“But, not ‘til dark...not ‘til dark.”
The deputy sheriff grinned a horrible, lopsided smile and waited for the darkness to come.
~~~
Braze held the phone to his ear, but the words his lawyer was saying were not the ones he had hoped to hear.
“...no, no...they’ve got it all tied up, Mr. Abraxis. There’s no point in going down there.”
He heard real frustration in the man’s voice. Braze had promised him a handsome bonus to make short work of this. And it was understood by both of them the other side of that shiny coin meant that the lawyer and his entire firm would be cut loose from future dealings with the company if they did not meet expectations.
What he was saying to Braze did not sound like they had.
“Apparently, the Fresci woman has people in city hall. Family, actually. And highly placed.
“I’m just on my way back from trying to get in to see Miss Renardine, but the police won’t budge and they’ve got the backing from some judge who’s in the family’s pocket.”
Braze hammered his fist down upon his office desktop making everything on it jump.
He took a breath and let it out slowly, then said, “You realize that this is not the result I asked for..?”
The man on the other side of the phone call replied with a shaken voice, “I know...I know. But our hands are tied until tomorrow morning. They tell me eight a.m. at the latest.”
Braze could hear the fear in the man’s voice and it sickened him. All weakness was disgusting. Especially now, when it mattered most.
“Tomorrow morning is not good enough. I am going to her...right now.”
The lawyer stuttered something then found his words.
“But, the police, sir...they will stop you before you even get past the front desk.”
A smile slipped onto Braze’s lips and there was no humor in it. Rather, it was a promise of violence and ruin to anyone who got in his way.
“Let them try,” he growled before stabbing the button that ended the phone call.
The huge man stood up and walked to the plate glass windows that made up the office’s walls on all sides.
The city was beneath him. All of it, including the people punier than the smallest ants, was beneath him, yet here he was powerless to free Sara from their system. But only if he played according to men’s rules. Rules meant to corral the weak.
Then like a whisper that tickled along his spine, Braze heard someone speak.
The weakness is yours.
It had been for so short a time, but he had always known that it had merely been but a respite and not a reprieve.
With a voice that echoed through corridors of death and dust covered bones, the voice spoke again.
I warned you. And now she has made you weak...divided.
Braze brought his hands to his head, knowing it would do no good. Covering his ears would not shut out the voice that came from within.
“You lied to me, father. Clement is alive. You knew it all along.”
Silence followed, but Braze knew the presence had not left him. He could feel it crawling in his skin, slipping along the twisted lines of the tattoos upon his body.
It was necessary, Braze, said the voice at last.
He would have been a distraction to you. And, now despite all my efforts, all my sacrifices, you have chosen the same path of weakness. The woman has left you open for a blood letting, and you allow it. Despite all that I have taught you.
Braze growled.
“There is no use in trying to divert me from the subject. You lied about Clement. Which begs the question...what else you have kept from me?”
He forced his hands down from his head, then seized his shirt and ripped it open. Buttons scattered to the floor while upon his chest black patterns and figures crawled and twisted.
“What other lies have you told, Father?”
Braze’s voice twisted in bitterness as he continued.
“What else have you hidden from me with all your scheming?”
Silence...boy. You are not yet the wolf that I was. You go too far in your reproach.
Can you deny that I have been right at every turn? Can you deny that I made the ultimate sacrifice to bring our kind into the modern world of men and that because of me, we are not far from becoming alpha of them all?
My choices were never easy ones. Not for your mother, nor for your brother.
But, I made them. It was necessary. No less necessary than the research I carried out the world over, turning over the least rock to winnow out rare arcane knowledge that would allow us to tie our souls together for all time.
You were not the one who slipped his head into the noose and kicked the chair out from under himself.
I knew fear in that moment, but I mastered it in the name of our cause. And as the runes upon your body held fast to my spirit, doors opened upon patterns and prophecy that are ours for the taking.
The company has flourished ever since. You have flourished ever since.
Where is the deception in that, my son? You who willingly took the writing of long dead languages upon your very skin. You did so with your eyes wide open.
Braze trembled with the truth in his father’s words. He had allowed it. Accepted it.
But how he had come to hate it.
“Leave me be. I am going to her and will bring her back here. She will be my mate, father, whether you will it or no.”
In his mind, Braze heard the grumbling of a hoary throat. A growl issuing from the jawbone of a long dead beast that sifted into dry, ash covered laughter.
And this, too, was necessary. While we argue, the woman has been taken by a minion of the would-be usurpers.
Braze froze, then said, “What did you just say?”
She has fallen into the hands of the vampires, Braze, and has passed beyond your reach.
Will you now, at last, accept the futility of this pursuit and come back to your true purpose?
He understood, then. His father had never been so long-winded. Only this time he had charmed Braze into listening while Sara was spirited away by the enemy.
