by Jenna Black
“I’ll be right over,” Jules said, then hung up without awaiting an acknowledgment.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, JULES arrived, bringing with him a thermos. “Pre-mixed,” he said as he stepped into the room, slapping the thermos against Gray’s chest. The liquid inside sloshed, and Gray couldn’t help his grimace of distaste. “You’re welcome,” Jules said over his shoulder as he strode into the room and made himself at home.
Gray put the thermos down and glared at the older vampire. “Do you actually like this stuff?”
Jules raised one shoulder but didn’t respond. “You said you’d found something?”
Gray smiled a secret, proud smile watching Jules’s face as Carolyn explained how she’d discovered the name of their adversary. Jules’s mouth dropped open, and a furrow appeared between his brows.
“Archibald Montgomery?” he whispered. “Where have I heard that name before?” He cocked his head, his face a study in concentration. His eyes widened when he figured it out.
“Who is he?” Gray asked.
Jules let out a deep breath. “Archer Montgomery. Eli told me about him. He was a Guardian once, long ago. He and Eli had a … falling out. Eli kicked him out of the Guardians. Supposedly, it was a relatively amicable parting of ways, considering the circumstances. But Montgomery’s had a lot of time to stew about it. I can imagine how he’d come to hate the Guardians.”
“This means that the Banger isn’t a Guardian after all,” Carolyn said. “Surely Eli would recognize him.”
Jules frowned. “You’re right, of course. But he must have help from the inside. There’s no way he could know who the Guardians are a century after he left them.”
“At this point, I think we’ll have more luck trying to track down Montgomery than figuring out who the insider is. Gray told me that vampires like to live in familiar surroundings. I’m going over old records, trying to find out where Montgomery lived when he became vampire.”
Jules nodded. “Good idea. I’ll check with Eli to see where he lived when he was a Guardian, but that probably wasn’t his mortal residence. Usually you can’t return to your mortal residence until everyone you’d known in mortal life has moved away or died.”
“I’ll let you know if I find any addresses associated with him during his mortal life,” Carolyn said.
Jules nodded. “Yes, do. But of course, you won’t do anything foolish like try to confront him yourself, right? He’s old and a Killer, a hugely dangerous combination.”
Carolyn’s lips thinned in annoyance. “No, I’m not an idiot.”
“Glad to hear it. Now, I’ve got something I have to take care of. Let me know as soon as you find anything.”
Gray ground his teeth as Jules made his exit. Where did the prick get off ordering Carolyn around like that? “What if Jules is Archibald Montgomery?” he asked. “His little story could be a complete fabrication, and we could be feeding information to the enemy.”
Carolyn turned to give him a pointed look. “If he were the Banger, and we’d discovered his name, you can bet we’d be dead by now.”
Gray couldn’t argue her logic, though he wanted to. Perhaps his nerves would feel a little less raw if he fed. Wrinkling his nose, he picked up the thermos, twisting off the top. The scent of blood stirred his appetite while his stomach simultaneously flipped over in distaste. Would he never get used to this?
Someone knocked on the door.
“I’ll get it,” Gray said, hastily putting the top back on the thermos. He should just drink the shit and get it over with, but he couldn’t help being grateful for the reprieve.
He’d assumed that it would be either Jules or Hannah, so when he opened the door and saw Deirdre standing there, he came to an abrupt halt.
“Dee?” he said, frowning. “What are you doing here?” And how had she found him?
Deirdre smiled up at him. And the glamour struck him like a speeding truck.
18
“PLEASE JUST TRUST ME on this,” Jules told David, his forty-two-year-old grandson. “It’s not safe to bring your father back to the city yet.”
David sighed and leaned back in his chair, his handsome face tight with strain. “Dad wakes up in the middle of the night screaming because he doesn’t recognize his surroundings. My daughters are wondering when they’re going to go back to school. Maria nags me night and day for an explanation for why we can’t come home. What do you expect me to tell her? Am I supposed to tell my wife we’re living in exile because my grandfather the vampire thinks we might be targets for the Broad Street Banger?”
