She wasn’t there.
He took a step forward, then another. Hoping to get her to speak again and get a better lead on her location, he said, “Tell me what would convince you, then. Tell me and I’ll do it.”
The rueful, answering snort came from that empty corner, he knew it did. But how? He took another step forward, carefully, then inhaled and opened all his senses to let the relentless drone of his surroundings sink in.
A pair of mice, scurrying along a ledge somewhere above his head. That dripping water, falling through caverns before it hit a body of standing water, far, far below. Rock dust and bone dust, both fine as silt, suspended and diffused as atoms in the air. A pulse of heat ahead of him, the scent of her bright in his nose. He took another sure step toward that sultry scent, and she said abruptly, “Stop.”
He did. He put both hands up in a posture of surrender. The air, cool and damp, felt delicious against his heated skin.
“I can kill you now and you won’t even see it coming. Stay where you are or I’ll spill your guts all over the floor. Understood?”
Considering the fact that he somehow couldn’t see her now but the last time he had she’d been quite handy with a dagger, D thought it prudent to nod.
He sensed movement without seeing its source, felt the pulse of her body heat move slowly around to his left. Nonchalant, feigning boredom, he lowered his gaze to the ground and then slid it left, following that delicious, satiny heat. There in the pale sifting of dust that covered the ground was a trail of footsteps, unremarkable in themselves, but astonishing for the fact that they appeared as they did, one in front of the other, right before his eyes.
Damn, he thought, floored by the sheer impossibility of it.
Eliana was invisible. How the hell had she managed that?
“I don’t feel the other Bellatorum nearby. Or your new team. So I have to assume you’ve come to kill me on your own this time.”
Instantly he said, “You don’t believe that. You know I’d never hurt you.”
“Do I?” she murmured in response, her voice now directly behind him. It took every ounce of willpower he had not to whirl around, but he held himself immobile, his limbs and posture and breathing nonthreatening and relaxed.
“Yes. And the team you mentioned isn’t mine. As I told you before, they’re called The Hunt. They’re assassins from the confederate colonies.”
The movement behind him ceased. He imagined he felt her glaring at the back of his head, willing it to explode.
“Do tell,” she invited, not cold but not particularly warm, either.
His hands were still lifted in the air, and he itched to lower them, but instead he turned his head and said over his shoulder, “They think you’re the new leader of the Expurgari.”
She spoke Latin as well as he did. So her voice was a little more heated when she said, “Purifiers? What is that supposed to mean? Why would they think that?”
Careful, he’d have to be very, very careful now. “I’d like to say this to your face, if you don’t mind,” he murmured. “Can I turn around?”
“No,” came the instant reply. Something sharp and cold pressed against the space between his shoulder blades: a knife. “And you have about ten seconds left to tell your story, so make them count.”
He accepted both the verbal threat and the more immediate one of the weapon with the tranquility of someone long used to facing death as a matter of course in his daily life. A soldier through and through, his self-preservation instinct had been deadened in infancy, when he’d been taken from the nursery and began his training as a warrior. He protected a colony of supernatural creatures, he protected their genocidal leader, he’d long ago come to peace with the simple fact that in all likelihood, his life would be short and violent. There were no grandchildren in his future; that was for sure.
“They think you’re the new leader of the Expurgari because your father was the old one.”
A quarter turn of the blade against his back. A slight hesitation, then, very quietly, “And what is it that these purifiers purify?”
He inhaled. He exhaled. “Us.”
“That makes no sense,” came the instant response. The knife pressed deeper into the flesh of his back. He felt it like an exclamation point on the end of a sentence, emphatic.
“It’s complicated.”
“Nine.” She sounded as if she’d like to shove the blade through his spine even sooner.
“They’re a militant branch of the Church, trained assassins—”
“More assassins!”
“Who’ve been led since the Inquisition by an Ikati disguised as a human—”
“Eight.”
“Which was a very ingenious way, if you think about it, to use humans to kill their own kind without drawing attention to the real culprit—”
“To what end? For what reason?”
“Vengeance, Eliana. Vengeance.”
“Seven.” Her voice, hard as granite.
“Why do you think your father was so devoted to Horus? God of vengeance, god of war…ring a bell? He used humans as a spy network to gain information about the other colonies so he could overthrow them, all the while disguising himself as a devout disciple of the Church, a spiritual warrior against evil. Against human heretics and that nonhuman scourge, that abomination against God and nature…shifters.”
“Six, five, four—”
“I have proof,” he said abruptly, and he felt the knife at his back give a little jerk.
“What proof can a liar give?” Her voice was bitter.
“Written proof. Straight from the horse’s mouth.”
The point of the knife drew away. He sensed movement, and then from around his left shoulder, he saw it and caught his breath.
She was there, but only just, beginning to take shape against the darkness behind her with little crystalline sparkles of light like motes suspended in a sunbeam. Her face appeared first, ghostly pale, and then her body began to take form, a growing mass that gathered around a core of shifting particles, ethereal as smoke. From one heartbeat to the next she became fully realized—flesh and bone and clothing—and began to move, slowly, carefully, watching him with eyes intense and unblinking.
