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He smiled then, but it was a cold smile, a harsh smile. "Good-bye Riley. It was a pleasure, however brief."
He gave me a slight bow then turned and walked out. I released a breath, then slid down the wall and hugged my knees close to my chest.
What a goddamn, fucking mess.
But I guess I should have known fate wouldn't give me a soul mate without adding her own nasty twist.
I should have arrested the bastard when I first had the chance, then maybe none of this would ever have happened. But I couldn't undo the past, no matter how much I might have wished to. I needed to move forward.
And that meant confronting an even bigger problem.
What the hell did I say to Quinn?
Chapter Twelve
Two hours later I was still at Hanna's, but I'd moved from the inside of the house to the outside, and had parked my butt on the curb. That's where Rhoan found me.
"So," he said, plopping down beside me and handing me a cup of coffee. "I heard it all went down as expected, and you caught your bad guys. Or gals, as the case may be."
I took a whiff of the coffee and smiled. Hazelnut. Rhoan obviously knew I needed a pick-me-up, even if he didn't know why.
"Well, it didn't exactly go the way I planned-" which had to be the understatement of the year-"but we stopped them, and that's what counts."
He sipped his coffee and didn't answer immediately, staring instead at the house across the road. There were three kids standing at one of the windows, and their little faces had been practically glued to the glass for the last couple of hours. Nothing like a half-naked woman and a host of Directorate vehicles and people to make an everyday suburb more interesting, I guess.
"That older kid over there is getting such a boner watching you."
"You can tell that from here?"
"His heart rate is way up, and there's a whole lot of blood heat concentrated around one certain area." He flicked me a grin. "Although it could be me he fancies."
"Either way, he's a boy with excellent taste." I took the lid off my coffee and took a sip, but the steaming liquid did little to warm the ice that had formed deep inside.
"Undoubtedly." He paused to take another drink. "Jack has sent a team to go dig up the daughter, but he doesn't think there's going to be much chance of her being sane."
"How long has she been in the ground?"
"She was declared dead eight years ago."
I grimaced. One year would have been insanity-inducing. Eight was the stuff of nightmares. "What is he going to do with her?"
"Probably send her to the vampire council. It's up to them to decide from there."
"You think they can save a mind destroyed by being locked underground for so long?"
"Maybe." He shrugged. "The magic must have kept her alive, because even the strongest vamp can't survive that long without blood. So maybe it preserved some sanity, as well."
Anything was possible, I guess. I sipped my coffee and waited for the question that was undoubtedly coming next. I didn't have to wait that long.>The words stopped. For a moment that knife didn't move, just stayed high above me, glittering brightly in the semilight of the room.
Then it came down.
Fast.
I barely caught it. Whether it was the dust she'd sprinkled over me or the weakness washing though my body thanks to the silver, the fact was, the blade was inches from my flesh when I stopped it.
And I didn't stop it by the hilt, but by the blade itself, and the metal sliced into my flesh as easily as butter. Blood seeped past my clenched fingers and began to run into the bowl under my right hand. I didn't care. I ripped the weapon from her fingers, flipped the blade, and stabbed her.
But again I was too slow. She moved at the last moment, and the blow meant to pierce her heart got her in the side instead. A nasty wound, but not a deadly one.
