TheSmallPrint (14 page)

“It started off once a week, now it seems like once a day.”

“How long have you been a—been like this?”

“Seven months, three weeks, two days. Approximately.” She gave a rueful smile.

Turner pulled her into his arms and held her tight, his face pressed against her hair. “You remember what happened?”

“I don’t remember an accident. I just woke up here.”

“If we could discover what happened, it might enable you to move on.”

Turner didn’t need to feel her tense to realize that wasn’t the right thing to say.

“I want to help you,” he whispered.

“Right. Help me leave here,” she said in a dull voice. “Help me leave you.” She wriggled out of his arms and pushed herself upright. “I’m going to have a shower now. Good night.”

Idiot.
He’d ruined the best night he’d had in years. Turner opened his mouth and then shut it again. He’d said quite enough.

He gathered his clothes and headed for the door. He spun around when he thought he heard a sob, but the sound of running water covered it, if it had ever been there at all.

* * * * *

“You were right.”

Three words Catch did
not
want to hear. His cell phone creaked in his fingers and he relaxed his grip as he moved away from his bike.

“Dava’s gone?” he asked, just to be sure.

“No sign of her when the VRB representative went calling,” said Mason, Catch’s boss in the SBI—Supernatural Bureau of Investigation.

“What made them go to see her? I thought they were happy with a visit a week?”

“Apparently their guy didn’t see her yesterday. Someone else did. Someone from the SBI. Care to comment?”

Shit.
“I wanted to see if she recognized me.”

“You mean she took one look at your mug and ran for it?”

Catch winced. “She didn’t know me. She isn’t that good an actress.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“No sign she was planning to disappear?” Mason asked.

“No. What about Gabriel?”

“He’s behaving.”

Not for long, Catch suspected. “Is there a warrant out for her?”

“No. The assholes in the VRB won’t ask. They’re giving her the benefit of the doubt. After all, she was there yesterday when she was supposed to be. We can’t do anything without a warrant. She has one week to get in contact. Enjoy your vacation because if she doesn’t turn up, you’ll be on her case when you get back.”

Catch was on it now, but better that Mason didn’t know.

“I’m going to warn all those she might—get in touch with,” Mason said. “Now I’m warning you. Just because Dava didn’t recognize you doesn’t mean you aren’t in danger.”

“I won’t have a problem snapping her neck.”

Mason huffed. “And then her friends will snap yours. It’s not a bad idea letting her run, so long as we’re on her tail, but the idiots in the VRB couldn’t follow a snail. You have any idea where she’d go? Apart from to Gabriel?”

“No,” Catch lied.

“Watch your back.”

“Always do.”

Maybe Catch was wrong. Maybe those three words, you were right, had been what he needed to hear because now he had an excuse to put things right.

Chapter Ten

Gabriel wanted to snap Dava’s neck. His fingers twitched. Twenty years he’d waited for freedom. All he needed to do was keep a low profile long enough to prove to the socially inept members of the VRB that he’d reformed and was looking forward to a life of quiet contemplation. Now there was a guy without a head in the apartment downstairs, the owner of that apartment apparently lay slumped in an alley with a case of severe anemia at the very least, and the idiot responsible stood in
his
apartment spattered from head to foot in blood. Vampire blood. Ken Burton’s blood. Gabriel’s VRB agent’s blood.

“Sorry,” Dava whispered yet again.

He wasn’t fooled. She told him everything she’d done since she was released and she didn’t look in the least bit sorry.

“I couldn’t—”

“Shut the fuck up. I’m trying to think.”

Gabriel’s choices were limited. He could call the VRB, tell them the truth and ask them to come and get her. After all,
he
wasn’t the one who’d ripped the guy’s head off or sucked on the mortal, but even so, Gabriel worried he’d get the blame. He’d sired Dava and was ultimately responsible for her behavior. He was within his rights to destroy her, but then who’d believe he was innocent of the latest carnage?

If he ran, getting caught could be fatal. This time there might be no intervention by friends in high places. He still wondered about that. He watched Dava surreptitiously trying to wipe her bloody fingerprints off the wall using her cuff. She had to be sacrificed. Gabriel had a pang of…maybe not remorse but regret. Of all his followers in the Purelight Calling, she’d been the most loyal. She’d done everything he’d asked without question, and she’d believed every bloody word he said. In and out of bed.

So how could he call the VRB without her realizing? He didn’t want her leaving the apartment.

“I know where the books are,” she said.

And Gabriel’s options changed yet again. Perhaps. “They were destroyed. A pile of ash that’s long gone.”

“I don’t think so.”

The word “think” disappointed him. “Then where are they, my pet?”

“Turner still has them.”

Gabriel made sure he showed no reaction. The claim was ridiculous. She couldn’t know that to be true, but his undead heart beat faster. He’d been surprised when the Court seemed to accept so easily that the books no longer existed. Not that it meant Turner had them, but Gabriel had watched him copy them as he did the translation. Gabriel had never seen anyone so excited as during the period Turner worked on the diaries. They’d had to remind him to feed.

“Why would Turner keep them?” Gabriel asked.

“I know him. You told me to get to know everything about him, and I did. He’d never throw a book away, let alone destroy it. He loves the damn things.”

Gabriel smiled. “More than you?”

Dava glared. “He’s gay.”

Gabriel sighed. So much for her getting to know everything about Turner. The vampire was bisexual. Gabriel had instructed Logan to use Dava to seduce Turner to the cause, and she’d not failed him in that, though it was the diaries that had kept him there, those and Logan. It had irked Dava that Turner liked Logan better than her.

