I walked toward her as she tucked the stake away. “Who kissed you?” The question popped out of me before I thought better of it.
Her mouth dropped open, but she snapped it shut so fast her teeth clicked. Her face flamed an interesting shade of pink visible to me even in the dim light. “No one.”
A lie so thick it all but hung in the air between us. “Where’s Ivan?”
“He followed my contact.” She seemed to pull herself together. “How is he going to find us?”
I shrugged and Rachel narrowed her eyes. A few beats of silence passed between us, and then she smiled a slow-growing grin I didn’t like.
“Oh my God. You think Ivan kissed me? Girl, he is so not my type. Irritating as hell is about all he is to me.”
My jaw ticked, but I struggled to keep eye contact with her. I finally put a hand to my forehead. “Madre de Dios, what wrong with me? Hundreds of years and I’ve never been affected like this.”
“Not even with Calvin?” Ever the journalist, she asked the one question that cut to the heart of it.
“No. Not even with him. That was...slow.” I shook my head, remembering all too vividly the scent I’d picked up right before the restaurant had blown up. Time to change the subject, and I’d have to do it rapidly to avoid the girl talk we were falling into. “I don’t think Calvin is dead. I caught wind of him and then it disappeared just as quickly right before I ran into trouble.”
Rachel crossed her arms, her blue eyes hard as ice in the dead of winter. “What kind of trouble?”
“The usual. Explosions, demon dogs, and monstrous flames. No way out.”
She swallowed hard, her throat bobbing. “If he’s a vamp, would he really turn on you?”
I closed my eyes and searched my heart well and truly for the first time, letting myself see Calvin for all his flaws as well as his strengths. “He will hate me for not killing him, with the passion only a true zealot can have. So, yes. He could turn on us.” I opened my eyes and let out a long breath. “He knows my ways, knows how I do things. Calvin would be the perfect vampire for them to set on us.”
“Well, that’s just fucking great, isn’t it?” Rachel spat out as she began to pace again.
I leaned back against one of the broken pillars. “Who gave you the stake?”
“Some guy.” She raised her left hand to her lips again—an unconscious gesture. So. The man who’d given her the stake had also kissed her. Her face pinked up again, but I didn’t pursue that line of questioning. There had to be some give and take in the trust department, on both sides, for our partnership to work.
“Where’s the vampire you were going to bring back for questioning?” Rachel half turned toward me.
“They’ve all fled the city. Except for Calvin, and I have little hope of finding him until he’s ready to be found. Since Ivan is following the contact, I assume that means you got nothing.”
Rachel dug into the bag hanging at her side and pulled out an envelope. “Not nothing. But not everything I’d hoped for, either.”
I took it from her and flipped through the contents. A couple of pictures, one of them with coordinates written on the back, and a phrase that meant nothing to me.
“This is where we’ll find Stravinsky.” I tapped the back of the picture, holding it with the coordinates. “This just confirms that we’re on the right path.”
“That would make the most sense. It almost feels too easy, though. Like a trap.”
I snorted softly, memorizing the coordinates and the phrase before I tucked the documents back into the envelope and handed it to Rachel. “Life is a trap, my friend. It’s how you handle the snap of the killing blow that determines if you are the prey or the predator.”
“Lea,” the way she said my name should have tipped me off, “why do you hate vampires so much? Not that I’m against going after them, but I met Louis. He wasn’t a bad guy. And while you’re a crazy-ass bitch when it comes to fighting, you don’t go around killing vamps left and right. They can’t all be bad.”
“No? Do you know that for the first fifty years of a vampire’s life, the blood lust is nearly uncontrollable? They’ll feed on anyone without thought unless controlled by a master vampire. Louis was only as polite as he was because whoever made him had a tight hold on the reins. One slip, and he would have been on you and Calvin in an instant.”
“Then why didn’t you kill him?” she asked.
