by Juliet Lyons
After arranging the coverlet into a cocoon around her sleeping body, I slide out of bed and pull on my boxers, closing the bedroom door gently behind me as I slip into the lounge.
Davies is sitting up fast asleep on the sofa, a pair of headphones over his ears and his laptop open in front of him. I remove the headphones and prod his shoulder.
His eyes flicker open. “Oh, it’s you,” he says, stretching into a yawn. “What time is it?”
“About half past twelve.”
Davies cuts me a disapproving gaze. “Have you been going all that time? What are you? A Duracell bunny?”
I laugh, heading for the kitchen where I flick the kettle on. “Coffee?”
He folds his laptop closed with a snap. “White with two.”
I lift two mugs from the cupboard, waiting for his next wisecrack.
“So, what are your intentions toward the young lady?” he asks, crossing the room, hands shoved into the pockets of his tracksuit bottoms.
“Weren’t you all for this a week ago?” I ask.
Davies looks sheepish, breaking eye contact. “That was before I got to know her—before I saw the way she looks at you.”
“How does she look at me?” I ask, on a knife’s edge of desperation.
“Like you’re her knight in shining Armani.”
I sigh. Even if that were true, after tonight she’ll see me as anything but.
“Seriously,” he continues. “When you mentioned the flowers for her mother, I thought she was going to swoon at your feet.”
I hold up a hand. “Enough.”
“Don’t pretend you’re not besotted either. Unless now you’ve slept with her…”
“Now I’ve slept with her what?” I snap.
“You’ve lost interest.”
I’m just about to set him straight when my phone begins buzzing on the kitchen counter. I hold up an index finger to Davies and accept the call. “Vincent Ferrer.”
For a short time, no one speaks. All I hear is a thud of techno music in the background. But then a familiar voice crackles down the line.
Ronin McDermott.
“I have the name for you,” he says. “I’m at the club.”
The line goes dead. Typical Ronin. He always had a penchant for the dramatic.
Davies frowns. “Who was that?”
“Ronin McDermott,” I say tersely. I fire off a text asking him to send the name, though deep down I know there’s no way I’ll get a response. “He wants me to visit him at the club. He says he knows who our killer is.”
Davies sways, looking as if someone’s hit him. “Fucking shit.”
We both lapse into silence, the kettle switch cutting through the tension like a gunshot.
“Could we send Burke?” Lee asks.
The thought of Linton Burke in Ronin’s vampire club brings a smile to both our faces. It’s like imagining a vicar in a lap-dancing bar. He would probably try to arrest people for indecent exposure.
“I wish,” I say grimly. I glance toward the bedrooms, picturing Mila asleep in my room. With Davies here, she’d be fine if I left her. She would probably never even know I had gone.
Unless I don’t come back. But that isn’t worth thinking about.
“I can get there and back within half an hour,” I tell Lee. “Will you do me a favor and sit outside my bedroom for me? Make sure Mila is okay? Sometimes she has nightmares.”
“She’ll get the shock of her life if she wakes up to find the likes of me hovering at the end of the bed. That’ll give her nightmares, all right.”
I shake my head, suppressing a chuckle. “No, I mean, she might wake up and come looking for me. If she does, tell her I have an errand to attend to and I’ll be back soon. I’ll double lock the window in my room before I leave.”
Lee makes a salute. “Guard the queen. Got it.”
“You’re a good friend, Lee.”
He quirks a brow. “Is this the part where we man hug?”
“Only if you want to.”
He shrugs awkwardly. “Nah, let’s save it for a special occasion.”
I flash him a smile. “Agreed.”
I slink into my bedroom as quiet as a cat. Mila has turned onto her side, a long, bare leg half out of the sheet. Though the last thing I want is to wake her, I lean over and press a kiss to her cheek, trailing fingers along the soft curve of jaw. “I’ll be right back,” I whisper, and because there is no one to hear me, I finish with, “my love.”
