A Touch of Crimson
Adrian cut him off with a look. “It’s not going to get out.”
He’d tracked Helena’s other lycan guard first, catching up to her halfway to Cedar City en route to the Navajo Lake pack. Her destination showed the strength of her self-preservation instincts. Given the opportunity to flee while the Sentinels were distracted by Helena’s desertion, she chose to head to the nearest pack instead. Without hesitation, she had agreed to never speak of Mark and Helena again for the rest of her life. For her loyalty and common sense, Adrian had offered her reassignment to his pack, a promotion she’d readily accepted. He had learned long ago that positive reinforcement was a far better motivator than fear and intimidation.
“Once Mark is in Japan and Helena is Anaheim,” he continued quietly, “we’re all going to forget the last four days. None of us wants to deal with what will happen otherwise.”
A Sentinel and lycan affair. The two running away together. The consequences of that choice. All of it would be a ticking time bomb, giving ammunition to the malcontents. With the recent spate of vampire attacks and the infection he’d witnessed in Arizona and Utah, he couldn’t risk unrest among the Sentinel ranks now. The balance he’d preserved for so long was crumbling around him. If he lost control of the Sentinels, nothing would save the world from the chaos that would ensue.
Because of the pressing need for secrecy, he’d conducted the entire hunt thus far without any technological help, unable to risk leaving a trail by using Mitchell Aeronautics resources. Being able to track Helena’s rental car via GPS would have shortened the hunt, but he hadn’t been in a hurry. Affording her a few days of whatever happiness she could find while on the run was such a small concession, and it was the only one he could make. The longer she was AWOL, the more volatile the situation became.
“You and Helena can’t be the only ones to form attachments,” Jason said.
“No.” Everything seemed to be coming to a head at once. Or maybe it felt that way because he was still reeling from Lindsay’s decision to leave him. She was being selfless for him. He had to try to be the same for her, which might mean letting her go.
“You can’t be surprised,” Jason went on. “We’ve been on this mission forever.”
“I’m only surprised it took this long.” Adrian looked at Damien, who lifted both shoulders in an offhand shrug that neither confirmed nor denied whether his opinion aligned. “But what are the alternatives? Dereliction of duty? The forfeiture of our wings? Preying on the mortals we were created to protect? Who the fuck wants to live that life?”
Damien exhaled harshly. “You’d have to ask the Fallen about that.”
They walked through Gardiner, then beyond to the rental cabins where Helena was holed up. Adrian had shadowed her and her lycan by air during the night, following them along the winding back roads and small towns they’d traveled through until they’d stopped near dawn.
Reaching into his pocket, he wrapped his hand around his cell phone. He wished he could talk with Lindsay now. Her mortal heart might not understand why he would part two lovers, but that heart would know it killed him to do so. She wouldn’t see his sympathy and compassion as weaknesses. Even if she argued against the actions he was forced to take, it would soothe him just to hear her voice and unvarnished reasoning, strengthening him for the pain he was about to inflict on a friend he loved.
When his phone vibrated with an incoming call, his grip tightened on it in surprise. He slowed his stride, wondering if Lindsay had actually felt compelled to call him by the force of his desire for her to do so.
The caller ID told him it was the Point. He answered.
“We might have a problem,” Oliver said without preamble.
Adrian stopped. Oliver never labeled anything a problem unless it was very much a problem. “What is it?”
“I just talked to Aaron. He went to Louisiana on the hunt for a rogue we’ve been tracking. They were ambushed by Vash and two of her captains. Aaron was wounded enough to put him out of commission for a while. He has no idea what happened to his lycans while he was regenerating. He’s been searching for them for three days.”
Looking at Jason and Damien, who could easily hear what was being discussed, Adrian saw the despair he felt reflected on their faces. Too much. Too fast. Like dominoes, everything was toppling in rapid, unstoppable succession.
“You sent a team to retrieve him?” Adrian asked.
