Chapter Eighteen
Before Denne left the restaurant, she made an excuse to Marco.
She didn’t even know what she said. Something about fish.
Which was stupid because the monger was beyond closed after five p.m., and also because she hated everything surf-related and Chef knew that: From the way the shit smelled, and how it felt raw, to the fact that a lot of the stock came with eyeballs, she just couldn’t handle the stuff.
If there was one errand, ever, that she would farm out, it would be an after-hours fish-pedition.
Still, Marco bought whatever the hell she’d said, waving a white- handled knife with the Sal’s logo on it over his cutting board as he stayed focused on trimming fat off a hunk of roast beef.
The fucking knife from the carving station.
Goddamn it.
As she went out the back door and it clapped shut behind her, she was kicking her own ass.
All brains could be manipulated, and human gray matter was especially easy to work with.
But what was impossible to control were those fucking CPD cop-bots that were everywhere in the last decade.
No minds to influence. No memories to hide.
And their recordings were instantly sent back to police HQ.
For fuck’s sake, that male in the hoodie and the jeans had caused her to get beginner-basic sloppy. Leaving the murder weapon behind? With an identifying mark on it like, oh, say, the fucking name of the goddamn restaurant the guy had been to?
OMG, at that level of stupid, they should first take her driver’s license away as a public service.
Courtesy of her mental lapse, Sal’s was going to get a visit from the Caldwell Police Department. ASAP.
The place was probably staked out already.
As she went around to the dark side, she thought about Marco and Emilio.
She’d brought a murder to those two men, and turned them into accomplices.
Sure, she hadn’t forced them to help with the young woman and the car, but they were men of worth who protected their own.
There was no way they wouldn’t have chipped in like they had, given the situation.
And now shit was very complicated.
Motherfucker, she thought as she closed her eyes.
It took longer than usual for her to dematerialize, to the point where she thought she might have to go the mist route.
Shadows had the option of traveling over the ground in a vapor, something that required less concentration, but was also less efficient, than the complete ghosting out.
Her brain was scrambled, and the cooking scents from the blowers on the roof, coupled with the crunching of tires over the ice as guests arrived up in front, made focusing even harder.
She’d ruined it. All of it.
Because she’d just had to get involved in shit that wasn’t her business—
Her corporeal form finally broke apart and she traveled in a scatter of molecules through the night. When she re-formed, it was in the woods by the river, just north of the clearing where she’d left the body.
The scene could well still be active. Who the fuck knew.
It wasn’t.
No bright lights glowing as lab techs in white suits took pictures of tire treads and tweezered individual hair fibers.
No battle-weary detectives smoking on the perimeter, frowns on their faces as they pieced things together.
No uniformed patrolmen regulating access.
No cop-bots recording everything with their camera eyes and their audio ears.
She stepped carefully through the snow, allowing the brilliant moonlight to be her guide versus getting out her phone flashlight and giving away her position.
But what was she hiding from. Nobody was here.
Then again, she’d been ducking her true identity around humans for her whole life, and staying on the down-low had always served her well.
As she stopped on the clearing’s periphery, the aftermath of the daylight activity made her think of ants all over a picnic.
Tributaries of footprints linked up and formed proper paths around and inside a ring of bright yellow tape, and there were plenty of tire grooves clogging up the broad running path she’d come down in her truck.
She could just imagine the lineup of Caldwell PD–branded patrol cars and CSI vans, and all the accompanying personnel.
Needless to say, no body.
And no knife. Because, hello, it had been sticking out of the corpse—
Later, she would wonder what called her attention to the river. It wasn’t a scent or a sound. A sixth sense, maybe.
What she was clear on, as she turned toward the shoreline, was she instantly knew who was standing there, staring across the ice-encrusted Hudson.
She waited for the male from the night before to look over his shoulder. When he didn’t, she cursed.
“None of your business,” she muttered to herself.
After a moment, Denne shook her head and started walking. Toward him, not away.
She wasn’t quiet about her approach. Even deliberately stepped on a couple of branches, and coughed once or twice.
The male didn’t so much as twitch.
When she was just three feet behind him, she stopped and looked around his heavy arm.
His focus was on a glass house directly across the river.
The modern place was built into the bend of a peninsula, the levels stacking up and no doubt offering incredible views.
Most of the expanse had drapes pulled, but there were a couple of rooms you could see into—and sure enough, there was a lean, blond female in a winter-white skirt suit walking around the elegantly decorated interior.
Given the window coverings, it had to be another vampire.
“Who is she?” Denne blurted.
Annnnnd that was when the shit hit the fan.
The male spun around, bared his fangs, and let out an unholy growl.
As he sank into his thighs like he was going to bite her face off, she jumped back and went for her old-fashioned revolver inside her jacket.
Except it was too late for that. No way she could get the weapon up and cocked before he attacked—
The male recoiled, and the change came over him immediately, his huge body freezing in place, his nostrils flaring as if he were testing her scent on the air, his upper lip dropping back down as his eyes softened.
The shift was so quick and complete, it was eerie.
And also a reminder that aggression in males was nothing to be toyed with.
She was a strong female, and with her gun, she probably could fend him off.
If she hadn’t been armed, though, and they’d gone hand-to-hand?
She’d have done some damage, sure. On the way to losing.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a deeper voice than she remembered. “But you shouldn’t sneak up on people. It’s dangerous.”
Denne narrowed her eyes and lowered the gun—but didn’t put the thing away.
There was something very, very different about him tonight.
He was in the same gray hoodie and jeans—or versions of the same as they were bloodstain free now.
Hair was the same, face, too. But she didn’t recognize him at all.
“What’s going on,” she said with a frown.
The male turned back around and seemed to forget she was there. Except then he replied, “You should go. It’s not safe here.”
“Nah, the humans won’t be back until it’s light out. If they even return.” In a wry tone, she tacked on, “Looks like they’ve gone through every square inch of this acreage with a microscope.”
He shook his head. “Not humans you need to worry about.”
She waited for him to finish, but he just stood there in the cold wind, staring across the river like whoever was in that glass house was the only thing that existed in the whole fucking world.
In a low tone, Denne prompted, “Are you stalking her because you’re in love or because you’re going to kill her.”
Like she needed another female-anything to save. And no, she wasn’t jealous. Jesus.
Like, not at all.
The male didn’t even look over again. “You need to go.”
“Yeah, you said that.”
And then she waited for him to keep talking.
Oh, damn it, what the hell was wrong with her? She’d spent her life staying out of trouble and keeping to herself.
“It’s just now,” she murmured, “I gotta know what’s happening here.”
“I have to protect her.”
Denne positioned herself so she could measure his profile. “From what.”
“The enemy.”
His voice was nearly inaudible, his affect too calm, his body too still. The fixation was fucking disturbing and she started to think he might be suffering some kind of psychotic break.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Allhan.”
None of the kind-of-charming, boyish-awkward routine. This was a fully grown male, who was goddamn serious about whatever he was doing.
“So what’s your deal, Al.” As she kept shit casual, she put her free hand in her pocket and made sure she had her cell phone against her palm. “Whatcha really doing out here now. Why’d you come last night.”
“You have to go.”
“Yeah, yeah, but I’m not going to.” On the far side of the river, the female walked out of a professionally appointed kitchen, and reappeared several windows down in a parlor. “See, I don’t really have anywhere I need to be. So how about you tell me what’s going on.”
It was a long while before he cranked his head around, and those eyes. Holy shit, those eyes. They were dead. No light in them at all.
“What the hell happened to you,” she breathed as he looked back out to the river.