“Didn’t have to.” She shrugged. “Man like you, your personality, doesn’t easily accept submission. But if you decided to give yourself to someone, you’d do anything for that person—even if the choice half killed you.”
“I’m so obvious?”
“No.” She met his eyes, stripped away a single fragile layer of her own shields. “You’re like me.”
“Ah.” That beautiful hair of his glittered under the moonlight as he began to walk again. “Have you ever trusted that deeply, cherie?”
Yes, and she bore the scars still. The marks on her back she could almost forget… but the ones on her soul? Those, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to forgive. “We’re not talking about me. What happened to your lover?”
“Shamiya became tired of me after a few years. I was left to the most tender mercies of Neha.”
“The Queen of Poisons?”
A slow nod. “Being in her court was… part nightmare, part ecstasy. I’ve never experienced such pain as I did at Neha’s hands, but she also showed me pleasure I didn’t know could exist.”
Ashwini thought of the archangel, with her skin of dusky brown, her sloe-eyed gaze, her exotic sexuality. “Is that why you’re drawn to me?” She was no beauty, but her skin was the same Eastern shade, her eyes as dark. “Because she imprinted on you somehow?”
Janvier laughed and it was a truly delighted sound, one she’d heard from him only once or twice—usually when he bested her on a hunt. “Neha,” he said, “is as cold as the snakes she keeps as pets. You, my fierce hunter, are wildfire. Two more different women could not exist.”
The cold feeling in her stomach dissipated under the heat of his laughter. “So, what did you learn before Callan went to play tonsil hockey with Ms. Beaumont?”
“He asked me to stay on, join the Fox kiss.” His body brushed hers as they walked.
She wanted to get even closer, touch, be touched. Feel human. “I thought he’d know you aren’t the joining type.”
“I will fight for what’s important,” he said, his voice missing its usual amusement. “But this—petty politics—non.”
“Is that what you told Callan?”
“Of course. Anything else would’ve made him suspicious.” He nodded left and, seeing the lily pond in the distance, she acquiesced. “But now he accepts that I will not take sides.”
“Too bad he forgot the biggest player.”
“Only a fool forgets an angel.” Going down on his haunches by the pond, he put one hand on the back of her calf when she came to stand beside him.
Aching for contact that demanded nothing from her except the most human of sensations, she didn’t shift away, didn’t remind him of her rule against dating vampires. She simply stood there and let the warmth of him soak into her bones. He was an enigma, Janvier. She’d seen him ice-cold, a predator, and she’d seen him bathed in sunshine. Some might’ve asked which was the real man—she knew he was both.
“Do you love her still?” she found herself asking.
“Who?”
“The vampire. Shamiya.”
His hand squeezed her calf in gentle reproof. “A silly question, cher. You know love cannot survive where there is no light.”
Yes, she thought, he was right. “What was she like?”
“Why so curious?”
“I just wonder what kind of a woman would’ve captured a man like you.”
“But I wasn’t this man when she knew me.” He leaned his body against hers. “I was a callow youth. I’ve learned since then.”
Accepting the answer, she turned her eyes to the pond, where the sickle moon made the lilies shimmer with midnight shadows. For the first time in years, her mind was completely quiet, completely her own. The peace of it was extraordinary.
When she ran her fingers through Janvier’s hair, he sighed but held the silence.
Three hours later, the peace was a memory as they found themselves in an alcove in the corridor leading to the bedroom where Monique was being held. “You sure Callan’s still in his study?”
Janvier nodded. “I saw him return to it not long ago.”
“Good, but even if we manage to sneak Monique out of her room,” she murmured, peering around the corner, “how do we get her past the guards?”
Janvier fiddled with the lock pick kit he’d produced out of nowhere. “This would be much easier if we could use Nazarach’s name.”
“Games.” Seeing who’d come out on top. “He’s pitting the two vampires against each other, us against Callan. We matter nothing except for the weaknesses we expose in Callan’s operation.”
“Nazarach has grown old fast.”
“He looks in the prime of his life.”
“No. Here.” Janvier put a fist over his heart. “I’ve met Favashi, the archangel who rules Persia. She is over a thousand years old—but Favashi still has her heart, still has a humanity that is utterly lacking in Nazarach.”