“Ana,” he breathed, “that’s incredible. That’s so beauti—”
She said, “Which horse?”
It wasn’t a knife she’d been holding, he saw now as she paused and stood just beyond arm’s length with the weapon held out, leveled at his heart. It was a sword. A short sword, elegant and curved with a bone hilt banded in silk cord and a tapered carbon steel blade. It looked vaguely Asian. And deadly.
He drew in a lungful of the cool cavern air and replied, “Your father’s. We have your father’s journal. You left it behind.”
He saw the way she faltered, just the tiniest furrow drawn between her arching dark brows before it was erased. Before she could respond, he said, “You’ll recognize the binding, you know his hand. It will answer all your questions.”
“Where is it?” she whispered, staring at him. “Give it to me.”
He shook his head, once, and slowly lowered his hands to his sides. “It’s not here. I’ll bring it tomorrow. I’ll bring it here—”
“No,” she insisted vehemently. “Not here. Somewhere else. Somewhere public.”
He studied her face. Drawn and pale, she looked suddenly terrified, but not of him. No, of something she was thinking. Of what she imagined inside that journal.
“The Eiffel Tower.”
Her brows flew up.
“Second-floor observation deck. Meet me there at sunset tomorrow. I’ll be alone.”
“I’ll know it if you’re not,” she warned. She still hadn’t lowered the sword. “I’ll know if it’s a trick.”
“I know,” he agreed softly. “I know you will. It’s not a trick.”
“And if you try and search for any of my—”
“I told you, baby girl. I don’t want them. I came for you. It’s only
you. It’s always been only you.”
Her eyes closed for just longer than a blink. Before she could speak, he murmured, “Don’t you know?” He stepped forward, slowly, until the blade of her outstretched sword rested against his chest, cold and sharp against the flesh over his heart, the flesh tattooed with her name. Her nostrils flared with her inhalation, but she didn’t retreat or move.
Looking deep into her eyes he said, “Ego mori tibi.”
I would die for you.
Latin, because that’s how they were both born and raised. Catacombs, darkness, secrets, and dead languages, apart from the rest of the world.
Eliana twitched and exhaled a little, stunned breath. Her eyes were very dark and wide.
Still in Latin, still fierce, he continued, “I would kill for you. I would tear out my own heart with my bare hands if that’s what you asked, because your pleasure is my reward and a smile from you is worth more to me than gold. I’ve searched for you every second of every minute of every day since you disappeared, and all I want now is for you to be safe from the others who are searching for you, too—others who want to see you dead. I won’t let them hurt you, and though you don’t believe me, I won’t hurt you, either. Ever.” His voice grew even deeper, huskier, and he swallowed. “Because I’m in love with you, baby girl, and I have been for as long as I can remember. You’re the one ray of sunshine in the total darkness of my life. You’re the only thing that matters.”
She made a low, anguished sound in the back of her throat. He saw her grip tighten on the hilt of the sword, saw her fingers go white with how hard they squeezed, saw her intention to run him through right where he stood.
Just before she lunged forward, D Shifted to Vapor, and Eliana’s thrust was met with empty air.
The first thing Gregor heard was the beeping.
Loud and insistent, the electronic noise was so irritating it had worked itself into his dream. He’d been having the most wonderful dream, distinct as daylight, in which he was visited by someone vaguely familiar. A woman, standing at the end of his bed. But she was more specter than flesh, scented of nighttime and the outdoors, silent as that damned beeping was not. She’d drifted to the beside, surrounded him in calming, cool mist, murmured his name into his ear, then other things. Lovely things.
“Rest, old friend. Heal. We’ll see each other again soon.”
But the beeping wouldn’t let up, and finally the beautiful vision had disappeared, only to be replaced by the sight of a room, eye-wateringly bright when he opened his eyes. He squinted against the glare, disoriented, saw white walls and a fabric curtain hung from a track on the ceiling, smelled the sharp, chemical bite of disinfectant and the more subtle, homey scent of freshly laundered cotton.
When he turned his head left he spied the source of that infernal noise: a heart monitor, rectangular green, on rolling metal legs next to his bed.
His bed. In the hospital.
With a jerk he sat up, and pain, searing hot, tore through his chest.
A murmur of disapproval came from his other side, and Gregor, growling his displeasure and gritting his teeth against the pain, allowed a pair of gentle hands to push him back against the mattress. The nurse leaned over him, smoothed down the neck of the pastel flowered gown that covered his chest and body, and inspected a square of white bandages taped to his chest.
“Try not to tear your stitches, Mr. MacGregor,” she admonished in a husky, accented voice. She was fortyish, dishy, with a cap of shiny dark hair that accentuated a pair of cheekbones so chiseled they could cut glass. She turned smiling, warm brown eyes to his. “We don’t want you staying here any longer than necessary, now do we?”
