When Wicked Craves (25 page)

He would submit. As soon as he had Petra back—and he
would
get her back—he would send out all his stories, and damn the fear.

When the furniture was out of the way, he drew a chalk circle on the floor, then stood in the middle, a photograph
of his sister clasped tight in his hands. The picture was one of his favorites, taken when they were both ten. He’d been on the porch, writing in his notebook, and as always keeping a close watch on his sister.

She’d been in the garden, cutting flowers to put in vases around the house. She still did that today, filling the front office with arrangements of flowers to complement the overwhelming floral theme that she thought made human clients feel more at ease.

Back then, he’d been playing with the camera his aunt had given him for his birthday, snapping random photos of the house, the garden, his sister. He’d planned to tape the pictures in his notebook, and then write a story about each. He’d been thinking about a story for Petra—something about a princess cursed by an evil witch, and only the kiss of her prince could save her—when she’d looked toward him and smiled, then thrown a handful of flower petals into the air. Magically, he’d actually caught the shot—Petra, laughing her head off, with petals dancing in the wind around her.

It was a beautiful picture, and he kept it framed beside his bed, where he could look at it every night. That was the way he liked to remember her, laughing and innocent. And safe.

Dear God, he hoped she was safe right then. Hoped she would remain safe until he could find her, until he could protect her from Montegue’s inevitable discovery that he was dragging the cure to Sergius’s change all over the goddamned globe.

With care, he took the candles from the polished ash box, then placed them gently on the chalk line. He burned no incense, but instead scattered fragrant herbs
and essential oils outside the circle. Then he sat, his legs crossed, his elbows on his knees, and the photograph tight in both hands.

He looked into his sister’s face, breathed deep of the scented air, and then closed his eyes.

The exhaustion following his power surge had left him sagging and hollow, but he’d slept and meditated, and although he wasn’t 100 percent, he felt strong enough to seek.

More than that, he knew he had to. That son of a bitch advocate had Petra, and there was no way Kiril was leaving her to that vampiric fucker’s mercy.

Slowly, methodically, he focused on his breathing, clearing his mind, cleansing his soul. Once his mind was empty, he began to fill it again, this time with memories of Petra. The way she looked, the way she laughed, the way she smelled.

His chest tightened, and he had to force emotion down. Now was not the time for longing or fear. Now was the time to be calm. To reach out.

To find his sister.

His mind thrust into the darkness, probing and searching, seeking her aura, her spirit.

Seeking, but not finding.

Fingers of panic traced up his spine, and Kiril gripped the picture tighter. She was far now—Montegue had taken her far away, and the bond between Kiril and his sister had stretched thin. But it hadn’t broken. He could follow it. Could move in his mind along the frayed ends of the thread, soaring over mountains, over highways, over grassy plains.

He moved with unimaginable speed in his mind,
crossing the country, soaring over the ocean, and then—nothing.

He stopped.

Simply stopped.

Dear God, was she lost at sea? Needles of panic burst through him, and he almost stood, almost broke the spell. But he forced himself to stay calm. To think, and to seek.

To call out for his sister and find
her
. Not the spiritual trail she’d left, but her. Her mind. Her thoughts.

Her destination.

He closed himself off, open only to her. Reaching out only for her.

But there was nothing. Only blackness. Only silence, until the weight of loss and horror bore down on him with such intensity that it was almost too much to stand.

Then, like a pinprick of light against a pitch-black wall, he felt her. He caught her. Not where she was, but where she was going. And although he couldn’t hold on tight—couldn’t grasp hard enough to track her to her current location—there was no mistaking the one, single word.

Paris.

“Excellent,” Tariq said into his phone. “Head out on my authority, and call me when you have them in custody.” He snapped the phone shut and shot Elric a smug glance.

His lieutenant shifted his attention from the brother’s house to Tariq. “New York?”

“You got it.”

“Good call there, man,” Vale said from the backseat, where he had binoculars trained on Kiril’s house. The brother had been moving around inside for a while.
He’d leave soon, and when he did, the team was poised to follow.

“It was a damn good call,” Elric echoed, and Tariq had to nod in agreement. “Hell yeah. The noose is tightening. Maybe my uncle’s idiotic attempt did us a favor after all.” He’d been furious when he’d learned—after the fact—about the in-air attempt on Petra Lang’s life. He’d told his uncle categorically that not only should he have been informed of the operation, but that it was too damn risky in the first place. When the goddamned plane had fallen from the sky he’d felt absurdly vindicated. For that matter, he’d wanted to call his uncle and gloat, but reason and common sense had kept him from dialing.

The plane had crashed in a field in New York State, and there’d been no human casualties, which was fortunate, as it made the administrative bullshit easier to navigate, and Division could ease in and push the human authorities out. But that didn’t matter much to Tariq. What he considered a blessing was the fact that the girl and Montegue’s escape meant that he knew they were in New York. And Sergius’s apartment was his best guess as to where.

“Fenrig has a mole in Division 12,” Tariq said, referring to one of the Alliance operatives stationed in New York. “He just got his hands on their surveillance and investigation file on Sergius, and now we’ve got the address of the vampire’s condo and underground fortress. He’s sending teams to both locations. It’s a good bet they’re at one or the other.”

