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Cold sweat trickled under Griffin’s collar. “I’m perfectly well.”
“Could have fooled me. Still, it doesn’t seem—”
The sound of an engine drowned out her words. Griffin glanced up to see a battered delivery truck backing into the alley. Instinctively he placed himself between the ladies and the vehicle.
“What is it?” Miss Moreau asked.
“Bootleggers,” he said. “No doubt here to make a delivery.”
Allegra Chase moved up to stand beside him, her body tense and alert. “What perfect timing,” she murmured.
No sooner had she finished speaking than a pair of hatchet men jumped from the back of the truck, took up positions facing the street and stoodwatch while several other men began to unload crates into the alley. A door near the mouth of the alley opened to receive the shipment.
The last of the crates had just been passed into the building when another man, dressed from head to toe in black wool and leather, emerged from the truck and spoke to someone inside the door. After a moment the door shut, and the man turned to look at Griffin. His upper face was completely covered by his black fedora and sunglasses.
Griffin advanced a dozen paces, his hands loose at his sides, and stopped a few yards from the man in black. He felt the leech’s eyes on him, eyes as keen in the dark as his own.
The leech’s lips curled. He signaled to a pair of henchmen armed with tommy guns.
“You shouldn’t be here, dog,” he said.
“It wasn’t intentional, I assure you.” Griffin spread his hands. “We have no interest in your business.”
“You are pack—”
“My name is Griffin Durant. I don’t belong to the pack.”
The leech made a sound of disbelief and glanced toward Miss Chase. He hissed through his teeth.
“Allegra.”
The lady in question strolled past Griffin and assumed an insolent pose, pushing her coat away from her dress to expose her shapely legs, one hip thrust out, her hand perched at the curve of her waist.
“Bendik. How nice to see you.”
Griffin stepped in front of her again. “A friend of yours, Miss Chase?”
“A friend? That’s a laugh.” She returned her attention to her fellow vampire. “Quit your glaring, Bendik. No one here’s going to cause any trouble, so why don’t you just wander on home?”
The leech looked Miss Chase up and down with scarcely less hostility than he’d shown Griffin. “What are you doing with a dog?”
“He’s woman’s best friend. Or hadn’t you heard?”
“Raoul…”
“Worried he might not approve? Too bad he can’t decide who I spend my time with.”
“You’ll go too far, Allegra. I look forward to the day Raoul puts you in your place.”
She yawned, stretching her body sensuously. “I’ll see you at the funeral, Bendik. Send him my best wishes.”
Bendik lingered a moment longer, looking as if he would have dearly loved to spray the alley with bullets, then retreated with an audible snarl. His henchmen jumped back into the truck, and the vehicle pulled out of the alley.
Griffin faced Allegra, his palms slick with perspiration. “That was very foolish, Miss Chase,” he said.
“Why? Did you think I was in danger?”
Anger choked him. “That…man was clearly not well disposed toward you.”
“He’s one of Raoul’s lieutenants, and Raoul isn’t happy with me these days.”
Griffin had heard the name Raoul more than once. The leech ruled the city’s vampire clan, but the authorities naturally assumed him to be human.
“Raoul is your patron,” he said.
“No!” Allie’s vehemence made it evident that she was telling the truth. “My patron…he’s nothing like Raoul.”
Griffin almost asked her to explain but stopped himself. He had no desire to become involved in vampire politics.
“A pity your patron isn’t here to caution you against your habit of imprudence,” he said.
“Ha. You don’t know anything about my habits. I—” She paused, regarding him through narrowed eyes. “Hey.You’re as white as a sheet.” She lay a hand against Griffin’s cheek. “Your heart’s beating like a jackhammer.”
Her touch wasn’t cold, as he’d expected a vampire’s would be. He moved away. “I didn’t savor the prospect of further violence, Miss Chase.”
“Don’t tell me you were scared. Bendik and his men would as soon have shot you as looked at you, but you were ready to take them on single-handedly.”
He stepped away. “Only if every other method failed.”
She shook her hair beneath the veil. Silky skeins settled about her face like black feathers. “So modest, isn’t he?” she said to Miss Moreau. “A paragon of virtue.”
