by F. E. Heaton
This was a time of war, a time for leading and fighting, two things that he was exceptionally skilled at.
This was his moment, their moment. Just as the Lady Caelestis and the Lord Aurorea had brought peace to their houses by standing by each other's side and fighting together, they would bring peace to the world.
His eyes narrowed and he looked up at the building, assessing it and searching for a way in. He walked along the length of the façade. He had been here before. He had a faint memory of it and he couldn't remember breaking in.
Clearing his head, he focused on the task at hand, his eyes darting about and scanning all the windows and doors.
They would be alarmed.
He raised his eyes up to the top of the building. It was possible that the roof would be the only way in.
"Valentine?” Prophecy's voice sounded out to him.
He looked at her.
The seriousness of his expression seemed to make her smile. He didn't lose his frown when she stepped towards him and tiptoed to press a kiss against his cheek.
She grinned. “Welcome back."
He gave her a slight smile and returned his concentration to the building. Taking hold of Prophecy's hand, he led her around the back, looking for a way up to the roof. There were trees surrounding the museum. It was possible that they were going to be their only way up. He stopped when he saw a lower section of the building and a tree not too far from it. There were branches that reached to within only a few metres of the roof. A human couldn't jump the gap from such a fragile branch, but a vampire could.
"We have to go up,” he said, looking across at Prophecy.
She nodded and then crouched down, tucking the hem of her trousers into her boots and tying them tight. When she was ready, he looked up at the tree, plotting the best route up it.
Before he could move, she had passed him and was halfway up the tall tree trunk. He could only watch her as she sprang from branch to branch, eventually landing on the one that stretched out towards the lower roof. He sniffed, took a deep breath and then followed her. When he was standing near the trunk on the same branch as her, he nodded towards the roof. She was lightest and therefore it made sense for her to go first. If the branch was going to break on the second person, he preferred that person to be him. He could find another way in if necessary.
She rolled her shoulders and then edged along the branch. He held his breath and watched her creeping closer to the point where the branch was too thin for her to walk on. There was still a good five feet to that point when she stopped. She looked back at him, smiled and then sprinted. He frowned when she leapt through the air, landing with all the grace of her species on the roof. He waited for the branch to stop swaying and listened to it, hoping to hear if it had been weakened by Prophecy.
She beckoned him with a wave of her hand.
He extended his senses and focused them on the branch while he ran towards the end of it. Leaping at the same point as she had, he landed on his feet close to the edge of the wall. He quickly grabbed hold of the hand she offered him, stopping himself from falling backwards over the edge.
"Not as spry as I thought I was,” he said.
She smiled. “I thought you were pretty spry. Quite limber in fact."
He raised a brow at the seductive tone her voice had taken on and the way her smile became alluring. Stepping up to her, he tugged her hand towards him, pulling her up against him. He kissed her, letting her see that her reference hadn't been lost on him and showing her that there was more to what they'd shared the other night. There was much more, and a lot she had to learn. This was one thing that he didn't mind teaching her.
Keeping hold of her hand, he walked across the roof, searching for a way into the building. There was a small door and a raised glass roof. The door was bound to be alarmed. The windows he wasn't so sure about.
He released her and pointed to the windows. “Check that side and see if there is any sign of a device on the inside."
"What about the door?” she said.
He shook his head. “It is definitely alarmed."
She looked at the door and then went to the windows. When he was halfway through checking his side, she stopped what she was doing.
"What's it like inside?"
"How do you know I've been inside?” he said and his fingers paused at their work. He looked up at her. She was still smiling.
"You must have. Everywhere we go, you seem to have been there before. Were you a vampire when you came here?"
He shook his head. “I don't know if I was. It is hard to say. I recall coming here many many years ago, only I cannot remember the details of my visit."
"So what's it like inside?"
He smiled. “Let's find out."
Pulling a knife out of his pocket, he slid it along the edges of the glass panel. It must have been years since these windows were opened. They'd been painted shut and by the looks of things, they'd had several coats. When he finished separating the window from the metal frame, he looked at Prophecy.
"I might need your assistance,” he said, his gaze moving to her amulet.
She raised her hand, looking at it. “What do you need to me to do?"
He looked through the window at the latch. “How are your telekinesis skills?"
"Let's find out,” she said, echoing his earlier words.
He stepped back to give her room when she closed her eyes. Her fingers wrapped around her wrist, holding it steady as the purple streams of magic began to appear. He watched with fascination as they reached out, extending in a waving, dancing line towards the window. They slipped inside through the crack he'd created and the window creaked as the latch was drawn back.
He pulled the window up and held it barely a few millimetres away from the frame. There would be some kind of security device fitted to it and he was certain that once it was more than a few centimetres away from the frame, it would be triggered.
