Chapter 4 #2
Her chin tips up a fraction. ‘Sure. You look like a sort who doesn’t mind honesty.
’ Her gaze darts to the skyscraper behind me for a half-second.
‘You live in a glass tower above the clouds when most of your kind prefer basements and dungeons. That suggests either vanity or defiance. I’m trying to decide which. ’
I slide my hands into my pockets.
‘I am not most… beings,’ I tell her. ‘If I need to clarify that for you, we are indeed off to a poor start. Ask what you want to ask.’
She glances towards the window again, towards the bleeding edge of the sun as it lowers behind the city. ‘You stand in daylight. How is that possible?’
A question very few people dare to ask and which is offered to even fewer. Yet the defiance in her scratches at centuries-old ennui, and for reasons I do not care to examine, I indulge her.
‘Age grants privileges. Power refines them. You’ve come across a few of my kind with varying degrees of strength and prowess, have you not?’
Her head jerks in a quick nod, her eyes shifting every few seconds to catalogue more of the room.
‘For those of a certain age, the sun is an inconvenience, yes,’ I say, ‘but it’s not a prohibition. I can tolerate it for hours now. Decades from now, I will walk from sunrise to sunset without consequence. There are advantages to survival when one is patient.’
I don’t mention the greatest privilege of all, the exceptional dominion sealed into me when the Crimson Mother remade my existence.
Only a handful of people who walk this Earth know the legacy of the Five Blood Thrones and the power it imbues its Blood. I am not about to share it with this audacious little bounty hunter whose insolent expression clearly shrieks that she would prefer to be anywhere but here.
As vaguely intriguing or captivatingly beautiful as I might find her.
Her gaze sharpens, less with awe than calculation. ‘And that patience gives you?’ she prompts.
‘Daylight governance,’ I continue. ‘Night dominion. Influence that does not sleep. My… position affords me resilience, longevity, and command. I rule this city because I can afford to see it whole. You’ll be wise not to forget that during our dealings.’
She absorbs that without comment, then subtly repositions herself so the door remains in her peripheral vision.
I begin to circle the room, unhurried, with a step here, a slight pivot there.
A predator does not announce pursuit. But more than that, I am testing her.
With casual intent, I relocate my glass from desk to liquor cabinet, watching her track me without turning her back, adjusting with quiet efficiency.
She has mastered evasion without fleeing.
An impressive skill.
‘Why are you avoiding me?’ I ask bluntly.
‘I don’t like being stalked. Or… monitored.’ She shrugs. ‘Or the many things we both know you’re doing. Hell, I have a dirty laundry list of my dislikes but I won’t bore you with it.’
‘Hmm. So if I crossed the room right now to shake your hand, as civility dictates, you would do… what, exactly?’
‘Probably punch you in the face,’ she returns dryly, although her eyes blaze with a lethal warning. ‘Top of my list is a serious aversion to being touched.’
That stops me.
Interest flares, sharp and unwelcome.
I catalogue it, then dismiss it as a side effect of the rune pulsing beneath my shirt, the restlessness that has plagued me of late.
I am not ruled by impulse. I don’t react to proximity.
And yet.
I look at her again, more carefully this time. The clean lines of her jaw. The controlled set of her overly plump blood-red mouth. The way she holds herself as if contact is a choice she intends to deny at all cost.
‘Noted,’ I say.
Her breathing remains steady for longer this time, as if now that we have established boundaries, she is giving herself permission to lower her guard by a fraction.
Foolish girl.
In another time, another place, I would snatch at the throat covered by that insubstantial collar, lick the pulse I can see throbbing with a persistent whoosh whoosh whoosh, and take singular, if brief, interest in watching those glaring eyes glaze with—
Enough.
I move back to my desk and brace my hands against it, reasserting the order of things with deliberate ease.
Purpose sharpens everything else.
Except what is happening now is the greatest inconvenience I have ever faced. And it demands immediate resolution.
‘Whatever led you to believe you could refuse me,’ I say, infusing lethal steel in my tone. ‘That ends today.’
Her lips part as if to argue, then close. She studies me with renewed focus.
‘You were told I’m in need of your services but not given the details, correct?’
An abrupt nod, her eyes fixed squarely on mine.
Again, I force away the sting of intrigue her boldness births. The shimmer of heat it drizzles through a body that has known more coldness than most people can bear in ten lifetimes.
‘I’m searching for someone,’ I continue. ‘A woman who vanished six years ago. Her name is Lyra Hannigan.’
I hear the quickening rush of her blood. See the tiny twitch of her fingers. Yet her eyes continue to bore into mine, and I’m not certain if it’s recklessness or bravado.
‘Why?’
‘What concern is it of yours?’ My tone is deceptively mild.
She shrugs, and I follow the line of her shoulder with curious absorption. My gaze lingers on the pulse alternating between racing and slowing, as if she is exerting substantial effort to maintain calm.
Fascinating.
In my vast experience, people either fear me or, when I will it so, sink into foolish calm.
I would call this singular interest a compulsion if I didn’t know the true meaning of the word.
But I do.
And this is not that.
‘You want my services bad enough to have hounded my agency for a couple of weeks. Which means you know I’m the best. Which also means you know I’m not a low-tier hunter who blindly follows instructions.
So with respect, I won’t hunt down a woman who might be safer wherever she’s hiding. Not if you mean her harm.’
‘She is mine,’ I state calmly. ‘My… intended. And she has been missing long enough to threaten… a few things I wish not to be threatened.’ I straighten, letting the weight of that truth settle into the room. ‘And that is all the information you need.’
‘Not quite. How do I know you won’t harm her?’ she persists.
I smell fury in her curious, troubling scent. ‘You don’t. You will find her,’ I say. ‘And you will bring her to me.’
Her eyes narrow. ‘And if she doesn’t want to be found?’
‘That, too, is not your concern.’
‘And if she doesn’t want whatever it is you’re offering?’
I allow myself a thin smile. ‘That will be addressed when the time comes. Tell me, are you always this overly concerned for the quarry you hunt?’
‘Only when things don’t quite add up. And you, Mr Don All-Powerful, using me to hunt down some woman when you have battalions of minions both of the human and non-human kind, seems… I don’t know… iffy.’
Silence stretches, thick with things unsaid.
I watch her weigh the risks, the reward, the lie she will give me if she decides to refuse again. I sense in Eira Cross a streak of unfortunate and probably misguided morality, despite her questionable profession.
I decide not to allow it.
‘I’ll pay you five million dollars now to take the job,’ I say evenly. ‘Another five million when you find Lyra Hannigan and bring her to me.’