Chapter 22
The dock area was uncharacteristically dark as Tori arrived. It should have been the dinner rush, but she didn’t even see lights on in the kitchen.
She pushed open the wide door that led into the kitchen. “Hello?”
She didn’t hear anything, not even the clatter of pots and pans she expected in a busy kitchen.
“Tori?” A voice in the dark kitchen startled her. “Are you Tori?”
She flinched, and her pulse sped up. “Yeah?” she said with a nervous giggle. Tori stared into the darkness, hoping to see who the voice belonged to.
A woman she didn’t know but recognized as having been around the kitchen stepped forward. Tori thought she worked for the company that owned the Vista Antiqua, but she wasn’t certain.
“What’s going on? I had a note from Les to meet him here,” Tori said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized everything was wrong. Les wouldn’t have told her to come to a hotel that was doing its best impersonation of a haunted mansion. And this woman was acting like some horror movie character, lurking in the dark. None of this was right.
She started to back out. Taking two steps backward she turned to run. She crashed into a thick chest, and strong arms grabbed her. She looked up.
“You?”
“You always thought you were so special.”
There was a sharp pain, and then nothing.
When consciousness creeped back into Tori’s brain, she couldn’t tell if her head throbbed on its own, or if the flashing lights and moaning alarm were causing the pain in her head. She tried to wrap her arms around her head to make it stop, the action barely muffled the sound.
“Shut the fuck up already,” she complained. Unfortunately, the pulsing lights and noise did not stop at her request.
She cracked her eyes open and struggled to sit up. She pushed against something firm, but soft.
Snatching her hand back, her eyes flew open the rest of the way, and she stared in horror at the body of Viktor Kilbride splayed out on the floor next to her. He was only partially dressed in boxer briefs and a dress shirt that was partially buttoned.
“Oh God, don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead,” she repeated the mantra, and she crawled to his head. The man was tall, long, as he lay out on the floor.
Tori sucked in and held her breath as she felt around for his neck. The only light she had was the strobing red emergency lighting that made it hard to focus on anything. It emphasized the pain in her head more than anything.
She felt what she thought was a soft, warm puff of breath as she felt over his face, touching his mouth and nose. She continued running her fingers over his face. His jawline was like a block covered in stubble. She reached his neck and began smoothing her fingers around. She located his ear and then slowly slid her fingers toward his shoulder. His pulse was stronger than she expected, steady and pouncing against her fingers.
She rested her head on his chest as she let out a long, heavy breath. He wasn’t dead.
“Mr. Kilbride, where are we, and why are we here?” She lifted her head to look around when a door shattered.
“Get away from him!” Cyan’s sharp voice cut through the darkness.
Tori fell back onto her ass. “He’s alive, he’s got a pulse,” she cried out.
Cyan covered Viktor with her body. Her head snapped to look at Tori. “Tori? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know.” As Tori described the events that led her to waking up on the floor next to Viktor, Cyan shifted, straddling his body, and running her hands over him. “I can’t find any injuries. There is a bump on his head, but the man is hard-headed, I doubt that’s what knocked him out. They must have drugged him. What about you?”
Tori reached to the back of her head, where the throbbing seemed to originate. “I think they hit me.”
“Did you see who it was?”
Before Tori could answer, Cyan was indicating she should be quiet.
“Find something to protect yourself with,” Cyan whispered so low, Tori had to strain to hear her.
“With what? I can’t see in this light.”
Cyan helped her up and backed her into what turned out to be a closet. Okay, this probably wasn’t the safest place, but Cyan was clearly doing her best. Where had she been that she hadn’t been knocked out too? This wasn’t one of the suits, just a normal hotel room, at least that’s what Tori decided as all the questions ricocheted around in her skull.
Without making any noise, Tori groped around her surroundings, hoping to find anything that she might be able to use as a weapon.
On the other side of the closet door, she heard yelling and a struggle. Someone kicked the door, and it folded open. Cyan needed help. The stupid throbbing light glinted off of something almost triangular in shape.
Not worrying about making noise, Tori grabbed the iron, shoved the folding closet door the rest of the way open, and jumped. She roared as she brought the iron down on the head of the man trying to grab a hold of Cyan.
He grunted and then went limp. Cyan shoved him off like an overly heavy blanket in the heat of the summer.
She and Cyan panted for a moment, before Cyan started moving again.
“Well done, little Tori. Thank you. Where is your wolf?”
Tori wrapped the electrical cord of the iron around her palm and gripped it tightly. “Wolf? What?”
“Never mind. Where is Les, we are going to need him.”
Cyan waved for Tori to follow her out of the room.
“I got a note to meet him here. I’m beginning to realize he didn’t write it. Are we going to leave Viktor here?”
“I’m not carrying him. He weighs a ton. He’ll be able to take care of himself when he comes to. You, on the other hand, are a lot less sturdy. But you are proving valuable in a fight. I see why Les has chosen you. He is a worthy mate for you.”
Mate? Les chose her? Cyan’s words had to be getting twisted up. Maybe it was a language thing? Tori shook her head. Cyan’s English was perfect, and Spanish wasn’t so far off that the words would get that twisted. No, it wasn’t the language getting twisted up, it was that Tori wasn’t quite getting Cyan’s choice of words.
Cyan tiptoed down the hall. She paused next to an open room door. She glanced in and then pressed her back against the hallway wall. Using hand signals, she told Tori to go the other direction. They walked quickly and quietly until they reached the stairwell at the other end of the hallway.
“Hurry, we need to find your wolf, and get you to safety.”
The words were English. Tori decided she must have been hit a lot harder than she realized, since half of what Cyan was saying did not make sense.
