Masters of the Night (20 page)

In one magnificent sweep, Henri also dropped from the sky like a black
wind, and took Angie into his embrace.

“Where did you come from?” she gasped.

“Around,” he smiled.

“You sensed I was in trouble,” she whispered, kissing him.
Loving him.

Danby spotted his knife and made a dive for it.

Henri released her and in the next instant the assailant’s knife was
his grasp.

Nicholas stepped to the
sid
,
as though this was a familiar stage—he would wait while Henri took the kill.

Henri threw the weapon to the ground,
then
his
hand was around Virgil Danby’s throat in a deadly grip, lifting him from the
pavement. For a moment that seemed like infinity, it appeared to Angie that
Henri was going to kill him.

Or have him for dinner.

Henri released his grasp. The man dropped heavily to the ground. Sputtering
and coughing, Danby grabbed his throat with his hands and looked up at the
vampyre’s
rage with terrified eyes.

But the hunting knife was near him.

“Henri!” Angie cried to warn him, clinging to the post again to keep
her wavering balance.

Nicholas had already whirled, sensing the threat. He knocked the
assailant backward. The man stumbled over a broken bumper jutting out from the
rear of the Expedition and fell face-down to the asphalt. He moaned, tried to
move.

Henri turned him over.

His knife protruded from his gut.

He looked up at Henri with a glazed emptiness that told him he knew his
life was over. “Let me join you,” he begged weakly.

Bending next to him, Henri gripped him by the collar with one hand and
yanked him partially from the ground. “Who sent you?” he demanded.

“From the English village.
I would be richly
rewarded by the Realm, they said. They gave me the flowers, told me what to do
…”

“Who was it?” Henri demanded, his gaze deepening to black fire.

“No—names,” the man choked through a bubble of blood in his mouth.

“What did they look like? Was one from the English woods? Did you see
the
Lammergeier
?”

“
Lammergeier
?
You are in deep
doodoo
, aren’t you?” the man gurgled.

Reaching out, he gripped Henri’s arm and squeezed his sleeve into his bloody
hand, his eyes wide. Emitting sounds in his throat like a rat caught in a trap,
he tried to
raise
up.

Then nothing.
The hand on the
sleeve went limp. He fell back.

Henri pulled the knife from his gut, then stood up and tossed it to the
side.

For a moment, as he gazed down at the wound still oozing red, Henri
became transfixed, like a man parched with thirst who’s just seen the river of
life in an oasis in the desert.

“Henri,” Angie said gently, touching his arm, drawing his attention
away and wishing she didn’t feel quite so dizzy. She picked up her cap and
brushed the dirt and debris from the brim. She had rarely received gifts in her
life, and any little token was precious to her.

“He said he was your friend,” she said, also picking up the card
smudged with dirt and pieces of flower petals she carried perpetually in her
pockets. “He gave me these.” She showed Henri what she had thought were tokens
of love from him.

“I would have sent rose petals,” he said tenderly, then looked down at
the dead man. “I do not know him.”

“He was on the plane to Sacramento,” Angie said.

“Waiting for his opportunity,” Henri said darkly. “Now he waits for
judgment.”

Angie stood over the dead man, crushing the bits of dried flowers and
card in her fist into grains,
then
letting them fall
through her fingers like sand onto his chest, detesting him.

“Take her and go,” Nicholas said quickly. “I’ll tell Jane I had to kill
her in battle and toss the body in the ocean so the Realm wouldn’t find out.
I’ll take Jane and go hide out at Stony for awhile until they forget about us.”

“Why would you help us?” Henri demanded.

“Hell if I know,” he said. “For old times, I guess.”

Nicholas turned and was gone over the wall, his dark shadowy wings
emerging.

“
Lammergeier
?
In
the English woods?”
Angie asked, leaning on the parking lot wall, still
trying to clear away the strange fogginess the fall had caused. “Had to kill
me? Toss the body in the ocean?”

A blur, an instant, and Henri
was
holding her.
“Angie, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

I’m dizzy as hell.

Vaguely, she became aware it was also harder to breathe.