Braze bowed his head in apparent defeat, then said, “Yet another lesson for me from my wise father. He who would see the world ruled by wolves and was willing to take his own life in exchange for the power of seeing just enough of the future that we prosper upon every choice we make. We have traded fang and claw for board rooms and committees, all in a bid for a dominance undreamed of by our wild forebears.
“Alas, I would hazard you have not foreseen at least one thing. And that is that your lessons have taught a dutiful son how to hate his own father.”
He rushed across the room and seized an overcoat from within a closet, then slammed his thumb down on the elevator button.
“A hard lesson,” he whispered into the sudden silence, “...but a necessary one. Just like so many others you have taught me. This one, however, is not one I shall soon forget.”
The elevator doors whispered open and Braze quickly tapped the code that would take him to his private parking garage.
He would find her and take her back. Even if it killed him.
~~~
Officer Branson checked the duty roster again and groaned. He had just pulled two weeks straight of third shift and here he had been put down for another two weeks.
“What the fuck did I do to deserve this?” he grumbled to no one in particular then went to take his place at the front desk. Granted that third shift was not as long as most shifts in the police barracks, but anyone who thought the front desk job was easy was someone who had never had to plant their ass behind it and listen to the crazies as they rolled in through the night.
Three a.m. can’t come soon enough, he thought. That’s when he would have his lunch break. At that time of day, or night to be exact, he was never very hungry, but he could coffee up hard and down some empty carb’s to get him through until his relief showed up at 7 a.m.
It was already
past 11 which meant the usual rush of weirdos in about an hour. They were mostly harmless, but sometimes there was serious trouble blown in the door with them and it would be up to him to sort it out.
He thought again about being forced to keep at it for a month straight and murmured, “Fucking fuckers...if I have to, I’ll have a word with the union rep. I’ve got seniority for chrissakes.”
It would be nearly a year and half before the hour of his retirement would sound, but he felt like he had already been put out to pasture. He sighed, then said under his breath, “Rat bastards think I don’t deserve better....”
And then, just as quickly, he felt bad about cursing. His Rosie would not have liked it. Two years earlier Officer Branson had found his wife lying on the living room floor when he had gotten in late one evening from work.
He remembered how strange it was to hear the vacuum cleaner humming away at such an hour and that led him straight in to see what Rosie was up to.
She liked a clean house and she liked a clean mouth.
A saint is what she was, he thought as he remembered her frown each time a curse word slipped by his guard.
He cleared his throat at the memory of her, then thumbed through the day’s register once again. Nothing too special except for the Renardine woman and God only knows how that would shake out.
Pretty girl implicated in such an ugly crime. After all these years and all the crazy things he had seen, Chet Branson could only shake his head over the whole thing.
The little red light on the underside of the desk’s counter flickered bright then dimmed again and Officer Branson sighed. At one time the front door of the police barracks had been equipped with a buzzer to signal every time someone stepped into the building. But the noise had driven the cops half crazy before they switched it back out for just a light.
Here come the crazies, he thought. The first of the night that would at best make the hours slip by a little more quickly until his break, or at worst, leave him a jittery mess and wishing he still smoked. Only his Rosie...God rest her soul...would not have liked that either.
The man who walked calmly to the front desk did not appear to be crazy. He was tall, of medium build, dark brown eyes. Caucasian, but probably of eastern European descent. Officer Branson made him out to be approximately thirty five years of age and saw no obvious scars or tattoos.
“Good evening, Officer,” he said as he approached, “I wonder if I might have a little of your valuable time.”
Ok, that’s different, the policeman thought, quickly followed by, I wonder what he’s selling?
“It’s my understanding that you have a certain Sara Renardine in your custody. Is my information correct, Officer?”
Chet frowned. He did not care much for the press. Reporters getting their stories only half straight before slapping it down for everyone to see and to hell with the consequences.
“I think you already know that I can’t confirm nothing, buddy. Not one way or the other,” he said, hoping the man before him would just back off and leave.
Instead, he smiled with a mouth full of bright, shining teeth.
“Yes, of course,” the man replied, “But, I thank you all the same, Officer...”
Hesitating, he glanced at the policeman’s chest, then finished “...Branson.”
He turned around and started to walk back the way he had come in then seemed to remember something.
“Oh, yes. Officer Branson, I nearly forgot....”
Chet watched him as he quickly came back toward the desk. His hand drifted down to his sidearm in a reflex that was hard to shake after all these years. Any sudden movement and he would start to reach for an arm that had not been pulled on a suspect for twenty years. Only, here...something felt like it was about to turn hinky.
“I have a message for you. From a dear woman by the name of Rosie,” he said as he came close to the policeman.
“Rosie,” Chet repeated vacantly as he watched, fascinated by the man’s mouth. There were just so many teeth.
“Yes...Rosie,” the man said, his voice calm and extraordinarily soothing, “She wants me to tell you that you will be joining her far sooner than expected.”
The man’s dark eyes seemed to grow larger as Chet looked back at him. His revolver forgotten, the policeman could not move as those eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, inviting him in.
