Reaper's Dark Kiss (18 page)

“Just around the bend,” Maggie said, hesitantly intruding into his thoughts, “there’s a new coffee place you might like.”

It was well known Vandar enjoyed freshly brewed coffee from far-off places. He looked down at her and marveled that after all he’d done to Maggie in the past few hours, she was still shy with him. He found this puzzling but charming.

“You will have to do the bartering,” he said, knowing that with a word, younglings would rush to serve him. “I have little that would interest the young.”

“You have a lot that interests the young.” Maggie rubbed herself against him, writhing with the muscled ease of a wild creature. “If they’re okay with a man making them so hot they can’t hardly stand it.”

Vandar, Lord of the Dominion, had never been seduced. He allowed himself to see in Maggie’s eyes all that she promised, and it was everything. He kissed her and let his hands freely wander her body. She moved against him with a slow urgency that made him hard for her. He enjoyed knowing she would give herself to him again and again, and for a time he knew peace from the agony inside him.

He should have known better than to think it would last. He felt Kraeyl before his counselor spoke. Pulling away from Maggie, Vandar turned to him and said, “What is it?”

Kraeyl, long since grown used to Vandar’s abrupt ways, bowed and said, “Could we speak, my lord?”

Whatever it was clearly wasn’t for Maggie’s ears. She sensed this and said, “I’ll go to the coffee shop.”

Vandar ran his fangs along Maggie’s neck and whispered, “No. Wait in my room.”

Maggie was still young enough to blush. Her cheeks colored under the blue-green light, and she turned to go, moving past Kraeyl.

“You did well in bringing her to me,” Vandar said, watching her go. “But you didn’t trail after me to be congratulated.”

Kraeyl looked up. The alley was a tall narrow crevice in the tunnels. “Ascend with me, my lord. This is private.”

Without waiting, Kraeyl rose straight up. Reluctantly, Vandar followed.

They stood beside each other on a narrow ledge so high up, and so far from torches, even they struggled to see.

“Tell me your hopeful news, counselor.” Vandar’s voice was a parody of good humor. “I’m sure the reason we’re up here is because you bring me news so good, it could not wait.”

Without preamble, Kraeyl said, “Oracle is here. He wants to see you.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“You ever have something happen, and it’s so bad, you forget about it most of the time?” Sky asked him. “Then something reminds you, and you think you can’t stand remembering. But then you forget all over again. Did that ever happen to you?”

Julian realized he’d seen this before. He’d seen Sky scared like this, but when? That first night in the diner? No. Not like this. Then he remembered. In the gardens, on the ledge, just before she let herself fall. He’d thought it was fear of falling off a ledge that high. Now he saw it had been something else. She’d been desperately trying to get rid of a memory, something that haunted her. What had she said before she jumped?
“I’m not a coward.”
Then after he caught her, she’d told him,
“You just banished the ghost of a hit man.”

While he’d been thinking, Sky had gone on talking. Julian wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What? You did a story on a hit man? I don’t remember seeing it in your clippings.”

“I didn’t file it.”

“Why not?”

Instead of answering she said, “He agreed to meet me on the roof of a burned-out building in Harlem. Hardly any light, I told him. I’d never have to see his face. All I wanted was to talk.”

What else would he do but agree? Once she’d tracked down the hit man, it would have been hard work for him to get Sky off his trail. Unless she fell off a roof in the middle of the night.

“I got there first,” Sky said.

No, you didn’t.
A hunter would never let the prey enter the killing ground first.

“I’d picked a building that had only one way up to the roof. After I found a good place to watch the door, I settled down and waited.”

“He was already there,” Julian said, a statement, not a question. “What happened?”

At first Sky gave him a questioning look. Then she asked, “Would you have done it like that? Waited for me?”

“He didn’t know what he was walking into.” Julian thought about it. “He trusts you, or maybe his gut told him you were too smart to write the story. It’s the only reason you’re still alive.”

Sky said, “He came up behind me, touched my shoulder, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.”

The story came in fits and starts, as if Sky could barely stand to think about that night. The hit man’s name was Greg, or that was what he told Sky. He said he’d come to talk, like Sky wanted.

“And he had the heart stone?” Julian asked.

