“Feeling dramatic tonight?” I glanced up at him, saw the intense and serious way he was looking at me, and dropped my eyes.
“Cazadors don’t get to know their prey. We kill them. End of story.” Ivan’s eyes were guarded, cluing me in that he’d already suspected. “It will mess with his head on more than one level if he realizes I’m not like the other vamps.” I shifted where my arm tucked around Ivan’s waist so I could grip his belt and use it as a handhold.
We walked for an hour before lights came into view. Not the kind of lights you would see in a city, but the flickering faint lights of a few candles lit in windows. “Rachel, your friend is here, in this village?”
“If it’s Shwan, then yes. If not, then it seems unlikely.”
She strode forward with impressive confidence. The village consisted of two streets set across one another, with homes and what looked like a few businesses scattered along the edges. Rachel dialed a number and lifted her cell phone to her ear.
After a minute, she nodded. “Baran, it’s Rachel. Listen, you aren’t going to believe this, but I’m in the area, somewhere south of Arbil, at these coordinates.” She rattled off the longitude and latitude on her phone. “We’re hoping for a place to crash. Somewhere people won’t be looking for us.” She shot a glance back at Antonio.
I glanced at the Cazador, who had us both in his sights.
“What’s his number?” She paused. “Thanks, Baran. I owe you big for this. But I need some other things. Transport—something I can hide someone in—a map, and weapons if you can get them.” She looked toward the village as she listened. “I am forever in your debt, my friend.” Then she said something in Arabic and hung up.
“What did you say?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes, obviously irritated by the question. “The literal translation is peace be upon you. We could use a little peace ourselves. Karma and all that.” She entered a number into her phone, then held it to her ear. In the distance, I heard the telltale ringing of a phone. The timing was too coincidental for it not to be her contact.
I steered Ivan in the direction I’d heard the phone ring. Rachel made a grab to stop us, but I kept moving, forcing her to come along.
“Siyad,” she said, then spoke to him in soft Arabic, looking furious that I had taken off without waiting for her to finish her conversation. She hung up and called out to me. “Slow your ass down, Lea. You can’t just barge in on him.”
“Watch me.”
The house was at the far end of the village, of course. Which was good as far as I was concerned. I knocked on the door and stood back. Rachel stopped giving me a murderous stare for long enough to grab a scarf out of her bag and cover her head.
The door opened and a short, older man filled the threshold, looking like he’d just gotten out of bed. “Rachel?”
She stepped in front of us, adjusting the folds of fabric at her neck. “Siyad, I’m sorry for our late intrusion. We’ll only stay one night before we continue on our way.” Then she said something in Arabic.
His eyes widened as he took in Ivan and me. He swallowed hard enough that the gulp was audible. I narrowed my eyes as I let Ivan go. “You three stay here, I want to take a look around. Make sure things are safe.”
Ivan gave me a nod. “Be careful.” And he pushed his way into the tiny house while Siyad was still spluttering. Rachel pointed at Antonio and whispered out of earshot of our host.
“Get in or fuck off.”
He shrugged and followed Ivan without a word. She fell in beside me. “Feeding?”
My jaw ticked. “I have to, or the threat to Antonio will become very real.”
She drew a slow breath. “Don’t be long.”
It comforted me to know she was as safe as she could be with both Ivan and Antonio looking out for her. I backed up and headed toward the center of the village, following the scent of a flock of sheep out to the surrounding hills.
Movement ahead snapped my reflexes into action before I fully registered what I saw. I dropped to the ground, my belly flat against the hard-packed dirt and my side against the closest house.
A figure edged from the corner of the same house. I caught my breath; his scent was as familiar to me as my own.
Calvin.
With a burst of speed, I leapt to my feet and rushed him. We slammed onto the ground, rolling until we ended up against a large rock. I had my hands around his throat.
“You bastard, you set those demon dogs on me, didn’t you?”
His hand clutched mine and he struggled to speak as I strangled him. “No choice. Please. No choice.”
