Her pulse sang—every mortal’s heartbeat was unique, certainly, but hers was music engineered specifically forhishearing. He quickened as well, a hawk preparing for the dive, a giant swan ready to descend upon a staggering girl.
I long to know your name, pretty one.So glorious tofeelagain after centuries spent watching the waters of Lethe rise inch by inch upon his frame, trapped in slowly calcifying body and mind.
Engine-noise, nearby and slowing. A mortal yell.
“Leila! Leila, come on!”
Like a young doe was she, running flat-out as if sensing the predator in her wake. Fists curled, arms pumping, the braid swinging to tap her back, she bolted from the alley and dove into the rear passenger side of a nondescript sedan, quick as a wink. The vehicle barely slowed enough for her to perform the maneuver, yet she did so with grace. One last skirt-flutter, and she was gone.
The soldier paused, struck by unfamiliar astonishment. He recognized another heartbeat within the car; one he had catalogued from sheer habit—the mortal male who had held her against the wall.
Lover? Husband? What true man would let such a beauty wander alone?But mortals were unaware of the rare flowers in their midst—and a good thing, too, lest they make lemaneven scarcer. Hunting the strange or different was not solely a sanguinant trait, or even confined to the wider demimonde.
Now that he had found such a rare, impossible miracle, everything he had ever heard concerning leman swirled inside him, a collage of tactical responses jostling for selection. It was traditional to remove all encumbrances from a newaima-glyza, in order to discourage panicked attempts at escape—and to make their transition to fledgling easier, for the moment she was bitten and claimed the Gift would begin to rise in her flesh.
At least his new objective was almost painfully clear. Father was a problem best solved in due course; the soldier could even anticipate the event with some pleasure.
His chains were now broken, an event any servant longed for, any master feared.
The soldier took to mistform again, following the fleeing vehicle.
CHAPTER 3
An uncomfortable rideback to base, not least because lean sandy-haired Dan stared in front of the old Taurus like the road had personally done him wrong, refusing to even glance in the rearview mirror. On the other hand, Pete, in the front passenger seat becauseof coursehe was, kept twisting to look back at Layla.
As if it wereherfault someone else had jumped the gun.
“It was a red-stripe, skull and crossbones,” she repeated, and felt the same old dull hopelessness. Tonight’s clusterfuck would absolutely end up being blamed on her somehow. “I just couldn’t drag the name up in time. You have to believe me.”
“I do,” Pete said. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, and his mild brown eyes were for once hot with accusation as he glanced at Dave. “Itoldyou not to put him there.”
“You prefer him on lookout, then? Or up-top with sniper duty?” Dan shook his head, an irritable flicker tossing too-long fringe out of his eyes. He’d refused to get a trim despite Shawn’s crew mocking him, probably becausetheywere a weirdly costumed lot in their own right—the tattoos, or the feathers tiedin John Dancer’s sideburns, were the least of it. “I’ll wait to hear what Ben has to say for himself before I decide what the hell.”
Oh, for Chrissake. Layla strangled a flare of uncharacteristically intense anger. Soaked with fresh sweat, her heart refusing to slow down from rabbit-gallop, and beginning to feel all the bruises from being nearly trampled to death in a nightclub becausesome dipshitcouldn’t get it into his head not to pop off before the order was given—that was bad enough. But to have Dan constantly giving that same dumbass the benefit of the doubt just because…
Why?
Because he’s a man.She swallowed the bitterness of adrenaline lingering at the back of her palate. “I swear to God it’s him. The one they call Nemesis.”
The car wallowed as Dan piloted left onto 45thStreet. He was playing it cool, just at the speed limit, striking a balance between cautious old granny-driving and the slight rule-breaking of a businessman one past the limit but determined not to get pulled over. This circuitous route back to base was part of the plan.
At least they’d taken her suggestion inthatregard; a miniscule, qualified victory, the only kind she ever got. But the sense of an invisible, unfriendly gaze on her simply wouldn’t go away. Her nerves were a thousand percent shot.
Pete at least had body armor under his civilian T-shirt, for Chrissake. Layla was supposed to be well out of the way before any shooting went down. She couldn’t get rid of the sensation of a big ol’ glowing target painted on her back.
“You can’t be sure,” Dan said, finally.
What the fuck?Her jaw threatened to drop. “There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Daniel.” Layla throttled the unfriendly reminder that she and Suze been the ones getting him through high school—Suze with her head for numbers and ideas of maybe becoming an accountant, Layla for everythingelse, including every single essay he’d laboriously hand-copied to turn in.
Thinking about it now, she wondered why he didn’t just spend that teeth-clenched effort to write the damn things himself.
Layla’s memory was a steel trap not just for names but for faces, a major reason why she did so much of the research and recon. But no, Dan said she couldn’t besure, probably thinking estrogen was clouding her synapses. Just what did she like so much about him, anyway? Especially considering what she’d seen just before the wedding—and yet he’d made Suzy so very happy, and the way he’d broken down after… after Suze…
After the attack at Paradise Point, and those terrible, dreamlike weeks afterward, when both he and Layla had found out how far down the rabbit hole really went.
Pete twisted again, peering into the backseat. “Well,Ithink you did great.” As if conferring a huge favor, but it wasn’t his fault. Men were just built to be dickheads; if she wasn’t so hung up on one particular specimen, she might even like Pete. Certainly he was far nicer thansomeshe could name. “And if you say it was a red-stripe then I believe you. But… Nemesis? You’re absolutely sure?”
“Curly-headed sonofabitch with a nose like that? And he was dressed the same way as in the file, same sweater even. Plus, he always goes around with a squad of cookie-cutter human goons, and I’d recognize that stare of his after looking at it even once.” Layla shivered, though the breeze coming through the half-open window did nothing to cool her off. It was just too hot tonight. She longed for a nice chilled bottle of chablis, a tepid bath, dreamless sleep on good sheets in an air-conditioned room. “We went over the files like eight separate times because of what happened to O’Shaughnassey’s crew.”
