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Three steps up the stairway Evee suddenly realized she’d stepped into a huge pile of shit. For it was then that she felt just how badly she wanted Lucien.
She walked slowly. Each step brought different emotions. The need for Lucien. God, he must think her a slut. She’d all but attacked him. All but begged him to screw her right there on top of the dryer.
Evee started to feel ashamed of herself. She should have shown more restraint. She had no business wanting any of the Benders. They were human, and her body hungered for more than a one-time fuck. That Evee could make happen at any time. But the Benders were different. Not only were they handsome, intelligent and powerful, but any woman would be stupid not to desire their heart along with their body.
And there lay her downfall.
No Triad shall marry or live intimately with a human.
The curse of the ages. If it was broken, they were assured it would cause the destruction of the world. That was the purpose for the mirrors inside their Grimoires. They replayed each day since they were created, scenes of Armageddon.
Except as of late. Over the last week, the mirrors inside their Grimoires had stopped replaying the destruction of the world. All three showed nothing but swirls of gray smoke. And no one, including their Elders, had any idea as to why. When Evee stared at the mirror in her Grimoire, she felt hopelessness, helplessness. As far as any of them knew, the end of the world might already have begun.
Heaven help her if she had had sex with Lucien. It might have been the match that lit the fuse to a bomb that would blow the hell out of everything.
Herself included.
Chapter 4 (#u1ff86f51-1a71-5020-900c-a6494694c309)
Once his clothes were dry enough for him not to look like a drenched rat, Lucien quickly dressed while Evee was in the shower. He felt guilty for leaving without saying goodbye, but after the incident on the dryer, he thought it best to be on his way—quickly.
Lucien couldn’t quite wrap his brain around what exactly had happened on Evee’s dryer. One moment they were staring at each other, and the next her lips were on his. Her body so close to his sent more messages than he’d been able to sort through. He sensed passion pent up like a pressure cooker without a release valve inside her. So he’d provided one. Anything beyond that, and he’d have forever considered himself a schmuck. It had taken what felt like superhuman strength to control the need he had for her. Sending her off to shower while he waited for his clothes to at least half-ass dry, then leave, made him feel like chicken shit. But he figured better chicken shit than regret.
Instead of going to the hotel to shower as he’d told Evee he would, Lucien decided to scout for Ronan first and give him a heads-up on the Cartesian attack. With that in mind and visions of Evee burned into his brain, Lucien automatically reached for his left wrist to initiate the locator implanted in his watch. It took a second for him to realize it wasn’t on his wrist.
Lucien stopped abruptly. “What the hell...?” Then he remembered. He’d taken it off at Evee’s, right before tugging his shirt off and tossing it into the dryer. Why the hell did he remove it in the first place? The only time Lucien ever removed his watch was before stepping into the shower, even though the watch was waterproof.
Habit, he assumed. Clothes came off to shower, thus off with the watch. But now his butt was in a sling. He couldn’t just walk back to Evee’s after what had happened a short time ago. She might view his return as an excuse, get the wrong message. Not that she’d have gotten the message wrong. Not completely anyway.
Hell, who was he kidding? He was the one who’d have the problem if he had her alone right now. How was he going to get his watch back without it being awkward for either of them?
Nikoli, the oldest of his cousins, always reminded them of the Benders’ mantra whenever they headed out on a mission. Keep your dick in your pants and your mind on the mission.
Normally that wasn’t an issue for Lucien. Women flirted certainly, and, occasionally, he’d reciprocate. But that was as far as it went until the mission was over and all they’d gone there to accomplish had been completed.
This was different, though. The mission wasn’t “normal,” as it involved the Triad, whom they’d never protected before. It slid off the normal scale with the number of Cartesians they’d encountered so far and the Originals they had to find and protect. All new challenges for them.
As Evee was for him. What he felt for her whenever he was near her was far from normal. She was an extraordinary woman who always smelled like gardenias and daffodils. Her smile melted his heart, and her copper-colored eyes grew so bright when she got excited they could’ve lit up a quarter of the universe. Evee might have come across as the gentlest and quietest of the Triad, but she carried an innate strength that was unmistakable.
“Hey, what’re you doing here?” a man asked, yanking Lucien from his thoughts. The voice came from behind Lucien, which caused him to clap a hand on the sheath of his scabior and spin about.
It was Ronan.
“Aren’t you supposed to be hunting the west side of the riverbank?” Ronan asked.
Lucien slapped a hand over his thudding heart. “Man, don’t you know better than to sneak up on me like that? I could’ve fried you.”
Ronan gave him a lopsided grin. “Nah, your reflexes are too sharp for you to make that kind of mistake. So, what are you doing here?” He took a step closer to Lucien and sniffed. “And why do you smell like...fish and dirty gym socks?”
Uncomfortable with the number of people milling about Toulouse Street, Lucien motioned for Ronan to follow him into an alley just off Dauphine.
“What’s going on?” Ronan asked. “You’re acting weird.”