“Easy,” Henri said, steadying her.

But as she regained her foothold, Henri did not release her. He held
her, clasped against him. “Love with you would be sheer hell for any man,” he
murmured. “You’re stubborn. You’re defiant. You don’t listen.” He entwined a
mass of soft, silky, golden hair into his hand and breathed its fragrance.
“Your mystical scent is sweet as honey.”

She looked up into his gaze. It had become a gaze of fire.

The embrace tightened.

“It’s difficult not to want you, Angie.”

His face drew close to her cheek, his inky soft hair brushed against
her throat …

She could barely breathe.

“Yes, I know. I am exciting,” he whispered.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I really—can’t … breathe,” she gasped.

She moaned. The knives of pain in her side as he crushed her against
him were excruciating, taking her breath.

He drew away. His hand moved to her ribs and pressed carefully, gently.
“You’re hurt.”

“I think I have—a broken rib and a concussion,” she said.

He felt her waist. “No breaks.
But deep bruising.”
He felt her forehead.
“And a knot the size of Alaska.
I need to get you to a safe place where you can recover.”

Lifting her into his arms, he placed her gingerly in the front
passenger seat of the nearest car still in one piece. “I can mesmerize you into
forgetting what happened here, if you want,” he said as he hot-wired the ignition.

“You have already mesmerized me,” she said softly as her head fell
against his shoulder. “You have mesmerized my heart. I am lost in you, Henri
DeLaCroix
.” Her eyes drifted up into his. “What do I do,
Henri? It seems I am a wanted woman.”

“We will find a way,” he whispered. He began speeding toward the
outskirts of the city. “Do you want to stand and fight or get the hell
outa
’ Dodge,
Liora
Anjanette
?”

She was unable to answer. Her world had grayed to black.

20.

A secluded mountain
home of brick and timber was masked in the night by pines, foliage and mist.

“Are we—safe?” Angie asked, her eyes resting on Henri as she regained
consciousness while he was parking the jacked car in a stand of pine trees.

“For the moment.
We are deep in old
growth forest,” he said.

Bracing Angie against his shoulder, Henri helped her out of the car and
led her along a curving, hedge-lined walkway. But he soon realized the stairs
would be too much for her.

When he started to pick her up and carry her, she muttered something—he
scarcely knew what—and attempted to demonstrate she could walk unassisted.

She swooned and fell against him.

Henri lifted the stubborn, bedraggled creature he loved into his arms.
Shivering, she moaned then slung her arms around his neck and closed her eyes.
She was groggy from pain, and he doubted she even knew where she was.

He ascended the porch stairs with her and appraised closely, once
again, the flawless soft face with its fragile beauty framed in silken clusters
of tousled and mussed ringlets the color of the sun, and he remembered blond
beauties he had carried up staircases of his past.
For his
own pleasure.

You do so tempt me,
Liora
Anjanette
,
he thought. Will I
break the vow I’ve made so recently to try again to make you my own and take
you into immortal suffering with me? He struggled to remind himself that his
obsession to be her protector was her only salvation.

“Sure you’re taking me to a safe place?” she asked, reading him
mystically. “Your aura seems a little on the dark side.”

“I wasn’t contemplating anything more than a pinprick, Angie,” he
lied—a little. “For your deceptions and running with slayers—and running around
with that nasty little stake in your bag that could pierce my heart. You wound
me,
Liora
Anjanette
.
To the quick.
I gave you so much.”

“You would have robbed me of sleep the way the moon robs the world of
color. The red rose is left with pale petals in the shadows caused by those
silvery rays,” she murmured drowsily.

“Still the poet,” he said softly. “I thought you liked the moon.”

He pushed open the door to the cabin, but hesitated before taking her
across his threshold. The only other human he had willingly allowed through his
door was the lab assistant from a local blood bank. Christa Remington knew what
he was and helped sustain his existence. And she never entered any rooms
without his permission. The plain-faced tech had been helping atoning
vampyres
for almost twenty years, helping them hide,
helping them stay alive.

She was, at the moment, the only one he trusted.

