Genevieve staggered over to her desk and blindly took a seat. What the hell was she going to do about this? She was in love with Cresso, and if the words he’d tried to tell her last night could be believed, he loved her, too. At least he thought he did. But how could she ever trust that this thing between them was for real?
Maybe you can’t. Maybe you just take a chance and hope for the best.
Oh, hell. She had to see him. She didn’t know what she’d say, but her gut told her to seek him out. At the very least, she could inform him of her scientific breakthrough.
Genevieve rose and unlocked the door, then started down the hall. After Cresso had met with Mac, who’d been present all throughout the morning casing the building once again, he’d retreated to his laboratory to prepare for meetings with some of his test subjects. She reached the door to his examination room but shrank back when she looked inside.
Cresso was in there, and he was with a patient. It was one of the succubi who’d gone to his apartment several days before. The sudden wrenching in her stomach told her she was jealous. How could she not be? The willowy blonde was perfection.
Genevieve glued her back to the wall and slid as close to the door as she could get. Yes, eavesdropping was wrong, but she couldn’t help herself.
“It’s been a while,” the succubus murmured. The paper lining Cresso’s examining table rustled.
“Stop that.” Cresso’s voice sounded cold and distant.
The succubus let out a soft laugh. “I’m just playing.”
“Don’t.”
There was a moment of silence before the succubus spoke again. “It’s been almost a month, and you’ve been acting more and more strange lately. What’s up with you?”
Cresso sighed. “Listen, I just started seeing someone.”
Another beat of silence.
“Wait, it’s serious, isn’t it?” The succubus sounded shocked.
“Very serious, Samantha. I love her.”
Thankfully the succubus’s gasp drowned out Genevieve’s.
“You actually mean that,” the succubus said with a note of wonder. “I can’t believe it.”
Neither could Genevieve. Maybe he really did love her. The true kind. The lasting kind. Maybe she could trust him.
She heard the rustle of movement inside the room and straightened, then fled. She wasn’t ready to face Cresso yet, and she didn’t want him to know she’d overheard his private conversation.
Genevieve raced toward the ladies restroom a few feet down the hall. She made it inside without being spotted. A long mirror lined the sink area, and when she looked in it, she barely recognized the figure on the other side. Wide-eyed and shell-shocked. She stumbled forward and rested her hands on the counter, giving herself a more thorough examination.
He loves me. He really loves me.
And she loved him. God help her, she’d fallen in love with Cresso. What was she going to do about it?
Her heart screamed to take a chance, but her brain insisted on replaying that fateful night with Jeffrey over and over again. If that happened with Cresso, she didn’t know how she’d survive it.
She turned on the faucet and used her shaky hands to splash water on her face, in the vain hope that it would help to clear her mind. When she heard the door to the restroom open, she forced a smile to her face and looked up. Then she saw who it was…and froze.
Dr. Summers blocked the door, a fierce expression on her face. Will had informed them this morning that she’d called in sick again, and Mac had sent someone to her house to watch over her. So what the hell was she doing here?
Genevieve whirled around to face her. “Dr. Summers, I…I thought you were out sick.”
Dr. Summers stepped forward. She opened her mouth, but instead of words, the most horrible, shrill shriek emitted from her lips. Goose bumps broke out all over Genevieve’s body at the bloodcurdling sound.
When banshees wailed, it meant someone was going to die.
Oh my God!
“Leave me alone!” She tried to run past Dr. Summers, but the superstrong banshee caught hold of her arm and shoved her so that her back hit the countertop. Dr. Summers’s right arm raised, and Genevieve saw that she had something cylindrical clutched in her hand.
A syringe. It had to be.
Dr. Summers was going to kill her, and she wasn’t strong enough to stop her.
She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could, the door to the restroom opened. Tom stood on the other side, and he had his maintenance cart right outside the door. He took one look at Dr. Summers and grasped his broom like a baseball bat. Dr. Summers lunged for Genevieve, who backpedaled just as Tom shot forward.