In the muted silence of the alley, Lucien relayed to Ronan what he and Evee had gone through on the east bank. As he wound down the telling of the incident, even in the faint glow of streetlamps, Lucien saw Ronan’s face turn beet red.
“I told you!” Ronan said. “Didn’t I tell you it was a bad idea to split up? Evee could have died. On our watch, she could have died!”
“Shh,” Lucien warned. “If your voice gets any louder, we’ll start attracting a crowd.”
“Shh, my ass,” Ronan said. “The Cartesian, the water...” He ran a hand through his charcoal-black hair and started pacing in a tight circle. He stopped abruptly. “Where is Evee now?”
“Still at her home, as far as I know,” Lucien said, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Ronan stepped closer to Lucien. “Hang on a minute. What were you doing on the east bank when you were supposed to be scouting the west?”
Lucien lowered his eyes for a second, then shrugged. “Instinct more than anything. I just got a sudden urge to follow her. I’m glad I did.”
Ronan’s eyes narrowed. “So you saved her from the Cartesian?”
“Yes.”
“And from drowning?”
“Yes.”
“Then what?” Ronan asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What happened after you pulled her out of the river?”
Lucien glanced away for a millisecond. “I carried her home. She was in shock, shivering. Couldn’t stand on her own two feet.”
“Then what?” Ronan asked, taking another step closer to Lucien. “What did you do when you brought her home? Just drop her at the front door? Make her tea? Get her a warm, fuzzy blanket to wrap around her shoulders?”
Lucien stared at the fury evident on his cousin’s face. “What’s with the twenty questions and why are you so pissed?”
Ronan turned away, folding his arms across his chest. “You broke protocol. It’s not like things aren’t screwed up enough here. Breaking protocol confuses things all the more.”
Lucien frowned. “Protocol for what? Rescuing a woman from a Cartesian and then from drowning?”
“Splitting up in the first place,” Ronan said, pounding a fist into the palm of his hand. “I could have saved her from that Cartesian and from the water.”
A neon light suddenly went off in Lucien’s head. It answered a lot of questions and made him sick to his stomach at the same time.
“Ronan?” Lucien said.
“What?” Ronan turned to face him, his expression roiling with anger.
“You like her, don’t you?”
“Who? What the shit are you talking about?”
“Evee. You like her, don’t you?”
Lucien saw Ronan’s shoulders slowly relax from their defense position. He unfolded his arms and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “Keep your dick in your pants and your mind on the mission,” Ronan said, his voice low, resigned as he stated the Benders’ mantra.
Even in the darkness of the alley, Lucien saw defeat dull his cousin’s large black eyes. In all the years they’d known each other, not once had Lucien ever seen Ronan make such a fuss over a woman.
It broke Lucien’s heart to see his cousin look so dejected. The words that came out of his own mouth milliseconds later rattled him to his core.
“If—if you’re interested in Evee,” Lucien said, “you should let her know. Eventually this mission will come to an end and so will the Benders’ mantra. So, good, bad or indifferent, at least Evee will know how you feel.”
Ronan blew out a breath. “I can’t. I’m not good with women the way you are.”
“Well,” Lucien said, “you can either let your shyness rule your heart or take a chance and tell her how you feel.”
Ronan looked him in the eye. “And what if she rejects me?”
“Then she rejects you, and you’ll move on,” Lucien said. “But you’ll never know where you stand or if you can stand beside her unless you try.”
Ronan slowly nodded, yet remained silent.
Now that he’d offered his heart up for slaughter, Lucien squared his shoulders and said, “Let’s make another run through the Quarter, and then we’ll go to the hotel so I can shower.”
Ronan nodded again, still silent.
Although he hadn’t uttered a word, Lucien knew his cousin well enough to know he was pondering what they’d discussed about Evee. Even now he was probably formulating a plan.
With a heavy heart, Lucien steeled his jaw and reminded himself that he was a Bender. He had to find the missing Originals, watch for Cartesians and take care of the Triad. That was his purpose, his innate ability.
And that’s all there was to it.
Squaring his shoulders, he began walking again, and Ronan followed him. They moved along the streets of the Quarter, Lucien using hand signals to guide Ronan in one direction or another.
Lucien looked over the faces of the people on the streets. Surveyed those who stood or sat in the bars and restaurants he strolled into and out of. He tried to remember the things Evee told them to watch for. The whiteness of the Nosferatu’s skin, sunglasses in the dark because some couldn’t tolerate any form of light. The problem was, after much searching, everyone started to look the same. Men—women—drunk.
After an hour of looking, they still hadn’t turned up anything. Lucien tried thinking like a Nosferatu, one hungry, away from its clan, not knowing where its next meal would come from or how it would get back to the catacombs. Maybe the missing Nosferatu didn’t want to connect with its clan again. Maybe it wanted the newly found freedom.
Lucien clearly remembered what Evee had said about the lost Nosferatu. If they weren’t reunited with their clan for feeding time at the compound, they’d find something or someone to drain of blood.
