Blaire
BLAIRE
and Ellis stared down at the stinking black uniform. wrinkled her nose.
“I thought humans … Candies … were supposed to smell delicious,” she muttered, turning away as she gagged.
Ellis snorted. “Not that I have partaken for a number of decades, but fresh blood—from a live Candy—that’s where it’s at!” she said. “This rotting mess is …” Ellis tried to grin, but her face was a little green too. “Decidedly not where it’s at.”
They’d cleaned the worst of the gore off the uniform and had removed a gun from one of the two holsters and what looked like a cattle prod from the belt.
“Oh well, no time like the present to go pocket diving!” Ellis crowed. grimaced as the blonde girl tugged on a latex glove. “I’ve watched enough episodes of CSI to know that we don’t contaminate the scene with our fingerprints.
It was ’s turn to snort. “You realize that we just had our hands all over the thing, picking off bits of …” took a moment to breathe and then wished she hadn’t when she caught another whiff of decaying flesh.
Ellis rolled her eyes. “Let me have some fun, alright? If I want to play forensic detective, I’m gonna play forensic detective!”
held up her hands. “Jesus, alright, go for it. Better you than me.”
Ellis gritted her teeth and stepped forward, digging her gloved hand into the pocket of the trousers. She tugged out a mess of blood.
“Oh God,” groaned. “That’s not another piece of … of him, is it?”
Ellis wrinkled her nose, picking at the mess.
“No … I think it’s a men’s handkerchief.” Ellis tossed the mess away with a shudder. “Eww! Candy boogers!”
A startled laugh ripped out of . “Umm, you are aware that we literally just pulled a strip of man meat off that gun, right?”
Ellis snickered. “Man meat.”
And then she dived into the other pocket.
This time, she came out with a blood-smeared plastic card, attached by a retractable cord to the inside of the pocket. stepped closer again as Ellis unclipped it and wiped a thumb over the surface, which did nothing except smear blood around everywhere.
“Give it to me,” sighed. When Ellis handed it over, wiped it with the heel of her hand, clearing enough mess away to see the words.
“Agent Miles Frankston,” she read the name beside an identification photo. She swallowed back the sudden lump in her throat. She’d killed a man tonight. She hadn’t meant to, but he was dead because of her. And now he had a name. And a face that, while stern in his ID photo, was young. Too young to have died the way he did.
“Don’t get like that,” Ellis said, and for once, her tone wasn’t mocking, but … sympathetic. “This ‘Agent Frankston’ held a gun to your face and threatened to blow it off if you didn’t cooperate. He made his choice, and he chose violence. Don’t feel bad for him getting caught in the crossfire of you protecting yourself.”
sniffed and then gagged again.
“I keep forgetting how bad it smells,” she muttered, looking back at the card.
“Taiga …” she read quietly, then gasped, her eyes darting up to meet Ellis’s. “They weren’t saying ‘tiger’ … they were saying ‘Taiga’!”
“Okay …” Ellis drawled, her brow wrinkled. “What’s so important about that?”
opened her mouth, then closed it, thinking furiously.
“Taiga is the boreal subarctic forest,” she murmured. “There are parts of it in the northern states of the USA, and Canada too.”
Ellis raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for the geography lesson, but how does this help us …?”
“What if their base is somewhere in the Taiga? What if …”
“So, if the Taiga on that badge is referring to a place,” Ellis interjected thoughtfully, “and look, it’s not a bad guess—forest like that would be a great place to hide a bunch of hybrid immortals … There is a pretty dang big swathe of Taiga Forest spread across North America, so where the hell do we even start looking? That’s a lot of square miles to search.”
“Seven hundred and eighty-one thousand, two hundred and fifty square miles, to be exact,” Farida muttered. “If we’re only searching continental North America … assuming the base isn’t in Siberia.”
looked up guiltily as Roman and Farida approached. Roman’s face was practically gray.
What the hell had Farida suggested to him … the thing that neither of them would agree to?