Holding the window, he waited for Prophecy to open her eyes and look at him.
"We will have to be quick about this. You drop down first. Once you are in, I shall follow you. Have your magic ready to close the latch on the window. An alarm will sound, but if we can get the latch back in place there is a chance that the security guards will believe it is a false one."
She nodded and he took a deep breath. It had been a long time since he'd broken into somewhere like this. Instinct told him that they would run into trouble at some point. There was no way they could make it in and out without alerting someone to their presence. All he wanted was to get as far in as possible before it happened. Death was on the cards this night.
He looked up at the sky, his eyes running along the silvery threads of clouds that hurried across it. There was no moon.
The perfect night for hunting.
Raising the window up, he watched her drop inside.
Prophecy landed silently on the floor and looked back up at the window in time to see Valentine coming in. The alarms whined in her ears, deafening her, and she frowned, struggling to concentrate through all the noise. She directed the threads of magic back to the window latch and focused on it.
"Hurry,” Valentine whispered.
She lost concentration when she heard footsteps through the noise of the alarm and sensed the approach of humans. The magic stuttered and withdrew a little before she managed to regain her focus. She stared hard at the window latch, willing the magic to go there and stifling the nerves inside of her. She knew that they had to succeed in making the guards believe that it had been a false alarm. If they didn't, then they would never get a chance to find the scroll. The guards would call the police. They didn't even have the option of killing them. If they did that, then the guards wouldn't be able to stop the alarm and she was sure that it was rigged to contact the police if it went off for any extended period of time.
This had to work.
The moment the latch clicked into place, Valentine grabbed her around the waist and hauled her in
to a dark room. She stilled her breathing and listened hard for a sign of the guards over the sound of the alarm. Her focus kept slipping. Valentine had her pressed up against the wall, his body hard against hers and his fingers tightly grasping her ribs. She could feel his thumbs beneath her breasts. She bit her lip and slipped into vampire guise, using her heightened senses to see him in the darkness. He was looking at her.
Her stomach tightened and fire filled her veins.
She raised her hand up and traced her thumb along his lower lip, teasing him with it, before running it down his neck and eventually to his chest. She stroked her fingers down it, feeling his tensed muscles beneath his shirt, and kept her eyes fixed on his. He was in vampire guise just like she was. She could see his sharp canines when his lips parted and the sight of them made her tremble inside.
Bringing her hand back up, she hooked it around the back of his neck and slowly lured his mouth down to hers. He was close enough for her to feel his cool breath in her mouth when voices echoed along the hall.
His fingers tightened against her ribs.
She turned her head to one side, listening to the distant conversation.
This had to work.
She started a little when Valentine raised her goggles up and took the hint. Placing them over her eyes, she remained in her demonic form and looked out into the hall, keeping far enough back that the men wouldn't notice her.
There were two of them. One was short and thin, while the other was broad but not much taller than his colleague. She couldn't see their faces. Their scent and voices told her they were men.
The short one removed a flashlight from his belt and clicked it on.
She instinctively flinched away and went to slip out of her vampire guise but then realised that with the goggles on she didn't have to. The tinted glass in them was protecting her eyes, meaning she could remain in her demonic visage and keep her senses as sharp as possible. Is this why Valentine had made her wear them, so she could keep herself in hunt mode and could use her heightened senses during the break in?
She looked over her shoulder at him to see he was also wearing his goggles. Something about them only added to how good he looked. She didn't think it was possible that a pair of goggles could do that to someone, but they made him look mysterious and even deadlier than usual. There was another bonus to wearing the goggles. It meant that if they were caught on camera, their faces would be partially obscured. They were going to have to leave the country at some point and it would be easier to do that if they didn't have the police after them.
"What the bloody hell is going on up there?” A crackly voice sounded out.
Her attention returned to the guards. The broad one took a walkie-talkie out of his belt and pressed the button while bringing it up to his mouth.
"Not a lot,” he said and peered up at the window his colleague was shining the light at. “Probably just a cat jumping across the glass or something. It looks secure."
He released the button and leaned across to his friend. “Sodding waste of time this is. No bugger could get through them windows without leaving a trace. You couldn't lock'em again."
His friend nodded. “Why doesn't the fat bastard come down here and check them himself? Sending us all the ways down here."
She ducked back behind the wall when the man turned, bringing his flashlight around at the same time. She leaned her back into Valentine and felt his fingers holding her arms.
She almost breathed a sigh of relief when the alarm went quiet. Her ears rang with it for a few seconds, marring her hearing and making it hard for her to listen for any sign of the men moving.
"Might as well do the rounds while were here,” the broad one said and she waited until their footsteps drifted into the distance before peering out into the corridor.