“Because I gave you my word!” I snapped. “You ask questions because it’s in your blood. And I kill vampires because it is in mine. They took everything from me. They drained my older sister, making her one of them.”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the memory. “They left me and my parents tied to three chairs, cuts in our necks so the blood dripped freely.” I could taste the fear on my tongue, the salt of my tears as I cried for Anna to wake up. Her dark hair just like mine spread about her face as if she were sleeping. Rachel said something, but I didn’t hear it as the words poured from me.
“She did wake up. Anna drained our mother first. My father screamed for her to stop, begged her. Called on God to stop her. His cries drew her to him next. Whether he meant to or not, my father bought me the time I needed.”
“Lea. You don’t have to—”
“I worked my hands out of the bonds before she made it to me, and she was so intent on her feeding, she didn’t notice I was free. I took a silver candlestick and rammed it through her heart as she drained my father. Her screams echoed through the night, and the Cazadors found me sobbing in a puddle of my sister’s blood. They told me my parents would rise as monsters if I didn’t drive stakes through them too. But that was a test to see how strong I was. I later learned they wouldn’t have turned without drinking vampire blood.”
I stared hard at Rachel, seeing the fear in her eyes. “I am not angry you asked. But it is not something I like to remember.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” Ivan said from the shadows. Rachel and I had our stakes out, one right after the other.
I glared at Ivan, unreasonably angry that he had heard my story. Even more so that he’d snuck up on us.
Again.
“Stop doing that,” Rachel snapped. “Make some fucking noise, would you?”
He grinned at her. “Bet you don’t yell at Lea for being quiet.”
“She’s on my side.”
“So am I.”
“Stop it,” I said. “Both of you. Did you catch up with her contact?”
His grin faltered and he shook his head. “No. I have no idea how the hell he slipped me, but from one street to the next his scent was completely gone. Maybe even from one step to the next.”
Rachel looked at me. “Like Calvin? Could they be using something to mask their scent?”
I nodded, already on that same line of thought. “He’s a scientist and he’s worked with Stravinsky from what we know; it’s plausible they’ve come up with a way to keep us from tracking them.”
The numbers on Rachel’s papers swirled in my head. I wanted to find that bastard Stravinsky so I could dig him out and roast him on an open fire.
“That grin, Lea. It’s disturbing.” Rachel wrinkled up her nose at me.
I laughed. “Thinking about what I’m going to do to Stravinsky when we find him.”
A wicked glimmer lit her eyes. “I assume I get to help with that part.”
“Bring the lighter fluid.”
Ivan looked from me to Rachel and back again. “You two are scary together.”
“Do as you’re told, and we’ll get along just fine,” I said, then paused and waved my hand forward. “Ready to hunt him down?”
Rachel nodded. “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER 12
RACHEL
Great. The giant pain in the ass was coming. “Do you even have a passport?” I asked him, my hands on my hips, my voice echoing off the walls of the vacant hotel.
His eyebrows lifted in amusement. “I have
several. Which country of origin do you think I should go for?”
Asshole. He annoyed the hell out of me, mostly because he seemed to take Lea slightly off her game. And ordinarily I’d tell her to chase a piece of ass, but in this situation, I needed her all there. Not distracted by an oversized asshat. “United States will do. Less suspicious that way.”
“Harvey Warhol. Louisville, Kentucky.”
It was my turn to lift my eyebrows. “You think you can pull that off? You don’t have even the slightest hint of a southern accent.”
“I’m a paper salesman who was transferred last year from Boston.”
I pushed out a breath. He seemed to have the story down. “You need to book your own tickets. We all do. We can’t travel together or we’ll draw attention. I’ll travel under an alias. At least to London. Too many people might recognize me on a flight originating from the U.S. I’ll pull out my Turkish alias and passport later.”
Ivan burst out laughing. “You expect to pass for Turkish? Are you counting on Lea’s power of persuasion to pull that off?”