She snorts in response, her nose wrinkling. Even making piggy noises, she is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.
God, give me more time with her. Don’t take her from me yet.
After double locking the windows and throwing on my discarded suit from the party, I steal one last glance at Mila’s peaceful face before slipping from the room.
Davies is nursing a mug of steaming coffee in the kitchen. “I was thinking. What shall I do if you’re not back within the half hour?”
My stomach clenches. “Give it another half an hour. If I’m not back, send a squad car to the club.”
Davies nods tightly. “Got it.”
I pluck my keys from the kitchen island. “Be back soon.”
The street outside the apartment is quiet, though not deserted. A group of drunk men stagger past, oblivious to me waiting in the shadows. They’re having a loud conversation about a girl in a club as they sway about like bowling pins. In the background, the distant scream of an ambulance cuts into the balmy night air, fading as tall buildings smother its high-pitched whine.
When the lads have disappeared from view, I leave the shadows and become a blur of speed. Though vampires cannot fly, we can move fast, leap higher than any building. Sometimes it’s a little like having wings.
The city lights merge into streaks of yellow and orange, the clamor of the street roaring in my ears like white noise. Before long I’m in Soho, the pavements still bustling with clubbers and tourists, the cloying aroma of restaurant kitchens—garlic, ginger, and cinnamon—spilling from open back doors.
The club on Broadwick Street is alive tonight, the thump of music pounding through the pavement at my feet. I push the shiny black door, not expecting it to give, but to my surprise it does, swinging inward beneath my palm. On the other side is a burly doorman, a vampire with a jet-black crew cut and a neck as wide as his head.
“Vincent Ferrer.” His voice is surprisingly refined. “Mr. McDermott is in his office. Go straight through.”
I drop him a nod and follow the gloomy corridor to the inner door. There is a tiny hatch open to one side of it, and a bored-looking human woman with white-blond hair sits on the other side, scrolling through her phone. Behind her are racks of coats. She sits up straighter when she sees me.
“Is this a coat check?” I ask.
“No, it’s an ice cream parlor. What flavor would you like?” Her voice drips with flirtatious sarcasm.
I frown, baffled. A coat check seems so normal. Maybe it’s not just the decor that’s changed around here. “There never used to be one,” I explain.
She raises a penciled brow, her gaze sliding over me. “I get off at two, if you’re around.”
I jolt in surprise, amazed at how it isn’t obvious I’m utterly smitten with someone else. “I have a girlfriend,” I say, a warm flutter unfurling in my chest as the word leaves my lips. “I’m crazy about her.”
The girl rolls her eyes, muttering, “Whatever,” under her breath. Her gaze flickers back to the screen of her phone.
I tug open the door to the club, but before the thump of the music blots out all other thoughts, I realize Cat was right. I’m falling in love. I’m probably already there.
I look down into the dark pit of the room, strobe lights slicing the dance floor like white blades, and realize the coat check has lull
ed me into a false sense of security. A bloody orgy is unfolding before my eyes—a modern day William Hogarth drawing, only with blood instead of gin.
Every corner is crammed with writhing bodies, mouths clamped to various body parts as rivulets of crimson spill from red-stained fangs. Clothes, scarlet-splattered and torn, hang from limp bodies like rags. Other individuals are less reserved—a man lies sprawled across a table, three female vampires latched on to him, suckling like newborn lambs, blood smeared across his body like war paint.
Despite the heavy thump of the music, the pulse of beating hearts is deafening, the stale air thrumming with the scent of sweat and blood. There must be close to two hundred people crammed into the room and the only ones not participating in the frenzy are the staff.
Several stacked vampires, just like the one out in the hallway, patrol the floor, checking a pulse here, pulling a lusty vamp from a vital artery there. I wonder, in a detached way, what the body count will be by the end of the night.
Fighting the urge to flee, I force myself down the steps and into the fray. It goes against every fiber of my being not to wrench every human I see from the grips of the vampires attached to them. I torture myself with the notion that this could easily have been Mila’s fate if Lopez had brought her here the night he tried to kill her.