She shook her head. She didn’t want to know. She wished he’d talked to her about his worries, about the danger the mirror wounds and the Joining pains put them both in, instead of running to Farida as if she could snap her fingers and magic up a solution to the problem.
Magic.
Shit.
That was why he went to Farida. For magic.
“So … are we working on the theory that the Taiga on this badge is the name of their base?” Roman asked, moving closer and plucking the ID card from her limp fingers. His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her against him.
You okay? he whispered in her mind.
I don’t know.
He tilted her chin, his green eyes worried, searching. She tried to smile through numb lips.
He wants Farida to use magic on us … thought. What exactly is she capable of?
“I think until we have anything more concrete, it might be the best course of action,” Farida replied, taking the card from Roman’s hands. “I might be able to … discern something from this,” she said, giving Roman a beady-eyed stare.
He nodded once at the black-haired woman and plucked off her feet, tucking her against his body as he strode from the room with her.
“What are you doing?” she hissed, even as her body melted into his warmth, as she wrapped herself around him, her fingers digging into the taut muscles of his back through his T-shirt.
“Clearly the events of this evening didn’t wear you out enough … but don’t worry, I have a plan where that’s concerned.”
“Bite down, drink deep, Sweetest,” Roman growled against her earlobe, tugging it between his teeth as he rocked deep inside her, his cock hitting that spot that had her seeing stars, had her poised to scream the entire Vault down.
Her teeth shot long and pierced his shoulder, her cries muffled by his flesh, by the spurt of blood on her tongue that had her swallowing hungrily as her orgasm pounded through her, her thighs quaking, pulling him deep, holding him there as he growled against her skin, his muscles tight, his teeth finding her neck.
Fuck, she loved it when he bit her just as she was coming! The waves of her climax crested again, taking her to another place entirely as he emptied himself into her with a shudder and a deep drink from her throat.
He released her neck, licking at the wound. It stopped bleeding almost immediately. She looked up at him, green eyes glassy and sweaty hair curling on his forehead. God, he was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.
“Spent now, Sweetest?” he asked. She smirked up at him.
“Have you met me?” she asked slyly. “I could easily go another round.”
She rolled them to the side, then pressed him back until she was on top, straddling him on the little nest of blankets they’d made for themselves in what they’d come to learn was the least temperamental corner of the Vault. The one least likely to let the others overhear them.
His hands found her breasts, stroking gently, cupping her. “You’re healing faster than ever,” he remarked carefully, pursing his lips as she rolled her hips, feeling him hardening again inside her. “I wonder if you, as a halfling, will settle into your immortality earlier than a pure-blooded immortal …”
His musings seemed casual enough, but there was a stiff edge to his voice, and she remembered what he and Farida had been discussing earlier, before she’d been distracted by Agent Frankston from Taiga.
She stilled on him, wrapping her hands around his and winding their fingers together.
“We can only guess,” she replied lightly. “Was that what you and Farida were whispering about earlier?”
Roman’s eyes sharpened. “What did you overhear?”
shrugged. “Not much. I didn’t want to eavesdrop,” she lied, “so Ellis and I went to investigate the … the uniform we brought back from Forest Lake.”
Roman watched her carefully for a long moment. “Did you forget that I can hear your thoughts, Sweetest?” he asked eventually.
’s face burned. “I forget that you’re much better at hearing mine than I am at hearing yours,” she grumbled. “What could Farida even do to help settle the Joining?”
Roman shook his head. “It’s a moot point because I won’t let it happen,” he said, untangling one hand to stroke a thumb over her cheek, tugging her down for a gentle kiss. His way of saying, ‘Don’t ask me about it.’
She clambered off his lap, suddenly in no mood for round two. He nestled her against his side, tracing little circles on her shoulder as she rested her cheek on his chest. His heart was steady, but there was tension in his body that shouldn’t be there after what they’d just done.
“What …” asked, then stopped to clear her throat, willing the tremor from her voice. “What is Farida? Why was she able to … to do what she did, that night on Greenrock? How did she move the Vault to Chicago? And what would she be able to do to … to us?”
