Chapter 5 #2
“He forwarded the report. Look, we have the name the car was registered under, a background check on the guy, and his most recent bank records. Holy shit,” she breathed.
“Surprised?”
“I’ve never worked on this side of things before, but you knew that.” Emma scrolled down through the financial records. “See these pending charges? He paid for a room at the Motor Inn. And there’s a recent charge to a Shell station. I know one in the area.”
“That’s only a few miles from here,” Adrian muttered. The time in the corner of the monitor taunted him, and he was divided between disobeying his own plans and listening to the inner voice of reason. “Kind of sloppy of him though. Usually hunters deal in cash only to avoid a paper trail.”
“Maybe they did this in a rush. Maybe they’ve exhausted all of their cash.” She frowned.
“Maybe it’s a trap,” Adrian suggested in a low voice.
“This is a lot of maybes, Adrian.”
“All the more reason to head out tomorrow after sunset. We don’t want time to be on their side.”
The computer screen dimmed after Emma logged off.
She rose from her seat and stretched with her arms above her head, revealing a narrow strip of bare skin around her midsection.
Adrian looked away to avoid admiring the lean curve of her back, only to catch a broody, dark-haired member of the book club looking in his stead.
When the young vampire noticed Adrian watching him, they locked gazes in a fleeting stare-off.
The kid broke eye contact first and fumbled his paperback novel.
Fuck, why did vampires have to be such pack-oriented creatures? Sometimes the frequent necessity of reestablishing his place in the hierarchy irritated him.
“For now, I’ll handle this and map out our route. You pack your bags with whatever you need for the next two weeks.
“I’ll pack the car as well,” Emma offered.
“If you like. Get some rest, you’ll need it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have personal affairs of my own to arrange.”
Because, if he had to sit one more minute in that room with that boy’s lusting eyes on Emma, he’d do or say something he’d regret.
Adrian cruised down State Road 6 and gestured to the motel, a cluster of pea green and yellow buildings hidden away by the dense foliage of a few trees. “This is it. Do you see the car?”
Emma stared out the window and focused on the small population of cars dotting the pavement. “Yeah, I do. It’s that one,” she said, pointing to the silver sedan parked at the end of the lot.
Adrian pulled into the second entrance to the motel and killed the engine. “You ready to face off against them?”
She chuckled scornfully. “I’m not afraid or anything related to hunters, but I don’t know if I can cross the threshold, even if it’s in a rented room. They’ve been here for days, maybe weeks, watching and observing the coven.”
“Maybe you can’t, but I can,” Adrian muttered. “It might hurt like a bitch, but I’ll get in.”
“What about the other people in the motel?”
“Follow my lead, and we’ll avoid civilian casualties. If we play it safe, no one will realize anything is happening. We’ll be in and out, back to our car in a few minutes.”
Emma popped up one skeptical eyebrow at him. “Uh-huh.”
To date, she was the only adept who treated him like a vampire on her level, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted to chastise her for disrespect or kiss her.
He decided on the latter. While the others became cowed little sheep in his presence, she met his stares, unblinking and fearless. She had the soul of a master inside her, and he thought, in a few decades, maybe she’d become an ideal candidate to nominate for master of liaisons.
A night clerk awaited them inside the lobby, and after Adrian exercised a little vampiric talent—pitting his compulsion charm against the weak-willed motel employee—they emerged with a room number and a keycard.
Emma had wiped the guy’s memory and ordered him to erase the security footage of their arrival.
Once outside again, they passed two guys smoking beside a Dodge pickup that had seen better days, dull rust visible on the doors and numerous dings in the body.
Both men appeared to be college age, too scrawny and too young to be hunters.
He dismissed them as harmless before leading Emma around to the rear of the building where more rooms awaited them.
Quiet. Dark. Perfect for their operation.
He released a pent-up breath and eyed the suite numbers.
Once outside of the hunters’ motel room, Adrian passed her a handgun with a silencer attached.
“Seems like most of them are gone, but I’m not leaving anything up to chance. I only smell one. Maybe two.”
“Don’t you need this?”
“Not really.”
He slid the keycard through the slot and threw the door open. A resistant force pushed at him, but the threshold in public places was a shadow compared to a home. Adrian ignored the sharp stings and forced his way through the invisible barrier.
