She disconnected the call without another word.
Ever since Deborah had been elected, Cade had tried to cajole her to hire vamps to fill positions on her staff. In the beginning she had, as a bone perhaps for helping her win the election, but one by one the vamps had quit, saying they couldn’t stand to work for the bitch. Eight months had passed since the last vampire on the Dayton staff had quit, and Cade had no other contacts in City Hall. Rose was the only staff member he’d been able to reach. The rest had vanished like insects into the woodwork.
He needed some air. The temperature had dropped tonight, a good excuse to slip a black duster over the red t-shirt and black jeans he wore. The cold didn’t bother him, of course, but he wasn’t in the mood tonight for flaunting his more colorful garb. It wasn’t late, barely past midnight, so the streets and sidewalks were humming with life, but his mind was even more unsettled than last night. It wasn’t pleasure he craved now, but an outlet for his frustration. He avoided Noctule, but wandered Armitage Avenue, shunning his usual prey, searching instead for someone who could give him what he wanted. But he couldn’t kill, not when he was extolling his brethren not to kill. Keep the peace, he thought, over and over again.
He ended up at Oz Park, as he often did, and he stood next to the statue of the Tin Man, bright and shiny even by night.
All you wanted was a brain. What do you suppose the Wizard could give me?
“Waiting for someone, Cade?”
He turned to see Red smiling at him.
“Just the Wizard.”
She drew her brows together. “The what?”
“Just you, Red. I didn’t see you on your corner.”
She hiked up a shoulder. “I did what you told me. I’ve been walking. I’ll bet you thought I wasn’t listening to you, but I was.”
She looked delicious, as always, wearing tight blue jeans, an oversized black sweater that dropped enticingly off one shoulder, and red jewelry. “Good,” he said, taking in every inch of her. “Good for you.”
She cocked her head, trying to catch his eye, and her red hair brushed her bare shoulder. “Alone again? Want some company?”
He reached out and fingered both the silky hair and the exposed skin. Sweet Red. He was in a dangerous mood, but perhaps she was what he needed. “Maybe.”
“More than a bite this time. Take me home.”
He didn’t want to go back to the townhouse. “No. Thor’s having a party,” he lied. “You take me home.”
She hesitated, and he took the opportunity to pull her close. His mouth caressed the length of her neck while his hands slipped under the sweater to cup her breasts. A tight sleeveless top under the sweater met his touch, but no bra. Her breasts weren’t large, but they were fuller than Deborah’s had been, round and tight, and he stroked her nipples with his thumbs until they were hard. He was harder yet.
“Mmm,” she purred.
He raised his head in time to see her suck in her lower lip, and he brushed her mouth with his, waiting. When she relaxed her mouth and let her lip unfurl against his he took it in a kiss.
After a moment she pulled away, breathing hard against his neck. “Okay okay okay. You win. I have a flat up on Arlington. It’s small, only one bedroom, but . . .”
“One bedroom is all we need.”
They walked north, her long strides matching his. He’d fed from Red countless times, but he’d never had sex with her. She was beautiful—there was no denying that—but he’d never thought of her as his type.
“Cade, is something wrong?”
He looked at her, at her porcelain skin, green-glass eyes, and garnet hair. Beautiful and intuitive. “No. What makes you ask that?”
She laughed, pulling up her sweater sleeve to cover her bare shoulder. “Only the fact that I’ve offered myself to you dozens of times, and this is the first time you’ve accepted.”
“And that’s wrong?”
“Well, it’s strange. Definitely strange.”
He only smiled and kept walking.
Red’s flat was a third floor walk-up, as small as she’d promised. But it didn’t matter. As long as she didn’t sleep on a damn futon or single bed he was happy. The furniture was cheap, but the place was clean, and she had a queen-sized bed. Not as big as his bed, but big enough.
Neither of them wasted time. This was no seduction on his part, no coy game-playing on hers. Nor was it business, as it often had been with Deborah, but need. He stripped off his coat and t-shirt, and she paused in her undressing to ooh when she glimpsed a portion of the tattoos that covered his back from his neck to his buttocks.
“Let me see them,” she begged.
“Later.” Other body parts demanded more attention.
He shed his jeans, and because all she did was stand and gawk at him, he finished undressing her down to her jewelry. She wore a gold necklace with dangling red crystal hearts, but the hearts hung upside down, like drops of bloods. He pushed her against the bed and straddled her, fingering the hearts while he ran his gaze over her breasts. The only fresh bite mark was his, from yesterday. She was impatient, not raking at his back like Deborah had, as though he were a field to be furrowed, but stroking as much of his skin as she could reach.
He made her wait, though, while he satisfied his curiosity, brushing her hair aside to check for bite marks on her neck. There were old ones, many probably his, but no fresh marks. He grabbed her wrists and pressed his mouth to the inside of each. He felt her pulse beat against his lips, and no scars spoiled the touch.
He lifted his head. “Red, no one else?”
She stuck her lip out at him, and he wasn’t sure if she wanted to slap him or kiss him. “I’m not a whore, Cade.”