He stepped across the threshold with Angie and struggled with the black
knowledge that however much he might love her, he was allowing a mystic slayer
into his domain close enough to kill him.

Placing her in a chair, he made up the sofa for her,
then
gently roused her.

He didn’t tell her where the pillows and brocade blanket he placed on
the couch were from. She would know soon enough that they were his.

While she sat in the chair and gritted her teeth, he cleaned the
laceration on her arm, applied iodine,
then
picked out
a needle to stitch the cut. “I picked up a bit of medical training in the Civil
War,” he said in response to her surprised expression.

“Don’t I need anesthetic or something?” she said, staring at the needle
that seemed to suddenly loom into her eyes.

“Oh,” he said, and gave her a slug of whiskey. “Supposedly, you won’t
feel a thing now, soldier.”

That wasn’t quite true, but it did help.

When he was finished, Henri appraised Angie’s tattered appearance. Her
clothes were torn and smudged.

Bringing a clean shirt from his bedroom, he asked her if she wanted
help removing her clothes.

“No,” she said firmly as she took the shirt. “I’m fine, but I’d like to
wash.” She paused.
“So.
Can I fly? I seem to know how
to do everything else you do.”

“Don’t try to fly,” he said. He showed her where the bathroom was,
then
walked her there just to make sure she didn’t
accidentally stumble into his bedroom by mistake.

And discover the long box of twelfth-century soil under his bed.

When he returned to the living room to put away the first aid kit,
Nicholas was sitting on his couch. “The Shadows are searching for you, Henri,”
he said.
“And not for an
atta
boy.”

“How do you know that?” Henri asked.

“I went back to the parking lot. I—wanted to get something left behind.
They were scouring the aftermath like a paranormal CSI team.
Taniesha
found drops of water spattered in the dents on a
car, and tiny bits of blue glass.
The mystic’s holy water.
They decided she had to fight you, and that the dead man slumped between the
cars—they called him ‘this poor fellow’—must have tried to come to her rescue.”

“Danby?”

“That would be the one. But
DuPre
looked at
his face, and told his troupe he didn’t look much like a
good
Samaritan. He looked more like the phantoms had just escorted him into hell. He
used his
precog
on the wall, read the brick dust and
knew a
vampyre
had gone over the wall. And that the
mystic had not. He gave the lot a once over. One parking space in the middle of
the battleground was clean, no glass or bits of metal. A car had been sitting
there, before and during the battle, then gone. Black tire marks led away from
the spot, so he knew someone had spun the wheels in their hurry to leave. He
bent down and brushed his hands across the perimeter of the vehicle’s vacated
spot, and knew she had left with a
vampyre
, and that
he drove.” He paused. “And that it was you.”

“Did he think she was taken by force?”

“His beady eyes shot toward the deeper parts of the city. He started
frowning and said he could no longer sense the mystic. He could
feeI
nothing from her.”

“That must have been when she passed out.”

“He said the city had swallowed her, and he could not sense whether she
still lived. Then he ordered his slayers to search the hangs, and that neither
you nor I were to be given berth. We are to relinquish the mystic or die. I am,
they decided, a soft-spoken terror who at best seems to want to access
heaven—by way of hell. And you’re a few rungs below that.”

Nicholas laughed then, a guttural, deep, dry laugh. “Andre couldn’t
find his
vampyre
of light or the crossbow slayer, and
started grumbling that in five years the Shadows had not been without unity,
fortified in their purpose. But of course he didn’t know they had spotted me,
and were chasing me around on the far side of the parking lot while he was on
his knees sniffing asphalt.” He paused.
“Damned fun, that
sable-haired little French wench that used to be the Marquis’ whore.
I’d
like to draw a few droplets from her rosy lips and join with her myself!”

Nicholas helped himself to a glass of wine, then grinned and laughed
again as he downed the red liquid in one draught. “They haven’t had an unruly
little mystic in their midst who’s being sought by the Realm, and a Royal at
their back door courting her.”

He heard the bath water draining, and left.

Angie came out, her skin sparkling pink, refreshed.