They were nowhere to be seen. She looked back at Valentine who was pulling his goggles off. He pushed them up so they were sitting across his forehead. It reminded her of their night at the masquerade in St. Petersburg. He'd pushed his mask up in a similar fashion.
She kept her goggles in place.
"Which way?” she said, looking along the length of the dark corridor in both directions. It was lined with paintings and vases balanced precariously on pedestals. A velvet rope arced along it, dictating the barrier that no one should cross.
"We need a map,” he said and slipped his goggles back on. He led her in the opposite direction to the one the men had gone in. “Where did Hyperion say it was located in the building?"
"He didn't. He just told me it was labelled as a cuneiform text of unknown origin and had no date.” She frowned and realised that she should have asked Hyperion for more information about it, or at least a general idea of which section of the museum it was in.
"It's old. Being cuneiform, they have probably placed it in with other scriptures and texts of Sumerian origin. That area will most likely be near anything to do with Ancient Egypt.” He stopped in front of a map and ran his fingers across the diagram. Her eyes followed them, trying to spot what he was looking for. “Here."
She frowned at the place where his finger had stopped. It was the Egyptian exhibit. Next to it was a series of rooms along a corridor that were labelled Ancient Civilisations.
"Not very specific,” she said and looked around them to see where they were so she could figure out which direction they had to head in.
"This way,” he said while taking hold of her hand.
Chapter 21
Prophecy followed Valentine along the corridor, not questioning whether he knew where he was going, and kept her senses sharp so she could easily detect any of the guards before they ran into them. The whole place was silent except for the sound of their boots on the hard floor. Maybe it would have been a good idea to do this barefoot.
Her eyes roamed the walls, looking at all the Greek artefacts and the little statues. She never could understand the ancients’ fascination with making models of naked people. She glanced at Valentine and bit her lip when she remembered waking up on top of him today. He did have a beautiful body. She hadn't even really noticed the scars that had been left behind after she'd healed him. All she'd seen were the defined curves, the muscles that shifted beneath his pale skin, telling her how powerful he was. If she had an artistic bone in her body, she'd probably want to make a statue of him too.
He looked over his shoulder at her, as though he'd felt her watching him, and she gave him an awkward smile before looking back at the artefacts. When they turned down another corridor, she tensed. In the distance, she could sense movement and on the edge of her hearing were voices.
She tugged Valentine down another corridor and into a room.
The footsteps grew closer and the voices got clearer. She listened to the man and the woman talking as they passed them by, not noticing her and Valentine where they were hidden in the shadows.
"That's four,” she said.
Valentine nodded. “There will be at least five or six security patrols. That means we have a dozen guards to deal with when the alarms go off."
"What do you mean when?” She gave him a confused look.
"A scroll as old as the prophecy is fragile and bound to be in a glass case. When we break into the case, an alarm will sound. Whether it's audible or not, the guards in the control room will know something is wrong and they will know where. We will have to fight if we are to get out of here."
She frowned and stared at his chest for a moment. She had known that there was a chance that they would have to kill the guards, but she hadn't realised that it was inevitable. She hoped that Venturi was ready when they made it out of the building. The police would be hot on their heels if they didn't make a swift escape.
"Are you all right?” Valentine whispered.
She nodded and managed a smile. “I just ... I don't know if I'll be able to stop myself from wanting to feed. I'm so hungry."
He rubbed her arm gently.
"We have to make this look as though humans atta
cked them.” He put his hand into his pocket and pulled the hunting lock knife out. “Kill them with it. It will give you ample cover so you can feed if you need to. Just resist biting them."
She took the knife from him and opened it. She pulled her left glove off, ran her finger along the blade to test its sharpness, and then closed the knife again. A spot of blood seeped from the small wound on her finger. Satisfied that the blade was sharp, she slipped the knife into her pocket and was about to put her glove back on when Valentine caught her wrist. She didn't stop him when he raised her hand and licked the cut on her finger, his lips wrapping around it and sucking it a little while he sealed the wound.
She wished he wouldn't do things like that. It made her want to forget the scroll and go somewhere a little more private with him, or maybe not even private. It was dark enough here and the thrill of being caught made her want him even more.
Pulling her finger from his mouth, she chastised him with a frown and saw the corners of his lips curve into his slight smile. He knew what he was doing. She grabbed hold of his shirt collar and dragged his mouth down to hers, moulding her lips against his in a brief but passionate kiss.
Releasing him, she smoothed her appearance, placing her glove back on, and smiled inside when he licked his lips and she realised he was the hungry one now.
She walked out of the room and back to the corridor they had been walking along before she'd heard the guards.
Valentine banged the back of his head against the wall behind him and told himself to get a grip. Now wasn't the time to be thinking the things that were running around his mind, even if they were the same thoughts she was having judging by the way she'd kissed him. He had to remain focused so they would make it safely out of here.