Ashwini gave a slow nod. “There are vampires like that, too.”
“If I ever become one, my darling Ashblade, consider it a mercy killing and take me out.”
“Shh.” Spying Perida’s petite form coming to relieve the guard on duty, Ashwini motioned Janvier to step back with her. “We take Perida hostage, use her to get Monique out.”
“Callan will shoot Perida to keep Monique,” Janvier told her. “Perida would let him—she knows she won’t die unless Cal turns out to be a very bad shot.”
“And people call me crazy.” Squatting in the alcove, she blew out a breath. “Trigger the smoke alarms, cause a panic?”
“Vampires are immune to smoke,” Janvier murmured, eyes the green of the bayou at night, “but not to fire. Set something on fire if you really want panic.”
“I don’t want to kill innocents.”
“No vampire over fifty is innocent, cherie.” But his voice was gentle. “We can use the curtains down the hall—it’ll get them far enough away, without endangering anyone in the rooms.”
Ashwini checked her pockets and came up with a lighter from what Sara called her Girl Scout kit. “Go distract Perida.”
A flash of teeth, pure sin in a smile. “Remember, you asked me to do it.”
Narrowing her eyes, she waited as he circled around to enter the hallway from the other end. Perida immediately went to intercept him, and while Janvier flirted with her using that lazy Cajun charm, Ashwini crept out and down to the curtains, hoping like hell there were no security cameras in the hall. She’d spotted none, but she’d have felt better if she’d been able to do a full scan.
Unfortunately, there was no time—according to the gossip Ashwini and Janvier had both picked up, Callan intended to move against Antoine tomorrow morning. The instant he did, Atlanta would turn into a bloodbath as the Beaumont vampires went up against the Fox kiss. Knowing Nazarach, the angel would let the city burn no matter that it was the innocent who’d get caught in the ensuing inferno.
Holding her breath until the edge of the curtain flickered yellow, she made it back to her hiding spot just as Perida laughed and pushed Janvier gently in the chest. Janvier put a hand dramatically to his heart but backed off, calling out a friendly bonne nuit as he disappeared around the corner.
Perida was still smiling when she reached her spot in front of Monique’s room. It didn’t last long. “Fire!” Screaming out the warning, she unlocked Monique’s door and ran in to grab the hostage.
The gorgeous Beaumont vampire had obviously been asleep, her body clad in a filmy white nightgown that barely touched her thighs. However, she assessed the situation fast. “Go, help put out the fire,” she ordered Perida. “I’ll make my way outside.”
Instead of obeying, Perida took Monique’s arm and began to pull her down the corridor. “I don’t think so, Ms. Beaumont. You stay with me.”
“Where exactly do you think I’ll run in a nightgown and bare feet?” came the lethally cultured response.
“You’re as immortal as I am,” Perida said, every inch the cold-eyed enforcer. “A bit of weather and a few cuts won’t do anything but inconvenience you for a couple of minutes.”
“Then perhaps I wish to stay for another reason.” Monique’s tone was all innuendo. “He is rather delicious.”
Perida’s back snapped steel straight… leaving her vulnerable for the barest fraction of an instant. It was all Ashwini needed. Slipping up behind the enforcer, she hit Perida hard enough on the back of the head to have killed a human. It only just put the vampire out. The other vampire, the beauty, stared at her. “Who are you?”
“I’ve been sent to retrieve you.”
“I’m not planning on leaving.”
Ashwini gave the other woman a smile she’d learned to form in that white-on-white hell her brother had dumped her in, all the while telling her it would hurt him more than her. “You signed your Contract in blood. You’re now in default.”
Monique’s face went sheet white. “Surely he won’t hold me to account for that.” A wire-thin voice. “I was under duress.”
“Doesn’t look like it. Now shut up and follow me.”
The fact that Monique suddenly turned meek told Ashwini all she needed to know about Nazarach. “Down here.” Grabbing the vampire’s arm, she thrust Monique into an alcove an instant before several of Callan’s men came pounding down the corridor. Raising her arm, she pointed toward the smoke. “Fire’s that way!”
One almost stopped, his eyes narrowing, but then a shout went up as someone found Perida’s collapsed form and he went running. Ashwini pulled Monique out of the alcove, pelting down the hall at breakneck speed.
“Ash!”