Masters of the Night (18 page)

“Don’t need them.”

He sailed on with her toward the Shadows’ apartments.

“Cold?” he asked tenderly.

“No,” she said, smiling, drawing her face close to his and clasping her
arms tighter around his neck. “You’re warm.”

“Scared?”

“Not when I’m with you.”

He didn’t tell her he himself was just a tad this side of terrified.
They could be shot out of the sky.

As if in response to his thoughts, the air sizzled next to him.

A crossbow bolt.

He flew higher, faster, but careful lest Angie lose her breath from the
speed of the chase. She burrowed her head into his chest to breathe, but began
drifting in and out of consciousness.

The bolt had been angled, so he knew the attacker wanted Angie alive.
The crossbow was to wound him, to bring them down into the dark web beginning
to form far beneath them.
A web of wings.

He flew into a cloud to gain momentary obscurity. Hovering, drifting,
he held the mystic helplessly, not knowing what to do. He pulled her close,
loving her, agonizing in a thousand sorrows for what might happen to her. She
was in a world not of her making. A single tear trailed his cheek. “I am so
sorry, Angie,” he whispered.

Through the misty cloud, he could see the moon shining high in the sky,
looking on.

Cold.
Heartless.

He looked past it to the heavens. And a silent cry rose from the depths
of his being, from the depths of his love for the mystic.

Help us!

He felt Angie’s heartbeat against his chest, beating so…

He felt her pouch against his thigh.

“Angie, do you have any holy water?” he asked quickly.

“Didn’t have to use it,” she said. “Are they still shooting at us?”

“Only one.
One
shooter.
We need the water, Angie. Who blessed it?”

“Stephen.”

“He has spent his life making amends for me. They will scatter like
crows when it hits them.”

She pulled out the vial. Henri flew out of the cloud. “Do you see what
is below us?”

She looked down. A patch of city lights was blocked out by an amoeba of
black.

“Shower the water over them like a rainfall,” Henri directed.

The water fell like rain drops down, down in a cascade onto the undead
amoeba.

The amoeba split into smoking wings and masses of screaming bones.

The night held no more bolts. Henri flew hard and fast.

By the time he reached the slayers’ apartments, Henri was in
gut-wrenching agony, the excruciating pain in his arms becoming unbearable.
Balancing Angie in his grasp, he slammed his free hand against the house
buzzer.

A light came on in the apartment building foyer. He stepped back—and
caught a familiar scent in the air.

Nicholas slithered up the side of the apartment building like a spider
to sit on the roof and take in the scene unfolding in the night. He looked very
pleased with himself.

But whoever had grabbed Brandi from behind and pursued them with a
crossbow had no scent.

18.

Taniesha
gasped as she saw
Angie in Henri’s arms, weak and tattered.

“What did you do to her?” she cried out in anger, drawing a stake from
its sheath as she shouted toward the stairs, “Andre! James!”

“Call the doctor, Andre!” James yelled as he rushed down the stairs.
His crossbow rose into the air to confront the Royal.

“She doesn’t need a physician,” Henri said, his eyes fixed on the
weapons beginning to mass against him as he lowered Angie to her feet. Stroking
her hair away from her face, he smiled into her eyes and said, “Throw some holy
water on her. She’ll be fine.”

“Where is Brandi?” they demanded.

“With Stephen.
Her head had a
slight run-in with a wall.”

“Henri didn’t do anything to her,” Angie said quickly as the Ethiopian
slayer glared at him, tightening her grip on the stake.

Henri’s eyes splintered toward the crossbow slayer. The bow string was
taut, the bolt on deck ready to fly.

“She was playing dodge ball with a phantom,” Angie said swiftly.

So.
She did not
know there had been another player on the court,
Henri realized.

“Get her inside,” he said firmly to Andre.

Andre understood.

Angie swooned a little, and Andre yanked her from Henri’s side and took
her into the apartments.