“You really are an idiot, aren’t you? Turkey has one of the most ethnically diverse populations in the world. Have you heard of the Adyghe people? No?” I asked when his grin fell. “Russians driven south. No, they’re not typically blond, but a wig will take care of that. I’ve used that ID before without incident.”
I turned to Lea, already done with him, and explained the travel plan I’d cobbled together on the way over—London to Turkey to Iraq. “I think we should use different aliases for the flight from London to Istanbul. The problem is getting visas for you two, but I think I can arrange something. I have a border guard contact who can be persuaded to help.”
“And by persuaded, you mean bribed,” Lea said dryly.
“Exactly.”
I pulled out my phone and tried to open my email app. “I need your aliases to make it happen. And we’ve got to go somewhere with Wi-Fi. I’ll use my VPN to hide our tracks.”
“VPN?” Ivan asked.
“Virtual Private Network. It hides my location and makes it harder for the bad guys to track us.”
Appreciation filled Lea’s eyes. “Smart.”
I shrugged. “I’ve done this a time or two. But we need to throw them off. So when I book tickets, I’m booking them through to Germany.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Ivan, you need to go to Zimbabwe.”
“Why Germany?” Lea asked.
“The Nazis were famous for their medical and genetic experimentation. And with the name Stravinsky…we’ll lead them on a wild goose chase. Make them think we’re off track. Traveling separately will strengthen our deception. Then we’ll disappear in Heathrow and fly to Turkey—separately again.”
“Very smart.”
I performed a quick search on my travel app, then looked up. “It’s 1:30 a.m. How quickly can you be ready to go?”
Ivan’s eyes widened. “An hour.”
Lea nodded. “The same.”
“Then let’s take the four a.m. train from Penn Station to Philadelphia and catch the ten a.m. flight to London.”
“Why Philadelphia?” Ivan asked.
“To throw them off. They’ll be watching the airports in New York.”
Lea’s mouth curved into a predatory smile, making me once again glad we were on the same side. “I like it.”
“I need to get Derrick’s bag and a Wi-Fi hot spot. I say we all meet at Penn Station in two hours.”
Lea gave me a pointed look and frowned. “No, we stick together from now on.”
I put a hand on my hip. “You don’t trust me?”
“I don’t trust the creatures you plan to use that stake on.”
She was lying—I could feel it as clearly as if she were in my head. She wanted to know where I’d gotten the stake, but I wasn’t ready to divulge yet. She was keeping secrets from me. I knew she’d encountered more than the usual mayhem and madness while she was gone.
She’d been evasive about finding a vampire to question, which made me wary. Was the man on the subway right? Should I be careful whom I trusted? Perhaps Lea considered this a temporary alliance. But we were both out to achieve the same goal—stop Stravinsky and the Asclepius Project. That had to be good enough for the moment.
“Fine. Derrick’s bag is in Penn Station, so I only have to find a twenty-four-hour diner with Internet to book our tickets and get in touch with our contact.”
“There’s Wi-Fi where I’m headed.” She looked past me to Ivan. “Can you meet us in two hours?”
“Of course. And I’ll grab your bag from my abandoned cab. Which is probably impounded.”
“Is that a problem?” Lea asked.
He grinned. “Not at all.”
I shot him a derisive look. “Remember, you need to book your own flight to London. With your alias. It’s United Flight 2980. Then onto Zimbabwe.”
He smirked. “Trying to ditch me?”
I shot him a sneer.
Lea sighed, clearly exasperated with our bickering. “Ivan, book your ticket. It’s better this way. Rachel, let’s go.”
We took the subway to Victor’s bunker. After acting as her benefactor for years, Victor had turned on her. It was hard to imagine Lea having a benefactor, but since killing vampires was her actual job, she had to be paid somehow.
