small and delicate and lovely, and utterly helpless. Everything that Cyn was not. She sighed.
“Alexandra?” The vampire looked up, pink tears streaking her dirty face. “Did Albin have a key or something for those cuffs?” Alexandra raised her gaze to the door and Cyn turned around. There on a hook, barely out of the prisoner’s reach, hung the keys to her freedom. Albin had indeed been a sadistic bastard.
Cyn grabbed the keys, but hesitated before unlocking the banded cuffs. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“No,” Alexandra said in a low voice, raw with strain. “I have no desire to end my days in this filthy place.”
Cyn unlocked the cuffs. They fell away with a jangle of heavy metal. Alexandra seemed to swell, as if the chains had been draining her physical strength. She stood and a shudder passed through her entire body. Where someone else might have stretched their arms widely, or rolled their shoulders, the female vampire sort of . . . vibrated. Then she looked at Cyn expectantly.
Cyn drew a deep breath. “Okay, let’s—”
“Cyn!” Raphael’s mental roar cut off her next words. She spun around almost without thinking, turning toward him, unable to resist his call. Running out through the open door and around the back of the house, she found him striding through the shadows of the overgrown yard like an avenging angel, his long coat billowing behind him, his silver-frosted eyes twin stars come to earth. The very air trembled in his wake, his power riding ahead of him to brush obstacles from his path with mindless efficiency. He was terrible in his beauty, and a painful longing squeezed her heart.
“Raphael.” She said it softly, but his gaze riveted to her at once, his long legs bringing him to her side in two strides.
“Cyn,” he took hold of her arms, searching her with his eyes, looking for injuries before he pulled her into his embrace, clutching her against his solid warmth. “My Cyn.”
“Raphael, I found—”
“Raphael.”
Raphael stiffened and looked across the yard to where Alexandra stood like a pale shadow. Cyn stepped awkwardly out of his embrace and watched as the smaller woman came closer, her dark gaze never leaving the vampire lord.
“Alexandra,” he said.
She walked right up to him and stood perfectly still. Then her shoulders slumped and Raphael stepped forward to wrap his arms around her in a gesture that began with affection and ended in a strangely formal embrace.
Cynthia watched for awhile in silence, and then walked back toward the cottage. Before she rounded the corner, she glanced back and met Raphael’s gaze over Alexandra’s head. She saw sorrow there, and regret. She didn’t know what he saw when he looked at her. She turned away at last, returning to the cottage only long enough to retrieve her gun, then climbed over the wall and disappeared into the trees.
Chapter Forty-eight
CYNTHIA SLEPT FOR the next two days, waking only long enough to go to the bathroom, drink some water, take another sleeping pill and go back to bed. She knew it was unhealthy, knew she was avoiding dealing with real life and was probably deeply depressed. Too bad. The latest pill kicked in and she drifted into another dreamless sleep.
On the third morning, she woke up feeling disgusted with herself and, perhaps more importantly, really needing a shower. So she got up.
After a long, long hot shower, during which she actually managed to bathe in between bouts of simply standing under the pulsing water, she dried her heat-reddened skin carefully, donned a comfortable robe and headed downstairs in her bare feet.
Her first stop was the coffee maker, after which she sat and stared at the tiled countertop until the smell of fresh coffee roused her enough to pour a cup of the life-giving liquid. With the second cup, she discovered she was also hungry, and microwaved one of her housekeeper’s muffins and then another. After the muffins were gone, she poured yet another cup of coffee and noticed the red light flashing on her answering machine. She doctored her coffee with lots of sugar and pushed the playback.
The first three messages were from her sister, Holly, all along the lines of, “We’re sisters, can’t we all just get along?” She deleted them. The next message was from Nick, his cheerful voice informing her he’d be in town on Wednesday—she checked the calendar, that was today—and to give him a call if she was around. She deleted that one too, but only after thinking about it for awhile. She wasn’t ready for Nick yet. Maybe eventually. But not yet.
Next was a call was from Dean Eckhoff, sounding way too serious and official, asking her to call him. The message had come in the previous afternoon. She frowned, picked up the phone and dialed.
“Eckhoff,” he answered.
“It’s Cynthia.”
“Yeah, let me get somewhere quieter.” She heard him moving, heard more than one door open and close, and then the sound of traffic. So, he wasn’t getting somewhere quieter; he was getting somewhere he couldn’t be overheard. “Are you okay? Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m home. What’s going on?”
“Bad shit, Cyn, really bad shit. They found Carballo’s body, and I thought . . .” She heard him take a deep breath and knew he’d been worried about her.
“I’m okay, Dean. What happened?”
“Vampire. She was completely drained, then dumped off in the hills near Malibu Canyon, along the freeway. Some Cal Trans workers found her. She’d been there a couple of days, looks like.”