A damn good bet, and he was certain that soon—very soon—Fenrig would have Montegue in custody and the bitch would be dead.

He only wished he could get across the country fast enough to watch it.

But no, better to stay on the brother. His gut was certain they were in New York, but until he had solid confirmation, he was going to work the case. Stay on the brother, see where he goes, and wait for a report from New York. He had a team in place in Paris, too. The crashed plane belonged to Gunnolf, and it was a good bet that the weren leader had lured the targets to France by offering them sanctuary. They probably wouldn’t continue now that they knew Gunnolf had fucked them over, but you never knew. They might have another reason for running there, and Tariq wasn’t going to overlook any possibility. Not now, when his future was on the line.

He fingered his phone, considered calling his uncle and telling him about the New York situation, but he hesitated. If he got Dirque’s hopes up and then the mission failed, his uncle would see it as Tariq’s failure.

No, better to wait and call his uncle when he could tell him the girl was dead.

Satisfied, he closed his phone and slipped it back into his pocket. His uncle would keep.

“Hey, look,” Vale said. He was watching the house, whose lights were rapidly flicking out. “We may have something.”

Elric turned the key, firing the engine, but leaving the
headlights off. They all watched the front door and the car parked at the curb just in front of the house.

“Come on, big boy,” Elric said. “Lead us to the little bitch.”

As if the words held their own power, the front door burst open. Tariq held his breath, waiting, but the brother wasn’t there. “What the fuck?”

In the front yard, the rose bushes started to sway, the movement setting off the motion-detector floodlight, which snapped on, the harsh glow of lights illuminating the area.

“Storm?” Vale said.

“Shit no,” Tariq said, scanning the area, looking for the bastard. “He knows we’re here.”

Tariq’s words were still hanging in the air when that very air began to swirl, with such violence that the Explorer began to shake and then, nauseatingly, to spin as it rose off the ground, higher and higher, spinning faster and faster until the wheels were level with the roof.

“Fuck!” Elric yelled. And then, before they could draw weapons or think how to respond, the wind stopped and the vehicle dropped like a stone to the street.

The men grunted, jolted by the impact, then looked up to find Kiril Lang smiling at them through the driver’s-side window. The engine was still running, and Elric hit the control to roll down the window.

“Not polite to spy on folks.” Kiril smiled, wide and white. “Just thought I’d share that tidbit with you, in case your mothers hadn’t taught you well.”

“Where is your sister, Lang?” Vale demanded, and
even though Tariq wanted to smack the idiot for revealing the reason for their surveillance, at the same time he damn sure wanted to hear the answer.

“You really want me to tell you?” he asked. “Where’s the fun in that?” Then he winked once and walked casually to his shiny red Honda, as if he owned the whole goddamned world.

“What now?” Elric asked.

“You heard the man,” Tariq said, dreading putting
this
in his report to his uncle. “We follow.”

“Something’s wrong,” Petra said, feeling the wildness rise inside her as they stood in Serge’s entrance hall. It was a harsh sensation, cruel, and although it welled up inside her, she knew it wasn’t her own.

“What?” Nicholas said, immediately at her side. He gripped her wrist. “Are you okay?”

She tugged her wrist free, regretting the fact that she hadn’t yet slipped on her gloves. “Sunrise is soon. We can’t risk getting too comfortable.”

His eyes were soft but his expression was hard as he took both her hands in his. “What’s wrong?”

“Something with Serge,” she said, relenting to the allure of his touch and sliding close to him. He wrapped his arms around her, and she soaked up the safety he offered. “I don’t know.
I don’t know.
” She spat the words, frustrated by the haze that seemed to linger over these feelings or visions or whatever the hell they were. “The dreams are still totally freaky, but when I’m awake, the feeling’s getting clearer. I still can’t pinpoint it, though.
It’s like a fog that’s lifting, but you still can’t see. But there’s something in the fog, Nicholas. Something horrible, and it wants to do horrible things.”

He eased away from her, and though she hated that he was breaking the contact, she knew it was so that they could see each other’s faces.

“That’s why we’re doing this,” he said. “Why we’re looking for a cure. So that whatever horrible thing is looming, we can stop it before it happens. He’s locked up tight, though. So whatever thoughts of his are filling your head, just remember that they’re only thoughts. No matter how horrible it gets, it isn’t real.”

She drew in a breath and nodded. The Serge-sensation was fading, and she forced the lingering remnants down, focusing only on Nicholas. And on getting the hell out of there before sunrise.

“We ready?” Nicholas asked. “Got everything?”

Petra nodded. Her own backpack had been lost when the plane crashed, and while she hated losing her journal and the family Bible, there’d been nothing remarkable about either the pack or her clothes. She still wore jeans, but she’d changed into one of Serge’s long-sleeved T-shirts. It was too big, but it was comfortable and clean, and right then that’s what counted.

She’d shoved some of his socks into a satchel, along with the five condom smoke bombs. The satchel’s side pockets held two soda bottles filled with toilet cleaner, and her pockets held tinfoil balls and a cigarette lighter.

She’d considered dumping all the gear into a backpack—Serge’s apartment rivaled a department store for all its choices—but Nicholas had insisted on the satchel.
“Wear it so that it hangs in front of you. Easy access to your weapons, and your hands are free.”