by Michele Hauf
Anxiously, he grabbed hold of the clerk behind the desk and hauled the poor man onto the shiny oak surface. Peering into that man’s worried face, he said, “Get her back to her hotel. Now. Safely.”
As the man emphatically gestured for Madison to follow him, another presence filled the room—a green velvet haze that looked for all the world like a patch of lush, verdant grass with the promise of a snake hiding in it.
“No need to scare the pants off the poor devil,” Simon Monteforte said in a voice rivaling the night’s chill as he fastidiously wiped a drop of crimson liquid from his mouth. “I will see to Miss Chase, personally.”
“The hell you will,” St. John replied.
Chapter 14
“Run!”
The silent command beat at Madison’s ears, compelling her to obey. She had never been so frightened.
Looking back and forth from Christopher St. John to the gaunt, sober-featured face of the man she had earlier brushed past in the doorway of Space, she immediately picked up on the strain in the room.
Without waiting for what might happen next, knowing only that she had to get away from that ghastly hotel and the scary apparition in green, Madison turned and sprinted through the open doorway.
No one stopped her.
She ran as if her life depended on it, pretty sure that it did. The quickly covered-up grimace of distaste that St. John hadn’t been able to hide from her as he faced the gray-haired man provided the impetus for a fast getaway. Instead of answers to the questions she’d started out with, new craziness had piled up.
That man in the hotel had blood on his chin.
At the end of the short block, where a sharp turn led to her hotel, she realized she was no longer alone. Static pulled her fine hairs to attention. Goose bumps arrived in droves.
Her legs faltered, feeling unnaturally heavy and weak. Without hearing anyone coming, she knew someone was there. The hotel clerk? Another gang of creeps bent on harassing tourists near the long line of popular hotels?
The word run replayed over and over like an echo in her overworked mind, in St. John’s voice, forcing her to put one foot in front of the other. The entrance to her hotel was only a few yards away, but she ran as if the sidewalk were composed of ankle-deep mud, each step labored and hard-won. Not enough air got into her lungs to make breathing count.
Tired of this crap, disgusted with weakness, she made herself move, and skidded on a damp section of concrete. She broke her fall by bashing the building’s wall with her right shoulder, and she cried out. A hand covered her mouth. An arm wrapped around her waist.
Her fear multiplied, though she hadn’t lost her wits this time. Using her teeth to try to free herself, Madison bit the palm of the hand covering her mouth, hard, hoping to do damage.
The acrid taste of blood, hot, thick, made her gag, but it also gave her more anxious energy. She kicked out behind her with nearly useless legs, and felt one kick connect.
Take that, prick!
Whoever held on to her didn’t seem to notice the kind of injury a well-placed high heel could inflict. Her attacker made no sound and no other move, other than to try to suppress her maniacal energy with one strong arm around her and the hand that kept her from shouting.
Madison refused to give up. Though each struggle required more effort than the one before, she gave it all she had. But it had been a very long day, and she was running out of steam.
An image of four college girls filled her mind, each of them caught in an iron grip on a dark street far from their home. Had their lives ended like this, in fear and useless struggle? She’d be damned if she’d become one of them.
With one last concentrated effort, she again bit the hand covering her mouth. As the blood from that bite ran down her chin, the last remnants of her energy finally failed. She could no longer lift an arm or a foot, open her mouth or fight back.
“Stop fighting, mad one,” a whispered voice commanded.
Flailing, Madison felt herself slip, felt the darkness of her surroundings close in...until she became one with the night.
* * *
“Ah, my dear St. John,” Simon Monteforte said in a voice as dark as the paneled walls. “You’d prefer she takes to the streets alone, without my assistance?”
“Out there, she stands a chance,” St. John replied, wanting to follow Madison, and having to carefully hide those feelings.
“You think so?” Monteforte remarked.
St. John didn’t bother to nod. He wasn’t sure how he could maintain his camouflage with any of the Ancients if he were to test Simon Monteforte’s fealty here, among so many of them.
The sound of Madison’s heels on the sidewalk had grown faint. He found it strange that nothing else seemed to matter to him at that moment, except getting to her.
“Hurting her would make a mess of things,” he said to Monteforte. “There’s no reason to do so.”
“Yet you brought her here, a place off-limits to most mortals.”
“For information about those girls.”
“Ah, yes. The missing girls,” Monteforte said.
“We can’t afford to have another one go missing, Simon. All eyes are on this city already. Haven’t you noticed?”
“The other Americans may turn up yet, and then they can all go home and leave us to our own...pleasures,” Monteforte said.
“Madison Chase must be with them when they go.”
“I suppose you’ll see to that, in spite of your earlier pledge?”
“My allegiance lies with maintaining our society and its secrets. Madison might be a nuisance, but is no threat. Getting rid of her won’t help any cause.”
“Your tune has changed, I see. I find that most interesting, St. John.”
“My tune hasn’t wavered since I first arrived in London,” St. John corrected. “When our goal was to exist alongside the mortals in peace.”
