by Anya Bast
Daria pulled off her soaked T-shirt and pulled a gray jersey from a drawer. “Anyway, I just stopped in for a minute. I’m leaving again to head back to Sante’s house. Ari wants to have lunch with me.” She pulled the sweatshirt over her head. “What are you doing today?”
“I’m with Carlos.”
She stilled and looked at him. “Really?”
He nodded. “Sante put me on security detail.”
“Shit.”
“I tried to get Brandon an in, but it didn’t work. I was shut down right away.”
“Did you tell Brandon?”
Alejandro nodded. “He wasn’t too happy, but he’s got his hands full as it is. There’s been more movement over by the honey fields. The supervisors there won’t let him stray anywhere close, though.”
She shook her head. “I think the best move for us is simply to get closer and closer to Ari, Sante, and Carlos. The rest will reveal itself eventually, once they truly begin to trust us. Brandon is just upset because he’s out of the loop on this. He’s a control freak, that guy. He doesn’t like that we’ve taken the lead here.”
Alejandro grit his teeth. “I don’t like being that passive.”
“It’s either we wait for Sante to let us in on the true goings-on here, or we risk getting caught and blowing the whole operation. There have been full moons every night, extra guards over by the honey fields.” She gestured impatiently. “I don’t see a better option at this time.”
“I’m not arguing. I just don’t like it. Don’t pick a fight with me, Daria. I’m not in the mood.”
Her jaw locked. “Look—”
The door slammed open, and Brandon stood there, panting and soaked from the rain. “Sante’s house was just bombed.”
23
DARIA stood stricken for a moment, and then ran past Brandon and out the door.
Alejandro and Brandon stared at each other for a moment. “Is he dead?”
“Don’t know, but it’s pretty bad.”
Alejandro rushed after Daria and Brandon followed. Outside he saw that Daria had taken off on a dune bike, rushing across the surface of the ground at top speed toward Sante’s house. He grabbed another and was off, leaving Brandon to fend for his own transportation.
By the time he reached the house a crowd had already gathered. Half the place was on fire, smoke billowing up in a heavy plume. Not even the steady rain seemed to be having an effect on the raging inferno that seemed as though it would engulf the rest of the house in no time.
In horror, he watched Daria jump from her bike before it had even stopped and go running past the guard gate, toward the burning house. The bike crashed into the heavy steel fence surrounding the house and whined to a halt.
Alejandro gunned the engine on his bike and sped after Daria. Coming up alongside her, he grabbed her around the middle and slung her over his lap.
Daria slammed her fist into his gut. Hard. “Let me down.”
He grunted. “Mierda, Daria! No way in hell.”
As they approached the house, he began to believe they actually were in hell. Heat warred with the downpour, the flames licking dangerously close to them.
He veered the bike away from the house, but Daria was having none of that. She punched him in the gut again and at the same time bit his leg, fangs extended. It was not a love bite, and there was no veil. It was just pain, pure and simple. Blood gushed from his thigh and he loosened his hold on her just for a moment.
It was all she needed.
Daria yanked herself backward, using her foot on the edge of the bike to get leverage to propel herself away from him. She fell five feet to the ground and rolled.
“Fuck!” Alejandro pulled a hard right, just in time to see Daria hauling ass into the burning house. He pulled up and jumped off the bike himself. Alejandro hit the ground running, ignoring the pain in his leg where she’d bitten him.
Heat burned his face and exposed arms. He was grateful he was soaked, or it would have been worse. He had a split second to notice that near the house no rain fell; the heat of the fire made it evaporate before it even hit the ground.
Brandon came up behind him, but Alejandro pushed him back. “Get out of here! All three of us don’t need to commit suicide.”
“I can help!” He pushed past Alejandro.
Alejandro grabbed his shirt and flung him violently backward. Brandon ended up on his ass. They needed one agent still alive and kicking after today.
Smoke billowed around Alejandro as he entered the kitchen and he covered his mouth with his forearm.
“Ari?” Daria’s voice coming from the living room. “Ari? Where are you?”
He ran after her. “Get your ass out of here. This place is going up.”
Daria coughed and turned toward him. She shook her head. “I was supposed to meet her here. She’s in this house somewhere and I have to find her.”
He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “No, Daria! We have to get out of here,” he yelled over the roar within the house.
“I won’t let her die!” Tears ran down her soot-covered face.
He stared down at her for a moment, his lungs burning. Somewhere above them, timber cracked ominously. “Goddamn it.” He released her.
Daria pushed past him, going for the stairs. Alejandro followed.
When they reached the top, they caught sight of a white bit of fabric on the floor just at the beginning of the upstairs hallway.
Ari Templeton.
Daria knelt and pulled her up, but the woman was out cold, maybe dead already. The Chosen were immortal, but that only meant they didn’t age and had above average immune systems. Smoke inhalation could do them in the same as a human.
Daria struggled to get her down the stairs. Alejandro stepped in and slung Ari over his shoulder. Together they made their way out of the burning building as pieces of the floor above them began to rain down.
They both stumbled outside, coughing, and made their way down the path and past the gates. Behind them, the house collapsed in the middle. If they’d stayed in there just a minute longer, they’d be fried, flat Chosen pancakes.
