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Lydia breathed in through her nose, and the subtle scent rolling off the man was a shock. If she’d been a human, she wouldn’t have caught it. But as a wolven, even in her biped form, she sure as hell did.
Gus had spent some time in very close proximity to C.P. Phalen.
“Lydia?”
“Oh, ah, sorry. Daniel has a headache. Is there any way you could—”
“Pay him a little visit without it looking like I’mdoing anything?” Gus put a friendly arm around her shoulders and started walking in the direction of her bedroom. “There’s nothing I’d like to do more. Good thing I’m on call tonight, huh.”
He was so casual and relaxed… that she wondered if maybe there was a professional reason he’d been up on the second floor and smelled like the perfume C.P. always wore.
Either way, it was none of her business—and God knew she had enough on her plate.
“Yes,” she murmured. “It’s a very good thing.”
TWENTY-THREE
THERE WERE TOOmany reasons to count, really.
Why Blade shouldn’t be here, that was.
This was what he told himself as he stood draped in darkness outside of a home that was a modern castle. The sprawling structure was stone and quite horizontal, only two, or perhaps in places three, stories high. Interestingly, there was no seeing into the interior. Between the security lights that glowed and some kind of covering on the windows, it was clear that both privacy and fortification efforts had been taken quite seriously.
An SUV was parked under an extensive overhang by the front entrance, and the passenger’s side door had been left open—as one would do if one were helping an infirmed into the house. Further, the vehicle was at a cockeyed angle, as if ensuring a proper angle had been the last thing on the operator’s mind.
So the wolven was going to come back, either toshut the heavy panel or to move the SUV somewhere else.
He imagined the wolven helping Daniel Joseph up the modest number of steps to the grand portal—would she have to wait for the door to be opened by a security detail, or would they have greeted her upon arrival? And once inside, where did she go?
Exhaling, Blade looked up to the sky and then he glanced around the estate. There was a detached garage set to the right, and he was willing to bet there was an underground tunnel connecting the chick to the hen beneath the parking square. Behind the mansion, a field. Behind the field, a forest.
He knew the setting by heart, even though he had never been here before. Then again, he had done his research about eighteen months ago. Aerial photographs of Deer Mountain, as well as the valley to the west of it and this flat acreage to the east, had been his first order of surveillance when he’d learned through various sources that an antiquated, subterranean laboratory had been resurrected into service. A drone had done the surveying duty, and Daniel Joseph had been the one to fly it over the area about two months before he’d been assigned the case and started his infiltration.
By applying for that handyman’s job at the Wolf Study Project.
Funny, how things came full circle. Now Blade was here, waiting for—
The door to the mansion opened and his wolven appeared in the entryway, a slip of a female compared to the scale of the place. As she exited, she was quick and light on her feet, descending the steps with alacrity—and he was so consumed by her presence that he didn’t bother to try to get a glimpse into the interior of the structure.
Whilst she shut the passenger door and then rounded the rear of the vehicle, her head was down and he was disappointed. He wanted to see her face. He settled for watching how her body moved in her casual, simple clothing.
How did her corporeal entity shift like that? How did it work on a molecular level, two forms sharing the same space?
It was as his mind chewed over the implications that he realized why he was captivated by her. He was also two things in one, part vampire, partsymphath, and he had always struggled with the incompatibility of his biological makeup. As the latter, he cared about no one; as the former, he had a loyalty that was dispositive.
Thus he had to hide while he was in the Colony. And he was not accepted when he visited Caldwell. Both made sense. He had to protect himself to survive, and he didn’t trust his impulses any more than anybody else did—
As the wolven arrived at the driver’s side door, she opened it—and then paused with one foot lifted up on the runner. After a moment, she twisted around…
… and looked straight at him.
Blade’s heart stopped, and he felt that stirring go through him again. Her regard was so frank, so pointed, that he glanced down, wondering how in the fuck she saw him. He was dressed in black and even wearing a mask—
The tackle came from behind him, a body taking him down into the dry, pre-winter grass—and as he was roughly rolled over and a gun was pressed under his chin, he thought, Ah, she hadn’t seen him. She had tracked the movement of this human man.
Who had seen Blade.
As a broad hand pressed into the center of his chest, he assessed the intrusion into his personal space. It was a stunning blond specimen of a guard with a military haircut and military clothing, precisely the kind of man who, under very different circumstances, he might properly have enjoyed making the visceral acquaintance of—provided their roles were reversed and he was the one doing the mounting.
