“Pardon, master,” Ashby said, tone so obsequious that it made me want to laugh. Ashby put on a menacing front, but faced with a bigger and badder vampire he was just as much a lickspittle as everyone else. “Natalia Valdez has arrived a little before schedule.”
My name provoked that same hissing conversation as it had before. A pair at the back of the room stood up and actually stalked toward me. They favored each other, both sporting wavy blonde hair and dark, almost black eyes. The man was about a head taller than the woman and dressed in riding leathers from head to foot. He was built along the lines of a pro football player and had tattoos on every bared inch of skin that I could see. If he hadn’t been a soulless, bloodsucking monster I might have found the package very appealing.
Then there was his sister, who was as slender as a rapier. The black dress she wore reminded me a little of Morticia Addams’ signature outfit. But so far as I knew Morticia had never glared at anyone like they were shit on her shoe.
“Allow us to throw her throw her out, Algerone,” the woman hissed. Her voice was unpleasantly shrill, even to my merely human hearing. “She’s not welcome here until the house has fully gathered. Geoffrey and I can take turns punting her across the yard.”
“I think you are forgetting that this is my house, Arabella,” the man in the chair reminded her. His voice was a sonorous rumble that made even my practiced ears perk up and pay attention. “You are not a queen, to hold court here. I instructed Ashby to retrieve the lady and here she is. Early, yes, but I can appreciate promptness in a business partner.”
Finally, the chair swiveled around to face me and I got my first good look at Algerone Lamonia. It knocked the breath out of me, even as I struggled to stay coherent in the face of all that loveliness. The strong line of his jaw was all that kept him from looking like a beautiful woman. His cheekbones were high and sharp, his nose was pert and upturned, and his eyes looked like the Gulf in summer. It was his mouth that allowed me to attribute the proper fear and malice to this man.
It was smeared with thick, scarlet blood and a quick glance to the shape in his arms showed me that the shape was not a woman, as I’d first believed, but a girl, probably no older than Kaya. His hand smoothed absently over her light brown hair. She was too pale and too still. If she wasn’t dead already, she was close to it. Her pleated green skirt was hiked up around her thighs and there were more bite marks there. Anger joined the adrenaline spiking through my veins. All it would take to render him permanently dead would be a well-placed bullet.
I reminded myself that he had information that could help Cat. And if I killed him now, I’d never get the answers I so desperately needed.
His bloodstained mouth formed a sinister smile when he read the surrender in my face. “Where are my manners? I’ll have this disposed of.”
He let the girl slide from his grip. Her knees folded beneath her when she hit the ground and her head impacted the rug with a dull thunk. He was taunting me, trying to provoke me into an attack. If my visit hadn’t been completely spur of the moment, I would have said he was planning this little display just to raise my ire.
One of the nearby vampires scooped the crumpled girl from the ground and toted her toward the door.
“Get her to a hospital,” I hissed from between clenched teeth.
He quirked a brow at me. “Why? It will not save her, you know. She’s already lost most of her blood volume. Death is imminent. Unless you’d like one of my children to turn her.”
I flinched away from that suggestion, nearly cringing into Ashby’s side to get away from it. I would not be the person who condemned an innocent girl to a damned existence. “Just do it, Lamonia. Let the family have her body. It’s a kinder fate than the incinerator or mass grave you have planned for her.”
Algerone shrugged and addressed the vampire who’d taken the girl’s body. “Fine. Zamora, place the girl in a group of vagrants. Stage a mugging, if you would. We wouldn’t want the pesky police officers to suspect that we had anything to do with it, after all.”
The woman he’d called Arabella took another few steps forward, baring her fangs at me in apparent outrage. “She has no right to dictate to you, Algerone. Just let me–”
“Sit. Down.” Algerone said coldly, glaring at his wayward subordinate. “Or I will pluck your fangs right out of your mouth, Bella.”
The man sidled up to his sister with a laugh and put a restraining hand around her waist. “Calm down, little sister. Let’s hear what the witch has come to say.”