Then Sante was there, pulling Ari from Alejandro’s arms. Sante laid her on the ground while he and Daria collapsed to the grass, both wheezing in an effort to get air into their scorched lungs. Beside them, Sante performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on his lover.
Daria sat up and watched Ari with a desperately pained expression on her face.
Ari wasn’t moving.
Alejandro reached out and pulled Daria into his arms. She came willingly, gratefully, snuggling against his chest as they watched Sante try to breathe life back into Ari Templeton. A crowd had formed around them, all keeping a respectful distance.
“Live,” Sante murmured against her lips. Then louder, “Live!” He kept up the resuscitation, but Ari remained limp, lifeless.
Carlos broke past the circle of onlookers and came to stand near his boss. Alejandro was struck for a moment at the expression of utter horror on Carlos’s face. It was as though he actually cared about Ari.
Carlos hesitated a moment, then stepped forward and touched Sante’s shoulder. It was clear to everyone that Ari wasn’t coming back.
“Leave me alone!” Sante snarled. Then he rested his forehead on Ari’s, closed his eyes, and whispered, “Please, Ari. I can’t do this without you. Please live.”
In that one unguarded moment, all doubts Alejandro had about whether or not Sante truly loved Ari Templeton vanished.
Sante sealed his mouth over Ari’s once more and pumped her chest. Nothing. He leaned back, rain beating down, and looked at his dead lover.
All was silent but for the crack and burn of the house behind them.
Then Ari’s chest heaved. She coughed and gasped. A look of absolute, pure happiness transformed Sante’s face and he caught her up against his chest and held her. Ari grabbed his shoulders as he rocked her back and forth, murmuring things into her soot-streaked hair.
&nbs
p; Daria turned her face into Alejandro’s chest and breathed deeply, shuddering in relief against him.
Brandon stood near them, looking a little bruised from Alejandro’s emphatic denial of his aid. A smile played on his lips. Maybe he wasn’t such a womanizing bastard after all.
After several moments, Carlos drew Ari away to the dome doctors who had rushed to the scene. There was no way to put out the fire, though it did seem the rain was coming down even harder now in this area, perhaps engineered to do so.
Once Ari had been handed over for medical attention, Sante stalked over and pulled Daria from Alejandro’s arms and into his. “Thank you,” he said as he embraced her. The sincerity of those words rang through the air.
Daria went visibly stiff in Sante’s arms—probably shocked—and pushed away from him almost immediately. “I didn’t go in to save Ari for you.” It was a hostile comment, something that Valerie wouldn’t say. It was the first time Alejandro had seen Daria’s mask slip.
However, Sante didn’t seem to notice it. He answered smoothly, “I don’t care, Valerie. You saved her. That’s all that matters.”
Alejandro drew her back against him. Emotions were running high, and they’d just risked their lives. He worried Daria might slip even more.
“Who did this?” Alejandro asked, his voice rough from coughing and smoke inhalation.
Sante’s lips pursed in thought. Around them Carlos had begun to shoo the onlookers away. “I have enemies. Many of them. We’ll investigate, but it sounds like it was a bomb.”
Alejandro stated the obvious. “You have someone in this dome who means you harm.” Besides himself, Daria, and Brandon, that was.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Sante made a fist. “When I find them, and I will, they’re dead for this.”
“You were at your headquarters,” Daria broke in. “It was public knowledge. Either the bomber wanted to threaten you and didn’t know Ari was in the house, or they did know she was there and their intent was murder.”
Sante’s smile was cold and the look in his eyes brutal. Here was the Christopher Sante who had killed Julia and the guards and who’d taken pleasure in slowly torturing their witness to death. Here was the Sante who had slept with and romanced Daria for years under a pretense. “Either way, he’s dead . . . slowly.”
“Keep Ari safe.” Daria’s voice was hard. “Keep her guarded.”
Sante cocked his head to the side a little and gave a curious half smile. “Why do you care so much, Valerie? You barely know her.”
Daria hesitated a moment before answering. “She reminds me of someone I knew once, a friend.”
His smile faded. “I’ll take good care of Ari, don’t worry.”
Daria/Valerie, who never missed a thing, asked how they maintained security when the dome was opened. He’d told her about the invisible energy barrier that covered the slit and about the quirk in the barrier’s operation. The security mechanism shut down while the dome opened and closed, which took a little over a minute.
During that minute he’d set guards to watch for anyone who tried to get out of the Shining Way. It was bait. If they caught the person who’d almost killed Ari, he or she was slated for death in the most horrifying way he could imagine.
Sante had enjoyed planning that death, but he’d enjoy the actual killing even more. He imagined blood and flesh filling his mouth, and pure white-hot bliss filled him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting the rising bloodlust within him, the leading edge of age insanity that ate at the fringes of his mind. He could control it. He had to control it for Ari’s sake.
She lay next to him in the bed, her breathing finally deep and even. She was still a new succubare and her enhanced healing abilities hadn’t fully developed, but she was doing much better than anyone had expected after her near brush with death.
