Cloak of Deceit: An Alex Moore Novel

by Gwen Mitchell

  Not anymore.

  My fangs sank into taut muscle and burst through the flesh barrier to reach the free-flowing life force below, and I drank ecstasy. Heady, spice-laden blood flowered in my mouth, driving me beyond satiation and straight down the Tomahawk to power.

  His blood tasted heavy, filling. Swallowing it put me in the driver’s seat.

  He moaned into my hair, grinding his hips into mine and draping his arms over my shoulders, begging with his body for more.

  I eased off and smiled, licking my lips and swirling the taste of him in my mouth. My other hand kept his neck pressed to the wall.

  Cody’s body went rigid.

  “Who are you?” I rasped, my voice still thick with the rush of his blood.

  The imposter started to shake his head. I squeezed my fingers together until I knew just a little bit more pressure would collapse his trachea. All my pre-med training was still good for something. “I know you’re lying. Just show yourself.”

  He only strained against me for a few heartbeats, then his exertion demanded the blood I’d stolen, and he sank back. His hands clawed weakly at my forearm and he shot me a hateful glare. I loosened my grip, letting him suck in one precious breath.

  “All right, all right.” He coughed. His breath raked in and out roughly, his neck straining against my fingers. “All right.”

  I gave him a half-inch more.

  The image of Cody melted away, like a watercolor painting in rain. It de-materialized, and what was left behind seemed to mold itself in front of me, a wax statue melting in reverse.

  It was a he. And he was a fox — a sable-haired, green-eyed fox of a man, with polished ivory skin and sharp-edged features. His lips were the only smooth curve, bow-shaped and pillowy, swollen from kissing. I blinked a few times to regain my composure.

  “What are you?” I asked, not managing to sound as threatening as before. That’s what they mean by disarmingly handsome — if that was the real him.

  “Esmond,” he said. His voice had changed too. It was smooth and cultured, with faint traces of an Irish lilt.

  I narrowed my eyes. “I said what, not who.”

  He glared at me. “Let me go and I’ll tell you.”

  I cocked my head as I considered it. Whatever he was, he was human, and I was stronger and faster. Clearly, I had the upper hand. If I turned out to be wrong on that count, there was always the damsel in distress act and a roomful of working-class beefcake right around the corner. I let him go and backed off a step.

  Esmond straightened to a height at least three inches taller than Cody. Slender, but not lanky. The force of his personality alone impressed, now that his layer of trickery had worn away. He was the sort of man you do not miss, even in a room full of them.

  I tucked my hair behind my ear and licked the last remnants of blood from my lips, which was a mistake. The blood was still settling over me, seeping into my thirsty muscles. Some of them were hotter than others, and I had to look away from Esmond for a moment. A blush burned in my cheeks.

  Hunting instincts: double-edged sword.

  Esmond cleared his throat, rubbing it with his hand.

  “Well?”

  “I am Grigori, just like you. I’m a Mirage Agent.” As soon as he said it, the rest of the pub pixilated and fell away like Disney fairy dust. The noisy bar hushed to a faint din and disappeared. The walls around us morphed to cold aluminum siding. My breath created a cloud of mist in front of me as the steel-grey sky resolved overhead.

  “What the hell is this?” I looked around, my voice rising with panic.

  “I’m releasing my hold on your mind,” Esmond explained. “I’ve been drawing you in for the last several blocks.”

  A shiver racked up my spine as the cold of my body reached me. A piece of wet velvet slithered over my brain. A loud pop echoed in my eardrums. I clenched my jaw.

  “You’ve been controlling my mind?” My hands shook with the effort not to pummel him as I felt my psychic powers returning. They’d been missing since before I entered the imagined pub, and as focused as I was on my Undead senses and internal turmoil, I hadn’t even noticed.

  “More like misleading. You could have blocked me, if I’d let you remember you had the power to do so.”

  “But you did read my thoughts?” I ground out.

  He shook his head. “Only glimpses, impressions, feelings. I promise.”

  I gaped at the sly expression on Esmond’s face and realized my control, too, had been an illusion.