Threading a
melty
thought her way of being in
bed with her naked, and to put a candle in the window if she wanted more than a
thought of his deep thrusts in her tonight, he flashed away from the weapons
too eager to end him and became a blur on the walk.

But as he left, Henri could hear Nicholas conveniently appearing at the
steps he had vacated, soft talking the Ethiopian night fighter.

“I tried to help her,
Tani
.”

Tani
.

Henri became angry. The vanguard was wheedling their affection, getting
on a friendly nickname basis with them right off the bat to throw them off his
true scent. The coyote coming to the dog pen to pretend to be one of them, even
chasing the ball until he could strike and grab them by the throat with his
jaws.

The Realm vanguard was about to walk right into their midst, parading
as an atoning
vampyre
.

Henri slipped behind a hedge to listen to his sidewalk sales pitch.

“Your mystic was attacked by phantoms in apparitions from her past,”
the
vampyre
said, his tone almost sorrowful. “I tried
to take the memory of their attack from her, but she is mentally strong and
resisted my efforts. I fought them, but I could not offer her much help. They
are not mine to command. She had to fight alone. I’m sorry.”

“Whose are they?”

He looked away as though looking into the phantoms of his own past.
“They were
Janey’s
—and Henri’s.”

Henri thought of some choice names for him as he listened to this
master of lies.

The Shadows embraced Jane’s evil vanguard into their midst, almost with
affection.

Were they insane?

Nicholas, the master spinner of tall tales, led them easily. How many
vampyres
had he promised he would share their blood with
when he finally took them? Henri wondered.

Shape-shifting into a raven, Henri flew to the high branches of a
sycamore next to the apartments, to alight and contemplate his miserable
existence.

His attempts at atonement had profited him nothing.

Now a master slayer would be after his head because of the vanguard’s
lies.

And then there was James Lauren …

And that damned crossbow.

And a Realm assassin.

And that damned crossbow.

He heard a sound below him, voices in low tones inside the apartment
building behind the foyer’s glass doors.

Nicholas stood on the stair landing—with Angie on a step slightly above
him. He had license to enter, but no one else could invade the building without
an invitation.

His cape was draped around him, and he smiled at her like Captain
America.

Damn you, Nicholas,
Henri thought
hotly.

Explaining his relationship with the Lady Jane Weston, he was
interjecting just enough truth into his stories to make them flavorful,
believable.

Henri flew to a higher branch and shadowed so the mystic could not
sense him.

Not that she would have noticed him anyway in her apparent
pre-occupation at the moment with the Russian Adonis and hero as of late.

Jealousy began to eat a hole in him.

“I was her prize,” Nicholas explained. “The one she had stolen from God
Himself. I fled from her in 1620. When I met Natalia, she—she and the others
helped me disappear into the mortal populace, and they kept me hidden from her.
She has used phantoms to search for me at night, and she employs mortals in
daylight. She even used a mortal niece descendant to try to track me, but the
girl decided she wanted me for herself. She was killed in a train wreck. But of
course you know that.”

Angie’s eyes seemed to flood with sorrow for him.
“The
passenger train.”

“And now she has found me.”

“What can we do to make this right, Nicholas?” Angie asked, knife
points of guilt and regret seeming to fill her voice.

His eyes narrowed toward some distant, indefinable place. “Who better
to find a
vampyre
than a pack of slayers? She is
still clever as a fox.”

“Why are you running from her, Nicholas? Isn’t that a little unusual—a
vampyre
fleeing from a
vampyre
?”

“Not when it’s The Lady Jane,” he said.

“You need a safe haven, Nicholas. Stephen’s church.”

“You want me to desecrate a holy place, Angie?” He reacted with a
mocking laugh.

“The only thing you’ll find inside is the glow of a sanctuary lamp and
a few candles.”

“And holy water that will burn like acid.”

“I doubt holy water would do anything to you now, Nicholas. From the
looks of it, you’ve got drops all over you.”

