Deep Deliverance: The Deep Series, Book 3 (13 page)

“And I you.” Donte fell back onto the pillows before giving Adin’s flank a light slap.

“Be back soon,” Adin promised.

“Wait. I have something for you.”

Donte shifted, letting his legs fall over the side of the bed. He rifled the nightstand for his wallet, and when he found it, he dug out a black credit card. “I had this sent for you.”

“Is that what I think it is?” Adin’s heart quickened when he saw the name on the card read, “Dr. Adin Tredeger.”

“Don’t leave home without it,” Donte quipped.

“My, my. Does this make you my sugar daddy?”

“This—” Donte gestured to the card, “—gives me peace of mind. Whatever you need, just charge it. Call Boaz if you have need of something that can’t be purchased.”

Adin protested, “Must I make peace with Boaz? It’s not going to be easy. He’s such a smug, condescending—”

“He’s been invaluable to me time and again,” Donte pointed out. “And he’s saved your life more than once.”

“I know that.” Adin glanced at the card in his hands. “But he’s loyal to you, not me. There’s no shade of gray there. I don’t trust him.”

“The very fact that he’s loyal to me is why you
must
trust him, despite your misgivings. You’re the most important person in my life, and therefore, he’ll protect you with his.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s not enough to change my mind. He doesn’t respect me, and I’m pretty sure he’s jealous.”

“Fortunately, I’m not asking either of you to enter into a ménage a trios, I’m merely suggesting you accept his assistance if you need it.”

Adin huffed a sigh. “I will. I’m not an idiot. I realize he’s far more savvy than I am in the ways of the dark side.”

“How many times do I have to remind you.” Uncharacteristically playful, Donte tickled him. “This is not
Star Wars
.”

They tussled and kissed. Before Adin could get sidetracked, he pulled away. “Stop. I won’t leave if you keep that up.”

“Who says that’s not my goal?”

They shared one last kiss, and Adin took his wallet from his jeans and slid his new card into it. “Thank you for this. I’ve never been invited to own one.”

“My pleasure. The airport lounge access is always useful.”

“I get the same benefits with the platinum card, you know.”

“But the black one,” Donte purred, “is exclusive and exclusive looks good on us, don’t you think?”

“Status whore.” Adin gave him a little shove. “I liked you better when I believed you could turn into a bat.”

Donte’s laughter followed Adin out of the room. As Adin made his way to the elevator, his steps were jaunty, but lush carpet muted the sound. Ironically, he felt more alive than he had since he’d died. He felt a little manic, he thought, since all his body parts were pleasantly achy from amazing sex and his senses were on vampire high alert.

This new vibrancy, this hyperaware, hyper-alert happiness had to be because he’d been nourished and fucked and he’d finally accepted his fate.

He was
sanguine
.

Adin grinned at the word.

The elevator doors opened to reveal the car was nearly full. He stepped on, and as the doors slid shut, his predator idly catalogued the scents and sounds inside. Human skin. Human blood. Sweat and sex. Hair products and perfume and a particularly enticing men’s cologne. Adin glanced behind him and found a tired looking man in a gray pinstripe suit. Dark skin. Curly hair cut close to his head. Expensive watch. His eyes widened slightly when he saw Adin staring at him.

Adin turned back to the numbers next to the door panel. People shifted uneasily around him. He wondered if he was giving off some kind of weird freshly fucked vibe. He glanced around again. No. There was definitely something else going on here. His presence seemed to make people vaguely uneasy. The faint scent of fear hung in the air. Probably without realizing it, he too had sensed the presence of predators all his life.

There had been plenty of times when he’d been on an elevator just like that one, or aboard a train car, or in a darkened alley and he’d either backed discreetly away from someone—or closed the distance between them, depending on his mood and how reckless he’d been feeling.

He loved danger. He loved the moment of anticipation, the thrill of hurling his fate into the wind. He loved the delicious terror while he waited for the outcome. And now the man in the gray pinstripe suit was looking at him as if he, too, liked to live on the edge.

The smile that found Adin’s lips was a small one. Triumphant, but tight. The man in the suit was attractive and willing, but he had no clue what Adin really wanted. And Adin wasn’t stupid. He had promised to find Sean before feeding, because it would be foolish in the extreme to hunt alone, as new as he was to this.

