A Touch of Crimson
Downtime to get her head on straight and catch her bearings—that’s what she needed. Then she could plan her next steps. Steps that would lead her away from Adrian. The temptation he presented was too great. She couldn’t trust herself around him.
Sliding into the backseat of a cab, Lindsay directed the driver to take her to the Belladonna hotel. Mr. Gadara had offered her one of the finished suites until he could make arrangements for her to move into one of his residential properties. She’d been surprised by how sweet he was. For such a powerful and well-known public figure, he seemed remarkably down-to-earth and approachable.
She pointedly ignored the fact that whatever sort of being was driving the cab was sending out the kind of malevolent, inhuman vibes that would formerly have put him on her hit list.
“It’s your lucky day,” she murmured, meeting the curious glance the driver shot her through the rearview mirror.
Lindsay pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned it back on. She wasn’t surprised when it chirped a multitude of voice mail and text message alerts. Steeling herself against a suddenly knotted gut, she read the text messages first.
No trouble til I get there, pls (this is Elijah BTW)
“Aw, fuck,” she muttered, feeling like an asshole for leaving him holding the bag. If he got in trouble because of her . . . Well, he just better not or she’d be pissed at Adrian for not being fair.
Then Adrian. Call me.
She dialed his number.
“Lindsay.” His voice, modulated and smooth, made her grip tighten on her phone. “Are you in Anaheim?”
“Not yet. I just landed.”
“You shouldn’t have left,” he said with the arrogance she was beginning to adore. “That said, it’s best that you did. Something’s come up. It’ll be a day or two before I can get to you. Elijah will join you until then. Don’t ditch him again.”
Even across the cellular waves and despite his steady tone, which gave nothing away, she knew he was troubled. She could feel it. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m . . .” His voice trailed off. “No. I’m not okay.”
Her spine straightened. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not in a place where it would be safe to discuss it.” He exhaled audibly. “I wish I could speak freely. There are things I want to get off my chest that only you would understand.”
“Adrian.” She leaned forward, prepared to tell the driver to turn around. “I’ll come back if you need me.”
“Always,” he said, so simply, as if it wasn’t deeply profound that a being of his power was reliant on her for anything. “But not now. You’ll be safest at Angels’ Point.”
“Actually . . .” Lindsay found herself hesitating to put the necessary distance between them. It didn’t seem like the time—not while he needed her. But she couldn’t lie to him or hold off the inevitable, either. Whatever it was they had between them, it was based on baring sides of themselves they exposed to no one else. “I’m on my way to the Belladonna. I’m going to stay there until I can find a place of my own. You said I’d be safe with Gadara.”
There was a short pause. “Keep Elijah with you at all times. Stay in the hotel as much as possible and don’t hunt.”
“I won’t. I know we need to discuss the logistics first.” She’d need his help to take down the vamps who had killed her mother. As reckless as she could be at times, she didn’t have a death wish, and she didn’t want to inadvertently endanger Adrian by crossing a line or breaking a rule she wasn’t aware of.
“When you left Vegas, were you leaving me as well?”
Her stomach tightened. “I felt like I had to. I . . . want you. If it was just sexually, I’d be okay. But the more I’m with you, the more I like you. I’m not as good at fighting those kinds of feelings. I can’t say no to you, and we both need me to.”
The silence stretched out this time. Long enough that Lindsay feared she’d lost him. “Adrian?”
“I’m here. You just . . . surprised me. Your decision to leave in order to protect me is unexpected.”
“I’m not worth falling over,” she muttered. “I promise you that.”
“I disagree.” Although his tone didn’t alter, she sensed a change in him. “I like you, too, Lindsay. You fascinate me. For someone of my years, that’s a rare gift. I intended to let you go, if you agreed to stop hunting. But I’ve changed my mind. We’ll pick this up when I get back and reach a compromise.”
Lindsay’s brow arched. Adrian compromising on anything wasn’t something she pictured easily. He always seemed to end up getting what he wanted. He was a favored son, this warrior angel with his bloodstained wings. And he captivated her completely.
“I have to thank you,” she said, “for calling my dad. He would’ve worried himself sick.”
“It was my pleasure.”
“It means a lot to me that you thought of it.”
“I can’t help but think of you,” he said in a low, intimate tone. “I haven’t been able to stop since we met.”
God . . . she felt the same way. They were in such deep shit with each other. “Whatever you have to do, please be careful.”
“Don’t worry, neshama. Nothing can stop me from finishing what we started today.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what you’re calling me?”
“Ask me again,” he purred, “the next time I’m inside you.”
Shivering against a sudden flare of sexual heat, Lindsay said a hasty good-bye and ended the call.
She knew she’d done the right thing by leaving, but that didn’t stop her from regretting it. Especially now that she knew he needed her with him to listen and offer support.
Damn it . . . she had to get a grip and think, but her lungs were constricted by a ferocious pressure to return to him. Although her mind knew the most reasonable and selfless course was to stay away, there was a driving need inside her demanding she go back and take him. Claim him. Make him irrevocably hers. The rapacious urge was so intense, it frightened her.
She’d never had trouble holding to her decisions, but with Adrian it felt like she was battling with herself . . . with a high risk of losing. He was a glorious being, proud and dangerously beautiful. His sole purpose was hunting the very creatures she hated and wished dead. If she destroyed him, if she derailed the work he did—which was so important to her—she’d destroy herself. But knowing the consequences didn’t seem to quiet the furiously whispering devil on her shoulder.
Holding to her chosen course of action by more willpower than she should have needed, she sent Elijah a text message: c u @ the Belladonna.
“This is for the best,” she told herself, earning another wary glance from the driver.
The verbal reinforcement didn’t help as much as she wished it would.
