Inescapable (Eternelles: The Beginning, Book 1) (6 page)

Et merde!
She had come here in Des’ car. Hers was still parked at the Met. She’d need help. There was only one person who could come to her rescue now. Someone who knew the truth about her and Sera, who wouldn’t ask questions.

She sighed. Loathe as she was to call him, she had no other choice. He’d done his best to make her self-sufficient, and she’d never hear the end of it if she was forced to call onto his help.

Sera mattered, though, more than the disappointment she would herald in him. Adri took a deep breath.

“Ares?” she called out.

As simple as calling out his name, she could summon him. Indeed, he heeded her call, and materialized in the wrecked living room. Standing tall and imposing, black designer jeans sheathing his long legs and a tight T-shirt outlining the rippling definition of his sculpted pecs and rock-hard abs, he could pass for a playboy European football player. People were always amazed at his wholesome yet dark beauty, the pulsing magnetism from him a lure to all women, and gay men, within a range of a mile. On Olympus, everyone cowered under his particular brand of strength and power.

Everyone but her. As a child, she hadn’t feared approaching him, and this gutsy move had sealed their bond for eternity.

Still, he didn’t tolerate stupidity, which she’d displayed with her daughter so far, it seemed. She’d hear her lecture before the night was over.

“What’s the matter, Adrasteia? You really had to pull me from the most rocking party at Château Marmont for this?” He glanced around the room, and whistled softly. “Though you might have a point. What happened?”

Adri opened her mouth to answer him, but her lower lip trembled, and a sob tore through instead.

“What is it? Speak!”

She glanced up at him when he crouched next to her, one hand on Sera’s head. “It happened.”

“What happened?”

“The blood lust came today. I couldn’t stop it in time.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Tell me you didn’t say that.”

She bit her lip and shook her head.

“How?”

She recounted what she knew, obliterating no detail.

“Who the hell is this Des fellow? What does he want with you?”

Outrage filled his words, and she heard the powerful love behind them. Ares might be the god of war feared by millions, but to her, he’d always be the big brother who took her under his wing.

“He’s one of the good guys,” she stated.

He snorted. “You’ve got a crush on him.”

She smacked him on a bulging bicep. “Get out of here!”

He jumped to his feet. “Sure. You just have to ask—”

“I didn’t mean get out of this room, you idiot.” She tugged on his trouser leg to keep him in place. “Listen to me. We need to get back to
Shadow Bridge, and for that, I require your help.”

He sighed. “Oh, sure. Now I’m Muscle Man, here to do your bidding.”

He could be so insufferable when he wanted to. Adri stood and kneed him in the gonads.

“What you go and do that for?” he howled.

“It’s not about me, but about her. Don’t you remember what you said—”

They’d never spoken of that promise....

Ares drew to his full height of seven feet and frowned. “Of course I remember. I don’t say anything I don’t mean. I gave you my word I’d keep your secret, and help out with her.”

Adri blinked to ward off the tears. He was the only one who knew of Sera’s origins, because he’d been with her on that fateful night when a flaming bundle had suddenly appeared in her arms inside the stables of her
château
in the south of France.

“Then help me now, brother. Take us back to
Shadow Bridge.”

He nodded. “I’ll find a car.”

He’d taken one step toward the door when a knock resounded. With a lightning-quick move, he reached Sera’s side and scooped her into his arms. After moving into the bedroom, he motioned to Adri from the doorway to attend the door.

Heart hammering in her chest, she trudged to the suite’s entrance and pulled the panel open. Vampyres or soul stealers would not advertise their presence and knock; they’d barge through or appear out of thin air. So whoever had come calling had to be mortal. Which didn’t mean they couldn’t be dangerous.

Through the slat of the opened doorway, she eyed the bell boy who stood on the threshold. He held a heavy garment on one arm, and nodded when she widened the opening enough to be seen.

“Good evening, Miss Dionysios. Someone left this for you at reception.”
He handed over the thick coat and a set of car keys. “The gentleman said you’d know who sent this. He said to inform you that the vehicle is in your usual parking space.”