The elevator made it to the ground floor, the doors opened, and Adin headed for the bar to call Sean. Maybe gray suit man would follow, and he could get Sean to come down—

Before he found a place to sit, his phone rang and he glanced at it.
Nuts.
Barrett Harwiche’s name came up in the caller ID. Whatever would he be calling for at this time of night? Adin answered, absently looking around to see if gray suit man had indeed followed him to the bar.

No sign of him. Too bad.

“Adin?”

“Hello, Barrett.” Adin’s tone probably sounded somewhat stiff. He hadn’t forgotten Tuan’s words, that tiger shifters hunte
d vampires for sport. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I wish you would have stayed here.”

Adin imagined Barrett’s lower lip was making its usual push out. He was completely certain he’d never been that young. “I’m sorry. Donte and I had things to talk over.”

“But I wanted to talk to you about those Beardsley prints.”

“Maybe some other time.”
Seriously?
There were probably boy band posters on his bedroom wall.
“Didn’t you show them to your father? What did he say?”

“How could I? He wasn’t ever here. Besides, Father was never interested in anything I did.” Barrett’s usual pouty inflection turned bitter.

“I’m sorry.” Maybe Barrett didn’t need an authenticator’s eye so much as he did a father figure. Then Adin remembered Barrett’s hands on his hips and pushed the idea aside. “I can get you the number of someone who can help you with those if you like. The information’s on my laptop, and I’m currently not in my room.”

“When I bought those Beardsleys, Father said he wanted to see them. He seemed almost excited about them. It was the last thing we ever talked about.”

That was kind of sad, really. “Barrett—”

“Come on, Adin. I know you know about things like this.”

Adin did know about things like that. He felt compelled to warn the boy. “There are tons of forged and later edition Beardsleys out there. Leonard Smithers produced them, even after Beardsley got religious and asked him to destroy his work.”

“I know that, but I got these from one of Father’s contacts. Father said if I was interested, he had a line on a true first edition
Lysistrata
that he believed to be the genuine article and—”

“Wait. Your father said he knew of a
first
first edition? There were only one hundred copies printed in 1896. Later editions, also called first editions, were printed by Beardsley Press in 1927. There are so many forged block prints and fakes out there it’s nearly impossible that what he was talking about is genuine.”

“My father thought it might be. The original page size on those was eleven and three-eighths by nine inches, bound in blue boards.”

“I’m not familiar with the details,” Adin admitted.

“What if it was for real though? What if we could find it? I’ll bet if we looked through his things we could find something, a clue.”

“How? His computer, his business papers, and things like that must still be in Paris, right?”

A soft rustling sound, as though Barrett sat up in bed, let Adin know he’d captured the boy’s attention. “His people boxed up all that stuff and sent it to my mother after he died. Nobody opened it or anything. My mother couldn’t care less.”

Harwiche’s papers? His contacts? His acquisitions receipts and notes? A passion Adin believed was dead stirred inside him. Every muscle in his body froze and he focused on Barrett’s voice like a hunting dog—alert, ready to dart after his preferred prey. “Does she still have it?”

“It’s in a storage place in North Hollywood.”

Adin’s excitement grew. He didn’t want to seem overly eager, didn’t want to give Barrett Harwiche, the pouting boy-man who showed an altogether unnatural interest in him, any leverage to use against him. “If you have the key it might be interesting to go out there sometime and see if we can find out what he’s been looking for. You’d have to have the prints authenticated, anyway, but if I could save you some trouble…”

“I could get the key,” Barrett said eagerly. “I know where it is.”

“Then—”

“It’s a twenty-four-hour place; we could go right now. I know his laptop is probably in there because my mother said—”

“No, it’s—” Adin tried to shut off the spigot of Barrett’s enthusiasm, but Barrett paid him no mind.

“—nothing on it mattered to her, but the lawyer said we should probably save all his papers, the laptop, and hard drives, because there would be tax questions later. I could pick you up in—like—half an hour and we could go look inside. Maybe we could get coffee after?”

Adin glanced at his watches again. 1:00 a.m.

He’d told Donte he was going to call Sean and feed. He’d planned to do just that. And nothing good ever came of changing his plans, following his impulses, or going behind Donte’s back.

But this wasn’t really behind his back, was it? He wasn’t going to feed, after all. He knew better than to hunt alone. He wasn’t going to do anything but check out this storage locker and hopefully discourage Barrett’s budding crush on him, or his desire to use him like a scratching post, or whatever Barrett had in mind.