Refusing to dignify Allegra’s provocation with a reply, Griffin gathered up his and Miss Moreau’s packages and asked the ladies to wait while he hunted down a policeman. Much to his surprise, Allegra and Miss Moreau were still in the alley when he returned with an officer of the law.
After the patrolman had briefly questioned Miss Moreau and taken the hoodlums into custody, Griffin flagged down a taxi and handed the ladies into the backseat. Allegra gave the cabbie an address that made Griffin raise his brows. It was one of the finest apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue, directly across from Central Park.
Miss Chase leaned out of the cab, her eyes unreadable behind the veil. “Thank you, Mr. Durant,” she said coolly, “for Lou’s sake.”
“You’re welcome, Miss Chase.” She began to close the door, but he locked his fingers around the handle, holding it open.
She lifted the veil and gazed up at him, dark brows high. “Well?”
“May I telephone you? At your convenience, of course.”
She grasped the card he offered between two slender, red-nailed fingers. “Why?”
“To inquire after Miss Moreau’s recovery.”
“Ah. Of course.” She smiled slyly. “Do you like me, Mr. Durant?”
Her blunt question left him mute. There was no sensible answer, no response that was more than witless babble. They’d only just met. They were of different breeds, races that had been enemies far more often than not. All the prejudices of his species should make Griffin regard her with suspicion and loathing.
But Allegra Chase had a subtle charisma that was something more than the glamour others of her kind possessed…something complex and passionate beneath the brash, seemingly careless exterior. She was fiercely protective of her employee, a quality that must be rare among creatures who viewed humans as servile inferiors. She was brave…and dangerously reckless.
The fact that she belonged—quite literally—to another man had oddly little impact on Griffin’s heart. He hadn’t felt such an instinctive attraction to any woman in nine long years. It was utterly mad. And undeniable.
“It isn’t real, you know,” Allegra said softly. “It’s just what we do.” Abruptly her features changed, taunting him with an air of casual indifference. “It’s a good thing for you that I have obligations that can’t be broken. You don’t want to know me, Griffin Durant.” She let his card fall into the gutter. “You must have a nice, quiet life. Don’t let anyone complicate it for you.”
He backed away from the cab, his throat tight under the knot of his tie. “I should certainly not wish to interfere with yours.”
“You already have. I hope you’re far away next time I want to have a little fun.”
She closed the cab door, and he caught only a brief glimpse of her face before the automobile drove away.
Deeply shaken by the fight and what had come after, Griffin walked aimlessly until well past sunset. Only then did he remember that Gemma would be wondering where he was. He stared at the slightly dented box in his hands and thought of the sweet, pristine dress inside it.
Gemma would never know a woman like Allegra Chase. And that was just the way Griffin wanted it. Miss Chase had done him a tremendous favor by reminding him just how untouchable she truly was.
Chapter Two
THE CEREMONY wasn’t anything a human would have recognized as a funeral. There were no clergymen, no pallbearers, no weeping relations. There would be no eulogies, no flowers thrown on the grave. The members of the clan stood in silent rows, sinister in their stillness, and draped in dark clothing that made them indistinguishable from the night sky and the black silhouettes of oak and chestnut trees.
Allie wore red. Cato would have appreciated her choice. She stood apart from the others, as befitted the one who’d been closest to the old scientist; she would scatter the ashes and speak the final words. And when it was over, not a single strigoi in the city could tell her what to do or how to do it.
She let her gaze wander away from her fellow mourners and drift to the buildings with their hundreds of windows glittering like stars. If any of the people in those buildings should wander into Central Park tonight, they would be in for a bit of a shock. Not that they would be killed; there were less drastic ways of dealing with inquisitive or thoughtless humans. Of course, Boucher didn’t have to conduct his cremation ceremonies in Central Park; he did it because it was his way of claiming his part of the city. At night, the park belonged to the clan.
A cool breeze ruffled the fringed hem of Allie’s dress. Her skin prickled, and she looked up to meet Raoul’s stare. He held the vessel out to her. She took it, careful not to touch his skin, and hugged it to her chest.
