Stay the Night (28 page)

Chris ducked her head. “Okay. Maybe I deserved that. But I didn't leave you alone and afraid in a strange place.”

“Didn't you? That night I woke up and reached for you, and you were gone.” He made it sound as if she'd set fire to the bed. “Do you wish to know how many years it has been since I slept through a day? I cannot remember; that is how long. Yet when I am with you—twice now—I have slept without waking.”

“I'm not a sleeping pill,” she snapped.

“No, you're mine. My
kyara
, my lover, my heart.” He turned away from her and strode the length of the balcony before walking back. “It's right in front of you and you still don't see it? I'm falling in love with you.”

She shook her head. “You just like having sex with me.”

“You've never been in love, so how would you bloody well know?” He laughed as she flinched. “You're brilliant to hold on to your heart the way you do. Me, I fall in love with a mortal. A mortal who wishes to imprison me. This should end very well.”

She lifted her face and saw the bitterness in his beautiful eyes. “It doesn't happen like this. Not this fast. I've only known you for a couple of days. We have nothing in common. You kidnapped me. I'm supposed to arrest you.” Suddenly she realized she wasn't trying to talk him out of it. She was talking to herself. “You don't know anything about me.”

“I know you don't want me,” he snapped. “That seems to be the only sort of woman I can fall in love with.”

Chris looked out at the water. She wanted him, all right. More than her career, her self-respect, her dignity, even her humanity. She was in love with an angry, handsome, omnipotent immortal who could have any woman just by sweating around her.

“Chris,” Robin said. “You've just gone completely white.”

“Yeah.” The balcony began to whirl a little. “I need to sit down.”

He brought her to one of the stone benches, sat down with her, and pulled her into the circle of his arm. They both watched the lights scatter on the gently rippling surface of the canal.

“Is this because of me?” she heard him ask. She shook her head. “You didn't know how I felt. I shouldn't have said anything. I frightened you.”

“Sometimes you do. The fangs, the drinking blood, the way you drive. I should have had three heart attacks and a stroke already.” She glanced sideways at him, and what she saw in his eyes decided everything for her. “You are wrong about one thing, and so was I. I've never been in love before . . . until now.”

Robin stared at her for a long time. “God.” He pressed her face into his shoulder.

“How scared are you?” Chris asked, her voice muffled by his tunic.

“You broke out of the apartment. You tracked me here. You are wearing a dress made out of silk scarves.” He set her at arm's length and gave her a crooked smile. “You terrify me. So what will we do now?”

“We're in this together, Robin,” she said. “I don't have any superpowers, but I am a trained investigator. From now on, I watch your back and you watch mine. When we recover the manuscript, when we save my partner and your friends, then we'll deal with the rest of it.”

“This practicality of yours is a superpower, as well as a damned nuisance,” he said, tucking her head under his chin. “We'll find a way to make it work, Chris. I swear to you.”

She blinked back stinging tears and cleared her throat before she drew back. “How do we find Nottingham now?”

“By his scent. My kind can track one another by following it.” He looked out into the night and breathed in. “He's moving east, toward the old part of the city.”

“There's just one more thing.” She straightened her legs to show him the too-large stilettos. “I need some new shoes.”

 

After convincing one of the human females at the ball with the same-size foot as Chris to give him her slippers, Robin took her with him, following Nottingham's scent through a labyrinth of ancient streets, pausing here and there to be sure he had not doubled back or left a false trail by using a human upon whom he had fed to scatter his scent.

Chris kept pace with him, her eyes alert and her movements as economical as his. He knew from making love to her that she kept her body in superb condition, but now he saw how beautifully she had honed her senses as well. Twice she tugged him back just as he heard approaching footsteps; for a mortal she had almost Kyn-like instincts.

Together they tracked Nottingham's path until his scent led Robin to a twenty-foot-high brick wall with a narrow gated arch. Through the bars of the gate he saw an empty, boarded-up palazzo surrounded on all sides by other smaller, abandoned outbuildings. Mold marks and the crumbling condition of the outer walls suggested that the former tenants had been driven out by flooding, a problem that regularly plagued Venice.

“This looks new.” Robin reached for the padlock on the gate, then hissed and pulled back his burned fingers. “It's made of copper.”

“Wait.” Chris looked all around the entrance until she spotted a disconnected pipe sticking up out of the ground near the gate. “That looks like it's made of steel; do you think you can break off a piece?”

Robin snapped the pipe off at the ground level and handed it to her.

“Thanks.” She ignored the padlock and went to the side of the gate. There she used the end of the pipe like a chisel, not on the gate but on the decaying brick to which it had been attached. Small chunks of the brick began flying away from the wall, loosening the bolts that had been driven into it.

“If I may?” Robin held out his hand.

She scowled a little but handed him the pipe. Robin used it in the same way she had, but put his Kyn strength behind each jab. Within seconds he had freed the gate bolts and hinges from their moldering frame on one side. Chris pulled it out until the gap was wide enough for them to pass through.

“No security cameras, vehicles, or signs of occupation,” she murmured after a few moments.

Robin turned his head right, then left. “He's been all over the grounds, but the scent is strongest there.” He nodded toward the palazzo's main building. “You should stay here while I search.”

“I should have stayed at the apartment, too.”

She followed him through the shadows as they approached the side of the main house. Robin saw one door that hadn't been boarded over, and started toward it.

“Hey. Let's not walk directly into another trap,” Chris suggested, and glanced up. “I see another way in. Can you give me a boost up to that second-story window?”

“I can toss you through it,” he said, eyeing the boards covering it. “But I fear your head isn't
that
hard.”

“Just lift me onto your shoulders,” she said, removing one of the scarves tied around her hips and wrapping it around her right hand. “I'll do the rest.”

