Twice Tempted (30 page)

“Leila, stop.”

Vlad brushed the floral bits out of my hands. Frustrated, I watched as they scattered to the ground.

“I don’t know why I can’t see her. I used to glimpse her before my health went haywire. Now, I don’t even get that.”

“You’ve been a vampire exactly one day,” Vlad said as he began to unwind my chains. “Every cell in your body has been drastically altered. It’s remarkable you’re able to use any of your abilities this soon.”

“Remarkable. That and four quarters will get me a dollar.”

I had reason for my glumness. Even if Vlad’s people didn’t breathe a word about Shrapnel to outsiders, any day now, Cynthiana would figure out something was wrong and go into hiding. When she did, it could be years before she resurfaced again. Sure, Shrapnel would eventually break, if Cynthiana hadn’t bewitched him into never revealing her location, but she’d be long gone by then. I might have all the time in the world to hunt her now, but my family didn’t. I couldn’t expect them to stay in hiding for years until we caught her, yet if they didn’t, they were walking targets.

It might already be too late. Cynthiana would be expecting new word from Shrapnel already . . .

“I know how we can get her,” I said, struck by inspiration. “Send Sandra into town to leave another message, this one telling Cynthiana where and when Shrapnel wants to meet her.”

Vlad unwound the final chain from me. “She’s not foolish enough to fall for such a trick.”

“Foolish? Maybe not. Arrogant? You betcha,” I countered. “This woman cast spells on you under your own roof, knowing all the while that you’d kill her if you found out. That’s so arrogant it’s like she had two boulders in a sack for balls.”

His lips thinned at the reminder of how she’d manipulated his willpower. I continued on as if I hadn’t noticed.

“No wonder she hates my guts. You said vampires were psycho possessive. In a few months, you offered me more than you offered her after three decades under her magical influence, yet I left because it wasn’t good enough. She probably had Adrian making that bomb even before Shrapnel gave her my location.”

More whitening of his mouth, and then suddenly, he smiled.

“I know why you’re goading me, but you will not get me to act rashly out of injured pride.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said, holding his gaze. “But she would. Since news of our marriage must’ve reached her by now, I bet she’s hit a whole new red zone of woman-scorned rage.”

Vlad stared at me. “Perhaps,” he said at last.

I couldn’t help but glance at the bed again. In fairness, I shouldn’t point fingers at Cynthiana for crossing into insane jealousy territory. The thought of the hours, days—hell, years!—Vlad had spent entwined with her in that bed upset me far past normal “vampire possessiveness.” In fact, my urge to manifest an electrical whip and start lashing the bed into pieces was so strong, my hand began to spark.

Vlad glanced at my hand and then at my face. Before I could say anything, the bed burst into flames.

My mouth opened in disbelief. In the few moments I took to close it, the wooden frame had buckled from the extreme heat and nothing was left of the blankets, pillows, and mattress except a smoldering black heap. Instead of that delicate floral fragrance, the room now stank of burnt foam and smoke.

The violently tender emotions sweeping mine told me why he’d done it, and it had nothing to do with his anger toward Cynthiana. He simply wanted to destroy something that hurt me.

I said nothing. Neither did he. Words were unnecessary now.

Chapter 43

I
woke with the same suddenness as on the past five days, going from unconscious to on my feet in less time than it took to say, “Good evening.” The only difference was that tonight, my first thoughts weren’t of hunger.

“Did she buy it?” I asked at once.

Vlad had been standing by the open slot in the wall. In response, he held out the blood bag I hadn’t leapt upon.

I ignored it despite my fangs popping out and my stomach clenching as though it were a fist opening and closing. Four days ago, Sandra left a message for Cynthiana telling her where Shrapnel wanted to meet. The next day, the bookstore owner, also mesmerized into betraying Vlad, drove seventy miles away to make a call that wouldn’t be routed through the cell tower Vlad owned. Today, while I was asleep, Sandra went back to the bookstore to see if
The Odyssey
contained Cynthiana’s RSVP.

“Did she?” I repeated.

“Yes and no.”

He stroked his jaw in a seemingly absent way, yet he only did that when he was in deep contemplation.

