Invincible (A Centennial City Novel) (35 page)

A flicker of emotion crossed the driver. Disgust, maybe. “Only you could come up with such a ridiculous comparison. You. Human. Do you know how to use a jian?”

I shook my head. “I have never found any occasion.”

Eve spoke up. “Have you ever used a katana?”

I grimaced. “Only once. I found it too heavy to use one handed.”

“Van, will you lend her one of your swords?” asked Eve.

His lips thinned. “Do I have a choice?”

“Give her a good one,” said Ryder. “Or it’s your head on the line.”

Van’s lips curled in arrogance. “I do not possess second-rate blades.”

“Hear that?” asked Ryder with a smile and a pat on my hand. “He gets a hard on whenever he gets a new sword. It’s a little creepy.”

I was about to reply when my nose twitched.

“Stop the car.”

The car screeched to a sudden halt, almost propelling me headfirst into the back of Van’s seat.

Silence reigned in the car as everyone looked out their window at the large, imposing dark edifice that seemed, for all intents and purposes, abandoned.

Ryder took a deep breath. “Oh. Shit.”

“Where are we?”

Eve opened her door and stepped out slowly while Van did the same thing.

Ryder would have done the same had I not grabbed hold of his wrist.

“Where. Are. We.”

He swallowed audibly in the darkness.

“At the home of a friend.”

I didn’t understand. Not initially. “They’re holding Jason at a…friend’s?”

“Not just any home,” he said quietly, his eyes impossibly wide, impossibly bright, impossibly blue. “Fenrir. They’re holding the Sanguinate at Fenrir’s home.”

I still didn’t understand. “I don’t…”

“Don’t you?” he asked, voice harsh, low. “We do. Annabelle’s not the only one who’s betrayed us. Three against one, that’s possible. She’s vicious. But two against two?”

Noir and Vincent. Fenrir and Annabelle.

And Jason stood in between them all.

“Things are bad now, aren’t they?”

Ryder’s hand wrapped around mine and I welcomed the contact.

“You have no idea.”

He was right.

I didn’t.

But I would find out very soon.

Whether I wanted to or not.

19

I wanted my
hwan-geom
badly.

In actuality, I wanted a lot of things very badly. For example, a flashlight would have come in handy, but Ryder smacked my hand as I reached for a light switch out of habit.

“Are you insane?” he hissed as Van and Eve took point.

Eve held a pistol in both hands, the barrel pointed to the ground. She looked like she knew how to use it as did Van with the polished katana that he wielded in one hand.

Perhaps he wasn’t a vampire, but he was something else, something otherworldly, because that sword weighed twenty pounds, not something you could swing around with any sort of accuracy with one hand.

But he proved to be more than up to the task when he dispatched the two vampires standing sentinel at the double doors with the peeling paint.

“Don’t touch the damn lights,” said Ryder as he looked back at the secured doors, the handles jammed by a propped up chair. I had no idea how long they would stand in the face of a vampire’s wrath, but I hoped there would be enough noise to warn us in time. “Do you need everyone to know we’re here?”

“They probably already know we’re here,” hissed Eve. “It’s not like the car stopped in the middle of the street isn’t a dead giveaway.”

“Then I can turn on the lights?”

She gaped at me. “Are you fucking kidding me? Abso-fucking-lutely not!”

I sighed and wished I had my sword back as the unfamiliar hilt slipped in my sweaty palms. “Of course. I don’t know what I was thinking. Because it’s not like I’m the only human who can’t see a damn thing. Wait. I am.”

I was convinced.

Eve Faulkner, Vincent’s emissary, couldn’t possibly be a human. A human being couldn’t grab a running vampire around the neck and let their momentum carry their body completely around.

The separation of the vertebrae from the head was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat and even Ryder winced.

“I’m human,” she replied.

I felt a laugh tickling my throat. “And I’m a movie star. Try convincing someone else. I’m not buying it.”

Ryder grinned. “Looks like she’s got your number.”

“I keep telling you to shut up, Ryder, but you never listen,” she muttered and drew in a deep breath. “Let’s get your lover boy out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

The inside of Fenrir’s mansion seemed like a collection of movie sets from various historical films, replete with anachronisms such as an MP3 player lying atop a Queen Anne chair that looked like it still had dust from two hundred years ago.

Van let out a hiss as a shadow flew out of the corner, white, pale arms outstretched, mouth open impossibly wide.

“Van!”

The dark-haired vampire turned easily and his blade flashed once, twice, thrice and the female vampire staggered to the floor, crimson spilling from her lips like an overflowing fountain.

While the corpse cooled into a pile of flesh and bones, I watched Eve pull her phone out and angrily punch a few keys.

“What is she doing?” I asked Ryder who, curiously enough, did not carry any sort of weapon.

Then again, I had seen his unarmed combat and he seemed competent enough.

His eyes narrowed. “I think she’s trying to get a hold of Vincent.”

“Damn it!” she muttered and shoved the phone back into her coat pocket, looking very much as though she would have liked to step on it. “That idiot won’t answer his damn phone. What the hell am I supposed to do when I don’t know what he wants?”

Ryder jerked a thumb over his back. “Then take Van with you and leave. Fenrir and Vincent were supposed to be taking Noir to his place. Maybe that’s where they are.”

She looked away for a moment, her dark brown eyes distant. “Maybe. Maybe not. Still. My orders are to see Ran safe.”

“As are mine,” spoke up Van. “I will see my orders fulfilled.”