Damn him. I eased off and he sat up, but he didn’t take his hands from mine. He squeezed them tightly instead. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. I have a master, I can’t deny him. I can’t even tell you who he is.”
“I can take a fucking guess, Calvin. How long were you swapping blood with vamps? Months? Weeks?” I’d sensed this weeks—hell, even months ago. Why hadn’t I called him on it?
Because I’d wanted to believe it wasn’t happening.
His jaw tightened. “I didn’t know, you self-righteous bitch.” And he jerked me forward. I braced for a blow to the head, so I was completely caught off guard when he kissed me.
He slid his hands around my back, taking my arms with him, pulling me into his lap as his mouth locked on mine. I groaned and leaned into the kiss, remembering all too well the one night we’d shared years ago. The heat of his mouth, the feel of his hands and body. He cupped the back of my head and pulled his mouth from mine. “I hate you,” he snarled, but it lacked the heat to make it truly dangerous. At least at this moment. Yet there was a glimmer in his eyes that suggested it was true. “This is your fault. You wanted me to be a vampire. But it won’t work. I won’t let you ever forget this is your doing.”
I jerked back and slapped him hard enough for his head to slam into the rock behind him. “I never wanted this for you. Never. I loved you.”
His head slowly turned back to me, blood trickling down his lip. “Past tense.”
“What?” I scooted back, needing room. His proximity made me forget too much. Like his deception, his lies, and the shame that grew in me as he spoke.
“You said you loved me. Past tense. No more? Did you find some other human to latch onto? Or maybe you’re fucking that pretty blonde, Rachel. I know I would have liked to.” He stood, but I beat him to it.
I launched myself at him, but I was so weak from not feeding, from sharing my blood with both Rachel and Ivan. Calvin dodged me—barely—and was disappearing into the night before I could get to my feet.
“Only one of us will survive this, Lea,” he called, his voice fading. I took a step, knowing I could catch him. Kill him. End whatever was left between us. I swayed where I stood from a wash of fatigue so strong it dropped me to one knee. If I didn’t feed, I would be of no use to anyone.
The crunch of a footstep and the soft sound of whistling snapped my head around. I moved without thought, without really seeing. I tackled the man to the ground as I’d done to Calvin, only this time I bit into his neck and drew his blood into me as if I were dying of thirst and he was an oasis of water.
His memories flowed over me as I drained him. His life alone as a shepherd, his desire for the woman who’d married his best friend, his sense of honor for doing the right thing. Guilt and shame flooded me as his life slipped from him. I couldn’t stop myself. My hunger and anger were too intense, and the shepherd’s life slid away.
He lay limp in my arms as I swallowed the last of his life down. “Damn,” I whispered. I pulled my stake out from my boot and slid it through the shepherd’s chest, piercing his heart, just to be safe. There would be no coming back for him. I laid him on the ground, rolling him so he looked as though he were sleeping.
Anger, shame, guilt, love, pain. The emotions, most of which I’d pushed away for the last several hundred years, roared through me with the force of a hurricane. Like unstopping a d
am. I stood, trembling as I struggled with myself, wondering how the hell I was going to deal with this new reality.
There was no going back to Rachel and Ivan in my current state. They knew me too well. Ivan would smell Calvin on me and ask questions I wasn’t ready to answer. Rachel would see the pain in my eyes and probably guess. She knew the only one who could push me like this was Calvin.
I bolted into the darkness, not after Calvin, but in the opposite direction. I would circle the village and keep watch from there. It was all I could do now.
Give myself some time and hope to hell I could get myself under control before dawn broke.
CHAPTER 22
RACHEL
Lea took off into the night and my stomach immediately churned with anxiety, which was ridiculous. She’d survived hundreds of years without me, and it was likely she’d survive a few hundred more. The thought of her life going on so far beyond my own left me strangely unsettled. That I would just be a whisper of her past one day and she’d likely forget me.
