Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession (41 page)

Chapter 15

M
adison didn't bother to wonder why no one kept her from leaving the dark room. She was absorbed in getting away as fast as possible.

She ran down a dim corridor punctuated by other open doors until she found stairs heading down. There was only one wall next to the staircase. The other side showed a gaping hole of nothing, open to the night. The meager illumination of distant streetlights helped in her race for freedom.

After descending four floors, she hit flat ground. Only then did she stop to take stock of her surroundings, because she had to. She'd need to find this awful place again.

She made quick mental notes.
Shabby building. Deserted. Derelict. Big dark holes where windows should have been.
Due to the unsoundness of the structure, the whole thing may have been slated for destruction. What was left of it sagged on its foundation; just the kind of place for keeping a kidnap victim, or hiding a body, though her kidnapper had been inexperienced enough to have forgotten to lock the door.

What about the body?

Glad she hadn't had to see it, she knew help would be needed for those details. Police.

Madison took precious seconds more to look herself over and get her trembling under control. Everything seemed fine, which under the circumstances was a blessing. She still wore her dress, and both shoes. Her knees were bruised, her fingernails were chipped, but if she had been able to get away so easily, what had the guy gained by accosting her on the street in the first place? She hadn't carried a purse or wallet. She didn't own any jewelry.

“Not a robbery, then.”

Her fingers were cramping from holding tightly to the sweater she'd found. Her mind raced. One thing was crystal clear. Detective Crane had been right in that pieces of clothing were turning up all over the place. At least, thankfully, this sweater didn't belong to anyone in the Chase family.

What if that body turned out to be one of the Yale girls?

She had to get help, when the biggest problem facing her now was having no idea where she might be.

“Damn it to hell and back!”

The curses she uttered followed her through the dark as ran down the street in search of a car to flag down.

* * *

St. John was too worried about Madison to consider the mortal in the doorway anything more than a hindrance.

“I'm looking for Madison,” he said, already moving toward the window.

“How did you get in?” the man demanded.

“How did you get in?” St. John countered.

The man held up a key. “It was under my door. Madison must have put it there.”

St. John had no time for explanations or hiding his next move. He sat for a moment on the sill before swinging his long legs outside, said, “Tell her I came by,” and jumped.

He landed on the sidewalk in a crouch, with one hand touching the ground and his chin lifted. The malignant odor of the rogues was stronger, though they weren't advancing as fast as he had anticipated, and were still outside of the city.

What good was hurrying, he supposed, when they and their counterparts had been after him, unsuccessfully, for centuries. When animals like these had plagued the Seven for an eternity.

As he straightened, he wondered how Simon Monteforte been able to fool the rest of the Hundred about his position within the community. Monteforte had hidden his darkness from the other creatures, when fooling the Hundred wasn't easy. Nearly impossible, in fact. Yet the old monster would now call attention to the beings who actually ruled most of London, and quite probably cause a rain of bloody terror to fall upon the innocent bystanders who got in their way.

No doubt Monteforte pined for the Grail, like so many others before him. He would shake the foundation of the Hundred to gain the knowledge St. John possessed. Thinking to bargain with the lives of the people in London, he would demand to know the resting place of the most holy of religious relics, sought for centuries and protected by the Seven Blood Knights bound to it.

Monteforte desired the magic that went with the chalice of Christ. No doubt he believed that with the Grail in his possession, Monteforte would have power beyond belief, and command the Seven.

Mason LanVal, the last of the knights to be added to the Seven, had been entrusted with the task of hiding the Grail, and was its keeper still, as far as St. John knew. Had Nosferatu been sent after LanVal, as well? Perhaps monsters were emerging all over Europe, hoping to track down his reclusive brethren.

Monteforte. Traitor.

Very bad news, indeed.

He had found what he'd been seeking, but was torn. Tonight, he had made a promise to keep a special mortal safe. His vow, meant for protecting the masses, or as many of them as he could manage, had truly enlarged in scope.

“Where are you?” he called to Madison, sending his senses outward. “I know you're near.”

He looked down at his feet. She had been here, on this spot. He saw her in his mind's eye as a shimmering outline of pale gray mist.

“I can smell you, little Slayer.”

Her fragrance lingered, hanging on the damp night air like a cloud partially tainted with the iron odor of fright, and blood.

Icy knife pricks of discomfort returned.

He had told Madison to run, and she had done so, blindly. Instead of sprinting to what she would think of as safety, however, she had met someone else along the way. Some
thing
else, smelling not quite so sweet.

He instantly recognized the image forming next to hers in his mind. Stewart Chase. The twins had indeed found each other here, not long ago. And all because St. John had left her alone for what was, in his world, an insignificant amount of time, but was in hers direly significant, the difference between life and death and another type of existence after real breath was gone.

St. John tried to appease the gnawing marks on his back that continued to pain him. Even without Nosferatu on the way, his dealings with the Hundred, and among them a traitor of the worst kind, this particular meeting between Madison and what was left of her brother could have bad consequences for everyone.

Monteforte would know this, too, and that in splitting his allegiances, St. John would become weaker in regard to any one of them.

The screech of sirens roused St. John from thought. The sirens were close, slicing shrilly through the heaviness of the otherwise deceptively quiet London night. Intermittent with those sirens, he heard the approach of a car.

He spun, slamming his stinging back against the side of the building, and waited for the arrival of the woman he felt with every sense in his body. The flame-haired object of his soul's desire was coming back to him. Stewart, bless that damn hybrid, hadn't harmed his sister.

