The Better to Eat You With: The Red Journals

by Cara Villar

  My stomach had all but forced itself up my throat.

  Was Ambrose the Collector? Was he kidnapping Immortals for a menagerie?

  Miloslav’s death was alleged to have been about fifty-odd years ago, but the details were shady and inconclusive. It was also around that time Ambrose was beginning to make a name for himself, and, unsurprisingly, when the disappearances were believed to have begun. Ambrose was said to speak fondly of his sire, which he referred to as Milo, conveniently meaning ‘solider’ in Latin.

  As we had finalized the finer details of acquiring the other half of the broken program from Natasha’s workplace, I had to concentrate on keeping my hands from shaking. I had gripped them tight in my lap, or in my pockets, or I crossed my arms over my middle, so no one would see how unsettled I was. I had reasoned with myself that I had every right to be nervous, even scared. It didn’t stop the shaking, and it didn’t make me feel better.

  The fact that I was cognizant of another being taking up residence in my own damn head didn’t help. It felt like at any moment, Felix was going to whisper dirty little ditties from the corner of my own mind, and I wasn’t going to be able to stop my reaction!

  Because I don’t have enough issues with people thinking I’m crazy as it is.

  So, there I stood, dressed in a school uniform, a pack on my back, the street damp under my DC’s and the night sky threatening more rain. I stared at the glass front building named after my dead-but-not-dead husband, whom I’d mourned for far too long, thinking far too hard about another man whom I dry-humped – again – to orgasm in the wee hours of the morning.

  And to think choosing the color of my shoes used to be the main event in my week.

  I could not have come up with a more unexpected, life-changing, fuck-my-life scenario in my existence even if I were looking to make a change that drastic.

  I miss my nest.

  Sighing heavily, I tugged up my over-the-knee black socks and skipped my way to the glass doors across the street, pigtails bouncing and swinging as I pushed my way inside. I swaggered across the pale marble floor, my expression camouflaged to overly perky and open, as innocent and young as I could get it.

  “Hi.” I beamed at the security guard over the desk, who stared at me as if I had two heads.

  “Hello,” he replied warily. He had a friendly face and big, open brown eyes with laugh lines creasing the corners. His hair was brown and awash with grey and thinning, and he had a bit of a pot-belly. He was probably someone’s dad. Someone’s husband. And for an instant, I felt bad for what I was about to do.

  “I’m waiting to meet my dad but he hasn’t come down yet,” I explained as a speed only the adolescent could understand. “Can you check to see when he’ll be finished?” Cue the big, naïve blink.

  Security guy gave me a tender look, even as his eyes skimmed the row of piercings I only just now realized I forgot to take out of my ears. I wondered if I reminded him of his daughter. Or granddaughter.

  “There’s no one here now, sweetheart. Everyone’s gone home.”

  My smile dropped, and my lip wobbled slightly for effect. “Really?” At his sage nod, I glanced away, mumbling, “Oh…maybe I was supposed to meet him at school…” I patted my pockets, pulled out my phone, and pressed my lips into a line as tears filled my eyes. “My cell is dead.” I looked up at the security guard, whose tender gaze was still so kind. “Can I borrow your phone?” When the guard hesitated, I let my fake tears choke me as I said, “Please? It’s dark out.”

  After a moment, the guard sighed and nodded, “Fine. But make it quick.”

  I gave him a brilliant yet watery smile, bounced around the desk, and promptly knocked him out cold with a well-aimed right hook.

  I caught him as he began to slump, and slowly lowered him to the floor. Whatever granddaughter I reminded him of wasn’t getting her gramp’s back with a bloody noggin’, that’s for sure. And call me sentimental but…I was a granddaughter once.

  Glancing up at the cameras dotted around the reception area, I blew a kiss to the one staring right at me, followed by a wave, then skipped over to the elevator, hit the up button, and stepped inside. As the doors slid shut, I shifted myself to stand right under the camera, and selected a random amount of floors. I actually only wanted floor sixty-three, but thirty-six, forty-eight, fifty-seven, sixty-nine, seventy-nine, and ninety-four seemed like good numbers to choose.

