Chapter 40 #2
He whirls around just as a man in a ski mask steps out from behind the parked cars. The man holds a gun in his gloved hands, and that gun is fitted with a silencer. “The lady’s bag, and no one gets hurt.”
I freeze and clutch my bag.
Alexandru takes a step forward.
“Back off,” the man warns, gun steady. It’s not a voice I recognize. “I’ll shoot.”
Alexandru takes another step.
“Alexandru, no!”
“Don’t make trouble,” the man says. “I just want the bag.”
Another step.
“I’ll do it! I’ll shoot!”
“I heard you,” Alexandru says, voice calm, almost bored. “Now pull the trigger.”
The man flinches. Alexandru keeps coming. I don’t know what the man sees in Alexandru’s eyes—maybe hunger. Maybe something worse.
The gun fires—soft, muffled. Right into Alexandru’s cheek.
I gasp.
Alexandru doesn’t stop.
The man stumbles back, panicked. Fires again. Alexandru’s body jerks with the impact, but he keeps going. It’s like watching a horror film.
“What the hell,” the man breathes. “What in the actual hell?”
Another shot—this one smashes into the car beside me. I scream, and my heel catches on a cobblestone. I go down hard, palm scraping, ankle twisting.
“Shit—ow!”
Alexandru turns to me, and that’s when I see his fangs, gleaming white and fierce against his full, firm lips.
I gasp.
He just stares at me, nostrils flared, monstrous rage slowly softening.
“Don’t worry about me! Go after him,” I say. “Now!”
“Were you hit?” He kneels by my side as the bullet wound in his cheek knits shut with slow, grotesque precision.
“Hurry!” I wave him off, even as pain radiates from my ankle. The gunman’s already bolting, vanishing into the alley’s shadows.
“There’s blood on your shirt.” Alexandru’s tone is murderous, even for him.
“I think it’s from my hand—maybe? Doesn’t matter. Go! Find him and find out who sent him.”
Strong, sure fingers glide over my shirt, searching for bullet holes, presumably. His eyes are intense, and his face is a mask of concentration; his unruly hair tumbles over his brow.
It’s so strange, this centuries-old killer turning the full weight of his powers on making sure I’m not hurt.
“You’re wasting time. Can you follow his scent?”
“I am not a hound, Ms. Renfield.” He continues his inspection, fingers sliding down my arm, touching every inch, leaving a trail of shivers.
“I said I’m fine!”
“Those in battle don’t always know when they’re hit.”
“He had a silencer,” I say. “That was next level.”
“He was not a typical footpad; he asked for your bag, but nothing from me. I believe he was after your electronic ledger.”
“Well, now he knows about you,” I say, breathless. “Whoever sent him will know, too.”
“And I will find them both and make them bitterly regret what they have done.” He scoops me up like I weigh nothing. “Gregor will tend to your ankle.”
“Gregor? No! I got it.”
“You are injured and in shock.”
“Just bring me home.”
He settles me gently into his car. The soft leather smells of musk. We speed through the night, past old familiar landmarks, until we reach Kingston Manor, all stone and shadow and silence.
Alexandru carries me inside over my vehement protests. His fangs are gone now, but I can’t forget the way they shone in the streetlight, deadly white against his lips.
“Gregor,” he bellows as he lowers me onto a velvet-backed settee in the front room. I glance past him and spot the foyer table, the one he bought from my mother’s store.
Gregor appears—out of breath, streaked with grime, knees scraped raw like he clawed his way up from hell.
Alexandru barely glances his way. “Clean yourself. Then tend to her injuries.”
I sit up straighter. “Actually, if you could just show me where your first aid kit is, I can manage—”
Gregor vanishes.
“We have to figure out who that was,” I say. “I get that you can’t follow a scent trail, but do you have any other superpowers that will allow you to track him down?”
“The power of my vengeance,” he growls.
“Not a superpower,” I whisper.
“You require another pillow.” He storms from the room.
Less than a minute later, Gregor’s back, impeccably clean, hair tied in his soldier’s ponytail, and coat exchanged for a crisp black tunic, first aid kit in hand.
“W-what did Alexandru have you doing before that got you so dirty?” I ask.
“Chores.” He sets down the first aid kit and extracts an antiseptic wipe packet and some bandages. “Your hand, please.”
“It’s just a little scrape.”
“Allow me.”
I give him the hand that took the brunt of the fall. “It’s nothing.”
He examines it. “This may sting,” he says, grabbing the packet.
“That will be all, Gregor.” I look up to find Alexandru watching from a shadowed doorway, pillow in hand.
He strides in like a soldier and plucks the antiseptic wipe packet from Gregor’s fingers, sending him away with a wave.
He kneels in front of me and cradles my hand. “You’re injured enough without Gregor bungling the job of bandaging you,” he growls.
Shivers race over my skin. “I’m fine.”
He tears the packet open with his teeth. It’s a brutal, violent movement, but his touch is startlingly gentle as he presses the pad to my wound. The sting makes me draw in a sharp breath.
His gaze lifts to mine then, intent with some emotion I can’t decipher.
“Whoever did this will suffer for it, bled dry, broken, screaming.”
My heart races.
Shivers skitter over my skin.
He’s just really hungry, I think. Or more like hangry.
