A deadly presence.
A gorgeous predator.
An animal in human skin.
Between one blink and the next, she saw him the night he had come to rescue her from that camp--but not as he had approached her with open arms and a calm voice just as she had run out of that steel door, all wounded and disorientated. No, she remembered him a short time later, when he had somehow met her at a rest stop some twenty miles down the highway.
She had never understood how it was possible that he had stayed behind as his cousins had driven off with her--and yet Assail had caught up with them as if he could fly.
And then there was what he'd looked like. His mouth had been covered with blood as if he had bitten someone. And those silver and purple eyes had shone brighter than this moon in this southern sky with the light in them so unholy, it had seemed the stuff of exorcism.
Yet she had not been afraid of him--and she had also known at that moment that Benloise, her captor, had not lived. Assail had somehow killed her kidnapper, and in all likelihood, his brother, Eduardo.
It was the way of the business they had all been in. And the way of the life she had been determined to leave after she had healed.
After all, when you were held by madmen and prayed to God to see your grandmother again, and that actually happened? Only a fool didn't keep their end of the bargain.
Hello, Miami.
Sola pushed her fingertips into her forehead and tried to get her brain off the well-worn path it seemed determine to process and re-process--even though it was a year later, for godsakes. She couldn't believe she was so fixated on a sound decision that she had made with her own survival at the forefront.
Nights were still the worst. During the day, when she was busy with such high-level endeavors as grocery shopping, and going to mass with her vovo, and constantly looking out from under the brim of a baseball cap to see if they were being followed, she managed better. But with the darkness came the haunting, the ghost of a man she never should have slept with tormenting her.
She had long been aware that she had a death wish. Her attraction to Assail was confirmation of that, and then some.
Hell, she didn't even know his last name. For all the spying on him that she had been hired to do, and then that which she had done on her own, she knew almost nothing about him. He had a glass house on the Hudson that was owned by a real estate trust. His two closest associates were his twin cousins, and both were as mute as brick walls when it came to his personal details. He'd had no wife or children.
At least not around him, but who knew. A man like that certainly had plenty of options for companionship.
Shifting to the side, she took her old iPhone out and looked at its black screen. When she woke the thing up, there was a picture of the beach from back right after she had arrived here.
No texts, no missed calls, no voicemails.
For a long while, she had had these regular hang-ups from a restricted number.
The intermittent calls were the only reason she'd kept the phone. Who else would be reaching her on it except for Assail? Who else had the number? It wasn't the phone she'd used with Benloise or any of her shadowy business, and the account was under an alias. He was the only one who had the digits.
She really should have left the thing up north and canceled the service. Clean cut was best. The safest.
The issue seemed to have resolved itself, however. Assuming Assail had been the one calling, he'd stopped--and maybe it wasn't because he'd found his grave. He had probably moved on--which was what people did when they got left behind. The whole pining-away-for-a-lifetime thing only happened in Victorian novels, and then usually on the woman's side.
Yeah, no Mr. Havisham going on up north. No way--
Another memory took her back in time, and it was one she hated. Even after Benloise had ordered her off the trail, she had followed Assail out to an estate, to what had appeared to be a caretaker's cottage. He hadn't gone there for a business transaction. No, it was for a dark-haired woman with a body and a half, and he'd taken her down onto a sofa like he'd done it before. Just as he'd started to have sex with her, he had looked directly at the window Sola had been watching him through--as if he were putting on the show for her.
At that point, she had decided to pull out of the surveilling and had resolved never to see him again.
Fate had had different ideas, however. And had turned her silver-eyed drug dealer into a savior.
The sad thing was, under different circumstances, she might have stayed with him in that glass house of his. But in the end, her little deal with God had superseded that kind of fantasy.
Getting to her feet, she lingered at the rail for a while longer, wondering exactly what she hoped she would find in the view. Then she turned away, shut herself back in the condo, and kicked off her flip-flops. On silent, bare feet, she whispered through the living room area and went into the kitchen. Her grandmother's standards were such that not only could you eat off the floor, you could toss a salad in any of the drawers, roll your bread dough out inside the cupboards, and use the shelving to cut your steak on.
The tool kit was under the sink, and she got out a full-sized hammer.
The iPhone went into a double Ziploc bag-setup on her way to the door and she disengaged the alarm before exiting into the corridor. The fire stairwell was down on the right, and as she strode over to it, she listened out of habit, but not necessity. The people in the building were elderly, and what little she saw of them confirmed she had chosen the right unit. This was the land of snowbirds who didn't have the money to fly up and back for the spring and summer, so the building never emptied out.
There would always be nosy witnesses, even if those eyes and ears were not quite as sharp as they had once been. And her fellow residents represented a complication that people coming after her would think twice about.
Plus, as always, she had a compact nine with a laser sight on her. Justincase.
