Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang do-7

by Кейти Макалистер

  I flipped back a page, looking at the dated entry containing Kristoff’s name. Why, if the Lodi Congress started the year following that, was the Brotherhood mentioned in the earlier entry? Had Kristoff been one of the first vamps to go after the reapers? I made a mental note to ask him when things were less hectic and he’d be more inclined to chat.

  “Regardless, it’s valuable enough to warrant having Kristoff translate it,” I said, gently rubbing my thumb across the goatskin covering. “If it turns out to be nothing, we’ll return it to Alec. Assuming he comes home, that is.”

  “I guess we’re finished here, then,” Magda said, glancing around the room.

  “We’ve looked everywhere. We can move on to the floor below us.” A thought occurred to me: Kristoff hadn’t been in contact with me for over half an hour. While that wasn’t in any way remarkable, I would have thought he’d be interested to know of our progress, or lack thereof. Boo, I’m ready to go on to the main floor. You about finished in the guesthouse?

  Silence was my only answer.

  Kristoff? Everything OK?

  I stood up as the profound silence filled my head. “Something’s wrong,” I said, trying to open up my senses to locate Kristoff.

  She paused at the door. “What?”

  “Kristoff isn’t answering me.”

  She glanced at the phone for a moment before her eyebrows arched. “Oh, the mind thing? Maybe he’s busy. Or out of range.”

  I shook my head, suddenly filled with the strongest portent of danger. “I don’t think so. Something has happened to cause him to close his mind to mine, and that can only be one thing.”

  “Reapers?” she asked, her face losing some of its animation.

  I nodded. “Or worse.”

  She froze for a moment. “Come to think of it, Ray should have been upstairs by now. Even if he had been drinking that lovely Costa Russi, he should have. . . . I’m going to go check on him.”

  She dashed out of the room without waiting for a response.

  Possessed by a sudden sense of urgency, I hurriedly wrapped up the journal, shoved the bit of trim back onto the desk, and without an alternate choice, stuffed the journal under my dress, into the band of my underwear.

  I snatched up the penlight that Kristoff had left me, flipping off the room’s light before carefully closing the door. The house was dark now that the sun was setting, but the penlight allowed me to pick out the way to the stairs that led down to the main floor. It, too, was in the dark, and for a moment I hesitated, the primitive part of my mind refusing to march blindly into what felt like certain danger.

  My foot had just hit the first stair when a noise behind me startled me, causing me to simultaneously gasp and spin around, one hand clutching the penlight, the other groping the journal as it pressed against my skin.

  A face loomed suddenly out of the darkness. My skin crawled in horror for a moment, my body giving in to the flight instinct. I stepped backward and plummeted down the staircase into the inky blackness below.

  CHAPTER 13

  The pain caught my attention first. It was sharp and hot, radiating out from a spot on the side of my head, dull waves of agony that brought the rest of my awareness to me.

  “Unh?” I said, my tongue seemingly made of lead as I blinked my eyes, trying to shake off the last shreds of oblivion that clung to the edges of my mind. “Hrng?”

  “Are you awake? How do you feel?”

  I blinked a couple more times. Light and shadows flashed on my face, blurred into fleeting shapes that seemed to rush past me.

  “Boo?” I asked, trying to adjust my position, and wincing at the pain in my head that followed the movement. “Ow. What the hell?”

  The man’s voice was a pleasant baritone with a slight German accent, sophisticated and sexy. “You hit your head on the banister when you fell. I caught you before you tumbled down the stairs, so you should be fine. Immortality is just one of the perks of being a Beloved.”

  Carefully I turned my head to look in the direction of the voice, my eyes still not focusing too well. Slowly, a face resolved itself, dimly lit, but recognizable. “Alec?” I asked, the memory of him emerging from the darkness of his house returning with an impact that had me struggling upright.