She reached for the velvet mass and the keys to her SLR.

Des
. It had to be him, for who else had known she’d left her coat and her car behind?

He’d escaped unscathed, then. But how? And again, who was he, in the end?

More pressing matters to attend to. Now that she had a means to get out of New York, she only had to get her daughter into the car and on the way back to their house. Ares wouldn’t have to use more than his muscles, after all.

She nodded her thanks at the bell boy and shut the door.

Ares came out of the bedroom alone.

“Where—”

“She’s sleeping.”

Relief crashed through her. “Help me get her to the car.”

As the big Olympian god cradled her in his arms, Sera opened drowsy eyes and blinked.

“I wanna go home,” she mumbled.

Ares dropped a kiss on her forehead. “You will, Princess. Your mother is taking you home.”

Adri sighed as she gazed at the shore of the small lake that stretched into a bay inside her private garden surrounding the
Shadow Bridge castle. She hadn’t slept since they’d returned home in the early hours of the morning, and the fatigue was starting to take its toll on her.

The soft lapping of the water against the grassy shore called out to her, her blood pulsing to the same rhythm as the waves. Pulling her in, ordering that she answer its call. Something she was loath to do, because it would mean letting her base nature win. Paying attention to the call of her heritage, the one she abhorred. Her father had pulled his power from water; she did, too. When the call of her maenad blood grew too weak to control her, the strength of any natural body of H2O won.

A flurry of joyous giggles burst through the air, and she snapped her head toward the apple grove on the side of the lake. The kindergarten had called that morning, to ask if the children could come fly kites on the plain adjoining the orchard. How could she have refused them? The sound of that laughter would be too precious to squelch. Children, and their innocence, were her soft spots, and the cunning fae who taught the kids probably knew that. Adri smiled.

Then her spirits crashed when she thought of her own child. The one she hadn’t recognized only a few hours earlier. The vampyre. Her worst fear had come true. Her immortal’s blood had not been enough to save the girl from that fate.

What was she to do now?

Fatigue and despair crashed over her, and before she could register what she was doing, she drew closer to the lake and crouched on the shore. The heels of her ankle boots sank into the silt. She paid that no mind. Instead, she reached out and dipped her fingers into the water.

A surge of power coursed through her and expanded through every cell of her body. Behind her closed eyelids, she could visualize a burst of light. Sounds of revelry, like the string music from Dionysia festivals in Ancient Greece, flitted into her ear.

Wait a minute.
She’d never heard that before in such circumstances. Something was amiss.

Adri pulled her hand back and snapped her eyes open. A thought ran through her mind. No, not possible. Her father couldn’t be close. But why else would the bond of their blood sing when she drew power like him?

Heavy footfalls crunched the grass, and she snapped her head around to face the person who approached.

He stopped in his tracks, usually-sleepy eyes growing wide. “Bloody hell, your eyes....”

She blinked. Right—he’d never seen her right after she’d stocked up on power. No one had, except Zeus and Sera. Her irises would have turned into a solid, sparkling blue shade. Doll’s eyes, Sera had once said. Adri pulled the power bristling inside her into a ball that she then buried within the core muscles of her body. When she next glanced up, she knew her eyes would’ve returned to their usual blue-grey color. Deeper on the blue, but “normal,” nevertheless.

She stood and dislodged her stiletto heels from the silt. “Craig. I wasn’t expecting you so soon.”

Mortification ramped up inside her when she thought back to the call she’d placed a few hours earlier. What had gotten into her to ask one of the top agents of the New York FBI office for his help in unearthing information about Des Roxburgh? She’d been rash and impulsive, her younger, naïve roots coming through. Time, and experience, had taught her she better be patient and not give in to any rash impulse, but sometimes, her jump-the-gun nature won over. Like today.

Yet, if Craig Tulane stood before her right now, that must mean he had information for her. “What have you found?”

He shrugged. The massive shoulders courtesy of his latent were blood didn’t seem used to that movement, which made him appear awkward. She narrowed her eyes onto him, and picked up the rumbles of discomfiture that etched underneath the rough, stone-hewn features of his large face.