A man stood only a few yards away by the double bed, surprise forming his mouth into a small “O.” He must have been on his way out.
“Fuck!” he cried as he drew a handgun from his jacket.
Adrian didn’t dare move from its path with Emma behind him and vulnerable.
The pressure of the silenced round sank into his chest, and he was acutely aware of a mild burn, an annoyance, before he sprang forward across the room as the man came up with a crucifix from his jacket, as if a wood and metal decoration could hurt him.
Adrian slammed him into the wall and held him by his throat with one hand.
Then he swept away the handgun. It thumped to the floor nearby.
“What do you want, demon?” the lone hunter gritted out.
“You know exactly what I want.” Adrian’s eyes cut to the side. Duffel bags and gear piled on the floor beside the bed indicated he hadn’t come alone. “Where are the other hunters?”
“I’m not telling you shit.”
“Why did you target that vampire the other night?”
“You mean the dead whore behind you?” The hunter laughed and spit in Adrian’s face. “Screw you.”
And he saw red. Of all the things he could have tolerated, calling Emma a whore wasn’t one of them.
“Adrian!” Emma called out in warning.
Excruciating pain ripped through his side, torn open by a knife he hadn’t seen. He snapped the hunter’s neck with one flex of his fingers and dropped him to the floor. Before he could check out the wound, Emma’s cold hands pulled at his shirt. He swatted her fingers away and ignored her scowl.
“Goddammit,” he muttered under his breath as he wrenched the blade from between his ribs.
“It’s not too bad.” He was angrier about the shirt than the injury and blamed himself for the attack.
One momentary lapse of judgment could have given the hunter the upper hand and ended the confrontation with a knife in Adrian’s heart.
Not that striking a vampire in the heart was that easy.
Most people didn’t know it, but vamps had evolved to develop a bony plate protecting their most important vital organ.
And vampire bones were as tough as they came. He’d taken a handgun shot to the head before with only a mild concussion to show for it, but he still loathed fighting armed individuals in close spaces. A shot that missed him was a round with the potential to hit someone else.
He’d rather it be him than Emma or some wandering human bystander.
“Shut up. You’re bleeding,” she chastised.
“I’m fine. Wait, how did you get in here?” He saw her for the first time with new eyes, realization dawning. She’d entered the room and shut the door behind her.
How the hell had she crossed the threshold without permission at her age?
“You’re bleeding,” she repeated.
Emma untucked his shirt and slid her hands beneath it against bare skin. Lifting the cotton away only revealed fresh, pink skin stretched over hard muscle.
“That fast?”
Adrian grinned weakly, forced on account of still marveling over how the hell she came inside.
“When you’re older, you’ll get to enjoy this too.
Though I have to say, you’re not so bad yourself when it comes to healing from gunshots, Emma.
” He stepped away from her and searched the room, rummaging through their stuff. “Grab that bag, would you?”
“Sure.” She paused by the corpse. “Are we going to leave him? I saw a dumpster in the back.”
“Nah. Leave him. Nice message for the guys to come back to, don’t you think?
” Adrian plucked a phone off the charger on the table and looked at the last messages.
“If I read between the lines, it appears they’ll be back in an hour.
I guess this wasn’t a trap after all. Actually, a pair are at the Cerulean Legacy looking for you, and two more are staking out the local Starbucks since you frequent it. ”
He swiped his finger over the screen and skimmed through messages in varying degrees of ambiguity. Most of it was in their code, indecipherable to him.
Emma ran her fingers over the dead man’s pockets and began removing his belongings. “If they’re at the hotel, our other people are in danger.”
“We’ll have to draw them away and give them a reason to follow us out of the area.
Then we’ll lose them on the road. I know it’s not much, but unless you’re ready for another showdown with them right now, it’s the solution with the least bloodshed for Belleridge to clean up.
The police are already a little pissed at us for that massacre you left behind. ”
“Sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize. You’re alive, and they’ll get over it. Anyway, do you see anything else of use here?”
“No, not really.”
“We may as well take their case of weapons and leave them empty-handed.”
A few minutes later, they were in the car again, Adrian behind the wheel and tapping out a message on the stolen phone.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up and grinned. “Giving them a reason to leave the hotel.”