Masters of the Night (16 page)

The store was as empty as the house. And clean as a whistle.

He shadowed and became himself. Leaning against the narrow front
counter, he drummed his silent fingertips on the counter top. Where could they
have gone?

The only thing they had left behind was a painting on the
wall.Odd
. The trees in the forest scene seemed to waver,
the leaves quiver …

The ghost appeared on the path and stared out at him from the painting
with his dead gray eyes.

“You seem to be alone, Henri De
LaCroix
.”

“Where did they go?” Henri demanded, his eyes piercing the painting.
“You must know.”

“You seemed to have lost your way when you lost your will.
Just a bird singing on a window sill.”
The gray ghost
glinted at him from beneath his top hat.

“She could be in danger,” Henri insisted in a plea. He did not know how
to beg or he would have.

“The lamb hawk is looking for a kill and looking for a lamb—to steal
her will.
As is the one who writes with quill.”
He
twirled his cane. “The one you
seek,
seeks her past,
where past was stolen and the future cast.”

He turned and became far away on the path.

A whisper floated from the painting and through the room, from wall to
wall.

And through Henri’s being.

For your life,
Royal
of the Realm, the slayers
also have a playbill.

16.

“Until Andre finds
a house, I guess we’re roomies,” Angie said, pulling her suitcase on its
rollers into Kathryn’s apartment.

Curled into a swivel desk chair with her arms wrapped around her knees,
Kathryn was riveted to her laptop screen, its glow the only light in the room.

Angie tossed a summer cap onto a hook next to the door. “Like my hat?
James bought it for me as a souvenir after lunch. This German place we found
next to the freeway was great. A dude with an accordion played songs and the
whole place all sang and sloshed beer. I had pink cabbage with apples, and
roast beef with this dill pickle thing in the middle of it, called
Roumaladen
and dark beer. Do you always sit in the dark?”

“
Rouladen
,” Kathryn said absently, her eyes
intent on her monitor. “It’s called
Rouladen
.”

“Yeah.
That,” Angie said,
and glanced out the window as a flash of lightning lit up the room. “Looks like
rain tonight.”

Kathryn took a tranquil sip of wine from the golden goblet next to her.
“I’m going to be with James for a while. Will you be all right?”

James Lauren, the mystery slayer who wears a ring with a mysterious
essence,
Angie thought.
The little gift
tucked into his baby car seat by the mother who ran away into the night—the
ring he eternally wears and cherishes.
The ring that causes a
chill within me every time I look at it.

“I’ll be fine,” Angie said. “I want to write a letter to my
grandmother.”

“I won’t be gone long, but if you have a visitor—scream. Based on your
perceptions and mine, our atoner is not to be trusted.”

“He’s a lying son of a—,” Angie said vehemently. “Do you think he would
be here, in Seattle?”

Her answer was to simply shrug.
“Possibly.”

A clap of grating thunder filled the night, then the storm hit, an
orchestra of nature complete with a xylophone of lightning and cymbal crashes
of wind against the windows.

“You can close the drapes if you like.” Kathryn smiled up at her. “I
remember you have a problem with thunderstorms. Blinding white lightning, fire
balls bouncing across the room, Henri on the window sill, all that.”

Sheepishly, Angie closed the drapes.

“You’ve got mail,” sang out from the computer speakers into the
darkened apartment. Angie read the transmission over Kathryn’s shoulder.

“Natalia
Ruminski
—Russian.
Now resides in
seedy old neighborhood in seedy old Victorian mansion, north side of city. It
appears they followed you to Seattle.
Does not live alone.
Watch your back and tell Angie to watch her neck. She’s known to have an
insatiable hunger.”

“Looks like they’re here,” Kathryn said. “You’re attracting quite a
crowd of hangers-on.”

Angie gazed at the message. “Typical girl next door,” she said. “Who
sent the information?”

“An informant,” Kathryn responded simply.

Angie changed into lounging pajamas, and returned to the room carrying
a candle with a small flame that kept threatening to go out.

Kathryn glanced at the candle. “You can turn on the lights.”

“
S’okay
.” Angie went to the refrigerator and
pulled out a tall plastic cup with a tinfoil seal from a group of identical
cups.

“What’s this?” she asked, sniffing it, curious.

“Cow.”

“Oh.” She put it back—quickly.

“And the little cups that look like pudding cups are plasma. I don’t
think you’d like them.
Unless of course, you’re not of mortal
blood.”
She twirled in the chair, turning to her. “Are you? How much did
Henri give you?”

“Apparently not enough.
Or I’d be drinking
cow.”

Angie started to open the meat drawer.
“Nope.
Don’t think I want to know.” She took a bottle of water from the tray in the
door. “I hope this is water,” she said as she twisted the cap.

“It’s water. Would you mind hanging up your cloak and straightening
your things while I’m gone?” Kathryn asked, not exactly overjoyed about the
prospect of sharing her personal space with the excitable child. But at least
she was clean.

The
vampyre
moved like lightning from the
chair, and it was still swiveling, empty, as Angie turned to answer her.
“Yeah, umm.
I’ll have my stuff put away in two jumps of a
jackass,” she muttered to the closing door.

Angie plopped into Kathryn’s chair and stared at the blank computer
monitor, lost in thoughts of the master
vampyre
who
had saved her life and thrilled her with his passion for her.
But the strange pain written in Henri’s eyes every time he looked
at her left her heart in shreds.
What was he holding back? What was it
he couldn’t bring himself to tell her?

