37. Blane

CHAPTER 37

Blane

A man ran out of the house, a stranger dressed in ill-fitting khaki clothing, and I focused on his soul. It stayed firmly stuck. Planes above and below, how many celestial beings were in this place? I tucked Wren behind me and prepared to get my hands dirty again, but then I saw the twitching.

Joseph.

“What happened to your other body?”

“It broke, and this was the only one available. What do you think of it? Feet too big?”

The whole thing was hideous.

“Forget the feet. Voltaire has Vee.”

“Voltaire? How…?”

“He was here. We need to search every building.” I kissed Wren chastely on the lips. “Start with the pool house—if it’s clear, Wren can wait in there.”

“Are you serious right now?” Wren went back to glaring. “You survived a fight with a werewolf—the safest place in the world is in your shadow.”

She was correct, but if Joseph and I had to take on Voltaire, that wasn’t something Wren needed to witness. One of the reasons Joseph was in admin rather than enforcement was his tendency to make a mess.

“You’ve seen enough blood for today, my darling.”

“No kidding—I already slipped in entrails. But I’m still not staying here on my own. Plus Caria’s drugged, Myrtle turned into a cat, and we need to find Lola.” Wren blew out a breath. “ Myrtle turned into a cat. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d utter, and I can’t believe you kept that from me as well.”

“Would you have believed me if I’d told you?”

Wren deflated slightly. “Probably not. Unless I saw her transform, I guess.”

“That might happen. She has no control over it.”

No, she just itched like crazy for a minute or so—her signal to get out of sight—and pop . She changed form. Interestingly, Laurent had appeared to shift at will, so perhaps there was hope for Myrtle? Although Laurent had also been able to speak in his animal form, so maybe they didn’t have much in common after all.

“Can we just hurry up and rescue Vee?” Wren asked.

Back at the apartment, she’d been timid and reserved, flight rather than fight. But here at the monster’s mansion, I was seeing a different side of her. Throw Wren into the middle of a crisis, and she found the confidence normally lacking.

Forget the aetherbond, that courage alone made me want her more. How many of my kin found a woman willing to go head-to-head with a werewolf in a foolhardy quest to save an immortal? Grovelling aside, the love I felt for her wasn’t one-sided. She felt it too.

Laurent floated motionless, his remaining eye staring sightlessly at the stars. The first werewolf I’d ever seen outside of ancient journals, and hopefully the last. Were they all like him? Intolerable assholes? Or were they like vampires and humans—a mix of good, bad, and indifferent?

“Stay behind me,” I instructed Wren. She’d picked up a gun one of the guards had dropped, and I wasn’t about to suggest she leave it behind, not when she had her mouth set in a thin line and her eyes narrowed.

She gripped my hand as we headed inside, and Joseph brought up the rear. It was easy to see the path he’d taken through the house. Blood trails, random lumps of flesh, brain matter splattered on the walls… Freed of his mortal bounds, he turned into a twilight tornado. Once again, I’d need to explain the concept of moderation, but this wasn’t the time or the place.

“It’s possible they’ve left already,” I said as we skirted a mangled corpse. Wren studiously looked away from the mess. “Even on foot, they could be far away by now. Vee moves supernaturally fast, and I suspect Voltaire has the same gift.”

“Voltaire also has a car. A black Mercedes. He parked it out front.”

“You saw him arrive?”

“Uh, yes?” Her cheeks flushed. “He might have given me a ride for the last part.”

I stared at her.

“He seemed polite,” she defended.

“I didn’t say a word.”

“But you’re thinking it.” She heaved a sigh. “I always thought I was a good judge of character, but these past two weeks have been a real eye-opener.”

Was that a dig at me? I thought it might be, but we didn’t need to get into a fight, not at this moment.

“Joseph, check for the car.”

He stumbled as he hurried off, still unaccustomed to the new body. The twitching was worse than usual this time. Explaining why my assistant had morphed from a slender, reasonably handsome lawyer into a muscle-bound fool who dressed in tasteless cargo pants would also be a challenge, but one I’d tackle later. I nudged open the nearest door and found a minimalist half bath. Empty.

“I’m worried about Caria,” Wren whispered. “Lola too. What if Voltaire finds them?”

“If he has Vee, he won’t be interested in anything else.”

Joseph returned quickly. “There are no vehicles parked in front of the house.”

“Dammit all to Plane Three. We need to find them.”

“We’re not leaving without Caria and Lola,” Wren said. “And what about Myrtle?”

“Myrtle understands priorities, and she’ll get herself out.”

But of course we needed to find Lola. She had neither the knowledge nor the ability to make her own way home, and if Caria was drugged, she’d need help too. But every second we wasted in this house was another nail in Vee’s coffin, metaphorically speaking. Vampires didn’t really sleep in coffins. Well, it was possible Voltaire did, but Vee had a California king with far too many pillows. Callahan complained about them constantly.

Joseph tilted his head to one side. “I think I hear crying. Kind of muffled, though. These ears are full of wax.”

That was a visual I didn’t need. “Which direction?”

He considered for a moment, then pointed toward the front of the house. “Through there.”

When we reached the hallway, Joseph stopped, and I heard the soft sniffles myself. But there was nobody around. Unless… I yanked open the door of the credenza by the Medusa stairs, and Lola tumbled out.