  “I’m not going to hurt you Alex,” he said. “If I wanted to, I could have.”

  I stuck out my chin and clenched my fist, ready to lash out at him, or to run.

  Esmond held up a hand to stop me. “Wait. At least listen to what I have to say? Please?”

  I squinted at him. Since when did bad guys say please? Just because Julian wanted to keep me away from his enemies, didn’t mean that was in my best interest. “How do I even know this is the real you?”

  “How do you know anything is real?” His bow-shaped lips stretched into a sensual smile. “You trust your senses. I was blocking them before. Use them now, Alex, your true senses.”

  I did as he asked. It was so obvious now that something had been missing the past few minutes. Yet I had walked right into this mind-bending trap. Barely an hour on my own and I could have died once already. Game Over. No “re-spawn.” What the hell did I think I was doing? Esmond’s aura was a solid steely-blue, lined in silver. The shape he wore was the real him — still foxy.

  Why do all the good-looking ones have to be complete jerks?

  “What do you want?” I kept my face stern, even if what I felt was more along the lines of crap on toast.

  The edges of his lips curled even more. “We want you.”

  My stomach tightened. “Haven’t you had enough? I know you didn’t fake your blood.”

  I could still taste it — still feel it spilling over my tongue, pulsing with power. Because he was a psychic? Maybe that’s what Julian had meant when he talked about wanting me. I ground my teeth together and forced the thought away.

  “Ah…no.” Esmond reached up to touch the bite mark on his neck. He looked down at me with sharp green eyes and swallowed thickly. “That was unintentional. I hadn’t anticipated being so susceptible to your wiles.”

  “I can’t be the first Undead who’s tried that one.”

  “Actually, you are. We don’t usually play nice, and I never let them get so close.”

  “You could have stopped me,” I pointed out.

  Should have, because now you’re mine. Hadn’t he known that?

  “I didn’t want to.” He lifted his eyebrows, as if surprised at his own answer. “I couldn’t break the ruse, and I’m under strict orders to deliver you unharmed.”

  Esmond frowned. I don’t think he meant to be so forthcoming with the intel.

  Whether he had meant to let me bite him or not, our blood bond gave me a slight edge, and I needed all the advantages I could get. I’d learned how to inflict the skull tingling feeling on Carl by focusing my desires on him. Intense eye contact helped. It mesmerized a donor, like charming a Cobra. Psychic or not, Esmond was still human, and he responded in kind. He looked back at me with the same openness I’d seen from Carl. Knowing that, I felt a lot safer. When I released him from the pull of my intangible leash, I was the one with the coy smile.

  He blinked twice before he came out of his momentary stupor, then gave me a sour look. No matter what his orders were, I took comfort in the fact that Esmond couldn’t force me to do anything. My Undead gifts could keep me safe, as long as we were alone. I was stronger, faster, and I could use our bond to bend him to my will. The more I thought about it, he was less like a captor and more like a valuable tool. I still had some cards up my sleeve. But, only as long as we were alone. “Where are you supposed to deliver me to?”

  “The Grigoric Council,” he said. “It’s time you came home, Alex.”

  “Why would
I want to go there?” Home again? What were they talking about? Like they’d really welcome me into the fold, no harm no foul? “Do you know what happened to the last agents that came after me?”

  Esmond nodded. “The Undead Knight you’ve been clinging to killed them.”

  I winced at the “clinging” part — mostly because it was so dead-on.

  “He only killed one. I killed the other.” I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to gauge his reaction.

  He didn’t have one. “That is…unfortunate.”

  I quelled the wave of regret and self-loathing that rose up in me at the thought of Sandra’s surprised face the second before she died. Instead, I turned it into a stony expression, hardened by the hurts that had followed since. I had several to choose from. “It’s unfortunate for anyone who crosses me.”

  “I get your meaning.” Esmond licked his lips. “As I said, I’m not going to hurt you. The Grigori only wishes to speak with you. I’m sure you must have questions, questions the Cloak can’t answer for you.”