The large white shirt with billowing, gathered sleeves and open collar
swallowed her slight form. The cuffs fell over her hands. Henri smiled in
amusement. “Aren’t you a little short for a storm trooper?”

“Very funny,” she said. She pushed the cuffs up, and the drowsiness in
her eyes told him she was spent. “Eighteenth century?” she murmured, inspecting
the soft cotton sleeves. “Did you kill anyone in this thing?”

“No.” He pulled up the shirt and began bandaging her waist, though she
trembled at every lingering touch. He eased the bandage to her back and brought
it around, standing close to her, his face almost touching hers. Then he tied
off the ends, clipped them with scissors, and helped her onto the sofa.

The tiny, stunned cry she emitted as she lay back and her head touched
his pillows and her mystical senses became fiery, tore at his soul. “I have a
friend. I’ll call her and ask her to retrieve the cross and bring it to you. It
will—help,” he said. Against the protest in her sobs, he pulled the brocade
coverlet up and around her
shoulders,
a coverlet he
knew was flooding her with his essence and imprisoning her. And it was not
tender. It was to keep her caged. And out of his inner rooms. “You have to
understand, Angie, you are in the dwelling of one of the Realm’s elite. If you
want to be with me, you need to know what I am. This room, this place, is
steeped in what I am. These things are mine—and not only are you an intruder,
you are a slayer. The room itself is at DEFCON 1.”

When she finally slipped into sleep from sheer exhaustion, he went to
the refrigerator for a bottle of wine to calm the traces of hunger still
flowing inside him.

“Don’t touch her, Natalia,” he warned as he closed the refrigerator
door. He did not have to turn around to know the impudent Russian
vampira
was standing by the sofa.

“Henri, Henri, what are you up to?” she said teasingly, with a lightly
wicked smile as she looked down at the innocent lying in sleep under his
favorite blanket. “You’ve placed her against your pillows and in your—” She
stroked the smooth orange and red brocade with her black tipped fingernails.
“
Blankie
.”

She smoothed her hand across Angie’s arm to touch the soft sleeve of
his shirt, and her eyes glittered with pleasure when the mystic moaned
uncomfortably. “And you even have her in your shirt. Isn’t this the one you
wore when you went sailing on that three-
masted
schooner,
The Sea Ghost
or something?” She
turned and looked at him with intense curiosity. “You’re keeping her will
deliberately weakened.”

Angie turned, restlessly.

“Ah, she knows I’m here,” Natalia said delightfully. “You’ve got a
sensitive one.
A mystic.
She unlocks doors with a
single touch, and senses my presence even when she’s out cold.”

The
vampira
began watching her breathe, and
began to sway, hypnotized by the steady rise and fall of her chest. Henri took
a step forward, watching Natalia closely.

She placed her first and second fingertips against the artery pulsing
rhythmically at the side of Angie’s throat, and her eyes became moist. “She’s
warm, Henri …”

Like a quick breath he was there, grasping her wrist tightly as he
yanked her hand away. “I said not to touch her.”

She sighed resignedly and feigned a pout. “We could have had a party,
Henri, you and I—” She glanced wistfully at Angie’s throat.
“And
her.”
She moved away at the command in his eyes, but smiled coyly at
him. “If you decide you don’t want her, De
LaCroix
,
let me know.”

As soon as she was gone, Henri called Christa to bring him the cross.
Self-control was not one of Natalia’s best qualities. Actually, she had no
qualities.

When he answered the doorbell anxiously, Christa’s gaze darted
curiously at the disheveled woman sleeping on his couch. “What’s that?”

“She’s hurt,” he said. “She had a run-in with a human trying to kidnap
her, and got the worst end of it.”

She dangled the cross in front of him. “And this was in a storm drain
next to crunched car head lights because—?”

Henri looked away from the silver quickly.

“Because the chain broke.”

“And she needs it because—?”

“Because it would seem—the whole damned Realm is after us.”

Christa’s look was more than concern. She was terrified for him.

“Would you like me to bring her some breakfast in the morning?” She
picked up the rag tag shreds of clothes on the floor. “And do a little shopping
for her?”