“Make my way back here on foot if I’m able. If I think I’m being followed, do my best to slip into a mortal bar or restaurant and blend in.”
Roger put his hand on Vincent’s shoulder and squeezed. A tiny thrum radiated from Vincent, not like an emotion at all but like a burst of static electricity. Pushing aside the strange sensation, Roger focused on the moment. “Stay safe, all right?”
Vincent almost smiled. “You too.”
A few other muted conversations were happening, and Roger eavesdropped to check on the moods of his companions. Josefina was stressing the importance that Dmitri filter a sliver of the funds to Nell in order to compensate for Roger’s debt, and he was reassuring her that was part of the plan. Whether Dmitri would live up to that, Roger wasn’t sure. But he had hope.
Amber was attempting to engage Janiyah in conversation, but while Janiyah wasn’t unfriendly, she treated Amber with a cool distance. She’d said during one of the planning sessions that she was doing this because Nathaniel stressed it would change things for the coven as a whole. In general, she didn’t give a shit about the elite vampires in leadership positions. Roger couldn’t help agreeing with her. The only one left in power that he cared about was Candide, and she would continue playing her cards to her advantage.
Thomas was checking his quiver for the third time. When Roger drifted toward him, Thomas said, “Wish we’d had a practice run.”
“They could discover Dmitri’s back door at any point,” Roger replied. “We can’t afford to lose any more time.”
“Hopefully, they haven’t already,” Dmitri added.
“You mean this could all be for nothing?” Amber said as she joined in their conversation.
Now, everyone was paying attention to them. Roger said, “Either we’ll be able to drain Seamus’s accounts, or we won’t.At the very least, we will send a message that he is not as invulnerable as he believes. Shaking even a fraction of his confidence loose is worth this risk.”
“Let’s hope,” Thomas said under his breath.
Roger scanned each of their faces. The grim note in Thomas’s voice had lowered the mood of the group.
Decades had passed since the last time he’d truly led anyone into a battle, and even then, he had been a captain for Seamus and moving on his orders. Coordinating the rescue mission had been Roger’s first true attempt to lead, and that had failed. If they failed again, he wasn’t sure what would be left of himself, let alone the others. In the best-case scenario, they all survived, and Seamus was robbed of nearly four billion dollars.
But there was the possibility of a horrific outcome. Not death—death would be terrible, but it would be a finality. If they were captured, that would lead to war between Nell’s coven and the GLC, which would result in too many innocents’ deaths. And there was no telling what sort of torment Seamus, Anton, and other sadistic vampires of the GLC would do to this brave group if given the chance. Roger didn’t have to think hard to envision a dozen different miserable, torturous scenarios.
All of them knew that there was a chance this mission would lead to worse than disaster. He might be leading them to their worst hells. But they were willing to try.
He couldn’t ignore that. Couldn’t let them think for an instant that their willingness to risk themselves meant nothing to him.
“We can do more than hope,” Roger said. “No one has made an attempt like this. Win or lose, we will make a difference. No doubt about that. Let’s do this.”
The attitudes of the others didn’t magically lift. In fact, Roger wasn’t sure he’d had much of an impact on them at all. Yet noone balked. No one rolled their eyes or stormed away. They were ready to follow him.
So he led the way out the door to the back alley, where their white rental cargo van waited. Vincent claimed the driver’s seat while Amber took the front passenger seat. Everyone else climbed into the cargo van’s open back.
Roger was the last to step up into the van. Closing the doors brought a thud that he tried not to compare to the slam of a coffin lid.Once we do this, there’s no turning back.
“Is the great pirate Roger is nervous about a robbery?” Josefina teased.
“Been a while since I’ve done one,” Roger said quietly. He glanced to Dmitri. “Must have been the 1920s.”
“The O’Malley twins’ place.” Dmitri leaned his head back against the side of the van, letting it bounce as the vehicle did. “I was thinking it must have been in Connecticut.”
“I was quite the terror on the roads in England.” Roger tried to grin. He resisted the urge to run his fingers across each of his silver daggers’ hilts to ensure they were still there. Instead, he rested his hand on the stakes in the wrist launcher that Thomas had given him. “That time, I was sent to bring Ezra home. But this is more like being on the ship.”
“Is it bad if I do miss those nights?” Dmitri said softly. “The rare ones.”
The ones where Dmitri and Roger had been new vampires who relished the moments of freedom they gained whenever the chaos of battle and plunder had taken over their ship. They’d been able to drink their fill, glutting themselves on blood. Ripping through the enemy and satisfying their hunger had always settled Dmitri for a few nights, provided their target hadn’t been a passenger vessel. For a short, glorious time, they’d been newly dead and never more alive.
But there was a gleeful wildness to those nights that Roger no longer trusted his memory to paint accurately. He had spent so long ignoring the pains inflicted on himself and others that holding on to the bleached notions of passionate, thrilling nights was a different sort of pain. How much of his pleasure had come from the blood of innocents? From those too much like himself, unable to trod another path in life?
Denying the shred of fondness that he had for those nights would only hurt Dmitri. There was no point in shattering him when he was barely holding himself together.
“I know which ones you mean,” Roger said gently.
“I don’t,” Janiyah said brusquely.