Siyad seemed deeply uncomfortable with the whole situation. “The big one is injured and needs sleep,” I said to him in soothing Arabic. “We will be gone at first light.” I hoped. Baran had promised he’d have a truck at the edge of the village before dawn, along with weapons. The sooner, the better, as far as I was concerned.
Siyad set up two pallets on the floor of the main living area, apologizing profusely that he only had bedding for two. He continued to shoot worried glances toward Antonio, the person he obviously saw as the most immediate threat. Antonio paced the small room, sending off anxious vibes that it didn’t take a vampire to pick up on.
“You’re freaking him out, Antonio,” I growled. “Tone it down a couple hundred notches.”
He gave me a look that let me know he didn’t like the reprimand, then shot out the front door without a word.
I would have said good riddance, but he knew too much about us and posed a direct threat to Lea, who was God knew where. I would get Ivan situated and then track him down.
Siyad cast a nervous glance at the door.
“He has gone after our other friend,” I said in Arabic. “Thank you for the hospitality you have shown us. We’ve put you to enough trouble. Please go to bed.”
He nodded, then left the room, slipping into what was probably his bedroom and shutting the door behind him.
I turned back to Ivan, who had sat in a kitchen chair the entire time, watching everything without speaking. After everything we’d been through, I’d come to realize he put off a laid-back, clueless vibe, but he was anything but. He saw everything and filed it away for future reference.
He stood and I helped lower him to the floor. He released a long groan as he stretched out.
“I want to look at your leg,” I said, leaning closer.
“It’s fine. It’s set. I’m only hobbling because I need rest.”
“Do you make it a habit to get hurt this often?” I asked with a teasing grin. “I’m guessing you know from experience.”
The flickering of the kerosene lantern lit his dark eyes as he chuckled and folded his arms behind his head to make a pillow. “I usually lead a boring, mundane life.” He grinned, but something dark lurked in his eyes. “You girls are bad luck.”
“So why stay with us?” I asked carefully, wondering what his answer would be today.
He winked. “The thrill, of course.”
A bullshit response. “What do you think about Antonio?”
His eyes darkened further. “Be careful with him, Rachel. He’s dangerous. Especially with you.”
I nodded, but Lea seemed like the more obvious target given his attitude about the supernatural. “I suspected, and I can take care of myself.”
He gave me a sly grin. “I saw the cut on his neck when he emerged from the back of the plane. I know you can take him. I was talking about your heart.”
I snorted. “You have no worries there, my friend. He’s no threat to my heart. I’m more worried about him cutting out Lea’s. He has an agenda, and while he claims he wants to stop Stravinsky, I have this feeling there’s more to it.”
He gave me a curious glance. “Like what?”
I pushed out a sigh. “All I know is that we have a huge dilemma on our hands. He could be useful, but how do we know he won’t turn on us once we get to the complex? I’m not sure it’s worth the risk.”
He studied me for a moment. “I’m certain he wants the same thing we do—the destruction of the facility, Stravinsky, and everything that mad vampire created. But beyond that, I suspect we have very different agendas.” A protective fire burned in his eyes.
“Lea.”
He gave a sharp nod. “I will defend her to the death.”
I shook my head. “But why? Why does she mean so much to you?”
“She’s the only one who can defeat Stravinsky.” He paused. “The two of you are.”
“Why are you on this quest? You have to know we might not be coming back from this.” When he didn’t answer, I pushed on. “Lea called you a lone wolf. An enforcer. I don’t know much about werewolves, but I do know they need a pack. Where’s yours?”
“Gone.” He shifted, clearly uncomfortable. “She’s right on both counts. I was an enforcer. I had been sent to take care of someone who was out of line. My pack was from Canada, and this guy had traveled pretty far north. I was gone for nearly two weeks. When I got back, the pack was gone.”
“Do you live in communes?”
