“Good! Good. I’m still at the Domain. Bring the diamonds to me now. Check in with Javier when you get here. He’ll know where I am.” He hung up before she could respond.
This was just great. If Javier was going to show her the way that meant Stefan was back in the private rooms where the vampires went to feed. By Dagda’s balls, he’d better not expect to feed off her. Not after all the energy she’d had to expend to keep everyone in the store feeling happy and calm. Plus, she had to draw the line somewhere. She pulled back into the flow of traffic and pointed her car toward Devil’s Domain.
Once again she pushed her way through the crowd at the club, and stopped at the door to the private area. And, once again, Javier was waiting for her. “Come on, bonita,” he said. “Stefan can’t wait to see you.”
As long as he didn’t plan on trying to eat her, she couldn’t wait to see him, either. She was glad she’d gotten her rest because she might have to drum up more glamour on him to make him think he’d fed on her. The sooner she saw him, the sooner she could get out of here. The sooner she left, the sooner she could take a shower and try to wash away some of the filth she was feeling. Even if it was all emotional dirt, a shower would help.
She found herself in the same room she’d been in with Javier, only this time Stefan was the one lounging back against the sofa. She pulled the packet of fake diamonds from her purse and handed them to him, then retrieved the bunched-up tissue from the pocket of her slacks. He sat forward, his gaze intent on her. “These are the real ones,” she said as she handed the tissue to him.
He unfolded it and stared at the two raw diamonds in his palm. “Excellent,” he breathed. He looked up at her, his smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Well done, Keira. Very well done.” He leaned back and crossed his legs. “I’m sure we’ll have other things you can assist us with, especially in the next several days.” A hungry look flitted through his eyes, and she prepared herself to start deflecting his intent to feed. But just as he scooted to the edge of the sofa, his hand reaching toward her, two raps sounded on the door.
Stefan’s lips tightened and he called out a terse, “Come.”
The door opened and another vampire poked his head around the edge. “You’re needed. Now.”
A harsh sigh burst from Stefan. “Can’t it wait?” His gaze drifted back to Keira, and she saw the crimson ringing his irises. His hunger was growing. If he stayed, she’d really have to pull out all the stops to fake him out.
“No.” The vampire stooge winced at the sharp glare Stefan sent him. “You have a call, and he insists on talking to you now.”
Stefan cleared his throat and stood. He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. After pressing a light kiss to her knuckles, he murmured, “Later, my dear.”
Keira scurried out of the club, but not before washing her hands…twice. She mulled over their conversation as she drove away from the club. What had he meant when he’d said she’d be able to help them with other things? There wasn’t time to plan any elaborate scheme and pull it off before the next rift. So what else could he have planned for a grifter like her?
She glanced at the digital clock on the dash. Eight fifteen. She grabbed her phone and called Caladh. He picked up on the first ring. “I have news.”
“Meet me at the contemporary art museum,” he said.
Half an hour later, after doing her best to make sure she wasn’t still being followed, she stood next to him in front of an abstract painting by a local artist and brought him up to date on what she knew of the rogue group. “For all his grandiosity,” she said, “Stefan Liuz has plans that are well thought out. He may be crazy, but he’s also very smart.”
“I am not at all comfortable that they’re raising the kind of capital they seem to be.” The selkie councilor glanced at her and then put his gaze back on the painting. “Do what you can to foil his intentions. You’re my best asset, so be careful. Don’t do anything to jeopardize your position in the group.”
“Or my life,” she muttered.
“Yes, yes, of course.” Caladh seemed irritated by her clarification. Was he becoming too focused on the goal to remember the asset he’d put in danger? “We cannot lose the foothold we now have.” He glanced at her again. “You say Finn Evnissyen has joined the group?”
She gave a nod.
“I trust you’ll not allow your personal feelings toward him to influence your decisions in any way.”
She frowned.
“My dear, you haven’t exactly made your flirtations secret. You and he have been seen together in public, dancing at Devil’s Domain, having dinner. You’re both, by all accounts, quite flirtatious with each other.”
