When Wicked Craves (26 page)

He carried a similar bag filled with similar items. And once they had filled their satchels, she put her gloves on and they headed for the stairs. The apartment was on the thirty-fifth floor, but Nicholas was concerned about their safety in an elevator. “It’s even more enclosed than a stairwell,” he’d said, and although she agreed, her legs were less than thrilled with the plan.

“At least we’re going down and not up,” she said as they reached the landing for the twelfth floor.

“How close are we to sunrise?” he asked as they continued their downward trod.

She stopped to glance at her watch. “Forty minutes. We need to hurry if we’re going to get to the airport without me needing a dustpan to get you on the plane.”

Apparently he wasn’t down with the hurry-up plan, though, because instead of continuing down, he took the two steps back up to her.

“What are you—”

He silenced her with a kiss, long and deep and lingering. “Hold on to that,” he said. “Even once the sun rises, I want you to remember my kiss. I want you to remember my hands upon you.” He pressed his hand to her cheek. “We are in this thing together. To the end, Petra. And beyond.”

She swallowed, overwhelmed by both his words and the knowledge that she was keeping secret from him the very cure that had gotten him into “this thing” in the first place. She wanted to
tell him—wanted desperately to find enough trust in her heart to believe that she could tell him the truth and know that he would stand by her and protect her.

But even as she opened her mouth to speak, the words wouldn’t come. Instead, a single tear traced a path down her cheek, and he wiped it away with the back of his thumb, then pulled his hand away. “No more,” he said, then quirked a smile. “But we have the next blue moon to look forward to.”

She knew he was trying to make her feel better, and she returned his smile, but there was no pleasure behind it. She felt raw and empty. Her whole life she’d longed for this night, and now that she’d had it, the weight of her life pressed down on her even heavier than before. She knew now what she was missing, and while she liked to believe that she would be satisfied merely by the memory of Nicholas’s touch, she knew that was a load of bullshit. Nothing would satisfy her except the real thing, and that was something fate had screwed her out of.

Goddammit.

Temper quickened her steps, and she took the lead for the next few floors, but when they reached the fourth-floor landing, Nicholas told her to stop, then hurried his pace to get in front of her.

She expected they’d leave the stairway at the lobby level, but instead, they continued down to the basement. “This way,” Nicholas said, leading her through the musty hall and into a laundry room noxious with the odor of detergent and mildew. “Here.”

He pulled aside a drape hanging down from a table to reveal a hole in the wall that led—well, she wasn’t sure where it led.

“I’m going first,” he said. “Stick close.”

They entered a dark tunnel system filled with the smells of human waste and rotting food. She kept close to Nicholas, skirting over the legs of a few homeless people who slept down there, and pausing when the ground around them began to rumble.

“This connects up with the subway system,” Nicholas said. “We’re going to come through a service tunnel to one of the platforms and then take the train to the airport.”

A good plan, she thought, especially after they’d walked for five more minutes and still saw no sign of any Alliance agents waiting to jump them. All that work making things that go boom, and they didn’t even need them.

“Left here,” Nicholas said as they approached an intersecting tunnel. “And then it’s not much farther.”

She said a silent thank-you—her nose was going numb from the stench—and rounded the corner eagerly …

 … then drew up short when they were attacked by three huge guys: a jinn, a vampire, and a werewolf by the looks of them.

The three leaped upon Nicholas, obviously trying to get rid of him and leave her unprotected. But she was
so
not letting them get away with that. She snatched a soda bottle out of the satchel, opened it up, dropped three tinfoil balls in, and then tossed it near their feet.

“Nicholas!” she called, and watched as he threw himself to the side, while the other three, slower to react, got thrown backward by the force of the blast.

A
lot
of force.

She gaped at it, pretty damn impressed.

Nicholas, meanwhile, had prepared another bomb, and threw it into the group. It exploded at the vampire’s feet, catching his clothes on fire.

The creature transformed to mist immediately, the action itself extinguishing the flames, and Petra took one of the smoke bomb condoms, lit it, and tossed it into the mist.

