Chapter Nineteen
Every time Allhan blinked, all he saw were the bodies in the snow from the night before.
And when he breathed in through his nose, it wasn’t fresh, cold air going in and out of his sinuses.
It was blood; all he could smell was the blood.
And then there were his hands. His hands were warm and sticky from trying to stop the bleeding at the throat, and his heart was pounding because he knew that there was nothing he could do.
No way of saving the male who’d spoken in such a rush.
Like he was fully aware that he was dying and determined to get some of the story out. So his friends might be rescued.
“Al? What’s going on here. Is there someone I can call for you?”
The sound of his name was like an echo from another world, and as he turned his head again, he felt as though he was looking at the female through a fog.
The longer he stared at her, though, the clearer she became, until he was able to finally connect to the present.
To where he actually was, as opposed to where he’d been last night.
Details registered. She’d kept her gun out, and her other hand was in the pocket of her black parka as if she had another weapon in there. Or maybe a phone? Her stance was tense and her dark eyes steady not because she was calm, but because she was measuring him as a threat.
It was strange, he thought. Reading emotions had never been a strong suit for him. In fact, for the longest time, it had been impossible for him to define the positions of eyes and mouths, and translate the countless orientations into meanings.
His father had despised his social failings. His sister had pitied them.
And he had been determined to learn that which had come so easily to everybody else around him.
As a consequence, he was an expert at them now.
“You have nothing to fear from me.”
“Damn right I don’t.” Her smile was cold, but it was to hide the fact that he had actually rattled her a little. “But that’s about me and not you.”
Allhan shook his head and looked back at the glass house.
There was no reason to talk to her about anything, much less argue a fact so immutable it was practically one of the laws of physics.
There were plenty of things he wanted to hurt right now, but not her.
Never her. And actually, if she wouldn’t leave the clearing, he could always just reposition farther down the river.
In case the slayer somehow knew he was here.
The problem? He found himself wanting to explain… something.
Even though he couldn’t tell her much—
“Six males I knew were killed last night by lessers,” he said roughly. When she gasped, he rubbed his aching sternum. “I wasn’t, like, really close to them, but I… was the one who found four of them outside of a club downtown.”
“I’m really fucking sorry.” When he just nodded, she cleared her throat. “Shit.”
“Yeah.” He glanced at both his hands and saw them stained with blood. “That just about covers it. And you know, I thought… it was bad. Like, last night, when I came here. I knew… it was bad, like, fuck. But the two of them who were kidnapped were… worked on, if you know what I mean.”
As she muttered a curse, he didn’t know why the hell he kept going. “They were taken… somewhere… and tortured. The bodies were found just before dawn.”
He looked back at his sister’s safe house. The one he hadn’t known about. The one he’d had to find in the databases when it became clear she hadn’t gone to Theo’s after all.
“The two males were tortured for information.”
That was as far as he could go. One, because he didn’t want this female to know too much. And two, he had a sudden, absurd conviction that he could ensnare her in this nightmare with him if he kept talking.
“You think slayers are going to find her,” the female said.
Oh, no, he thought. He was very sure they already had.
He’d never considered the fact that even though he might not know Shuli’s friends, they could very well know Carmen and his family.
He had been born twenty years after his sister so they’d never run in the same circles—and he hadn’t had a circle.
But Carmen and Theo had had an active social life, and the aristocracy was a small club.
That fucking slayer had tortured those two males to find out details about her.
And had gotten them.
It said a lot about how much the Lessening Society knew of vampires that they’d navigated the opportunity with those males as they had. And the unmistakable conclusion was that if Allhan hadn’t been with Shuli and his friends at the club, the six of them would still be alive.
And his sister’s whereabouts in her glass house would still be unknown.
“So why aren’t you going over there,” the female next to him asked. “And taking her away?”
Breaking off from her, Allhan walked back through the trees, to the yellow tape that had been strung around the clearing.
As he regarded the disturbed snow, the tire grabs, the bloodstains where the body had been, he had such an incredible pain behind his sternum, he wondered if he was having heart trouble.
