Phantom Shadows (26 page)

“No.” He seemed as disinclined to move as she was. She didn’t think she had ever seen him so relaxed and content.

“You don’t think I overreacted when I told you I want to be transformed if anything else happens to me?”

“No. I think you were being smart and practical. Shit happens in this business. Even in the hallowed halls of the network.”

“Yes, but most of the shit that happens at the network is instigated by you.”

He chuckled, the rare sound of it trickling through her and relaxing her like wine. “True.” Another moment passed. “Times are changing though. You might consider making your wishes known to Seth and Chris. Someone at the network needs to know in case I’m not around and something foul goes down.”

“Linda knows.”

“Good. She seems like good people.”

Melanie smiled. “She is.” She was pretty damn courageous, too. Linda had been scared as hell when Vince, Cliff, and Joe had taken up residence in the network, but she had sucked it up and worked with them until she had lost that fear.

Unlike Dr. Whetsman and certain other colleagues.

Melanie guided her mind away from the job. She didn’t want to think of work when she had Bastien snuggled up with her. All she wanted to think about was how good it felt to have his large, warm, muscled form pressed against hers.

Well, that and . . .

“Go ahead. Ask me,” he murmured.

“Ask you what?”

“The question I imagine you’ve been wanting to ask ever since the meeting.”

“Are you sure you aren’t telepathic?”

He grunted. “I wish I were. It would take all of the guesswork out of dealing with people.”

“True.”

“So go ahead and ask me.”

“Who was the woman?”

“The one Ewen caught me draining?”

Melanie nodded as lethargy stole upon her. She shared Tanner’s belief that Bastien wouldn’t kill anyone who hadn’t done something seriously wrong. So what had the woman done? What had she been to him?

“She was a madam . . . of sorts. There were a lot of homeless children and poor children in what the ton would think of as the seedier parts of London. Always hungry. Working at a ridiculously young age to help put food in their mouths and on the family’s table.”

“I’m guessing there were no child labor laws back then.”

“No. Though a few fought for them.” He sighed. “Pedophiles are not new in our society. They were present in my youth and long before that. This particular woman catered to that sort of clientele, stealing, conning, or buying children and selling them into prostitution.”

Melanie didn’t understand people like that. People who seemed to have no conscience. “How did you find out about her?”

“There was a boy. He had been earning just enough to stay alive working as a chimney sweep when he stumbled upon a temporary resting place I had chosen after I stayed out too late to make it back to the apartment Blaise and I used to share. Blaise was dead then, recently destroyed by Roland and I was . . . lost. First my sister. Then my best friend. I had had to give up the rest of my family when I was transformed. So I had no one.”

Melanie gave him a squeeze.

“Anyway, this boy stumbled upon my hiding place and . . . He looked so damned skinny and hungry. And he was such a proud boy. I offered him a job, gave him some busy work so he wouldn’t think he was a charity case. You might say he was my first Second.” He shrugged. “I really just wanted to give him a warm place to stay, three squares a day. And his chatter filled the silence.” He sighed. “I don’t know. There might have been a little ‘I could have had a son like him if I hadn’t been turned’ mixed in there, too. It doesn’t really matter because he didn’t come home one day. And by the time I found him he was dead.”

“The woman . . . ?”

“Mistook him for fair game and sold him to the man who killed him.”

“So you . . .”

“Killed them both . . . and everyone associated with the woman. Her employees. Her other customers. I saved her for last. Unfortunately, Ewen came along just as I finished draining her.”

“He must not have been a telepath or he would have seen the reason you killed her.”

“I don’t know what his gift was. I only know he didn’t give me a chance to explain and nearly destroyed me before I finally managed to destroy
him
. I didn’t have a ready supply of blood then, so it took me three days to recover.”

“You should tell the others.”

“Do you really think knowing their friend died because he made an error in judgment will make his loss less painful or me more popular?”

“I suppose not.” She yawned.

Bastien brushed his hand over her hair. “It’s been a long night. See if you can’t get some rest.”

Melanie gave him a quick kiss and closed her eyes.

If he said anything else, she didn’t hear it. Sleep claimed her too quickly.