  At floor fifty-seven, however, I slipped out, waltzed along the darkened corridor, and into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time up to sixty-three. By the time I’d cleared the twelve flights, I knew my cardio was seriously lacking, and determined I should probably hit the gym when I got some off-time. Though, I hated running. Seriously, when you have an ample chest (and mine hadn’t been small to begin with), you can’t run. Even with a bra, it still feels like I’m going to knock myself out with my own tatas, and running down the street after a bounty while holding my boobs was hardly a professional look.

  But I digress.

  On floor sixty-three, I was to exit the stairwell, turn left and move twenty feet to the next door. Behind that door would be a supply closet with an air vent. A very specific air vent, I had been drilled to understand, that would allow Felix to enter the multi-story office building. All I had to do was ensure that the vents were clear. I didn’t know how Felix was getting in at sixty-three stories up, or how the hell he was getting in through that tiny vent, since he weren’t exactly scrawny. But all my questions went unanswered—or ignored, depending on whose perspective you saw it from.

  So, I did what I was told, wrinkling my nose when the supply closet turned out to be a cleaning cupboard, and the acrid stench of confined cleaning products burned away any sense of smell I might have had with the first inhale. I moved to the designated wall that Fletch had pointed out on his blueprints, and slid the cabinets away to the side. The vents were utterly clogged with dust and cobwebs, as if the cabinet had been there a long while. So, dragging over an empty bucket, I upturned it, stepped up, and using an old cloth that still felt damp, I cleared the muck. Instantly, a cool breeze ghosted into the room, lifting away some of the disinfectant and bleach, some dust and damp and mold. I leaned in and sucked in fresh air in a vain attempt to get my olfactory sense to work again, and got a faint of wisp ice, coffee and anise.

  With a sigh, I spun around on the bucket—and froze.

  A very Felix-shaped haze was rapidly forming within the confined space of the cleaning cupboard. Strong legs straddled buckets and mops, narrow hips blocked hanging damp cloths, broad shoulders brushed cabinets, and then laughing green eyes that matched the constant amusement in the corners of my mind.

  I gaped at him as he casually adjusted the fall of his long-sleeved T and cracked his neck, taking in the skin tight black top and jeans and the wind-brushed hair and newly flushed cheeks. He’d fed before meeting me, and yet, the fact hardly registered as my gaze darted from him to the vent, then back to him. I did this for a good few wasteful moments before I finally found the motor-skills necessary to speak my utter shock.

  Because everything was suddenly all falling into place.

  “You can teleport?” I squeaked.

  He instantly hushed me, and then enunciated, “Misting.”

  I stared at him and pointed at the vent, “You can bloody teleport!”

  “It’s called misting,” he told me again, rolling his eyes.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Your forgiven,” he interrupted.

  I scowled, then continued, “But what the friggin’ hell is misting?”

  “I can dissolve myself down to a molecular level. In other words, I literally become mist. And I can travel that way.” He shrugged. “Comes in handy.”

  “This is how your scent disappeared outside the bar in Summersville.” I realized. “This is how you managed to avoid me in Osiris’s house for so long.” I gasped in outrage. “This is how you got in front of your car so bloody fast when I was trying to es
cape!”

  “A gentleman always has his secrets,” Felix swaggered.

  I snorted. “Gentleman, my arse.”

  He arched a brow, and ignored my comment. “Vampires acquire abilities the older they get,” he explained, taking a step forward. “It’s why we never disclose our age.”

  “Because then everyone would know how powerful you are,” I surmised, his spicy, exotic scent wrapping around me and drowning out the unsavory sharpness of cleaning products.

  “Which is why most Vampires will not be so inclined to enjoy that wonderful ability you have of gauging their age as accurately as you do.” And then he was right in front of me, and for the first time since I met this damn Vampire, I didn’t have to look up at him.

  And all it took was a bucket.