Jules ground his teeth in frustration. He hated this. But until the Banger was caught and killed, it was just too dangerous for his son or his grandson to remain in the city. Courtney had already been killed because of her association with him; he wasn’t going to start losing family members too! He felt like grabbing David by the scruff of the neck and giving him a violent shake for forcing this meeting between them. Jules’s senses were on high alert, searching for any sign of a vampire stalking him, but just because he didn’t sense anything didn’t mean someone wasn’t out there. And by meeting him, David was making a target of himself.
How many other Guardians had Jules counseled to sever all ties with their mortal lives? And why couldn’t he do so himself? Even if the Guardians killed the Banger, Jules knew his son didn’t have long to live. The man was eighty years old and suffered from Alzheimer’s. How badly was it going to hurt to lose his only son to that dreaded disease?
“I’m sorry, David,” Jules said. “I should never have intruded on your life. Then you wouldn’t be in danger. But I can’t turn back time, and I can’t make the threat go away. Please go back out to the country and stay there until this is over.” His cell phone beeped an urgent message, and Jules looked down to see that it was from Eli. “Marde,” he muttered under his breath. “I have to take this. Please—”
David held up a hand to silence him. “I’m going. My car is just over there.” He pointed at the shiny blue Volvo. “As long as no one jumps me before I get in, I’ll be safe, right? So go ahead and play bodyguard, Gramps.”
Internally, Jules cringed at the anger in his grandson’s voice, but he didn’t let it show on his face as he answered the phone. “What’s up, Eli?” he asked, keeping a careful eye on David as he got into his car and drove away.
“There’s been another murder.” Eli sounded exhausted, like he hadn’t slept in three days.
“Who?”
“Frank LaBelle.”
Jules let fly a stream of expletives in Québécois, not caring that Eli could understand him. LaBelle had been a troublemaker in the making, but still … .
“A stake through the heart, just like Thomas Freeman,” Eli continued. He hesitated a moment. “There’s more.” Jules tensed at the warning tone in Eli’s voice. “There was a note at the scene.”
“Well, what did it say?” Jules prompted when Eli hesitated once again.
“I want you to promise to stay calm and rational.”
“I’m not going to stay calm and rational if you don’t finish what you started here, Eli. What does the note say?”
Jules could almost hear the Founder debating himself. Finally, Eli spoke. “The note says ‘Vas chier, Jules. You should have killed me when you had the chance.’ It’s supposedly signed by Gray James.”
Adrenaline surged through his veins as Jules glanced at his watch. It had been two hours since he’d left Gray at the hotel room. Plenty of time for the bastard to run out and kill again! Maybe the whole Archibald Montgomery story was a load of crap, though Jules wondered how Gray could have known that name. But Carolyn had already proven herself a masterful detective. Maybe somehow she’d learned the story of Montgomery and Eli’s falling out, and had fed the information to Gray. Just another red herring, amongst the many others.
“Are you staying calm and rational like I asked?”
“Hell no! Eli—”
“No, don’t give me your list of reas
ons why you think he’s guilty. I’ve heard them before. Just go check and see if he’s in the hotel where you left him.”
Jules shook his head. “He won’t be.”
“But maybe he will. You and I are the only ones who know where he’s hiding. The Banger may have just screwed up, thinking we don’t know where Gray is and can’t check his alibi.”
Reluctantly, Jules had to concede the point. “All right. I’ll go back to the hotel and check it out. But if he’s not there …”
“If he’s not there, we’ll deal with it, one way or another. But be careful. If he really is the Banger, then he can probably overpower you. Don’t hunt him alone.”
