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After a few minutes he set his sights on the trap he meant to lay for Daniel. Time to finish off dear old Dad once and for all.
First, of course, Santa Fe.
* * *
Claire showered and dressed like she was in a fog. The chains already told her that Lucian had shut down and shifted focus.
It was time, long past time, to return to her life, to the human world.
Lucian told her that Rumy had already arranged to set her up in a hotel in Santa Fe so that she’d have a place to live until she was ready to contact her family, something Lucian had asked him to do. He’d transitioned a lot of humans back to their world; a separate residence sometimes helped, especially if the captive had been gone a long time, like Claire.
She nodded her appreciation, but her hearing had sort of shut down. When she asked about his plans with the extinction weapon, he brushed her off. She didn’t need to worry about that kind of thing anymore.
He was right. She needed to let go of him and of his concerns. She needed to turn her face to the future.
But the fog remained, even as he flew her back to The Erotic Passage and Rumy’s office.
Once there, Claire recognized the chain-removal expert and something inside her spasmed, a twist of pain that stunned her.
She didn’t want the chains off. They’d become part of her. They connected her to Lucian, and she didn’t want to let go.
But she had to.
She closed her eyes and ignored how she felt. She focused instead on the complete blankness that Lucian had become, a wall of closed-off vampire. That was what she needed to do as well, to shut down once and for all.
Removing the chain turned out to be a simple process. The expert slid a thick leather band beneath the chain all the way around, then one by one made a hairline cut through the side of each link, small enough that the chain still held together. With each snip, Claire felt some of her connection to Lucian fade, one by one, link by link.
“I’ll be doing the last one now. You might experience a sudden dart of sensation, a little bit like electricity, but nothing more. You ready?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
He made the final snip, cutting through the larger link at the nape of her neck, which broke the chain. A jolt passed through her that arched her neck and made her gasp, but she couldn’t describe it as pain exactly.
“You okay?” Lucian asked. He reached a hand toward her, then let it fall away.
She touched her neck as the specialist pulled the leather away, still holding the chains in his hand. Claire took them from him and glanced at Lucian. “I’d like to keep this, if it’s all right with you?”
He swallowed hard as his gaze fell to the limp collection of severed loops. He nodded several times in a row. “Of course.”
It felt so strange not to have the connection to him anymore. And yet she still felt connected. In fact, she could have sworn she still sensed what he was feeling, but maybe that was an afterglow effect of having been chain-bound for the past several days.
“You really gonna leave us, Claire?”
She turned to Rumy. “I have to go home, to see my family. I have a different life to live.” But the words tightened her throat all over again.
He smiled, the tips of his fangs as absurd as ever on his callused lips. “Well, you can always come visit.” He handed her his card, which had his phone number on it. She took it and tucked it away in the pocket of her jeans, but she doubted she’d ever see him again.
He snapped his fingers. “Wait, I have something for you, a little going-away present. It’s not much, something smallish from one of my shops.” He reached into the drawer at his desk and pulled out a box with a big pink polka-dot bow on top. “Just something to remember us by.”
“Rumy, thank you. You didn’t have to do this.”
“Oh, yes, I did, because I want you to look at this all the time and feel guilty as hell about leaving us. No, don’t open it here. When you get to the hotel will be soon enough.”
“Okay.” Tears once more bit her eyes. She felt an impulse to hug the vampire, but she knew, chains or no chains, that Lucian wouldn’t like it.
Instead she extended her hand. He shook it once firmly, then let go, because Lucian was suddenly next to her, his hand on Rumy’s shoulder, pushing the small Italian vampire back a few feet.
Claire glanced at Lucian, surprised. The connection was gone, but he was still behaving as though she belonged to him.
He looked down at her, equally as surprised. “Claire, I’m sorry. Rumy, apologies.”
Rumy waved a dismissive hand, but Claire threw herself into Lucian’s arms once more. I’m going to miss you more than words can say.
He wrapped her up in his arms and hugged her hard. I feel the same way.
The next moment, without another word, she was flying to Santa Fe.
Chapter 14
Half an hour later, Lucian stood in the middle of Rumy’s security briefing room. One of Rumy’s team, Alan, explained the explosives setup for the extinction weapon. He’d spent decades studying and making bombs, mostly as a hobby. Both Rumy and Lucian knew him well and trusted him.
Lucian had left Claire in Santa Fe, but apparently his heart had remained behind. He’d never felt worse in his life and he hated not sensing what she felt because of the chains. He’d gotten used to feeling her one minute out of two.
At the same time, he was surprised at how much still came through, apparently a sort of leftover effect of having been bound to Claire for the past several days. He could still feel her, if just to a small degree.
“I’ll attach the trip wire to the bottom of the weapon.” Alan showed him a diagram. “All you have to do is to lift it up by the crane-loop, the way you did at Four Diamonds. And, boom.”
Lucian was only half listening, but he needed to pay better attention. He nodded. “Got it.”
Alan would help him rig up the extinction weapon to a boat, a twenty-foot vessel that Lucian planned to take to the center of Lake Como, surrounded by a disguise.
Daniel had already agreed to meet with him, to talk things over.
Lucian had suggested the location: a boat out on the lake.
With his arms crossed over his chest, Lucian’s biceps flexed. The plan would work as well as anything else—maybe better, because Daniel wouldn’t easily be lured to the depths of a cave where all sorts of traps could be set, especially involving electrical fields. But he could easily flee a boat on open water.
Daniel had indeed thought the idea perfection, no confining cave walls to hinder either of them. Maybe he wanted to pick up where they’d left off in Siberia.
