by Jenna Black
“I’m sure we can reach some sort of agreement,” Ian said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“If you let him go, we’ll lose our one and only edge,” Jules urged. “He’ll kill us both.” A quick mental survey of the area showed him the alarming fact that another vampire was fast approaching. “Hurry, Hannah, someone else is coming.”
Hannah licked her lips, her eyes wide and terrified. Her hands shook with her conflict and Jules willed her to shoot before it was too late.
Then it was too late, for the other vampire had rounded the corner and was sprinting down the alley toward them.
HANNAH HATED HER OWN squeamishness. She stood in that alley holding the gun to a Killer’s head and couldn’t make herself pull the damn trigger. He was a murderer many times over, and he’d just threatened to torture Jules. She had to shoot him. Her finger twitched on the trigger and yet still she didn’t fire. Buffy, she was not.
“Damn it, Hannah!” Jules shouted, “shoot him now!”
“No!” another voice yelled, this one from behind her. “Don’t shoot.”
The voice was vaguely familiar, but Hannah didn’t dare turn to see who it was. She couldn’t afford to be distracted, or Squires would turn the tables on her.
“Drake?” Jules said, sounding confused. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving you from yourself.”
Yes, Hannah recognized the voice of the Killer who worked with the Guardians. The guy creeped her out big time, but she tentatively numbered him among the good guys.
“Please don’t shoot him, Hannah,” Drake said. It sounded like he was about five feet behind her now.
She blinked away a bead of sweat that trickled down her forehead. And she kept her gun right where it was.
Jules snarled at Drake. “Keep out of this! Hannah, shoot. Now!”
“Don’t shoot,” Drake countered.
Jules drew breath to bark another command, but Hannah cut him off. “Okay, guys, you can stop now. I’m not doing anything just because one of you says so. I know why Jules wants me to shoot. Why don’t you want me to, Drake?”
“If you shoot him, we’re all dead. He’s far from the only vampire in Baltimore, and they’ll avenge him if you kill him.”
Jules let loose a stream of French. She didn’t understand a word, but she sure as hell got the gist of it. “Shut up, Jules. Let him finish. So, what’s to stop him from killing us if I don’t have my gun to his head?”
“Me, for one,” Drake said. Jules started up again and Drake raised his voice to be heard over the cursing. “But I’ll try for something more concrete. Hold tight for a minute.”
She heard little beeping noises she recognized as cell phone buttons being pressed. She let out a slow breath to calm the pounding of her heart, wishing she could spare a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow. Drake’s presence calmed some of the anxiety, but she wasn’t what you would call at ease. Her fingers started to cramp from holding the gun so tightly, and she forced herself to loosen her grip.
“I need to speak to Camille,” Drake said into his phone. “It’s an emergency.” There was a brief pause, then Drake made an irritated-sounding grunt. “Put your mother on, Gabriel.” Another pause. “Oh, all right. Tell her that if she wants Ian alive, she’d better call him off right this moment. My friend has a gun to his head and every reason to fear for her safety if she lowers it. Eventually she’s going to get tired of waiting and shoot.”
Another beep from the phone as Drake hung it up. Seconds later, Squires made a choking sound, and despite Hannah’s order for him not to move, he staggered sideways toward the mouth of the alley. She kept her gun trained on him, but he barely seemed aware of her. He’d put both hands to his throat, and his eyes bulged. Hannah shivered as she realized he was choking himself. What the hell was going on?
Drake’s hand landed on her arm. “Put the gun down and let’s get out of here.”
Jules stepped away from the wall, eyes glowing with purpose as he strode toward Ian.
“Stop it, Jules!” Drake barked. “If you want to risk your own life, fine, but Hannah will pay the price with you if you kill him now.”
Jules turned back toward them, his lips stretched away from his teeth to display the fangs, a feral, frantic look on his face. For the first time ever, Hannah actually felt afraid of him. Her hand flexed on the gun and she wondered if she’d end up having to use it on Jules.