Suddenly she regretted not telling him she was going to Seattle. She
had been miffed at him for his secrecy, keeping secret the reason for those
looks exchanged with Nicholas, and for not sharing his heart’s pain with her
that she could see so clearly. She thought they had something special, and it
had hurt that he shut her out. He had been at that mansion to protect her, of
that she was certain.
But …

Angie tried to trust her perceptions. When training her, Andre had told
her that feeling the sunrays on his arms doesn’t tell a blind man if the sun is
setting or rising.

Perceptions are from felt from the dew on the grass, hearing the birds
flying in low as they would at the end of day, or rising high, or hearing the
cock crow. Instinctively within the core of the mystic, perceptions beyond the
natural are also “seen” and “felt,” becoming a vital force.

Angie wanted—needed to “see” what she was feeling from Henri.

She sent a text message to Danby, lit a fragrance candle for
aromatherapy, and searched her heart. The darkened room was quiet, with only
the light from the candle flame for company and the pale, blue glow cast by the
laptop screen into the shadows.

Thoughts of Henri consumed her, the mystery of him, the secrets behind
his eyes, the blatant but wonderful way he openly desired her. The warmth—

Nicholas had been cool, his muscles cool, as he backed against her …

“If he’s in atonement, I’ll eat my hat,” she said aloud. She sighed and
rose from the chair. Taking the traveling cloak from the back of the couch, she
touched the soft velvet to her cheek remembering Henri’s dance with her, and
she swayed into her bedroom in a waltz.

“What is that?” she blurted in a startled whisper as her gaze swept her
pillow.

A rose lay across the cream-colored pillow case, a black rose so named
for its color, a rose so deeply red it took on the hues of night.

She draped the cape across the bed and picked it up, rubbing the soft
petals between her fingers as she returned to the kitchen to look for a vase.

Was the fragrant flower from Henri?

The candle flame next to the computer wavered.
And
went out.

Angie’s hands froze, crushing the flower.

Peeking around an open cabinet door, in the blue pallor cast across the
room from the computer monitor, she could see—

A fog shadow.
Then
a silhouette.
“What the hell are you here doing … doing here?” she spat,
tingles of fear gripping her. Henri had said Nicholas was dangerous. And here
he was, brazen and half naked, and in her kitchen.

With wings.

He was shirtless, baring a pair of dark gray wings that moved slightly
in the shadows as his silken eyes stared as though obsessed at a small bottle
on the kitchenette counter, a holy water bottle,
sixteenth
-century.
The thick, cobalt blue glass bottle, ornately decorated with etched silver
capping, was attached to a solid silver chain.

A chain usually attached to her belt.

“Should I spill that all over you? Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
Would you melt?” she said.

He walked toward her. “Don’t be afraid of me, Angie. You walk our
world. I have no evil intent toward you.”

Was he lying? She could not tell. His aura was gray, his smile
superfluous. Desperately, she wished her perceptions were clearer, instead of
brown streaks on a blurry mirror.

She whipped the rose behind her. “I don’t recall inviting you in.”

“You placed the ad,” he said with a shrug and a sly smile.
“Inviting me to respond.”

“How did you know I was in Seattle?”

“You should be more careful of the friends you keep,” he smiled.

“Who?”

He moved toward her. She backed into the bedroom.

Stupid move.
His Fruit of the
Loom low rise briefs were clearly revealing the reason for his visit.

Somewhere inside her a tiny voice cried pitifully,
Scream, idiot!

Her scream stuck in her throat.

He smoothed a hand across the velvet cape and the bed.
Then across her throat.
She fought his spell, the wicked
webs in his eyes.

“You need to put some pants on. I would have thought you were the silk
suit type.”

He laughed from somewhere in his throat, and his Reason pushed hard
against his low risers. “I am. It’s on your kitchen floor.”

The wings widened to enfold her, the muscles in his chest rippled. “I
could place whispers in your heart,
Anjanette
,
because you walk so close to us.”

His words magnetized her, drove her toward him, toward the strange,
wicked wine in his eyes. “I don’t—want to walk—close to you.”

His voice heavy with command, he deepened his seduction. “Fly with me,
Angie. I could lift you with me above the city and wrap you in thrusts of love
while the breezes high above the mortal streets flow around us and under us,
cooling our bodies, but not our desire, our fire.”

Desire, the wine of forgetfulness …
Angie thought, her
brain beginning to spin.

“I would not, could not hurt you, Angie,” he said. “I’m in atonement,
after all, and it would be for only a moment.
Just a touch.
A touch of romance.
You would feel sweetness like wine
and candlelight with each hot thrust from me.
A night to
remember in a black silken sky.
My wings would cradle you as I held you
under me. I’m strong. It would be exquisite with me.”

He waited.
For her to yield her body to his
beckoning, her will to his bidding.

Yeah, right. Dream on,
Ruskie
.

“A night to remember,” he whispered.

And then,
Angie thought,
he would finish
his designs against me.

Under the dark fires of his touches, she would float enfolded in
pleasure as he caressed her throat before he took her breath away—forever. Then
waves of weakness and a cry that would seem to come from a chasm, a cry that
would be her own, a sob carried out to the sea on a wave from the sky and a
windless, wordless whisper of pain—reality gone awry.

A strange feeling would begin to creep along her veins, and she would
need blood. It would spread slowly through her body and invade the very
chambers of her empty heart.

And he would fill the chambers.

She would be lifted away from the pallid sky in his arms as he carried
her with him, to lay her on his pillows and float with her in dark ecstasy
while he spoke softly to her … before he killed her.

Or whatever it was he was planning for her.

Pursing her lips in anger to fight his hypnotic presence, Angie jerked
the limp rose, crushed and bedraggled now, out from behind her back.
Damn you,
Nicholas
, she thought to herself.
You put this
rose on my pillow because you expected a one-night stand in the sky. Have sex
with me on some damned cloud, I suppose.