A Touch of Crimson

  “She fell in love,” he murmured. “With a lycan.”

  “That’s bad?”

  “It’s impossible.”

  “Why? Lycans aren’t mortals.”

  He barked a humorless, bitter laugh. “Helena said the same thing, but seraphim aren’t designed to experience mortal love. We’re not supposed to have mates. She wanted my blessing. She hoped I would give it to her, because I have you. But it’s not my place to make that decision. It’s my responsibility to keep the Sentinels on the right path.”

  Lindsay felt the progress she’d recently made in regard to having some faith backslide again. How could love, in any form, be wrong? “What did she do?”

  As he explained the actions Helena had taken, Lindsay’s blood chilled and goose bumps spread across her skin. She relived the horror and agony of that night with him, her shoulders sagging under the growing weight of his despair. There was no greater proof of the impossibility of loving Adrian than the suicide of Helena and her beloved lycan.

  “Jesus,” she whispered when he was done. “I can’t imagine.”

  “I can.” His chest expanded with a deep inhalation. “I have.”

  Her heart stopped, then lurched into a double-time rhythm. She pulled back and glared up at him.

  “I swear to you—” Her voice cracked, forcing her to clear her throat before continuing. “If you ever try something like that, I’ll make you regret it.”

  His lips pressed to her forehead. “You worry too much about me.”

  “I’m serious.” Her fingers dug into his waist. “Whatever consequences we face for being together is out of our hands. We don’t need to borrow trouble on top of that.”

  “And we won’t.” For a moment, he looked so resolute and somber, giving her the impression there was something more he needed to say. Instead he said, “We should head back. You have an early day tomorrow, and I have to look into how Elijah’s blood ended up in Louisiana.”

  “Do you have any guesses?”

  “We take and store blood from each lycan for identification and genetic purposes. If any of Elijah’s stored blood is missing, I have a traitor in my ranks. The alternative would be that someone collected his blood from a hunt at some point in the past and saved it, which would speak to lengthy premeditation. There’s really no good way to look at this. Someone out there has an ulterior motive that can only cause me a lot of trouble.” His thumb brushed over her cheekbone. “I know how you feel about the lycans, and I don’t disagree, but there’s no way one hundred and sixty-one Sentinels can contain the thousands of vampires in the world without their help.”

  “Let me help you, brainstorm with you. I want to support you . . .”

  “Yes, neshama. I look forward to it.” He urged her toward the door. “But first, you need to get some sleep.”

  “That won’t be a problem.” She preceded him out of the building. “I haven’t slept well since Vegas, and it’s been a long day.”

  His mouth lifted in a half smile that charmed her. “Your definition of a long day may change after training tomorrow.”

  Lindsay looked at him through the lock of hair the evening wind blew across her cheek. “You can’t scare me.”

  He turned off the lights and stepped outside with her. The wind kissed him, too, whispering across his wings. “You’re fearless. That’s one of the many reasons I want you.”

  A quiver of sexual awareness moved through her, heating her blood.

  When they got back to the house, she didn’t go inside, knowing it was best not to confront temptation directly. “I’m going to head back to the hotel. Is my stuff still out front?”

  Adrian paused on the threshold of the sliding glass door leading back into his bedroom. “I want you to stay.”

  “That’s not a good idea. Besides,” she rushed on, when his eyes took on the glitter of determination, “I need to give two weeks’ notice, and the sooner I do that, the better.”

  He weighed that a moment. “Once you quit, you’ll stay here.”

  “Adrian—”

  He took a step toward her.

  She knew what would happen if he touched her. “Can we talk about it later? I’m beat.”

  After a brief hesitation, he nodded. “Tomorrow. Leave your suitcase here.”

  “I have—”

  “—no idea what it did to me to see you putting that in your car.” Catching her hand, he stroked his thumb over the back of it. “Leave it here.”

  “Fine.” She squeezed his fingers, a faint echo of the constriction around her heart.

  She couldn’t say the words, but she could show him. That would have to be enough for both of them.

  CHAPTER 19

  “I knew they were going to have a hard time with this,” Lindsay muttered to Elijah, watching as more and more Sentinels began to land in the field by the training warehouse.

  The sun had just risen. Adrian had insisted Elijah drive Lindsay back to the hotel the night before, arguing that she was too tired to be behind the wheel. Since her Prius was a bit small for a large lycan, they’d taken one of the Point’s Jeeps. She thought leaving her car behind might have been another way for Adrian to keep something of hers with him, something she’d have to come back for, so she’d refrained from arguing.

  “Things have been the same for the Sentinels for a long time,” Elijah said. “It’s probably been a while since anything threw them a curveball.”

  She pivoted to face him. “Are you going to be all right, El? With the whole Alpha business and now the blood thing yesterday . . . Is there something I can do?”

  He looked down at her. With his green eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, she couldn’t get a read on what he might be thinking. “Just stick close to me. I’m supposed to keep you safe. If I fuck that up, I’m toast.”

  “I can’t imagine you fucking anything up.”

  He snorted.

  “Wanna talk about it?” she offered.

  “Don’t even want to think about it.”