Sky was on her feet, pacing. She shook her head. “No. Everything was going good. We were walking, staying in the dark. He was answering a question about his first kill. Then suddenly it all went wrong.”

Watching Sky hug herself as if she couldn’t stand the fear running through her was more than Julian could take. He got up and brought her to the couch. He leaned back, one arm behind her, the other around her. She rested her head against his shoulder.

“It was a full moon. He stood right in a shaft of moonlight and grabbed my arm,” she said. “I stumbled into him, looked up at his face, and I thought I was dead.”

Greg told Sky that what she really wanted to know was how men like him survived, and now that Sky had seen his face, it was a good time to show her.

“He dragged me over to the edge.” Sky looked up at Julian. “It was a twelve-story building.”

“What did he do?” Julian said, suddenly knowing why Sky had been scared of heights.

“He pushed me,” Sky whispered. She grabbed Julian’s shirt in a trembling fist. “I was falling, Julian. The ground was spinning, and I was heading right for it. I grabbed at him. I missed. I knew I was going to die. I tasted it.”

She was breathing hard. Cold sweat popped out on her forehead. She reeked of fear and adrenaline. Julian held her closer. “But you didn’t,” he said, caressing her fist until her fingers relaxed.

“He caught me,” Sky said. “By my ankle.”

Julian waited for Sky’s horror to fade enough for her to go on. During the long pause that came, thoughts of finding the assassin and showing him a thousand ways of ancient death did a slow march through Julian’s mind.

Sky said, “I was just hanging there, arms over my head, my ankle hurting from where his fist was clamped around it. He looked right into my upside-down face and told me his address, his phone number, even his social security number.”

It was all Julian could do not to demand Sky tell him where Greg lived.

“Then he hauled me up,” Sky said.

At first, Sky told Julian, all she could do was lie on the roof, panting, looking up at the stars, not really believing she was still alive.

“He crouched over me and said, ‘Now you’re too scared to write about me. Now you know how I survive. I ever read about tonight in any paper where you work, I’ll have to kill you. Don’t make me do that. You have guts. You write good. You shouldn’t die young.’”

Julian ran his fingers through Sky’s hair, letting her take her time.

“Then he was gone,” Sky said.

He let a few moments go by before he said, “But that’s not all of it.”

“No.”

Sky couldn’t stop thinking about it. “I wrote the story. I nearly filed it. I opened about a million e-mails to my editor. But I couldn’t hit Send. I started hanging out at bars when I should have been working stories. A month went by, and I realized rent was due, I hadn’t written one story, and I was running out of money.”

“What did your brother do?” Julian asked.

“I didn’t tell CJ. I knew he’d find a way to push Greg in front of a train or knock him off a rooftop. I couldn’t let that happen. Not because of me.”

The hardest part was coming, Julian knew. Sky’s heart was thudding, beating against her ribs so hard a mortal would have felt it.

“I felt like a coward for not filing that story. I went down to Pier 16 around one in the morning. Just going there that late was a way to kill myself. I didn’t need the East River.”

“I’m not a coward.”

But Sky still thought she was. Julian heard the cold, sharp self-accusation in her voice. “What you lived with would have worn anyone down,” he said. “And you couldn’t talk about it. It was eating you up.”

“I went right out to the edge of the pier, and I just stood there,” Sky said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “The moon was full. You know how it makes a streak on water?” She didn’t wait for Julian to answer. “I thought it was a bridge—the Forever Bridge—and if I jumped in, I’d find whatever I thought Greg had taken away on the other side.”

Pushed before a train? Knocked from a rooftop? No. Too quick.

“He came out of nowhere,” Sky said. Greg had been watching her. He’d seen the drinking.

“He told me I kept thinking he’d show up. And in a funny way, I realized he was right. I’d been waiting to die. I’d already checked out of my life.” She took a quivering breath and added, “Like a coward.”

“Fear wears anyone down.” Julian kissed Sky’s temple, felt her shaking against him.