  Something bound me, holding me back. I struggled with the thing, realizing as a metallic click sounded that it was a seat belt. I was in a car.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, pushing myself up from where I’d been slumped in the passenger seat. Pain bit hard and deep in my head for a few seconds, slowly ebbing away to a dull throb. “Oh, God. I remember now. You loomed up out of the darkness and scared the crap out of me.”

  “I’m sorry for that, love.” Alec caught himself, making a little face. “I suppose I shouldn’t call you that anymore. Not since . . . Well. What’s done can’t be undone.”

  “If you’re talking about Kristoff . . . ,” I began slowly, rebuckling my seat belt. With extreme caution, I felt the side of my head. There was a good-sized lump there. “No, it can’t be undone. Not that I would want to even if I could change it. Ouch. I don’t suppose you have an ice pack handy?”

  He shook his head, glancing briefly at me before returning his eyes to the road. “You are happy with Kristoff? I had thought that you and I had a great future before us. It seemed to me that you thought so, too.”

  “I don’t think we were ever really meant to be,” I said uncomfortably, and not just due to the headache. “I will always cherish our time together, though. And I can’t believe I’m saying something so predictable and trite, but I hope that you won’t allow my relationship with Kristoff to come between our friendship, or your friendship with Kristoff. Assuming, that is, that you are not really working for the Brotherhood and about to turn me over to them so they can perform insanely evil acts against my person.”

  Alec’s lips thinned. He was, as I had had occasion to note at some length, an exceedingly handsome man. He was dark haired, like Kristoff, but where Kristoff had dark auburn curls, Alec’s hair was a rich, deep, dark chocolate, straight and silky, pulled back in a ponytail. His eyes were green like a cat’s, and although our physical relationship hadn’t gone beyond one night together, he had enough raw magnetism that even in my somewhat muddled state I felt the impact of his nearness.

  “That you can even think such a thing about me pains me deeply,” Alec said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

  “Well, you have to admit that you haven’t done much for making people think you’re a knight in shining armor. Where have you been? What have you been doing? And why have you kidnapped me?”

  “I haven’t kidnapped you; I’ve saved you,” he said, shooting me an irritated glance. “There were reapers all around my house. I sneaked in through the attic and was going to retrieve a valuable when I heard people.”

  I suddenly remembered the old diary Magda and I found. I slid my hand toward my stomach, relieved to feel the stiff vellum-and-goatskin journal resting against it. Alec must have seen the movement.

  “Yes, my reaper journal. It would appear I need to find a new hiding place for it. Oh, don’t distress yourself, love. I didn’t take it from you. In fact, you will find it most interesting reading, although I would like it back when you are through with it. You might ask Kristoff to translate parts for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I didn’t know-”

  He made an abortive gesture. “It doesn’t matter. I was about to strike you down when I saw you near the stairs, having assumed you were a reaper-or rather, one of the reapers who would not hesitate to kill me-when I realized it was you. What was Kristoff doing, leaving you alone in my home?”

  “He didn’t leave me alone,” I said, sick to my stomach and confused as all get-out.

  “He didn’t?”

  “No. He was out in the guesthouse. At least, I thought he was, but he didn’t answer me when I tried to contact him.”

  Alec swore and slammed his foot on the brake,
the car fishtailing wildly to the accompaniment of horns from the cars behind us as he pulled an extremely illegal U-turn across a grass strip dividing the highway, and headed us back in the direction we’d just come.

  “Where are we going now?” I asked.

  “Back to get Kristoff. They must have him. The place was swarming with them when I arrived.”

  Fear rolled through me, leaving my hands clammy. Kristoff? Please answer me!

  Silence hung heavily in my head.

  “He’s still not answering,” I said, nausea leaving me weak and shaking.

  “We’ll find him,” Alec said, his jaw tight. He glanced in the rearview mirror. “We were not followed. With luck, they will still be searching my house and will not have removed him yet.”