  “Okay. I’m here if you need me.”

  Damien approached. While the morning was chilly and fog hugged the ground, he was dressed like the other Sentinels on the field: in loose pants and leather sandals. The women wore sports bras, but otherwise everyone sported bare torsos. Just looking at them made Lindsay shiver. She was wearing a lined jogging suit, but she was still just short of having chattering teeth.

  “I’ve seen you with knives and a shotgun.” The Sentinel raked her with a clinical glance. “You were fairly skilled with both. How are you in hand-to-hand combat?”

  Her brow lifted. “Seriously? I’m human. That’s what the knives and guns are for, to keep the inhumans from getting close enough to tear me to shreds. Plus knife throwing and marksmanship are solitary activities, so I taught myself—Whoa!”

  Lindsay arched back and away from Damien’s fist flying toward her face. The smack of flesh meeting flesh rent the air. She hit the dirt on her ass and stared up with wide eyes.

  Elijah had blocked Damien’s blow with the palm of his hand. The two men were in a standoff, their arms shaking with the force each exerted in a brutal sort of strong-arm competition.

  “What the fuck?” she snapped.

  The two men pushed away from each other, each taking a step back. They turned to her in unison, both extending a hand to help her up. She grabbed them both and let them haul her to her feet.

  “Adrian said you were quick,” Damien said calmly, as if he hadn’t just struck out at her with a blow that would have shattered bone. “I didn’t get a chance to see you move in Hurricane, so I had to gauge your speed.”

  Lindsay gaped at him, then shot a look at Elijah. A muscle was ticcing in the lycan’s jaw. Maybe the test hadn’t been just for her. Maybe they’d been testing him as well.

  The rest of the Sentinels, about ten evenly divided between men and women, dotted the field around them, sizing her up. She felt like a raw slab of meat tossed to voracious raptors.

  She r
olled her shoulders back.

  “If you get me squared away,” she said to Damien, “Adrian will worry less about me and more about the shit you’re dealing with. We all want that.”

  The Sentinel held still for a moment, staring her down. She didn’t flinch.

  Finally, he nodded. They might all want a pound of her flesh, but Damien would keep them focused on the big picture. Hopefully.

  Elijah stepped closer to her. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised, in a way that sounded like a threat. A gauntlet thrown down for the others.

  Damien gestured for her to join the Sentinels on the field. “Let’s go.”

  She realized Adrian hadn’t been kidding about revising her definition of a long day. This one was going to be endless, she knew. And it hadn’t even started yet.

  “Elijah’s blood is missing from Navajo Lake.”

  Adrian looked away from the view speeding by the Maybach’s rear passenger window and faced his lieutenant. “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.” Jason returned his cell phone to his pocket. “Not the whole sample, just some of it. They had to weigh the bag to detect it.”

  The sun glinted off the Sentinel’s golden hair through the panoramic glass roof, creating a halo effect. For a moment, homesickness was a deep ache in Adrian’s chest.

  The longest they could store blood before the cryo-preservation affected the quality of the sample was ten years. Someone had accessed the blood, removed what they needed, and returned the sample.

  “When we reach the airfield,” Adrian said, “I want you to head to Navajo Lake and find the one responsible. Only Sentinels are authorized to access the cryogenic storage facility.”

  “You think it’s one of us?”

  “After Helena . . . who can be certain? I need to know for sure.”

  Jason sighed. “I never thought I’d have any sympathy for what Syre and the Watchers did. But it seems like the longer we’re here, the more human we become. We want things . . . feel things . . . Well, you know.”

  Adrian studied his second for a long moment, looking at Jason with a thoroughness he hadn’t employed for quite some time. He’d stopped paying attention to a lot of things, it seemed. Too lost to the apathy fostered by his grief and guilt.

  “Do you desire, Jason?”

  “Not to the extent you do and not for sex. My restlessness stems from frustration. I’m tired of carrying a yoke that can never be put down.”

  “I would ease your disquiet, if I could.”

  “Ah, well.” Jason lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’ll live. And I have hope that this vamp illness signals the end of our mission. God willing, it will take them all out and we’ll be able to go home.”

  Adrian looked back out the window.

  Home. For him, that was now wherever Lindsay was.

  They reached Ontario and the hangar Mitchell Aeronautics kept there. They waited briefly as the massive metal doors parted; then they drove the Maybach inside. Jason set off to make flight arrangements for his trip to Utah. Adrian moved deeper into the building, heading down into the subterranean storage areas. The farther he descended, the easier it was to hear the growls and hissing. Unintelligible sounds mingled with shouted threats and profanities from those captives who hadn’t yet been infected.

  It felt very much like entering the bowels of hell.

  “Captain.”

  A petite brunette approached him with a clipped, precise stride. Dressed in urban camouflage and sporting a pixielike cropped hairstyle, Siobhán looked too delicate to be formidable, which helped her immeasurably in battle. Her opponents always underestimated her. It was one of the reasons he’d put her in charge of rounding up infected vampires. The other reason was her fascination with science. This hunt had required someone who understood that capturing the vamps was only the beginning.

