“Good evening,ma chérie.Who were these men you were traveling with?” He took her arm, helping her out. “And… why are your wrists handcuffed?” A snap of metal, and her hands were free.
He turned her to face him. “When you didn’t—” He stopped in mid-sentence as he saw her face, tear-stained, bruised and swollen, and his glamour flickered, eyes shifting full red. “What has happened?” he said sharply. “Who has done this to you?”
So many questions. So few simple answers.
She couldn’t face answering any of them. Not yet. “They have Eve,” she said instead, the words coming out high and tight.
His expression went cold. “Where?”
“I… don’t know. A basement in a large house, somewhere southwest of here. We drove for maybe half an hour.”
Antoine was already pulling out his phone, lifting it to his ear. “Noah?” He said nothing more, listening, and his gaze locked on her and grew colder still. “We’ll talk about Nico later,” he said at last, watching her. Cally couldn’t hide her reaction fast enough. She dropped her gaze as heat rushed to her face, and her fractured cheek flared with it, shame tangled with the ache untilshe couldn’t tell them apart. “I need possible addresses for a wealthy estate—”
“Just off Chestnut Street,” Belle said from inside the sedan. They both turned, and she gestured to the GPS. “Or at least, that was their previous destination. Technology,mon amour.Haven’t I told you to be more adaptable?”
“Scratch that, Noah,” Antoine said into his phone. “Get a couple of thralls down to Hopkinton Road on cleanup. Black sedan, two bodies.” He gave Belle a wry look. “One of them is somewhere in the trees.” He killed the call and fixed Cally with his stare. “Get in the car. We’ll talk on the way there.”
“We can’t,” she said helplessly. “They have an army. Dozens of men… automatic weapons. They’re holding Eve in a…” She swallowed hard, her throat closing up.
“Do they have Nico?”
“Yes. He’s in a secure cell.”
“What do you think?” he asked Belle. “Armed chattel in numbers, behind reinforced doors.”
“With a captured vampire?” she said. “They will think we are going for him, no?”
“Exactly.”
“Sounds like an entertaining evening.” She ran her hands down her body. “If I had known you were taking me out, I’d have dressed more appropriately.”
Thirty-Five
Belle drove like Antoine: fast and without any care for the laws of the road.
Fortunately, it was the early hours of the morning.
“About thirty Order soldiers?” Antoine confirmed.
“It’s just my estimate.”
“What does Darian look like?”
“Dress pants, a button-up shirt, and polished Oxfords.”
“And did he leave at the same time?”
“I don’t know. He said he was going to, but not when. I couldn’t see; they had a hood over my head.”
“So he might’ve taken some with him, or traveled by himself.”
“Or still be there,” Belle added.
“I hope so.” Antoine paused. “I would very much like to meet him.”
Cally gingerly touched her cheek. The swelling was going down as her phenomenal healing kicked in, and her chafed wrists already felt better. But her cheekbone was broken, she was sure of it, and it was taking longer to heal. She wanted to ask if it would fix itself without help, or whether there was a risk of scar tissue and… not looking herself. But she had no right to say anything, other than to answer his questions.
Antoine turned to her and stilled as he caught her with her hand raised to her face. She dropped it guiltily. “Does it still hurt,ma chérie?”