He swung the broom at the back of Dr. Summers’s head. It connected with a loud crack that tore a scream from Genevieve’s throat. Dr. Summers’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she tumbled to the ground.
Genevieve pressed her back into the wall and stared at Dr. Summers in dumbfounded silence. After long moments in which Dr. Summers didn’t get back up, Genevieve allowed herself to relax. Maybe he’d killed the banshee. The trickle of blood pooling on the floor next to her head certainly didn’t look good.
“You okay?” Tom asked.
“She…she tried to kill me.”
When he cocked a brow at her, Genevieve crept forward and knelt before Dr. Summers. She unclenched the banshee’s right fist to retrieve the object in her hand. “It…it’s a piece of paper.”
Tom shifted his weight, nervously staring down at Dr. Summers’s prone figure. “What did you think it was?”
“A syringe.” She unrolled the paper. The single word it contained wasn’t in the same penmanship as all the previous notes she’d received. And the word scrawled on the paper elicited a tremor of fear.
It said: Run.
“Run?” Genevieve’s brows furrowed and she glanced up at Tom. For the first time, she noticed that he’d retrieved something from behind his back. It was a white handkerchief. “What are you—”
Before she could say anything else, he lunged for her and pressed the handkerchief to her nose and mouth.
No! She tried to scream, but nothing more than a muffled cry escaped her lips.
Genevieve attempted to struggle out of Tom’s grasp, but he was too strong. She was forced to breathe in the noxious fumes of the compound the handkerchief had been dipped in. Based on its sweet smell, she knew what it was. Chloroform.
Oh, no. No.
She’d gotten the wrong person. Dr. Summers wasn’t her stalker. It had been Tom all along.
With that last thought, her vision faded to black.
Chapter Eleven
Once Cresso was done with Samantha, he escorted her to the front exit as required by company policy. Wearing an anxious expression on his face, Will waved him over. “Dr. Taylor, I was on break, and I just got back and checked my log-in records. It seems Dr. Summers arrived less than ten minutes ago.”
Cresso’s chest tightened on a punch of pain. “She’s here?”
“Yeah.” Will fidgeted and scratched at his arm. “I know you asked to be notified immediately if she came in, but—”
Cresso didn’t wait for him to finish. He raced toward the stairs and took them up at super speed, heading straight for Genevieve’s office. His worst fears were realized when he found it empty.
Maybe she’s somewhere else. The restroom or the cafeteria.
That was certainly possible, though his gut told him it was wishful thinking.
She might even have gone to my lab.
He turned and headed down the hall, pausing outside of the women’s restroom. Since finding Gen was more important than preserving someone’s sense of modesty, he pushed inside and stepped back at what he saw there.
“What the fuck?”
Dr. Summers, the very person he’d suspected of being Gen’s stalker, lay facedown on the floor. A thin stream of blood flowed from the back of her head. He rushed forward and bent down beside her. When h
e touched her shoulder, she moaned and rolled onto her back. Her eyes fluttered and a weak hand reached for his wrist. “Dr.…Russell.”
Cresso closed his arms around her shoulders. “Where is she?”
“Tried…to warn her. Couldn’t stop it.”
His heart stuttered. “What do you mean?”
“Had a vision.”
Oh, hell no. If she’d had a vision of Genevieve, that meant it was of her death. One of the curses of being a banshee was that they couldn’t verbally warn those about to die, they could only wail at them. And since only those doomed to die would hear the high-pitched howling, no one else in the building would have been the wiser.
He bit back the pained roar that threatened to tear out of his mouth. “Is she dead?”
“Not yet.” Her fingers tightened on his wrist. “He has her.”
“Who? Who has her?”
She heaved in a breath. “Maintenance man…Tom.”
Tom? He rocked back on his ankles, staring at her in shock. The maintenance man was her stalker? It had been him all along? “Where did he take her?”