She had no idea if that would mess up the vampire’s navigational power, but it made her feel better.

As she did that, though, the jinn had attacked Nicholas, knocking him to the ground.
She ran toward them, planning to kick the creature off Nick, but she was pulled back by a tug on her arm. She stumbled toward the weren who’d grabbed her, and he held a hand out to stop her, his fingers brushing her cheek as he did.

She froze, and so did he.

And he didn’t change.

She drew in a breath, realizing it wasn’t yet sunrise. It was still a blue moon. And that meant she could touch.

With teeth clenched tight, she balled up her fist, got some power going, and slammed her knuckles right into the bastard’s nose—all while he was still standing there, shell-shocked, obviously wondering why he hadn’t turned into Monster Boy.

She shook out her fist. It was sore, but damn it felt good.

“Smoke bombs!” Nicholas said. While she’d sucker punched the weren, Nicholas had gotten out from under the jinn.

A huge explosion rocked the area, and she realized he’d tossed in the last of his explosive bottles. Now he wanted to cover their tracks with smoke.

She ran toward him, trying but not managing to light the things as they went. In the end, she passed them to him, and they dropped four. The bombs exploded in succession, leaving the intersecting tunnels a smoke-filled mess.

“Hurry,” Nicholas urged, and as they ran, she heard the chirp of his cellphone. He didn’t answer it, not until they were sure they’d lost their attackers and were settled on the train heading toward the airport.

Only then did he punch the button to retrieve voice mail. And while he listened, Petra leaned back on the molded plastic seat, breathing hard, but feeling alive. She looked at her punching hand. Alive, she thought, and kick-ass.

Nicholas slipped his phone back into his pocket, and she was about to ask if he’d seen her first-ever punch. But the expression on his face stopped her. “What’s wrong?”

“Serge is out,” he said, his tone flat.

“He escaped?” She couldn’t get her head around it. “How the hell could he have escaped?”

Nicholas just shook his head. “Luke was there with Rand and Lissa. Somehow, he just went through the glass.”

She slammed her hand down hard on the seat beside her. “Dammit! He’s out there because of me, Nicholas. He’s going to kill because of me.”

“We’re going to stop him,” Nicholas said, his voice firm. No nonsense. “Luke and Rand will find him. They’ll capture him. And we’ll cure him.”

“Yeah? Well, here’s a question—why the hell are they even still alive?”

That was a damn good question, Nick thought. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Neither does Luke. Serge attacked, and he—well, apparently he stole their essence.”

She stared at him. “Come again?”

He explained, and when he was done she was still staring. “But … but are they okay?”

“Luke says they’re both fine. Although it took hours, they got back to normal.”

“Thank God. And he didn’t hurt them?”

Nick hesitated. “Luke thinks he would have. But he stopped. Luke isn’t sure why. Said it looked like he had other plans.” He stared hard at her. “Your feelings. Petra, is there anything more you can tell me?”

She shook her head. “No. I told you. It’s murky. Strange. I didn’t even realize he’d escaped. The connection just isn’t that tight.”

Nick nodded, and even though that connection could help them, he could only be glad that among all her other burdens, she didn’t have to live inside the mind of a monster, too.

Luke had seen a lot during his years on earth, but the bloodbath inside Dirque’s mansion was enough to make even
his
stomach roil. One of Dirque’s perimeter guards had discovered the body—or, rather, the pieces of body—less than an hour before at a shift change, and now the house was crawling with crime-scene techs and investigators, including Agent Ryan Doyle, a percipient daemon whom Luke had once called friend, and now tried not to call on at all.

It was almost three hours until sunrise, and most of Los Angeles still slept. But not in this house, now painted, literally, with blood. The walls were splattered with blood, and in the carnage a finger had traced the word
kill
over and over and over. And everywhere, the simple number three.

Amid the carnage, activity reigned, everyone as busy as possible, their minds focused on the job so they wouldn’t have to focus on the question that hovered silent in the air—who the fuck could have done this?

That question wasn’t on Luke’s mind. He already knew the answer.
Serge.

