Текст книги "The Shadows"
Автор книги: J. R. Ward
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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 42 страниц)
THIRTY-FIVE
“The check has been taken care of.”
Trez paused in the process of taking his wallet out. “Excuse me?”
“It’s been taken care of.” The waiter smiled and bowed. “It has been our pleasure to serve you.”
Jesus, if he hadn’t known the guy was human, he’d have assumed one of Fritz’s staff had followed them here. The service had been phenomenal all night.
“Enjoy your cappuccinos at your leisure.”
Trez looked across at Selena. Her eyes were on the view again, but she was not smiling. Her perfect profile was cast in grave lines.
Reaching over, he took her hand in his, a spike of fear going through his chest. “You all right?”
Surreptitiously, he ducked into his coat and palmed up his cell phone.
“Oh, yes.” Except she didn’t look at him.
The soft patter of conversation around them dimmed down and the striding movements of the waiters disappeared from his periphery.
“Selena, what’s going on?”
“I don’t want it to be over.”
“We can come here again.”
“Yes.” She squeezed his hand. “Of course.”
As the restaurant continued to turn, turn, turn, the Commodore’s flank came around into view again, the building’s tall expanse speckled with random lights—including some in the penthouse.
Guess Rehv was in res.
Trez looked down at the coffee cup he hadn’t touched. The steam rising up was spiced with cinnamon, which he’d never been a fan of. He’d ordered it only because his queen didn’t seem to want to leave.
“It was so nice of them,” she murmured. “To pay for dinner.”
“I’ma take care of that when I get home.”
“You should let them be kind.”
Trez searched what he could see of her body, looking for signs that she was having problems that would require a quick call downstairs to Manny and Rhage.
“Selena?”
She shook herself and glanced over. “I’m sorry?”
“You want to order another dessert?”
“No.” She gave his hand another squeeze before releasing her hold and folding her napkin and placing it on the table. “Shall we?”
He popped out of his chair to help her so fast, the four feet squeaked over the glossy floor. “Here, let me—”
But his queen rose to a stand on her own with an elegant shift, her body perfectly stable, perfectly at ease. At least physically, that was. He could sense the weight of her mood.
Escorting her out, he was aware of the eyes of the room on them once again, hushed comments being uttered behind the rims of wineglasses and the squares of napkins as the humans tried to place them upon the grid of celebrity. There was satisfaction to be had in the fact that the peanut gallery would never be able to.
At the great glass doors, he opened one of the panels for her, and as she stepped through, she paused and stared over her shoulder, as if she were worried she would forget some nuance of the way the place looked or smelled or sounded.
“We can always come back,” he repeated.
“Oh, yes.”
She flashed a smile at him and continued out into that minimalist open space where the elevators were. Going ahead, he hit the down button and then stood next to her, putting his hand on the small of her back.
“So where do you want to go next?” he asked.
“You mean tonight? I’m rather tired—”
“No. Tomorrow night.”
She glanced over at him. “I . . .”
“Come on. Give me the next destination so I can get things ready for sundown tomorrow.”
The elevator doors opened, and he urged her inside—and he was so focused on her, he barely noticed that hideous glass wall that was open to the lobby. Pressing the L button, he stroked Selena’s shoulder.
“So . . . ?” When she didn’t reply, he leaned in and kissed the side of her throat. “This is not the only night we’re going to have.”
“How do you know that.” She met his eyes. “I don’t want to ruin this, but how do you know?”
“Because I won’t have it any other way.”
Turning her to face him, he deliberately put his hips against her body and dropped his lips to hers. “Unless you’re sick of me. Or seriously unimpressed by my being a vertical pussy.”
Her eyes seemed very blue and very scared as they met his. “Boat.”
He’d expected something else. “I’m sorry?”
“I, ah, I want to go on a boat ride on the river.”
“Fast or slow?”
“Both?”
“You got it.”
“Just like that?” she whispered. “Can you make everything happen?”
He put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Come back to my room and I’ll show you just how talented I am.”
As her scent changed, he nuzzled her, kissing her neck, nipping over her vein. He wasn’t playing fair, of course. He knew that she was likely to get distracted, and he wanted her to be. In fact, he couldn’t guarantee her tomorrow night or even the coming dawn, but like forever memories, the illusion of them having all that time had to stand in for whatever fate had waiting for them.
Kissing her, holding her, feeling her body against his own, he discreetly took out his phone and brought it up behind her back. The text to Manny and Rhage was short and to the point: Owh tx.
On way home. Thank you.