  “Well,” I said breathlessly, “it’s not like I go around advertising.”

  Felix’s smile was rather devilish then. “I should hope not, pet.” His eyes drifted down my outfit, then back up to my eyes. “Where did you get the uniform?”

  I cleared my throat and tugged on my short pleated skirt. “It’s Jade’s old Private School one.” I tilted my chin up, even as a blush raced across my cheeks when his eyes dipped down to the straining shirt buttons. I was a little more endowed than Jade had been at fifteen.

  “Looks a little…tight,” Felix observed, flooding our connection with excitement.

  “It’s a little snug, in places.” I hunched my shoulders a little, trying to shrink my own chest. It didn’t work.

  Felix grinned, gave me a quick heated kiss, and then turned for the door. “Come along, Wendy.”

  I hopped off the bucket. “Fuck off, Alistair.”

  His chuckled warmed me to my core.

  25

  This little breaking-and-entering mission was all about timing. The guards did rounds of each floor every half hour. We had nineteen minutes until that round started again, which under normal circumstances would have allowed Felix and me to be in and out in half that time. However, Natasha had the wonderful fortune to be an executive personal assistant to one of the top company dogs. According to Felix, it had taken Natasha twelve years to work her way up to her position, and the sensitive information she became privy to was invaluable to someone in Felix’s line of work—whatever that was.

  “You’ve been hunting him that long?” I’d asked Felix.

  “Nearly four decades,” he replied, eyes cold, memories of atrocities I could only guess at running through his mind.

  Natasha had been Felix’s eyes and ears in one of the biggest Immortal companies in the world…even if the Immortal in question wasn’t exactly on par with the rest of the society. Whatever information was likely to be on the USB we were trying to decrypt would no doubt be gold.

  I sincerely hoped so, since the executives at G.C. Logistics, and their assistants, worked on one of the top two floors that demanded the use of a private elevator on the opposite side of the building to the one I had hiked a lift on. And it didn’t run at night. To get to it, Felix and I had to skirt a whole floor of cubicles while dodging the occasional security camera, then break into the elevator shaft, go up said shaft somehow, and into the private, heavily monitored executive offices, without setting off any alarms.

  Piece of cake!

  Once we’d managed to get onto the encoded, heavily monitored and tightly secured office floor, and into the ever-changing personalized pin and print-activated offices, and then into the every-changing personalized pin and print-activated filing cabinets and drawers, we had to get back out again. All without setting off any alarms.

  Yeah. Totally a piece of cake.

  “Hallo, Kiddy Cat,” I murmured into the dainty comm-system perched in my ear. “Can you purr for me?” A slow grin spread across my face as Fletch’s familiar deep rumble of a purr vibrated through the sound check. Felix arched a brow at me from his squat on the other side of the cubicle.

  “A voice for late-night luuuuurve,” Fletch added.

  “Wrong target audience,” Vince grumbled.

  “Jail Bait looks entertained,” Felix drawled, referring to my outfit

  I scowled playfully, tugging at my skirt. “I like being sweet talked into things.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Vince replied huskily, and Felix’s eyes flared with gold at the challenge.

  “Watch your step, pup,” the Vampire said in a voice low and brimming with hostility.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “You watch yours, bat boy,” Vince replied, and Fletch snickered across the line.

  “All right, boys. Rein in the pissing contest. We got work to do.” I gave Felix a pointed look, and he blew me a kiss that made me blush. “Kiddy-cat," I said, voice strangled, “how we looking?”

  “No alarms triggered as yet, and the airwaves are clear.”

  Excellent. That meant no Chicago Police Department. I respect their jobs, but not when it interfered with mine.

  “Big Dog? How goes street-level?”

  Vince was outside with his lieutenants keeping watch for any unwanted visitors not announced on the police dispatch.

  “Perfect for ducks,” he grumbled. “But clear of anything else…Jail Bait.” Vince’s tone was decidedly provocative, proving that he wasn’t in the least bit worried about the Vampire opposite me with an irritated expression on his face.