“Yes. But after Phineas and the attack on you, I thought you should know it was the lycans Vash was after.”
“Is it possible they’re the ones responsible for Charron’s death?”
“I thought of that. Too young, the both of them.”
“Keep me posted.” Ending the call, Adrian started forward again, spurred by the driving need to get back home, where he could regroup and take the offensive. He could only hope that compiling all the information he’d obtained over the last week would lead to an understanding of what the fuck was going on and why everything had gone to shit in a matter of days. “Let’s get this done,” he said to Jason and Damien.
As they neared the cabin, he freed his wings. The metallic odor that teased his nostrils was instantly recognizable. No light shined from the unit, intensifying Adrian’s foreboding. He raced the final distance to the door, disengaging the lock with a thought before he reached for the knob. The stench of congealing blood hit him with enough force to rock him backward a step. He willed the lights on, even though he didn’t require illumination to see.
With a curse, he averted his gaze from the carnage that was more horrifying under the harsh glare of flickering fluorescent lighting.
Jason stepped into the cabin and froze. “Fuck me,” he gasped, before pivoting and stumbling out the door.
Damien entered next. His sharp inhale betrayed his shock and dismay, but he remained at Adrian’s side, his gaze darting around the room as he took in the entirety of the grisly tableau before them.
Knowing he needed to provide strength to the two Sentinels, Adrian scrubbed both hands over his face and rolled his shoulders back. He turned his head forward again, breathing through his mouth. The sight of a wing lying on the floor blurred, then cleared as tears coursed down his face. The other wings were scattered about the room as if they’d been tossed away like so much trash. One hung off the end of the bed, the soft pink and gray feathers now stained with blood. They’d been clawed from Helena’s back, leaving two rows of three stumps protruding from her graceful spine.
The fallen Sentinel lay prone on the bed, her sightless eyes trained at the door, her golden hair plastered to her cheeks and back with dried sweat and blood. Her lycan lay sprawled on the floor at the foot of the bed. Two unsealed punctures in his neck explained the sickeningly white pallor of his skin. Adrian doubted there was a drop of blood left in Mark’s body.
“This is hell,” he said gruffly, shaken to his soul by the waste—the wrongness—of it all.
Damien looked at him. “Why didn’t it work?”
“Why would it have? She wasn’t punished. Her wings were taken by her lycan lover, not a Sentinel. He was bitten by a—” Adrian walked over to Helena’s body and peeled back her upper lip. He stared for a long moment. “Her canines aren’t elongated.”
“Maybe they retracted when she didn’t fall completely.”
Adrian’s gaze lifted skyward, corrosive grief burning through his veins. His fingers sifted through the once glorious strands of Helena’s hair. She’d been more than a friend. She had been proof that failure was not inevitable, that it was possible, if they were strong enough, to serve their mission without forfeiting their faith in the process. Now that hope was lost, withering in an agonizing death along with a seraph whose heart had been so pure that only love could destroy it.
For the first time, he thought perhaps the Sentinels hadn’t been tested so much as served as test subjects to answer the question: Was the Watchers’ fall unavoidable?
Damien ran a shaking hand through his dark hair. “We need to clean this place.”
His hands fisting at his sides, Adrian continued to survey the damage. More than two lives had been lost here. A seraph had willingly mutilated herself in an attempt to fall. Then she’d tried to turn her lycan. If they’d succeeded, they would both be vampires now—a new class of vampire. And they would have opened the door to others to try the same. The mere knowledge of what they’d done held immeasurable power.
“Something went wrong here,” Adrian thought aloud. “Maybe ingesting lycan blood affected her fall. Maybe he could have Changed if she’d fed him her blood sooner. Maybe there was no way for them to succeed. We can’t know unless it’s tried again. Perhaps again and again. Whatever possibilities this desperate act might inspire in others must die here, with them.”
Although he spoke as if it could be contained, Adrian knew the idea would merely lie dormant for a time, waiting for another fertile mind to conceive of it.