Now she slept, and that was good. However, sleep remained elusive for him. His mind turned over the possibilities endlessly.
Who would want Ari dead? Who would dare threaten him?
The obvious answer was that someone under the dome was gunning for Ari and they were affiliated somehow with her father. Someone paid to be here. It could be anyone.
Alejandro and Daria were here at the behest of Richard Templeton and therefore were a threat to Ari. That’s why he kept them so close. They would have been top on his list were it not for the fact they’d risked their lives to save her. He dismissed the notion. No, they were just good agents working under the notion they were doing good things.
There were some other possible suspects. Tomorrow he would set to work analyzing all the recent members once more, even closer, in an effort to discover who had done this.
He put his arm over his eyes and blew out a sharp breath. Ari reminded Daria of Julia. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. There were parallels. Julia had been tougher than Ari physically, but they’d both possessed the same touching vulnerability, a quality that made you like them right away and made you want to draw them under your wing.
His memories flashed back to that night, when he’d gone to take care of the witness. When Julia had seen his face on the camera at the base of the high-security building where they’d been protecting Stephen Miller, she let him right in. All going according to his plan, she’d met him at the door and smiled, asked him why’d come so late at night. He’d given her a plausible excuse . . . then choked her to death.
Christopher could still see the look of surprise on her face after he’d snaked his hand out fast and hard and caught her in the foyer of the apartment. He could still feel the way her slender neck had cracked under the pressure of his grip. He’d gone for her throat, so she couldn’t alert the two other guards.
He hadn’t wanted to do it; he’d grown to like Julia. Yet there’d been an undeniable, feral part of him that enjoyed her soft skin squeezing in his palms. A violent, maybe even age-insane, part of him had gloried in the control he’d had over her and enjoyed it when the light of her fragile, human life had flickered and died in her eyes.
Once he’d had a taste of that murder and it had coated his tongue like a sweetly bitter sip of wine, he’d gone in and killed the two guards. Fast. Clean. Cut their throats with a blade and let their blood sink into the beige carpet. The sight of it, the scent had made him insane with hunger.
He’d found Stephen Miller, an aging human who’d been his blood mother’s accountant, hiding in a closet. Before he’d pulled him out, he’d played with him a little, making him whimper and wet his pants.
Christopher had saved the best for last and had taken his time with the man. He’d tied him up and tortured him slowly, breaking each of his fingers and toes and biting pieces out of his arms, legs, and stomach until Miller had been insane with terror and only been able to babble.
Then Christopher had drained him slowly until Miller’s life had slipped from his fingers and Christopher had been sated.
He’d left the apartment that night high on what he’d done, crazed by it. That night, even though he’d loved Daria, he’d fought the urge to return to her apartment before his kills were discovered and torture her, too. That’s how much he’d wanted to do it again.
Christopher closed his eyes. Instead he’d plucked a homeless woman from the streets and sated his need.
That night he’d discovered a part of himself he’d always known existed, but had tried to suppress—the very edge of age-inspired insanity. One day Christopher knew it would come for him in earnest. When that happened, he would be a very dangerous Chosen.
Once the highs from his kills had worn off and the reality of what he’d done, and how much he’d enjoyed it, had set in, he’d sunk into depression.
After he’d served his short stint in jail for impersonating a human, he’d gone back to his blood mother and discharged himself from her forever. Then he’d disappeared for years, resurfacing only when the idea for the Shining Way had manifested itself in his mind and ultimately saved his wretched life.
There wasn’t a day that went by that he hadn’t seen the faces of Julia, the guards, or Stephen Miller in his mind’s eye. The homeless woman had never bothered his conscience much. There wasn’t a day he didn’t suppress the sweet flush of excitement those faces created in him as he remembered the killings.
Every day was an effort to remain sane. He’d been doing better with it, but with the attempt on Ari, he could feel his bloodlust flickering to life.
And the lust wasn’t very discriminate.
24
IN appreciation for saving Ari’s life, Sante flung open his arms and gave Daria and Alejandro everything they could want.
Even things they didn’t want.
The morning after the bombing, three Chosen men had arrived at their room. Within minutes, they’d been packed up and moved across the dome to much larger and fancier accommodations—a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment complete with a kitchen, a luxury reserved only for the wealthiest of Chosen under the dome.
Packing up their stuff had caused Daria some concern—so had moving from their private area where they could speak freely—but it wasn’t like they could refuse Sante’s gesture. That would look pretty suspicious. Once Alejandro and Daria reached their new digs, they’d resecured it.
Daria had taken one of the guest rooms.
Alejandro didn’t like it. He’d been brooding about it for two days now, casting only dark looks in her direction. But it had to be done. She had to distance herself a little from him.
A relationship was not what she’d gone into this mission looking for. She wasn’t ready for one yet. Maybe she’d never be ready for one.
It was her desire to not complicate her life. Her choice to remain alone. She had made that decision many years ago and she intended to maintain it. She didn’t need a man to be happy, or to complete her. She had her career. That was enough. Sex she could get anytime.
Not only had their rescue of Ari procured them nice new digs, they’d also gained a new respect around the dome. Entry to where they’d never been able to gain entry before.