“In that, I believe we have fared well.”
“Until now, when too many missing people are stirring up public sentiment against those in charge of this city.”
St. John took his time with the final question. “Where are those girls now, Simon?”
Monteforte grinned, showing crimson-stained fangs. “You think I know?”
“I believe you might.”
“You give me far too much credit, St. John.”
“Or else not nearly enough.”
In that moment, as the comment left his lips, St. John realized fully that Simon Monteforte was the one he sought. The reek of the immortal’s indiscretions sat in this place like another layer of haze. Without the crowd and scent of hundreds of mortals in the club to mask it, Monteforte’s foulness was readily apparent.
St. John stared at the Ancient who had to have known his secret identity for some time. Monteforte had unleashed the hellhounds. Did Monteforte imagine those hounds could take a Blood Knight down?
Something else drew his attention.
A prickle of fear twitched the thread tying him and Madison together. It was Madison’s fear.
Monteforte was formidable, and needed tending to, but St. John knew he was needed elsewhere. Something had happened to Madison. He had to go to her.
He spun for the door, not bothering to stop when Monteforte called out, “You feel the new darkness on the wind, St. John? Does it whisper your name?”
Free of the weighty Ancient’s presence, and out of the building at last, St. John opened his senses. Sniffing the air, he grunted a curse. That new trouble Monteforte had mentioned now tore at his senses as if it had been magnified by the Ancient’s recognition of it.
The trouble in the wind hadn’t yet arrived, though it was too close for comfort when his strength was needed elsewhere.
The people of London would be lucky if t
hey stayed off the streets in the hours to come.
Facing the direction of the odor of the Nosferatu in the distance, St. John bared his fangs. The unearthly sigils carved and seared into his back were speaking to him in whispers and undulations that confirmed the rightness of the direction of his thinking. Under all of their noses, Simon Monteforte had become a servant of the Dark.
But that wasn’t all, certainly not the worst of things. He could no longer sense Madison. She must have lost consciousness. The thread had gone lax, even as his sigils rippled.
* * *
Madison opened her eyes, blinked, but saw nothing. She was on her back, on a cold floor.
Sheer fright made her sit up. With darkness enveloping her, and a loss of all direction, a wave of dizziness made her stomach heave.
Flipping onto her hands and knees, she strained for a couple of clear breaths. What she sucked in wasn’t pleasant. The air was filled with particles of dust, decay and the awful smell of something rancid.
Crawling on all fours, she tested out her surroundings, afraid of what she’d find. She rotated in a full circle, unhindered. That was good. A start.
The floor wasn’t concrete, so it couldn’t be a sidewalk. The ground beneath her had the coolness of slick ceramic tile, with grooves in regular intervals. She counted four large tiles by crawling forward and backward and feeling with her fingers, and more tiles to her right and left. She was indoors, then, on a floor. Her attacker had left her, without bothering to tie her up.
“Stupid bastard.”
Her searching fingers found something soft that gave her a start. She backed up, sliding over the hard floor on bare, throbbing knees. Nothing happened. No one pulled her back.
Inching forward again, she reached out, closed her fingers over the soft object. No bad consequences presented themselves.
Sitting back on her heels, Madison pulled the object through both of her hands. A sweater? Yes. Long-sleeved, loosely woven and smelling faintly of perfume.
Her heart gave a gigantic thump. Waiting in silence, she half expected her attacker to laugh, and sighed with relief when no laughter rang out.
Crawling farther, the silence creating pressure in her ears, Madison found another item that felt like a canvas bag. Fumbling, she wrenched the bag open and moved her hands over more fabric. Another sweater, and a pair of jeans, easy to identify because of the unique smell of the denim. With further scrutiny, she concluded that whoever owned these clothes was small-boned, thin.
Excitement made her heart lurch. Clothes meant that either she’d been tossed onto the floor of someone’s residence, or someone had been here recently. A young woman.
Her mind spliced that information together, driving Madison to her feet. Again, she waited for danger to strike and said in astonishment and relief when it didn’t, “Okay.”
Since she was free to move about, she might also have the freedom to leave this place.
With the sweater grasped tightly in one hand, and the other hand held out in front of her, Madison shuffled forward. She found a wall, and next to it the arm of a chair.
The smell of decay grew stronger. Gagging, Madison felt around, paused, recoiled when breathing became difficult. The object in the chair was large, stiff, cold and unmoving.
It was a body.
Swallowing a scream, she backpedaled with her pulse exploding, then she dived forward again, refusing to lose the wall. Maybe there was a door or a window in that wall.
Hand over hand, with the sweater dangling from her fingers and the blood pounding in her ears, Madison felt her way across the room until she found a crack. Tracing the crack, she discovered a doorknob that turned in her hand.
Breathless, frightened, she took a cautious step forward and felt the chill of fresher air on her face.
* * *
St. John strode through the night, alert, determined.