  He had me there. Even Monique’s library hadn’t answered my questions. The Grigori apparently kept a very tight lid on their history and culture. I silently mulled it over.

  “We can go somewhere and discuss things while you consider it. I assure you no harm will come from me. Look at me, Alex — you can tell I’m not lying.”

  “I can’t tell a damn thing.” I shook my head. “But I’m willing to risk it, because I’m freezing.” I wrapped my arms more snuggly around myself and shivered.

  “Good enough for me.” He gave me a rakish smile and turned on his heel. “My car’s a few blocks from here.”

  I stole a glance at Esmond every time we crossed through a stab of darkness in the checkerboard shadows of the streetlights. As we walked up the drenched sidewalk towards his car, his features were severe, but unreadable. He had flawless shielding. I couldn’t get a read on him unless he let me, which made me a little twitchy. With his intentions out on the table, he’d dropped his friendly façade. Foxy was all business, and he exuded class from every line of his custom-tailored silk suit. He walked with confident purpose. He reminded me of the intellectual stiffs my mother was always trying to set me up with. Except way hotter.

  “Do you always think so loud?” Esmond peered at me from under one curved eyebrow.

  I kept a straight face and my eyes forward as I answered. “I don’t know how not to.” Apparently it wasn’t just Carl who could read me. Terrific.

  “I suppose you wouldn’t,” he said. “I can show you a few things, if you’d like.”

  “I’d like for you to tell me a few things.”

  “Ask.” He glanced down at his feet as we passed under the next light.

  “Where are you going to take me?”

  “Anywhere you want.” He shoved his hands into his coat pockets, his brow furrowing, as if he hadn’t intended the double-entendre.

  I fought not to smile. If I could base anything off my experience with Carl, our fresh blood bond would have both of us feeling like a couple of crushing teenagers for a while. It was distracting, but at least I was used to it. Esmond wasn’t. I cleared my throat. “Where is the Grigoric Council?”

  “Based in San Francisco.”

  My throat froze stiff. San Francisco? The Grigori’s super-secret clubhouse was less than two hours from home, from Mom. I kept my face and mind empty, and didn’t answer him. We kept walking. I watched Esmond carefully and wondered if I could trust anything he told me. He’d already been inside my head. He already knew more about me than I was comfortable with. He already knew that I had no one. It could all be a trick to get me where they wanted me. But where else was I supposed to go?

  I’d tried to find my way with the Undead and ended up betrayed and alone. The Cloak wanted to ransom or otherwise kill me. Trying to hold the Grigori back had cost me more than I’d gained. I kept hurting people I cared about. What if Esmond’s superiors could make all of it stop? Julian had lied about what he intended to do with me. He could have been wrong about the Grigori. His opinion was biased by his history with them, which I knew nothing about. Maybe I’d chosen the wrong side, based off my attraction to him.

  Gee, that would be a surprise.

  So far, the Grigori hadn’t actually tried to kill me. The voices inside my head were eager and overwhelming, but were they really malicious? Did they want to hurt me, or just get me away from the Undead? They were at war, after all.

  “Will this go away?” Esmond asked, rubbing the bite on his neck again.

  “You really don’t know the answer to that question? Whatever happened to ‘know thine enemy’?”

  He grimaced.

  “The mark will heal.”

  “And the feeling?”

  I considered lying, but I felt a twinge of sympathy for him. He seemed very uncomfortable with his vulnerability. “It will lessen with distance and time, but it never goes away entirely. Or so I’ve been told.”

  I turned the next corner half a step ahead of Esmond, and ran into a wall of flesh. A huge, meaty fist swung down from above.

  I dodged — too slow. The blow landed soundly on my temple, and I collapsed into a heap at the feet of my gargantuan attacker.

  I’ve seen those boots before, I thought idly. I rolled to my back, and he stepped towards me. Fear zinged through my head like a lightning bolt. I threw my hands out between us.

  Derek went flying over a beat-up Pinto and landed in the street with a dull thud.