She couldn’t deny that. Finn was fun to flirt with, and to be flirted with. “It won’t be a problem,” she promised.
“See that it’s so.” He paused and then exhaled on a soft sigh. “Keep me informed.” He walked away, hands behind his back.
After a few minutes Keira left the gallery as well. It was time to slough off the unpleasantness of the evening. She had a long overdue shower to get to.
“Meet me at your mother’s house, all right?” Finn gave a low growl at Nix’s obstinacy. He’d been on the phone with her for five minutes, trying to get her to agree to see him. Sweet Jesus, but she was even more obstinate now that she was part vampire than she ever had been as half human. “I promise you I only want to talk,” he said.
Finally she agreed and hung up. Quickly he dialed his father, letting him know he was on his way to Betty’s.
“I’m leaving the office right now,” Lucifer responded. “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
When he got to Betty’s neighborhood, Finn parked his motorcycle a few blocks away and hoofed it to the house like he normally did. There was something about parking in front of his father’s girlfriend’s house that felt weird. He vaulted the back wall and knocked on the kitchen door.
Betty let him in. “Nix is in the living room,” she said.
“Thanks.” He went through to the main room.
Nix Caine was sitting on the sofa, leafing through a magazine, but looked up when he entered. She seemed a little thinner than she’d been the last time he’d seen her, but she looked fit. And content. He felt a brief flare of envy that he quickly quashed. If she wanted hearth and home and happily ever after, that was fine. For her. For him it was footloose and fancy free all the way.
“So what’s this all about?” she asked. There were little yellow flecks in her eyes, which told him she was agitated and her demon half wanted to play.
He glanced back toward the kitchen. Raising his voice a bit, he asked, “Is there any more of that cheesecake?”
Betty poked her head around the corner. “You can wait until Lucifer gets here,” Betty answered. “No one’s having any of his cheesecake without his permission.”
For God’s sake. The woman was more protective of a food item than she was of her own flesh and blood. No wonder Nix seemed brittle. If he had to deal with Betty like she did, he’d be on edge, too.
“Finn, you begged me to meet you,” Nix muttered. “Tell me why.”
“I didn’t beg.” He sent her a scowl. “And I’d rather wait until—”
“Tell. Me.”
He heaved a sigh. “You know, I think I liked you better when there was a chance you’d go insane. You weren’t as cranky then. You were sure a helluva lot more fun.”
“Finn!”
There was no easy way to say this, so he’d just get it out. “I’ve been asked to kill Caine.”
She shot to her feet. Eyes dilated and crimson rimmed what was left of her irises, now gone completely yellow. “The hell you say!”
“Slow down, little cousin,” he drawled, holding out one hand, palm facing forward. “I didn’t say I was going to.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t call me that.” Fang tips peeped out over her bottom lip as her vampire half made itself fully known. “Explain. Now.”
&n
bsp; “You’ve gotten scrappy since you were turned,” he said as he sat down in one of the plush armchairs that faced the sofa. Even knowing Nix could make a dash for his throat at any moment, he couldn’t bypass the opportunity to play with her a bit.
Betty slipped into the room and settled on one end of the sofa, her gaze on her daughter. She held herself tensely, as if ready to spring into action at any time. She shot Finn a look that clearly conveyed her feelings at the moment. She thought he was being an idiot, baiting her daughter the way he was.
She was probably right.
“Ex. Plain.” Nix crossed her arms and one booted foot began tapping on the carpet.
He figured if he drew this out any longer he’d end up with that boot up his ass, plus he didn’t ordinarily turn his teasing into cruelty. “My test of loyalty to the rogue group is to kill your husband.”
“Well, that ain’t gonna happen.” She plopped down on the sofa and curled her legs beneath her. Her relaxed pose in no way detracted from the fierceness still blazing from her eyes. “What did you tell them?”
“I said I’d do it. They know Caine and I had a run-in several months ago, and really, there’s no love lost between us.” When Nix shot to her feet again, he hurriedly assured her, “I’m not going to, of course. But I have an idea how we can do this, especially since I talked Liuz out of accepting Caine’s head as proof the deed was done.”