Once again, putting himself in the shoes of a Nosferatu, Lucien knew he’d go to a place with the most noise, the biggest cluster of people it could find. Once it defined its prey, it’d probably lead them down some dark alley.
The one place Lucien knew that fit this compilation, with many offshoots and empty, dark alleys, was Bourbon Street. First they had to study the street with the beat—Bourbon. A place whose streets and sidewalks held the footsteps, vomit or piss of some of the most rich and famous people from around the world.
Following that logic, Lucien signaled Ronan to his side, told him his game plan. Then they parted, each man taking a side of Bourbon.
Just as Lucien expected, as they walked the crowded street, glancing down one alley after another, they were faced with large groups of people laughing, talking, cramming the bars. How were he and Ronan supposed to identify a Nosferatu in this cluster? It felt like an impossibility.
An idea struck Lucien and gave him pause as he allowed himself back into the mind-set of a Nosferatu. He knew it would find an alley to make the kill. Its prey might be found in the crowded streets, but the kill would be done in seclusion. Not public.
So what made sense to Lucien was to walk Royal Street, which ran parallel to Bourbon, then straight ahead, checking out every alley between Iberville to Esplanade, which crossed the parallel streets. He signaled for Ronan, told him to focus on the alleys between the streets he felt were the likeliest place a Nosferatu would strike. They’d walk in tandem as much as possible.
It wasn’t until Lucien reached Barracks Street that something caught his attention. Sucking sounds, mouth to flesh. He looked across the street for Ronan and saw he was ahead, near Esplanade, dodging into yet another alley. He didn’t want to call out to him and warn whatever he’d have to face in his own alley.
Lucien removed his scabior from its sheath and made his way toward the sounds he’d heard.
The only streetlights he had to work with were the weak streaks shooting from pole lamps on Royal and Bourbon. So the farther he walked down Barracks, the darker it became.
He heard a woman moan. “Oh, baby, yes! Put it in now!”
Lucien walked faster, zeroing in on the woman’s voice. As he made his way toward the voice, a skinny, haggard-faced woman approached him, a hooker looking for a john, wanting a good time, a night’s wage. He ignored her and had walked another half block when a drunk stumbled out of a side alley and bumped into him. The drunk threw a punch at Lucien as if he was the reason he’d misstepped.
Lucien dodged the fist and quickened his pace, his ear still tuned to the woman’s voice.
“Oh, yeah, baby. Give me more. I want more.”
By the sound of her voice, Lucien suspected she was already copulating, or was about to, with whatever man she’d picked up on the street. From where he stood, Lucien noticed the woman had her back to him in an alley that grew darker with every step he took.
Even in the darkness, however, Lucien noticed something white just over the woman’s left shoulder. No question, it was a Nosferatu in midtransformation.
“What the f-fuck?” the woman said.
There was no mistaking the balding white head, the large vein that bulged from its forehead. Quite noticeable even in the dark.
Despite her slurred speech, a testament to heavy alcohol consumption, the woman evidently didn’t care for what she witnessed, either. That white bald head, the cauliflower ears, the pointed fangs that should have been front teeth. Her screams, when they came, told Lucien she had suddenly turned stone-cold sober. But her cries for help were drowned out by revelers shouting, laughing, talking up in the Quarter, where the action was at an all-time high.
Lucien remembered what Evee said he should do if he spotted a Nosferatu. Yet he stood mesmerized, watching the Nosferatu’s clawlike hands wrap around the woman’s arm, holding tight. Its head tilted back, fangs showing, ready to strike.
Suddenly snapping out of his stupor, Lucien placed two fingers against his bottom lip and let out a loud, shrill whistle.
So far, the only thing his whistle did was create a diversion for the creature. It turned to Lucien, hissed, then sank its fangs into the woman’s throat. Its eyes rolled back in its head as it drank, sucked, consumed the meal before him. As much as he wanted to do something to save her, Lucien knew he was no match for a Nosferatu. He didn’t have the weapons or the magic to send it to its knees.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, he found Ronan at his side.
“Son of a bitch,” Ronan said, looking at the Nosferatu feasting on the woman.
“No shit,” Lucien said.
Evidently irritated by the sound of Lucien and Ronan’s voice, the Nosferatu abruptly threw the woman it had been feeding on to one side. And a second later, it stood right in front of the Benders, a hand on each of their throats.
“You stupid, little men. What were you whistling for? Your dinner or mine?” the creature said.
Its grip on Lucien’s neck felt like a band of steel. Its fangs were exposed, twisted and yellow, and dripping with blood.
In a flash, Lucien did the only thing he knew to do. He kneed the Nosferatu in the groin. He didn’t know if it would have the same effect as it would’ve had on a human, but he didn’t care. In that moment, he had to do something.
Fortunately, Lucien’s effort threw the creature off balance, which caused it to release Ronan and Lucien, giving them time to unsheathe their scabiors.