“Ow!” she yelped .

How on earth had she managed to fit in there? In her previous life, Delphine must have been a contortionist.

Wren dropped to her knees. “Are you okay?”

“My legs are all tingly.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said, and that earned me another glare from Wren.

“I want to go home.”

“Soon, sweetie,” Wren promised. “I can drive you after we find Caria.”

“I want Lucian to drive me.”

“Lucian has to help Vee. A bad man has her.”

“The man who hit her?”

“Yes.” Wren gave a wet-sounding sniffle and nodded. “I’m so sorry you saw that.”

“The man didn’t take Vee.”

What?

I crouched and gripped Lola’s arms. “What do you mean, he didn’t take her?”

“It…it went dark and scary.”

Lola’s turn to sniff, and Wren reached over to loosen my fingers. Lola’s skin had turned white, and the old feelings of guilt resurfaced in a crashing wave. Fuck. I let go and gripped her hand instead.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Just take your time.”

“The dark went everywhere.” Joseph. When anger filled him, he literally couldn’t contain himself. “And the man who hurt Vee ran down the stairs, and he was saying all the bad words. And then he ran out the door.”

Why? Why would he leave alone? Vee was scared enough of Voltaire that when she realised he was in Vegas, she’d almost skipped the country. Only Callahan’s job and the fact that I’d promised to protect her had kept her in Vegas.

It was another promise I’d broken.

The devil had a reputation for lying, but I’d never done so intentionally, not to my friends. Turned out that my father had been right after all—I was a screwup.

And if Lola was correct, then Vee was upstairs.

Wren must have had the same thought because she stared toward the mass of writhing silver snakes and bit her lip.

“What did he do to her?” she asked softly.

I didn’t want to find out.

But I had to.

I ran for the stairs with Joseph, and we thundered up to the second floor. How many rooms did this place have? Doors, so many doors. I kicked open the first and found a bedroom, one that hadn’t seen a housekeeper in weeks. Clothes strewn across the floor, dirty mugs on a chest of drawers, tangled bedding. No Vee.

The next room was set up for fun and games. A spanking bench, a Saint Andrew’s cross, a rack full of whips, chains, and assorted leather implements. This was the logical place for Voltaire to have brought Vee for punishment, but there was no sign of her.

I turned for door number three and nearly tripped over Myrtle.

“Look where you’re going,” I snapped.

She must have been taking glaring lessons from Vee because she fixed me with a death stare. If cat-Myrtle had been able to talk, every word would be bleep-worthy.

“Wait in the car,” I told her, and of course she ignored the instruction. Instead, she lashed out with a claw and left deep gouges in my shin, then ran deeper into the house.

I was about to curse her again when I glanced down at the damage.

An arrow.

She’d carved a fucking arrow into my leg.

And then I understood .

And I ran.

She led me through a bedroom to a closed door, one that might have been to a bathroom or a walk-in closet or a…personal tanning room.

The barely audible whimpers coming from within tore my heart apart for the second time this decade, but as I ripped the power cable out of the socket, that heartache turned to fury. I had no idea how to kill a vampire, but I’d spend the rest of my life working it out.

Voltaire was a dead man.

He’d imprisoned Vee in the tanning bed, a heavy chain and padlock—presumably borrowed from the room of kink—fastening it shut. She might not have been able to die, but the air was thick with the smell of burned flesh, and she was terrifyingly still. There were some fates worse than death.

“Lock picks?” I asked Joseph.

“I left them with my other body.”

“Get them. Hurry!”

“They probably got shot to pieces. We need a plan B. Can’t we just tear the tanning bed apart? Or shake her out the end?”

The chain wrapped around the ends, and wasn’t she in enough pain already? Punching glass shards into her raw wounds would only make matters worse.

“Vee, we’re trying to help you,” I said. “We’re here.”

“What’s that smell?” The voice came from the doorway, and I spun to see Wren. She hung on to Lola to stop her coming any closer, and with her other hand, she held the pistol in a death grip. “It’s like well-done—” Her expression turned to horror. “Oh no.”

Oh yes.

“Give me the gun.”

“Why? ”

But she held it out anyway, and I studied the padlock. “I saw this in a movie once. Take Lola into the hallway.”

“Uh, is shooting at a padlock safe?”

“Does it matter? It’s not as if I can die. Joseph, go with them. You don’t want to ruin another body, and there isn’t a spare.”

Wren was absolutely right about the safety aspect. It took three shots to shatter the padlock, and a shard of metal lodged itself in my thigh, dangerously close to my left testicle. The wound healed fast, but it still stung like a bitch.

Although that pain was nothing compared with Vee’s. I flung back the lid of the tanning bed, and for the first time in my life, I felt nauseated. It wasn’t just the melted flesh, or the blistering, or the stink; it was the fact that Vee was a friend.

Wren did throw up. Lola was crying, even as I tried to shield her from the sight of Vee’s animated corpse.

“What do we do?” Wren whispered. “If we get her to a hospital…?”

“A hospital can’t help. Usually, she heals almost instantly, but the UV light has caused damage beyond her ability to repair.”

“There must be something… We could call Aurelia? She might know?”

“There’s only one thing.” And it was the request I could never make, not of Wren. Not when she’d already been thrust into a world she’d never wanted to be a part of. “Blood. Vee needs blood.”