Nix went very still as only a vampire can do. “Son of a bitch.”
“There’s more,” he cautioned.
“Oh, hell, there always is.” She sighed and sat back down.
“The meetings that I’ve been to have taken place in the basement at Devil’s Domain.” He watched for her reaction to that bit of news. Nix knew the owner, Byron Maldonado, a vampire and an old friend and former employer to her husband.
“Byron is mixed up in this?” Nix jumped to her feet once more and paced in front of the couch. “He and I will have to have a talk about that.”
Finn tried to calm her down. “Be careful, Nix. We don’t want to blow our cover. For now I think we need to sit on this.”
“Now, Nix,” her mother said, “just because you think you’re some kind of big, badass vampire,” her face crinkled in disgust for a quick moment, “you don’t have the right to take the leader of the city’s vampires to task.”
“Watch me.” Nix didn’t show any reaction to the look on her mother’s face that Finn was sure she’d seen. He knew she regretted not having a close relationship with her mother, and now that she was part vampire she probably never would.
The front door opened and closed, and Lucifer walked into the living room. When he saw Finn, he shook his head. “I didn’t see your bike parked out front. I suppose you came over the back wall again?”
“He did.” This from Betty, who got up and walked over to Lucifer. She placed a kiss on his cheek and wrapped her arms around his waist.
Finn saw the wince that Nix tried to hide. Damn her mother. Why couldn’t she dole out some of the affection she reserved for his father to her own damned daughter some time? As a child starved for one little sign of approval from his own parent, he knew it wouldn’t take much.
Lucifer kissed Betty’s forehead and came with her into the room. They settled onto the sofa as he said, “Well, fill me in. How’re things going?”
Finn brought him up to speed. By the time he got to the part about being asked to kill Caine, Lucifer’s eyes blazed with yellow demon fire. “Son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, that’s the consensus around here,” Finn muttered. “Don’t worry. Instead of taking him Caine’s head, I told Liuz I’d bring him his fangs.” He looked at Nix. “Caine is going to have to shed some blood, though.”
Her eyes narrowed again.
“He’s right,” Lucifer said. “Liuz will be able to smell whether it’s Tobias or not.”
“Fine. But he’s not shedding any more than he has to, so don’t go getting any ideas.” Nix shot Finn a warning glance. “How do you propose to pull this off?”
“We’ll need a dead vamp brought to your house.” He had something else to figure out, too. Like how to make sure Liuz or one of his shapeshifting buddies didn’t smell the underlying odor of the original owner of whatever fangs he tried to pass off as Caine’s. He finally settled on bleach. It would clean most of the other vamp’s blood off and mask any remaining odor. Even a small amount of Caine’s blood would provide enough of a scent to make a positive ID. “And we’ll need bleach,” he added.
“Bleach?” This from Betty.
Finn nodded. “I’ll need to soak the wooden stake and the fangs in bleach before coating them in Caine’s blood. The bleach should obfuscate the scent enough that Stefan won’t be able to tell there’s another vamp’s scent underlying Caine’s.”
“Tobias has a friend at the council morgue,” Nix said. “I think we can trust him to give us a dead vampire who’s similar to Tobias in size. I’ll let you know.”
“It has to happen tonight.”
“What!” Nix hopped to her feet again. “Are you kidding me?”
He shook his head. “It’s a test. If I fail this, they’ll fail me.” He stared at her. “Can you and Tobias get that corpse?”
“The alternative being that you make my husband a corpse?” She scowled.
“No.” Finn put his hands on his knees and pushed to his feet. “I wouldn’t.”
“Sure you wouldn’t,” she muttered. “You don’t like Tobias, why should killing him bother you?”
“Because Finn is not cold-blooded,” Lucifer said. His voice was low, but steel threaded through the softness. “Don’t mistake his adeptness at his job as anything other than what it is: dealing out justice.”
