A Touch of Crimson (25 page)
Lindsay managed to let Elijah mow his way through two full stacks of pancakes and six over-easy eggs, before she pressed him for more information. “So why do people think you’re a troublemaker?”
He dropped a pat of butter onto his hash browns. “I said I was being observed, not that I’m a troublemaker.”
“Okay then.” She pushed aside the remnants of her breakfast. “What are you being observed for?”
He shoveled a massive forkful of potatoes into his mouth. After he chewed and swallowed, he said, “There are some who think I show Alpha traits.”
“Alpha. Like top dog? King of the hill? Master of all he surveys?” She nodded. “Totally.”
He paused with another heaping forkful suspended halfway between his plate and his lips. “You’re not helping.”
“What?” She leaned back into the booth. “What’s wrong with that? Better than being a Beta male for sure. I mean, they have their uses and all. But really, women are looking for sexy, hunky Alpha males. We like that take-charge, take-no-shit, bad-boy vibe. It really does a number on us, which I’m sure you’ve noticed in the course of your seventy-some-odd years of living.”
Elijah exhaled in a way that conveyed endless patience. “Women aside,” he said drily, “it’s not good to show Alpha traits when you’re a lycan.”
“Why not?”
He stared at her for a long moment, as if debating what to say or whether he should say it at all. “The Sentinels are supposed to be the only Alphas. The lycans are supposed to look to them for guidance, not to each other.”
The gravity in his voice sobered her. Lindsay waited until their waitress had topped off her coffee and moved on to another table, then asked, “What happens if it’s decided that you’re an Alpha lycan?”
“I’ll be separated from the others and . . . I don’t know. Alphas don’t come around very often, so I don’t know what happens to them. I’ve heard rumors that they’re kept together and used for non–field assignments, like interrogations, but frankly I don’t see how that would work. You can’t put a bunch of Alphas together and expect them to play nice. But maybe that’s the point—make us kill each other, so the Sentinels don’t get their hands dirty.”
“I can’t believe Adrian would condone that.”
“After working with him, I’m not sure he’s fully aware of how the lycan system is run.” He grabbed the top half of an English muffin and eyed the amount of butter already on it. “He’s out there in the trenches, more so than any other Sentinel I’ve seen. He’s always on a hunt. He hadn’t been home in almost two weeks when you saw us in Phoenix. We’d taken out a rogue minion just a few hours before we ran across you.”
“He’s been away from home for days now.”
Elijah opened two jelly packets and scraped the contents onto his muffin. “Yeah. Hunting is what he lives for. It’s his way.”
She blew out her breath. It was her way, too. The only way she knew. “Okay, you’ll think this is crazy, but . . . what about going into business with me? Bounty hunting maybe? Private investigations? You’d still be hunting. Plus, I’ve got a score to settle that I could really use your help with. We both know I need someone to be the level-headed voice of reason.”
He paused in the act of chewing, staring at her, then washed down his food with half a glass of orange juice. “You think I can just quit?”
“Hey, I’d have to quit my job, too.”
“The only way out of working for the Sentinels is death.”
Lindsay’s pulse stuttered. “What are you saying? You’re prisoners? Slaves?”
He resumed eating. After he swallowed, he said, “I think I’m gonna bring another lycan on board.”
“Okay, ignore the big question. I’ll worm it out of you eventually. As for another lycan, do whatever you think is best. I trust you. I don’t suppose it’s a woman . . . ? I’d feel a lot better about you having to babysit me if you had some fun doing it.”
His green eyes sparkled with laughter.
Realizing how that sounded, she groaned. “That came out wrong.”
“No, it’s not a woman. Just someone who could use a little time away, too.”
“Is he an Alpha?”
Elijah shook his head. “He’s not. Thank god.”
More than anything he’d said, it was the relief in his voice that gave Lindsay chills.
