Hunger Untamed H3 (19 page)

There was no place left for them. Their options had slimmed down to none, one tick of the clock at a time. He was fucked and he’d dragged Lucy with him.

“
Your destination is on the right.
”

After turning into the parking lot, he studied the glass front of the building and spotted several security failures right away. This might be a little easier than he’d first thought.

More than a dozen vendors had set up tents, spotlights illuminating the artwork on display. The artists stood near their wares, chatting with passersby and potential patrons. It looked like a typical bohemian scene until one realized how beautiful and ethereal the artists themselves were. Their creative works, paintings of fantasy and whimsy, seemed like decoration for the people instead of just goods to buy.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been to one of these,” Lucy said. “I guess the crowd I hung with was a little too hoity-toity for a late-night art walk.”

Victor ran his gaze over Lucy, who’d chosen a loose-fitting jumper with thin straps at her shoulders and a belt at her waist. The wrap she’d draped over it hid the holster at her back and the stakes strapped to her thighs. Although it would have appeared more natural if she’d been wearing low heels or maybe strappy sandals of some sort, the smart would-be assassin that she was, she’d chosen cowboy boots with steel tips. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail. Her makeup light with a smattering of color on her lips.

Before they’d gone far, she’d captured the interest of one or two men. Maybe a woman, too. Victor made a point of putting his hand on the small of her back. Last thing they needed was a suitor interrupting their plans.

“Figures Sage would make himself the host of something like this.” True to character, he needed to be surrounded by pulchritude. He lowered his voice before they’d ventured too close to the others. “He’ll have guards close by. Let’s figure out who they are, then figure out how to separate them.”

Lucy drew a deep breath, a habit she’d abandon sooner or later. She’d missed out on the sexual oblivion of transition, having been unconscious for most of it, but he hoped she’d forgive him enough to let him show her the luxury of being a vampire. How wondrous it could really be.

Oh
,
fuck
.

Victor grabbed her hand, pulling her from the doors leading them inside the gallery. Despite her small noises of protest, he dragged her away from the vampires milling inside and toward more of the outdoor vendors. He scanned their wares as they went by at speed that would no doubt catch people’s attention, but probably not more than Lucy’s scent would.

At last, he spotted what he needed. “Pick something and smother it on. A lot.”

“What? What are they?”

Lotions, from what he could tell. Homemade, organic shit that would have questionable side effects on anyone prone to allergic reactions. “Smelly is what they are.”

Lucy stared at him.

“Burning night, doll. Pick something and put it on. We need it to cover the last of that cinnamon coming from you or we’ll attract way more attention than we want or need right now. Got it?”

Victor slapped a twenty on the table while Lucy donned the last of her disguise for the evening. He studied her one last time and felt safe in believing they’d covered all the bases. Whatever happened next would be a little bit of skill and a whole lot of luck coming out to play.

Once the transaction ended, he held out his hand, pleased when she took it. “Let’s go.”

* * *

They strolled through the gallery, pausing long enough to seem interested in the featured artist of the night. From Victor’s understanding, Sage owned the place, allowing the vampire community to host this monthly function meant for the more cultured. He didn’t always make an appearance himself, but if Corin’s notes were accurate, he’d be here tonight.

Lucy squeezed his hand ever so gently. Surrounded by so many with superior hearing, he didn’t dare ask her the matter, but glanced at her face. She slid her gaze toward a back corner of the room and then back to Victor, subtly directing him.

And there he was. Twin A or B from not too long ago tucked into a corner. He stood with his back to a painting, his focus sweeping over the patrons in the room. The way he ignored the artistry around him, content to people watch, made him stand out from the others. But Victor was very glad to see him. It meant he and Lucy knew what they faced. It meant the other twin would be somewhere close by. It meant Sage waited even closer.

“I want to see this one,” Lucy said in a soft voice. She moved away from Victor, their hands disconnecting at the last second. She hadn’t said she wanted him next to her and for now, he would follow her lead.

There weren’t a lot of people in the room, but he kept a clear line of sight to her at all times. She only had to look in his direction and he’d be by her side, guns and stakes drawn.

Lucy tucked the ends of the wrap into itself as she walked. She knew something Victor didn’t. Her focused gaze stayed ahead of her, ignoring the people in her path, the people behind her. Ignoring Victor. He did what a good backup should, following her close, keeping an eye out for the missing twin guard. His heart thumped a steady beat, the music in the room not loud enough to drown its persistent thumps.

Victor scanned everyone, trying to locate anyone out of place, and couldn’t tell which of these vampires might turn on either of them. Lucy needed to get closer to Sage, to disable him, before he knew what was happening.