  “I’m seriously confused, here,” I said, touching the lump on the side of my head again. “Are you on our side? Or are you yanking my chain? Because, so help me God, Alec, if you’ve done something to Kristoff-”

  “We have devoted ourselves, both of us, to defeating the reapers,” he said grimly, his face set. “Such acts require much self-sacrifice, and at times have left us both in positions where we were close to destruction. I have saved his life a number of times. Do you seriously believe me capable of betraying him to the reapers? Or perhaps you think I am so desperate that I am willing to take another man’s Beloved?”

  Shame filled me at his accusation. “No, I don’t think that of you. And I apologize for what I said. It’s just that you disappeared so completely, and no one knew where you were or what happened to you. And then the vampires all seemed to lose their minds and accused him of the stupidest things ever. Alec, I have to know-did you set up Kristoff?”

  He shot me a startled glance. “Set him up how?”

  “Make it look like he embezzled a bunch of money, and had something to do with your disappearance, and killed Anniki.”

  “Oh.” He looked almost amused. “No, I did not arrange for that.”

  “Then where did you go?”

  He was silent for a moment, the streetlights as we passed under them checkering his face and making it almost impossible to read his expression. “I have been working.”

  “Working how? For the reapers?”

  The look he gave me was pure scorn.

  “Sorry. Working for whom, then?”

  “I have been attempting to uncover a connection between one of the reapers and a Dark One.”

  “The mole, you mean?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Kristoff told me.”

  He made a face. “I should have guessed.”

  “I knew it!” I sat up a little straighter in the seat, ignoring the brief throb of pain in my head as pieces of the puzzle slid together. “You’re pretending to be a friend of the reapers in order to find out who the mole is, aren’t you?”

  His smile was wry and brief. “It appears I have underestimated you. Yes, I have infiltrated the reaper organization. They believe me to be a friend.”

  “Oh, I can’t wait to tell Kristoff!” At the mention of his name my spirits plummeted. “Assuming I can. Why did the Brotherhood go to your house?”

  “I suspect that someone tipped them off to your arrival.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said, gnawing on my lower lip, stretching out my senses to find Kristoff. There was nothing but a cold abyss, empty of all warmth and sensation, that was the man with whom I was now wholly and irreversibly in love. “No one knew we were coming here but Raymond, Magda, Kristoff, and me.”

  “Someone must have known,” he insisted, making a run off the highway and sending us speeding through the night up a winding street that I recognized.

  I thought briefly of the phone calls Kristoff had made, ostensibly to friends. What if one of his buddies was the mole? What if one of them had told the Brotherhood where to find us? Had they had time to badly hurt Kristoff, or was he not answering me in a misguided attempt to protect me? “Do you think he’s OK?”

  “We’ll know in a few minutes,” he answered, and I shivered at the grim note in his voice.

  There was no car in front of his house. A sudden spurt of worry hit me. “Magda and Raymond! They were here, too!”

  Alec frowned for a moment.

  “You remember Magda, don’t you? She was with me on the tour in Iceland.”

  “Ah, yes. Spanish, black eyes, large . . .” He gestured toward his chest.

  “No bigger than mine, thank you,” I said, crossing my arms. “She and her boyfriend, Raymond, were helping us.”

  “They are mortals, and of no concern to the reapers,” he said, surprising me by driving past his house and turning into the drive of a neighboring house. “They were probably sent on their way.”

  “I hope so. I don’t think I could stand having any more innocent people’s blood, metaphorical or otherwise, on my hands. What are we doing here?”

  He stopped the car and got out, gesturing for me to follow. “There is a back way into my house, via the attic.”

  There was a narrow, mostly invisible break in the hedge that served as a fence around his property, and between him and his neighbors. I squeezed through the break, spitting out bits of yew leaves that poked into my mouth, following silently as Alec sneaked through the garden, past a small, dark guesthouse.

  “Wait here,” he whispered, pushing me against a tree trunk while he crept up to one of the windows of the guesthouse. He returned a moment later, gesturing again for me to follow. We slipped past an empty pool, the water rippling gently in the evening breeze, lit from below to make the pool a glowing teal beacon that had nothing on the clarity that was Kristoff’s eyes.