Stopping on the side street bordering Madison’s hotel, he glanced once at his surroundings, then looked upward. Gripping the building’s brick exterior with both hands, he began to climb.
Madison’s window was open. Knowing immediately that she wasn’t in that room, he hauled himself in, landing agilely on both feet. As the skin prickle of warning washed over him, he closed his eyes to process any new scent that might overlap hers, and snapped his fangs in frustration over not finding any.
The room was just as he’d last seen it. Some of Madison’s things were spread out on the bureau, personal things he wanted to touch.
The doorknob to the hallway rattled. St. John turned his head, and gathered to spring.
The door opened slowly, but no monster stood there. On the threshold was one of the men from Madison’s network, wearing a startled expression and a wrinkled shirt.
“Who the hell are you?” that man demanded.
“I might ask you the same thing,” St. John replied, unfisting his hands.
Chapter 15
Madison didn’t bother to wonder why no one kept her from leaving the dark room. She was absorbed in getting away as fast as possible.
She ran down a dim corridor punctuated by other open doors until she found stairs heading down. There was only one wall next to the staircase. The other side showed a gaping hole of nothing, open to the night. The meager illumination of distant streetlights helped in her race for freedom.
After descending four floors, she hit flat ground. Only then did she stop to take stock of her surroundings, because she had to. She’d need to find this awful place again.
She made quick mental notes. Shabby building. Deserted. Derelict. Big dark holes where windows should have been. Due to the unsoundness of the structure, the whole thing may have been slated for destruction. What was left of it sagged on its foundation; just the kind of place for keeping a kidnap victim, or hiding a body, though her kidnapper had been inexperienced enough to have forgotten to lock the door.
What about the body?
Glad she hadn’t had to see it, she knew help would be needed for those details. Police.
Madison took precious seconds more to look herself over and get her trembling under control. Everything seemed fine, which under the circumstances was a blessing. She still wore her dress, and both shoes. Her knees were bruised, her fingernails were chipped, but if she had been able to get away so easily, what had the guy gained by accosting her on the street in the first place? She hadn’t carried a purse or wallet. She didn’t own any jewelry.
“Not a robbery, then.”
Her fingers were cramping from holding tightly to the sweater she’d found. Her mind raced. One thing was crystal clear. Detective Crane had been right in that pieces of clothing were turning up all over the place. At least, thankfully, this sweater didn’t belong to anyone in the Chase family.
What if that body turned out to be one of the Yale girls?
She had to get help, when the biggest problem facing her now was having no idea where she might be.
“Damn it to hell and back!”
The curses she uttered followed her through the dark as ran down the street in search of a car to flag down.
* * *
St. John was too worried about Madison to consider the mortal in the doorway anything more than a hindrance.
“I’m looking for Madison,” he said, already moving toward the window.
“How did you get in?” the man demanded.
“How did you get in?” St. John countered.
The man held up a key. “It was under my door. Madison must have put it there.”
St. John had no time for explanations or hiding his next move. He sat for a moment on the sill before swinging his long legs outside, said, “Tell her I came by,” and jumped.
He landed on the sidewalk in a crouch, with one hand touching the ground and his chin lifted. T
he malignant odor of the rogues was stronger, though they weren’t advancing as fast as he had anticipated, and were still outside of the city.
What good was hurrying, he supposed, when they and their counterparts had been after him, unsuccessfully, for centuries. When animals like these had plagued the Seven for an eternity.
As he straightened, he wondered how Simon Monteforte been able to fool the rest of the Hundred about his position within the community. Monteforte had hidden his darkness from the other creatures, when fooling the Hundred wasn’t easy. Nearly impossible, in fact. Yet the old monster would now call attention to the beings who actually ruled most of London, and quite probably cause a rain of bloody terror to fall upon the innocent bystanders who got in their way.
No doubt Monteforte pined for the Grail, like so many others before him. He would shake the foundation of the Hundred to gain the knowledge St. John possessed. Thinking to bargain with the lives of the people in London, he would demand to know the resting place of the most holy of religious relics, sought for centuries and protected by the Seven Blood Knights bound to it.
Monteforte desired the magic that went with the chalice of Christ. No doubt he believed that with the Grail in his possession, Monteforte would have power beyond belief, and command the Seven.
Mason LanVal, the last of the knights to be added to the Seven, had been entrusted with the task of hiding the Grail, and was its keeper still, as far as St. John knew. Had Nosferatu been sent after LanVal, as well? Perhaps monsters were emerging all over Europe, hoping to track down his reclusive brethren.
Monteforte. Traitor.
Very bad news, indeed.
He had found what he’d been seeking, but was torn. Tonight, he had made a promise to keep a special mortal safe. His vow, meant for protecting the masses, or as many of them as he could manage, had truly enlarged in scope.
“Where are you?” he called to Madison, sending his senses outward. “I know you’re near.”
He looked down at his feet. She had been here, on this spot. He saw her in his mind’s eye as a shimmering outline of pale gray mist.
“I can smell you, little Slayer.”