“...expected,” Officer Branson mumbled.
“That’s right. But first, we shall both go visit your little unconfirmed guest and see how she’s doing.”
The policeman made no reply nor did he mind as the creature came round the desk to pluck away the keychain fastened at his belt.
Chet felt a nudge from behind as a voice said, “Lead the way, Officer.”
Lurching into motion, he walked away from the front desk and whispered, “Rosie.”
And no one questioned him as he led the tall man down hallways that most innocent people never see. Together, they went back to the holding cells and Chet had no problem with opening locked doors.
He was going to see Rosie. And that was a wonderful thing to know.
They had brought her a meal. Tasteless and dry, she was not even sure what it was pretending to be and the useless plastic spork on the tray left much to be desired.
Sara had barely touched it. She had lost her appetite as the hours had passed and still no one had come to get her out. In particular, no one named Braze.
The thought of it made her sick.
What if they convinced him I did it? she asked herself. A few hours ago, such an idea would have been laughable. But now, with no sign of any rescue in sight, thoughts like these began to worry at her like rats chewing on the ropes of a shipwreck.
She was going to go down. The thing that called itself the Journeyman had decided she was of no more use to him and had hung her out to dry.
The worst of it was that she knew it was true. She had gone too far with Braze. If she ever saw him again, she would tell him...all of it. No detail spared and then she would throw herself at his feet and beg forgiveness.
Perhaps he would be able to forgive her. Or, perhaps, he had already decided he could not.
These thoughts circled round and round in her mind, a thing that spun like a mouse trapped under a glass dome. Turning round in endless circles that served nothing.
She would have liked to sleep. But this too escaped her and she could only hug her sides with her own arms wrapped tightly around her body. The irony of it was not lost on her as she thought how it had only been a matter of hours and it had been his strong arms around her.
Her tears ran when she was sure that she had none left. But apparently they were endless this day.
She heard a sound then. Muffled through the heavy door, Sara heard the distinct sound of keys jingling against one another on a keyring before the lock mechanism of the cell’s door clicked.
The door swung wide and she saw a portly policeman step through the door. His eyes had a strange, empty look to them, then her attention was quickly drawn to the man who followed him.
Tall, elegant...an air of self-assured calm. Sara did not dare to hope, but he looked like he might even be a lawyer.
Maybe Braze had not abandoned her to her fate after all.
Except that all hope disappeared as the man bared his lips in what might have passed for a smile.
Sara knew then. Large, overlong canines lay in that overly wide smile. The kind of teeth meant for piercing the flesh of men.
“Greetings, Sara,” he said in a strong, clear voice, “It’s so nice to put a face to the name after all I’ve heard about you.”
Sara held her tongue. Her situation had gone from bleak to outright ruin in the space of five seconds. A half minute more and she did not doubt that her troubles would no longer bother her.
Again that hideous smile.
“Oh, I’m not here to...” he paused, relishing the moment, then said “...rub you out.”
He chuckled and pushed p
ast the overweight policeman who only stood there staring blankly at the wall.
“That’s how they say it, don’t they? Among cops and robbers.”
She tried to rally her courage and replied, “Maybe...about fifty years ago, mostly in old movies. But, I suppose that doesn’t sound so long ago to someone like you.”
His tone turned grave as he answered, “No, not too long for someone like me. You are right about that.”
He walked toward her and Sara did her best not to shrink back from him.
“In any case, I wish you no ill, Sara. I am merely a...how shall I put it? A facilitator.
“Yes, that’s it. I am here to facilitate. And for exactly what reason might I facilitate, you wonder?
“If you did...and I assume that you do...I would tell you that I am here to see it that you leave this awful place and these desperately boring policemen and their incessant forms-to-be-filled-out-in-duplicate long behind. I mean, really...who uses carbon paper these days?”
He leaned close, looking her over, and despite herself Sara felt the pull of his dark eyes.
“Only he didn’t tell me just what a delectable creature you really are....”
Dark pools swept toward her and, instinctively, Sara fought against it. She cleared her throat and croaked, “What do you mean? Aren’t you the Journeyman?”
He laughed then and she felt the pressure of his gaze ease some.
“No, of course not. I mean, really...have you seen him? Have you seen me?”
Pale hands smoothed his suit jacket’s lapels.
“I suppose he must have wiped his image from your mind but there is no resemblance, I assure you, Sara. On the other hand, he is our mutual employer...his term, not mine...and it is on his behalf that I am here.”
Sara shuddered. The nightmare of the Journeyman threatened to come back and swallow her whole. Thoughts of the creaking, limping way the thing had moved before rushing toward her with dark emptiness where it’s face should have been made her feel ill.
She could not stop the gooseflesh rippling down her arms.
“I know,” he said, “His appearance does leave much to be desired, but who are we to judge, Sara?”
Her Billionaire, Her Wolf--The Novel (A Paranormal Alpha Werewolf Romance) Page 14