Biker vamp’s voice was sexy with a side order of gravel and heat rose unbidden into my cheeks. If I was going to be spending any time in this mixed company I needed to find myself a nice human boytoy to satisfy the urges I’d been having. I hadn’t gotten laid in two years and it was clearly affecting me. I tore my gaze away from his broad chest and fixed my eyes on Algerone’s cravat, so I wouldn’t be staring at the girl’s blood, still smeared all over his face.
“I want proof that you’re not bullshitting me, Lamonia,” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong with Cat. What’s going on inside of her?”
Algerone’s laugh was almost a physical touch along my skin. It was so much worse than Ashby, whose aura had pressed against me when he’d embraced me the day before. Even across the room, Algerone’s voice set my body trembling in a mortifying fashion. I could practically feel his hands on my face, traveling down the smooth column of my throat, his mouth trailing wet kisses down my–
“Stop that!” I snapped, glaring at him. “Quit the mind games, Lamonia, or I’m going to shoot you and take my chances with your retinue.”
The phantom hands slid away from me. I wanted a hot shower and oddly enough, Dominic’s arms to wrap around my shoulders. I hadn’t allowed myself to want his comfort in years. But after the violation that Algerone had so casually thrust upon me, just to prove that he could, I wanted my ex. I wanted the assurance that he would wreak vengeance on my behalf. I couldn’t kick their asses until this job was done, but he could. The realization that he’d roundly condemn my actions here meant I was unlikely to ever experience his particular kind of comfort again.
Algerone stood and brushed himself off, drawing a handkerchief from one coat pocket to dab at the blood on his face. He crossed over to the bookshelf and pulled an old tome from an eye-level shelf. It was bound in skin and its pages were yellowed and cracked. He flipped it open to a marked page and showed me the page full of flowing script.
“The thing that has afflicted your sister, calls itself Valerius,” he said, sliding the book across a desk toward me. It stopped a few feet away from the edge. “It is an ancient parasitic being that feeds on magic and ill will. I believe the Aztecs used to sacrifice to it. We cannot say who might have used your sister in a ritual to it, but it was clearly not enough for the thing to manifest completely.”
He sidled to the edge of the desk and snapped the book closed before I could peer more closely at the writing on the next page. Not that it was going to do me a lot of good, really. It was written in a language I didn’t know. Ancient languages had been Dominic’s specialty, not mine.
“This book contains a ritual that can be used to oust it from her body. From what I’m told she may never wield magic again after it has gotten its hooks into her.” He shrugged delicately. “I believe that is a risk you are willing to take if it frees her. Or am I wrong?”
He waited, considering me with cool blue-green eyes.
“Fine,” I whispered. “Fine, I’ll do this. But I want to take that book with me. I’m having someone translate it while I do the job. I don’t trust you not to burn it out of spite.”
He nodded once. “Very well, you may take the book. But you’ll be leaving tonight. I believe if the Aerion is fueled and prepped within the hour you may be able to make it to Belize before sunrise.”
“Sounds great,” I drawled. “And all that room to stretch out in too. It’ll be like a vacation.”
“You will be traveling with Geoffrey and Arabella Danvers,” Algerone informed me lazily. He considered the other vampires in the room and then nodded to a tall, spare man skulking in a corner. “And Tristan Giles.”
“I told Ashby I didn’t want the tagalongs. I’ll deal with her protectors, and I’m more capable than I look. Do I really need three?”
Algerone’s smirk grew a little more feral, exposing his bloody teeth. “Alright. But your escort would be Ashby, in that case.”
I glanced beside me to the pretty and too-eager vamp. He’d lit up like a kid on Christmas morning, apparently delighted by the prospect of tormenting me the whole time we were there.
“On second thought, the dream team sounds great. We’re like a really bad goth band. Natalia and the Bloodsuckers.”
No one in the room laughed. I rolled my eyes.
