Chapter Nine
Pierre sat on the hideous sofa in their apartment, their mate in his arms, her body shaking.
Pressed between them was her laptop. The key to finding Cordelia.
But all he could think about right now was that someone had tried to kill his mate.
Had nearly succeeded. As fucked up as this situation was, as the scene was in Melinda’s second bedroom, he couldn’t fault Louis.
Had they been a split second later, they would’ve been too late. Louis had saved Melinda’s life.
Louis, once again human, the blood cleaned from his face and chest, strode into their apartment. One look at his tight expression told Pierre the situation was about to get worse.
“Faucherians,” Louis mouthed at him.
Faucherians? How? Why? Was Louis sure?
Louis pointed to his neck. Oui, Louis was certain.
They’d all seen the neck tattoo one too many times to mistake it.
Faucherians. A vigilante group who followed the writings of Faucher, a tenth-century eveque who’d made it his life’s mission to track down and destroy anything supernatural—witches, demons, werewolves.
And he’d had a special kind of fervor for the Langeais wolves.
His followers were fanatical zealots. In eleven centuries, their obsession with wiping out the Langeais wolves had only intensified.
Dedicated, well trained and well supplied, they were more than a thorn in the side of the Langeais wolves.
But what did the Faucherians want with Melinda?
He left their mate in Louis’ care and stepped out of their apartment into the quiet corridor.
No sign of the police. Yet. He put a call through to Gabriel, the Langeais wolves’ head of security and their older brother.
Pierre had to get this mess cleaned up before the emergency services arrived.
With any luck, since the siren had stopped, they’d treat the call as a false alarm and take their time getting here.
The call rang out. Merde, Gabriel. Answer your damn phone. Ever since he’d mated Annabelle, Gabriel was hard to get a hold of. Pierre called again, and he would keep calling until his brother answered.
Gabriel answered the phone with a grunt. “This better be important, Pierre. I’m busy.”
A feminine giggle echoed over the phone line. Annabelle. He didn’t need two guesses to know what his brother had been up to.
“Well, unbusy yourself. We’ve got a problem.” Pacing, he outlined the situation as quickly as he could.
“Are you sure it was a Faucherian?” Gabriel groaned. “I feel like an imbecile every time I say that word.”
Oui, it was a stupid name for stupid, bigoted people. Unfortunately, as each century had passed, they’d grown larger and more influential, adding some wealthy and powerful people to their ranks.
“We’re sure. We don’t know why they targeted Melinda. Maybe because of us?”
“She’s the cipher working for Cordelia, no?”
“Oui.”
A weighted sigh from Gabriel. “Cordelia’s working with the Faucherians.”
“What the fuck?”
“Oui, it surprised me, too, but the Faucherians will do just about anything to destroy us, even, it appears, work with a time-traveling witch.”
“Melinda wasn’t easy for us to find? How did they? I don’t believe they have anyone that good.”
“You’re assuming she didn’t tell Cordelia herself.”
“I don’t think so.” A hacker who created new identities for people, some deserving, some not, all desperate, wouldn’t advertise where they live.
“There is the possibility…” Gabriel trailed off and there was weight in his silence.
“What, Gabriel? The possibility of what?”
“We, that is Maxime and I, think they might have infiltrated the DGSE.”
The Directorate-General for External Security, France’s foreign intelligence agency? That changed things. With government resources at their disposal, almost anything was possible.
Annabelle’s voice floated across the phone, asking if everything was all right.
“It’s Pierre. There’s trouble in London,” Gabriel replied to her.
To Pierre he said, “I’ll call Laurent. Have him do clean up.
Hopefully, he can get there before the police do.
If not, maybe he can run interference. The important thing is, you get the information out of the cipher about Cordelia. We need it.”
“Melinda. The cipher’s name is Melinda.”
“Pierre.” The warning in Gabriel’s voice was clear. “There’s no time to fuck around. We need to get Isobella back to the tenth century. We can’t put it off much longer, and I sure as hell don’t want Cordelia, any of her minions, or the Faucherians showing up to interfere.”
“It’s not that simple, Gabriel,” he ground out through gritted teeth.
“It fucking is. If we don’t get Isobella back to the tenth century soon, we won’t exist. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty attached to my life. Especially now I have Annabelle.”