Clenching my hands into fists, I push through the heaving bodies toward the light of the bar. A man and a woman are going at it on a stool. The woman’s head tips back onto the stainless-steel countertop, dark-red droplets falling in a slow drip from the column of her neck. The barman—not the same as the one from the other day, but a tattooed youth with a lip ring—motions at the door next to the bar. I nod gratefully, following his pointed finger through the heavy door into a tiled hallway.
The corridor is empty, but I remember Ronin’s office is last on the left. After clearing my throat and pushing the hair from my face, I rap on the purple-painted door. No response. Thinking he hasn’t heard, I knock again. No answer. Remembering the doorman said to go straight in, I twist the handle and open the door wide.
At first all I see is his back, a well-cut suit stretched tight across his broad shoulders, as he stands before his desk. But then my brain clocks a pair of female legs parted around his hips and registers the moaning, writhing person spread over his desk.
I divert my eyes, face burning, and turn to face the door. “I’ll come back.”
The moaning stops. I hear Ronin curse under his breath and the sound of a zipper being pulled. “Vincent, stay. These ladies were just leaving.”
Ladies. Plural.
“But we’re not done yet,” a woman’s voice exclaims.
I hear a smack, like a palm hitting flesh. “Don’t worry. I’ll call you back when I’m finished,” he says, his Scottish accent raspy.
“Your friend is handsome,” the voice continues. “Does he want to join us?”
I briefly close my eyes. Jesus. Why the hell couldn’t he have sent a text?
“Vincent?” Ronin asks, voice brimming with mirth. “He doesn’t have a fun bone in his body.”
I tense as not one but two partially dressed women, brunettes with slanting, dark eyes, trot out of the room, gazing over their shoulders into my face and pouting.
Once they cross the threshold, I slam the door after them, spinning to face my maker.
“They said they were sisters,” Ronin mutters, staring at the door. “But they didn’t taste related.”
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I say, “The name, Ronin. I’m here for the name.”
He turns a cold, blue glare on me, sending a chill zipping up my spine. “I’m sorry you had to see that, Mr. Monk-in-Training. Be sure to say some Hail Marys for me later, won’t you?”
Shoving his hands deep into his pockets, he circles his desk and sinks into his leather swivel chair. “Take a seat,” he says, gesturing to the space where he was pleasuring the two women only moments before.
Ignoring his smirk, I pull over a chair from the other side of the room to sit opposite him, wondering how long he plans to drag this out.
He runs a hand through his hair, russet in the low light of the room. “Cat came to see me,” he says. “I thank you for that.”
At the mention of her name, his eyes lose some of their iciness, the hard lines of his face softening. “She barely uttered two words to me the whole twenty minutes she was here. She sat where you’re sitting now and stared at her watch. Then she got up and left. When I called her on it, she said the deal was that she visited me at the club. It said nothing about actually talking to me.” He shakes his head, his expression a mixture of amusement and pride. “She’s tenacious, that one.”
“Which I’m guessing is the appeal,” I say dryly.
His blue eyes narrow as he tilts his head to one side. “What do you call that thing women do with their hair?” He lifts an index finger, swirling it around his crown. “When they knot it on top of their head?”
I smile, thinking of Mila and the hundreds of hair bands I keep finding all over the apartment. “A bun or a chignon, I think.”
Ronin’s eyes light up. “A bun, that’s it. She was wearing her hair in a bun and she had this soy sauce stain on her blouse.” He brushes a finger over the shiny material of his gray shirt. “She’s a bit of a mess, actually.”
“The best ones usually are.”
“Aye,” he says dreamily. “They are.”
A silence falls. I stare at London’s vampire overlord, trying to figure out the depth of his feelings for Catherine Adair and wondering if he’s ever going to get around to giving me the name I came for.