Robin lifted her to sit on his shoulders, and then walked over to stand directly under the window before holding her hands so she could plant her feet. Chris didn't try to open the window, but tossed the scarf up, threading the end over the bottom rung of an old fire-escape ladder and catching it to create a loop.

She held on to the scarf, looked at him, and said, “Let me down easy.”

The corroded metal groaned and rained rust down on both of them as Robin eased her to her feet, but the old iron ladder came down intact.

“The windows on the upper floors aren't boarded up, and the floodwater never got that high, so they're probably not warped shut,” she said after she tested the steadiness of the ladder. “We just have to climb up there and see.”

Afraid the old ladder might collapse, Robin stayed right behind Chris as they climbed it to the fourth floor. As she predicted, the window nearest the ladder remained accessible, and opened after Robin forced the lock.

The empty interior of the room they stepped into magnified every sound they made. The lack of light made Chris blind, but Robin's night-adapted vision allowed him to find the door leading out at once. He stood beside it first, breathed in, and listened.

“He's below us,” he said. “I can smell only him, no one else.” Robin pulled his tunic off and draped it around her. When she frowned, he added, “It will help mask your scent.”

She regarded his bare chest. “Who is he more likely to smell first, you or me?”

“You.” Robin looked down at her. “But he would not expect me to bring a human with me while I am tracking, and may believe that whatever he smells of you comes from me.”

She frowned. “Why would you smell like me?”

“You leave your scent on me every time you touch me,” he said, bringing her hand to his face and kissing her palm. “After we make love I can smell you on my skin for hours.”

Her expression turned wry. “I seem to have the same problem.”

“It is why infidelity is not common among my kind. Stop looking at me that way or I shall collect more of your scent.” He opened the door a mere crack and peered through it. “The way is clear. I shall go down and draw him out of the palazzo. While I keep him occupied, you must find the manuscript.”

She nodded, and then reached up and gave him a soft, lingering kiss. “Be careful.”

“The same goes for you, love.” He held her for a moment, and then opened the door and slipped out.

Robin was surprised by how much effort had been put into restoring the ruined building. The inside walls and flooring had been replaced, and new furnishings brought in to replace the old. Nottingham could not have done it in a few days; this place must have belonged to him before he'd fled Italy.

If he'd had to flee at all. Robin would not be surprised if his old enemy had struck a bargain with the Brethren to regain his territory. None of the Guisbournes had ever been particularly concerned with honor.

Robin tracked Nottingham's scent down three floors to a staircase that descended down a dimly lit stone shaft. Another, fresher track led from it toward the back of the palazzo.

“There it is,” Chris whispered, moving away from him.

Robin saw the manuscript sitting out in the open, atop a pedestal placed in the center of an octagonal recess in the floor. The recess looked damnably familiar, but he couldn't quite place it. He looked up and saw what looked like a series of pulleys hanging over it, and then peered at the floor again.

It was exactly the same size as the trapdoor to an oubliette. “Wait, love. Don't touch it.”

Chris had already stepped down into the recess and was reaching for the book. Metal shrieked, and the false foundation beneath the pedestal collapsed. Chris screamed as she and the book fell out of sight.

Robin ran to the edge and saw Chris lying at the bottom of the shaft. She appeared to be in some sort of cell. “Chris? Chr—”

A strong, cold hand shoved Robin over the edge.

 

Alexandra had never thought she'd be happy to see so many burn patients, but her initial assessment of the refugees that Gabriel and Nicola had delivered from Spain revealed that none of them had been shot by their attackers.

“Lady Alexandra,” the footman said. “The high lord requests that you attend him in his chambers.”

Alex saw a thin blond woman waiting outside the high lord's chambers, and stopped in front of her. They'd never been friends, she and Éliane Selvais. Among other things, the Frenchwoman had set off the chain of events that led to Alex becoming Kyn, but over time the initial vicious animosity between them had gradually altered into a semi-antagonistic form of mutual respect.

She'd never completely trust Richard's
tresora
, Alex decided, but she didn't want to see her dead anymore. “What's going on, Éliane?”

“Lord Tremayne wishes to know how the wounded are faring.” The Frenchwoman sounded worried, and looked as if she hadn't slept in days. In a lower voice she added, “Please try to keep this brief. He's very tired.”

“I guess all that talking has him worn out.” Alex gave her the once-over and noted the slightly wrinkled condition of her suit, and a ladder running up the side of her stocking. She also radiated the smell of burning cherry tobacco. “You look like you could use a few dozen naps. Has Richard been behaving himself?”

“Of course. My lord is much improved, as you will see.” Éliane looked as if she wanted to say more, but fell silent.

“All right.” Alex went inside.

The scent of cherry tobacco stung the air, but it took her a moment to adjust to the candlelight Richard preferred to electricity. The high lord sat near one of the windows, his body concealed by a full-length black cloak.

“We meet again, Doctor.”

Said the medieval spider to the smart-ass fly
. Alex kept her expression and tone impersonal. “You needed to talk to me about something?”

“I do.” Richard rose from his chair and came around it toward her. His walk, formerly a dragging lurch, now seemed easier and more natural. “What progress have you made with your research on the Darkyn curse?”

“There is no curse. The pathogen infecting us is composed of three separate viral organisms. Two appear to be evolved versions of anthrax and bubonic plague. I haven't identified the third virus yet.” She watched him move to a cart with a bottle of wine and glasses. “You want me to get that for you?”

“I've forgotten that you've not seen my progress.” Richard removed one of his gloves and displayed his hand for her. “Once again I have fingers and joints.”

Alex walked over and took hold of the hand, turning it over to study the changes. Before, Richard's feet and hands had been little more than oversize cat's paws. Now they looked more humanoid, although a thin layer of black-and-silver hair still covered his skin. “Well, it looks a little better.”