Tempest rested her hand on his leg, providing wordless comfort.
“I’m so sorry,” Savian said, looking horrified. “I had no idea they were killing vampires, and for you to have lost a sister ... that’s just terrible.”
“Are you sure Victor is the head of the organization?” Tempest asked.
“Everything points to that, although it could be a code name rather than his actual name. That’s why it’s so vital for us to determine once and for all just what role your cousin has to play in the Revelation. Either he’s Victor, or he’s one of Victor’s henchmen. Or he’s a deliberate cover, intending to throw us off the scent of the real man behind it all.”
Tempest murmured sympathetic things into his mind, allowing him to push aside the hot spike of revenge that always rose whenever he thought of his sister.
It wasn’t long after that they came to a large city, and there, unfortunately, Savian lost the trail.
“It’s not so much that it’s gone too faint to see,” he said after half an hour of running up one train platform and down another. The three now stood at the deserted end of one of the platforms. “It’s that it’s been dispersed by the large amount of foot traffic. Stirs up the air, you know, and makes all the sanguine particles spread around.”
“Then we’ve lost him?” Tempest asked, her face pale with strain.
Merrick didn’t like her stressed. He wanted her happy and giggling, and saying outrageous things into his head while she did the most amazing things to his body.
“I’m afraid so. The best I can say is that he likely got on a train served by this platform. If you like, I can ask what trains have been through here in the last hour or so,” Savian offered.
“That would be helpful,” Merrick said, hiding his frustration. He’d been so close to Victor, and yet once again the opportunity seemed to slip away.
“I’m sorry,” Tempest said, her hand on his arm, instantly flooding him with warmth and understanding and concern. “I feel like this is partially my fault. If I hadn’t broken my phone, I could have seen your text, and you could have been after him immediately rather than being delayed.”
“We were already tracking him; stopping to pick you up did not delay us any significant time, so you can cease feeling guilty.” Merrick fought the hunger that her nearness triggered. He reminded himself that he was a Horseman. He was a stranger to softer feelings, and had no intention of changing his ways now.
Dammit, but she smelled good. Like a glass of golden sunshine, warm and slightly floral and very heady.
“What are we going to do now?” she asked, frowning at nothing. “We have to find Carlo. Not just because he’s probably Victor, but he also has Ellis, or at the very least knows where Ellis is.”
It was on the tip of Merrick’s tongue to tell her to return to the safety of his home, but in time he remembered her anger at being dominated. He very much disliked the idea that she would put him in the same group as the men in the cult, but at the same time, he wanted her protected and kept safe from the viciousness of which he knew Victor was capable.
It was as if she were a little bird, standing on the edge of the nest, trembling with excitement at the world that lay beyond, but with fledgling wings that he wasn’t sure would support her.
“I know you are concerned about your friend. Would it make you feel better if I asked the thief taker to search for him?”
She sighed with obvious relief. “It would, it really would. I want to go help him—Ellis—but I don’t know where he is, and I don’t know how to help him if I can’t find him.”
“I will have him direct his search for your friend, although, being mortal, he will be harder to track,” Merrick said.
She beamed at him, making him want to kiss her again. “Thank you. That would make me worry less to know Savian was on the trail.”
“While he’s searching, it would be helpful if you could make yourself available to being contacted, say at the hotel in Nice where Carlo tracked you,” he said slowly, picking the words carefully so that she didn’t feel like he was telling her what to do. “In case he wishes to speak with you. With your mobile phone not functioning, he will need some other method of contacting you.”
Tempest had been about to protest the idea of returning to Nice, but paused instead to consider it. “That makes sense, although do you really think it’s likely he’ll try to call me?”
“If he went to the trouble of kidnapping you, yes, he will want to find out if you are in Nice or are somewhere else. And assuming he took a train out of the area, he can’t check on you himself.”
She squinted up at him. “Do you believe that’s what he was doing at the hotel? That he followed me there specifically to kidnap me?”
Again, he had to pick his words carefully. “I believe his plan is to use you to get to me, yes. As for following you ... describe again what happened after you and the dog got away from his car.”
She ran through the events again. At the end, he nodded to himself. “Let me see your phone.”
“It’s broken,” she said, pulling it out of her pocket and handing it to him. “It won’t even turn on.”
“I don’t believe it needs to.” He pried off the back cover, flipping it over to find exactly what he expected to see. He held the back cover out to her, nodding toward it. “There’s a tracking chip here.”
“A what, now?”