He hated it when people asked rhetorical questions. But in the dishy nurse’s case, he figured he’d let it slide. “How long have I been here?” He let her plump the pillow beneath his head, fuss over his blankets. She lifted a plastic cup to his mouth and helped him sip water from a bendy straw, all the while making little noises of encouragement. He began to like her more and more.
“Two days,” was the answer as she watched him drink. When he finished, she set the cup back on the small table beside the bed. “And they’ve been a royal pain, if you know what I mean, the whole time.”
His brows pulled together. “They?”
She darted a sour glance toward the door of the room. Beyond the narrow strip of glass inset beside it Gregor saw a trio of men, two uniformed gendarmes flirting with an unseen woman at the nurses’ station, standing with their backs to him, and one seated man in a plain black suit with spectacles and a patch over one eye. He was looking away so Gregor saw him only in profile, but he knew exactly who it was.
As if he felt him watching, Agent Doe looked over. Their eyes met through the glass.
“Say what they want?” he muttered, holding Doe’s icy blue gaze.
“Well, mon amie,” said the pretty nurse with a wry little smile, “you made quite an entrance when you checked in. The damage to the front of the hospital was extensive. And your girlfriend scared the merde out of one of our senior doctors. He took a few days’ personal time after your surgery. I’m not sure if he’ll ever come back.”
Gregor’s hand flew to his bandaged chest. Surgery. He’d been shot. Eliana—
“What happened to the woman—the woman who brought me in?” He caught the nurse by the wrist. “Where is she? Is she hurt?”
With the slow, nonthreatening movements of one trained to deal with irrational people, the nurse removed her wrist from his grip and then patted his hand. “She walked out of the emergency room on her own two feet, Mr. MacGregor. From what I understand, she was not injured. You’re lucky she got you here so quickly, though. You nearly bled to death on the way over.”
Gregor slumped back against the pillows, clammy with relief. She wasn’t hurt. But where was she now?
“The car you arrived in, on the other hand, was not so lucky.” She chuckled and moved around to the other side of the bed to check the readouts on the heart monitor and the amount of pale liquid left in a plastic bag hanging from a hook on a rolling pole. There was a length of clear tubing from the bag to his arm, a piece of white tape over the vein on the back of his hand where the tubing was attached with a needle. “Antibiotics,” she said, seeing his look. “Just to make sure you don’t get any infection from the wound.”
The door swung open. He and the nurse turned to watch Agent Doe, leaning on a cane, enter the room, followed by the two uniformed officers. The three of them sent him baleful glares.
“Well.” The nurse shot Gregor a meaningful glance. “My name is Lily. I’m on until nine o’clock. If you need anything, just push that red button on the remote beside the bed and I’ll be in momentarily.” She brushed past the men and let herself out, closing the door behind her.
Gregor said into the following silence, “Agent Doe. We meet again.” He glanced at the two unsmiling gendarmes. “Where’s my good friend Édoard? Our little reunion won’t be the same without him.”
Agent Doe’s knuckles were white around the curved handle of the cane. His jaw worked, but his cold, cold eye revealed nothing. “He’s at your building as we speak.”
There was a lump in the mattress the size of a cat that was pinching a nerve in his lower back, but Gregor refused to shift his weight to relieve the discomfort. “Oh?”
Doe grew a smile that would have looked at home on Hannibal Lecter. “Do you have any idea how long the prison term is for operating a bordello?”
So they’d found it. Gregor said flatly, “Five years to life. Or so I’m told.”
“Ah, but you are correct! Your lawyer must be very intelligent. Though not intelligent enough to dissuade you from engaging in such a reprehensible activity. Pity.”
Gregor did have an intelligent lawyer. A genius lawyer, in fact, who charged fifteen hundred dollars an hour and had drilled into his brain never, never to admit anything, even if caught standing over a decapitated body with a bloody machete in one hand a
nd a severed head in the other. Which in Gregor’s case was not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
“Actually, I only know that from television. It’s amazing what you can learn from those—”
“—crime shows,” Doe finished for him. “Yes, you said so before.” His ugly smile grew mocking. “You certainly do watch a lot of television.”
The two officers snickered. Gregor and Doe stared at one another, deadlocked in silent animosity, until Gregor made a motion with his hand.
“What happened to your eye?”
Doe stiffened. The smile leached from his face, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I am not after you, MacGregor, you should know that up front so you can make your decisions going forward accordingly.” In answer to Gregor’s plain expression of disbelief, he said, “I am after far bigger fish, and if you assist me in that regard, all charges against you will be dropped.”
“I thought you weren’t with the police. How can you have the authority to do that?”
Ominously, he said, “My organization is above the police.”
Gregor’s interest was piqued. “Is it now? And here I thought no one was above the law.”
“Enough money can put you above anything, even God Himself.”
Without explaining further and apparently tired of standing, Doe snapped his fingers and one of the officers brought him a chair from the corner of the room. He settled himself into it—lips pinched, legs stiff—and then waved a hand, dismissing them. They looked at one another for a moment before leaving the way they’d come. Gregor saw them take up position outside his door, noticed they both wore sidearms.
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