Christ, he didn’t see the true object of Lucy’s intent until the last possible second. She pulled on the fire alarm as casual as you please and walked away as if she’d done nothing more mundane than read a sign placard. For a split second, it didn’t seem like anything would happen. Then blaring, enough to startle the thought out of his head, shook Victor to his core. The alarm rang with a trill intensity he felt through his bones.

Patrons in the gallery snapped to attention, then shrieked en masse. The more agile and quick-thinking searched for the nearest exit. In small clusters they moved with quick efficiency, heading toward the outside. The twin—the other one still out of sight—made his way toward a partition.

“Gotcha,” murmured Victor.

He and Lucy went after the guard, knowing Sage couldn’t be too far away. Figures they had him tucked away in a corner, out of sight of the general public, but close enough he could entertain an audience should he choose.

Victor heard movement behind him. Turned to find a man wearing a gray shirt and dark gray tie stalking them. His features were rough, his jawline sharp. Dark hair draped across his head, obscuring his forehead and ending in curls over his neck. His hands were loose at his sides, the look in his eyes hard and unyielding. Not vampire.

“Go,” Victor barked at Lucy. He sure as hell didn’t want them splitting up, but anyone who chose to go after the guard instead of fleeing from the imagined danger had an agenda. Was he one of the werewolves? Why hadn’t he come to Victor first, then?

Shit. He wouldn’t take the chance someone else might have had a plan for Sage. His decisions as part of the Council weren’t always popular. Victor withdrew his gun, which had to be a deterrent to anyone.

The guy didn’t even slow. He withdrew a crossbow pistol seemingly out of nowhere and pointed it in Victor’s direction. Before he could reconcile the device for what it was, he was forced to move as a metal arrow whizzed by Victor. The wind touched his face where the arrow should have gone if he hadn’t spun at the last second.

Glass shattered beyond Victor. His gaze flitted to the ruined artwork, crystalline pieces scattered on the floor surrounding a pedestal. By the time he turned back around, he’d wrapped his hand around his gun and drew it. One shot after the other left the chamber, aimed at the fleeing man. He’d raced after Lucy, who was no longer in sight. Victor had to get to her, but indecision tore at him about what to do with the attacker.

Was he after Victor or Sage? Lucy? The damned alarm made it hard to think.

No matter what, he had to protect Lucy.

Chapter Twenty-One

Lucy had to trust Victor had her back.

She ran through the curtains separating the gallery from a backroom. Papers flew from a small desk when she rounded on it and headed toward the door swinging closed ahead of her. Her heart hammered while she picked up speed, boots pounding the tiled floor. Metal hit her hands as she punched the push bar, the sting a place to focus. If she lost sight of what she was doing, she’d put herself in danger needlessly.

Hunt Sage smartly.
Don’t end up his victim again.

She couldn’t see the person or people she was chasing, but something in her gut told her there’d been more than one person in that little office. They’d fled through the back door once the alarm had sounded. Since she and Victor hadn’t seen Sage elsewhere, she had to be on the right track.

One guard at a minimum. Maybe two.

Victor would have her back.

Lucy thought she’d caught sight of Sage’s distinctive hair several feet ahead of her. The man wore a linen shirt and brown slacks. If not for the tailored lines of his clothing and the haircut that must have cut at least a few hundred dollars, she might have dismissed him. A man of Sage’s affluence, especially one who liked to flaunt it like him, stood out.

He was flanked on either side by familiar sandy blond hair. Identical broad shoulders and carriage. One wore a white blazer over dark pants, while the other wore a green collared shirt and similar dark pants. The twins kept pace with Sage, their strides casual.

All three men individually wouldn’t have caught anyone’s attention. With Lucy on the lookout for a powerful man flanked by his twin guards, they shone like a beacon. None of them looked back although the fire alarm continued to blare. The people they passed turned to stare and whisper about the building still spilling a crowd from its exits. Lucy’s heightened hearing caught snatches of conversation, but she stayed focused.

Lucy increased her pace, determined not to let anyone get between them. She came up with a dozen plans to get close to Sage, distracting his guards, but had to discard each of them. No matter how much she wanted to withdraw the guns and start shooting at his back, he’d only brush off the wounds like waving off a mosquito. The same could be said for the guards. She had to figure out how to separate them.

She thought about Cindy, who’d been her heart. How the two of them had grown up together, best friends and thick as thieves. They’d been certain their lives had been about to change for the better, vampires desiring them for their fairy-good looks. Before falling asleep each night, they’d whisper and giggle about what the future years would bring. Never in a million years had either considered that it might have brought them to their ends.

Tears blurred her vision for a few seconds until she blinked them away. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

Her stomach gnawed, heat flaring outward. Victor had explained to her the feelings that would flood her system while she finished transition. How desire would make her a wanton thing.

