Antiquated though Evenfall might be, at least the water was hot.
• • •
The farther away Xavier got from Tess, the darker his mood grew. As he strode down the hallways, he checked his messages. The only news he’d received was from Raoul, from a few hours ago:
M missed check in. Instructions?
And his brief reply: Wait. Let me know if you hear from him.
Marc was the best of his new recruits. Not only was he smart and capable, but he was also steady-natured and had proven himself to be reliable. Xavier had given Justine to him as his assignment, with strict instructions to maintain a low profile, protect his identity, use extreme caution and avoid direct engagement.
But as more time passed and still no word came, the probability that something had happened to Marc grew greater. By the time Xavier reached the IT section of Evenfall, which was located in a concrete reinforced area off the underground garage, he was scowling.
Earlier he had notified Gavin he would be stopping by, and the younger Vampyre was waiting for him. Gavin was just under two hundred years old, but he had been turned when he was barely out of his teens. With a snub nose, red hair and freckles that had never faded, he had been nicknamed “Opie” by his coworkers.
Xavier handed his cell phone over, and Gavin got to work.
“So, I heard you brought a new attendant with you,” Gavin said. “A female one. It’s her, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Xavier leaned back against a table as he watched Gavin extract the recording.
“Are you going to bring her down here, so I can meet her?”
His expression turned wry. Gavin hadn’t even met Tess yet, but he appeared to have developed a crush on her. “I’m afraid we don’t have time this trip. But I will be sure to bring her next time.”
“What’s she like?” Gavin’s tone was elaborately nonchalant.
Defiant. Devious.
Delicious.
He didn’t say any of those adjectives aloud. Instead, as his silence grew too long and Gavin lifted up his head to look at him curiously, he finally settled on “Unforgettable.”
The other Vampyre’s eyebrows lifted. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were falling for her.”
He leaned against a nearby table. “Why do you think you know better?”
“Xavier, for as long as I’ve known you, I think you’ve had a total of maybe three relationships, and those were all shallow and ended after just a few months.” The younger Vampyre gave him a sidelong, curious glance. “Son of a bitch. You are falling for her, aren’t you?”
He didn’t have to reply, but he did anyway. “I am.”
Gavin’s eyes went wide. Then he grinned. “Good for you.”
After transferring the recording to his desktop, they listened to it together. “Trim everything off but their agreement,” Xavier told him. “Then get the clean copy to Julian as soon as possible.”
“You got it.”
While he had finished what he had come to do, he hesitated and turned his attention to the wall of TV monitors, watched by two Vampyres across the room. They studied footage from security cameras placed at strategic intervals all over Evenfall.
He said, “Do me a favor and run a search for Justine over the last twenty-four hours.”
“You got it,” Gavin said. He walked over to another computer system, sat down, and his fingers flew nimbly over the keyboard. “Can you tell me what we’re looking for?”
Watching, Xavier crossed his arms and shook his head. “I don’t know. At the very least, I just want proof that she is actually still here. I haven’t seen her since I’ve arrived. I’ve only heard Julian mention her.”
“Well, that should be easy enough to confirm.”
Fifteen minutes later, Xavier watched irrefutable evidence. Justine had been present in Evenfall for at least a day. He studied snippets of footage of her in various public spots. Twice, the recordings showed her in conversation with Julian, their expressions cold and body language angry. The footage didn’t supply any sound, but he wasn’t interested at the moment in overhearing conversations.
Frustration spiked, and he rubbed his face. While she was clearly here, that didn’t mean Marc was in any less danger. She had any number of employees who weren’t here with her.
“Is that what you needed?” Gavin asked.
Sighing, he said, “Sure. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Night had fallen while they had worked. Xavier could feel it, the cool, welcome darkness pulling a veil over the land. He said good-bye to Gavin, pocketed his phone and headed back to his rooms.
There, he found Tess stretched out on his bed, reading a paperback. He could sense Diego in the other part of the apartment, but for the moment he focused all his attention on Tess.
She had showered and dressed in clean jeans and a dark red, long-sleeved shirt. The color suited her as much as the dark blue of the ball gown did, and he smiled with pleasure to see her.
Noticing him in the doorway, she gave him a self-conscious smile. “I hope you don’t mind me coming in here. I figured if you could invade my bedroom—twice—I could invade yours.”
For a brief moment, he forgot his concerns and laughed. “You have an open invitation. You can invade my bedroom anytime you like.” He braced one knee on the edge of the mattress and leaned over to give her a deep, slow kiss.
Afterward, he pulled back. She searched his face. “Any news about Marc?”
He shook his head. “The sun has set, and we need to leave. I know this isn’t what we had planned, but I’ll have to drop you off at my town house and leave you for a while. I need to find out where he is.”
Pushing off the bed, she slipped her shoes on and stood. “Of course.”
He went to Diego’s room, rapped on the door and opened it. Diego had been reading too, and he set aside his e-reader when Xavier appeared.
“Time to go?” Diego asked.
“Yes.”
