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Alive and well, and fashioning himself as the self-appointed leader of what had been shaping up to be a massive Rogue uprising. What could still be, considering that Marek had managed to elude the assault that took out his fledgling army and their base of operations.
"My brother is many things," Lucan said thoughtfully, "but I assure you, he is utterly sane. Marek has a plan. Wherever he escaped to, we can be sure that he is working on that plan. Whatever he's up to, he means to see it through."
"Which means he needs to rebuild his numbers and build them fast," Gideon said. "Since it takes time and a lot of bad luck for a Breed vampire to go Rogue on his own, perhaps Marek has started looking for a way to give his recruiting efforts a little boost--"
"Crimson would make a hell of a draft card," Dante interjected.
Gideon shot him a sober look. "I shudder to think what Marek could do with the drug if it went global. We wouldn't be able to contain an epidemic of Breed civilians suddenly turning Rogue on Crimson. It would be complete anarchy all over the world."
While Dante hated to consider that Gideon's speculations might be right, he had to admit he'd been having similar thoughts himself. And the idea that Tess's boyfriend was involved--that Tess herself might have anything at all to do with the problem Crimson was posing for the Breed--made his blood run cold in his veins.
Could Tess know anything about this? Could she be involved in some way, maybe aiding her boyfriend with pharming supplies from her clinic? Did either one of them realize what Crimson was capable of? Worse still, would either of them care, once they learned the truth: that vampires were walking among humankind and had been for thousands of years? Maybe the idea of a few dead bloodsuckers--or the entire race--wouldn't seem like such a bad thing from a human's perspective.
Dante needed to know what Tess's role in this situation was, if any, but he wasn't about to put her in the crosshairs of a Breed war until he found out that truth for himself. And there was a mercenary part of him that wasn't at all opposed to getting close to Tess in order to get close to her scumbag boyfriend. Close enough to kill the bastard, if need be.
Until then, he just hoped the Order could clamp a lid on the Crimson problem before things escalated any further out of control.
"Hi, Ben. It's me." Tess closed her eyes, sank her forehead into her hand, and let out a sigh. "Look, I know it's late to be calling, but I wanted you to know that I really hate the way we left things earlier tonight. I wish you had stayed and let me explain. You're my friend, Ben, and I've never wanted to hurt --"
A piercing beeeeep sliced into Tess's ear as Ben's answering machine cut her off. She hung up the phone and settled back on her sofa.
Maybe it was just as well that she didn't get a chance to finish. She was rambling anyway, too wired to sleep, even though it was almost midnight and her shift at the clinic would be starting in roughly six hours. She was awake, unnerved by the entire evening, and worrying over Ben, whom, she reminded herself again now, was a grown adult and not her responsibility.
She shouldn't worry, but she did.
Aside from Nora, who never met a stranger, Ben was Tess's closest friend. Her only friends, in fact. Without them, she had no one, although she had to admit her solitary way of living was by her own design. She wasn't like other people, not really, and that awareness had always kept her separate. It kept her alone.
Tess looked down at her hands, idly tracing the little birthmark between her right thumb and forefinger. Her hands were her trade, her source of creative outlet as well. When she was younger, back home in Illinois, she used to sculpt when sleep eluded her. She loved the feel of cool clay warming under her fingertips, the smooth stroke of her knife, the slowly emerging beauty that could be coaxed out of a shapeless mound of plaster or resin.
Tonight she had brought out some of her old supplies from the closet in the hallway; the box of tools and half-rendered pieces sat in a cardboard file box on the floor beside her. How often had she retreated into her sculpting to distance herself from her own life? How many times had the clay and knives and awls been her confidante, her best friend, always there for her when she could count on nothing else?
Tess's hands had given her purpose in life, but they were also her curse and the reason she couldn't trust anyone to truly know her.
No one could know what she'd done.
Memories battered the edges of her consciousness--the angry shouts, the tears, the stench of liquor and heated, panting breath blasting across her face. The frantic pumping of her arms and legs as she tried to escape hard, grasping hands. The weight that crushed down upon her in those last few moments before her life tumbled into a chasm of fear and regret.
Tess shoved all of that out of her mind, just as she'd been doing for the past nine years since she'd left her hometown to start her life over again. To try to be normal. To fit in somehow, even if that meant denying who she really was.
Is he breathing? Oh, my God, he's turning blue! What have you done to him, you little bitch?
The words came back so easily, the furious accusations as cutting now as they had been then. This time of year always brought the memories back. Tomorrow--or rather, today, now that it was past midnight--marked the anniversary of when it all went to hell back home. Tess didn't like to remember it, but it was hard not to mark the day, since it was also her birthday. Twenty-six years old, but she still felt like that terrified girl of seventeen.
You're a killer, Teresa Dawn!
Getting up from the sofa, she padded over to the window in her pajamas and lifted the glass, letting the cold night air rush over her. Traffic hummed from the expressway and on the street below, horns honking intermittently, a lone siren wailing in the distance. The chill November wind sawed through the screen, riffling the sheers and drapes.
Look what you've done! You fix this right now, goddamn you!
Tess threw the window wider and stared out into the darkness, letting the night noises cocoon her as they muted the ghosts of her past.
Chapter Thirteen
"Jonas Redmond has gone missing."
At the sound of Elise's voice, Chase turned off his computer monitor and looked up. Discreetly, without letting her see his movements, he slid the utility knife he'd recovered several hours ago while on patrol with Dante into one of his desk drawers.
"He went out last night with a couple of friends, but he didn't return with them."
