For now, enjoy this teaser.
There is a reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.
Dracula, Bram Stoker, 1897
A smile dark enough to match his eyes formed, showing me two more fangs than I’d known he possessed, making it six. “You desire vengeance. Step aside, and you shall have it; it is a specialty of mine.”
Fixed on those two very long, sharp teeth to the inside of his lengthened canines, it took me a second to register his movement. I pressed my hands to his chest again, for all the good it would do.
“Wait, wait. We have to finish the business, first.”
“Step aside,” he growled, the sound metallic, giving me a hot spinal monkey. “It is past time for him to atone for his sins.”
Yes, yes it is.
But no!
“Aeshma, please, please, wait.”
His eyes bored into mine.
“Listen. Just listen to me, please.” My thoughts ran to a place I didn’t want to drag him. But I had to. It might be my only shot at stopping him.“If you do this now, we fail. I don’t want that. I don’t want to fail Michel.” My back contacted metal again. “Do you want to fail?”
I knew what saying this might do to him, God help me, but I had to appeal to him, and it was true. It was the only reason I could imagine looking at my attacker again—when I was able to look at him—the idea of letting Michel down otherwise.
Travis’ reply sounded like boiling mercury.
“He does not deserve to breathe the same air as you any longer, Death Dancer.”
Pressed, pressed harder into the metal. If the door opened, I’d fall inside, giving me somewhere to go.
But I didn’t want it to open.
“You’re right, Aeshma, he doesn’t.” His fangs, so close to my face that his other features were out of focus. “But we will fail if you do this now. Do you hear me, Travis? Fail.”
The black of his eyes thinned, amber pushing its way through. A minute later metal wasn’t chilling me through my suit any longer.
“Fail…” he said, but there was no rejoicing on my part as I witnessed the softening of his expression.
I still had to be certain the point drove home completely, damn it. There were still black slivers trying to swallow the amber in his eyes.
“Right, an absolute fuck up, Travis. We can’t have that, now can we?”
“No, we can’t have that. I made an oath.”
“Exactly. We’re both loyal to the end. So just a while longer, okay? After we’ve wrapped this up, I can’t stop you, I know that. Just—wait.”
All the blackness in his irises disappeared, and there was the laid back Travis I’d grown accustomed to.
“Will you want to stop me later?” Even his voice had shifted, I realized.
I also realized my inability to say yes to his question.
Hey there. Yup, it’s me again.
You know the drill.
1
September 1
“You are quite close to boring me beyond death,” said Gabriel, his voice dropping another degree, along with the temperature of his gaze.
A wisp of auburn drifted across her cheek with the defiant lift of her chin. “If you want entertainment, you can buy it on the street.”
My dark angel’s smile, frostbitten on its edges, grew a degree as he took a gliding step closer to the barstool on which she sat. I leaned back against the countertop, draping my arms to each side, admiring my lethal, longhaired beauty.
“I prefer a far higher class of entertainment, merci. More erudite pursuits, one might say,” he replied.
She smiled up at him, the smile as flippant as her tone. “Guess that counts me out.”
For this, at first, his smile merely chilled a wider path across his face.
We had arrived in Phantasm, a sanguinary club deep in the heart of Prague, through a chain of events both lucky and crafted.
Vita, the spy Elise had offered up, had been the first link in our chain. Vita had proven rather ballsy for a human, not to mention hardier than I imagined. It had taken more than I thought most humans capable of enduring, before a single tidbit of useful information spilled forth. Yet unfortunately—for I was enjoying myself at the time—she didn’t prove as hardy as I would have liked.
She expired before I’d captured all the details I was having so much fun chasing.
No matter, this was no matter at all, as upon occasion I can be quite unselfish, and so I did not begrudge Trey his chance at satisfaction, and satisfaction we both did have, for much information did she give Trey.
From the Other Side, that is.
She’d certainly never expected the interrogation would continue beyond death, and she certainly had not imagined what manner of punishment a Death Dancer could deal, particularly when he felt righteously moved.
Of course, she hadn’t known there were such things as Death Dancers either, which, since Travis had first uttered the words, had become our new term for Trey’s persona. In the time since his possession, Trey was beginning to grow into this new skin in the most interesting fashion. I found the title fitting and elegant in its way.
But I digress. I often do so when I am being entertained.
My beloved hunter Travis Starke provided link two. I have often mused that there isn’t a hole in the world in which one could hide that he would not pull one out of, and our next link was pulled out of a hole in Italy, after crossing the border from Nice. Quite literally pulled out of a hole, in fact, as this traitor had need of digging said hole before the sun reduced him to a bubbling slick of entrails, then ashes.
Link three was, admittedly, a stroke of luck, thanks to the faithlessness of link two’s lover. The lover was having an affair with the third link, and so they were kind enough to be in the same location—namely her bed. I wouldn’t have missed his expressions, nor the sounds he made when I crushed him beneath my boot heels, for anything.
I’m more than happy to provide other details later, perhaps, but we should expedite our return to the enthralling sight of Gabriel post haste.
As of now, here I stand, content to watch my Angel of Death conduct his interrogation; one that would, beyond doubt, end quite badly for the third-rate street walker named Phaedra, sitting on a stool in this bar she’d sleazed her way into owning.
“Truly now, your head is not fully vacant. Certainly you have an answer to the question that I have posed, one that might even suit me,” he said.