Oui, he understood the urgency. It tugged at him, too.
Isobella’s destiny was to be the mate of his tenth-century ancestors, Edmond and Aubert Montagne.
She was their many times great grandmother.
The consequences of her not going, he couldn’t bear thinking about, but…
“She’s our mate, Gabriel. Melinda is our mate. ”
His phone went silent for a moment. “Merde. That changes things.”
“Oui.”
“D’accord. Keep me informed. Whatever you do, wherever you go, I want to know about it. And whatever you need, it’s yours. We’ll work this out.”
The tension eased from Pierre’s shoulders. “Merci, brother.”
He ended the call. One thing for certain, they couldn’t stay here. The Faucherians had plenty of soldiers. This one may have failed, but the next one they sent might not.
He itched to return to his mate, but there was something he needed to do first. In Melinda’s apartment, he snatched a tea towel from a hook in the kitchen, wrapped it around his hand and grabbed a knife. From beneath the sink, he took a bottle of cleaning fluid.
Blood was already congealing on the body as Pierre entered the second bedroom. As Louis had said, the tattoo on the dead man’s neck confirmed him as a Faucherian. Connards. But he didn’t have time to dwell on all the trouble they caused his kind.
Melinda’s screens lay on the floor, all of them dark and all smashed. The towers each had several bullet holes in them. Had Cordelia sent the Faucherians to destroy any evidence Melinda might have? Including Melinda herself? If so, what had prompted her to send them now?
His gums throbbed and his canines threatened to punch through, but he resisted the pull of his wolf.
He must be certain the dead man had done the job.
If someone discovered the body before Laurent could get here, it wouldn’t take long for the police to pull the footage from the security cameras which, along with Melinda’s computers, would be taken in as evidence.
The security logs in the building were easy enough to wipe, to hide their presence over the last few weeks.
He’d have to get onto that soon, but there was still Melinda’s feed in her flat to contend with.
There was no camera in this room, and no recording of Louis’ part shift when he killed the Faucherian—thank fuck—but there would be of them entering the apartment.
Who knew what other incriminating information she might have on her hard drives?
Things about her clients and what she did for a living that Melinda wouldn’t want discovered.
Using the tea towel to prevent leaving prints, he ripped off the casings of all four towers, located the hard drives in each of them and plunged the knife through them multiple times, just to be sure.
Satisfied his destruction would render them in operable, he tucked her phone into his pocket and using the cleaning fluid, wiped down the alarm cover and battery, removing any print or DNA Louis might have left behind.
In her bedroom, still using the tea towel, he dug around in her closet for an overnight bag, and tossed a few clothes in it.
She couldn’t stay here. Not anymore. From her dresser, he selected under garments—plain and utilitarian, except for a set of barely there red lace.
He fingered the material, imagining her in nothing but these, then shoved them in the bag.
With any luck, he might get to see them on her.
In her bedside drawer, her passport—in the name of Mei Lin Lee—and…
Putain. He stared at the small, purple, egg-shaped vibrator with a curling tail and the matching remote.
Before he could second guess his decision, he snatched up the vibrator and its remote and slipped them into the pocket of his sweats.
Her passport went into the bag, as did her phone.
A noise from beneath the bed had him freezing. He sniffed the air. Feline. Melinda’s cat. From the hours of footage they’d watched of Melinda, she had an attachment to her furry companion. Merde.
He found two shopping bags under the sink and filled them with tins of cat food, cat bowls, a bag of cat litter and the litter tray from the bathroom after emptying it onto the floor.
The ginger tabby put up a hell of a fight, yowling, scratching and biting as he grabbed it by the scruff, hauled it out from under Melinda’s bed and shoved it in the cat carrier he’d found on top of the water heater in the bathroom.
The cat knew he was a predator, even if Melinda didn’t.
As an afterthought, he grabbed Melinda’s teapot, which he wrapped in a clean tea towel, and her tins of jasmine tea, and loaded them into the shopping bag with the cat supplies.
After tonight, she was going to need her tea.
He snatched her purse off the sofa and shoved the tea towel in the shopping bag.
Pierre wasn’t taking the chance of leaving any trace behind.
With one last check of Melinda’s apartment, he headed back to theirs.