With every footfall, the heat burned brighter, but it wasn’t desire filling her system. The memories of Cindy fueled her fury. Although she no longer hurt from poison, echoes seemed to bounce inside her chest. She could barely breathe because of the stabbing pain. The man ahead of her should assume all responsibility for her anguish.

Her eyes narrowed, focused on the trio of men. She pushed past the crowds separating her from them until at some point the people stepped out of her way. The scent of human sweat and colognes assaulted Lucy while she moved, prodding her to go faster. Fortunately, the people parted before her as if they could feel the building determination and bitterness, shrinking away to keep from touching it.

Footsteps behind her snagged her attention. She glanced over her shoulder, expecting to find Victor. She almost stumbled when a man with crystal-blue eyes studied her, fast on approach. He had some kind of gun-like weapon in his hand.

Lucy turned back around, searching her mind. She looked for anything in her memory from that quick glimpse that said he was another vampire, coming after her. She and Victor were in danger from executioners, but how had they located them so quickly? Hell, they hadn’t known they would be here until a short while ago, themselves.

If he was a vampire, why did he carry a gun, though? She couldn’t wait for any answers to come to her, so she went for her own gun, hidden by the wrap she wore. Shrugging out of the garment, letting it lie where it fell, she spun and raised her weapon, ready to fire.

The assassin’s eyes widened when his gaze alighted on her, and that told Lucy more than she wanted to know. He hadn’t been looking at her, but beyond her. At Sage?

He raised the gun, finger on the trigger. Lucy dove to the side, stumbling into an elderly couple with the misfortune of looking at custom jewelry. “Hey!” The gentleman wagged his finger at Lucy after she set them to rights. Neither looked injured, just annoyed. “Learn how to walk.”

“Sorry,” Lucy mumbled at them. Her arm stung where something had grazed it, leaving behind a weal oozing bright red blood. She slapped her gun hand over it, decided she’d live and turned to track the guy. Asshole had shot something at her. Not bullets, which meant he knew she was a vampire, but something that hurt. What was he?

“She’s got a gun!”

From behind her came the sounds of the couple scrambling to get out of her way. What a sight she must have made with a bleeding arm, strands of hair dangling from a lopsided ponytail and of course, running through a crowd with a gun. Why the police hadn’t tackled her to the ground yet, she didn’t know. It couldn’t be her concern right now. Besides, the fewer people between her and her target, the better.

She lost sight of the guy, and he’d lost her visual on Sage.
Fuck.
Left with no options, she started jogging in the direction she’d last seen the Councilman. If the guy who shot at her really was after Sage, she’d spot him too. He had to be a werewolf, but what was he doing here?

The crowd was beginning to thin, the borders of the art fair fast approaching. If she didn’t catch up to Sage soon, he’d make it to his car, and their only opportunity for getting to him tonight would be gone. That wasn’t an option, so she put on a burst of speed, searching down side alleys and peeking in shop windows, although the ones out here were dark. Running out of options.

Something inside of her went languid, her heart beginning to race. Lucy glanced over her shoulder, simmering heat hitting full boil as she spotted Victor running toward her. It might have been a signal of the new bond between them, but she’d put her money on plain old lust. Damn that man could make her lose her train of thought.

“Lost him,” she called to him.

“Did you see the guy with the crossbow?”

“That’s what that was?” She poked her arm out, pleased to see the wound had closed. “He got me here and distracted me from Sage. Know who he was?”

“No clue.”

Damn it. Lucy stopped walking and dropped to a crouch, frustration mounting. Breathing hard, she tried to think on what to do next. Sage had been forced, like everyone else, to park away from the art walk. He wouldn’t be in the main parking garage, too vain to be forced into behaving like one of the humans. His car no doubt idled someplace close. “Do we split up?” she asked Victor. “I’m out of ideas other than to start going down the side streets. Find his car.”

“With that guy on the loose?” Victor shook his head. “Until I know more about him and what he wants, I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“We’re losing, Victor.” Lucy shook her head. “I thought this would be easier than this. I thought—”

Screams came from up ahead. Her head snapped up, eyes searching that direction. The sounds of multiple pairs of feet from panicked people bounced off the streets.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Victor shouted.

He needn’t have bothered. Lucy pushed away from the concrete and started running. She stumbled past people trying to get away from where she figured she needed to be. Something bad was going down and with vampires on the loose, she’d bet good money Sage was at the center of it.

Lucy skidded to a stop at the corner of Lake and Satsuma, her back to the crumbling brick building. Victor pressed beside her, guns in both hands. She glanced at him, met his eyes, then drew a deep breath. After withdrawing her own piece and undoing the strap on one of the stakes, she raced toward the commotion.

Before she got far, Lucy pulled up short, skin crawling. She gasped in horror. “
Oh
,
God.
”

Like everywhere else in the city, oak trees lined the sidewalks. Their branches and moss sycophants often sweeping into pathways and forcing pedestrians to brush past them or duck out of their way. It made for a beautiful scene at sunset.