He looked at his cloak. It was covered with tiny circles of
water-stains. “The spray must have been blown by the wind. I guess I didn’t
notice the stray mist in the heat of battle.”

No, I guess you didn’t,
Henri thought
sarcastically from his branch as he watched the master of deception, deceiving
the mystic.
His mystic.
He began to burn with anger.
Violently.

“How is it Henri brought me to Andre after the battle with the
phantoms?” Angie asked, her tone changing.

“I had no choice but to flee the presence of the priest, but Stephen is
Henri’s descendant, and he holds no power over him. I do not know why Henri brought
you back. He seems to have—designs—toward you, known only to
himself
.
Designs that require keeping you alive, perhaps?”

Nicholas’s eyes rested on her breasts. “I could immerse my being easily
with yours, Angie, because you are so like my own kind. I can give you pleasure
you could never have, would never feel with a mortal.”

Then his eyes spotted the cross of hammered silver peering out from
between the buttons on her lace collar.
His cross.
“Why do you wear—that?” he asked, startled, his eyes narrowing

She tilted her head a little to the side to gaze at him sideways from
under her lashes.
“Because you are such a liar, Nicholas.”

Henri chortled so hard with
laughter,
he
almost fell off the branch.

Nicholas’s arrogant, dry laugh filled the night. “I guess this means no
sky sex tonight?”

“Or anything else,” she said. “When you’re ready to tell me the truth
about my aunt, if she is my aunt, let me know.”

She went up the stairs and into her apartment.

Henri left the tree and summoned the vanguard.

Reluctantly, Nicholas alighted before him in the shadows at the back of
the building.

No
vampyre
could deny a Royal’s call. They
could resist many demands of those who held reign over them after they were imprisoned
between life and death, but in this they had no choice. Their will was
sacrificed to the Royals the moment they chose not to die.

“What do you want, Henri?” he asked irritably.

“
You having
a little trouble getting a mystic
to believe your lies,
Nicholai
?” Henri mocked. “You
tried to seduce her by leading her to believe
DuPre’s
envoy is part of a
vampira’s
scheme to reclaim a
lover.”

“She is quite a beauty, isn’t she? She could make any atoner junk his
vows.”

“Your dog and pony show tonight was quite impressive.”

Nicholas laughed. Raspy, wicked.

Henri stepped toward him. “What are you planning for her, you worthless
piece of fifteenth-century trash?”

“If she has the English crest in her past, one hell of a hoedown. But
of course you already know that. Walk away, Henri. This doesn’t concern you.”

“The mystic does concern me. She’s mine.”

“Lucky you were there tonight to catch your little falling star.”

“Touch her with malice again and you die,” Henri threatened.

“You must have exquisite plans for her,” Nicholas smiled, unfazed.
“Seal her away, keep her barely alive so day after day you can come to her—keep
her hidden from the Realm’s dogs, drink her mystic power, bed with her and take
the Realm throne perhaps?”

“What makes you think the mystic is the descendent niece?
Besides a cross that could have come from anywhere.”

“We found the crazy grandmother and had a little tea and blood with her
to confirm our suspicions. Loving mother that she was, Allison tried to protect
her with that very special cross that could have come from anywhere.” He
paused. “I hear the Realm has offered quite a finder’s fee for this Black Rose.
I have not yet decided whether to present her to Jane and let her take the
vows—or hand her over to the Realm
myself
, take the
money and run. What do you have to offer?”

“Your life,” Henri answered flatly.

“Ah,” Nicholas said, arching an eyebrow. “That is, if you can survive
the nights ahead.
And the price on your head.
The
Realm gave you a run for your money tonight. You may yet need me, Henri. As in
the days of old, yes? When you were in trouble over some woman? How often did
we have to dump your carcass in a hearse and whip the horses
til
’ they dropped to get you out of town before some
scorned lovely showed up at sunup to stake your philandering heart?”

“This is different, Nicholas. I love her.”

The
vampyre’s
eyes widened
in surprise.
“Damn! I believe you do.”