Jules resisted the urge to snap at the Founder, irritated that the old man found it necessary to deliver such an elementary warning. “Don’t worry, Eli,” he said in a relatively calm voice. “I’m not quite the hot-head you seem to think I am. I won’t take him on alone. I’ll call you from the hotel.” He hung up the phone, already moving at a steady jog.
GRAY BLINKED AND SHOOK his head to clear the fog from his brain. His eyes focused sluggishly and he swayed on his feet. A quiet, malicious laugh sent a chill down his spine and the world snapped back into focus.
He was standing in a barren room, surrounded by windowless walls of dull gray stone. A bare bulb shone dimly from the ceiling. A flight of wooden stairs led upward. Perched on the edge of those steps, Deirdre sat with her arms wrapped around her knees and a nasty smile on her beautiful face.
“Dee?” he said, his voice sounding as shaky and confused as he felt.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Gray,” she said, smiling more broadly.
A soft groan beside him told him that they were not alone, and he saw Carolyn sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, her head hanging halfway to her chest.
“Carolyn!” he cried, crossing the distance between them in a quick bound. He knelt beside her and seized her arms, his heart thudding against his breastbone in panic. She groaned again, but her eyes opened and she squinted up at him.
“Don’t worry, Gray dear,” Deirdre said. “She’s unharmed. The glamour just hit her a little hard is all.”
Carolyn’s eyes cleared and she took a deep breath. “I’m all right,” she told him quietly, accepting his hand up.
Putting an arm around Carolyn’s shoulders, Gray positioned himself between her and Deirdre, trying to make sense of things. “How did you find us?” he asked.
“You think that was hard? I followed Jules, of course. You’re lucky half the Guardian population didn’t find you or you’d have a stake through your heart by now.”
“You mean to tell me I won’t have a stake through my heart in the near future anyway?”
She sniffed daintily. “If I were going to kill you, I’d have done it already while you were … shall we say, indisposed? No, I have other plans for you.”
Something ugly gleamed in her eyes, but Gray still felt confused. He shook his head. “You can’t be the Banger. You don’t have the proper … equipment.”
She giggled. “Amazing how single-minded you and all the Guardians can be. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like explaining everything to you just this moment. You’ll just have to piece things together yourself, I’m afraid.”
“You can explain why you’ve just kidnapped us at least.”
“That I can do.” Her smile became even uglier—malice, perhaps even madness, shining in her eyes. “You are now thoroughly screwed over, my friend. I’ve set up another lovely crime scene for you, and while you were under the influence, you wrote a particularly incriminating little note. If you set foot on the streets again, the Guardians will hunt you down and kill you. In the past, they would have tried to get to the bottom of things before taking such drastic action, but I’ve reduced them to a pack of mad dogs, ready to tear the throat out of anything that looks at them funny.”
“Why?”
She laughed with what sounded like genuine amusement. “Damn, Gray. Are you that naive?” She controlled her mirth. “You might have noticed that Philadelphia is a hostile environment for a Killer. My choices were to move away—and hope the Guardians never came after me—or to make the city more welcoming. As you no doubt realize, I can easily overpower a Guardian or two, but as long as Eli held the society together and kept their efforts organized, I was doomed. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could remain here and fly under their radar indefinitely, like your poor Kate Henshaw. Now they’re at each others’ throats, broken into warring factions and bands of useless vigilantes.”
She was very proud of herself, her lips twisted into a smirk, her eyes glowing with superiority. Gray hoped he was doing a fair job of keeping his reactions to himself—he didn’t want to give her any satisfaction, if he could help it.
“You still haven’t answered my question—why have you framed me?”
“Oh, just a little extra motivation.”
“Motivation for what?” he demanded, his voice rising as he lost his cool despite his intentions. Carolyn slipped her arm around his waist and gave him a warning squeeze. He tried to reel in his temper.
Deirdre stood, descending the stairs until she was eye level with him. “To join me.”
He blinked a few times as his brain tried to make sense of that. What the hell … ?