Victor had been an interesting man. While his father had wanted to purge the world of vampires, Victor had wanted to become one—a gift Lea had repeatedly refused to give him. It had been his undoing in the end. After his death, Lea had taken over his secret bunker and all that was in it. Which included multiple specially-developed weapons to fight supernatural creatures.
“It’s a shame we can’t take these with us.”
I pulled my laptop out of my bag and booted it up. “I suppose we might have gotten away with hiding a few things in a checked bag, but our bags will go straight to Berlin…and we won’t. Too bad we can’t hire a private jet.”
Lea glanced up at me.
Did Victor have that much money lying around? “No, we need to stick to this plan. They know I’m going to do something to prove my story is true. If I just disappear without a trace, they’ll start actively looking for me in Iraq. We need to buy all the time we can get. But you could take a private jet.”
Some emotion flashed in her eyes. “No. We stick together.”
I nodded. I preferred it that way too. I wanted her in my sights as much as she wanted me in hers.
She grabbed a stack of cash from a safe and several passport books. “I have several nationalities to choose from when we fly into Turkey. My Spanish passport might serve us best.”
“Sounds good.” I bought the tickets separately, using Victor’s credit card. “I’ll purchase the tickets to Turkey on the train,” I said. “I don’t want them to be bought so closely together.”
“Good idea.”
We reached Penn Station with time to spare. Derrick’s bag was in a weekly rental locker. I grabbed his laptop and papers and stuffed them into my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “Let’s go.”
We purchased our train tickets separately too. Lea stood about twenty feet away while I took a seat in a plastic chair, my nerves a ball of unbridled energy. I’d never been good at sitting around, waiting for life to happen to me. And while I knew we were taking the offensive, I still had an uneasy feeling. The bearded stranger’s words hung in my head.
The train pulled in and the few passengers disembarked. I climbed aboard and took a seat by a window looking out on the platform. There was still no sign of Ivan, but Lea was standing in the same place. Though she was trying to look like she didn’t care, I could see worry in the slight curve of her shoulder. I watched her as she pretended to talk on her cell phone—or was it real? She hung up and waited another minute. When the overhead speaker announced the train was about to depart from the station, she climbed aboard the car behind mine without a sideways glance.
Had Ivan gotten held up somewhere or had he got
ten what he wanted? Lea had to be disappointed, even if she would likely act otherwise, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t happy. After my encounter with the man on the train, I didn’t trust Ivan.
The doors closed and the train was about to pull out of the station when a man burst through the turnstiles, racing for the train at superhuman speed. He pushed the doors open and slipped through them just as the train began to pull away.
For better or worse, it was the three of us. Whether I liked it or not.
CHAPTER 13
LEA
Ivan tumbled into the train, falling to his knees right at my feet. He lifted his head and his eyes met mine, but it was the gash down the side of his face and the smell of blood that captured my attention. I grabbed his arm and hauled him further into the train.
“What happened?”
“They were waiting for me at the cab.”
Which meant they knew we were working together. Fuck. I found a private car and shoved him in. “Sit. Stay.” I pointed for good measure.
Rachel was right behind me when I turned around. “How bad is it?”
“He’ll heal. We just need to make sure we aren’t noticed.”
“Then maybe you should get in there with him, Miss Leather and Hooded Cowl,” Rachel said with more than a touch of sarcasm. I grimaced.
“I have other clothes in the bag Ivan brought me. I’ll change.”
I ducked into the small space with Ivan. He was flat out on his back, or as flat out as he could be in the tiny bed space allotted to each stateroom. Thank God this wasn’t some subway train with standing room only.
His long legs hung off one end, his arms off the other. My leather bag was clutched in one hand.
“Where’s your bag?” I took my bag from him and opened it on the floor. A pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a hoodie attached would do the trick. I peeled off my leathers and bundled them up, quickly yanking on the more mundane clothes. Ivan’s gaze was heavy on my skin, but I refused to acknowledge it.
“Didn’t have time to get mine.”
Replica (The Blood Borne Series Book 2) Page 7