As Chris promised, a network employee delivered two thermal vision scopes—one for Bastien and one for Richart—and one pair of thermal vision goggles for Sheldon just before dusk.

Bastien liked the scope. So did Richart when he teleported home soon after. It fit in their pockets, and they could take it out and peer through it without altering the vision in both eyes. Call him old-fashioned, but he didn’t want to completely abandon his super-sharp immortal vision in favor of high-tech whatever.

Bastien took Melanie home once the sun set. She had a small place out in the country that reminded him of the tiny frame house Sarah had been renting when Roland had met her.

He suspected she was as obsessively neat as the immortals because the clutter he found there was minute at best. Mail scattered on the coffee table. A couple of dishes soaking in the kitchen sink. A jacket tossed on a chair.

Unable to resist, Bastien followed her into the bathroom and made love with her in the shower. It was so good it terrified him. With every touch, every look, every minute they spent together, he could feel the bond between them strengthening.

While she dressed for work, he meandered around and snooped freely. There were only two framed photographs in her small home. The couple pictured in them, their arms around each other in one and looped around Melanie in the other, must have been her parents. They looked happy in a way Bastien’s aristocratic parents never had.

Melanie’s furniture was mismatched. Some, he thought, had probably belonged to her parents. Some were purchases of her own. The atmosphere was warm. Homey. Welcoming. He wanted to sprawl on her beat-up couch, prop his feet on the coffee table, and just soak it and her in.

But duty called them both. So he took her to the network, left her with a kiss, and met Richart at UNC.

“You’re doing it again.”

“What?” Bastien looked over at Richart as the Frenchman held his thermal scope up to his right eye and scanned UNC’s campus for the fiftieth time from their position on the roof of Davis Library. “I’m doing what?”

“Mooning.”

Bastien snorted. “Last time I checked, my ass was still in my pants.”

“Not the drop your drawers and bend over mooning. The sighing as you fantasize about Melanie mooning.”

“Bollocks.”

“You’re infatuated with her. At the very least.”

Bastien thought about denying it, but . . . “Can you blame me?”

“No. But your distraction with her last night may have contributed to your not noticing the soldiers earlier.”

“So what was your excuse?”

He sighed. “I was distracted by Jenna.” He gave Bastien a rueful smile. “We’re a pair, are we not? Two hundred years old and behaving like we’re each caught up in a first crush.”

Bastien shrugged. “For me it sort of is. I’ve never felt like this before.”

Richart stared at him. “Never?”

“No time, really. When I wasn’t fighting other vampires who had succumbed entirely to the madness and avoiding fights with you immortals, I was hunting Roland.”

“I didn’t realize you fought vampires when you lived among them.”

“Hard to avoid. Sometimes they did the craziest shit. And I don’t mean crazy wild. I mean crazy demented. I knew some of them weren’t right. It just took me awhile to realize that they
all
eventually weren’t right.”

Richart grunted and looked at his watch. “Time to meet Stuart.”

“Already?” Maybe he
had
been mooning. He hadn’t noticed the passage of time. Bastien took out his cell phone and dialed as promised.

“Yeah?” Tanner answered.

“We’re heading over to meet Stuart.”

“Okay. Let me know if you need me.”

“Will do.”

Ending the call, he dialed again.

“Hello?”

Lowering his voice to a sleazy, rusty whisper, he said, “What are you wearing?”

Melanie’s laughter danced over the line. “Chuck Taylors and nothing else.”

Bastien smiled. “I wish.”

Beside him Richart chuckled.

“Are you heading over to meet Stuart now?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Be careful.”

“I will.”

“And call me afterward to let me know you’re okay.”

“I will.”

Richart gave the campus one last thermal once-over as Bastien put away his phone. “How does it feel to have people worrying about you?”

“Strange.”

“But good, right?”

Bastien nodded.

Richart put away the scope. “All right. Let’s do this.”

Bastien kept his eyes open while Richart teleported them to the site of his old lair, ready to fight if Stuart had betrayed them.

What he saw the instant they materialized filled him with rage.

Stuart had returned. And he had not returned alone.

While Stuart stood off to one side, looking as somber and itchy as a drug addict in need of a fix, nine vampires staggered around the center of the clearing.