She’d forgotten that as a Killer, Drake was much stronger than Jules. She could see the moment Drake’s glamour hit—Jules’s face suddenly went slack and his eyes glazed. Behind them, Ian was struggling to move down the alley, still clutching his throat.
“Let’s go,” Drake said softly, tugging on Hannah’s arm.
Shaking with nerves, she lowered the gun and allowed him to lead her to the other end of the alley, Jules following behind with a dazed look on his face.
When they reached the main street, Hannah cut a look at Drake from under her lashes. What she saw caused her steps to falter, and he turned fully toward her.
“Geez!” she said. “What happened to you?” Both his eyes were blackened, and another large bruise spread over his jaw. She didn’t even know vampires could get bruises.
He shook his head. “We’ve stepped into the middle of some kind of mess here. I’m not sure I understand the details. Come on, let’s keep moving, shall we?”
“My car’s that way,” she said, pointing. She’d thought driving would get her to the scene faster, which had turned out to be a miscalculation since she’d had to find a place to park.
Drake nodded and gestured for her to lead the way. Jules was still following like a zombie. She supposed she should be trying to get Drake to let up on the glamour, but after the madness she’d seen in Jules’s eyes in the alley, she wasn’t sure what he’d do.
“Are you all right?” she asked Drake, more disturbed than she liked to admit to see a vampire of his power with black eyes.
“I’ll be fine. The bruises will heal in a few minutes.”
“Oh, crap,” Hannah said.
“What?”
She heaved a sigh. “You see that policeman over there? The one writing out a ticket? Well, that’s my car.” With the clock ticking, she’d finally decided an illegal parking spot would have to do, and she’d parked smack dab in front of a fire hydrant.
Drake actually smiled at that. “I’d change his mind for you, but I’d have to let go of Jules and I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”
She glanced at Jules and his slack jaw and shivered. “You going to keep him like that indefinitely?”
“Tempting,” he muttered under his breath. “No,” he said aloud. “Just till we get back to the hotel. Let’s skip the car. We don’t want to be talking to cops right now.”
With the highly illegal concealed weapon on her person, and a PI license that would be revoked in a heartbeat if she was caught with it, Hannah had to agree, so the three of them strolled right on past her car. It wasn’t that far to the hotel anyway.
“So,” Drake said, “I was expecting to find Jules alone. What are you doing here?”
“Carolyn was afraid Jules was going to do something stupid like this, so she sent me to look after him. You know, make sure he didn’t accidentally fry in his hotel room, stuff like that. What’s your story?”
“Eli sent me to haul Jules back to Philly.”
Hannah bit her lip, remembering Jules’s assertion that Eli would kill him if he ever went back to Philadelphia. Was he right? Or had that just been a bad case of paranoia?
They walked in silence the rest of the way to the hotel. By the time they stepped into the elevator, she noticed Drake’s bruises were completely gone.
7
PEOPLE LOOKED AT IAN strangely as he staggered and stumbled down the street toward the house, his hands, under Camille’s command, cutting off most of his air. Gabriel met him halfway, grabbing his upper arm in a brutally hard grip and dragging hi
m along.
Ian cursed his moron of a fledgling, and he cursed the interfering mortal who’d stopped him from getting his satisfaction. Despite the distraction of Camille’s forceful summons, he’d taken a long, hard look at the woman. He would recognize her if he saw her again, and he would make her suffer for what she’d done.
And Jules! Who’d ever guess the bastard was stupid enough to have come down here alone? No, he was supposed to bring a nice, big squad of Guardians with him, and they were supposed to find the house that, on paper, Ian still owned. And they were supposed to kill the bitch who lived there! Leave it to Jules to fuck everything up so thoroughly.
Gabriel ushered him into the living room, then gave him a shove that left him lying face down at Camille’s feet. At least she finally let up on making him choke himself. He lay still, sucking in air, grateful to be alive, and not sure how long that would last, seething with fury that his plan had failed.