The stairwell was cooler, but no dryer than the great outdoors, and she didn't go far. She put the phone in its little plastic bag-coffin on the concrete floor underneath the coiled fireman's hose and checked one last time that there had been no calls.
Then she drove the hammer down once. Twice. Three times.
That was all it took to destroy the phone.
As she went back to the condo, she turned the loose pieces over in her hands, the two baggies keeping things together. Tomorrow morning, she would go online from a secured computer and cancel the service, her last tie, flimsy though it was, cut forever.
The idea that she would never know what happened to Assail was almost as bad as the reality that she would never see him again.
Letting herself in once more, she resolved to go to bed, but was drawn back to the view of the water and the moon.
She missed the man she shouldn't have ever had as if he were a piece of her soul, left behind.
But that was the way of it.
Destiny was such a thief.
TWO
THE BLACK DAGGER BROTHERHOOD TRAINING CENTER
CALDWELL, NEW YORK
Doc Jane checked her watch and resumed her pacing. As she went back and forth in the concrete corridor outside her main exam room, she was very aware of her own heartbeat--which was a little odd considering she was, for all intents and purposes, not alive.
In the back of her head, she heard Bill Murray saying, Have you or your family ever seen a spook, specter, or ghost?
Pretty much every time she looked in the mirror, Dr. Venkman. Thanks.
On that note, she headed down a couple of doors and stopped. Staring ahead without seeing anything, she found that she couldn't breathe right and decided that, of all the parts of her job as a trauma surgeon, what was about to happen next was something that she had never gotten good at. No matter how much training, experience, or continuing education she had, proficiency in this most vital part of her calling had not come.
And she ho
ped it never did.
Assail, I have failed you, she thought. I am so sorry. I did everything I could.
A clanking sound brought her head around. Down at the far end of the training center's long, main corridor, past all kinds of class-, break, and interrogation rooms, the reinforced-steel vault panel that separated the subterranean facility from its multi-level parking area opened wide. Rhage, one of the Brotherhood's newest fathers, came in and stood off to the side.
The two dark-haired males who entered after him were, from what she understood, an anomaly in the vampire species. Identical twins did not happen that often and few of them made it to adulthood. Ehric and Evale had proven to be the exception to a lot of rules, however.
For example, she wasn't sure they were any more living than she was. For all the emotion they had ever shown, they might as well have been cyborgs. Such dead eyes--they had stares with all the luminosity of matte paint. Then again, they had probably seen a lot. Done a lot. And that translated, from what she had learned about war, into people who dissociated from the world around them, trusting no one.
Not even themselves.
Rhage indicated the way toward her, even though her presence was a self-explanatory destination, and as the twins walked forward, John Matthew entered as well, adding a caboose to the train.
Where was Vishous, she wondered. He and Rhage were supposed to be on transport with them?
Taking out her phone, she did a quick check. No texts or calls from her mate, and for a moment, she considered reaching out to him.
Shaking her head, she put the cell away and refocused on her job. She had to get through this conversation first, before she did anything personal.
As the twins approached, proximity didn't increase the warm and fuzzies of those males in the slightest. The closer they got, the bigger they became, until they were stopping in front of her and reminding her that immortality was so not a bad thing. They were killers, these two, and though they had extended a professional courtesy exemption to the Brotherhood's household by virtue of shared interest, she was glad she was a ghost.
Especially given what she had to tell them.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
The one on the left--the one that...yup, there was that mole behind the ear, so he had to be Ehric, not Evale--nodded once. And that was it from the both of them. No greeting. No nervousness. No anger. No sadness, even though they knew exactly why she'd asked them here. In all their robotic stoicism, with their black hair, and their platinum eyes, and their powerful builds, the cold-as-ices were like a matched set of Glocks, deadly and emotionless.
She had no idea how this was going to go.
"Will you excuse us?" she said to Rhage and John Matthew.
The Brother shook his head. "We're not leaving you."
"I appreciate your concern, Rhage, but patient confidentiality is an issue here. If you don't mind, maybe you could wait down by the office?" She pointed over there even though they knew perfectly well where it was. "This really needs to be a private conversation."
She knew better than to order any of the Brotherhood or the fighters off the kind of duty Rhage and John Matthew felt they were doing here. To them, she was Vishous's shellan, and as such, her advanced degrees and recent karate training didn't mean diddly: Even though the twins and their kin had proven loyal to the King and they had never shown any untoward behavior around her, they were still unattached males near a bonded Brother's female.
So she was going to be guarded like she was in a wet T-shirt and a pair of stripper heels.
It was ridiculous, but going Gloria Steinem on the situation was just going to delay things. Putting the very real privacy concern on the table, however, was going to get the job done. And it did.
"We'll just be right there," Rhage muttered. "Right over there. Like, no distance at all."
"Thank you."