Raucous laughter silenced wildlife. The scents of alcohol, stale sweat, and urine befouled the air. The dumbasses were talking loud and saying nothing, acting drunk even though the liquor they swilled had no effect on them, courtesy of the virus. Bastien’s gaze flashed amber as it narrowed on the loudest, who laughed and turned in a half circle as he whizzed on what remained of Bastien’s property.

On some level, Bastien knew this was no longer his home. Though he still owned the land, this chapter in his life had ended.

But damned if that kid pissing on the winter brown landscape with such glee didn’t feel downright disrespectful.

Stuart’s eyes widened when he sighted Bastien and Richart. Wrapping his arms around his middle, he hunched into his jacket and edged farther away from the others. Anxiety pinched his features. And Bastien got the distinct impression the boy wanted to say something.

The whizzer, dick still in hand, turned and saw them. “Hey,” he called the others’ attention to them. “Where the fuck did you guys come from?”

Bastien ground his teeth together and offered him a smile. It was not a nice one. “I would say your mother’s bed, but . . . I’ve seen your mother.”

Richart turned slowly to look at him and raised his eyebrows.

Bastien didn’t care. The little prick was pissing on what used to be his home.

A moment of silence passed, then the other eight men burst into guffaws.

“Ooh! Burn!”

“He thinks your mom’s too ugly to fuck!”

The whizzer’s eyes flashed a dazzling greenish blue.

Bastien nodded to him. “If you’re wise, you’ll put your wee willy away now.”

“Why? Is it turning you on? You want to suck it?” the whizzer asked snidely and gave his friends an ain’t-I-clever grin.

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear. If you want to
keep
your wee willy, you will put it away.”

Something in his voice or appearance must have registered on some lone firing neuron, because the asswipe tucked himself away and zipped up. “What’s it to you anyway?” he asked. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Yeah,” another added. “And what’s with all the black? What are you guys—Immortal Guardian wannabes or something?”

Richart never cracked a smile. “Or something.”

Bastien cocked his head to one side. “As for who I am: I’m the man upon whose property you are currently trespassing.”

“Bullshit. That would mean you’re Bastien.”

Which meant the little prick had known whose territory he had just desecrated. “Give the man a cigar.”

The whizzer exchanged glances with his buddies.

“So . . . what? He’s Roland?” one asked, peering at Richart

“I thought Bastien and Roland ran around with some human bitch,” another said.

Richart looked askance at Bastien. “You know, I’m beginning to feel a bit testy that you and Roland are so revered amongst the vampire population, yet my name remains unknown.”

Bastien glared at the whizzer. “If they don’t know your name, they can’t piss on your lawn.”

“Good point.”

“Wait,” yet another vamp said. “You really
are
Bastien? For real?”

The whizzer’s incandescent eyes narrowed. “You’re Bastien the Betrayer?”

“My, aren’t you quick?”

As one, the other men’s eyes flashed.

“Kick his fucking ass!” the whizzer shouted.

Their forms blurred.

Bastien drew his katanas.

Richart vanished, then reappeared in front of the rushing vampires, swords extended to either side.

Two heads leapt from the bodies that carried them. As they tumbled to the cold ground, Richart spun and stabbed two more vamps through the heart.

The remaining vampires reached Bastien en masse.

Bastien focused on the whizzer, disarming him while deftly fending off the others’ clumsy attack.

These vamps, like those last night, lacked the training he had attempted to instill in his own vampire followers and boasted none of the training the vampire king had driven home in his. There was a lot of exuberance and power, but no control or direction. One even overextended himself and stabbed one of his cohorts.

The bumbling buffoons didn’t appear to have ever fought together as a unit. That was somewhat comforting as it meant the vamps they were dealing with now were just random roving bands rather than a new army gathering.

These were also members of the digital generation and had no notion of what real battle was like, carrying what Bastien liked to think of as vanity weapons that they thought were cool but proved utterly useless when fighting immortals. Bowies with elaborately carved handles and animals painted on the damned blades. Shiny butcher knives that looked like they would be more at home on a cooking show or in a horror movie. A flashy hunting knife with a ridiculous blade shaped like a dragon of all things. And one weapon that Bastien could’ve sworn was a fillet knife.