Chapter Seventeen
EJ
Beneath an obfuscation, EJ slipped in, closed the door, and studied Angie’s apartment.
Walter was healing his sister. The dark-skinned vampire had slathered his own blood on the flesh of her hands and forced her to drink more of his blood than was safe for her, even in these times when binding a human or a witch to a vampire’s will was difficult.
Her head lolled drunkenly against a pillow. Blood-drunk.
Angie, wrapped in a big towel, a smaller one around her head, was stretched out on the sofa, healing amulets all over and around her: stones; cuttings from a rosemary plant; a silver pot that had been purified under the full moon and filled with healing moonstones; wood disks carved with trees; feathers sung into healing workings by their father; others.
Angie hoarded healing as if she saw a time in her future when they would be the only things that kept her, or someone she loved, alive.
Villetti, who had once broken Angie’s heart, was in her kitchen, preparing a pesto hollandaise sauce for salmon and asparagus.
His hair was wet too, but he was dressed, wearing comfortable-looking sweats and socks, but no shoes.
Despite being nearly sucked into an alternate universe with a bunch of demons, he looked younger.
Happy. The cop turned his head over his shoulder to see Angie, his eyes drinking her in, as if the sight of her kept him alive, kept him breathing, kept his heart beating.
EJ knew that look. It was what his mother would refer to as smitten. Angie had once been smitten with Villetti too.
EJ’s fingers played over the keys of a piccolo in his jacket pocket, silently running through a riff. Hidden in the shadows of subdued lighting, he put things together.
During the attack, they had raised the Dark Queen’s flag over the apartment building.
The queen had been prepared and had planned ahead for various attacks.
Aunt Jane was good at politics. Vampire good.
With her standard, she had set her protection and her claiming on the building and its people, a claiming in the vampire way, a claiming tantamount to a declaration of war against all enemies.
The queen was stating that our response to attack was also hers.
Their vampire clan Blood Master, in the guise of plain old Jane Yellowrock, would also have to respond to attack.
Edmund—the Emperor of Europe, and Angie’s Dark Knight—would have to respond to any attack on the child he was sworn to protect. Respond or lose face in a way that could result in a serious challenge to his leadership.
The Everhart-Trueblood coven would have to respond.
The Master of the City of Asheville, their grandfather. Yeah. He’d respond too.
Gramma, married to Shaddock, would be in the middle of it all. Dear God. Gramma.
But with the storm, there was no way in.
Had their enemies planned for all that too? Sure. Why not? They’d had years since the war to prepare for and lay the groundwork for whatever this was, for all their goals.
If not for the snow and ice, EJ and Ange would already be overrun by people taking over, keeping them safe.
But…if he and Angie could end this on their own, before anyone else showed up to assist, before the media saw the banner, success could cement their independence and prove they could protect themselves.
Mostly. The presence of the queen’s guard made that more difficult, but the change in circumstances wasn’t set in stone. Yet.
Angie sighed and mumbled, “I feel so much better.” She rolled her head up to where she could see into the kitchen and called, “Hey, Leandro. Bring your sexy ass over here.”
Villetti chuckled low and shook his head. “My sexy ass is making you a meal, Angelina. Well, my hands are, but the rest of me is keeping my hands company.” The cop turned back to the stove, the whisk in his hand.
The blood on Angie’s hands was being absorbed into the ruined flesh.
Walter cleaned the residue with a damp bloody towel EJ hadn’t noticed, and then licked Angie’s hands with healing saliva.
He used a second wet towel to clean her hands again, the left one up to her elbow.
Seeming satisfied, the vampire pushed the amulets to the side, picked up Angie, and carried her to the bedroom. EJ followed silently. Watching.
Walter placed her on the bed and opened her closet, studying its contents.
He removed thermal-fleece leggings from a shelf and a matching pullover shirt from a hanger.
From a basket on another shelf, he pulled out panties and a bra.
Looked at the stack. He gave a slight frustrated shrug and opened three drawers before he found some purple wool socks.