“She agreed to meet him tomorrow at seven, but changed the location to the Bucharest Metro.”

I’d never taken the main Romanian subway for obvious reasons, but it wasn’t hard to figure out the problem.

“She picked rush hour in a busy public place.”

We’d chosen a warehouse in a sparsely populated town. Easy to surround, fewer bystanders to worry about. Cynthiana must’ve figured that out, too. Looked like Vlad and I were both right about her. She might be arrogant enough to come, but she wasn’t stupid enough to do it without adding protections. “It presents several difficulties, starting with being impossible to secure.” He gave me a brief, sardonic smile. “Many members of the Romanian government are in my line, yet I can’t order the entire Metro shut down. Even Mencheres couldn’t freeze tens of thousands of commuters and dozens of trains to catch her.”

“And if the Metro is suddenly filled with vampires, she’ll get suspicious and bolt.” I sighed. “Is tracing the bookstore owner’s call the next move?”

Vlad continued to stroke his jaw. “Already done. It went to a burner phone that led to nowhere. That leaves the Metro.”

“Did she even say which station?”

He snorted. “No, but it’s obvious.”

I let that alone. “Vlad, if she catches sight of you, she’ll run. In fact, after living with you for three decades, I bet she knows most of the vampires in your line
and
your allies, so a glimpse of one of them would make her a rabbit, too.”

He didn’t dispute any of the above. “After tomorrow, she’ll realize Shrapnel has been compromised. I’ll put a large bounty out on her, but catching her will take time. Difficult or not, the Metro is still my best chance.”

“Yes,” I said steadily, “it is, but you’re forgetting something important.”

A brow arched. “And that is?”

“Me.”

“Not this again,” he muttered.

“I’m the obvious choice. She doesn’t know what I look
or
smell like, so I could be standing right next to her and she wouldn’t feel the slightest bit threatened.”

“Why should she? She’s three hundred years older than you.”

His tone was scathing, but I wasn’t going to let him sidetrack me taking it personally.

“When we met, you insisted that I learn how to use my electrical abilities to fight, and you were right. They ended up saving my life when I took down vampires a
lot
older than me. But more than that, you keep saying ‘I’ when this isn’t only about you. Cynthiana killed my friends at the carnival. She had me kidnapped. Then it was her spell that stole my mortality from me before I was ready to give it up. If I was the type of person who’d let all of that slide, you wouldn’t love me because that sure as hell isn’t who you are.”

His stare could’ve bent a laser from its intensity.

“You expect me to forgo my vengeance in favor of yours?”

“No,” I said, adding with an inward smile, “they call you Vlad the Impaler, not Vlad the Emasculated. All I want is to go into the Metro and find her. Then I’ll either flush her out or tail her and give you her location. Either way, you’ll be the one to bag and tag her, but she’ll know—and so will I—that I helped take her down.”

He was silent for a long while. Then he said, “You’ve never even seen her face.”

Not a
Hell, no!
I began to feel a tingle of anticipation.

“Don’t worry. I’ve seen enough to spot her.”

I
couldn’t remember the last time I’d been surrounded by so many people. Maybe it was American snootiness that made me assume a Romanian subway wouldn’t be much busier than some of the larger carnivals I’d worked; maybe it was being underground that made everything feel more crowded. Whatever the reason, as I crossed the fourteen platforms of the Gara de Nord, I actually had to fight back a sense of claustrophobia.

At least I didn’t have to worry about electrocuting any of the commuters that brushed past me on their way to or from one of the Metro’s many trains. Underneath my business casual pants and blazer was a full body wetsuit, the rubber thicker because it was normally used for icy water dives. A silk scarf hid where the suit rose to the base of my neck, while theater-thick makeup covered my scar.

Aside from the annoying squeaking noises it made when I walked, the wetsuit could be a new wardrobe staple. I hadn’t been able to pass through a crowd without worrying about electrocuting people since I was fourteen. If it wouldn’t have attracted undue attention, I might have hugged a stranger just because I could.