When they were out of earshot, she said to the twins, "Would you like to talk in my--"
"Here is good," Ehric said in his thick, Old Country accent. "How is he?"
"Not very well, and I don't think we're gaining any traction with Assail's recovery." She crossed her arms over her chest and then dropped them because she didn't want to come across as hiding anything or being defensive. "His neurological functions are compromised and they are not improving. I've spoken with Havers and shared with him all of the scans as well as video of the behaviors and affects, including the change that happened about a week ago. With the onset of the catatonic state, he is less of a danger to himself and others, but that is a far distance from responsive--"
"Is it time to put him down."
Doc Jane blinked. When she'd made the transition from human surgeon to vampire healer, there had been all kinds of things to get used to. There was new anatomy to learn, new drug reactions and side effects to be aware of, a completely different circulatory system, as well as hormonal and pregnancy issues she had never seen before.
She'd also had to adjust to the race's end-of-life decisions. In the human world, sustaining life was the imperative, even when there was no quality to it. Assisted suicide remained an ethical decision to be debated, with only seven states allowing it within prescribed parameters. With vampires? It was a matter of course.
When a loved one was suffering, and there was no chance of that improving, terminal aid was rendered. Still, they were not talking about a cherished pet that had come to the end of its life cycle here.
She chose her words with care, wanting to be honest without advocating for any specific outcome. "Based on everything I have seen and all the tests we have run, I do not believe there is going to be a resumption of normalcy. We have done everything we can to support his systems in his cocaine withdrawal, but after the psychosis hit, we just...we've lost him and we can't seem to get him back."
In every way that counted, she was uncomfortable leaving this decision in the hands of Assail's cousins. It would be easier to trust whatever choice was made if they were upset. Troubled by conscience. Worried over whether they were doing the right thing.
With their dispositions? She had a concern that they would throw out her patient like a broken toaster. And yet, according to the vampire standard of care, she was duty bound to offer them, as next of kin, the option to terminate Assail's life now that the course of his care had reached this point of no return.
Havers, the race's healer, had been the one to bring the issue up to her, and her instinct had been to fight it--but that was a holdover from her human days. She did, however, continue to find it a potential contradiction to the spiritual lexicon of the species. In the vampire version of the afterlife, there was a belief that you couldn't enter the Fade, or what they considered Heaven, if you committed suicide. That being said, if you were lingering, and especially if you were incapable of deciding for yourself, your closest family could ease your suffering in a way that apparently got you around that provision, a loved-one loophole, as it were.
The reconciliation was evidently in the free will. If you pulled the trigger, that was suicide. If someone you loved said enough's enough? That was destiny.
Yet it was a slippery slope, especially if your next of kin was maybe angry about what you'd done to them over the holidays. Or pissed off that you'd borrowed money and hadn't paid back the loan. Or morally deficient--which was what she worried about here.
Still, Ehric and Evale had seemed to stick by their cousin, coming to see Assail regularly, receiving her updates, calling her back immediately. That had to mean something. Right?
Besides, in her heart, she knew that Assail had suffered enough. He had walked in here to detox from his drug addiction, and months later, after a roller coaster of self-harm, hallucinations, screaming paranoia, and violent outbursts, he had been reduced to nothing more than a pulse and some respiration.
"I'm very sorry." She looked back and forth between the mirror images of face and body. "I wish I had better news."
"I want to see him,"
Ehric said.
"Of course."
She reached for the door and hesitated. "He's still restrained. And I had to--well, you remember that we needed to shave his head. It was for his own well-being."
As she opened things wide for them, she searched their expressions, praying she saw something that eased her own conscience, that assured her this very serious decision was in the right hands...that their hearts were somehow involved.
The twins stared straight ahead, only their eyes moving around, their heads staying static. They did not blink. Twitch. Breathe.
Doc Jane glanced at her patient and felt a crushing sorrow. Even though her mind told her she had done everything she could, her heart regarded this outcome as a failure she was responsible for. "I am so very sorry."
After a long moment, Ehric said in a flat tone, "We will do what is necessary."
THREE
WEST POINT, NEW YORK
From behind the wheel of the rental car, Vitoria Benloise was impatient. So long, all this travel. So long to come to this northern state in America. Such an inefficiency to transfer her physicality from where she had been to where she needed to be.
At least the transition was over.
Up ahead, her destination appeared as an island rising up from the vast midst of the sea, the great house sitting upon its rise, a showy declaration of wealth that due to its age was "venerable" as opposed to "ostentatious."
Her brother Ricardo would have had his manse no other way. Having come from little, he had sought validation through a persistent illusion of false aristocracy and old money. No new house for him. No flashy cars. No Eurotrash ostentation.
Which she believed was what the Americans called it.
Even in his legitimate business, the one that had been but a shell for his true revenue streams, he'd had to have an art gallery. Not a construction business, no, no. Not garbage removal or cement mixing. It had to be the art.