The elevator reached the lobby just fine, and all the kissing helped him stay good and distracted, too. And then they were walking out of the building, into the cold, blustery fall night. Fritz was across the street in the Mercedes, and the doggen brought the car over the second he saw them.
There was no waiting for the butler to get out and do the duty with the door.
Trez wanted to be the one to wait on her.
Just as she was sliding into the warm interior, the last sound he ever wanted to hear when she was in his presence caught his attention:
Pop-pop-pop.
Gun fire.
Fuck.
Trez jumped into the sedan with her, and jacked up between the seats. “Get us out of here! U-ie now!”
Fritz didn’t miss a beat. Throwing the S600 into reverse, he pounded the gas so hard Trez nearly ended up playing air freshener on the rearview. Recovering fast, he covered Selena with his body—so he could get to her seat belt. Yanking the band across her, he’d just gotten the catch home when centrifugal force threw him against the opposite side of the backseat, ringing his bell—but he didn’t give a shit. Bracing his feet against the wheel wells and his palms against the roof and the door frame, he kept himself from battering Selena as they finished the spin that got them pointed in the right direction.
Make that the wrong way on the one-way they’d come in on.
“Let us proceed,” Fritz shouted over the squealing tires.
The roar of the Mercedes-Benz engine and the explosion forward reminded Trez of an airplane takeoff. And as his body was sucked into the bucket seat, he looked over at Selena.
Her eyes were popping wide. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
The buildings on either side of the three-lane road were steel and glass and pale concrete, and they started to flash by, faster, faster, faster. Glancing up in the front, Trez checked the road ahead, the grilles of the parked cars facing them like disapproving parents as they went in the wrong direction.
“Nothing’s up!” he yelled over all the noise. “I’m just really excited to get you naked—”
Selena’s brows rose even higher. “Trez, I heard something—”
“—’cuz I’m that desperate to have you!”
“—that sounded like a gun!”
They were both hollering over the engine, going back and forth as Fritz bat-out-of-hell’d it away from all the bullets.
And then the fun really began.
They’d gone about two blocks when the Caldwell police cars started showing up. And unlike the Benz? The blue-and-whites with their flashing lights were going the right way on the street.
“I shall have to go onto the sidewalk,” Fritz called out. “Just a bit of a bump—”
That crazy bitch-ass butler yanked the steering wheel to the left and hopped the curb, capping a fire hydrant that promptly exploded in their wake, sending a gusher of water up into the air. And then, by the grace of God, the Benz landed like a gentleman, its superior shock absorbers cushioning what was no doubt a slam and a half.
Wrenching around, Trez looked out the back windshield. Cop cars were spinning around and breaking rank to follow them as Fritz hit a wall of newspaper dispensers, sending the red and yellow and green plastic boxes flying behind them. The flimsy things broke apart as they crashed on the sidewalk, sheets of papers fluttering off like doves released from cages.
As he turned back to Selena, he braced himself, trying to think of a way to reassure her—
Au contraire.
Selena was alive with excitement, her fangs flashing thanks to a huge smile, a giggling laugh bubbling out of her as she hung on to the door.
“Faster!” she yelled at Fritz. “Let’s go even faster!”
“As you wish, mistress!”
A fresh roar from that massive piece of German engineering under the hood sent them careening not just down the sidewalk, but right up to the very edge of the laws of physics.
Selena looked over at him. “This is the best night ever!”
* * *
“Okay, time to pull out.”
Rhage nodded at Manny. “I wonder what they had for dinner.” He checked his phone again and wished he had actually gone to that steakhouse. He’d only flown that shit to put Trez at ease. “He said nothing about the entrée or dessert. I mean, come on, he could have given a few deets. We only got eight letters from the guy.”
“Actually, it was five.”
“That’s what I said.”
The Doritos had worn off an hour ago. Then again, sometimes he could say that about three-course meals.
Manny put the RV in drive and started off, the ambulance trundling over a pothole, then gathering speed. “I’d better get a move on. Fritz has a heavy foot.”
“Like, did they have the roast beef? I saw a picture of the way they do it up there in a magazine—”
Boom!
Just as they came to a four-way juncture of alleys, something big flashed out in front of them and bounced off the hood. As Manny slammed on the brakes, the massive weight rolled off.
“Jesus Christ, was that a deer?” the doctor hollered.
“Try moose.”
Rhage palmed both his guns and was about to jump out when the bullet shower started. High-pitched metallic pings ricocheted off the RV and spiderwebbed the thick glass.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Manny bit out. Then he screamed through the windshield to the shooters, “I just got this thing!”
Rhage went for the door handle, but got nowhere with it. “Let me out!”
Ping-ping-ping. “No way, you’ll get killed!”