Right then, he was also tingling all over with the nearly erotic pleasure of his used-to-be job—that of using his expertise to dive into history and chemistry and science to authenticate documents. To find something rare and precious and valuable.

This wasn’t hunting for sustenance; it was a
treasure
hunt. He’d been doing that half his life. History was his hunting grounds, and he’d been the top of the food chain there for a long, long time. If he didn’t need to give that up…if being turned gave him love and he could still navigate the human world well enough to do his job, then he could have everything he’d ever wanted.

“All right. Text me and let me know when you get here. I’ll meet you out front.”

Chapter Eighteen

Adin waited in the bar for Barrett’s text. It occurred to him that if he could find Ellen Wentzler, or anyone from the vampire welcome wagon, he could get that out of the way, but he didn’t know how to go about that without involving Donte or Santos or Sean. And really, what was the big deal? He wasn’t going hunting. No humans would be harmed, no laws broken, no underworld treaties violated, by a trip to some storage facility.

Barrett texted, and Adin headed out to meet him. He’d pulled up in a sweet little SUV with cushy leather seats and a booming sound system, and Adin got in without a backward glance. It occurred to him to let Donte know where he was going, but he figured that he was a grown man. And grown men whose lovers trusted them did not have to account for their every move.

“Hi, Adin.” Barrett’s smile could have been an ad for toothpaste or orthodontia. “I got the address and the key. It’s just off the 101 in North Hollywood.”

“Okay. Let’s go. You’re in charge of this expedition. I never drive in L.A.” Adin glanced around as they pulled away from the hotel and turned onto Olympic Boulevard.

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it. The traffic can be crushing but not at this time of night.”

Adin accepted that. He watched out the window as they drove. L.A. was so huge, and somewhere out there, his sister was working or driving or home, sleeping. Maybe she was out on a date. He hadn’t called her since he’d been turned. Hadn’t found a way to keep his emotions in check long enough to even consider it.

It was unavoidable, though. He’d have to man up and call while he was in town.

What’s the worst that could happen?

He’d make a late evening reservation for dinner and introduce her to Donte. They’d pass for human easily enough, if it was dark out and they’d recently fed.

Of course there was the problem of not eating food in a nice restaurant…

Maybe they could meet for drinks.

“What’s got you so preoccupied?” Barrett asked.

Adin turned back to him. “I was thinking about my sister. I need to touch base with her while I’m in town.”

“Sisters.” Barrett groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

“Don’t you and your sister get along?”

“She’s the most competitive person on the planet.” He paused to swoop onto a freeway on-ramp and merge into traffic. “She always has to have the last word. It’s exhausting trying to do anything when she’s around.”

“Which one of you is older?”

“She is. By ten measly minutes.”

“My sister is younger.”

Barrett nodded. “What’s she like?”

“Deana is a chemical engineer. She’s always been interested in science, while I was into the humanities, so we don’t have to compete. I mean. We do. She’s always telling me she’s the smarter one. Giving me advice. She works for Walkeil Pharmaceuticals.”

“Yeah? That’s the big building on Wilshire?”

“Yes.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Sudden longing made Adin glance at his hands. “Before I was turned.”

“Oh, Lucy,” Barrett laughed. “You got some splainin’ to do.”

Adin decided it was time to change the subject. “So how come you aren’t Ned Harwiche IV?”

“Technically, I am. Edward Barrett Harwiche IV. Technically, Elizabeth’s name is Sabine Elizabeth.”

“You
choose
to be Elizabeth and Barrett?”

“Okay, yeah…I know it’s creepy, but believe me, between the fact that the name Sabine reminds me of that scary-ass sculpture,
The Rape of the Sabine Women
, and being Ned Harwiche’s namesake, the names Elizabeth and Barrett are the lesser of several evils. We never attended the same schools, so no one teased us for being named after the Brownings. It’s tragic, but not so bad when we’re by ourselves.”

“Oh, that’s not tragic. What if they’d named you Heloise and Abelard?”

“Yeah, okay.” He grinned. “So we dodged a bullet there. My old man probably just didn’t think of it, or he would have named us that. He was a prick.”

Adin made a mental note of that. Elizabeth may have made her peace with Daddy, but there was definitely no love lost between Barrett and his father. He decided to change the subject. “Tell me about shifters.”

“What about them?”

