Chapter 20
The hush was full of murmurs, the hum of a large occupied building at night, the ticking of its mechanical systems, his leman’s pulse in the near distance audible against the more frantic thunder of mortal hearts.
Jonathan listened intently from the hallway’s end, drifting back and forth in mistform at the margin of sweet Simone’s watchful caution, and scanned the rest of the hotel almost idly.
Nothing amiss. Why was he so uneasy?
Perhaps it was her insistence upon meeting with mortals. He could pour through the door and render them corpses in short order, but she… well, even the distraction and near-frustration of his tentative, wary, beautiful treasure entangling herself in this fashion was a pleasure in some aspects.
The lady had merely requested a small indulgence, after all.
Still, he did not like it. Her scent hung in the hallway, powerfully soothing. More noises—freshly awakened machinery, soft clatter, mortal voices in earnest conference. Her silence was now marked, though her pulse remained even, regular.
Was this another escape attempt? His patience snapped, and he streamed through the minute cracks under, around, between the double doors she had so thoughtfully warped with a single blow.
Aren’t you enthusiastic, darlin’. A pleasure to name her thus.
A faint whoosh issued from the far end of a half-glass cavern, the song of his leman’s heartbeat receding upon its stream.
Closer, and far louder, were five mortal males, all in a strange costume he could now identify as tactical.
They gathered in a tight knot near what seemed a bandstand or dais, and the reek of reined bloodlust was strong.
“—fuckin’ amazing, man.” A large blond specimen, standing a-spraddle as if possessed of a virulent rash upon his nethers, pumped his fist in the air. “Just pop, and down she goes. We gotta get more of that shit.”
“Experimental.” A dark, ferret-faced fellow cast a nervous glance across the vast shadowed space, as if he sensed Jonathan’s presence. “An’ I dunno, bitch might wake up in transit. Wouldn’t want to be stuck on a whirlybird with that.”
“Cut the chatter.” The chief of their small group was blond as well, bristles standing up aggressively on his close-cropped head, his scent full of shaky dominance bearing a burnt-metal chemical edge—some manner of medication, Jonathan surmised. “Hooper? We good?”
The lantern-jawed mortal so addressed was staring at a small flat rectangle—smartphone, that was the proper word—and nodded, his thumb lovingly stroke-tapping its glowing surface. “Payment’s landed and verified.”
“A solid night’s work. Let’s move ou—” The chief blinked, watery blue eyes widening, swelling like poached eggs.
Jonathan noticed the gleam at the man’s throat—blackened metal rings worked very finely indeed, chainmail snugged against flesh.
The collar was ingenious; yet unless constructed of true silver it would not turn aside even a fledgling’s fangs, merely causing allergic reaction to one new in the Blood.
Jonathan pulled his hand back, twisting his wrist to loosen muscle suction. It was so simple to stop a mortal’s inmost clock; the ribs were not reinforced as a sanguinant’s, the sac enclosing the organ fibrous instead of bone-shielded.
The other blond male’s chainmail collar produced a single spark against the drag of Jonathan’s claws before parting, only slightly more resistant than water.
Next came the ferret-face, who alone of his group had the presence of mind to begin moving, although unfortunately he chose to stagger backward, heavy-soled boots catching upon the lowest dais step.
Ferret-face was dead upon landing, head lopped free, and before the arterial spray reached full gush the heretofore-silent fifth male—owl-eyed, his heartbeat speaking of some small congenital flaw which might or might not cause problems were he to survive past this night—was flung across empty space with precisely enough force to hit the vast windows running all along the northwestern wall, producing a bonesnapping crack.
The impact, precisely gauged, was not enough to break or even spiderweb the glass. The mortal’s interior architecture was not nearly so lucky.
Which left only the lantern-jaw and his phone. Said jaw was loose as the mortal stared, fishmouthed, attempting to absorb the sudden whirlwind of violence; Jonathan leaned close, gaining a deep whiff of the mortal’s very particular scent—weak and harsh at once, so far from the perfume of his leman.
His strike was comparatively gentle, gauged just a hair over necksnapping force. The phone described a high arc, flipping end over end before dropping to land in Jonathan’s waiting hand as its former owner spun and crumpled.
Not an escape. He was almost certain; after all, she would either be far more direct or cunning, not this middle-road effort.
Blurring mistform again, pouring through doors into the lift shaft, drawn upward upon the golden thread, and when he burst onto the roof a flood of night wind bore only a single trace of her along with a puff of exhaust and a fading thump-shirr noise.
A complex wash of other male mortals—prey, and now he could pinpoint an additional detail, alerting him to the true nature of this disaster.
The golden thread held an acrid note, something inimical attempting to metabolize through skin and breath. Poisoning a sanguinant was difficult indeed, most drugs and illnesses simply eaten by the Gift.
And yet mortals were endlessly inventive, and this an age of technological wonder.
The fleeing shadow made a distinct rhythmic noise to the northwest, a deceptively inelegant bee bumbling along. One of the strange aircraft with whirling blades, staying aloft through science indistinguishable from magic, wheeling due west as if chasing a sun long retreated.
Or fleeing swift-approaching dawn.
Even in mistform he might not catch up before the sun rose. Were the mortals intending murder, or something far more daring? He should have listened to their conversation, instead of refraining from politeness to his sweet Simone.
He was still holding the phone, he realized. Plumbing its secrets could wait. He slipped it into a pocket—wonderful, really, the clothing of this age was agreeably convenient in that regard—and took to the sky.