Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Adrian led the way to Brennan’s office. After a sharp knock of warning, he entered to find the coven leader with a young woman on his lap, her red hair pulled over one shoulder and her neck bared.
Brennan’s blue eyes rose to the door. “Why yes, do come in.”
Adrian ignored his friend’s stormy expression. “The council has made their decree. I didn’t think you’d want to wait.”
“Bella, dear, go wait for me in the bedroom.”
After gracefully leaving Brennan’s lap, Bella crossed the office floor and strode to the wall.
Every step bounced the short hem of her lacy black negligee against the top of her thighs.
She tugged a book on the shelf to activate a hidden entrance to Brennan’s personal bedchamber and disappeared into a bedroom with crimson silk sheets and romantic candlelight. The door shut behind her.
To Adrian’s rear, Emma made a flustered, nervous sound and focused on a fascinating tapestry on the wall while Brennan fastened his shirt and tucked it into his slacks.
“Julius phoned me about the decree, but I didn’t expect you to return so promptly.”
“Did you expect us to linger?” Adrian raised a brow and crossed his arms over his chest. “The sooner Emmaleigh completes her task, the sooner we can all rest easy.”
Brennan straightened his tie. “Very well. What do you require?”
Emma stepped forward and relayed her discovery about the hunter who had observed the attack. She rattled off the license plate number and the details she’d noticed.
“If we can get a trace on the car, I think it would give us a place to start. A name, at the very least. I imagine they’ll be nearby if they’re trying to keep tabs on Emma.”
“Have you realized the cell haunting Dartsmouth may lack information about the hunters holding the Eye?” Brennan asked.
“The thought did occur to me, but it’s a place to start. At the very least, Emma and I can lead them away if staking her is their only mission objective here.”
“All right.” Brennan picked up the phone to dial his contact in the police department. “What else?”
“We’ll make the drive to the Smithsonian in DC,” Adrian continued. “See if we can learn anything about the theft and how the hell it reached the museum in the first place. From there, who knows. Texas, maybe.”
“Or wherever the trail leads us,” Emma interjected. “Could be anywhere.”
Brennan held up a finger for silence when his call connected. Adrian turned his attention to a map on the wall and motioned Emma over while their illustrious leader handled their first real lead.
“Seven-to-nine-hour drive. We’ll need to plan for a stop,” he told her.
“We can’t make that in one night? Nine hours isn’t much.”
“We could, if you’d like to risk traffic delays and sleeping in the car after sunrise. Besides, that way we’ll have a full night to explore the crime scene.”
Emma frowned. Her brow furrowed into a line he wanted to smooth away. “We’ll need a way inside after hours.”
It wasn’t the first time Adrian had gone on a day mission to investigate matters outside of the coven, but it had to be a first for Emma.
Remembering to be patient with her, he pressed one hand against her back.
She didn’t tense. “Don’t worry too much about that.
We’ll grease a few palms and gain access after dark. ”
They spoke for a while longer at the map while Adrian identified locations of smaller coven houses along the way.
“I remember that one. They were very nice. Had a homey kind of feeling there,” Emma murmured. “But cramped.”
While the seven great covens were larger and always had room for older, established vampires, the smaller clans self-limited their populations to no more than seven or eight.
Once Brennan hung up the phone, he turned his attention back to them.
The fax machine beeped behind him and churned out a few sheets of paper, one of them decorated with an Avis logo.
“Here. The car in question is a rental registered under this name, but my contact at the department will do a trace on him. If they’ve rented a hotel or made any credit card purchases lately, it’ll turn up. ”
Adrian grinned. “Speaking of credit… we’ll need funds for gas and any potential emergencies.”
Brennan produced a credit card with a matte black surface. “Spend wisely, mate.”
“You know I always do.”
“Anything else?”
“Not at this time. You’ll let me know if the police produce anything else?”
“Yeah. Shouldn’t take long. Hunters operate in cells, so if one goes dark, another relocates to their last known spot to identify what’s happened and determine the next course of action.” Brennan nodded to the door. “Go and sketch out your route to the Smithsonian”
Emma turned to him the moment they were outside the office. “I can’t believe you did that.”