“The Guardians are weak now,” Dee continued, “but it’s still possible Eli can manage to pull them together eventually. So far, I’ve been more than a match for him, but I’m not so foolishly arrogant as to think I’m unstoppable. No, I need my own army to help me take him down, my anti-Guardians, so to speak. And you’re to be the first member.”
Gray was beginning to follow her train of thought, but he really didn’t want to reach its conclusion. He swallowed hard, his body tensing as his stomach dipped.
“You’ve already taken the first step toward addiction,” Deirdre said. “And once the addiction takes hold, there’s no escaping it. You’ll lose your humanity and become a Killer, as you were meant to be. All you have to do is take another step down the road.”
Her eyes shifted to Carolyn, and Gray’s heart seemed to stop. “No,” he gasped.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” Deirdre asked in what was meant to be a seductive murmur. “I saw the thermos Jules brought you. You hadn’t drunk it yet. How long has it been since you fed?”
Gray couldn’t have spoken if he’d wanted to. Cold sweat bathed his face and body, and if it weren’t for Carolyn’s arm around his waist he might have collapsed to the floor, his knees felt so weak.
“Please,” he choked. “Let Carolyn go, at least.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. She’s been making quite a nuisance of herself. Last night, I overheard Jules when he asked Drake for his fingerprints. I figured that wasn’t Jules’s idea.” She smirked. “Not that she was going to learn anything with her little game.”
Neither Gray nor Carolyn saw fit to contradict Deirdre’s assumption.
Deirdre’s face softened, as did her voice, but there was no hint of mercy in her eyes. “I know it hurts right now. But once you give in, that pain will go away.” She stepped closer. “You have no idea what the Guardians have deprived you of.” Her voice dropped to a low, coaxing murmur. “You have no idea what it feels like to stop fighting the beast within, to let it take you, to let it fill you with power and strength!”
Gray lunged at her desperately, though his rational mind knew it was a hopeless and foolish effort. Deirdre dodged him easily and countered with a brutal jab to his kidney that stole all his breath. He collapsed to the floor, his teeth gritted against the pain. Carolyn knelt beside him, her face drawn with strain as she took his hand in silent moral support.
“The sooner you give in to the urge,” Dee said, starting up the stairs, “the sooner your pain will end.” And then she was gone, and he heard the distinctive sound of a key turning in a lock.
CAROLYN WAS VAGUELY AWARE of a current of fear that ran through her veins, but s
he had no intention of letting Gray see it. He stood still and tense, staring up at the doorway through which Deirdre had disappeared, his face stricken, a world of pain in his eyes. She let out the breath she’d been holding and approached him, putting a hand gently on his shoulder. He jerked away from her.
“Don’t touch me!” he barked, a wild light flaring in his eyes.
“Easy, Gray,” she said in her most soothing voice. “You’re letting her screw with your head. You weren’t anywhere near desperate before she brought us down here. She’s just got you thinking about it, worrying about it. You’re fine.”
His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and his rapid breaths seemed to echo through the small room.
“Don’t panic,” Carolyn continued in the same tone. “Instead of worrying about what might happen, let’s concentrate on trying to find a way out of here, okay?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “You don’t understand—”
“Yes, I do. But if you give in to panic now, then we’ll never get out of here. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. So take a deep breath, relax, and tell me if she’s still in the house. You can sense her, right?”
For a moment, she thought he was going to argue with her, but then he took the deep breath she’d suggested and some of the wildness faded from his expression. There was still fear in his eyes, but at least he seemed to have controlled it. “How can you be so calm?” he asked. “You’re the one who’s in danger, and I’m the one who’s panicking!”
She moved to him, and though he took one quick step backward, he halted his flight and let her put her arms around him for a quick, hard hug. “I trust you, Gray. You’ll fight it with every drop of your will.”
When she tried to end the hug, he held on, pressing her head against his chest, his fingers burrowing into her hair. “I’m so sorry, Carolyn. So sorry I got you involved in all this.”