When the car pulled up, he saw Madison through the window. He couldn't rush out there and tear the door from its hinges. What he could do, though, was offer up a prayer of thanks for her return, even though his prayers were seldom, if ever, answered.

* * *

As the detective's car came to a stop in front of her hotel, Madison shivered. Her inner radar told her that St. John hovered just out of sight.

She wasn't sure she could withstand another encounter with him just now. Yet she couldn't wait for it.

He had warned her to run because he believed the creature in the Germand hotel lobby had been extremely dangerous. She knew he'd been right. Just the sight of that hotel had caused a flare of unease in her. And there had been still more danger on the surrounding streets.

“You'll need to come back to the department with me to make a statement,” Crane said, cutting the engine. “You have time for a quick shower and a change, that's all.”

Probably sensing the distressing way he had put that, he hurried on, more gently. “You look like you need that shower, as well as a good, stiff drink.”

Madison searched the dark. “They'll find out who's in that place, and who the sweater belongs to?”

“We'll do our best.”

The detective got out of the car, crossed to her side and helped her out. She hated the fact that she needed his arm in order to stand.

“I'll take you up,” he said in a tone that let her know he'd accept no argument.

“I can shower by myself, Detective.”

“Of course you can, so I'll wait in the hall.”

He wasn't smiling when Madison looked. His forehead showed deep furrows as he said, “You saw St. John again? Could the blood on your hands be his?”

“No. Not his.”

She didn't dare address the reason why the detective had been spying on her, and instead thought about the Germand hotel, and how wrong it had felt leaving St. John there. Had it only been hours ago that he'd held her in his arms?

“Is something wrong?” the detective asked.

“Funny question, isn't it, given the circumstances,” she said.

She realized as they passed through the lobby that she'd begun to hate this place, and every hotel like it.

“There's a hospital a few blocks away. It might be a good idea to stop there,” D.I. Crane said in a tone of honest concern.

“Thanks, but I really do need that shower.”

Her stomach was queasy, but Madison couldn't recall the last time it hadn't been. As for the weak-kneed condition currently crimping her style, well, that had to go. She was smarter than this, stronger than this. She was alive. She hadn't been hurt by whoever had abducted her. In fact, she had gotten away without much fuss at all, as bizarre as that was.

Her journalistic side wanted to know why she had been allowed to leave the scene of a possible homicide, and why her abductor had let her walk when he had to figure she'd go straight to the police. The detective beside her had probably asked himself those same questions.

Would he also consider that whoever had taken her to that apartment might have done so for a very specific reason? So she would find the body in it?

The clock over the lobby desk told her she'd been gone an hour. One freaking hour, when it felt like twenty.

She eyed the detective as they approached the elevator, finding it interesting that he'd give her a pass to return to the hotel for a quick cleanup, when that kind of leniency surely had to go against police policy in any country. She had been part of a crime scene. Even after they'd taken samples from under her nails, she remained the bearer of important details, and a credible witness.

Contrary to Teddy's analysis, British D.I.s weren't stupid or notorious for fits of lovesickness. Nevertheless, too damn many things were popping up that any skilled journalist would have gone after with lights and cameras blazing...which was exactly what she intended to do.

As she and the detective stepped into the elevator, the smell of the blood on her hand made her stare at her fingers. She'd bitten some guy, acting like one of Stewart's vampires. She had tasted the awful stuff twice tonight, and wondered how vampires could like it.

However, the dried blood on her hands seemed to signify something of real consequence. And damn if that didn't always bring her back to Stewart, and the way his insane explanation for the events of the past two days would go down.

Vampires. In London.

As the elevator started up, Madison delved into her memory of her brother's files, unable to help herself. Because there had been, she was sure, blood on the old man's lips at the Germand.

Blood that may not have been his.

Stewart had written that there were two Londons, one for the living and one for the dead, and that the two worlds had collided in the worst possible of ways. He had suggested that innocent people were suffering the consequences of the secrets known only to a few savvy souls.

What if there were actually such things as vampires, and everything she'd been through was tied in to that?

What if what she had seen on the old man's face at the Germand had been blood, as in he'd been drinking some?

What if vampire existence somehow explained the disappearance of the four Yale girls who had been seen at that hideous hotel, and Stewart knew it and that's why he'd come here?

Vampires, in London.

For real.

Screw the shaky stuff.
She had a job to do and by God, she would do it. Finding that body tonight only served to up the ante.

“I remembered something,” she said to D. I. Crane. “I'm sorry I can't recall where the information came from, but it was to check out a hotel around the corner called the Germand. Do you know it?”

The detective nodded. “Fancy place for fancy people.”

Again, she thought of the image of the old man in green.

“Can you send someone there to investigate whether the girls might have been there recently?” she asked. “Right away?”

“I can, and will,” he said, eyeing her quizzically. “It was a good tip? Trustworthy?”

“As good as it gets.”

She was shivering again, and positive that Christopher St. John waited for her. He felt close enough to touch.

Who was St. John, really?

He had rubbed his hands over her on a dance floor, and had taken her, body and soul, in a hotel room. He had stepped in front of her on the street, and in that awful hotel, in an attempt to protect her.

Protector.
Beings who were liaisons between immortals and humans. This was the term she had bandied about the night she'd met him. And just after he'd offered his assistance with this case.

St. John.
With his easy access to all sorts of clubs and private hotels, was there any doubt that he might also be socially well placed enough to be able to pull the strings necessary to get her a shower and her current chaperone?

Had the Protector, in lieu of not being able to do his job, recruited someone else to do it for him?

She gave the detective a covert glance before her gaze strayed to the bloodstains on her hands.