  “Can you climb?” Alec asked in a hushed voice as he stopped next to a large split-trunked tree.

  I looked upward to where the tree’s branches lay against the roof of the house. Normally, I wouldn’t consider such a thing, but Kristoff’s life was at stake. “I’ll manage,” I told him.

  By the time I struggled from the leafy and branch-riddled embrace of the tree and through a window into a dark, close attic, I had come to the conclusion that climbing a tree in any apparel was hazardous, but doing so in a gauzy sundress meant to entice one particular man into a frenzy was definitely not a smart idea. More than once Alec had been forced to climb down to detach me from some particularly troublesome branch, ultimately being forced to rip the material free.

  “Note to self: Next time pack tree-climbing clothes, preferably something in the non-tear nylon family,” I said as I got up from where I’d landed on the attic floor. Through the thin light streaming in from the outside house lights, I could see that the front of my dress was smudged with dirt, little leaves and twigs clinging to bits of torn fabric, long, wrinkled tears leaving the bodice more a memory than an actual garment. A faint breeze on my backside told me that the skirt was likely to be in the same condition.

  “I would say you look charming, but I doubt if you would appreciate my approval of your underwear,” Alec said, his eyes on the exposed portion of my bra. “This way. I feel their presence in my house, so we must go very cautiously.” He started to edge his way around the boxes and discarded furniture that littered his attic, pausing a moment at the door to mutter, “That is odd. I feel . . . Hmm.”

  “Feel what?” I whispered as he silently opened a trapdoor in the floor, sticking his head out to examine the hallway below before he got to his feet. There was a foldout set of narrow steps that must have been very well oiled, for he lowered them without a sound.

  “Feel the presence of people I had not expected. Unfortunately, I can’t tell how near they are. Come. We must be silent now.”

  I followed him as quietly as possible as he crept slowly down the hallway. The upper floor was dark, but lights shone up from below. I picked off twigs and leaves and a couple of bugs as we headed to the main stairs. Alec held up a hand to stop me. I stayed against the wall as he slid along it to the stairs, peeking over the edge to the floor below.

&
nbsp; He stood up suddenly and, with an inexplicable smile at me, ran down to the floor below. I stood stunned for a moment, then followed.

  I made it to the bottom of the stairs before I realized what it was that had Alec so amused. Four men and two women were arranged in various poses of bondage on the huge living room floor. The women had been propped up more or less upright, their hands bound behind them, their feet tied, with duct tape across their mouths. Two men were prone on the floor, blood around them indicating that they had been injured, although they, too, had been bound. The other two leaned drunkenly against each other, their eyes spitting fury as I slowly entered the bizarre scene.

  But what had me coming to a complete halt was the sight of the two men lounging on the couch.

  “Took you long enough to get back,” Andreas said, looking up from where he was examining his fingernail.

  Rowan, who had his feet resting on one of the prone men, stopped flipping through a magazine to glance up. “You found her, I see. We figured you must have her, since they didn’t.”

  “Yes, and you might have told me you two were in town,” Alec said, strolling over to the two men. He squatted next to them and eyed them carefully. “It would have saved me a great deal of trouble. Where is he?”

  “Kristoff?” Andreas nodded his head toward me. “He’s over there.”

  I spun around and almost choked with horror. Kristoff lay on a small honey-colored couch that sat under a huge mural of the ocean, one arm hanging lifelessly off the edge.

  “You bastards!” I shrieked, running across the room to where he lay. “What have you done to him?”

  “I like that,” Rowan said, nudging one of the guys on the floor as he raised his head. “Did you hear her? She called us bastards.”

  My horror turned to sheer terror as I realized the pattern on the floor was due to blood, not the design of the carpet. “Oh, my God, you’ve killed him! I swear by all that is holy that you will all pay for this. I will not rest one single second until you’ve suffered the way you’ve made my poor Kristoff suffer.”