That surprised Brystol and after a moment, she pulled a card from her coat pocket and handed it to Stacia.
“Okay then, we may be in touch. But right now, we gotta leave,” Stacia said, pulling on my arm as she slid out of the booth. I followed, dropping three twenties on the table to cover the bill.
Outside, I immediately spotted our ride—a big black SUV. The three-hundred-pound black and tan wolf sitting outside the open rear passenger door was a clue. A small crowd was watching him watch for us and most of the passersby were studying him as well. But nobody approached him; they just watched, fascinated. It helped that the driver, who was one of our regular security guys, was leaning up against the vehicle only three feet from the massive wolf, casually texting on his phone.
When we got fifteen feet away, ‘Sos stood up on all four feet, which caused a minor commotion in his crowd of observers, most of whom turned to look where he was looking. At us. The collective noise alerted the driver, who also looked up at us.
“Hey Stevens, lining up a hot date?” I asked as we closed the distance.
“Not my fault I’m in high demand with the ladies. Well, actually it is,” he chuckled. “Right, Hot Stuff?” he directed at Stacia.
She sighed. “I see you’re itching for a rematch. Happy to oblige Stevens,” she said, sliding past all of us and into the backseat. Stacia had joined sparring practice and the ex-military guys had gone from laughing lust to humble awe.
I squatted down and ruffled Awasos’s thick neck fur. “Hey buddy, I missed you,” I greeted him. He’d had to stay behind for the morning’s meeting, and neither of us liked it. I still didn’t remember his birth, or my rescue or raising him, but he fit my life so closely that I couldn’t imagine him not being in it.
“Hey mister, is that a real wolf?” a voice asked.
A boy of about ten or eleven, standing with his family, had blurted the words out, much to the chagrin of his parents. His older brother and younger sister just looked fascinated as they waited for my response.
“Yes he is. His name is Awasos and you can pet him if you like,” I said, keeping my arm around ‘Sos’s massive neck. Mom and Dad started to protest, but all three kids had jumped forward before their parents could stop them.
“He will be absolutely fine with them,” I assured the parents. The kids had frozen now that they were up close and personal with him so I grabbed the middle son’s hand and put it on ‘Sos’s neck, letting him feel the thick, soft fur. ‘Sos turned his neck like the kid had found some magic itch spot or something, and that broke the spell. The other two crowded close, petting the beast that weighed more than all three of them together.
“He’s breathtaking,” the mom said, eyes wide.
“Now you’ve done it. You’ve complemented him,” I said as ‘Sos moved forward like a furry boulder to shove his head against the mom’s leg. She laughed and started to pet him as well. I looked up at the crowd, who were all suddenly talking and exclaiming, and spotted Brystol and Barry, standing just outside the restaurant. Both were staring wide eyed at us and this time it was Brystol who was snapping a picture with her phone. Seeing how ten other people were doing the same, it didn’t seem right to close down her phone. But it
was
time to go.
“I’m sorry, but we have to leave,” I told the family and at my words, Awasos turned and flowed up into the back of the SUV like water running uphill. The heavy duty suspension jiggled under his mass.
I slid into the backseat next to Stacia and gave the group a little wave as Stevens pulled us out into the New York traffic.
“That will be all over Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter in the next two minutes,” Stacia said.
“Not to mention Instagram and Vine,” Stevens said from up front.
“That’s so not gonna help you hide from the government,” Stacia said.
“As demonstrated by the three cars that just pulled out behind us,” Stevens said. “You’ve got your work cut out if you expect to elude the combined intelligence services
while
still shutting down demon shit.”
“And a demonic Brianna DuClair and whatever help she brought back from Hell, as well as Girl Reporter back there,” I said, sinking into my leather seat and into my thoughts. “Hey who stuck you with picking me up? Deckert?” I asked Stacia.
“No, Tanya,” she said, looking out the window and leaving me wondering if
that
little piece of info was, in fact, the first sign of the Apocalypse.
Chapter 7
When we got back to our current
home
, I headed straight for my quarters. Home these days was no longer the swanky hotel I had come back from the South to, but instead it was a lower level of a factory that was owned by a textile company that was a subsidiary of a holding company that was owned fifty-eight percent by an industrial conglomerate and forty-two percent by a retail sales chain that specialized in discount clothing. Both of those were owned in the majority by an offshore company whose shareholders were Tanya, her mother, Lydia, and fourteen trusts that all listed some combination of the three as beneficiaries and trustees. Tanya had started the process while we lived in the hotel. She had multiple factories with excess space, along with empty rooms in apartment buildings and office buildings, all renovated to provide a dizzying array of hideouts for us all over New York City, parts of New Jersey, and even Philadelphia and Boston. Some, like this unused lower level, were very large, easily able to house a whole bunch of us. Some were much smaller, just sized for a core group. The properties were owned by a maze of corporations, holding companies, foreign entities, and off-shore shell corps. It was a tangled web that was constantly being shifted by involving Coven members and corporations from around the world. The plan was to shift residence at random intervals, which would be decided by Tanya and her vampire chief of security, Arkady.
I entered our four-room suite to find Tanya already sleeping on the king-sized bed, looking tiny by comparison. It was now almost three in the afternoon, but a couple hours of naptime would go a long way. Stripping to boxer-briefs, I slipped in beside her, curling my larger frame around her. Once again, I was at odds with the federal government. Add to that the new threat of DuClair and a fast-approaching Halloween, an attempt on Toni, and the media. About the only thing left that hadn’t blown up was the damned witch’s grimoire, which was safely tucked away.