Turner’s reputation as
the
vampire historian had been too much for Gabriel to resist. Gabriel’s diaries had been too much for Turner to resist. Turner’s support made a massive difference to Purelight’s appeal. Of course when Turner began to ask the wrong questions and finally realized the difference between what Gabriel said he was doing as opposed to what he was actually doing, the guy was doomed. Only the arrival of the SBI had saved him from Dava’s delightfully wicked fingers and joining the fifty lost ones.

“I was under the impression the historian was dead,” Gabriel said. “I was told he’d stepped into the light after the humiliation of the trial.”

“I heard that too. Interesting they should want us to believe that. I researched him on the internet. Turner’s not written another book. He’s not teaching. He’s not been seen in any of the social circles he used to move in.”

“So he
is
dead.”

Dava shook her head. “I traced him through the Vampire Electoral Role. Then found he’d moved house. His name is on the land registry document.”

Gabriel was impressed. This time her initiative showed intelligence.

“Turner’s had twenty years to work out exactly what the books say.” Dava gripped his arm. Gabriel stared at her fingers and she let him go. “Sorry. I’m excited. Maybe he’s even found a suitable plant. Perhaps he’s building a craft to take us home.”

Then again, maybe the use of the word “intelligence” was going too far. The eagerness in her expression made Gabriel cringe.

“We can get the books and start again.” Dava stared straight at him.

Assuming the books really did still exist, and even then, Gabriel would have to tread carefully.

“They’re waiting for you to lead them. You just have to give the word,” she said in a quiet voice.

Towers were tumbling around Gabriel’s ears. No books meant Gabriel could play the persecuted leader of Purelight whose only wish had been to bring the joy of sunshine to all of his kind. But if the books or copies still existed… Had Turner lied? To Gabriel’s surprise, Turner had maintained his belief in their validity throughout the trial even though he’d been called a deluded idiot by the Court. Gabriel had found Turner’s insistence and the Court’s condemnation rather entertaining. It made Gabriel reconsider what
he
believed. Only at the end of the trial, when everyone but Turner had denounced the diaries as fake, did Turner’s head drop to allow an apology and a muttered acquiescence fall from his lips.

Gabriel had been amused by the irony that although he’d underestimated Turner’s susceptibility to Dava, he
had
been spot-on in knowing the historian would be taken in by the diaries, at least long enough for his support to matter. They’d been worth every penny he’d paid for them. Of course Gabriel now wished he’d had the foresight not to kill the man who’d provided them because he couldn’t ask the question that had been burning in his mind for twenty years.

Were the diaries really fakes?

Maybe he didn’t need to ask. Maybe the Council and the Court’s insistence that they were fakes was enough to convince him otherwise.

Maybe Turner’s claim that they were real was the voice he should believe.

Incredible that Gabriel should have run a scam that wasn’t quite a scam.

“Why are you so quiet?” Dava asked.

“I’m thinking.” Unlike her, he could do it without speaking.

If Turner
had
kept the books, or copies, and studied them, surely by now he knew whether or not they were forgeries. What had he been doing for the past twenty years? When Purelight had come to an end, Turner had barely started to tell him what the diaries said. Dava was right about one thing. They needed to speak to Turner. If he could be persuaded to say he still believed in the books, that he’d been forced to retract his support for them by the Council, then it would give more gravitas to Purelight.

Though there was still the problem of the body downstairs. If only the myth were true about vampires turning to ash when they finally died, it would make life so much easier. Well, they turned to ash in the sun, but leaving a body out in the open was risky in case it was discovered before dawn. The older ones turned quickly to sludge, but not the young ones. It took ages for them to dissolve.

“I’ve already contacted some of the Calling,” Dava said. “They’re waiting for your words. They love you. I love you.”

Gabriel’s brain hurt. Dava both revolted and attracted him.

“Computers have transformed communication. I can’t believe the VRB was stupid enough to provide them for us. I found someone to show me how to use the laptop.” She continued to talk, and he didn’t have the energy to shut her up.

Gabriel stared at the laptop he’d been given. Ken Burton, who now had no head, had done little more than show Gabriel how to play a boring game of hangman.

“Pete was very helpful,” Dava said. “He demonstrated how to cover my tracks so no one knows what I’d been doing. Our supporters are still out there. Waiting.”

Who was Pete again? Oh yes, pizza boy.
“After two decades? They still believe?” Gabriel gaped at her.

She gave him a puzzled stare. “Why would they not? You are the holder of truth, the owner of light, the giver of joy.”

The idiot was still spouting the same crap after all these years. Maybe there
was
hope. Gabriel had spent much of his imprisonment trying to come up with another moneymaking scheme, but why not go with the first? It wasn’t the content that let him down but people and politics. The Council wanted the diaries suppressed, ergo there was something worth suppressing.

“Where’s Turner living?” he asked.

Her lips curved in a smile. “Near here.”

“Are there any other bodies I need to be concerned about?” Gabriel asked. “Your VRB social worker?”

“Untouched. I’m really sorry I killed yours, but he recognized me.”

Putting on some sort of disguise had clearly been beyond her.

Gabriel stalked over to the kitchen, pulled a pair of rubber gloves from underneath the sink and tossed them to Dava. “Get rid of his body and clean up the mess. Go and find the woman you fed from and bring her back to her apartment. Make sure she remembers nothing. Find somewhere to hide and come back here tomorrow at sunset. I’m going to call the VRB and tell them their representative hasn’t arrived.”

Dava hurried to the door.

“Oh,” Gabriel added. “And may the light be with you.”

She beamed. “And with you.”

Moron.

* * * * *

Matty woke to the sound of banging and sat bolt upright. She glanced around and her shoulders fell. On her own. Turner hadn’t sneaked back after she’d gone to sleep. Matty didn’t understand him. One minute he wanted her, the next he wanted to get rid of her. Well, yes, she
did
understand him. His only interest was sex, and if he hadn’t had any for two years, that sort of explained the aura of desperation when he—