“Do you live in some kind of pack or—”

“Dogs live in packs, Adin.” Barrett’s highly insulted words were accompanied by a careless sweep of his head that whipped his hair to one side. Adin had to admit, he was a pretty good-looking kid. There was no temptation there. Not just because Adin was with Donte, either. Adin liked men, not barely legal boys. “Tigers are fairly solitary and territorial.”

“Tell me what it’s like.”

Barrett glanced at him again, but wariness had replaced his normal open expression. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’ve known Tuan for years, and I just found out he’s some kind of panther shifter.”

“Black leopard.” Barrett shot him a look. “They call black leopards panthers, but they’re leopards. Jaguars in the Americas.”

“Thank you,
National Geographic
.”

“Well, you said… Anyway, I’m telling you. That’s what it’s like. Ignorant people ask you if you live in packs and call you by the wrong name.”

“I apologize.”

“You could call us all felid, and that would be fine.”

“Okay.” Adin nodded. This had to be the weirdest conversation Adin had ever had. But Tuan was so tight-lipped about things, and Adin sensed Barrett wasn’t quite as closed-off. “Felid then. So…you’re a tiger.”

“Yes.”

“And so are Elizabeth and your mother?”

“Yes.”

“How does that work? Do you live some part of the time as humans and some as tigers? Or—”

“We don’t share too much about ourselves for obvious reasons. Especially with anyone who could use the information against us. Historically, vampires are our sworn enemies, you know. I’m not making it up.” Barrett, it seemed, would be cagey about this thing as well. “It’s safer for everyone if less is known outside the families.”

“Even in this day and age?”

“Of course!” Barrett glanced at him, incredulous. “Things are sort of okay now, but there was a time when we could have been put to death just for hanging out together. Don’t you know anything?”

“No. I don’t.” Adin fumed. “And it’s because no one will tell me anything that I’m so ignorant.”

“Donte shouldn’t be keeping anything from you. He’s your boyfriend.” Barrett reached over and put his hand on Adin’s thigh. “I’m so sorry, Adin. All right. What do you want to know, then?”

“Okay. No.” Adin ejected Barrett’s hand from his lap. “We are not on a date.”

“All right, dude. Whatever.” Barrett made a sound that blew the fringe of his hair straight up. It fell perfectly back into place. Felid shifters must be as conscientious about grooming as any other feline species. While he couldn’t exactly picture Barrett sitting on the windowsill licking himself—or maybe he could, but he just didn’t want to—Adin could smell about ten different soap products, moisturizers, and a nice cologne emanating from him. He smiled into the darkness, just before they pulled into the A-1 Storage facility.

Barrett parked the car in a nearly deserted lot.

“Doesn’t look like anyone else is here.” Adin glanced over just in time to see Barrett take a look around. In that moment, Barrett’s tiger heritage was abundantly clear. He was watchful. Waiting. Somehow, despite his exuberant personality, he managed a tense silence that could only be described as predatory.

“I don’t think so. Can you sense anyone?”

“Not really.” Adin tried, he really did, but the city was too confusing for that. He probably could have said if there was a stranger present in their hideaway in Colorado, but here, where he was assaulted by a million different scents and sounds—where light was jarring and movement came from every corner—it wasn’t as easy. For the first time, he wondered whether it would have been smart to call Santos and Sean after all.

Stop it. You’re with a tiger shifter
.
You don’t need more protection than that.

Even if they sounded like a bad walked-into-a-bar joke, a vampire and a tiger shifter were probably pretty badass compared to anyone they’d find inside a storage place with twenty-four-hour video surveillance.

“So…” Barrett got out and joined Adin at the back of the SUV. “Are we looking for anything in particular? Like computers? Or—”

“I won’t know until I see it, I’m afraid. I had some idea it might be useful to see where your father’s travels took him. Maybe we could start with his laptop? Do you know the password?”

“I could probably figure it out. It’s not like Father was in Mensa or anything.”

“Fine. Then I think we should also look at anyplace he might have made a schedule. Travel itineraries. Business and shopping receipts.”

Barrett’s mouth hung open. “That will take forever.”

Adin glanced over at him. What had the kid expected? That they’d find a file folder with “Everything You Want to Know” written on the tab? “Research of this nature takes time.”

“But it will be so boring,” Barrett whined. “I was hoping we could go out for coffee or something. Maybe even hit a club or two.”

“Are you even old enough to—”

“Stop treating me like I’m a kid.” Barrett stamped his sneakered foot and ruined his big moment. “I can go anywhere I want in this godforsaken town. It’s not like anyone really cares.”

