Cloak of Deceit: An Alex Moore Novel (28 page)

I opened the door.

The hallway was quiet. I snuck along the wall and made my best guess when I came to a “T” then doubled back when I reached a dead end, losing more precious time. Any second an alarm would go off, or I would hear Fido let loose and on my trail again. Instead, what I heard as I neared another intersection was a scratchy voice over a radio.

“We-
shpt
—eed help in the East corridor.
Shhhh-zzzpt
ambush.”

I crouched against the wall and waited to see what the guard would do. His boots thudded down the hall in the opposite direction of my hiding place, so I slid around the corner and followed.

Ambush!
Maybe the collective had heard me and sent the cavalry. Or maybe…Julian had come for me?

G.I. Joe led me back to a familiar hallway and up a set of cement stairs. Another guard joined him from a side corridor, and I had to fall back. I don’t know how they’d missed me, other than they were focused on covering ground. Afterwards I was more careful to keep my antennae tuned for others. I sensed at least six Undead as we approached the front lines of the ambush.

The guards burst ahead of me through some double doors into a large room, guns firing to join the onslaught. The hall where I crouched was filled with smoke and plaster dust as the cafeteria beyond the doors got tore up from the floor up.

I tucked into an alcove, sandwiched between the wall and a vending machine, trying to remember if there was another way out. A stray bullet shattered the glass next to me, and I screamed. It was a reflex — I couldn’t help it.

“Get the girl!” a voice shouted.

There was a break in the gunfire, and when it started again, it was aimed in my direction as one of the guards backed through the doors to retrieve me. I screamed again as bullets whizzed over my head, and felt a surge of power as my survival instincts took hold.

The vending machine flew into the commando’s back, crunching him into the floor. It continued to sail, tearing the swinging doors from their hinges, careening into the center of the showdown.

Four guards huddled nearest to me behind a pile of overturned tables and chairs. One of them glanced at me standing there, but they were too busy laying down cover fire to do anything about me.

Then I saw him on the other side of the lobby. He was only a shadow, but the way he moved, ducking and spinning as bullets whizzed past — I knew it was him.

Without another thought, I dove into the room and started to crawl towards Julian.
My
Julian. I was almost there! Shots rang out around me. My limbs were moving too slow, like I was climbing through foot-deep mud. I felt a white hot poker stab through my left upper arm and I spun, flipping onto my back. I wanted to scream. Not from pain — the pain was nothing — but from being so close and yet so far away. Could I get one fucking break?

The lights exploded overhead, raining sparks and exploded glass down. I shielded my eyes, and then flipped back over with a grunt, determined to crawl the rest of the way with one arm as fast as I could.

I had barely got my elbow underneath me when an arm reached out of the smoky shadows, scooped me up by the waist, and hauled me through another door. Gunfire echoed behind us as Julian set me on my feet.

I don’t know what I had expected to see. A wistful girl inside me somewhere had imagined him sweeping me up in his arms and kissing me senseless.

I opened my mouth to say something —
you came for me
— anything, but he shoved me forward yelling, “Run!” He turned to shoot down the hall behind us, shielding me with his body as I led the way out.

We rounded a corner into a smaller hallway and I recognized where we were from Leo’s mind: one more turn and up the stairs to freedom. I pulled Julian behind me, refusing to let go of his hand. I would never let go again, if I had it my way. The corner of the wall exploded inches away from his face as we took the last turn. I yanked us through a door into a run-down office. Julian let go of me to reload his gun, and I took the opportunity to mentally shove three of the five metal desks against the door.

He tensed at first, ready to shoot the possessed furniture, but then backed out of the way. He raised his eyebrows at me as the desks stacked against the door. “You’ve been practicing.”

I kept the smile off my face as I answered him with a casual shrug. “You were taking too long.”

He shot me a wry look, but whatever he would have said was cut short by bullets pounding at the door. Julian grabbed me by the arm and towed me out of the building without another word.

The downpour outside drenched us the second we hit the pavement. I didn’t care. It felt amazing. I hadn’t had a shower or changed my filthy, bloody clothes for I didn’t know how long. I paused to wipe beads of rain away from my face, but Julian jerked me along and set off at a stride I had to run to keep up with. We sloshed through puddles at an Undead pace, and he kept checking over his shoulder. We came to a block lined with open shops and coffee shops. He slowed, walking like your average wino out for a rainy night stroll.

I stopped at the front window of a busy café and gaped at the people inside. It seemed so wrong for it to be there, little more than a mile away from the Lex Press, from the lair of an Undead Cabal with a demented leader. People just sat there, sipping their lattés, gossiping about their quaint little lives.

You used to be one of them
.

It seemed like a lifetime ago. Technically, it was.

“Alex,” Julian barked. I turned my head to see him standing next to an open car door at the curb, the rain plastering his hair to his forehead. I looked back at the life I had left behind one more time and shook my head. An outsider in every possible way, I turned to the reality of my present. I guess it was a good day, since for now I still had a future beyond a slow, torturous second —third?— death.

I slid across the back seat of the car and looked up to see a familiar set of spring-blue eyes watching me in the rear-view mirror.

“Carl!” I lunged forward to hug him with my good arm, surprised at the surge of joy I felt at seeing him. Carl gripped onto me hard, his face constricted with emotion.

Before either of us could say anything, Julian slammed the car door. “Step on it.”

I settled back, trying to adjust to how quickly things had been turned right-side-up again. In the warm, quiet interior of the car, my tense muscles turned to Jell-O with a mixture of relief, exhaustion, and being totally overwhelmed. I wanted to cry, whoop for joy, and pass out all at once.

