Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (7 page)

Despite his lack of a plan, he lifted his hand and knocked again. There was still no answer. Taris pressed his ear to the door but could not hear any noise coming from inside, either.

One noise he
could
hear was the elevator ascending its cables. He glanced behind him and saw that the little numbers across the top were quickly blinking closer to the floor he was on. If anyone saw him there, his entire mission was screwed. He gripped the doorknob and almost gave it a twist out of its casing but quickly pulled his hand away. Nothing blew a covert operation like a busted door. “Time to pull another trick out of the bag,” he mumbled. He stared intently at the dead bolt on the door to the apartment and concentrated. He envisioned the thick metal sliding out of the notch in the doorframe. As he imagined it, he heard it slide, unlocking the apartment door.

He pushed open the door just enough to sneak in. Once he’d slipped his way through the narrow space, he gently pushed the door closed and turned the dead bolt, making a beeline for a closet on the opposite side of the room. The louvered doors snapped shut just as he heard the scratching of keys in the lock to the front door.

“Shit,” he mumbled quietly. It was the doctor, all right, but there was a man with her, and damn if that didn’t complicate things to the
n
th degree. His best bet was to be as silent as the grave and pray to God he didn’t have to make his presence known.

“You can’t blame yourself for this.”

The man’s voice rumbled through the front door.

“Damn it. I lost my temper on national television and managed to get both of us suspended. How can I
not
blame myself for this?”

Taris leaned in and listened as best he could. Through the slats in the door, he could make out where the light from the corridor beamed just above the threshold, and four long shadows cast into the darkness of the apartment. He could hear more mumbling and another jingle of keys before the dead bolt slid back and the door pushed wide open.

Dr. Bridgeman stormed in and flipped on the light, illuminating the open floor plan of her apartment. It caught him off guard, so even through the narrow slats of the closet, Taris had to squint his eyes for a moment. She was followed in by a tall man who even Taris had to admit was damn good looking.

“Well, for one thing, it’s not your fault I couldn’t make the interview instead of you.” The man shut the front door and looked at the doctor with an expression that made Taris want to punch him in the mouth.

“That’s hardly fair,” she replied as she tossed her purse onto the kitchen counter. She held out her hand for the man’s overcoat, but he shook his head and laid it over the back of the couch. She shrugged hers off and turned toward the coat closet. “You had an episode, and you can’t exactly flip those on and off with a switch, now can you? Besides, it may have been better that you didn’t go. This woman would have taxed your nerves to the point of passing out.”

Taris’ heart started to pound as she stepped closer and closer to the closet. There was nowhere to hide in the damned thing. He clenched his hands by his side and waited for the confrontation but was instead smacked in the face with a thick wool coat. He sat there for a minute, holding perfectly still, just in case the door was still open. After the loud click reverberated around him, he let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. Gripping the coat in his hands, he went to set it on the floor but paused when the faint smell of warm vanilla and sugar swirled around him.

Dr. Bridgeman stood in front of the closet and said something to the man. There was something about the sound of her voice that stroked him in places it shouldn’t have. It was sweet and mellow and deep enough to make a man shudder.

Considering he was basically a Peeping Tom who had broken into her house, he had little to no moral ground to stand on, but he stared at her through the slats of the closet, listening to her voice rise and fall as she complained about her boss, the interview, and the fact that she’d been suspended from work. He wondered what it would be like to just sit and talk to her.

“I still feel bad that you had to do it and that this whole thing has blown up.” The man was working his way around the kitchen.

“Nick, as much as I wanted to kick your ass last night, there is no way I am going to blame you for this.”

Okay, Nick. Nicholas. Patton, wasn’t it? That must be her research partner
. But their relationship seemed more than a little chummy for just co-workers. And the man knew his way around her apartment. If he lived there with her, this was going to be a much taller order than Taris had initially bargained for.

“Quit fussing about coffee and sit down,” she said as she flopped down onto the couch. He felt like such a fucking creeper, but he couldn’t help but admire the way she moved; every ounce of her oozed confidence. She was tall and lean. She didn’t have many curves, but she didn’t look awkward or masculine. Just graceful. She fumbled with her long, brown curls and tried several times to pull them up neatly into a rubber tie but then gave up and twisted them into a sloppy ball secured at the nape of her neck.