“I never said you were.” Though many a mortal would.
“There hasn’t been anyone for a while, now,” she said.
He frowned. “Do you know who I am?”
“Sure. You run Noctule. Now would you stop asking stupid questions and fuck me?”
He laughed. Maybe Red was indeed just what he needed. He took one hardened nipple between his teeth, and his phone rang from somewhere near the foot of the bed.
“Let your voice mail pick it up,” she breathed, arching up to him.
He couldn’t. He’d left lots of messages. At the least he had to see who it was. Cade rolled off her and fished on the floor for his cell phone. A blocked number. Maybe Rat again.
“Cade.”
“This is Detective Tower. You know me?”
He did. Hannibal Tower was a vamp cop, not as old as Rat and not as arrogant. “I know you.”
“This is a warning, if you haven’t already heard it.”
Now what? “Go on.”
“An arrest warrant has been issued for you for Deborah Dayton’s murder. If I were you, I’d start running.”
Fucking cops! “Based on what?”
“I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but you’re my doyen.”
And someday you want a favor in return. “Based on what, Hannibal?”
“We’ve got plenty of probable cause. We found diary notes in Dayton’s house saying that you forced her to make changes that were prejudicially favorable to the undead. Her notes also said she was tired of the extortion and was going to blow the whistle on you, and her housekeeper gave a statement that Deborah had told her she was going to expose the vampire conspiracy behind the election.”
“That’s a load of crap—all of it. It’s all lies.”
“Hey, I’m not the judge and jury. I did what I had to do. You do what you have to do.”
“Hannibal . . .” The call had already been disconnected.
“Son of a bitch!” It was a rare expletive, proof that he, and the situation, were out of control.
“What is it?”
“Turn it off, and dress in the dark. No lights.”
She silently did as she was told.
He didn’t dare go back to either the townhouse or the club. The cops may not be there yet, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. But he had no cash, no clothes except those strewn on the floor, and no car. He hit the pre-set for Thor’s number.
“Thor.”
“Cade. Are you at the club?” From the din of laughter in the background, it was a good guess, but he wanted to be sure.
“Of course.”
“This is private. Get someplace where you can’t be overheard.”
“What’s up?” asked Thor a moment later.
“I need you to bring me the following items from the club. Do not go to the townhouse, understand?”
“Sure.”
“Bring me as much cash as you can. There should be at least ten thousand in the office safe. Then take a bag and fill it with as many clothes and travel necessities as you can pack in three minutes. No suits with color—just one of the black ones—and jeans and shirts. Bring everything to . . .” He turned to Red, who stared at him with saucer eyes as she finished pulling up her jeans. “What’s the address here?”
She told him, and he repeated it to Thor. “Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing or where you’re going, understand?”
“But where are you going?”
Damned if I know. “Later. Get going. I want you here in fifteen minutes.” He ended the call.
KITTY’S TITS! CADE was bailing, and Thor would be left holding the proverbial bag of shit. It was Thor’s fear come to life, all the more angering because Cade hadn’t taken even a few seconds to tell him what this was about. Imperiousness, thy name is Cade.
But it spurred him to action, and Thor didn’t even think about refusing the order. He opened the office safe and grabbed the cash kept there for emergencies. He counted the taped bundles quickly. Not as much as Cade wanted, but too bad. Next, he tore upstairs to the bedroom Cade kept on the third floor of the club. There weren’t as many clothes here as at the townhouse, but enough to stuff into a bag.
Thor had never known Cade to run from anyone, mortal or vampire. It wasn’t so much that Cade was strong or that he knew things no one else knew, though both were true, but it was as if Cade felt someone had anointed him as some kind of god—or anti-god, as was more appropriate to a blood-sucking beast. It wasn’t just that he was head of Chicago’s undead. Cade wore the title as if he were lord and master of the undead and human population alike, as well as the city itself and the very land it sat on. That Cade was running meant he feared something. That scared Thor, but it also made him think. It was the first chink in Cade’s armor he’d ever seen. Cade was not invincible or infallible.
Cade could be challenged.
RED TOOK A step in Cade’s direction. “What is it? What happened?”
Cade studied her, for she’d just become a problem to be solved. He could kill her, leave her here alive, or take her with him. He rejected the idea of killing her. He didn’t want to survive the murder rap with the mayor only to be convicted of killing a blood whore. He could leave her, of course. She’d be interviewed for hours, but being sucked dry by the cops was a little different from being drained by a vampire. The obvious answer finally dawned on him. She was his alibi. He’d been feeding from her within moments of the mayor’s death. He’d have to take her with him. It would be the only way of keeping her alive long enough to help clear him. Left on the street, witnesses in Chicago tended to disappear with the speed of light.
“Cade?”
“Something came up. I have to go. Thor’s bringing me a car.”
Red scrunched her brows and pushed her lips into a pucker, not as though she wanted to kiss him, but as if she had just swallowed something nasty. “That load of crap you were talking about on the phone? I think it was just shoveled my way.”