For a moment, as Xavier looked at him, he considered offering Diego the chance to look into what had happened to Marc. The impulse passed quickly. Not only was it something that Xavier needed to investigate personally, but it was also clear from the younger man’s closed expression that Diego had already emotionally disconnected.
He’d already said it. He was done, and there was no going back.
Back in Xavier’s bedroom, it was the work of a few moments to gather up his things and pack them in his overnight bag. When he had finished, they left.
As they walked through the halls of Evenfall, he held his hand out to Tess, no longer caring how they broke the news to Diego. He planned on talking to Raoul and the others soon enough. Besides, he simply wanted to touch her.
Hesitating only for a moment, she laced her fingers through his. When Diego’s gaze fell onto their linked hands, his eyes widened briefly, but then indifference returned and he looked away.
This time, Xavier escorted Tess to the front passenger seat and he drove, while Diego rode in the back.
They made the drive across the Golden Gate Bridge mostly in silence. The night was clear and unusually warm, a choppy wind blowing off the waters of the bay.
Pinching her full lower lip and appearing deep in thought, Tess stared out her window, while Diego checked his phone and spoke up just once. “You know, you don’t have to take me all the way to the hotel. You can drop me off somewhere convenient, and I can call a taxi.”
The Four Seasons Hotel lay south of Chinatown, and southeast of Nob Hill, where Xavier’s town house was located. Xavier said quietly, “The Four Seasons is not that far away, Diego. It’s no trouble at all.”
Looking uncomfortable, the younger man frowned but fell silent.
Traffic was heavy on the main highway. As Presidio Parkway turned into Lombard Street, a he
avy garbage truck pulled behind them.
Checking his rearview mirror, Xavier surveyed the truck. It didn’t look out of the ordinary, and several garbage companies employed Nightkind creatures and operated at night. Dismissing it as a minimal threat, he still took standard precautions and turned down a side street.
The truck followed.
Now, that got his attention.
He stepped on the gas pedal, and the SUV leaped forward just as, at the next intersection, another garbage truck turned onto the street and swerved directly across their path.
Diego swore.
San Francisco had some of the most expensive real estate in the world, and while some areas of the city didn’t have alleys, this street did.
Checking to make sure Tess was wearing her seat belt, Xavier yanked hard on the steering wheel. Tires shrieking, the SUV plunged into the alley.
Up ahead, a third garbage truck pulled across the alleyway. He stomped on the brakes.
The passenger side of the garbage truck faced them. The door opened, and someone inside tossed out a round object, roughly shaped like a bowling ball. It bounced down the alley toward them.
It was Marc’s severed head.
EIGHTEEN
Oh, my God,” Tess said. Her face blanched.
Dark figures swarmed out of the garbage truck ahead of him.
Xavier grabbed her, yanking her sideways and down, away from the windshield.
“Keep your head down,” he told her.
At the same time he snapped off his seat belt, opened the glove compartment and grabbed the Glock that was stored inside.
Gunfire sprayed the outside of the SUV. All of his vehicles had run-flat tires, bullet-resistant glass and layers of armored plate inserted into the body panels, but those precautions wouldn’t hold up under a concentrated, sustained attack. All they would do was buy a little bit of time.
Xavier glanced in the backseat. Still swearing, Diego had unbuckled too, slammed part of the backseat flat and was climbing into the back, where a stash of weapons and body armor was stored in a compartment underneath the floor.
More dark figures came up from behind the SUV.
Nobody would have tried such an attack if Xavier had been alone, because it wouldn’t have worked. He could have fought his way out, or climbed the side of a building. But traveling with both Tess and Diego, this type of assault was brutally effective at pinning them in place.
He couldn’t pull both of them out or take them up the side of the building, and he would never leave them.
He said, “I count fifteen.”
“Got it.” Diego threw a Kevlar vest at him.
He caught it and spread it open over Tess. He told her, “Put this on.”
She snapped off her seat belt, pushed her seat back as far as it could go and wriggled into the vest. Diego threw a second vest at him, and he twisted to put it on in the confined space.
More gunfire sounded. Webs of fractures starred the front and back windshields, but they held for now.
“I need guns,” Tess snapped. “Lots and lots of guns.”
Folded into the small space between the front seat and the dashboard, she looked terrified and sounded furious. In spite of the urgency of their situation, Xavier almost smiled. He bent over her, tilted up her face and whispered, “Tell me it’s okay to fall in love with you.”
She gave him a wide-eyed, cranky stare. Her lips were bloodless. “You’d better. I’m not falling in love all by myself.”
He gave her a swift, hard kiss. Something hard nudged his shoulder. It was Diego, poking him with the butt of an assault rifle
He took it, slammed open his car door and rolled out to lay a blanket of gunfire down either end of the alley. He hit some of their attackers, while others dove for cover. The ones he had hit sprawled to the ground then scrambled to get away.
Their attackers were all Vampyres. Unless he struck any of them in the head, the gunshot wounds would be painful and debilitating, but they weren’t lethal.
He said to the other man, “Stay in the car, under cover as long as you can.”
