She was wearing some sort of tight black leggings or skin-tight jeans that were tucked inside the over-the-knee boots, and a black leather jacket, zipped only a third of the way up, to give her access to the gun she would be wearing under it.
There was something lacy and black underneath the jacket. The flawless pale olive flesh rose the length of her throat to the sharply defined chin. Full lips. No lipstick that he could detect. High cheek bones.
Her jaw flexed as she came toward him and the black eyes with their thick, declarative brows were fixed on him. “Heru sends his regards,” she said.
“He actually said that?” Rick asked. He shifted his feet a few centimeters to put himself in a better position to defend or attack, when the time came.
“You and I both know he does not speak that way.” Her voice was husky and there was a hint of an Italian accent that had not yet faded altogether. From that alone, Rick judged she was young for a vampire. Barely a century.
“He speaks that way to me,” Rick told her. “But I took the time to learn his language. He finds that a valuable thing.”
She had stopped a meter away from him and now stood with her hands on her hips, her legs spread in the ready stance. The position of her hands drew attention to the curve of her hips, outlined by the unforgiving fabric of her pants. Just under her fingertips, her hip bones thrust gently against the material, lifting it in a very feminine crest. Her thighs were nicely muscled – like a dancer’s, slender, but strong.
But Rick’s gaze went back to her waist, outlined by the closely fitting leather jacket. Was her waist really that small?
“Why are you here?” he asked, then mentally berated himself. That wasn’t a question he had wanted to ask. It implied his information was deficient. It pointed to a weakness in either his information sources or his ability to interpret them. The last thing he could afford to reveal to this woman was a weakness.
“You have not arrived at the answer yet?” she asked. “That’s surprising, for you.”
Something tightened in his chest. She had pressed her finger exactly over the vulnerability he had wanted to hide. She had spotted it. Then he realized that this gave him an opening to ask questions. “Do I know you?” he asked. “Have we met in some past time and I chose to forget you?”
“You can do that? Forget?” Her pointed chin dropped a little. “I can’t.” Her voice, her whole body, spoke of barely held pain and fury.
“Then I do not know you,” he concluded. “But I know your reputation.”
Contrariwise, she did not seem pleased that he was aware of her reputation. The anger remained in place. “You applaud what I have done?” she asked. Then she smiled. “Of course. I forgot for a moment who I was speaking to. Cyneric Pæga, the Assassin. The others all think that is just a name, but it isn’t, is it?”
Rick felt a frisson of energy ripple down his spine. It was pleasure at this woman’s display of knowledge. “There is a wealth of meaning in the name that most people do not appreciate,” Rick agreed.
“You were one of the original Assassins,” she continued. “You joined the Nizari Ismailis and you lived and trained in Alamut, their central mountain fortress.” She smiled and even her smile seemed to hold a world-weary irritation. Her hand reached for the zipper on her jacket, and Rick took a step closer, his senses kicking up to high alert. He brought his hands up higher, for a quicker response.
“Relax,” she told him and unfastened the jacket. “If you know my reputation, you know I am better with a rifle in my hands. These—” and she pulled out a small revolver, “are only good for scaring people.”
She took a few steps backwards and placed the revolver on the long coffee table in front of the sofa. It gave Rick a glimpse of her in profile. She was slender, her ass tight and high.
“I prefer a blade or arrow, myself,” Rick replied, his thoughts racing. He didn’t know why she was here, so trying to kill him remained a possibility. “Or poison,” he added.
“Poison. The girl’s way.” Her mouth turned down in disapproval.
Rick smiled in genuine amusement. “It is the most discreet weapon. Knives and arrows can be traced if you are unable to retrieve them. If you create your own poison, then it is a complete cut-off.”
“A gun is quicker and more certain. If you use common bullets, it is just as discreet.”
“Not when you shoot the way you do. You brand yourself with every impossible shot.”
She cocked her head to look at him, her hair slipping to partially cover one eye. “You know more than just my reputation.”
“I’ve had reason to find out about you.”
She came closer and Rick raised his hands once more. She had laid aside one weapon but might have more and they could be more lethal for him than the gun. She stepped even closer and now her scent seemed to wash over him like the warm wave of air from a radiator.
Rick did something he hadn’t done for centuries. He shivered.
The novel sensation left his nerve ends zapped and sizzling. His heart picked up speed. This woman was affecting him – it was the almost perfect balance of lethal expertise and overwhelming femininity.
“I know all about you,” she said, her voice low. The sound of it felt like a mental caress. An invitation.
Her hand shifted, as if she was flexing it…or reaching—
Rick picked her up, his hands around the leather cinched waist, and pushed her up against the wall the big TV was mounted upon, pinning her with his body and spreading her hands out, away from any weapons. He jammed his leg between her thighs and held her there.
Her breasts were pressed against his chest, soft mounds under the leather and lace.
They remained motionless, both of them. Rick tried to backtrack through his mind. Why had he acted without thought? He had never failed to calculate the risks and consequences of possible actions and reactions before.
She was looking up at him expectantly. Her features were small but not delicate. She had strength—bushels of it. It showed in the jut of her chin and her direct gaze.