“Why did you kill that human,” he asked, knowing she’d followed him.
She was not going to want to talk about her situation. Maybe invasive questions would get her to go.
“He was hurting a woman.”
Allhan twisted around and frowned. “What do you mean, ‘hurting.’ ”
“I shouldn’t have gotten involved.” She came closer, her boots crunching through the uneven ice pack.
“It was just some customer at the place I work. I didn’t know her.
But she needed my help, and after I went into her mind and saw what he did to her, there was no way I could let him live. Some things… just have to be handled.”
Abruptly, he thought of sterling silver candlesticks.
“I agree,” he heard himself say.
And then they just stayed where they were, their eyes meeting.
“Why did you come back here tonight?” he asked.
“I made a mistake.” A hint of a hard smile lifted her lips. “Not about security cameras. Those I did take care of.”
Allhan nodded. “You forgot to take the knife with you when you left. Don’t worry, I pulled it out of him and went to the bridge. It’s at the bottom of the river. No one is ever going to find your murder weapon.”
The exhale that left her was slow and surprised.
“Salvatore’s Restaurant. Right on the handle.” He turned back to the clearing. “But like I said, you don’t have to worry about it. There are bubblers around all the bridge supports to keep the ice away. I watched it sink with my own eyes.”
“Why did you do that… why did you help me?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve got a soft spot for females in peril, too.”
“I was not in peril.”
Even with everything going on, he had to smile to himself.
“If the humans had found that knife, they would have immediately gone back to the restaurant you work at, and who knows what would have happened. Have you told the owner that you’re a vampire or was that not something covered during your employment interview. ”
“It didn’t come up,” she muttered dryly.
“Mmm. Best it stays that way.”
In the silence that followed, the wind moved around them, drawing the pine boughs in and out of position in waves, whiffling the snow that was still loose because the temperature remained so low. In a strange, profound way, her mere presence calmed him, helped him breathe.
Even though it didn’t change the mess he was in.
The deadly danger his sister was in.
Six months since their father had been in the grave, and he was was still screwing them both. Then again, nothing had worked out as he’d planned. Nothing.
“Well, fuck,” she said in a low voice. “Looks like I owe you.”
Denne turned back to the glass house. The female was no longer in sight, and she had a sudden, irrational fear that a slayer was inside and whoever Al was worried about was being killed right now.
Actually, it wasn’t irrational.
“Why aren’t you going over there?” she asked.
In her peripheral vision, he rubbed his temples like he was trying to rotate the tires on his brain. “I can’t. She… hates me, and she has good reason to.”
“Trouble with exes, huh.” Denne shrugged. “So I’ll go over.”
His eyes snapped toward her. “You cannot—”
“Sure I can. I’ll knock on the door, make sure she’s okay, and tell her she needs to find a safe house.”
Al shook his head like he was having a seizure. “That is her safe house. And it’s too dangerous—”
“I’m really good at taking care of myself. Besides, that’s not how I die.”
There was a shocked pause. “Excuse me?”
“Long story. But I do not die in a glass house on the shores of the Hudson River one night after my life is over.”
“I’m sorry—I’m totally not following.”
She smiled for half a second. “Like I said, it’s a long story. Looks like both of us had bad news last night.”
“You’re not going over there.”
As she stared at the house, she felt him focus on her, and as much as she tried to deny it, she liked the attention.
“Do you know what I am, Al?” She glanced back at him. “A vampire, yes, but what kind of vampire I am?”
When he shook his head, she nodded. “I’m going to show you a little trick. It took me years to be able to do this, and I haven’t really shown this off to many people…”
Try any, she tacked on to herself.
“But I want you to look at me.” She kept the gun out, but released her cell phone and patted at her parka. “You see me, right? I’m standing in front of you. Right?”
As he inclined his head, she lowered her voice. “I want you to keep staring at me. Just keep those eyeballs right… where… they… are.”
Between one blink and the next, she projected herself so that a slice of her life-force was behind him.
“I’m also over here, Al.”