What did he hide? She reached out and grasped his hand. Roiling emotions filled her. Doubt. Perplexity. A need to work out a complex puzzle. And on the edges of it all, the latent desire that simmered inside him. She released his fingers as if stung.

Craig had never been forward with her. There had always been an aura of understanding and kinship about their acquaintance. He’d been born to a were mother and a human father. An aberration, like her, created from two species that should never have produced offspring. Supernatural races couldn’t procreate across themselves, but sometimes, with a human involved in the mix, such children happened. One in a billion, literally.

She could understand him, sometimes so totally it scared her. From the first time they had met, he a wayward teen dropped at the orphanage in
Shadow Bridge, that sizzle of longing for her had threaded through each of their contacts. He’d never acted on it, though, probably knowing he wouldn’t stand a chance. No man would, except the one who had kissed her that fateful night of the masquerade ball, and then disappeared.

Like Des had disappeared?

Adri shook her head. He’d ruined her, that mystery man. Spoiled any chance for her to find something with a man. Not that many of them were worth the fight—they all lacked the spark, the thing that made them rise above the slush of lust and power-driven natures. Craig had that spark, making him one of the good guys with whom she couldn’t toil. They wouldn’t accept her “love ’em and leave ’em” attitude. Back in Sweden a century earlier, even Ulrick hadn’t accepted that she’d leave. She’d been forced to wipe his mind, make him forget he’d even met her. Him, and everyone in his household. That had hurt, because she had loved him, as much as she could love someone else, at least.

“We have to talk.”

Craig’s words brought her back to the present, and she frowned at his ominous tone. “What’s wrong? What did you find?”

His left eye closed slightly—a tic that always gave away that something bothered him. Bad.

“We need more,” he paused, “privacy.”

No one loomed inside the garden; he could talk here. But using that “code” implied something dire, with ramifications far beyond what she could’ve imagined. Her heart clenched, and she steeled her spine. The power inside her thrummed, giving her the countenance she needed to forge on. She nodded toward the mansion. “Let’s go in.”

He nodded, too, and fell into step beside her. They walked to the French doors in silence. Another bad sign—Craig always loved to rile her about her sky-high heels. The banter flowed easily between them, usually. What could be so wrong that his sardonic wit would be switched off?

And...
Oh, no.
Sera. Did all this have something to do with her daughter?

Once inside the cool and dark interior of the castle, she started toward the wing where she and Sera lived, where the girl would be asleep. But to do so would imply having to pass through the corridors of the main part of the dwelling, the one that housed the Fleur de Lys Academy—to all exterior eyes, a finishing school for gifted teens, that, however, brought together the crème de la crème of all supernatural races in order to forge them into the future leaders for their respective race. Adri might love kids, but on most days, she was wary of the hormonal, teenage hooligans that trolled the academy’s corridors while trying to, unsuccessfully, master their kind’s specific powers.

No, she’d check on Sera later. The girl had been knackered, and Ares had left her in the safety and comfort of her bed inside the castle. With runes at all corners, spells warding off any unwelcome intrusions, and even sigils on all windows to keep angels and demons at bay, Adri could be at peace. At least, as much as possible, given that she still had no clue what brewed around the vampyric assault on her daughter the night before.

Now with Craig not talking—

She nearly tripped as a Siamese cat wrapped itself around her legs. “Bloody damn!”

The feline purred, and arched its back to rub its silky fur against her naked calf. Two more animals joined the pack, twirling their lithe bodies around her feet.

Great, the familiars were on a high again. She didn’t abhor the cats but had no love lost for them, either. Something had to be up, however, because the animals always flocked to her when something brewed. The witches said it was the familiars’ way of providing comfort.

That such independent and haughty creatures as Siamese cats felt they needed to offer comfort—what on earth could be so wrong?

They got into the lift. One of the cats sank its claws into her Diane von Furstenberg silk wrap dress and climbed its way onto her shoulder. Why didn’t it simply continue up, to wrap itself like a turban around her head?