Red. So much red in my ledger.

What’s worse, it was red scrawled in there by enemies.

“Ran, do you know where Jason might be?” asked Eve, shoving a lock of hair from her almond-shaped eyes. “This place is gigantic. They might already be moving him to a different location.”

“No,” I said. “I can still smell him.”

But the scent was fading.

And that was not good.

“At the risk of sounding like the dumb asshole in every horror movie, I think we should split up,” said Ryder. “We’re never going to find him at this rate.”

Eve exchanged a look with Van and turned to me. “Well? He’s your guy.”

The
jian
was unsheathed in my hand and felt wholly alien.

But it was the only weapon I had.

“He’s right,” I replied. “It’ll be faster if we take a different part of the house.”

“House?” snorted Ryder. “More like a friggin castle.”

“Right,” said Eve. “Van, come with me. We’ll take the west wing. Ran, you take Ryder and go down the east wing. Be careful; there’s a basement level on that side of the property. For all we know, he might be there.”

“But he may not,” I pointed out.

Eve’s lips thinned. “I know. That’s why we’re splitting up. Ryder, call me in half an hour, regardless of your status. I lost Vincent; there’ll be hell to pay if I lose you too.”

He grinned. “Would you miss me?”

She rolled her eyes and gestured to Van to follow her. “Yeah, right. Keep Ran safe.”

The laughter faded so easily from his blue eyes, I couldn’t help but wonder if it just been a lie. “You bet.”

We split at the main entryway, Eve and Van taking the left side of the house and Ryder following me on the ground level on my right hand side.

The house was, for the lack of a better phrase, eerily quiet. Almost, as if to make up for the excess of excitement at the house entrance, the deep interior was calm, too calm for my liking.

Behind me, Ryder giggled.

“Wow. This is creepy.”

I looked back at him, hackles raised, feeling desperately defenseless. “Do you have to laugh about everything?”

He shrugged, hands held casually at his side. “It helps.”

I sighed and shook my head, creeping against the wall, hands splayed against the peeling wallpaper that felt damp and sticky on my fingertips.

The smell was no less and yet no more intense than when we had entered the house and I wished I could have perfected my skill of tracing a body through their blood scent.

“Do you really think he’s here?”

“I have no choice but to think so,” I replied quietly and then paused. There was something… “Did you hear that?”

He guffawed. “Wow, now
you
sound like something out of a horror movie. Isn’t the person who asks if other people heard that weird noise the first person to die?”

“I have no intention of dying,” I said. “Not tonight.”

“Funny thing,” he replied. “Neither do I.”

Another noise again.

The sound of footsteps.

I put a hand over my racing heartbeat, half convinced I was only hearing my own pulse echoing in my ears.

No. Not my heartbeat.

“Okay, I definitely heard that,” said Ryder.

Apparently, not his, either.

“Usually, this is the part in the movie where the characters should turn around and run. But they don’t. They just walk towards the sounds and end up getting an axe in their head. Just an FYI.” Ryder whispered in my ear and I almost jumped through the ceiling.

Was it possible to find a man so alluring and yet annoying at the same time?

I wouldn’t have thought so, especially if he was a vampire, but it just goes to show you there’s a first for everyone, everything. “Go away. I mean it.”

The old gaslights flickered on the walls and shadows leapt, jumped, stretched as we followed the passageway that seemed to slope downward.

Was this the way to that underground passage?

The footsteps grew closer, louder.

I stopped, held out an arm to stop Ryder from walking past me.

“What?” he asked, brushing a lock of golden hair from those blue eyes. “Why’re we stopping?”

I put a finger to my lips and turned back to face the shadowy corridor. “Wait.”

The footsteps coalesced into heels.

Sharp heels.

I recognized them.

Ryder’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, isn’t that the…”

I let out a slow breath and closed my eyes for just a moment.

I hadn’t thought it was possible. Why did I feel such betrayal from a being I would’ve hunted down only a week ago?

What was wrong with me?

The heels stopped ten feet away, a swish of lace and silk.

“Hello, Ran.”

I opened my eyes.

Looked into the eyes of a small child with beautiful red cheeks and black hair that feel like a sheet down to her tiny waist.

“Hello, Reiko.”

She smiled. “Are you here for Jason?”

“I am.”

She tilted her head to one side, still smiling. God. “You know how he’s a Sanguinate?”

My throat felt impossibly thick. “I did.”

Her smile widened. “Well, did you know a Sanguinate used to rule our kind in the olden days?”

Ryder’s breath stopped. “Jesus.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes still on me. “I came upon this information not too long ago. Jason is meant to rule. I could not possibly allow him to be slaughtered by Vincent and his like. No wonder Vincent and Noir wanted him dead so desperately! What would happen if the others found out about Jason? There would be a riot. Vincent couldn’t possibly hope to keep his position at the top, you know.”

“So you came to rescue Jason?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice level and steady.

She was a
Domina
. She could kill me in less than a second.

A sobering thought and I wasn’t even drunk.

She shook her head. “I thought so. But he doesn’t want to be the ruler! So…I thought…perhaps I could…persuade him…”

Suddenly, a sharp cry echoed from below and I felt my skin prickle.

Jason.

It had to be him! “Persuade him?”

“It is his birthright,” she said in that same, maddeningly childish voice. “He
must
take it.”

“And if he continues to refuse?”

Her dark eyes gleamed. “Then he must die.”