“Are you going to kiss me now?” she asked. Her voice was low, throaty. It told Rick she was reacting to him despite the bravado, and that made the press of her body against his all the more potent.
He shifted, unable to help the instinctual movement. It drove his hips hard against her. “I don’t know your name.”
“You need a name to kiss me?”
“I need…data.” He struggled to keep his thoughts clear and precise, but her body was awakening baser instincts.
“Wouldn’t you rather know why I am here? Wouldn’t that be more useful data?” She smiled and it held a hint of superiority, as if she was pleased she was disrupting his ability to think, that he was responding to her despite what rational thought he had left screaming at him to let her go and run like hell. But despite the knowing smile, there was a frantic pulse beating at the base of her throat. This wasn’t a one-way effect.
“Tell me why you’re here, then,” he said harshly, so his voice wouldn’t give him away. But even her small wrists and the touch of soft flesh under his hands was a powerful goad. He dropped his head to sniff delicately at the nape of her neck, inhaling the scent. His lips were barely an inch away from her carotid. “I could rip you apart with my teeth and let the life bleed from you.”
“You won’t do it.” She said it with utter certainty.
“You think I’m incapable of killing you?”
“Oh, I know you could kill me, but you love answers. You want my answers more than you want my blood.”
True.
“I’m here for a job,” she said, her voice very low. “Nial Aquila is my target. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
He lifted his head to look her in the eye. “Yes.”
“Are you going to warn him, Cyneric Pæga?”
An answer wouldn’t come. Her aroma was wreathing his head, clouding his mind, keeping the good responses at bay.
How did
their lips meet? He wasn’t sure. He may have dipped his head to touch his mouth against the full, soft lips. Perhaps she met him half-way. He didn’t care. Kissing her was enough. His body, already throbbing with possibilities, leapt with a rarely felt excitement. His heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest. He could hear the rush of blood through his veins, stirred by this most primal of instincts – one of the few that remained from the days of being human.
Her mouth was sweet – so sweet! Her face was soft under his fingers and small and refined. The strength came from within.
Dimly-heard, struggling to rise through the miasma of pleasure, the voice of reason touched his conscience.
Rick staggered back, fighting to make it look like he had simply stepped away from her. She dropped to the floor and thrust out her foot to keep her balance.
He saw his keys lying on the floor, close to his feet, and bent and picked them up. He strode to the apartment door and opened it. “Whatever security you breached to gain entry,” he told her, “make sure you rearm it when you leave.”
“Cyneric!”
He pushed the door open once more – just enough to look at her.
“My name is Ilaria.”
Something tightened, clenching hard inside his chest. He shut the door gently, which had not been his first intention, and walked away, fighting the insane need to go back.
* * * * *
Winter kept her eyes shut, focusing on what she could see/feel through her fingertips, while she listened to Iona’s voice.
“…make yourself smaller and go deeper. Become a particle, dwarfed by all you see, and go deeper.”
Winter observed the muscle tissue where she was currently located. She felt/saw the stringy, fuzzy fibers that made up the muscle. She got closer to them, and they grew larger in her mind, so that she could see the empty spaces in between. She slipped into one of the spaces, guided by Iona’s directions, and her universe seemed to telescope out.
“Space. So much empty space,” Winter murmured.
“Go deeper,” Iona encouraged her. “Head toward the walls in front of you, making them larger as you go. Find the empty spaces in the walls and slip through.”
Winter had attempted this exercise many times before, but penetrating inside organs and tissues had defeated her every time.
“Stay calm,” Iona reminded her. “The more tightly you hold your body and mind, the less flexibility you have to scale your perceptions up or down. Make yourself smaller and smaller until you see the spaces in the walls. Then go through.”
Winter took a deep breath, narrowing her focus down even more tightly. She tried to make herself relax, to let the impressions build on their own instead of reaching for them. Iona had said to remember a time when she had been completely relaxed and content, so she recalled the last time she and Nial and Sebastian had had sex…the dreamy, heavy-limbed, post-orgasmic peace and love that had settled over her afterwards. Maintaining that feeling, she let herself grow smaller and her perception zoom deeper.
“I see them!” she whispered.
“Go through them,” Iona encouraged. “Float through gently. There is more than enough space. You will not hurt him.”
Euphoria was layering over the sexual glow. Winter zipped through the cavernous empty spaces between the cells that made up the muscle fibers. It wasn’t a wall than had prevented her, for more cells lay ahead and all around her. It was simply where the fiber ended and the space between the fibers had begun. Now she was inside the fiber, looking around at all the cells spread about like bubbles, or balloons at a carnival.
She didn’t wait for Iona, this time. She approached the nearest cell, letting herself grow smaller and smaller, until the empty spaces in the cell wall were bigger than her. She slid through and looked around. And there…there…the double helix!
“I see DNA,” she told Iona. “I can actually see it.”
“Do not touch it!” Iona warned. “You will be tampering with something that is beyond even our skill.”
“Really?” Winter murmured, for she was floating along the incredibly long length of the chain, and the couplings and molecules spoke to her. She could see what their roles were, as clearly as if they wore color coded uniforms. “But…I understand them.”