Roman’s finger stilled on her skin.
“She … it’s not my story to share. But I can tell you that she and this vault are linked. And it’s been an ongoing worry for all of us since we … since we cleaved from the Coalition.”
He sighed, fingers digging into her shoulder, pulling her closer.
“Fortis was particularly … fond of Farida. And when he realized she was more than she first seemed, that fondness became an obsession. He used her in ways that … well, I still feel sick to my stomach to think about them.”
“Is she a … a witch?” asked, her voice barely more than a breath on his skin.
The shake of Roman’s head was barely perceptible. “I don’t know. I don’t know if she even really knows. But this place … there are thousands upon thousands of books in it, and maybe one day we’ll come across something that explains what she …”
He cleared his throat. “She has abilities that are beyond my understanding, so I don’t try to understand them. But I trust her with my life—more than that, I trust her with yours. I hope that you can accept that as enough of an explanation for now.”
felt hollowed out. All that Roman’s explanation had done was make her crave more answers. More detail. But prodding him wasn’t going to work, so she asked something else that had been weighing on her.
“I barely see Raoul. Why doesn’t he spend time with the rest of us?” she asked.
Roman turned until they were side by side, face to face. “He doesn’t trust Farida. He doesn’t understand that the things he saw … back in the Coalition days … that she was forced to do them by Fortis. He has reason to feel … unforgiving towards her, and our kind is good at holding grudges for a very long time.”
“Do you trust him?” asked. “Wasn’t he very close to Fortis?”
Roman’s face was a mask of tightly held fury. “He was. For longer than he should have been. I … I don’t think he is any longer, though. But perhaps it is for the best that he is not always present when we’re making plans.”
huffed. “The way this damned Vault works, he could be miles away and still hear us like we’re in the next row over.”
Roman grunted. “Well, that’s a risk we have to take if we want to find a way to get Jack back … and Jude now, too.”
’s heart stuttered. “He was trying to make me be more cautious, just before I stormed into Mom’s office and the two men attacked us,” she confessed, her voice quavering. “I hope that no one sees his capture as an excuse to get rid of him.”
“You heard Farida talking about him, didn’t you?” Roman asked quietly. nodded against his chest.
“She really seems to … dislike him,” she muttered, in the worst euphemism ever. “What does she have against him?”
There was no reply. propped herself up on one hand, resting the other against Roman’s chest as she peered into his stoic face.
“He’s my … he’s my father, Roman. I kind of want a chance to get to know him better. So, can you at least tell me why he and Farida are at odds?”
Roman blew out a long breath. “When Farida and I … when we decided we couldn’t live under Fortis any longer, and we escaped with Ellis … Jude tried to stop us. Farida, she … killed his Joined to distract him … so that we could run before he raised the alarm.”
’s mouth fell open.
No.
Farida wouldn’t have …
“You have to understand, Sweetest, how desperate we were to escape. And Jude didn’t … he couldn’t understand it. He … he wanted us to stay with Fortis. He didn’t want us to run … to be on the run from Fortis.” Roman huffed out a humorless laugh. “Like we have been for far too long now.”
“He’s not … loyal to Fortis, is he?” asked breathlessly.
Roman shook his head. “He wouldn’t have allied himself with the Operation if he was. Wouldn’t have helped them make you. I think he wants to … he needs to atone for trying to hold us there. I think he wants Farida … wants all of us to forgive him.”
Irrational rage bubbled in ’s throat. “ Farida forgive him ? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? She murdered his Joined!”
“It’s not that simple,” Roman mumbled.
“It never is.” sighed. And she’d thought the politics of the human world were convoluted.
With a yawn, she snuggled into Roman’s chest. “I can’t absorb any more information right now, I’m so tired.” She tilted her head to eye him beadily. “But don’t think this means you’re off the hook—I’m calling a raincheck on this conversation until I’ve had some sleep.”
Roman chuckled. “I have no doubt you’ll be demanding that raincheck at your earliest convenience.”
wanted to snap out some witty retort, but another yawn was all that she managed as her eyes slid closed.