  Two sets of hands grabbed my arms from either side and lifted me. Esmond was on the ground, apparently knocked out, blood splattered across his face. I twisted between the two uniformed men and found my super-human strength gave me no advantage. They were Undead too.

  One of them wrenched my arm back, and I cried out, too distracted by the pain to focus enough to throw him off. The other plunged a four-inch needle into my neck as I struggled.

  My muscles went slack.

  Undead. Derek. The…what had Julian called it?

  Cabal, I thought, but the word dissolved into blackness.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My throat felt like I’d swallowed a gallon of pine needles. Or maybe it was just that the cold, polished floor underneath me smelled like industrial pine cleaner. My face stuck to it as I got my hands underneath me. My palms pressed flat, I tried to push myself up, but I couldn’t. My muscles were more than strong enough to lift me, but my shoulders and head knocked into something hard and solid.

  My vision was saturated with pitch dark, even with my better than human sight, which I had a feeling would be blurry anyway. Was I under a table? I tried again, bumped it with a curse and then tried to push it up off of me. I collapsed back to the floor a few seconds later, my muscles burning, my stomach knotted up. I kicked up my feet.

  Thump. Thump.

  With a panicked whimper, splayed on my chest, I reached out to both sides with my arms and felt up above me — smooth, flat, solid. I didn’t need air, but my chest inflated and deflated at a breakneck pace, pressing me into the — wall? — above me with each breath. I tried to twist my body, to turn over on my back, but my hips were too wide. I had just enough room to turn my head from side to side, and stare into the darkness in either direction. Tears built in my eyes, but I held my breath and started to shimmy-slide sideways. One arm’s length away, I hit a wall. I scooted down to the corner, towards my feet until I felt another edge, then to the other side. I found the top, and cursed again.

  I was trapped in a room with no doors and no light, about six-feet square, and eight inches high.

  “Help!” I screamed.

  Knock. Knock. Thump. Thump.

  “Let me out of here!” Hot tears streamed down my face and gurgled in my throat.

  And then I threw a total fit.

  “Get me the hell out of here now!” I screeched, again and again. “Somebody!”

  I kicked and screamed and clawed until my fists and heels and elbows were raw.

 
I did the circuit of my cage again and again, trying to find something different. I felt along the edge of the ceiling for a crack, a gap, anything. I tried imagining the ceiling lifting away from me, visualized it, tried to focus all my psychic powers on it, but they were such a wild card. Sometimes they worked on their own. I didn’t have to think, just react. But otherwise, I needed to focus, and stuck in such a claustrophobic space, I just…couldn’t.

  The slab on top of me was too large. I was too weak. Too afraid. Totally screwed.

  Derek put me here to die.

  How long had it been already? My stomach burned like I had swallowed battery acid, and my head ached. I had never been starved of blood before. How long would it take?

  As the first wave of panic receded, I lay there crying, and at long last, thinking. Mostly I thought about how stupid I was. Julian might have traded me into slavery to get Andreas out of prison, he might have let me fall for him in order to earn my trust, but he never would have left me like this. He never would have killed me. He certainly wouldn’t have been so cruel. Whoever my enemies were, Julian wasn’t one of them. He had wanted to keep me safe, had risked a lot to do so.

  But I had been in a real hurry to get away from him, reacting to my stung feelings with raw energy, not thinking things through. “You’re so stupid, Alex.”

  No, not stupid…

  She’s just a little mixed up, my mother’s voice echoed in my head.

  It’s funny how, when facing death, even for the umpteenth time, life is suddenly reflected with such clarity. The edges of your memories glow with an otherworldly light, the bigger picture illuminated. I could see my mother’s face, perfectly etched in time as she said, “She’s just a little mixed up.”

  It was her explanation for everything unexpected, unprecedented, or unauthorized I ever did. When I wanted to be a fighter pilot at nine, instead of a fairy princess — she’s just a little mixed up. When I quit piano to play soccer. When I’d tried to drop pre-med to study philosophy — just a little mixed up. I had always heard it, “just a little mix up.” As in, “This isn’t what my daughter was supposed to be. This isn’t what I ordered. There was a mix up. A miscalculation.”