Cyn was surprised at the pain of loss, surprised at the tears that filled her eyes. Benita had been a friend, no matter what had happened later. But she had also betrayed Cyn to the vamps, knowing exactly what Albin and Pushkin planned to do to her. A part of Cyn couldn’t help feeling that a certain poetic justice had been served.
“Cyn?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“The bastards killed her.” He was angry, disappointed in Cyn.
“She was your snitch, Eckhoff,” Cyn said flatly. “She told me herself.” She proceeded to describe the night at the ranch house, how Benita had coaxed her to the party and set her up, then bragged about how she was playing the cops.
“Damn it,” Eckhoff swore. “God damn it. Okay, listen, Cyn, you lay low for awhile and don’t be surprised if they pull you in for questioning—”
“I didn’t do anything!”
He sighed. “Carballo left some notes, deliberately casual stuff, but enough to let us know where she was going that night and who she was going with. You. She made it look an awful lot like you were the one feeding the vamps information, which was probably the plan all along until it backfired on her. Now that I know where to look, it’ll—”
“That’s bullshit an
d you know it.”
“I do, but a cop is dead, Cyn, and everyone knows you play with the vampires. They’d rather believe it was you than believe one of their own was dirty.”
“Great. You know, I’m beginning to think waking up wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. Damn it. This blows. So what should I do now?”
“Just lay low. I’ll do what I can from here, and eventually they’ll have to admit the truth. But, Cyn, it might be awhile.”
“Yeah,” she said glumly. “I know.” No matter how much evidence they uncovered that pointed to Benita’s guilt, no matter how squeaky clean Cyn turned out to be, there would always be someone who believed the worst about her. “Look, thanks for believing in me, Dean. It means a lot.”
“Hey, I care about you, grasshopper. You know that.”
“You may be the only one.” She sighed. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Stay in touch, okay?”
“Sure thing, sweetie.”
She hung up and was seriously considering going back to bed when she realized there was one more message waiting for her. She hit play, freezing at the sound of Duncan’s even voice. “Ms. Leighton, we need to arrange for final payment on your contract. It would be best to meet in person. Please call with a time and place that would be convenient. I believe you have my number.”
She remained frozen, staring down at the colorful tiles of her kitchen floor, until a knock on her front door startled her into movement. Walking automatically across the still dust-strewn living room, she peered through the peephole of the new door. Her housekeeper stood on the porch, looking perplexed as she sorted through the keys on her key ring. New door, Cyn remembered and wondered halfheartedly where the keys were. She threw the deadbolt and yanked open the door.
“Sorry, Anna,” she apologized wearily when the woman looked up with a confused smile. “New door.”
Anna bustled in, ready to get to work. She stopped and looked around the living room in dismay. “Miss Cynthia?”
“Oh.” Cyn looked around as if seeing the mess for the first time. “The workmen. They made a mess. Don’t worry if you need extra time today, whatever it takes.”
“Yes.” The housekeeper nodded slowly, then took a good look at Cyn and scowled. “You’ve lost weight,” she said sternly. Shaking her head, she went on into the kitchen, depositing her purse in the cupboard beneath the island and going immediately to the utility closet for her supplies.
Cyn didn’t like to be home when Anna was working. It made her feel like an intruder in her own house. She picked up the phone and dialed Duncan’s number from memory. She didn’t identify herself when his voice mail answered, just said five words and hung up. “My office at eight. Tonight.” She put the phone down and went to get dressed.
Chapter Forty-nine
DOWN IN THE GARAGE, Cyn took one look at the mess inside the Land Rover and closed the door. She’d run it through a car wash and thrown a towel over the seats before driving to Santa Barbara, but it was one thing to drive the damn truck to a rendezvous with a high probability of more mayhem, and another entirely to park it behind her office in Santa Monica. There must be someone who specialized in cleaning blood-soaked car seats. Someone like Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction. Come to think of it, she’d seen a special on television about a company that cleaned up after all kinds of bloody events—crime scenes, suicides, stuff like that. There had to be a company like that in L.A. She’d have to find them and give them a call. In the meantime, she arranged for the local car rental place to deliver a Lexus sedan to her office and called a taxi.
As the taxi dropped her behind the low office building, she noticed the lawyers on either side of her were both in. The therapist apparently took Wednesdays off. Did therapists golf? Or maybe they went to the spa. God knows, if Cyn had to sit and listen to other people complain for hours every day, she’d certainly need a weekly spa visit.
She let herself in the back door, automatically turning off the alarm and opening the blinds to let in some light. There were a few messages waiting for her, nothing monumental. A backup call from Nick and a couple of potential clients, referred by others. She’d call them later, or maybe not. She was thinking about a nice, long vacation. Somewhere far away from Malibu and its resident vampire lord. Cyn sighed deeply. She’d managed to avoid thinking about Raphael for the last couple of days, had managed to ignore the dull ache of emptiness beneath her heart. Duncan’s phone call had brought it all roaring back to life.