“I want coffee, Sarah, and damn it, I’m going to make it.”

Sarah twisted her face and shook her head to mock him. Taris almost laughed.

“I wish I could make this better for you,” Nick said as he sat down next to her, handing her a steaming cup. “The best I can tell you is to just ride it out, and for God’s sake, don’t do any more interviews.”

“No shit,” she smiled, blowing into the mug before taking a sip. “Maybe this could be a good thing for me. I could probably parlay this into a way to fill my date book.”

Nick laughed. “I don’t think you’d want the kind of attention this sort of exposure gets you. Remember the magazine article about me that landed me the train of women?”

“It got you laid, didn’t it? Last time I had any sort of decent sex was before you and I started working together.”

“Hey, I did offer.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have refused.”

Taris felt an odd tingle of jealousy flare up when he saw Sarah lean over and pull Nick close to her. He watched as her fingers stroked his back. The tenderness between them was almost too familial to watch. He needed to look away, but something about the genuine outpouring of love she clearly had for him was touching in ways he didn’t know humans possessed anymore.

“Guess we’ll never know, will we?” Nick muttered, pulling away from her. “Besides, humping you now would be like humping my sister.”

“Oh hell, thanks, Nick.”

“Don’t mention it.” Nick stood and held out a hand to her. “What is family for but to make each other feel really shitty, while at the same time letting them know you love them unconditionally?”

Sarah stood in front of him and hurled his coat at his face. “And, thank the Lord, you’re the only family I’ve got.”

Sarah walked him to the door and mumbled something about him staying.

“I have to take my medicine. I have to pick up a refill tomorrow, and the hospital insurance won’t cover it anymore. Guess it’s a good thing I’m making the big bucks. Next time, I won’t catch such an expensive disease.”

“Yeah, someone should really do a PSA about the dangers of HIV on your pocketbook,” Sarah faintly smiled.

From where he stood, Taris could only see her hands on the door, but he heard the sound of her lips on what he hoped was his cheek. There was a little mumbling, and then she closed the door.

The moment the dead bolt turned, he could literally see the weight of the world sink down onto her shoulders. The light in her chocolate brown eyes seemed to flicker out as soon as she thought she was alone. He knew how that felt, how to live with a spark of hope in front of everyone else, only to let it die slowly when no one was watching.

She clicked on a lamp and turned out the overhead light, filling the apartment with a faint orange glow. For a brief moment, his mission changed. His objective shifted, and he wanted nothing more than to let her know that he was there, to hold her and let her cry the tears he could see were welling in her eyes. From the bits of conversation he’d picked up, he knew she’d spent the better part of the last twenty-four hours being hounded by the media. She’d been suspended from her job, and the one “family” member she had was dying of an incurable disease.

And he was about to ask her to do something as monumental as save a race of people who weren’t even supposed to exist? And to top it all off, he’d broken into her apartment and had been hiding in her closet like a perv. He may as well have “asshole” tattooed on his forehead.

She sauntered off to the back of the apartment and down the hallway, where he assumed the bedroom and the bathroom were. He was just about to peek out when she reemerged from the hall in her underwear.

“Damn it,” Taris muttered.

Underneath her put-together, professional exterior was apparently a woman who liked to wear lime green panties and had a half-sleeve tattoo on her right arm. It was oddly sexy and small enough that a T-shirt could cover it. A crystal ball surrounded by misty blue-and-green swirls covered the top of her arm. Inside the orb were inked the words
It’s only forever. Not long at all
.

Sarah moved her way around the bar and stretched up to reach into a cabinet. She pulled a bottle of Blue Label Johnnie Walker out from behind the rows of coffee mugs and set it down on the counter before sliding a glass out of another cupboard. She pulled the corked top out of the bottle, stopping just before the first drop fell into the glass.