“Vampires,” I muttered. “No sense of humor any of you. I guess comedy really is dead.”
Again nobody laughed. It was a travesty really. I was killing it, so to speak.
“Fine,” I huffed. “Let’s get to the freakin’ jet. I’ve got a job to do.”
chapter
13
WE LANDED IN PHILIP S.W. GOLDSON International Airport a little before dawn. There were no direct connections straight from JFK to Belize, so we’d been stuck waiting for flight clearance for a few hours, despite leaving the Lamonia estate at half past midnight.
The Aerion was one of the fanciest planes I’d ever had the chance to fly in. I was more accustomed to choppers and coach. The Trust loved to use the Big Five to do their dirty work for them, but they didn’t shell out the money to make sure we were in first class seats while we did it. And since I was about to do something that was probably going to give me an ulcer in the years to come, I decided to indulge just a little. I drank a glass of the nice champagne that Lamonia had stocked to impress his guests and ate my steak rare, just to taunt the vampires who were stuffed into the cabin with me.
Arabella had folded herself into one of the nicely upholstered seats and glared out the window at the cloudy night as we soared south toward Belize. Tristan was entertaining himself by counting, polishing, and testing the variety of knives that he’d stowed inside the plane before takeoff. I wasn’t sure if it was strictly for my benefit or if he did this ritual before every mission.
Geoffrey kept up a steady stream of conversation with me the entire time and there had been a few instances that he’d actually made me laugh. I decided right then that he was the most dangerous of the bunch. Anyone could put a knife through your heart or a bullet into your brain but not everyone had the skill to make you think of you as a friend just before they did it.
“So where to?” he drawled as we loaded our bags into the trunk of a rental car. It was parked and ready for us by the time we’d disembarked from the plane. We only had about a half hour before all the vamps needed to be ensconced in a room.
“What, you don’t know? I thought you had their location on record already.”
“We do. They’re staying at a premier hotel on the Cocoa Beach Resort. But there are about three others to choose from not far away from it. How close do you want to be?”
“Across the street,” I said at once. “And up at an angle if we can get it. People rarely look up as often as they should. I’d like to be catty-cornered to them if I can be.”
Geoffrey nodded once and pulled out a cellphone, muttering my request into it. About a minute later he ended the call and opened the passenger side door for me. “All taken care of.”
“If it weren’t for the fact that you’re a sin against nature, I might like you, Geoffrey.”
He smiled at me for the first time since we met. His fangs were not as pronounced as some of his fellows. To most people, he’d just look like a tousled bad boy looking to be reformed.
“And if you weren’t such a high handed hypocrite I might like you.”
There was probably some truth to his words, but they still stung like a bitch. I ducked into the car rather than let him see me flinch. Tristan was in the driver’s seat, which left Arabella and Geoffrey riding in the back behind me.
“Let me make one thing clear,” Arabella said, voice as cool and crisp as a winter morning. “I told Algerone we could handle this girl on our own. It was he that insisted upon bringing you along. So if you betray our master’s trust, I will put you down like the pathetic creature you are.”
I bared my teeth at her in an expression that was more snarl that smile. One didn’t have to have fangs to prove they were dangerous with just a grin. “Try it, puta. I’ll stick those patent leather pumps so far up your–”
“Ladies,” Tristan warned. “Let’s not fight in the car.”
I fell silent, sure I’d made my point. Arabella huffed, crossing her arms over her barely-there chest.
The rest of the ride was spent in tense, uncomfortable silence.
The hotel that the mark was staying in was too nice. If I’d been assigned to her protection detail I’d have insisted on the one that the dream team and I were about to check into. I had some history with that particular hotel. Steamy, off-the-books history. Dominic, in one of his only illicit acts ever, had taken me to Belize while we were still technically working on the Trust’s dime. We’d finished a particularly dangerous mission in Guatemala and I hadn’t felt ready to climb into the sardine can that was our little prop plane we’d be taking back to the States. Only the month before I was dug out of a bomb-strapped coffin in the middle east, and my claustrophobia had been at an all-time high.