“To come after you in such a way,” he adds.
“To be fair, they were coming after my tablet.”
He grunts and finds a bandage, pressing it onto my palm with care.
And then it’s time for my ankle.
He unzips the side of my ankle boot and slides it off.
“I can do it.”
“Be still.” Slowly, ever so slowly, he pulls off my sock.
He goes motionless when he catches sight of my toes; I’m guessing it’s the red nail polish, because he looks up at my lips—same exact shade—and then quickly back down again.
Is it the red? Does it remind him of blood?
“It does not look swollen.” He skims his fingers over my ankle, pressing lightly in a pattern that feels almost deliberate. “You will tell me where it hurts.”
“Okay,” I say, hyperaware of every bare inch of skin his fingertips graze. I’m trying really hard not to think again about his comment about giving women exquisite, soul-shattering pleasure with his so-called superior senses.
And failing.
What is wrong with me? What woman in her right mind would view this arrogant monster with his polished manners and twisted morality in any kind of sexual way?
You would have to be so desperate. So foolish and—
“There!” I say when he touches near my anklebone. “It hurts there, but just a tiny bit.”
“And when you stand?” He stands and puts out his hands.
I set my hands in his and let him pull me up. I test out the foot. “The tiniest pain.”
“You will sit. I will wrap it.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Sit,” he commands.
I sigh and plop back down, allowing him to wrap it, which he does with surprising skill.
“Okay, I got it from here.” I finish up myself and roll my sock back on. “Don’t you worry. Your Renfield is in perfect Renfield working order. No need to make the pesky switcheroo to an inferior Renfield just yet.”
He stands, peering down at me. “Good.” He calls for Gregor to bring a small bag of ice and a footstool.
I lean my head back on the settee, gaze drifting to the snake-writhing stairway woodwork. “We can’t let somebody run around town knowing what you are. What if he tells people?”
“Nobody will believe him, and I’ll find him soon enough.”
“But he was wearing a mask!”
“The man was about five feet eleven. Hazel-green eyes. Two hundred some pounds with a rotten tooth, a penchant for bourbon, and a preference for offensive chemical-scented dryer sheets.”
“Wow, that’s a robust profile.”
“It will do.”
Gregor arrives with the ice and a small upholstered stool. Alexandru instructs me to put my foot on it, and he arranges the bag of ice over it and then settles himself on the other side of the settee in his usual princely way.
“We have to go back to Whitney,” I say. “I’m going to try to get us in with her. Tomorrow morning before work, if possible. We have to ask about the sparkler picture, even if we don’t have it.”
“Very well,” he says.
“Can I ask you a question?” I say.
“What?”
“Why did you order calling cards?” I ask.
He’s silent for a while, and I think he won’t answer. Then he says, “Habit, I suppose. Ritual. And they do strike terror in certain circumstances.”
I smile. “Don’t tell Sloane that!”
He seems lost in thought. “What happened between you?”
“It was a long time ago.”
“You are ashamed.”
Everything feels so raw, suddenly, like the world is spinning on a knife’s edge.
We were mugged, Alexandru’s gotten too hungry, and he tended to my wounds in a gentle way that scrambled my brain, and I find myself telling him.
“Sloane and I were good friends in high school. We worked on the high school newspaper together, along with our friend Jerome. I was the editor, the decision-maker on the paper. Sloane was a reporter, and she was a good one. She loved finding stories.”
Alexandru nods, watching me, dark eyes steady.
“Anyway, one day she came to me with a scoop. Our championship swim team was practicing in dangerously cold water because of a broken heater. They didn’t want to halt practice to fix it because of upcoming important competitions.
It was a great story, the kind of scoop that a high school newspaper dreams of—the kind of story that big city newspapers would cover.
I mean, it was people’s children. Beloved athletes.
Child endangerment to a certain degree. We started taking a series of temperature readings and quietly researching legal parameters.
We even snuck into the maintenance office to try and find work orders about the heating system.
And we did find a request. It was something, but it wasn’t a smoking gun.
Even so, Sloane and I built a damn good story. ”
“You were a team,” he says.
“A great team. Josie pitched in from the student council angle, but it was Sloane’s baby. She was an amazing reporter. And she loved doing that work. The paper went to press every Friday. Sloane felt we had enough data to run with the story.”
“And you disagreed.”
“I didn’t want to get it wrong. People would’ve been hurt if I had gotten it wrong. Of course, kids were potentially getting hurt by being forced to swim in the cold water. But we needed more data.”
Alexandru adjusts my sock.
“We fought so hard about it, Alexandru. We said things we shouldn’t have. I decided we’d do cheerleader profiles on the front page and hold off on the pool story for another week.”
“Did you run it the next week?”
“No. Ashwood Gazette ran with it on their front page the following Monday. They had their own sources. Or maybe they heard the buzz. The big Cleveland papers picked it up the next day. It would’ve been such a feather in Sloane’s cap. It was even on the TV news.”
“I’m sorry,” he says to me. And I think that he is sorry.
“Thank you.”
“It is a hard thing to lose a friend like that,” he says. “To have a friend turn enemy.”
I pull apart the sides of my boot, hoping I can fit it on over the bandage, and wonder if Alexandru had a friend turn enemy. Does a man like this even have friends?
But then, he’s not a man, is he?