The late-night sounds of the city—distant cars, trains underground, mortals walking lonely streets—filled the silence between them until Sky spoke again. “‘People think a hit man doesn’t have a conscience,’ he told me. ‘I think they’re right. But sometimes we try to make up for what we do. Letting you walk away like I did, that was me making up for some badass shit. Don’t kill yourself and ruin it for me, okay?’ That’s when he gave me the stone. ‘My grandmother gave me this. She said as long as I had it with me, I had her heart with me. I’m giving it to you because I want your heart to go on beating.’ He just stood there, with his hand out, the stone on it, waiting for me to take it. When I did he said, ‘If you really feel like you have to do this, don’t try the pier. I’ll take care of it. Drowning’s a hard-core way to die.’”

“It’s hard to say why,” Sky said. “But when I took the stone, I knew he wasn’t going to kill me.”

Julian could almost see Greg letting Sky get used to the idea that she’d die someday, but he wouldn’t be the reason. That didn’t make up for what he’d almost made Sky do, or how much fear he’d made her live with. First, Julian would give Christian a chance to avenge his sister’s suffering. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t matter, because as far as Julian was concerned, Greg’s death scroll was signed and delivered for execution.

“Where’s the stone now?” Julian asked.

“I don’t know,” Sky said.

“What happened to it?”

“My place got robbed in March. The stone was in my computer bag. It got stolen.” She heaved a deep sigh. “It’s not worth a war and people dying and you going into exile. Just let Vandar have me. It’s not like it’s forever. The contract runs out, doesn’t it?”

Five years? Julian’s beast growled. Not even an hour. He would slaughter every vampire in New York, every vampire on the
continent
. He’d wipe the Dominion off the face of this world if that was what it took to keep Sky with him. And he’d start with Vandar.

“Julian?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re too quiet. What are you thinking about?”

Protective gear. He’d need it to stake Vandar to a glacier in Antarctica in the summer. Twenty-four hours of sun there. No one knew why, but it took months to die on the ice, a slow burn until the sun finally went down.

“Summertime,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“You’re thinking evil things, brother.”

Sky hadn’t heard Viper come back with Harli. Viper was right. Julian’s face was fixed. His fangs were showing through his slightly parted lips.

Standing in front of Julian, giving him a look that would have made a sensible man run, Viper said, “Do I have to get your female away before you bite her, or do you think you can start acting like a warrior?”

Ouch
. But instead of getting mad, Julian took Sky’s hand and kissed her palm. “Sorry,” he said. “Shouldn’t be scaring you like that.” To Viper he said, “I know where the heart stone is.”

“Where?” Sky said.

“Right where Oracle told us it would be,” Julian said, talking to Sky but keeping his eyes on Viper.

There was a table near the farthest wall with short legs that put it maybe a foot off the floor. Viper made fat gold cushions float from the far wall and dropped them around it. “Come tell us,” he said.

They sat cross-legged at the round table. It was made of warped wooden planks, deeply scarred, as if something big and angry had clawed at it. As Julian spoke, Sky had the odd feeling of hearing her own story unfold from someone else’s lips. When Greg’s name came up, she felt a stab of fear. Julian sensed it, took her hand, and went on talking. Suicide didn’t come up, and Julian glossed over the drinking.

“What are we going up against?” Julian said. “Oracle practically gave us the bridge. He doesn’t give anything for free.” He looked at Harli. “What do you know about the heart stone?”

In the legends, Harli told them, it said nine stones came from the skies.

“Meteorites?” Sky asked.

“I don’t know what that is,” Harli said. “The stones fell like hail on fire, but they didn’t burn up.”

“When did this happen?” Julian asked.

Harli tilted his head back, thinking. “When the Before Time ended. The legend says they were pieces of the subliminal ground of the Furies.”

There was that word again, Sky thought,
furies
. This close to sunrise, she didn’t ask.

“
Sublime
ground?” Julian asked.

“Maybe,” Harli said. “That part was in Sumerian.” He looked from Viper to Julian to Sky to see if there were any more questions. When they said nothing, he went on. “After a long time, mortals found the stones. They could do things, like cure sickness or let a blind mortal see.”

“How do you know all this?” Julian said.

Harli looked away. “You leave me in your library to read history scrolls. I read Oracle’s scrolls.” He gave Julian a nervous glance, waiting for him to disapprove. When he didn’t, Harli said, “He wrote down legends. Lots of them. His writings say only true believers can find a stone. Legends say the heart stone saves innocents from dangers that come from being in love.”