“Whatever the most disastrous thing you can imagine is, the reality is worse.” Torque shoved a pillow behind his back and leaned into the headboard attached to the wall. He was careful to keep his leg away from the slender shaft of sunlight sneaking through a tiny parting in the blackout curtains of his motel room. “Word on the street says Phineas is dead—from an unprovoked vamp attack.”
There was a long pause, filled only by his father’s deep and steady breathing. “Dead? Are you certain?”
“As certain as I can be without hearing it from Adrian himself. He’s been out of town since I arrived. My guess is that he’s hunting down those responsible.”
“Without a doubt.”
Torque allocated unlimited resources to the cabal he’d managed to infiltrate into the area, which gave him—and his father—access to fairly accurate reports of Adrian’s and the other Sentinels’ activities. Of course, Adrian kept a high profile on purpose, and Torque had long suspected that the cabal members had gone unmolested only because the Sentinel leader willingly looked the other way. You can see me coming and I’ll still get the jump on you seemed to be his message.
“I was hoping to meet with him,” Torque said, toying with a throwing star, “to let him know we had nothing to do with this.”
“No. He might see you as a fair trade for Phineas—someone he loved and relied upon for someone equally valuable to me.”
“A small sacrifice to keep a war from erupting.”
“That isn’t your decision to make.”
“Isn’t it?” Torque threw the hira-shuriken at the wall, absently noting the star’s position in relation to the wallpaper pattern. His father was too protective, to the point that Vash served as his second-in-command to keep Torque out of the direct line of fire. While Torque understood the motives—and the paranoia that fueled them—it didn’t make the bitter pill any easier to swallow. He wanted to serve the vampire community to the fullest extent he could. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do or sacrifice to see them thrive and flourish.
“I’ve already lost one child. I won’t lose both of you.” Torque could imagine his father’s head leaning heavily into the headrest of his office chair. “Come home, son. We have the information we need. Now we need to figure out what to do with it.”
“We should send Vash on cleanup duty. If we police ourselves first, maybe that will reinforce our innocence.”
“Yes, you’re right. You can take over the hunt for Nikki’s abductors.”
“I’d like nothing more, but there’s something else.” Torque threw another star, embedding it in the wall directly beside the first. “Adrian’s been spotted with a woman recently.”
Again, a lengthy stretch of silence. “You think it’s Shadoe?”
“I haven’t known him to show interest in any other women. Have you?”
“Phineas is gone. Adrian will be deeply aggrieved, maybe enough to break a cardinal rule. We need to be certain of the woman’s identity before we take her.”
Torque’s hand relaxed. “I’ll keep digging until I know for sure.”
“If it’s your sister, we need to bring her home.”
“Of course. I’ll keep you posted.” Pulling the phone away from his ear, Torque turned it off and tossed it on the bed beside him. The hunt for intel distracted him from the grief he couldn’t bear to deal with now. When he’d Changed Nikki, he had done so because he wanted her immortally by his side. Nikki’s life was a sacrifice he hadn’t expected he would have to make. Living without her was killing him. He now understood the venom that coursed through Vash’s veins over the loss of her mate. His agony fueled him, keeping his focus sharp and his need for retribution simmering in his blood.
A couple more hours until dusk, and then he could hit the streets again. And god help any Sentinel unfortunate enough to cross his path.
Adrian had just reached Mesquite when his phone rang. “Mitchell,” he answered.
“Do you have an idea of how long the vampire was infected before you captured him?”
The somberness of Raguel’s voice snared Adrian’s complete attention. “No. Why?”
“The vamp is dead, and the blood sample degraded during testing. It was, I am told, as if his blood turned into a ‘motor oil–type sludge’ in an instant.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that.” Furious was more apt, but he made certain that wasn’t evident in his tone.
“Whatever you are dealing with,” the archangel went on, “is apparently lethal and perhaps fast-acting, depending on when the subject was infected.”
“Thank you. Your help is appreciated.”
Ending the call, Adrian looked at Jason and Damien. They were waiting nearby, looking bleak and disheartened beneath a flashing neon keno sign. Adrian wished he could have spared them this hunt for one of their own, but he couldn’t risk losing Helena or her lycan if they decided to split up. Already Helena’s second guard was traveling separately from the couple, stopping less frequently and swiftly pulling ahead.
“We need to capture more minions,” he told them. “Infected and not.”
Jason’s golden good looks were made stark by concern. “What’s going on?”
“Perhaps the end of the vampires is finally nigh.” Adrian returned his cell phone to his pocket. Jehovah does love his plagues, Raguel had said. Perhaps the archangel had been onto something.
“What a blessing that would be,” Damien said grimly, following Adrian around the corner of the casino parking lot in preparation for takeoff.
Adrian didn’t voice the rest of his thoughts.
Or we are about to be tested in ways that may yet see the end of us all.
CHAPTER 15
Lindsay fingered the keypad on her cell phone and debated the wisdom of calling Adrian. She’d been strong the first few days and refrained from contacting him, but the night before had been hard. She had roused from sleep at three in the morning, her thoughts filled with memories from a dream so vivid she still recalled it eight hours later.
She’d been standing with Adrian in a lush valley. A massive river had flowed beside them, providing the water necessary to support the miles of grasses spreading outward from its banks. The sun was bright and fierce, the air humid and almost too hot. Adrian wore only coarse linen pants and leather sandals, his hair long enough to hang to the tops of his broad, powerful shoulders. His head was tilted back, his eyes closed, his sensual mouth thinned with frustration or displeasure. There was a blade in his hand—a thick, sturdy weapon that reminded her of a medieval sword or glaive, like King Arthur’s Excalibur. He spun it deftly, absently, his skill apparent in his easy familiarity with its weight and length. He was both regal and fierce. Heartrendingly beautiful.