Of course, there was another issue that being so close to thousands of people brought up. My hunger. Everywhere around me, countless veins bulged with the tantalizing nectar I now craved like a drug. Under normal circumstances, I’d be slowly introduced into limited-contact settings with humans to make sure I had enough control to handle it. Going into an underground Metro at rush hour was akin to jumping in the deep end to sink or swim. More than once, my fangs popped out and I had to hastily put a drink to my face to hide it. Good thing Vlad had suggested getting a cup of coffee as a prop.

The unpleasant smell of my surroundings helped curb my hunger, actually. With the bustle of people and the different sections of tunnels came all types of odors. Certain parts of the Metro were only a few shades more aromatic than Vlad’s dungeon. My first trip by a public bathroom almost made me throw up.

A screeching noise preceded a train on the M1 line coming to a halt. I sipped my coffee and watched the throngs of people load and unload, paying special attention to the women. No thick walnut-colored hair or telltale skin a shade too creamy, plus the only vibes I felt came from the electricity running through the tracks. I glanced at my watch. Six fifty-nine p.m. Time to check the next set of tracks at the Basarab stop.

Yes, Vlad had a Metro station named after him. No wonder he said it was obvious where Cynthiana would expect to meet Shrapnel. The M1 side of the tracks was done in bland shades of white and gray, but the M4 side had orange walls, black granite floors, and yellow neon lights. Somehow, I thought the bolder-colored section was where I’d find Cynthiana. If its vividness reminded me of Vlad, it would probably remind her, too.

We had an appreciation for him in common, after all.

Another ear-splitting screech announced a train coming into the M4 station. I leaned against one of the wide columns, my hair falling over part of my face as I studied the commuters. Could that brunette be her? Nope, she had a fresh pimple, something no vampire could get. Maybe the woman in the ball cap . . . no, not with that deliciously throbbing vein in her neck from how she hurried off the track.

I muttered a curse as my fangs sprang out again. Now I knew how teenage boys with unwanted erections felt. I pretended to take a long sip from my coffee as I silently willed them back into my gums, and then I felt it—an aura of power, invisible yet potent, like a cloud of perfume, and coming right toward me.

I kept the coffee cup in front of my face as I sought the source. Not there, not there . . .
there
. Oh yes, I’d know that thick, walnut-colored hair anywhere, not to mention her gliding grace made her stand out like a ballerina amidst a stampede of bulls.

With my gloved hand, I pinched the wire my scarf concealed and whispered two words into the microphone.

“She’s here.”

Then I stared, finally getting a full look at the woman who’d wreaked so much havoc in my life. Taken piece by piece, her face was full of flaws. Her mouth was too wide, nose a trace too long, and cheekbones so high they looked artificially enhanced. Put together, though, she was beautiful in a way you’d find hard to forget because it wasn’t “pretty” beauty, but the bold, striking kind that made it difficult to look away.

And that’s why I recognized her even though our previous meeting had only lasted seconds. No wonder Cynthiana had used a spell that not only made it impossible to get a fix on her location, but also blocked me from seeing her face. That spell hadn’t just prevented us from hiring a sketch artist to discover her identity sooner. Unintentionally, it had also kept me from recognizing her as the same vampire who’d watched Dawn and Marty’s last performance the night of the carnival explosion.

Then dark topaz eyes met mine as Cynthiana looked up and stared straight at me.

Chapter 44

A
s casually as possible, I glanced away, pretending to smile at someone farther down the walkway.
Just another vampire meeting a friend, nothing to see here.
When I could still feel her gaze on me, I headed in the direction I’d been looking, hoping the skin-scouring version of a deodorizing treatment I’d undergone had removed all traces of Vlad’s scent from me. Then I picked a person at random, coming toward her while saying, “Hello!” in Romanian as if we were old friends.

Something punched me in the back, a hard double tap that made me spin around so fast, I splashed coffee on the person closest to me. As that man began to sputter out a curse, another hard double punch hit me square in the chest.

I looked down. Silvery liquid oozed out of two holes onto my blazer, but before my mind even registered that I’d been shot, instinct took over. I leapt up, clearing the crowd and hitting the roof of the tunnel in less than a second. A piece of concrete exploded near my head and I spun away as fast as I could. Then gravity brought me back down into the crowd. I landed on a few people, inadvertently knocking them over. As soon as I hit the ground, the screaming started.