Next to her, Craig stifled a laugh behind a cough. She glared, and he grew serious again.

As soon as the doors slid open, she shot out and turned to him. They were in as private a place as someone could get on this planet. Even the Pentagon with its dozens of subterranean levels that, officially, “didn’t exist” had nothing against the underground floor at the Shadow Bridge castle. Spells, runes, witchcraft and wizardry, fae magic, sigils—all of these, and more, kept it impregnable and running with the latest technology. From here, the Fleur de Lys Society, that humans believed to be a champion of human empowerment and feminine liberation, ran with its true purpose: to seamlessly bridge the supernatural and human worlds, and keep homeostasis inside the sup world, between the different races. Last but not least, the society was responsible for the protection of the portal inside Shadow Bridge—the connection to a world of evil closed off a long time ago, in a time no one alive today, not even her, could remember.

Adri set her hands on her hips. “Private enough for you? What is going on?”

“Susan Gregory is dead.”

She breathed out. Not something terrible about Des. Thank goodness.

“I know.” The reply shot from her mouth before she could process it in her brain.

Craig drew closer, and grabbed her arm. “How?”

The cat on her shoulder hissed. She shrugged out of his grip. No way out of a confession now. If Craig knew about this murder, that might mean he had additional information he could impart. “I was there.”

“But no witnesses mentioned—”

“They don’t remember my presence.” That’s as far as she’d go.

“Damn it, Adri. If you did that, it means something supernatural is at play here. How am I going to explain that to my boss?”

Outstanding deductive powers. They’d done well when they’d signed him up to join the FBI. Nothing better than having one’s own eyes and ears in official circles.

And explain to his boss? “Since when does the FBI investigate petty murder?”

He sighed. “Murder that happened at the Met, not to mention the disappearance of The Arles Bronze. They brought in the art theft team on that one.”

That Egyptian artifact? The bronze statue of the Egyptian goddess, Sekhmet, found in Arles, France in the nineteenth century, but its real provenance unknown—a woman’s body with a lioness’ head, sparkling rubies for eyes, and an amber, flame-shaped stone set into her chest.

Adri remembered seeing it among the Met’s esteemed collection of ancient Egyptian art, and reading speculations that it may have been brought to Europe on the same ship occupied by Mary Magdalene, who left from Alexandria, Egypt for what is now France after the crucifixion of Jesus. Sekhmet’s trademark sun-like crown, denoting her heritage linking her with the sun god Ra, was a missing feature in this statue, replaced instead by thick, carved bronze waves and curls for hair. Another unusual detail—the smooth face and neck of the foot-long statue was untidily streaked by what looked like red paint, as though a child had slapped it on.

“The
Arles Bronze? That’s a gaudy piece for show.” Or not. Which spelt something really, really bad. “And how did the killer manage to kill Susan and make it all the way to the Sackler Wing without—”

Of course! The mist. No one would see him if he traveled through the ceiling pipes to his intended target.

“The Met is no small playground. This was well planned in advance….” she thought aloud.

“We’re still determining whether the art piece was stolen before or after the murder. Susan could have caught the thief escaping with it and he killed the witness,” Craig offered, sounding quite unconvinced.

“Why would the killer cross all the way to Gallery 522 with the object, which is where Susan was found, rather than make straight toward an exit?”

And to carry the heavy piece in his hands—much heavier than the vials with Susan’s blood—he most likely had to be in his human form.

“No,” Adri said. “He had to have killed her beforehand and taken advantage of the museum teeming with people to carry out his other crime. That’s
if
he was working alone….” She let the last words linger in the air.

Craig looked at her suspiciously. “How do you—”

“Well, look at that,” a soft voice crooned behind them. “If it isn’t the crazy cat lady.”

Adri froze at Sera’s spiteful tone. She turned toward her daughter, to find her throwing daggers with her eyes. If looks could kill, she’d be six feet under right now.

Seriously, what was her problem? Anger flared inside her, and she threw caution to the wind. “You’re growing catty,
ma fille
.”