Iona’s hand rested on her shoulder. “Enough. Pull out, Winter,” she said firmly.
Winter withdrew her presence until she was all the way back in her own mind. She opened her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
Dominic was stretching out his leg, underneath Winter’s hand. She gave him a smile and let go of his thigh. “Thank you,” she told him. Dominic was the perfect test subject for her training, for he could not hear some of the more gory discussions they had about facets of his anatomy and wouldn’t get queasy or worried about what Winter might do to him.
She glanced back at Iona. The dark haired woman’s eyes were grave.
“You could read the DNA?” Iona asked. “No one can do that.”
The front door slammed, making Winter jump and Iona to look over her shoulder. Footsteps on the tiles told her who it was. “Rick,” she murmured to Iona. They both looked toward the doorway, and Dominic, she saw, turned his head, too. He’d been cued by their glances toward the door.
Rick spun around the door, one hand on the frame. “Where is he?” he demanded. His normally glossy and groomed hair was in disarray, the locks scattered across his shoulders.
“Nial?” Winter clarified. “In the basement with two bodyguards. What did you tell him this afternoon?”
Rick pushed his long fingers through his hair, giving her the reason for its tumbled look. His eyes had a haunted expression in them. “Thank you,” he said shortly and whirled away again.
Iona glanced at Winter. “Very troubled,” she decided.
“Something has goosed him good,” Winter agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so disheveled and ruffled.” There was a tiny sense of satisfaction in the idea that something in this world was capable of reaching past the armor plating that Cyneric habitually wore.
* * * * *
Nial’s bodyguards were Garrett and Sebastian, who were sprawled on the circular sofa with Nial, talking.
Everyone stopped to look at Rick as he stepped around the stairwell walls and into the basement area proper. Nial’s eyes narrowed and he stood up. “What’s happened?”
“The Whisper,” Rick said. “She’s made contact.”
“Contact? With you?” Sebastian asked. “Why didn’t she just shoot you?” he muttered.
Nial rolled his eyes, then looked back at Rick. “It’s a good question.”
“I don’t know. But she confirmed you are her target.”
“She said that?” Nial asked, astonished.
Sebastian got to his feet. His feet were bare, and the sleeves of his shirt were rolled up. The shirt had no collar. “Did she get within reaching distance of you?” he asked sharply.
Rick knew exactly what he was thinking. Sebastian was the electronics expert. Electronics included bugs and spot tabs and more.
“Turn out your pockets. Check everything,” Nial told him, proving that he had jumped ahead of Sebastian’s question, too.
Garrett also got up and moved behind Rick. “I’ll check the back of your collar.”
“Unroll your sleeves,” Sebastian said.
The four of them inspected everything Rick wore and Garrett found it. “Here it is,” he said, tugging on the back of Rick’s belt. “Under your belt and attached to the reverse side.” He stepped around to face everyone and held out his hand. The miniature transmitter was half the size of a postage stamp, and was sticking to the tip of Garrett’s finger.
Sebastian peeled it off, letting it stick to the end of his thumb. Then he bent and ground it into the glass top of the coffee table.
“You didn’t want to trace it back?” Nial asked mildly.
“Not while it’s squirting out a signal saying ‘here I am, here I am!’ to whoever cares to l
isten.” Sebastian jerked his head at Rick. “He’s led her straight here.”
Rick sank down onto the sofa cushions. Noise was beating at him in waves, making it hard to think. Greetings from Heru. Are you going to warn Nial? “She already knew where you were,” he croaked and put his head in his hands.
“What?” Garrett asked. “Are you okay?”
Rick made himself look up. “She dangled a distraction…and I took the bait.”
Nial sat on the coffee table in front of him. “We’re not following you, Rick.”
Rick smiled bitterly. “It wasn’t you she was after. It was me. She was testing me.”
Garrett sat as well. “Testing you for what?”
“His loyalty,” Nial said. “If Heru took over the League and it seems that he did, then Heru sent The Whisper to Rick to test if he was still Heru’s man.”
“Heru would guess that I would learn about The Whisper, so when she appeared, I was braced for violence,” Rick said tiredly. “That is her standard method of operation, after all.” He grimaced. “I’ve spent years at a time away from Heru, doing different things, and he was never suspicious about me before.”
“Only now, when the stakes are considerably higher,” Nial concluded. “We’ll have to reconsider our position and future strategies – everything you predicted appears to be correct. Heru is running the League, the Libertatus is leaderless and I presume The Whisper is still coming for me.”
Rick scrubbed at his face. “This changes everything,” he concluded.
Nial smiled like the cat who’d found the cream. “It’s a whole new game.”
Chapter Eleven
Roman phoned late the next day. The quick results surprised Marcus and he said so.
“It’s a lead, not a name,” Roman told him. “You can do your own footwork tracking him down. But the lead came easy and quick because it’s local. There’s a gun range out in the hills around Lake Arrowhead. The owner is more than just a businessman. He’s a true enthusiast.”
“Who makes his own bullets and sells them,” Marcus finished. “What’s the address? It’s Saturday tomorrow, so he’ll be open for all the weekend hunter types.”
Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone) Page 11