I knew that under the right circumstances it would be too easy to create a bottleneck, trapping them in the narrow halls. I knew that the windows were sealed shut and that the fixtures were all nailed down, so there’d be no moving them to create a barricade. Even the strings on the drapes were taut, so they couldn’t be pulled out to be used as a garrote if the occasion called for it.
The room we squeezed into was on the tenth floor and at an angle from the room that the mark was staying in. I’d dozed a little on the plane, trapping myself in the rather spacious bathroom so I’d have a layer of protection against the vampires. It was flimsy at best but it had been all I could think to do. I’d popped an Ambien and slept for about an hour. This trip was going to last about fourteen days if I kept to my usual patterns. So I was going to have to sleep around the vampires sometime. But that didn’t mean I liked it.
We’d gotten two separate but adjoining rooms, pairing off at the desk like we were a pair of happy couples, come to vacation in Belize. Geoffrey was sharing mine, which suited me just fine. He was the only vampire I’d met that didn’t seem to want me dead on sight. He stripped off his leathers and got dressed for bed while I set up my equipment. I’d have to be careful while I was watching the mark during the daytime, so I didn’t turn Geoffrey into a puddle of goop on the bed. Vampires didn’t burst into flames when exposed to sunlight. They literally melted. The skin sloughed off, the muscles liquified and the bones crumbled so that in the end, all that was left was a soupy stain on the carpet.
Geoffrey’s chest was all rippling muscle and it took concerted effort not to stare.
I was definitely going to have to find a pool boy if the vampires were starting to appeal to me.
Geoffrey caught me looking and gave me a sharp-toothed smile. “It’s not so bad you know. Dying. All that guilt and pain you’re going through? It’d be gone. You’d never have to feel anything like it again. I wouldn’t recommend Ashby for a sire, but if you’re ever interested…”
“No. I wouldn’t know what to do with my Thursday nights if I didn’t have self-pity to wallow in. And that would just throw off my whole week.”
He laughed and pulled off his leather pants, leaving him in only a pair of expensive silk boxers. He climbed into bed and didn’t bother crawling beneath the covers before he fell asleep. I waited a few minutes to make sure he was well and truly out before I wormed my equipment thr
ough a small, inches wide gap in the drapes. I pressed my eye to the scope I’d trained on the room. Between Landon’s and Algerone’s surveillance, I knew which room I needed to be watching. The girl was in a suite with two queen-sized beds. Room 508, which had a stunning view of the ocean and the rising sun. Unfortunately, sunlight was not a guarantee of the mark’s safety.
As I watched, the girl from the photograph sidled up to the window, pressing her face against the glass to get a view of the horizon. It was lightening to gray in the predawn and the water had already begun to shine a light, luminous blue in response to the barest hint of light. Belize was just as pretty as I remembered it.
The girl looked pale and drawn, even from this distance. Her light blue t-shirt was rumpled and her hair needed to see a comb stat. The circles beneath her eyes were bruise-like and the part of me that was an older sister just wanted to guide her to one of the queen size beds and strap her there until she’d slept for a week.
I was absolutely certain one or both of her protectors had told her to stay away from the window. If I’d had my rifle unpacked I could have dispatched her with one round, easily. She wasn’t even wearing body armor, which I was also sure her protectors had insisted on.
A hand wrapped around her arm and pulled her back from the window. The girl’s grip on the drapes pulled them open further and I got a good look at the first of my adversaries. It wasn’t Cayman Bello, thank God. The man had sandy brown hair and a round face. Even though I couldn’t see them at this distance, I knew from years of working with him that his eyes were blue and that he was wearing an utterly bland expression on his face.
Ewan Saunders was as unremarkable as possible and could make himself unobtrusive in almost any crowd. Funnily enough, the bright, eye-catching Hawaiian shirt would help him blend in with the rest of the tourists below.
Agent of Magic Box Set Page 12