“I thought you were supposed to be hunting me up a juicy morsel for dinner,” Camille said. “Yes, I specifically remember asking you to do that for me. And yet, it seems that you had other priorities.”
The bitch was too lazy to do her own hunting half the time. And, unlike Ian, she was picky. Male or female, her meals had to be pretty or she’d throw a fit.
Camille hadn’t given him permission to get up, so Ian remained prostrate at her feet. “I was hunting for you,” he lied. “I’d found one I thought you would like and was bringing her back when Jules found me.”
“Jules found you?” she said, her voice dripping with incredulity. “Sit up so I can see your eyes.”
He sat up and obediently met her eyes. She thought her ability to read his eyes was infallible, but she was wrong. Years of trial and error had taught him how to mask his thoughts with reasonable success. He did his best now to project sincerity even as he frantically planned his next steps. He might convince her for the time being, but that was unlikely to last.
Camille sat back, looking disappointed that she had read no lie in his eyes. He almost allowed himself a breath of relief, but she spoke before he did.
“Would your little fledgling tell the same story if I questioned him?”
Oh, no. She couldn’t be allowed to speak to Jules. She was, unfortunately, anything but stupid. If she talked to Jules, she’d figure out what Ian was up to eventually.
He hoped his fear didn’t show in his eyes. “Probably not,” he said, “if he sensed saying otherwise would get me in trouble.”
“Hmm,” she said with a little pout reminiscent of Gabriel’s. “I suppose I’ll have to make the interview subtle enough that he won’t know which answer would precipitate your death, won’t I?”
If she talked to Jules, he was dead. Simple as that.
“I was looking forward to a nice, quiet evening. Now you’ve gone and spoiled it for me.” She fixed Ian with her coldest stare. “I’m tired of looking at you. And I’m hungry. If you don’t bring me dinner soon, I’ll be most displeased with you.”
He swallowed hard. “I’ll take care of it,” he promised. Go get your own dinner, you fucking bitch, he thought. If she wanted to talk to Jules tonight, then it would happen. Which meant Ian had to get the hell out of Dodge.
He felt a moment of profound relief that he hadn’t pinned all his hopes on Jules. He’d been thinking about and planning his coup for years now, and the notice in the paper about the death of Jules’s son had seemed like it might be a godsend, making his job exponentially easier. But he had a plan B, one Camille hadn’t even begun to guess at.
His other fledglings were younger than he would have liked, but it seemed he had no choice but to step up the time line. If he lost a few fledglings in the process, well, they could be replaced once the city was his.
When next he saw Camille and Gabriel, he would not be helpless.
JULES CAME BACK TO himself with a start and a gasp. The last thing he remembered was standing in that alley in the middle of a mess of a standoff. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs and realized he was sitting on the edge of a bed. With his hands tied behind his back and his legs tied at the ankles. Hannah sat Indian-style on the other bed, and Drake hovered in the entryway.
Familiar rage boiled in Jules’s gut, moments away from eruption. He tugged at his bonds. It would take a great burst of strength, but he thought he could break them.
“Drake wanted me to leave the room,” Hannah said. “He said you’re going to have a temper tantrum and get in a fight with him and I might get caught in the middle and get hurt. I told him you were more mature than that. Which one of us do you want to prove right?”
That checked his temper in a hurry. In the entryway, Drake laughed, covering his eyes and shaking his head. Jules made a growling sound deep in his throat, but Drake was too amused to care. And Hannah was grinning from ear to ear, proud of herself for knowing how to defuse him. Jules ground his teeth and shut up before he said something he’d regret.
Drake seemed to be convinced Jules wasn’t going to do anything monumentally stupid and came fully into the room, pulling the chair out from under the writing desk and sitting down. The Killer folded his arms across his chest and rocked back in his chair.
“You can untie me now,” Jules said, looking at Hannah. She hesitated only a moment before hopping onto the bed behind him and loosening his bonds. The brush of her fingers over his wrists made his skin tingle pleasantly.
“What are you doing here?” Jules asked Drake as Hannah worked the knot loose.