Dr. Summers shook her head. “Don’t know.”
“Shit. Fuck!” He rose to his feet. “I’ll get you some help.”
She nodded weakly. “Go. Hurry.”
Cresso raced for the stairs and headed back to Will at the front desk. “Tom…where is he?”
Will gave him a shocked look. “He left, ’bout fifteen minutes ago.”
Cresso’s stomach dropped. “He left?”
“Yeah, today’s garbage day. He leaves early to take the garbage bags to the dump.”
Oh, fuck. “He had garbage bags with him?”
“Yeah, several of them on his maintenance cart.”
“Damn it, no!” Cresso raced out into the parking lot, but Tom and his large company van were gone. That had to be it. He could’ve easily hid Genevieve in one of the bags and left. But only if she were unconscious.
Or dead.
No, don’t think about that.
Dr. Summers had told him she was still alive. He would trust in that.
Cresso ran back inside to where Will stood behind the desk, waiting for him. “I need Tom’s address.”
“Okay, yeah. But we keep that in our physical files downstairs. It’ll take a few minutes to track down that information.”
“Do it. Now. He has Genevieve.”
Will’s eyes widened. “Dr. Russell?”
“Go.”
Will obeyed, turning and running toward the stairwell. Cresso paced the length of the lobby, wondering what the hell else he could do. This was bad. Really bad.
When his phone rang, he dug it out of his pocket, hoping against hope that Genevieve had somehow managed to communicate with him. His heart sank when he saw it was Taeg.
“Taeg,” he rasped into the phone.
“Hey dude, we’ve been searching for these maliki demons for days, and we haven’t found squat. Fucking frustrating. I’m beginning to think someone was screwing with us—”
“He’s got Genevieve.”
Taeg paused for a fraction of a second. “What?”
“The stalker. It’s the maintenance man, and he’s taken Genevieve. If I don’t find her soon, he’ll—”
“Do you know where he might be headed?”
“The security guard is looking up his address. That’s the best guess I have.”
“Fuck,” Taeg said. “Listen, hold tight, man. Me and Maya are, like, fifteen minutes away. We’ll be there soon.”
“Okay. Thanks, man.” While part of him wanted to race out of here and search for Genevieve, he couldn’t do it without anything to go on. He needed to keep his head. Otherwise there was no chance he’d get to her in time.
She must be so scared.
No, he couldn’t think about that right now. He had to focus on getting her back. She was going to be okay. She had to be.
If he lost her, he wouldn’t survive it.
…
The ferocious pounding of Genevieve’s head jarred her back to consciousness. She shifted her head and swallowed to moisten a mouth that tasted dry as cotton. What the hell happened?
She tried to sit forward but couldn’t. That was when she opened her eyes…and remembered.
The bathroom. Dr. Summers. Tom…
Several blinks later, everything came into focus. She was alone in the center of a dark room that reeked of a combination of chemicals, and she sat in a wooden chair with her arms and legs tied to it.
Oh, fuck. Somehow Tom had taken her out of the building and brought her here, wherever this place was.
God, no. Did Cresso even know she was gone? She didn’t hold out any hope he’d find her here. He wouldn’t even think to suspect Tom.
Okay, focus. She had to concentrate on the details, see if she could find a way out of here.
Genevieve took a longer look around the room. It was a rustic log cabin, complete with wood ceilings and floors. Strange carvings of canvas stretched over wood lined the log walls, with abstract designs etched in blood-red paint. Besides her chair, the only other furniture was a long couch covered in ratty green material. Directly in front of her was the sole entryway into the room.
There was no light other than the tall flame in the fireplace, a few feet away. It warmed the left side of her body, but not even that could dispel the chill in the air. Stifling a shiver, she craned her head behind her. Nothing but wall there.
Where the hell was she?
