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Isao’s silent greeting felt tense, putting Dominique instantly on guard.What happened?
Nothing here.Pause.A great many things with you, as I understand it.
I survived, Dominique countered as he paced toward the parkade’s hotel entrance.What is it you think you understand?
Garrett has told me what you tried to do. As well as the result.
Taken aback, Dominique’s long stride faltered. An alliance had been forged, Isao informed him, between himself and the wily old vampire hunter. Information sharing was part of this agreement. All in the name of security, of course.
“Merde,” he said faintly.
“What?” Jackson said.
Another bright presence approached, causing Dominique to curse again. He raked the fingers of both hands through his sticky hair and plowed through the door into the hotel’s staid and air-conditioned inner sanctum.
“What the—oh,” Jackson said when he spotted the female blood-drinker at the far end of the hall. She was petite, Japanese, and looked runway-model-fragile in her stylish coat and thigh-high boots, but her eyes gleamed as hard as black steel, and the spikes of her hair looked sharp enough to draw blood. Surprise made her delicate features go slack.
“Friend or foe?” Jackson queried out of the side of his mouth.
“Spy of a friend,” Dominique growled. The starved prisoner look he currently sported wasn’t lost on Makoto, nor was the stench of blood still clinging to his skin. Both she and her sire, Isao, were now very much aware of just how close to death he had come. How close they had all come.
I have failed you, my lord, Isao said on a wave of profound shock.
On the contrary, Dominique countered, choosing to misunderstand.You have kept my family safe. For that, you will forever have my gratitude.
But I failed to prepare you adequately for Adilla. You underestimated him and put us all at risk.
“Not a mistake I will make again. Of that, you can be very sure,” Dominique muttered as he swept past Makoto. She was little more than a century old, but at the moment she was easily his better. He was vulnerable, which made them all vulnerable, a state of affairs that did not sit well with Isao and his spawn.
Not a mistake I will make again, either, Isao promised solemnly and proceeded to lay out the situation in more detail than Dominique cared to contemplate right now.With your sister, Adilla has gained a grave advantage over you. He will use her to provoke you until he breaks you to his will. Or until one or both of you—and many or all of us—have turned to ash. Nor can you turn your back on him now. He will not let your challenge go unanswered. Not in a thousand years of night.
An excellent argument for Adilla’s destruction, Dominique thought, but swallowed the impulse before it could reach anyone who would object to that course of action.Adilla will submit. Even if I have to keep him in chains for the rest of time.
This appeared to mollify the blood-drinkers in the hotel, for no further chastising was forthcoming. He counted himself fortunate that they needed him to live as much as Adilla.
“What just happened?” Jackson wondered once they had stepped into the lift and the doors sealed.
Dominique leaned his head against the wall behind him. “Politics.”
“Oh, nice.” Picking up on the weary tone, he let that answer lie. Jackson gestured with his phone and continued. “Garrett texted. They’re all waiting in your suite.”
Dominique already knew. Cassidy’s presence in his mind had grown steadily stronger for hours, instilling him with new determination. But while she knew of his turmoil, she was also preoccupied with keeping Francesca from despairing over her missing daughter and absent son, or worse, calling the authorities.
Looking down at himself, he realized he was far more the picture of a battlefield survivor than the confident man of business his mother would expect. The wounds had healed and most of the blood was wiped away, but it still caked his hair and edged his fingernails. “May I borrow your bathroom? And your closet?”
“Um. Sure.”
Dominique made quick but thorough use of the shower in Jackson’s suite before donning the same boots and black leather jacket, along with a pair of Jackson’s jeans and a fresh T-shirt. Damp and reeking of the hotel’s floral soap, he headed for his own suite, Jackson trailing behind.
At the end of the hall near a fire exit, he spotted another of Isao’s younglings, his oldest. With his wild, russet hair and broad face, Kostya looked a little like a taller, brawnier, better-dressed version of Serge and not much older, too.
He barely had time to acknowledge Kostya’s small bow of greeting before Cassidy opened the door and rushed into his arms. Purple smudges of exhaustion shadowed her eyes. “Cassieamour,” he whispered as he tucked her close against his chest and inside his soul.Mon coeur, mon tout. A sense of peace brushed his mind as he buried his face in the loose knot of hair at the back of her head. A sense of comfort and completion. A sense of home.
“Dominique?” His mother stood just inside the suite, holding open the door, her features drawn with anxiety and a touch of displeasure. She believed he was returning from a business trip, one that had taken far too long given the current family crisis. Only when she didn’t come forward to greet him did he realize he had forgotten to alter his appearance. She was staring at him, seeing him the way he truly was: gaunt, pale, and not quite human.
“Maman,” he said, releasing Cassidy.
Garrett, standing back, nodded a grim-faced greeting.