The Vista Antigua had an eerie cast about it. Les slowed his bike, and let it sit idling as he tried to figure out what was going on. There were strobing lights and a low volume pulsing alarm, but there was no crowd gathered at the street out front, and no sirens going off in town that he could hear.
He didn’t like this at all. Cussing every word, he knew in English and Spanish, he started stripping down. He wasn’t going into this situation without his defenses. There were vampires involved, he felt it in his core.
He headed toward an open transept window and jumped.
Les landed, making no sound. His wolf wasn’t as large as he knew some of the other Palatines to be, but that didn’t make him any less dangerous. The strobing emergency lights were going to give him a headache, but if he managed to find the shutoff someone would know he was there.
Who that someone was, he didn’t know. Whoever they were, they did not need to know he was there. He found the first body.
His nose told him that Stevens wasn’t dead, he just smelled bad. Damn, when was the last time this guy bathed? His sweat smelled like onions and garlic, and not in a good way. Les knew that was a hazard of the job. Showing up for work all fresh and clean, and within hours, garlic and onion seeped from pores, and grease clung to skin. Working in a hot kitchen was one part sauna, one part swimming in kitchen scraps.
It’s why he preferred pastries. At least at the end of the day, he felt sticky with too much flour and sugar and not permeated by the stronger smells.
He treaded softly, his nails not even clicking against the tiled floor. The waffled comfort mats, while they were great to stand on in shoes, were not paw friendly. Another body. Chef. Fuck.
Les wedged his snout against the man’s neck. Les sensed the man’s pulse. Good, also alive. Where was O’Connell? He continued to search, using his nose and ears. It didn’t smell right. He could smell gas closer to the floor. Several feet above the floor, the air was just wrong.
Standing perfectly still, closing his eyes, so the lights didn’t interfere with his other senses, he listened. There should be more bodies, waitstaff, and dishwasher. Maybe they had gotten out?
He stalked into the front of the house. More bodies on the floor. The sharp tang of blood and urine alerted him that something was wrong before he saw the mangled way the bodies were heaped together.
He needed to get Chef out of there ASAP.
Les leaped through the pass-through. He shifted while airborne and landed on human feet. A tickle at the back of his neck told him to check the walk-ins.
The door to the first one was standing open. Typical for morning prep work. But this wasn’t the morning, and the door hung at a weird angle. It was busted. The freezer was blocked. If someone had decided to hide inside, they were trapped.
Putting his shoulder to the stack of crates, Les heaved. He pushed and managed to get the majority of the blockage moved. O’Connell fell out of the freezer and against him as soon as he opened the door.
She shivered and curse words stuttered out of her mouth.
“Took you too fucking long. What the fuck?”
Les swept her into his arms and crossed the kitchen. He slammed his back against the double doors to the loading dock. They held. With Jen still in his arms, he slammed against the seam of the doors again. A splintering sound cracked through the kitchen like gunfire. Les flinched before realizing it was the door and no one was shooting at him.
He turned and kicked. His bare foot made contact with the already splintering wood. The broken door flew into the alley. The second door swung limply, barely holding on to its hinges.
He set Jen down, checked her pulse, and ran his hands over her arms until he held her fingers. He rubbed each finger and checked her color. Pink. Good. “You’ll be okay. Help is on the way.” He wasn’t sure why he said that. He stood and looked over his shoulder. There were no sirens going off. Help in the form of emergency services was not on the way. And he hadn’t managed to call anyone at Mission Run. No, he was the help, and he was already there. He looked back at her and gave her a half-assed grin for reassurance and shrugged.
She looked up at him. “Damn, Les, if I knew you looked like that under your clothes. Has Tori seen all of this yet?” Her words slurred together as if she were drunk.
He glanced down at his body. Fuck, he was naked. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “I need to get Chef and Stevens out.”
“Leave Stevens. He’s a dickhead.”
A smile found its way across Les’s face, despite the situation. Stevens was going to be insufferable and pissed when he found out that Les pulled him into the fresh air. And O’Connell would make sure to constantly remind him that Les did it while naked.
Les reached Chef first. Throwing Chef’s arm across his shoulder, with a roll, he got the larger man hoisted across his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He set Chef down next to O’Connell.
She crawled next to Chef and began shaking him. “Chef? Chef! Les, is he?” She gasped in a sob.
Les pressed his fingers on the man’s neck. Pulse was there. “He’s out cold, but he’s breathing. Get close, he’ll keep you warm.”
There was a moment Les considered walking past Stevens’s unconscious body. Tori was inside somewhere, and no one would really miss the dickhead if he wasn’t there any longer.
“Fuck me,” Les whined.
He wasn’t careful with Stevens as he dragged the other man over the kitchen floor and outside. Les paused long enough to confirm there was a pulse. He ignored Jen as she asked him questions, what was going on? Why was he naked? Where was Tori?
As if his state of undress had anything specifically to do with her. He shook his head. Idiota. Fucking moron. All of this had everything to do with Tori. As he ran past the lifeless forms of people he once worked with, he shifted back into his wolf form.
The air was clearer out of the kitchen, away from the low hanging gas. He could use his nose. If Tori was in this building, he should be able to track her. After all, he had her scent wrapped around his heart.
This was the daywalker’s fault. Had to be. But Morgan hadn’t seemed worried that Cyan del Fuego was playing in his backyard. They may be one valley over, but it was close enough not to make a difference. Shit. If he had only been able to get a message out to Morgan, or anyone, he wouldn’t be in this alone.
“I’m not one of your enforcers or investigators, I make pastries.” Les mocked his previous self, the one who didn’t want anything to do with the Palatine half of his heritage.