Adrian exited Yellowstone into Gardiner, Montana, just after dusk. He’d located Helena and Mark early in the morning, then held Damien and Jason back until nightfall, giving the two lovers one last day together.
It was a concession the Sentinels obeyed without question but couldn’t understand. Love in the mortal sense was unknown to them. They didn’t grasp the desperate desire, the aching longing, or the purity of joy a mortal felt in finding the other half of his or her soul.
Adrian knew those extremes far too well, but this time with Lindsay was novel in many ways. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, couldn’t stop comparing her incarnation to the ones that had come before. He was used to starting from scratch, but there were always certain constants he’d come to expect. Lindsay deviated from the pattern to such a degree that he could find few markers with which to map their interactions. It was all new and uncharted. And he was captivated by the mercurial emotions she roused in him.
“What are you going to do, Captain?” Damien asked as they entered the small town on foot.
“Arrangements have been made for the lycan to join the Hokkaidō pack.”
“I still think you should put him down,” Jason said. “If ever there was a time to make an example out of a lycan, this is it. When this gets out—”
Adrian cut him off with a look. “It’s not going to get out.”
He’d tracked Helena’s other lycan guard first, catching up to her halfway to Cedar City en route to the Navajo Lake pack. Her destination showed the strength of her self-preservation instincts. Given the opportunity to flee while the Sentinels were distracted by Helena’s desertion, she chose to head to the nearest pack instead. Without hesitation, she had agreed to never speak of Mark and Helena again for the rest of her life. For her loyalty and common sense, Adrian had offered her reassignment to his pack, a promotion she’d readily accepted. He had learned long ago that positive reinforcement was a far better motivator than fear and intimidation.
“Once Mark is in Japan and Helena is Anaheim,” he continued quietly, “we’re all going to forget the last four days. None of us wants to deal with what will happen otherwise.”
A Sentinel and lycan affair. The two running away together. The consequences of that choice. All of it would be a ticking time bomb, giving ammunition to the malcontents. With the recent spate of vampire attacks and the infection he’d witnessed in Arizona and Utah, he couldn’t risk unrest among the Sentinel ranks now. The balance he’d preserved for so long was crumbling around him. If he lost control of the Sentinels, nothing would save the world from the chaos that would ensue.
Because of the pressing need for secrecy, he’d conducted the entire hunt thus far without any technological help, unable to risk leaving a trail by using Mitchell Aeronautics resources. Being able to track Helena’s rental car via GPS would have shortened the hunt, but he hadn’t been in a hurry. Affording her a few days of whatever happiness she could find while on the run was such a small concession, and it was the only one he could make. The longer she was AWOL, the more volatile the situation became.
“You and Helena can’t be the only ones to form attachments,” Jason said.
“No.” Everything seemed to be coming to a head at once. Or maybe it felt that way because he was still reeling from Lindsay’s decision to leave him. She was being selfless for him. He had to try to be the same for her, which might mean letting her go.
“You can’t be surprised,” Jason went on. “We’ve been on this mission forever.”
“I’m only surprised it took this long.” Adrian looked at Damien, who lifted both shoulders in an offhand shrug that neither confirmed nor denied whether his opinion aligned. “But what are the alternatives? Dereliction of duty? The forfeiture of our wings? Preying on the mortals we were created to protect? Who the fuck wants to live that life?”
Damien exhaled harshly. “You’d have to ask the Fallen about that.”
They walked through Gardiner, then beyond to the rental cabins where Helena was holed up. Adrian had shadowed her and her lycan by air during the night, following them along the winding back roads and small towns they’d traveled through until they’d stopped near dawn.
Reaching into his pocket, he wrapped his hand around his cell phone. He wished he could talk with Lindsay now. Her mortal heart might not understand why he would part two lovers, but that heart would know it killed him to do so. She wouldn’t see his sympathy and compassion as weaknesses. Even if she argued against the actions he was forced to take, it would soothe him just to hear her voice and unvarnished reasoning, strengthening him for the pain he was about to inflict on a friend he loved.