Pushing the glass aside, she stared at the bottle for a moment before taking a swig straight from it. The deep pull was all it took for Taris’s heart to pound nearly out of his chest. The girl deserved a drink after the last two days she’d endured, but damn it if watching her lips touch the glass rim of that bottle, standing there in her bright panties with that tattoo, wasn’t the sexiest thing he’d seen in nearly a hundred years.

There was no way he could step out and introduce himself now. It was best to formulate a plan. She’d already been more of a surprise than he’d anticipated, and the last thing he needed to do was jump out of her closet with his fangs showing and a raging semi.

He breathed a sigh of relief as the glowing lamp clicked off and her feet padded across the hardwood floor to her bedroom. If she were asleep, then he could focus and rethink his plan of action.

Even the sweet smell of high-priced tobacco couldn’t cover up the metallic sting that seemed to soak into everything that Maven owned. It was making her gag. The combination of the spicy smoke and the dripping liquid that was now covering her dressing room walls literally rolled her stomach. She would have thrown up if she could.

Duct tape made for a great vomit deterrent.

She could hear the blood racing through her, feel her heart pounding against her chest as the smoke began to surround her. Her tongue was heavy with a thick coat of acidic fear. There was hot blood trickling from her rope-bound wrists behind her, and her feet weren’t faring any better. The binding that was teathering her spread-eagle to the chair was tight and coarse. Her eyes darted to the thick, red spot on the wall and then quickly shut as a hunk of something fell and landed with a wet
plop
onto the floor. She felt sick again as the heavy boot that was placed precariously on her chair at the juncture of her thighs wiggled.

“What’s the matter? I thought you liked tearing people apart?”

The man in the chair directly opposite her leaned forward, his handsome face highlighted with a harsh streak of blush. His red eyes were accented by a darker red shadow. His shiny crimson lips made his makeup mask look all the more ominous. He flashed a smile that made her shiver, visibly. Those teeth, Lord help her, the things he had done to her poor stage manager with those teeth. Her eyes darted to the spot on the wall again. By the time she managed to pull her gaze from it, he was a breath away from her face, his blood-colored eyes boring right into her. Without looking away from her, he bent down and placed a half-smoked cigarette beneath a large boot that was covered with metal and looked like it could withstand the inside of a wood chipper. He crushed it out and quickly pulled another tightly rolled black cigarette from the pocket of his designer blue leather duster.

“So,” he said as he whirred his Zippo and drew the flame through the tobacco, “you think if I take this tape off your face, you’ll talk to me?” He blew the first drag of smoke directly at her, smiling as he saw her eyes squeeze tight against the assault. “I don’t want any more of that wussy screaming, you hear me? Otherwise, you end up like your friend there.”

Maven nodded her head, struggling to get her stomach in check. She didn’t want to look at the floor, to where he was pointing.

The man with the makeup and the terrifying teeth lifted a long finger, and with a quick rip, he pulled the tape off Maven’s mouth. She felt it pull pieces of skin away from the corners of her collagen-injected lips, and she cried out.

“Thought I told you no screaming?” the man said. “I’ll let that slide just this once because I know that had to have hurt like hell.” He leaned back in his chair, once again placing his booted foot between her legs, only this time, he shoved it completely beneath her skirt until she could feel the sole of his boot pressing into her skin through the fabric of her silk panties. “Now, if you are nice to me and tell me everything I need to know, I won’t have to eat you.”

Maven did her best to swallow the knot in her throat.

“Ask,” she cleared her throat again, “ask me anything.”

“There’s a good girl.” He exhaled a brilliant puff of white smoke again, but this time, he tilted his head up toward the ceiling. “Where do I find Dr. Sarah Bridgeman?”

“All of her contact information is in my PDA, there on my desk,” she motioned with her head. Her breath was still ragged, and it disgusted her to hear the weak terror in it. “Her cell number, work number, home number, her address, everything.”

He rose from his chair, thankfully relieving the intense pressure he had been putting on her pelvic bone. His heavy boots waded through the blood pool on the floor, and he retrieved the silver device. Scrolling through it, he smiled when he came to the memo about the good doctor.