“Let me see this.” Julian examined my gunshot, still expressionless.

“It’s fine.” With gritted teeth, I pulled away from his probing fingers. He squeezed until I held still. I peered at the red bulge of flesh where a chunk of my arm used to be. I wasn’t even bleeding. “See? It’s already closing up.”

Julian gave the wound a thorough examination, his brows furrowed. He ran a finger along the scratch on my jaw, nothing more than dried blood now. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Nothing a little therapy won’t fix.” I shrugged, trying to make light of it.

Julian didn’t find it funny. His grave expression wilted at the corners, revealing the tiredness and worry underneath. My vision of him blurred with tears.

He crushed me against him. His arms locked around me like steel bands. The rest of my strength drained away. I closed my eyes and melded myself to his body, forgetting everything else for a blissful second of sheer elation. Julian was there, alive, and holding me. After everything that had been done and said between us, and everything that hadn’t, he still wanted to hold me. Just then, nothing else mattered.

He mumbled something into my hair.

I didn’t hear him the first time, my ears were ringing, and my tears muffled his voice. I eased away, wiping my face. “What?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“No.” I grabbed hold of his trench coat with both hands and shook my head. “This is not your fault. I ran. I got caught. This is all on me.”

He blinked and then looked down, clenching his jaw. “Why did you run, Alex?”

My mouth hung open for a moment as the answer to his question resurfaced. In all the excitement, I had truly forgotten. Life and death situations have a tendency to make everything else seem pretty mundane. But the memory of Julian’s fangs sinking into Monique’s neck ran together with all the other too-intimate glimpses she’d forced on me. I winced, freshly stung by the memories. I let go of him and fell back into my seat.

Julian’s expression faded to something close to anguish. I hated the look on him. No matter what happened between us, he had tried to keep his word to me. He’d never promised to love me. That hadn’t been part of our deal. I’d fallen in love all on my own. I couldn’t punish him for it. Monique had lied to him and manipulated him. I shook my head again. “No. Julian, I’m sorry. I saw the two of you, and I just…Oh God, Julian, Monique—”

He lifted his gaze back to mine, heavy with regret. Regret for me, or for Monique, I couldn’t tell. My throat felt tight.

“I didn’t mean for you to see that.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Julian, it’s okay, she—”

“She’s dead.”

“What?”

“We’ll talk about it later.” Julian cleared his throat and tore his gaze from mine as if it physically hurt him to look at me. “Let’s just get to the hotel.”

Chapter Nineteen

A
small sitting area attached our rooms. By ours, I mean the one I apparently shared with Julian, and Carl’s. My stomach did a little flip when I realized this, but I couldn’t be sure if it came from nerves or excitement. I said goodnight to Carl in a daze, hugged him, and let Julian lead me into
our
room.

The door closing behind us sounded very final. As I looked around at the lushly appointed boudoir, I couldn’t help but wonder if he intended on doing more than just talking. How did I feel about that? I didn’t have to consider it, really. I still wanted Julian. More than ever. But I had no idea how he felt, especially now. Unsure of myself, I hovered in the middle of the room.

“There’s a robe in the bathroom. I brought you new clothes for after you’ve cleaned up.” He gestured to the door on the other side of the suite.

I nodded and silently slipped past him.

He stopped me with a hand on my shoulder, turned me around. His expression was impossible to read, and my powers must have been tapped out because I didn’t catch even a hint of aura. “And then we’re going to straighten some things out.”

“All right,” I agreed, completely neutral. I hated being so careful not to reveal my feelings, but navigating the snare of issues between Julian and I would probably prove more challenging than escaping Derek’s Chamber of Horrors.

The most intrusive of my worries dissolved as the hot shower cleansed away the grime and blood from my body and the taint from my spirit. I was free, with Julian and Carl, and we were safe. For now. I was pretty much whole. My arm had almost healed. Everything since the inhibitor chamber episode with Monique — the last time I had spoken to Julian — seemed like one long nightmare. Looking back, I couldn’t imagine how I got through it. Yet, there I was.

I must be tougher than I thought.
The idea lent me the strength to face my hardest battle yet, the one with my own heart. How would I handle whatever it was that Julian wanted to straighten out? There were so many things I wanted to tell him, to apologize for. Where would I begin?

Julian stood by the window when I exited the bathroom. He’d taken off his boots and coat. His arms were crossed over his chest, his black T-shirt stretched across his imposing shoulders.

I set my bundle of dirty clothes in a chair and came to stand beside him. We had an excellent view of the city from our room. The lights glittered below us like a garden of stars. That normal world hovered just beyond. So far away from our ghostly reflections in the dark glass: Julian’s hard-set and intense, mine pale and wispy. I looked almost as nervous as I felt, a doe caught in headlights. What did he have to say to me? Did I really want to hear it?

“Jules?” I placed a trembling hand on his arm.

He whirled on me, and before I could blink, he’d sealed our mouths together in a hot, mindless kiss. After giving my brain a second to catch up, I surrendered to his sudden rush. The force of it would have knocked me over if I hadn’t held on so tight.

Julian’s tongue lashed against mine, wickedly demanding my inevitable response. My focus narrowed to encompass only him. His lips, teeth, and tongue claiming me. Owning me. His hands fisted in my robe at my lower back, the heat of him pressing against me like several atmospheres of pressure. Days of yearning compounded into a solid force, slamming us together like two supernovas.

We backed towards the bed until we toppled over with him on top. My skin broke out in a sweat, a fever burning down the front of my body. I had no hunting instincts or bloodlust to blame for it. I wanted him that badly all on my own. Every swirl of his mouth tasted like honeyed whiskey, searing down my throat and straight to my core
.