He nodded to himself in satisfaction and put the bundle of clothing on the bed. He tapped his earpiece. “Grizz. Angelina is ready for a female’s assistance in dressing and for a chaperone.” He was quiet for a moment, and said, “Yes. Thank you.”
He tapped his ear-patch and looked at the doorway, where EJ stood in the shadows. “You wish to speak with me?”
EJ had no idea he was about to answer in the affirmative until he said, “Yes.” He dropped the working.
“Your apartment in five minutes. I need to have a word with Villetti first. He offered to permit me to drink from him, to replace the blood required to heal Angelina. I will heal him, speak with him, and feed quickly.”
“Speak with him, to tell the man that if he sleeps with Angie in her current state, it’s no better than date rape?”
“For both of them, inhibitions will be lowered, therefore one of the women coming to dress Angelina will remain here to prevent a development in their relationship for which they may not be ready. I do not wish to have to kill Villetti for not respecting my charge.”
EJ offered a small nasty grin. Knowing what vamp blood did to most humans, Villetti might end up back in the shower, a cold one this time.
“Good by me. I’ll tell Ojos to expect you.
Although, since Angie’s Privacy Protocol was overridden, it seems the queen can override any command we give it.
” With that snide comment, EJ turned and walked through the apartment, lifting a hand to Villetti as he passed through the room.
EJ had gotten by him. From the expression on his face, that wasn’t a normal occurrence. “I will be more alert,” Villetti said.
“Alert is good.” EJ left his sister’s apartment and took the stairs up one floor.
As he climbed, he thought about the security protocol Alex had broken with no more than a finger tap.
EJ had trained under the mad genius for three years as a young teenager.
The war had put a stop to that. The war had been very different for each of them, and Alex had clearly continued to hone his electronic skills, while EJ had concentrated on magic.
He needed to dedicate a few days to Ojos’s internal systems to pluck out the threads of the queen’s influence.
Except…That override had allowed Villetti and him inside, to save his sister’s life.
EJ had no doubt she’d intended to sacrifice herself to save their lives.
It was an instinctive action, not a taught one, the kind that made warriors throw their bodies over grenades to save others.
It was also an action left over from when they had been children and she had played with raw magic as if it were a toy, to protect him and Cassey, their younger sister…
and also to get her way in matters where magic was stronger than parental orders.
Their parents had described her as determined and mischievous.
What she had been was devious. Still was.
Inside his own apartment, he sent a query to Alex about the military’s storage of EEB collection chambers, asking, Have any gone missing?
Alex sent back an emoji of a raised middle finger and the words, Checking. Military is seldom responsive.
EJ left the locks unsecured and opened a nice Cabernet Franc, a light red wine, leaving it to breathe.
On a tray, he placed two glasses and sliced some cheese onto a plate along with buckwheat crispbread crackers, a few dried berries, and a small stem of grapes he had managed to find at this time of year.
He arranged the sparse seating. The last time he remembered Walter in this apartment for more than a moment had been when they updated the wall screen and it took two people, one for software and one to install hardware.
They had worked in silence except for very basic suggestions and instructions.
No chitchat. No personal stuff. Ever. He had learned more about Walter in the last forty-eight hours than he had, cumulatively, in the two-plus years since the vampire had moved in.
Walter seemed to have no interest in them except for the duties assigned by his queen.
But what if EJ and Angie had avoided forming a real relationship with Walter out of some lack of understanding and irritation that he had been foisted upon them?
What if the reason that Walter took this job was because he liked them—wanted to be here instead of simply being under a contractual agreement?
Neither he nor Angie had made an effort to create friendship.
The last day had taught EJ something vital. Without Walter, they would likely both be dead. They needed him. And more important, they liked the vamp. Trusted him.
EJ adjusted the seating and turned on the fireplace.
He checked the energy levels to the private electric grid that gave the apartment power during outages.
The bolt of lightning released in the battle had topped them off, but it was running down quickly.
He calculated how long backup power would last and sent a message to all the tenants and the guards letting them know they needed to decrease power consumption by thirty percent to make it through the next twenty-four hours.
Hopefully, the Chat-town utilities company would have power back on soon.