Finn sent his father a look of gratitude. He’d been getting it from all sides lately, it seemed. It was nice to know his dad was in his corner on this one. “When you have things in place, send me a text that dinner’s ready. I’ll head on over.”
Nix lifted her chin in acknowledgment. As Finn started toward the kitchen, her voice stopped him. “And Finn?”
He turned back toward her.
“Regardless of your protestations, I know you. If anything, anything at all, happens to my husband, you won’t live long enough to celebrate it.”
More often than not he gave Nix a hard time, but he’d always had a healthy respect for her skills. Skills that were now enhanced by virtue of her being half vampire. “I won’t let anything happen to him,” he said, hoping he could keep his promise.
He lifted a hand in farewell and left the house. When he climbed onto his bike, he caught movement from the corner of his eye from the house next to the one he was parked in front of. He paused, leaning over his bike as if he were checking something, and reached out with his senses. He couldn’t hear anything beyond normal night sounds, and when he tapped into his chameleon abilities and took on the olfactory senses of a werewolf, he couldn’t smell much of anything beyond the gasoline in his bike and the rubber and asphalt smell of the road. Except…
There was something vaguely feline in the air. Maybe Liuz had sent someone to tail him, to make sure he got the job done? All they would know at this point was that he’d gone to his father’s house, and that Nix had been there. Which could be explained away as a family thing he couldn’t get out of. For now, he wanted to see who was spying on him, and why.
He got off the bike and stood looking at it, giving whoever was hiding in the bushes time to relax. Then with a low grunt he turned and sprinted toward the house. He heard the bushes rustle as the other person tried to get away from him, but Finn was fast. Even faster when he took on the aspects of a catshifter himself.
Damn it. His shadow must have shifted, because the feline smell was stronger now. Finn chased him around several hedgerows before he was able to dive down and grab—
A cat. A damned ordinary orange tabby who hung in his grasp like a spitting furball of fury. Even with shapeshifters the laws of nature applied. A two-hu
ndred-pound man could not downsize himself into a twenty-pound cat, no matter how hard he tried. Some mass could be lost or even expanded upon, but not that much. Catshifters were always big cats—lions, tigers, pumas, and the sort.
The tabby landed a lucky swipe of claws across Finn’s inner forearm. He muttered an oath and dropped the cat, who growled and then hissed at him one last time and darted away.
Finn walked back to his bike and drove home, wincing as the scratches on his forearm tensed and pulled with the use of the hand gears. He’d never been fond of cats, and this solidified his dislike. Damned felines.
Once at home, he cleaned the scratch marks on his arm, though they were already healing. He wolfed down a couple of PB&Js, then geared up. He cleaned his seldom-used Glock and placed it in the holster. Clipping it to his belt, he moved on to his scabbard holding his short sword. It snuggled between his shoulder blades, the handle just where he could reach behind his neck to grab it. He tucked two wooden stakes into the inside pocket of his leather jacket. One final piece of equipment—a pair of pliers—and he was set. He sat down to wait.
Within an hour he received his text from Nix. Showtime.
Finn drove to Caine’s house, fairly certain this time that he was being followed. His every turn was matched by a black sedan traveling a few cars behind.
The walkway to the house was well lit, making picking the lock on the front door like child’s play. As he let himself into the darkened house he noticed all the curtains were drawn closed. He hesitated, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. A dead vamp, a silent pale slab in front of the sofa like a morbid coffee table, lay on the living room floor. While Tobias and Nix stood without moving in a corner of the living room, Finn went about making it look like a struggle had taken place. He knocked over a lamp and shoved the sofa across the room. Then he slammed one of the wooden stakes through the vamp’s heart.
He pulled the sharpened wood right back out again. “Do something with that,” he said in a low voice, and held out the stake to Nix. Bits of tissue and congealed blood clung to the wood. She came forward and took the stake with two fingers and a thumb, wrinkling her nose slightly. “You’re such a girl,” Finn muttered, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. Even if anyone was lurking by the windows or door they wouldn’t be able to hear him, preternatural hearing included.
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