So this is all that’s left of a lifetime, Cato. How many hundreds of years, reduced to ashes.
How did you die, my friend? Raoul says it was the weakness left by the influenza that killed so many of us after the War. I don’t believe it. You would never tell me what you were working on, that secret research for Raoul. But you gave me a great gift, and I still wonder if that had anything to do with your passing…
She remembered the moment when she’d felt his death…the terrible, devastating shock that had washed through her like molten lava, a monster that ripped her heart from her chest with jagged steel claws. The blood-bond had been severed, yet the ghost of it had lingered, leaving her helpless while her world shattered and slowly reassembled itself again.
Cato is dead.
Grief made a hard knot in her chest, but she didn’t weep. She’d learned not long after her rebirth that vampires didn’t—couldn’t—cry, another one of those “anatomical changes” Cato had warned her about. But that was all right. The last thing she wanted was for Raoul to see her weak.
She nodded to the Master, reached into the vessel and gathered a handful of ashes. They felt dry and cool in her palm. She withdrew her hand, spread her fingers and scattered the ashes on the breeze, letting them fall where they might. No one made a sound. The others were here because Raoul demanded it, not because they cared that Cato was gone. They didn’t like being reminded that even strigoi could die.
Allie emptied the vessel quickly and let it fall. She faced the clan members with a raw-edged smile.
“Catowasmy patron,” she said. “But hewas also my friend. I know that doesn’t mean much to most of you. The funny thing about Cato was that he hadn’t forgotten that there are a fewgood parts about being human.”
Someone hissed, a sound of derision and contempt. Raoul’s head snapped around, seeking the source of the comment. The ensuing silence was deafening.
Allie laughed. “I always did enjoy a good argument.” She grabbed her wrap from the tree branch where she’d hung it and threw it over her shoulders. “Rest in peace, Cato Petrovic.”
She’d walked halfway to Fifth Avenue when a man stepped out from among the trees along the path and gestured to her frantically. She paused as she recognized his face, pursed her lips and went to join him.
“Elisha Hatch,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d be here.”
The human looked right and left, his nervousness palpable. “I watched,” he said. “Cato was my friend, too.”
Friend? Perhaps, Allie reflected. But Elisha had primarily been Cato’s laboratory assistant, the one human her mentor had trusted to help him in his mysterious work. He remindedAllie too much of a mouse…or more likely a rat, with his beady eyes and furtive movements. Not every human could live comfortably among vampires.
“What is it?” she asked, eager to be gone.
He rubbed his arms repeatedly, though the night was warm. The tattoos on the back of his right hand jumped and quivered. “Did Cato…did he give you anything before he died?”
The question caught her unawares. “What do you mean?”
“There was something…something he was supposed to leave to me if anything happened to him. It’s missing. I thought you might have it.”
Allie narrowed her eyes. “If something happened to him?”
Elisha risked a glance at her face. “The old weakness, you know.”
Just as Raoul had claimed, but Allie was far from satisfied. “Was he in some kind of danger?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.”
“And what was he supposed to give you?”
Once again Elisha looked carefully about them. “Papers,” he said. “Notes from his research. He didn’t want them to be misplaced if he…if he couldn’t work on them anymore. He knew I was the only one who could understand them.”
Allie weighed his answer. It seemed reasonable enough. “Why do you think he would have given them to me?”
Elisha shifted from foot to foot. “Maybe he thought they’d be safe with you.”
“Safe from what?”
But Elisha had scarcely begun a hesitant reply when he saw something that shut him up fast. He melted back into the trees, leaving Allie to wait alone for Raoul.
The Master glanced toward the trees as Allie returned to the path. “Talking to someone?” he asked.
“I thought I saw an intruder hanging around.”
“And did you?”
“I must have imagined it.”
Raoul regarded her with a half smile. “Your imagination is as troublesome as your impertinence, Allegra.”
“Impertinence? Is that what they call it?” She began to walk, and Raoul fell into step beside her, his shoes soundless on the path.
“Impertinence,” he said. “Rashness. Foolhardy defiance.”
Allie yawned behind her hand. “Glad I made an impression.”