He knew, because the idea had once been his, long ago.
And not so long ago.
CHAPTER 16
“She’s here in Anaheim.” Torque shielded his eyes against the headlights of a car pulling into the parking spot in front of his ground-floor motel room. “But Adrian’s been gone almost a month, barring a one-night visit over a week ago when he was seen out with her.”
“It can’t be Shadoe then,” Syre said with a sigh of regret.
“I can’t say that for certain. She has a lycan guard. If she leaves the hotel for any reason—which is rare—he’s with her. It’s possible that Adrian just doesn’t want to put her at risk while he’s hunting.”
“Leaving her with one guard? Away from the Point?”
“She’s working for Raguel and living on his property. She doesn’t need a lot of protection when she’s under the wing of an archangel.”
Syre exhaled harshly.
Torque frowned at the sound, hearing a wealth of disquiet and frustration in it. Not what he would have expected from his father while discussing Shadoe’s possible reincarnation. “What’s wrong? What aren’t you telling me?”
“You remember what Adrian said about Nikki? About her appearance and behavior?”
“Like I’d forget fucking lies like that.”
“Torque . . .” Another weighted pause. “I’ve received two reports of similar sightings. These came from within our own ranks.”
“Sightings of what?”
“Disease. Infection. You haven’t heard anything?”
“No. But the cabal here is successful because of its discretion. They keep to themselves and stay focused on watching Angels’ Point.” Torque’s spymaster cabals, known as the kage, were comprised of his most trusted minions, those who took orders without question and deeply respected that he was the son of Syre. “What kind of infection are we talking about?”
“Unreasoned aggression, mindless thirst. Adrian’s description of foaming at the mouth and bloodshot eyes has been corroborated.”
Torque sank onto the edge of the bed, his heartbeat quickening. “Nikki was only gone two days . . .”
His father’s worn, comfortable desk chair creaked over the cell phone receiver. “If it’s not possible for you to definitively establish the woman’s identity by the end of the week, I want you to come home. Depending on how widespread this sickness is, we could be looking at an imminent war with the Sentinels. We need to be prepared.”
A young family of tourists walked by Torque’s window, laughing and chattering with little regard for the lateness of the hour. He turned his head away from the simple happiness he would never know and looked at the clock on the nightstand. “I think it’s even more important that I find out who this woman is. Think about it, Dad. What if Adrian’s behind everything that’s happening? What if he’s deliberately staging these attacks to give him the excuse to come after you? It would make sense if the blonde is Shadoe.”
“A blonde?”
The pain in his father’s voice iced Torque’s blood. If the woman was his sister, they were as far from looking like twins as could be. “Yeah. And I’m dying my hair now to get the blond out. How ironic is that? I’ve got a job interview with her tomorrow and we’ll see what happens. That’s why I asked you to overnight the Fallen blood to me. I have to head out in daylight.”
“Did it arrive?”
“Yes. I’ve got it.”
“Vashti should be there shortly, if you need more. I’ll be waiting to hear reports from both of you.”
Torque was tired of waiting. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can. In the meantime, think about the possibility of Adrian orchestrating these attacks and the illness.”
“He wouldn’t go to the extent of killing Phineas. They were as close as brothers.”
“Anyone will sacrifice a lot, Dad, if they’re desperate enough. It can’t be a coincidence that Vash is tracking Nikki’s abductor right back to the Point. While you’re investigating the reports of sick minions, see if you don’t also hear reports of vamp abductions.” Torque scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling weary and irritated by the chemical stench of hair dye. “I think what you’re hearing are carefully planted rumors, but if there’s any truth to them and Adrian is involved, he has to be abducting vamps to infect. And if so, someone out there is missing those who’ve been abducted. Like I’m missing Nikki.”
Missing her so badly it was eating him alive. Inside, it felt like he was screaming at the world through soundproof glass.