“Yeah, okay.” Diego looked pretty sick, himself, as he crawled from the back. He handed Tess a handgun and another rifle. “Xavier, this is all my fault. I am so profoundly sorry.”
He paused only for a fraction of a second. “You’ll have to explain that to me later when we have time.”
“What are you doing?” Tess said to Xavier. She flung out one hand, reaching out to him. “Get your ass back in here.”
“That’s not how we’re going to get out of this,” Xavier told her. He shoved his cell phone into her hand. “Call Raoul and Julian.”
Her fingers closed over the phone.
“Cover me,” he said to Diego. The younger man nodded, his face tense.
It was time to get to work.
• • •
After wrapping her unsteady fingers around his cell phone, Tess watched Xavier turn toward their attackers, and his expression changed.
All of the light he carried inside of him, the gentle sensuality, warmth and laughter, disappeared entirely, and what came in its place made her shake all the harder.
She had always thought death was a massively indifferent, inescapable juggernaut, for sooner or later it came to every living thing. Through accidents, acts of war and sometimes illness, it even eventually struck down the long-lived creatures of the Elder Races.
But the kind of death Xavier embodied was a fiery, passionate blaze.
The death in his eyes cared far too much to stand idly by and watch an injustice being done. It cared about the thinking that went behind each action, and the reasons for war.
It would never rest, never stop, until either harm had been averted or balance had been restored.
Her limited human eyes couldn’t track what happened next. He simply left her behind on this heavy, solid Earth and went somewhere else, shooting through the air like God’s arrow.
That was when the screaming began.
More gunfire sounded in short staccato bursts. From the backseat, Diego shoved open a door on the driver’s side and angled his body out to shoot at the group of attackers behind them.
Keeping her head down, she punched through the commands on the phone that took her to Xavier’s list of favorites. Locating Raoul’s number, she dialed it.
He answered immediately. “Have you heard anything?”
“It’s Tess,” she told him. “We’re in the city. We’re pinned in an alley and under attack. Marc’s dead. They cut off his head! Whoever they are.”
Raoul’s voice changed. “Where are you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only been to San Francisco once.” As she watched, Diego sagged against the side of the vehicle. He brought the muzzle of his rifle back up almost immediately, but she knew he’d been shot. She said rapidly, “We came across the Golden Gate, we were headed toward the Four Seasons Hotel and now we’re in an alley. Figure it out.”
“Keep this phone on,” Raoul said. “I’ll track you, Tess. Do you hear me? I’ll track you.”
“Hurry the fuck up,” she said between her teeth.
Of course he wouldn’t make it in time. Even if she called Julian and he sent people from Evenfall, or from within the city itself, nobody would make it in time. She disconnected, shoved the phone into the pocket of her jeans and scrambled over the seat to the driver’s side of the vehicle where Xavier had left the door open.
With both of the SUV doors open, she had cover, of sorts, on both sides.
Diego had given her another Glock, like the one that had been stored in the glove compartment. It was her favorite of the handguns she’d practiced with, so far. She checked over the assault rifle. It was a SCAR, a special forces combat assault rifle, like the one he’d handed Xavier. While she didn’t care for them, she did k
now how to use it.
“Here’s where you get to show off everything you’ve learned in class,” Diego said, from the other side of the open rear door. He sounded breathless, and his rifle had slumped to his side again. “Look up, chica. Move fast.”
Using the car door as a shield, she angled out her head and checked the rooflines of the neighboring buildings.
Nearby, a muzzle of a rocket launcher aimed at the SUV, the figure of the shooter hunched over it.
She didn’t give herself time to think.
Snapping up the SCAR, she shot. The figure holding the rocket launcher jerked and disappeared.
If that was a Vampyre, he was going to reappear in a few moments and try again. “We can’t stay here,” she told Diego. “How badly are you hit?”
“You know, I’ve seen better days,” said Diego. “Go for. The doorway. Fifteen yards. Back. Take. Cover inside.”
She didn’t move. Instead, she watched the rooftop for the rocket launcher to reappear. “You don’t sound so good.”
The tip of the launcher reappeared. Her heart kicked. She sighted down the SCAR and sprayed it. To her immense surprise, it exploded. A ball of fiery light lit up the night, and she swore.
Diego laughed and went into a spasm of harsh coughing. She could hear his breathing hitching from where she crouched. Daring to peer around the edge of the door, she saw that the immediate area around their SUV was deserted.
Near the garbage truck blocking them at the rear, a vicious, whirlwind fight was taking place. She couldn’t track all that happened—they all moved too fast—but she could tell there were several figures involved.
Even as she watched, two of the figures dissolved into dust. Oh, God.
But the fight continued, so she knew Xavier had to be alive.
“Come on, Diego,” she said. “We’re going to get to that doorway together.”
“Sorry. No can do.” His voice was noticeably weaker. “I want you to tell Xavier . . . I want you to tell him . . .”
Furious, horrified tears filled her eyes, and she swiped them back. She couldn’t afford to cry. She needed to see.