He wheeled around and almost tripped over his feet. “What the fuck—”
Denne lifted a hand and waved at him. In her mind, she had a split screen of sight, seeing him both face-on and from the back, and she could also see both versions of herself, project her voice in both places, move wherever she wanted to.
“I’m a Shadow,” she explained as she sent the image of her walking back around. “It’s called astro-projection.”
“Some of us can do it,” the other her chimed in.
“Well, not many,” she hedged as the main her stayed where she was.
“You need to have the knack to begin with—”
“And it has to be developed,” she finished as the two of her stood side by side. “But when I say I can go over there safely, I assure you, it’s not a problem.”
With that, she absorbed the projection back into herself.
Al, bless him, leaned forward like he either wanted to see her better—or he was about to poke her in the shoulder to make sure she was real.
“How the hell did you do that?” he asked.
“It’s a lot like dematerializing, except you only send a part of yourself through the air, not the whole thing. The projection is me, but not. I know where I actually am, and I can see, interact, and move around in the other place, even though that’s not really me.”
“A Shadow,” he whispered with a kind of awe. “I had heard of your kind, but I’ve never met one before. You. I mean—fuck. That sounds bad, it’s coming out all wrong.”
“Don’t stress. I know what you mean. And we keep to ourselves mostly. There’s a long tradition of not leaving the Territory.”
“And yet you work in a human restaurant?”
“No, my father owns it.” She smiled again. “He was given it over thirty years ago because he loves to cook. He’d still be there if he could, but a ‘man’ who looks as young as the night he walked in, after three decades? He had to step aside for a little while.”
Abruptly, she put her palms out to pump the brakes. “I’m no cook, to be clear. I just run the numbers, keep the trains going, help out when I can.”
His face softened. “Especially women when they need you.”
“Yeah,” she said with defeat. “I don’t know what the hell has gotten into me.”
“Maybe you’re just a true female of worth. And that’s what people like you do.”
Denne shook her head. “No, I don’t know what it is.”
What she was clear on was that she owed this male. Huge. “Anyway, how about I go over there and help out that female you love so much.”
As Al just stared at her, a strange emotion curled in her gut, and the twisting, aggressive drive was so strong, she found it impossible to ignore—even though it was something she’d never felt before.
Assuming she was clocking the shit right, though, she knew what it was.
Jealousy.
Which was totally nuts.
There was absolutely no reason for her to envy some female she didn’t know over a male she’d run into by mistake out here in the fucking woods.
“So what’s it going to be?” she prompted.
Al stepped into her, and as she had to let her head fall back so she could still meet his eyes, she found the difference in their heights kind of mesmerizing.
And then there was the size of him. For all of the male’s awkwardness, his body was well muscled, and she knew that as time went on, he was going to continue to put on more weight because he’d just been through the change.
Abruptly, she wondered what his chest looked like, bare and bathed in soft light. And his abs… and his—
“I can’t have you hurt, too.” He slowly shook his head. “I’ve already got so many people involved in this.”
“Involved in what?”
When he looked away sharply, she stomped a boot in frustration.
But then she found herself looking into his pale blue eyes.
They were a nice version of the color, like aquamarine gems. And around them, his lashes were thick and long, crowding at the far corners in a way that might have been a little feminine, except for the heavy brows he had.
“Will you finally let me know your name?” he said in a low, velvety voice.
Denne’s heart skipped a beat. “Names don’t mean anything.”
“No? Then share yours with me, if that’s true.”
“Dennesha.”
He closed his eyes as if savoring the sound. “What a beautiful name.” Then his lips parted, like maybe his chest was getting tight. “Dennesha.”
“Denne, for short. Like the restaurant.”
His lids slowly lifted and the glow in those eyes of his was so intense, she felt like taking off her parka. Before she spontaneously combusted.
“You know what I’m thinking about right now?” she heard her- self say.
When he shook his head, his stare drifted down and focused on her mouth.
“Oh, I think you do, Al.” She reached up to his face and brushed his lower lip with her thumb. “I think you know exactly what’s on my mind.”