  With gloved hands, she pulled down the surgical mask covering her face. “We’ve already lost two of the six I caught. Four is a very small pool of subjects, so I’ll need to hunt again soon.”

  “Do any of the noninfected have useful information about when the illness was first sighted? Or how it might be spread?”

  “One was willing to talk.” She dug into the cargo pockets of her pants and withdrew a mask and gloves, which she handed to him.

  “Are these necessary?” Sentinels were impervious to disease.

  “I don’t know.” She gestured for him to walk with her, leading him to a room filled with a dozen silver-plated cages. “But you don’t want their spittle on you, just for the ick factor.”

  He donned the protection without further questions. “What do we know?”

  “The disease first appeared about a week ago. It infects at a varying rate. Some succumb swiftly and die within a matter of days. Others take longer to show symptoms and live up to two weeks. This group wasn’t aware that there are other incidents of infection in other states, which makes me wonder how much Syre actually knows.”

  Adrian walked by the cages, examining the infected vamps with morbid fascination. Red-eyed and frothing at the mouth, they seemed mindless. They bashed themselves against the unforgiving metal bars and reached out with clawed fingers, grasping for Adrian and Siobhán with malevolent desperation. Their gazes were wild, yet lifeless. “Do they show any signs of intelligence?”

  “No. They’re like bad B-movie zombies. Aside from a fierce thirst for blood, there seem to be no lights on and no one home.”

  He exhaled harshly. “Are we testing their blood?”

  “We took samples from both the infected and noninfected while they were still tranquilized on the plane. However . . .”

  Her pause caught his attention and he tore his gaze away from the macabre freak show to look at her. “Go on.”

  She crossed her arms. “Their metabolisms are extremely accelerated. While the noninfected vamps stayed under induced anesthesia for the duration of the flight, the sick ones woke up shortly after we took off. Malachai was bitten by one of them while drawing blood.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “So far, he’s fine. But I have him quarantined until I know for sure. The vamp that bit him was the first of the two causalities. I had to put him down to get him off Malachai.”

  Siobhán resumed walking, stopping before a cage in which a male vampire sat in the corner with his arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees. “This is the talkative one.”

  “So you’re the great Adrian,” the vamp said, his voice shaking. “You don’t look so scary with that mask on. You look scared.”

  Crouching, Adrian asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It does to me.”

  The vamp lifted a shaking hand to push back a grimy lock of dark hair that had fallen over his brow. “Singe.”

  “What is it you like to burn?” Adrian asked, recognizing the signs of withdrawal and knowing that the monikers vampires chose often had significance.

  “Crystal dream.”

  Looking at Siobhán, Adrian asked, “Any possibility the drug is connected? Perhaps it affords a level of immunity?”

  “Anything is a possibility at this point.”

  “Thank you for your help, Singe.” Adrian stood and faced Siobhán. “Take me to Malachai.”

  They left the room and moved down the hall.

  “I have a question for you,” Adrian said quietly.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “Lindsay Gibson mentioned that her blood has a negative effect against some of the beings she’s hunted. Since she’s taken down both vampires and demons alike, I assume it’s the latter group that was susceptible.” He thought of the vampress he’d interrogated in Hurricane. He’d had Lindsay’s blood on his hands, but it didn’t spark a reaction of any kind, adverse or otherwise. “Can you explain why her blood would allow a blade to slice into a dragon’s impenetrable hide?”

  She frowned. “Interesting. I’d have to think about it. I’d certainly love to test a sample.”

  “Is
it possible that having two souls inside her would be the cause?”

  Siobhán slowed before a metal door with a window. “Yes, it’s possible. You know how powerful souls are. Two in one vessel likely creates a unique force we will probably never fully understand.”

  Looking through the glass, Adrian saw Malachai kicking back on a cot with his cell phone in hand. Adrian knocked. Malachai looked up, his face breaking out in a smile when he recognized his visitor.

  “I feel fine, Captain,” the Sentinel shouted.

  “Good to hear.” Adrian was about to say more when a ferocious pounding came from down the hall. He looked over his shoulder. “What’s that?”

  Siobhán frowned. “I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

  A few more Sentinels appeared in the hallway as the violent thumping continued. They all looked to Adrian, who swiftly passed them en route to the source of the sound.

  As the location of the noise became apparent, Siobhán said, “That’s the makeshift morgue.”

  “Who’s in there?”

  “Aside from the corpses of the two infected vamps? No one.”

  The sound of glass shattering preceded a shout. “Let me out of here!”

  They turned a corner into a short hallway that ended with a single door. A masculine face stared out through the broken window, amber eyes glowing with ire. “Fuck you, Sentinels,” the man growled. “Either kill me or let me go. Don’t fucking leave me in here with a rotting corpse!”

  “He was a corpse,” Siobhán whispered. “I shot him myself after he bit Malachai.”

  Adrian didn’t take his eyes off the vamp in front of him. “He’s made a miraculous recovery.”

  “But the other one is still dead . . . ?”

  “So is the one I caught. Turned into an oil slick, I was told.” He contemplated the seemingly cured vampire with narrowed eyes, the tempo of his heartbeat accelerating as he considered the possibilities.