When his phone vibrated with an incoming call, his grip tightened on it in surprise. He slowed his stride, wondering if Lindsay had actually felt compelled to call him by the force of his desire for her to do so.
The caller ID told him it was the Point. He answered.
“We might have a problem,” Oliver said without preamble.
Adrian stopped. Oliver never labeled anything a problem unless it was very much a problem. “What is it?”
“I just talked to Aaron. He went to Louisiana on the hunt for a rogue we’ve been tracking. They were ambushed by Vash and two of her captains. Aaron was wounded enough to put him out of commission for a while. He has no idea what happened to his lycans while he was regenerating. He’s been searching for them for three days.”
Looking at Jason and Damien, who could easily hear what was being discussed, Adrian saw the despair he felt reflected on their faces. Too much. Too fast. Like dominoes, everything was toppling in rapid, unstoppable succession.
“You sent a team to retrieve him?” Adrian asked.
“Yes. But after Phineas and the attack on you, I thought you should know it was the lycans Vash was after.”
“Is it possible they’re the ones responsible for Charron’s death?”
“I thought of that. Too young, the both of them.”
“Keep me posted.” Ending the call, Adrian started forward again, spurred by the driving need to get back home, where he could regroup and take the offensive. He could only hope that compiling all the information he’d obtained over the last week would lead to an understanding of what the fuck was going on and why everything had gone to shit in a matter of days. “Let’s get this done,” he said to Jason and Damien.
As they neared the cabin, he freed his wings. The metallic odor that teased his nostrils was instantly recognizable. No light shined from the unit, intensifying Adrian’s foreboding. He raced the final distance to the door, disengaging the lock with a thought before he reached for the knob. The stench of congealing blood hit him with enough force to rock him backward a step. He willed the lights on, even though he didn’t require illumination to see.
With a curse, he averted his gaze from the carnage that was more horrifying under the harsh glare of flickering fluorescent lighting.
Jason stepped into the cabin and froze. “Fuck me,” he gasped, before pivoting and stumbling out the door.
Damien entered next. His sharp inhale betrayed his shock and dismay, but he remained at Adrian’s side, his gaze darting around the room as he took in the entirety of the grisly tableau before them.
Knowing he needed to provide strength to the two Sentinels, Adrian scrubbed both hands over his face and rolled his shoulders back. He turned his head forward again, breathing through his mouth. The sight of a wing lying on the floor blurred, then cleared as tears coursed down his face. The other wings were scattered about the room as if they’d been tossed away like so much trash. One hung off the end of the bed, the soft pink and gray feathers now stained with blood. They’d been clawed from Helena’s back, leaving two rows of three stumps protruding from her graceful spine.
The fallen Sentinel lay prone on the bed, her sightless eyes trained at the door, her golden hair plastered to her cheeks and back with dried sweat and blood. Her lycan lay sprawled on the floor at the foot of the bed. Two unsealed punctures in his neck explained the sickeningly white pallor of his skin. Adrian doubted there was a drop of blood left in Mark’s body.
“This is hell,” he said gruffly, shaken to his soul by the waste—the
wrongness
—of it all.
wrongness
—of it all.
Damien looked at him. “Why didn’t it work?”
“Why would it have? She wasn’t punished. Her wings were taken by her lycan lover, not a Sentinel. He was bitten by a—” Adrian walked over to Helena’s body and peeled back her upper lip. He stared for a long moment. “Her canines aren’t elongated.”
“Maybe they retracted when she didn’t fall completely.”
Adrian’s gaze lifted skyward, corrosive grief burning through his veins. His fingers sifted through the once glorious strands of Helena’s hair. She’d been more than a friend. She had been proof that failure was not inevitable, that it was possible, if they were strong enough, to serve their mission without forfeiting their faith in the process. Now that hope was lost, withering in an agonizing death along with a seraph whose heart had been so pure that only love could destroy it.
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