  Fletch snickered again.

  With a dramatic, heavy sigh, I replied, “Then let’s go get my lollipop.”

  Peeking out of the cubicle, down each end of the long aisle, then up at the little glass orbs in the corners, I narrowed my Vampire gaze on the lens beneath the tinted glass. The camera was reflecting the light ever so nicely if you had the supernatural ability to see it, and when it was just right, Felix was on his feet and moving up the aisle, and I was following on his heel.

  Felix’s dark form slinked along the shadowed cubicles like a wraith through the dust of a deserted town. Sometimes I couldn’t even see him, until the moon caught his hair, or the gleam of his eyes, or the shimmering paleness of his skin when he glanced back at me. The Vampire was in his element, and a wonder to behold. He was lithe, graceful, and sexy, and as I followed him through the ugly-grey-divider-jungle, I thought for an instant that I might follow him anywhere, and be happy to.

  As long as he kept looking at me the way he kept looking at me.

  How could a girl resist that?

  “Toad in the hole, peeps,” Fletch’s voice suddenly purred softly in my ear. “Duck ‘n’ cover. I repeat, duck ‘n’ cover.” And then a toilet flush sounded not far off up ahead of us.

  Felix slipped right into the shadow of a cubicle. I went left under a desk and pulled the chair in close. The heavy clump of steel-toe caps thudded leisurely towards us then, and a low jaunty whistle as a bright beam of light flashed past our cubicles. I froze, my hand gripping the edge of the chair wedged against me, and wished Fletch would stop humming Labrinth and Emeli Sande’s ”Beneath your Beautiful” in my ear. He couldn’t have picked a more un-mission-like song ever. What happened to the James Bond theme? Or even The White Stripes?

  The security guard with his bright light and cheerful whistling wandered past us, swaggering, hand on his belt, and I wondered inanely if he remembered to wash his hands.

  Then we were on the move again.

  I swung my pack around to my front as we swiftly moved to the elevator and squatted down by the security panel. Felix was prying off the panel as I got the wires and keycard sorted to hack the motherboard. Sliding in the hook-ups and then slipping a coded passkey card in, I watched the dial race with numbers, praying this wasn’t one of Fletch experiments. That all the security from this floor up would be out for twenty minutes, while Felix went to work jimmying open the elevator doors.

  “Kiddy Cat, we good to go?” Fletch’s job was to upload an interference virus into the security system of the elevators to give us temporary access, and then it would dissolve and become untraceable.

  Beat of silen
ce. “Security system has a cold.”

  I snickered at the Independence Day line.

  “Go!”

  The red security beams were already flickering and going out by the time Felix was done wedging them open, and I was slipping Fletch’s naughty little toy back into my pack. Whatever little coded sequence they scattered ensured the alarms wouldn’t go off when we forced the elevator doors open upstairs.

  “After you, pet.” Felix bowed his head and swept out an arm, all gentleman-like.

  “You just want to look up my skirt.” I smirked, swinging out and latching onto the metal ladder to the left of the open doors.

  “Think of it as me sweet talking you,” he offered, swinging out to the metal ladder on the right. He leaned over and dislodged the rubber wedge holding the doors open.

  “Pervy Vampire,” I remarked over the swish of closing steel.

  He shrugged. “It’s an age thing.”

  “It’s a Felix thing.”

  “Oh, pet,” he purred, pausing on the ladder as I continued, leaning precariously over to blatantly look up at me. “You think you know me so well.”

  “Oh please,” I retorted dryly, “I hardly think Osiris is the kind to look up women’s skirts.” I lost sight of him as I shimmied behind the edge of elevator.

  “You’d be surprised,” Felix replied, and I ducked down to give him a sharp look.

  “Indeed, I would be,” I told him before continuing to the top of the metal box. Hopping up onto the top, Felix pulled open the escape hatch and dropped silently inside. I wobbled with the elevator, and then followed him down. We paused at the elevator doors of the executive level.