“What would I know about the blood bags roaming your city, and why should I care about any of them?” she replied, her spine clinging to a straight line. She then laughed. “And why should you care?”
Gabriel’s smile to her was pleasant— dangerously so. The more polite he became, in certain instances, the more life-threatening he was.
A slight flaring of his nostrils accompanied his next words, his calmly spoken words. “They have their uses, as I believe you know – indeed, know very well, and quite recently.” As she offered only a shrug, Gabriel continued. “I have certainly found a use for one such creature even now.”
On cue, her eyes flitted to the door, as also on cue, a mortal stumbled through it, aided greatly by Kar. Swiftly, she looked back to Gabriel, attempting to disguise her reaction.
“Some sport?” Her tongue slid across her front teeth, tasting each one. “If I’d known you were coming and that you were into this kind of thing, I would have made arrangements.”
His bow shaped mouth, which I so coveted, curved ever so slightly. “A faux pas on our part, certainly, but not to worry. I have brought my own rabbit, as you can plainly see.”
Said rabbit could not contain himself and made a desperate move in her direction, for which he found himself in my grip. I smiled sweetly, catching Phaedra’s eyes.
“I might be of a mood to share,” I said, “depending entirely on your next few words, of course.” Her pet’s fear wafted out through his pores and caressed my taste buds, delighting the devil within me.
“Save me a thigh, will you?” she said. “I love tender thigh meat.”
I found the mortal’s cry quite heady, quite pleasing, when fabric and flesh gave way to nails. So pungent the sudden release of blood was, I could trace its descent, taste every particle that paused to cling on the hairs of his leg.
“I don’t know, Phaedra. I grow hungrier by the second, and the only thing better than a perfectly curved breast is a juicy thigh.”
Germany
“Shit,” I whispered. “This isn’t working.”
“That disc was supposed crack everything.”
“Yeah, I know that; we all know that. Doesn’t change the fact it isn’t working.”
“You need to figure something out; we’ve not much time.”
“Know that, too, thanks.” I waved my hands. “I’ll take a shot at the password myself.”
“Or we do it another night.”
“Fuck that. Tonight’s the night, man.” In my head, I started going over everything I knew about the company and the dude whose computer I was hacking.
Trying to hack.
“By the way, I think you need to fire her software geek,” I said. “Bill Gates he ain’t.”
“I was just thinking that myself, mate. Now get that brain working.”
“I’m on it, I’m on it.”
Fourth attempt, and I was so not on it.
“Of course. There’s nothing remotely predictable about this dude. I can’t figure it out, and I’m gonna trip something here; I just know it. It’s gonna lock me out, and then we’re well and truly fucked.”
Travis was at the door one second, then standing behind me the next. “Let me see.”
I leaned back to give him room. “Computer savvy, are you?”
“I might know a trick or five.” The glow from the computer screen illuminated his grin.
“Yeah? So why don’t you handle software next time?”
“I will.”
And just as easily as he said those words, he had bypassed the security on the computer.
“You cheated. How did you do that?”
All I got for that was another grin. He started heading back to his post. “Copy that shit and let’s get out of here.”
Slipping the USB flash drive in, I set about finding the right files. “On it, on it.”
“Shhh.” He paused. “Our company’s on the second floor.”
“We’re on the seventh, right? Still time, and I can’t make this go any faster, you know.”
He waved a hand at me.
“Maybe if you’d used that trick earlier, we’d be out of here already, Travis.”
“Last resort.”
“Why’s that?”
“Shhh.”
Sure. Fine.
Shhh.
Files. There. Copy.
“Almost there,” I said under my breath, slipping the useless disc into my pocket. “Where are they?”
No response.
“Dude, where are they?” Copy next files.
Silence.
I looked up. Travis wasn’t there.
“Shit. Travis?”
Click, open, copy. Hurry up, damn it.
“Travis…where’d you go?”
How would you say it? Stop tripping, man.
Scowl. (Definitely not a pout.) “I am not tripping.”
Then be quiet.
Well where are you?
Focus on your task.
Grunt.
I grabbed the flash drive, slipped it into my pocket next to the disc, and proceeded to close up everything on the comp, cover my trail.
That done, I got up and headed for the door. I grabbed the doorknob and eased the door open, peeking out into the hall, and as soon as I saw that it was clear, cautiously, quietly, made my way out and started heading for the stairwell down at the end, to the right. Safely there, my feet started carrying me down the first flight.
Second.
Where the fuck is Travis?
Rounding the third, I heard a noise and just stopped myself from saying his name. Might not be him, after all. No, I was sure he wouldn’t be making that much noise while he walked; this operation was all about stealth, for God’s sake.
The door below. Someone was opening the door below.
I turned and flew back up the steps toward the fifth floor exit, thinking Travis, hard. Hearing footfalls on the steps didn’t give me much time to check out the hall before I bounded out and started down it, looking for a place to hide.
Office door, locked.
A few steps more, another door, locked.
“Shit.” So where are you now, bodyguard and accomplice? Making a bloody trail? Is the gig up?
While reaching for the handle of a third door, something reached for me at the same time.
A hand clamped over my mouth, an arm gripped me around the waist, and whoever it was yanked me inside a pitch-black room and shut the door.
Shit.
Fucked. That could be my name right now.
Copyright S. ROIT
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