Beside him, Tiberius stood still and tall, his dark eyes surveying the room. As the Los Angeles area governor and a member of the Alliance, Tiberius had been notified
of the murder immediately. Tiberius, in turn, had called Luke.

Across the room, the front door opened, and Tariq rushed in. He looked around, his glance stopping only briefly upon Luke, then halting on Tiberius. He stood straighter, shoulders back, and hurried to the governor. “Sir,” he said, and as Luke watched, he realized there wasn’t the slightest sign of mourning in the jinn. Only a desperate ambition so thick that Luke had caught its scent from halfway across the room.

“It appears that my theory was right,” Tariq said. He stood facing Tiberius, but his eyes shifted sideways, taking Luke in.

“That may be so,” Tiberius said, “but it has yet to be established. You are currently observing the girl’s brother? Should I assume by your presence here that you have lost him?”

A deep red color began to creep up Tariq’s neck, and Luke knew that Tiberius’s arrow had hit home. “I was coming to report on that very subject when I got word of my uncle’s death.”

“You have my deepest sympathies,” Tiberius said. “What of the brother?”

“We followed him to the airport, and in light of his earlier actions, we believe it is safe to assume that he is traveling to meet up with his sister.”

“Where?”

Tariq cleared his throat. “He bought five tickets online before leaving his house, sir, on different airlines, all with essentially the same departure times.”

Luke bit back a laugh. The brother was clever, all right.

“I’ve tasked five agents, each with a ticket on one of the flights. They will remain at the airport until boarding just after dawn, and we will see which flight Kiril truly takes. That being said, I believe I already know his destination.”

“And why is that?”

“The tickets are for London, Zurich, Paris, Frankfurt, and Rome. Of all of those, we are already aware of a Paris connection.”

“You wish to take that chance?”

“I do,” Tariq said. “If I utilize a Division para-daemon as escort, my team and I can travel to Paris by wormhole and arrive prior to Kiril.”

“And if he does not arrive at all? If he steps off a plane in Rome?”

“Then at least I am already in Europe.”

“I can find no fault with your reasoning. Go. And report to me upon your arrival.”

Tariq inclined his head. “Sir,” he said, and then turned to leave, without giving Luke even a second glance.

Tiberius looked at Luke. “You didn’t like him three centuries ago, and you do not like him still. Why is that?”

“He is a snake.”

“He’s ambitious. Is that a crime?”

“He is a snake,” Luke repeated, and thought of Sara in her cell and his plan to free her. With luck, the opportunity would present itself here.

Beside him, Tiberius was once again looking around at the carnage. “Tell me true, Lucius Dragos, not under the bond of friendship, but under the bond of
kyne
,” he
said, referring to the secret brotherhood that served the Alliance. “Did Tariq stumble upon the truth? Does Sergius still live?”

Luke considered lying, but abandoned the notion. No matter his misjudgments, Tiberius was his friend. More than that, to the extent he controlled his daemon, Luke had Tiberius to thank. The elder vamp had forced him into the Holding, had made him
kyne
, had trusted him with his life more times than Luke could count.

He had kept the secret for Serge’s sake. But the monster was out now, and Dirque’s death was only the beginning. When he and Nick had captured Serge right after the change, he’d been wild and raging and strong, and that had seemed plenty bad. In the months that had passed, though, he’d grown exponentially stronger and had developed some pretty nasty new skills along with a significant level of control. Luke thought about the way Serge had pulled power from him. The way he’d taken on the appearance of a weren after stealing power from Rand.

Most of all he thought about the way Serge had stood there with awareness on his face, his expression turned inward as if he were calculating or reviewing a plan of attack.

Serge was something new and even more dangerous, that was for damn sure. Earlier, Tiberius had told Luke that Petra’s touch could bring about the end of the Alliance. Now he believed he understood what the master had meant.

“Yes,” Luke finally said. “He lives.”

“I see.” Tiberius stood tall and straight, power seeming to radiate from him, as if he was having to work
hard to hold it in, as if one wrong word would make the whole world explode. “And yet we had no sign. The streets have been free of violence—of this level at any rate. It begins only now. Why?”