He ignored that and brushed past her on the way to the small living room and the window that looked out onto Arlington. There could be cops outside already waiting for him. He wouldn’t put it past Rat to live up to his namesake and have assigned him a tail. The street looked quiet enough, but it was hard to see everything, even with his nocturnal vision.
“Can I help?”
She came up behind him, smartly staying out of the window’s exposure.
“What?”
“Can I help with whatever trouble you’re in?”
He turned his head and gave her a sidelong glance. “Yeah. Don’t ask questions that will get you dead.”
She somehow knew he wasn’t joking, for she didn’t laugh, but neither did she leave his side. He resumed his surveillance, laying out his plan in his head. He wasn’t totally unprepared for an emergency.
The Great Chicago Fire had caught him by surprise. During the Great Fire he’d spent the night in an old stone vault in the Catholic cemetery at the south end of Lincoln Park, having nowhere else to go. The fire had come right up to the park, burning part of the fence between it and Clark Street. The wooden grave markers in the cemetery had all burned, but he’d survived because his vault had been closer to the lake than any of the others. The vaults closest to Schiller Street and Dearborn had actually cracked from the high temperatures, and had he taken refuge in one of those his body would have burst into flame from the insufferable heat. As it was, he’d spent an almost unbearable night in what had become a stone oven, closed tight and so hot no mortal could have lived. In the building boom of the fire’s aftermath, he’d bought up a few houses for safe holes, but not enough.
The war that was Hell had also caught him with his pants down, rather literally. When twenty years ago the Brothers of the Sun exposed vampires to the mortal world and began burning them out of Chicago’s neighborhoods, Cade’d been caught ill-prepared again.
But he’d learned his lesson at last. He had dozens of safe houses all over the city now. They weren’t purchased in his name, but he owned them, and he paid vamps to house-sit all of them. The sitters kept the grass cut, snow shoveled, junk mail from overflowing the mail boxes, and their mouths shut. He used the cottages, graystones, flats, and bungalows for sucklings new to the city who had no place to go and vamps in trouble who needed a place to stay. And while he’d never yet used one for himself, that had been part of the plan all along.
This time he had the luxury of choice. Thor and a few others knew about some of the safe houses, but not all. He’d have to choose one that only he knew about. That limited the choices some, but he still had a wealth of possibilities to consider.
As Cade stood sentinel at the window, a dark sedan with tinted windows rolled past the building and turned into the adjacent alley. It was his car, the black Panther he’d used for his trips to City Hall.
“Come on.” He took Red’s hand and led her downstairs. So far Thor was playing it smart by not parking in front of the building. They stepped outside, and a moment later Thor appeared with a large nylon travel bag in hand. Thor eyed Red, and she him, but neither exchanged a word.
“Upstairs,” ordered Cade.
Inside the flat, Thor handed him the bag, and Cade took his position at the window, opening the bag and splitting his attention between its contents and the view outside the window panes. “How much did you bring?”
“Nine thousand. Last night’s cash take was way down, and tonight hasn’t been much better. It’s in the bag. Want to tell me what the hell this is about?”
“No.”
Thor nodded toward Red. “How is she involved?”
“She isn’t,” he lied. Thor and Red knew each other, of course. Thor was a frequent hunting partner and had fed from Red almost as much as he had.
“Then what . . .”
“Shut up!” The good thing about the flat was that its height gave Cade a perfect view of the nearby intersection and a good stretch of Arlington. The bad thing was what that view showed him now. A vehicle inched along Arlington, and a moment later its headlights went out. The vehicle hadn’t stopped and parked first. Of that Cade was sure. A second vehicle crawled along the cross street of Geneva, and it, too, extinguished its lights. He whirled on Thor.
“What? Will you . . .”
But Thor couldn’t finish the question, not with his back slammed against the wall and Cade’s hands around his throat. Pictures bounced off the wall, a wall cabinet filled with bric-a-brac crashed to the floor in an explosion of chinks, clanks, and pings, and Red screamed, but Cade’s attention was on his tyro.
“The cops are outside. Did you bring them?”
“Cops? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t bring any cops.”
Cade stared into Thor’s eyes. “Is this the hill you want to die on? No lies, now.” He tightened his grip over the third and fourth cervical vertebrae, knowing his practiced hands could sever a spine as effectively as a vampire-killing Claw.
“I wouldn’t betray you. If the cops are here, they followed me.”
Cade couldn’t afford to waste any more time. He loaded all his compelling power into the weapon of his psyche and fired into Thor’s eyes. “Say nothing,” he commanded.
He released Thor, who slumped against the wall with little strength in his legs and less in his mind. His eyes gleamed like blue marbles, glassy and still.
Cade turned to Red, who hadn’t run. She was rooted to the floor, as motionless as Thor, her eyes wide and bright and her mouth looking very much like a Venus’s-flytrap.
“Do you want to live?”
She nodded.
“Do you have a car?”
Another nod.
“Where?”
“In the back.”
“Okay. Now listen carefully. You have exactly thirty seconds to pack whatever it is you can’t live without. No lights. Do it in the dark. Now go.”
Hell's Warrior Page 6