Six and a half hours later, I woke when Tanya moved to slide out of bed. The sun was long down and I could feel through our bond that she felt like she’d overslept. I clutched one slim wrist as she slid across the sheets, both my eyes still shut. She stopped moving and I opened one eye, staring up at her perfect features.
“I did not mean to wake you,
zayka
,” she said, tugging gently on the captive arm.
“You don’t have to go yet,” I protested.
Immediately she moved closer, lying down against my chest, snuggling closer.
“Perhaps not yet,” she agreed.
I tucked my head into her raven black hair, breathing lilac and jasmine with every intake of air.
“You are feeling a little overwhelmed?” she said after a moment, no doubt reading me through our two-way connection.
I snorted. “Let’s see, hunted by entire federal government of the most powerful nation on earth while trying to close an endless supply of open Hell holes and hunt down an escapee from Hell who is probably some greater demon, not to mention keeping assholes from attacking Toni and avoid reporters.”
“Reporters? What reporters?” she asked, sitting up and crossing her legs.
“Well, just one, but where there’s one, there’s more,” I said. Absolute silence greeted me so I pulled back and opened my eyes, meeting two very blue ones that were impatiently waiting for an answer. So I told her about Brystol Chatterjee and her pal, Barry. She made me recount every word of the conversation, both mine and Stacia’s.
“Hmm, clever girl,” she said when I was done.
“Who? Brystol?”
“No, Stacia,” she said.
“That sounded suspiciously like a complement,” I said.
“I don’t like your wolf girl, but I never said she lacked intelligence,” she said.
“So what do you mean… clever?”
“She forced this Brystol girl to reevaluate you—to look at you from a whole new angle. If you can’t deflect or destroy the story, reframe it,” she said.
“Why did you send her to get me?”
“Because you don’t always stay in one spot when you get hungry. I wanted you picked up quick and nobody can find you faster than she can, except me,” Tanya said.
“But like I said, you don’t like her,” I pushed.
“But you, my
zayka
, do,” she said, pinning me with her eyes. I didn’t respond, too busy trying to process her meaning.
“I’m not saying anything improper, Chris. You like her. It’s as simple as that,” she said. I must have frowned fiercely because she smiled a little.
“What? You already told me she was your friend. Generally we’re only friends with people we like, which is pretty much the definition. So when I send someone to track you down and bring you home, why not one of your friends, especially one who has an uncanny ability to find you?”
“But you know she more than
likes
me. And I’m pretty certain you’re not okay with that.”
“Listen, Christian Anthony Gordon, if I know anything in this life, it’s that you are mine. Maybe I was uncertain before, but when you died in that silo and came back to me, I knew what we both used to be, what we have always been, and that we will always be two parts of one whole. I
know
that so deep in my core that it is unshakeable. My concerns for your feelings toward me have been dissolved. So if she has strong feelings for you, I find I can’t hate her for that, especially when I
know
who you belong with. But I also understand that I have never been human. Every other vampire and bitten werewolf started life as a human. But not me and oddly enough, maybe not the born weres. You were human as well. So there is a part of you that I cannot relate to, but your blonde friend can. You need that. If she’s the one who can provide it, so be it. The fact that she is intelligent and capable and willing to protect you when I can’t are just bonus features,” she said.
Plus she looks like a supermodel,
I thought, but I kept it to myself.
“Of course, I’m not thrilled that she looks like she does. I would prefer it if she were a hunchback hag, but we can’t have everything, now can we?” asked the girl who
could
just about buy everything. “And oddly enough, I believe she has honor. She demonstrated that when you were in North Carolina. She does not throw herself at you. And as I said, I know you will not stray from me. So why not send your friend to you when I can’t go myself?”
“What if she did start to throw herself at me?”
“Then I would likely rip her arms off and feed them to her,” she said with a smile that said she wasn’t joking.
Grim suddenly surged into control and my feet hit the floor, my hand grabbing the semi-automatic shotgun that hung on brackets from my side of the bed, while Tanya was suddenly holding a rubber-coated silver spike and standing facing the door. We both went from relaxed to battle ready in a millisecond, alerted by the sounds of someone outside our door.
The bedroom door crashed open and Lydia stood framed in the opening. “Quit the kinky stuff and come with me! Someone broke into the bank vault and stole the book bucket.”
Four minutes later, we were mostly dressed and standing in the computer center, leaning over Chet Aikens’ shoulder as he replayed footage he’d already hacked.
“The Metrobanc branch on Broadway closed at seven p.m. By eight, all the staff had left for the day. By eight thirty-two, the lobby motion detectors had gone off, but none of the door alarms ever went off. When police got there with the bank’s security officer, the vault was open,” Chet said.
“Where are you getting all this?” I asked him. I didn’t doubt the authenticity of his information, but I was curious.
“I still have backdoors into the NYPD system so I can follow the reports as they’re entered. This footage was copied from the bank’s security system and a detective entered it into his laptop,” he said. “Also, I have a number of insiders who sent me text updates when I asked them.” He pointed at a monitor that showed a live feed from outside the bank. A uniformed cop standing guard outside the front door was alternating with texting on his phone and watching the entrance. “That’s Joe Laportia. I set up his wife’s business computer. I saw him on this feed and texted him. He told me that it looked like the vault was opened from the inside by someone who knew enough to disengage the time locks. That particular door has an emergency release in case any staff or hostages are ever locked in the vault. Anyway, he said it looked like only five or six of the big safety deposit boxes were smashed open. That would include the one you guys keep the book in.”
“So it seems as if someone somehow hid in the vault when it was closed, waited, then broke open the safe deposit boxes till they found ours and then opened the vault and left? What about camera footage?” Tanya asked.