“Eli sent me.”
To do what? Jules wondered. Hannah finished untying his hands and laid his crumpled Yves St. Laurent tie on the comforter. He quickly freed his feet from another of his silk ties, then stared hard at Drake, trying to guess his intent. Drake’s face gave away nothing. Neither spoke, and the stare turned into a silent challenge.
“Ooh,” Hannah said. “I can just feel the testosterone in the air. It’s so fun to watch a couple of alpha males doing the macho stare-down thing. Sexy as hell. If you want, I’ll go find a ruler—you can whip ’em out and I’ll let you know which one is bigger.”
Jules and Drake broke off the stare at the same moment, both sets of eyes turning to Hannah who was looking disgustingly perky. Jules glared at her, but Drake laughed again.
“A ruler might do for Jules, but you’ll need a yardstick for me.”
Hannah laughed right along with the asshole, and Jules squirmed, strangely jealous of what seemed like a sudden, easy camaraderie between the two. He’d never known Drake to have much of a sense of humor; as for Hannah, it was either laugh with her or kill her, and right now, the latter held a certain appeal.
“Okay, comedy hour is over,” Jules said. “You’ve got some major explaining to do, Drake.” He remembered the distinctly disturbing sight of Ian’s hands squeezing his own throat. Obviously he’d been under the influence of some kind of glamour, but Jules had never heard of a vampire who could use glamour without even being in sight of his victim.
Drake raised a single dark brow. “I don’t see why I’d have to explain anything to you. You’re the one who—”
“Who the hell did you call?”
Drake’s expression was one of long-suffering patience. “Ian’s maker, of course.”
“And what exactly happened after that?” Hannah asked before Jules could.
“Camille—that would be Ian’s maker—called him off.”
Hannah looked down her nose at him. “By making him choke himself. Or was that some kind of optical illusion?”
“No, that seems to be what happened.” He turned to Jules. “Your maker has a lot more power over you than anyone else. Camille couldn’t have managed a glamour like that against anyone but her fledgling. Do I have to spell it out to you that Ian has similar powers over you? Not as strong as Camille’s, for sure. But you’re in way over your head.”
“How do you know all this?” Jules demanded.
“I had a life before I joined the Guardians.”
Jules had always disliked Drake on principle, hating that the man killed without apparent remorse. The dislike had overshadowed any curiosity he might have felt, and he couldn’t remember a having a single conversation with him that wasn’t directly related to a case. Why had it never crossed his mind that he knew nothing about Drake?
“Are you going to elaborate?” he asked, already knowing from the closed expression on Drake’s face that he wasn’t.
“I prefer to keep the past in the past whenever possible. But I do understand things about how vampires outside of Philadelphia function. The ones we get are the lone wolves. They come from the country or the suburbs or cities too small to sustain a significant vampire presence. But you won’t find lone vampires in cities the size of Baltimore.
“Places like this, you find master vampires with varying numbers of fledglings serving them. Camille is the Master of Baltimore, and Ian is far from her only fledgling. I don’t know how many she has, but I have encountered one of them and he overpowered me with frightening ease.”
“So that’s where you got the shiners?” Hannah asked.
Jules frowned. He’d never gotten a good look at Drake back in that alley. Despite his dislike for the Killer, there was something distinctly unnerving about knowing there was a vampire in the city strong enough to beat him in a fight.
“Yes,” Drake answered. “He was making a point about who was in charge here and what would happen if I stepped out of line.”
“Hold on,” Jules said. “Back up a minute. There’s still a lot you haven’t told us. How come you knew this Camille person? And how come you just happened to be there to stop me from killing Ian?”
Drake snorted. “You mean stop him from killing you, don’t you? Like I said, I had a life before I joined the Guardians. I knew about Camille, and I knew only a vampire with a death wish would set foot in the city without checking in with her. I’d just gotten her permission to stay in the city until I found you and dragged you home when I sensed a couple of vampires nearby. I thought it wise to check it out, so I did.”