Adrian glanced at her. “Did what?”
“If any of us barged into his office like that, we’d be hitchhiking to our next coven at dawn.”
“So?”
“He lets you get away with murder.”
“He and I have an understanding.” Chuckling, he gestured her ahead of him into the library, his other hand on the small of her back.
“Uh-huh. He looked murderous.”
“That look from him is nothing new. Trust me. He’ll finish what he started now that we’re gone,” Adrian assured her, enviously wishing for a sip of hot blood from a live vein himself. He hadn’t kept a human pet in years, and even then, it was a short-lived relationship of convenience.
And he hadn’t enjoyed many vampire lovers either over the years, certainly never so chummy that he drank from them. As the thoughts danced through his mind, a young neophyte, barely more than a few months into her second life, glanced enviously at Emma in passing. Adrian ignored it.
Emma stared the vampire down without breaking eye contact, until the other female retreated into the shadows of another room.
It wasn’t that he didn’t notice the favorable attention he received from their females, and even some of the males, but that he had no interest. He knew of many masters who broke the rules of their society by fraternizing with the lessers, and he knew a handful who had been stripped of their titles too.
Until Emma, it had never been a risk he’d been willing to take. But she grew on him, got under his skin and in his head until he practically smelled her blood even after she’d left a room. Fuck, why couldn’t he untangle her from his brain?
“That one has it out for you,” he murmured, referring to the girl. “Are you one of her mentors?”
“Was. I grounded her last week for playing it close during a monitored live-feeding exam. After I cut her off, she continued to drink,” Emma explained with a shrug. “She’s Angie’s problem now.”
“Ouch.”
“Save the ouch for Jeffrey. He passed out from the blood loss. She could have killed him.”
The library spanned the entire corner wing of the house, each wall covered in floor-to-ceiling shelves and packed to the brim with books on every subject and genre.
Two identical bay windows with built-in seats let in the moonlight and offered a serene seaside view.
Five adepts gathered on a sofa near the fireplace, holding identical books with covers depicting a magical battle.
A book club. He’d forgotten the group visited three times a week to discuss their current reads.
“We can take that corner over there,” Emma murmured, equally aware of multiple gazes drifting their way. It seemed like every eye was on them.
Many covens, Dartmouth included, relied on the transference of gossip as entertainment by trading secrets like currency.
Information became a vital resource for vampires who weren’t yet able to visit the city or travel away from home base.
New vampires no longer had personal lives of their own and lived for being in the business of older, established vampires.
With his posture erect and chin high, he followed her to the quiet corner. He’d never been that desperate for entertainment, not even in the younger days when he was a neophyte struggling to fit in.
Or had he?
“Now what?” she asked. “Why the library?”
Adrian nudged her toward a computer. His personal printer was out of ink, putting a damper on going to his office instead.
“To acquire a recent map of the sanctuaries along our route while we wait for information on the driver. Shouldn’t take long.
Then we pack, rest, and get on the road to track the hunters at sunset. Log into the system.”
“If the news comes back soon and they’re nearby—”
“We’ll wait anyway,” he cut in, “unless you want to risk hunters trapping you by daylight.”
“Fine.” Emma slipped into the chair and typed her login. A moment later, she had the society directory open, a detailed listing of every safe house, coven, and underground across the world, color-coded by vacancy and privilege ranking.
Her easy surrender made him wary, but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and question her contentment with the decision.
“I know of a couple safe houses in the area,” she said, “but a few are luxury sanctuaries above my level.”
“I have access to all of them,” he assured her.
“And if we go to Texas?”
“I have access to all council resources, Emmaleigh. Consider it a perk of the job. Whether we fly or drive, we’ll be taken care of.
I’ve seen too many things go wrong with a commercial flight to risk it for domestic travel unless necessary though.
I prefer to be in control of my arrival and departure. ”
“Oh.” After a moment, her face tilted up to him. “Like what kind of things?”
“I know a master who hid for hours in an Atlanta airport restroom because of a flight delay. If it can go wrong, it will.”
Emma snickered and turned back to the computer monitor. A new message icon popped up in the corner, along with a notification chirp. She tabbed over to her e-mail and opened the missive from Brennan.