The thump of shoes crossing the floor made her whole body tense and her heart pound in her chest. Seconds later, Tom entered the room. He still wore his blue work overalls. Upon seeing her, he broke out into a grin. “Oh, good, you’re finally awake.”
Stay calm. Focus.
“What’s going on here, Tom?”
“You’re at my place. Thought you should see it.”
She shrank back as he crossed the room and knelt right in front of her. Within kicking distance, had her feet not been tied to the legs of the chair. “Why did you bring me here?”
He scowled, and his face took on an expression of madness she’d never seen before. “I couldn’t wait any longer. Not after you’d gone and soiled yourself.”
Genevieve blinked at him. “What?”
Tom rested his hand on her knee, just below her skirt.
Heart in her throat, she inched back. “Don’t touch me!”
Rage colored his face, and he squeezed her knee hard. “Why not, after you let that dirty incubus touch you?”
“I…what? How do you know he’s touched me?”
He scoffed at her. “I was there by the elevator the other night. Why else would you be going to his place? And then I saw you yesterday, taking some more of the vaccine from his office. Once wasn’t enough, right? You decided you need to keep a stash of the stuff around for whenever he feels like fucking you again.”
An embarrassed flush crept to her cheeks. She purposely ignored his taunting questions. “How did you track me to Cresso’s apartment? How did you know where I live, for that matter?”
Tom gave her a slow smile that made her skin crawl with its menacing promise. “I tracked you back to your place one night a few weeks ago. You never even noticed me on the tube.” His smile transformed into a glower. “And then, when I saw you and Cresso leaving the other night, I shifted and chased after his car.”
She blinked at him in disbelief. He’d turned into a hyena and chased her car down the streets of London? How incredibly insane for him to take such a crazy risk.
Genevieve tensed in horror when his hand traveled under her skirt. He paused at mid-thigh. “I thought you were special, that you were different from the rest of them.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered, trying to shrink back from his touch.
“I’ve watched you since you started at Elcorp, and not once did I see you with another man. You were pure. Untouched.” His lips curled back from his teeth. “And then you had to go and give it up t
o that demon.”
She knew she should keep her mouth shut, but she couldn’t. “What I do on my own time is none of your business.”
Tom let out a growl and his face momentarily distorted into his hyena form He lifted his hand from her thigh and slapped her across the face, snapping her neck to the side. “Whore!”
Genevieve swallowed back her agonized cry. She tasted the tangy flavor of blood on her lower lip and sucked it into her mouth, determined not to show him weakness. Something told her he preyed on the weak. “You never once showed any interest toward me.”
Those were the wrong words to say. He slapped her again, and she let out an involuntary whimper.
“You weren’t supposed to whore around!” He stood and turned his back, pacing a few feet. “I thought you were special. I’d already picked out a place of honor to display your beauty. If you had only remained pure, you would have forever been worshipped. Adored.”
“I-I don’t understand,” she stammered.
“You were going to be my queen.”
“Your queen?” The horror of his words made her stomach twist into a vicious knot. “You’re crazy.”
Tom laughed and turned back to her. “We’ll see how crazy I am.”
He stalked to the side of the fireplace and retrieved something from the floor. When he held it up to her, she couldn’t fight her gasp. It was a large knife, and the dried red flakes along the blade looked more like blood than rust.
“No,” she whispered. Damn it, she didn’t want to beg him for her life. Instinctively she knew he would enjoy that. But she couldn’t stop the word from escaping her mouth.
Tom’s eyes glittered as he shook his head. “In the end, you were just like the others. Whores, all of you. That means you’ll meet the same fate. Instead of a place of honor, you’ll grace the wall of shame.”
“Others?” She swallowed hard. “What others? And what are you talking about, wall of shame?”
He motioned toward the walls. Genevieve glanced at the carvings hung on them before turning back to him. Wait…
She focused her gaze back on the carvings. What she’d assumed to be painted canvas stretched over wood was nothing of the sort.
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