“So, the name,” he says finally, jaw clenched tight.
“The name,” I concur.
“He comes to us courtesy of the lovely Esme, New York’s overlord. I don’t have all of the details—you know how contrary Esme can be—but she did give me his name: David Moreau. She met him in the Basque Country, northern Spain, in the early nineteenth century.”
My heart freezes to ice in my chest, a cold drip of fear trickling down my back. “Moreau?”
“David Moreau,” he repeats.
It’s a coincidence, my rational mind tells me. Moreau is a common name in that part of the world. Yet in some quiet corner of my brain, alarm bells begin to ring.
Ronin leans across the table. “You know the name?”
“Adrienne’s surname was Moreau.”
“The woman you loved back in the revolution?”
I nod, a hollow feeling settling in my stomach. “But it can’t mean anything.”
Ronin sits back, eyes narrowed. “Could it be a relation of hers?”
I swallow, a lump sticking in my throat. “She came from a large family. I can’t recall all of their names.” I get to my feet, the chair tipping backward and crashing to the floor in my haste. “I have to go.”
Ronin holds up a hand. “Vincent?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to find out where he’s staying. I’ll have someone call you with the details.”
“Why would you help me?” I ask, stunned.
He shrugs, a devious smile quirking his lips. “Maybe when Cat hears of my chivalry, she’ll realize what she’s missing.”
The intimate scene I interrupted when I arrived flashes into my mind. I really can’t see how Cat would miss any of that in her life. She has never struck me as the ménage à trois type.
“How do I know I can trust you?” I ask, eyes narrowed.
He shrugs. “You don’t. But what choice do you have?”
Good point. “Thank you, Ronin.”
He dismisses me with a flick of the hand. “You’d better be getting back to that woman I can smell all over you,” he says. “I hope you left her protected.”
“I did, but you’re right. I have to go.” I drop him a nod before leaving th
e room. Outside the corridor is empty, the two women nowhere to be seen. I emerge back into the dark carnage of the club, cutting through the writhing bodies as swiftly as I can before taking the stairs in a single bound. I’m so desperate to get back to Mila, I don’t give a moment’s pause to bid farewell to the coat girl or the doorman.
Once outside, I dart into a shadowy side street, away from the cars and late-night revelers, and take flight, the name Moreau turning over and over in my mind as I speed back to Farringdon. Is it merely an unlucky coincidence the killer has the same surname as my first love, or is there a more sinister meaning at play? All these weeks, working day and night on the case, is there a chance I’ve missed the obvious?
Outside the door of my apartment, the sound of Mila’s soft breathing in the bedroom is music to my ears. I exhale in relief, deciding that there’s no way I should tell her about the significance of the name or even that Ronin has agreed to help—it would only worry her. Besides, after tonight, seeing my life essence, relations between us will be different. A wave of sadness rolls over me. A couple of months ago, I’d never heard of Mila Hart. Now, the thought of going on without her is unbearable. A year from now, a hundred years, two—how will I be able to live in a world where I don’t wake up to her every morning? Or even more unbearably, one where she no longer exists?
I check my watch as I push open the front door. Only twenty-five minutes have passed since I left. True to his word, I find Lee propped up against the wall opposite my room, his laptop on his legs.
“Did you get it?” he asks me.
I nod, motioning him through to the lounge, where I tell him the name and about the connection. “I’m not going to tell Mila about the link,” I say, staring through the window at the twinkling city lights.
“Well, that’s up to you,” Lee says. “Though I’m told women appreciate honesty. Shall I call Scotland Yard with the name or will you?”
“Pass it to Burke, though he won’t see it until morning.”
I bid him good night and head back to my room. Mila is much as I left her, sprawled out asleep, golden and pure in the glow from the bedside lamp. I shed my clothes and put my watch on the chest of drawers before crawling under the sheets, wrapping my arms around her warm body. Her sweet scent, like roses after rain, draws me in. She stirs as I press a kiss into her neck.