“No; unlike vampires, we try to fit into society. That’s the most disturbing part. They disappeared one by one. The disappearances had started before I left, but we didn’t recognize what was happening at first. Tobi, the runaway, was the one who told me. He was terrified when I found him. He said a monster had come for him one night, but he’d escaped. Tobi was no lightweight. I thought he’d lost his mind, especially when he told me he couldn’t shift.”
“You mean into his wolf form?”
He gave a sharp nod. “But I knew something was off. He smelled differently and there was a rash on his neck.” When I didn’t react, he said, “Werewolves don’t get rashes. We don’t get sick.
“When I tried to bring him back, he flipped out. He was acting so oddly, I called the pack to send someone to help me. But I couldn’t reach anyone. Tobi got hysterical and said he was coming for all of us. That he’d never let him take him again. When I asked who he meant, Tobi said a single word. Stravinsky. Then he pulled out a gun and blew out his own brains.”
I cringed.
“I looked around the cabin and found some notes, but none of them made sense. Stravinsky’s name and a list of several countries. Canada, the U.S., Iraq. A few random references. I grabbed what I found, torched the place and headed back…to nothing. Everyone was gone.”
“In less than two weeks?”
“Yeah.” Worry filled his eyes. “It’s not easy to take a werewolf, Rachel. Let alone a whole pack.”
“How did they do it?”
“A toxin.” He paused. “It was in Tobi’s notes. He had an address too. By the time I got there, everything was gone, but a pile of bodies was stacked in the back. The thirty-two members of my pack, minus Tobi and me. They hadn’t bothered to get rid of the evidence.
“They’d experimented on them. It was the dead of winter, so the bodies were frozen. Some were stuck in mid-transformation. Others had tumors on their bodies. But there were animals too. It looked as if they’d been in the process of shifting—a dog to a pig. A horse to a sheep. A monkey to a…”
He shook his head, and his eyes were haunted when he continued. “I swore I’d track down the bastard and kill him myself with my bare hands. But I’ve fumbled around for ten months, tracking leads in New York City. And then I heard about what you and Lea did to the facility there, and I knew you were the ones who could find the bastard. The vamp murders around the city made me realize she was a Cazador, which meant she could really find and kill the bastard. I only planned to tai
l you until Lea hopped into my taxi. Then I knew it was my destiny to help you two, that you would finally help me avenge their deaths. Her death.”
“Whose death?” I asked quietly.
“Patricia.” His voice was rough. “My wife.”
His eyes were glassy with unshed tears. Stravinsky—and the people behind the Asclepius Project—had stolen someone from both of us. I fully understood why he was here now. I put my hand on his arm. “You need some rest, my friend.” My voice broke, so I cleared my throat. “You need to sleep if you’re going to have the energy to rip Stravinsky’s head off with your bare hands. I’ll do my best to make sure that honor is yours.”
His eyes sank closed and I made a quick check of my bag. While it still contained my laptop, it was broken into pieces. At least I could probably rescue the hard drive. I had a thirst to get moving, to track down Stravinsky, the bastard who’d destroyed life after life. But I knew I needed to deal with Lea and Antonio first.
I slipped out the front door and lifted my face into the wind.
Sayid lived on a dirt path, and while Antonio had hid our tracks as we fled the crash scene, he hadn’t bothered to cover them here. His footprints led around the back of the buildings, then inside the outer wall of the town. I found him lying with his stomach on the hood of a Jeep, looking out at a rare field of grass dotted with sheep.
“If you’re trying to sneak up on me, you have failed miserably,” he said, not changing his position.
“If I had intended to sneak up on you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“You should get some rest, mi guerrera. You’ll need all your strength for the fight.”
“What are you? Really? And don’t give me some vague answer.”
His eyes filled with appreciation as he turned to glance at me. “What do you think I am?”
“A Cazador. Lea thought there might be another. So she’s not alone?”
“No, mi amor. She is not.”
“So you’re along for the ride because you want to kill Stravinsky and every vampire we find in the facility? Like we’re handing you a Disney Fast Pass?”
Replica (The Blood Borne Series Book 2) Page 13