What Lucy found was a man hanging from one of the lower limbs, his hands scrabbling at the wire cinched around his neck. One of the guard twins. His legs kicked uselessly at the air.

Victor brushed past her. “He’s fine. Inconvenienced, but he’ll live.”

She knew she should believe him, but the chilled blood in her veins would not be swayed.

He grabbed her arm and forced her to move. “Vampire. No breath in him. A broken neck would have healed also. He’s
fine
.”

Nodding, Lucy held on to his words as they moved faster. Someone had strung him up, leaving only one other guard with Sage. It also meant they were close to the Councilman and still had a chance to catch him up.

Victor scanned the area. “This way...c’mon.”

Lucy followed and at last—thank God, finally—heard a skirmish coming from one of the side streets. They pumped their legs harder and headed straight toward the source of the noise.

Sure enough when they got there, they found Sage and his guard cornered in a dead end by the man with the crossbow. Who was this guy?

“He’s mine,” Lucy yelled.

The dark-haired man spun to face her, and she saw the cell in his hand. He said something rapidly into it before dropping the phone to the ground. Although he kept his crossbow leveled at Sage, he didn’t outright dismiss Lucy and Victor either. “Get your woman out of here, Collins. We had a deal.”

Shock slapped Lucy in the face. She turned to Victor. “You know him?”

For a few seconds, Victor’s face registered the same surprise she felt. He studied the man before scanning Sage and the guard.

Time seemed to slow while Lucy waited for him to respond in the negative, to tell her that the man had only guessed his name—
yeah
,
right
—and that Victor had no idea who he was or what he was doing there. Her pulse raced as the seconds ticked by and he said nothing.

“Victor?”

“I won’t give you a second warning, Collins. You held up your end of the bargain. Now go.”

Lucy stared at Victor, trying to make sense of all of this. Her heartbeat slowed to a crawl, pieces of it breaking off as she puzzled together everything that was happening around her.

The werewolves wanted Sage. The werewolves knew Victor.

A man available to the highest bidder.

“When we first met, you told me you couldn’t take my contract,” she whispered. Not for any price.

“Lucy...”

But Victor had somehow shown up at Sage’s party. Damn it, she hadn’t even questioned it. Hadn’t considered that Victor shouldn’t have known how to get to Sage.

The only way he might have known about Sage’s place of residence, done research on the elite vampire, was if he had been hired by someone else.

By the werewolves. With a heart broken in a million pieces, Lucy lifted her weapon, aiming it at Victor’s head. She had to hear him say it. Had to know for certain.

“
Victor?
”

* * *

Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck.

A small part of him had wondered if the man was a lycan. When he’d seen the guard strung up with such obvious efficiency, he should have grabbed Lucy by the hand and ran. He could have taken the time to explain to her what he’d tried to tell her before.

Lucy kept the gun raised at his forehead level. It wouldn’t kill him, and she knew it. Most likely though, it would level the playing ground. “Lucy...don’t.”

“All this time, you knew what I was after and you were hustling me?” Her eyes narrowed. “You weren’t after Sage for me. You were after him because
they
wanted him.”

Yes, he’d told the lycans where Sage would be and for hours he’d wrestled with the decision of letting her know his plan. But he thought he knew Lucy by now. She would not rest, would
not
, if she’d thought for a split second he was blowing her chance at killing Sage. In the end, he’d chosen to play things close to the chest. Despite what she thought, his sloppy plan hadn’t come together until Corin had provided the needed information.

“Wait a minute.” Sage’s cultured voice poked through. “I recognize you two from my house. The blood slave and her owner. Are you behind this?”

The lycan growled. “Shut up, vampire. Your turn to talk will be soon enough.”

“Is that a threat?”

The twin screamed, an arrow released by the lycan pegging him in the upper chest. Blood blossomed on his previously pristine shirt, his face contorting in pain. He gaped at the shard protruding from his body like it had grown a head and stared back at him. Victor had wondered how he’d managed to get caught in the first place and then noticed the arrow sticking out, perpendicular to his knee. That
had
to hurt.

“To answer the question you’re no doubt wondering, vampire, yes, it’s ash. That’s why it hurts so much. If your employer continues to run his mouth, I will not only dispatch you, I will then turn my weapon on him. My only instructions were to hold him alive. No specifications were made about you, and certainly not about the state of his health. Alive is all that matters.”

Victor could almost read the plans running through Lucy’s brain and he mentally begged her not to do it. No, she couldn’t aim and fire her weapon accurately or fast enough to hit the lycan. No, there were no guarantees she’d be able to stake the wounded guard. No, he still didn’t know if she could get Sage.