“Okay.” Adin nodded slowly. He wondered whether he should just grab that coffee and call a halt to the whole thing when something new caught Barrett’s attention and he turned away. “What’s that?”

Adin took a few steps to investigate the sound. Inwardly, Adin laughed his ass off.

“It’s an empty cardboard box. The wind apparently picked it up and now it’s scraping along the ground by the Dumpsters.”

“Oh.” Barrett turned to him with a flush on his cheeks. His unusual coloring was weirdly creepy in the glow of security lights.

“Let’s go look at what all is inside your dad’s storage locker, okay? Maybe there’s nothing useful in there and we’ll be in and out.”

“Okay.” Barrett pulled a key on a paper tag from the pocket of his skintight jeans. As they walked inside the facility, he whispered, “Does this place scream serial killer, or what?”

“I admit, it does have a vibe. I’m sure during the day it’s full of activity.”

Barrett glanced behind them. He was excited, not frightened, Adin realized. He was all prepared for grand adventure. Adin remembered being Barrett’s age only too well; he’d been embroiled in a love affair with one of his college professors, a man who was ten years older than Adin was now.

God. When he thought of it that way…

He winced.

“What is it?” Barrett asked. “You made a face.”

“Just thinking.”

“Here it is.” Barrett found the unit he’d been looking for. It was in the middle of a clean, well-lit corridor. Clearly marked. He fit his key into a relatively new padlock and it popped open with barely a sound. He pocketed both the key and the lock and opened the door wide. “All right. Here you go.”

The unit was very small. Barely the size of a closet. Inside, there were maybe twelve clearly marked boxes. They were neatly stacked. Taped shut. Labeled in French.

“This isn’t much.” Adin took a look at the first one. “Books and papers. Not very descriptive.”

“The laptop’s in this one.” Barrett moved a box from the bottom of a stack of two to the top. “Do you want to open it here?”

“There’s no way I could get any information off your father’s laptop here. I’d need to take it back to the hotel, or—”

“There’s not much at all. It would fit in my car. What if we just take these, and you can look them over some other time.”

“Are you sure your mother would allow that?”

“Please.” Barrett tilted his head to an uncomfortable-looking angle and looked at him from under his lashes. “My mother couldn’t care less about this stuff, as long as we get it back when the accountants need it. They’ll only need it if my dad’s estate is audited. Which it won’t be. No one is going to care.”

Adin thought that was probably a major oversimplification, but he wasn’t above taking advantage.

When had he turned into
that
guy? A man like Charles, who wasn’t above taking advantage of a kid? A man who had the wisdom and maturity of age but used someone younger and more naive to further his own ends? This was pretty selfish. This could get Barrett into real hot water.

“Look. Why don’t you call your mother and let me talk to her. I’ll explain the situation to her, and if she says it’s all right, we’ll go ahead.”

“I can’t. She’s nocturnal, right?”

Adin didn’t understand. “So then she’d be up.”

“But she isn’t. She has to take sleeping pills, so she can shop and go to the spa and the gym during the day. My mother’s entire life is about making those rich women on reality television look like hillbilly trash. You’d have a better chance waking up my father.”

Adin hesitated.

“Seriously, Adin. If I know anything about my family it’s that nobody cares about my father’s papers. They wouldn’t be here in storage if anyone wanted them. And you aren’t going to keep them forever, are you? You’ll give them back when you’re done, right?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll put them in the truck and go get a drink. I swear. For a vampire, you’re kind of a twat.” Barrett picked up a stack of boxes as easily as if they’d been full of tissue paper. Seeing hi
s lithe, lean form in motion, watching his grace as he carried the boxes out of the tiny storage unit and down the hall, was mesmerizing.

Watching him walk away was a revelation. Like his mother, Barrett walked like he had a tail, even when he wasn’t shifted.

Adin picked up a stack of two boxes. While he could have carried more, he liked to see where he was going. At least, he told himself he had to watch his footing, so his eyes wouldn’t accidentally land on anything else, like Barrett’s very young ass.

“Jesus Christ,” Adin complained when they made the third and final trip.

“Something the matter?” Barrett asked.

Adin let his mind go anywhere but how good the kid looked, slightly rosy and disheveled. Damp from his exertions. “If you were to shift, you could pretty much kill me with one bite, right?”