She walked over to her desk and leafed through the stack of mail that had been waiting for her. It was the first of the month. There were bills to pay, rent checks to process. Life went on. She opened her banking software and set to work.
By the time she finished, the room had grown dark, with only the small desk lamp and her computer monitor to light the office. She glanced up uneasily, painfully aware that somewhere in the city Raphael was beginning his night. Without her. She pushed away from her desk with an angry kick. She would not cry. She would not.
She glanced at her watch. It was nearly eight o’clock already. Where the hell was Duncan? She cleared her desk, closing folders, shutting down her computer. No reason to stay once this meeting was over. There were no other current clients, and she didn’t fancy any new ones right now, especially not the ones who came at night. When the buzzer sounded, she jumped, even though she’d been expecting it. She stared at the closed door and reached out reluctantly to click the small knob on the security screen.
Duncan stood outside, gazing directly at the camera. “Fuck.” She leaned back in her chair and realized for the first time that she’d been hoping Raphael would show up tonight, not Duncan. Her disappointment was bright and sharp, and so stupid. A knock sounded on her door and she heard the vampire’s voice. “Let me in, Ms. Leighton. I know you’re there.”
“How do you know, you bastard?” she whispered.
“Because I can hear you,” he replied, clearly amused.
“Great.” She pushed the release.
Duncan walked into her office alone. Definitely alone.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I told you on the phone,” he said patiently. “I brought your final payment.” He laid an elegant, white envelope on her desk. Her name was typed—not written in a flowing hand, but typed on the front. “You did perform quite admirably, but I believe you’ll find the compensation more than adequate.”
“Yeah, great.”
The vampire tilted his head curiously. “You disappeared the other night before I could thank you. I had my doubts about the wisdom of bringing you in, but . . . you served him well. That’s important to me.”
Cynthia stared at the blond vampire with his so human brown eyes. So sincere, so sober Duncan. And so utterly devoted to Raphael. “Can I ask you a question?”
Duncan regarded her steadily, then tipped his head in acquiescence. “Certainly.”
“I don’t mean to offend, but . . . how did you die? I mean what happened that made Raphael turn you?”
Duncan smiled at her. Cyn thought it was the only time she’d really seen him smile. “You’re very straightforward, Ms. Leighton. I admire that. As to your question, I was dying, struck down with so many others during the war.” He caught her eye. “That would be the War of Northern Aggression, the Civil War I believe you call it.”
Cyn nodded.
“It was 1863, the Battle of Stones River. Thousands died on both sides, many more were wounded. There was so little the surgeons could do for us then, and what few skills they had were given to the officers, or to the men who would live to fight again.” He stared at the wall, his eyes far away. “I was not one of those. Like so many, I was a farmer, conscripted into the army with no training and even less skill. Such a waste.” He shook his head at the memory. “In any event, I wa
s sorely wounded, sliced across the belly, my own hands all that were keeping my intestines from spilling into the dirt. A terrible way to die, slow and painful, with the scavenger birds jostling all around, waiting until you were too weak to push them away. I can still hear the screams of the other men, even after all these years . . .” He was silent for a moment, then continued briskly. “Lord Raphael found me and gave me a choice. I owe him my life; my loyalty I give freely.”
Tears were rolling down Cynthia’s cheeks and Duncan stared at her. “Cynthia?”
She wiped her cheeks angrily. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever called me by my name, Duncan. Be careful; you wouldn’t want anyone to think you like me.” She forced a smile. “So, how’s Alexandra? She recovering okay?”
“As you saw, it was difficult for her, but under the circumstances, she’s doing quite well. Raphael is taking her to one of his other estates for awhile, away from the memories. Though, he is sorry to be leaving Malibu. This is his favorite city.” He looked at her directly. “For many reasons.” When Cyn didn’t respond, he continued. “Alexandra has told us how you killed Albin and freed her. Raphael was furious at first; Albin was supposed to be his.” Duncan seemed amused by that. “Alexandra has nothing but good words for you and asks almost daily if you will visit.”
“Well,” Cyn laughed nervously. “That would be awkward, don’t you think? I mean she and Raphael . . .”
Duncan stared at her. “I believe you have mistaken the nature of their relationship, Ms. Leighton. Alexandra is Raphael’s sister. They were separated for centuries; he thought her dead along with their parents. He still feels guilty, I think, that he lost her for all that time, and Alexandra is not above . . . Well. Let us say Alexandra can be rather demanding.”
“His sister.” Cyn felt like someone had kicked her in the stomach. She fought to keep the pain from showing and knew from Duncan’s expression that she wasn’t succeeding. So she turned away, busying herself with taking the envelope—which was filled with cash—and shoving it into her backpack. She switched off the light before facing him again. No doubt he could see her just as well in the dark, but it made her feel less exposed.
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