“We’re sitting ducks!”
“No, we’re not!”
All at once, the RV settled about four inches and metal plating dropped down over every square inch of glass there was. Instantly, the sound of the gunfire was dulled to a distant snare drum.
Rhage glanced over in the relative silence. “You are a genius.”
“Harold Ramis is.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You ever see Stripes? My favorite movie of all time. I based this thing on Bill Murray’s ride.”
“I knew I liked you.” Rhage quickly glanced at his phone. No Brothers were in the vicinity, and that was a good thing given the firepower. “Only one problem—we can’t just sit here. The human police are going to be all over—”
An LED screen the size of a TV rose vertically from the dash, taking up most of the now-blocked windshield space. And on its flat surface was a green pictorial of the streetscape in HD—so they got a really good picture of the shooters as the pair of trigger-fingers ran into their headlights. The two were both sporting long-nosed guns, AKs in his opinion, each discharge causing a bright flash from the muzzles as they kept those rounds pumping.
They didn’t pause as they went by Manny’s vehicle.
“Those are lessers,” Rhage muttered. “They’re going too fast for humans. Plus only slayers would be dumb enough to make this kind of racket. Let me the fuck out of here.”
“You’re not going after them—”
Rhage reached over and grabbed the front of the man’s shirt, dragging him into the aisle between the seats. “Let. Me. Out.”
Manny met his eyes. Cursed. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“No. I won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I got fun and games no one can handle.” He nodded to the window. “Crack it and I can ghost out through the slats between your armed plates. Unless you have steel mesh in there somewhere.”
Manny started muttering all kinds of vile things as he went for the requisite button and Rhage’s little slice of see-through went down about two inches.
“As soon as I’m gone, hit the gas,” Rhage demanded. “We need you on Trez’s tail. No joke.”
Closing his eyes, he concentrated and . . .
. . . dematerialized out of the interior, re-forming beside the RV and then pounding on the door. The shooters had gone past them, tracking their prey, which put him in a perfect position. As the engine under all that metal plating revved up, and Manny’s little portable clinic rambled off, he started to run. The scent in the air told him he’d been right; this was a pair of slayers with a very expensive set of toys—something they hadn’t seen in how long?
Not since Lash, that bastard, had been Forelesser.
Thighs pumping, guns ready, he was closing the distance when the sirens came behind him. Suddenly, he was spotlit from the rear, and not in a good way. With two autoloaders in his palms, they were liable to think he was the goddamn problem, instead of the solution trying to catch up with his enemy.
Sure enough, a male voice projected out of a high-res speaker came down the alley. “CPD! Stop! Stop or we’ll shoot!”
God. Damn. It.
Humans: Nature’s remedy for an otherwise good time.
THIRTY-SIX
Back in his cell at the palace, iAm was busy wearing a track in the polished marble floor, going back and forth between that new bedding platform and the shelf of books.
The longer he was left by his little lonesome, the more he became convinced that the maichen had made the offer to get him to the healing texts out of an abundance of impotent compassion. But, hell, even if she had been serious and did show up again with some kind of plan, it wasn’t like he was going to accept her help. There were so many people sucked into this mess already, and he wasn’t sure she knew what she was volunteering for: He was a prisoner of the executioner’s, which meant even though many could have access to him, there was only one son of a bitch who had the keys to his escape.
And it was not that lowly female.
If she did spring him? Even if it was not to the great outdoors, but the library? The monitoring systems would surely report them both—and then sudden death would be the best outcome she could hope for.
What was more likely was a long, suffering period of torture during which she would pray to be—
As that panel slid open, he made sure his sex was covered and wheeled around.
It was the maid, and she had bolts of cloth in her hands. As the door slid back into place, she tucked something next to the jamb to prevent it from closing all the way and rushed over to him.
“Put this on. We have no time—”
“Wait, what—”
“Put it on! The security staff is changing shift and they are required to have a mandatory prayer of sorrow and remembrance for the infant. We have to get you down the hallways now—”
“I can’t let you do this—”
“You want help, right. For your brother’s love, right.”
iAm gritted his teeth. Rock, meet hard place. “Fuck!”
“I do not know what that means.”
He grabbed whatever it was out of her hands, but kept up the arguing as he threw the folds over himself. “What about the trip back?”
“I’ll create a diversion. You’re going to need some time in the library—unless you know exactly what you’re looking for?”
The heavy robing rushed down his legs. “What about in here?”
Without warning, the lights went out. “I activated the circadian system.”
Ah, yes, the alternation of light and dark without which you couldn’t sleep.
Click!
A tiny flashlight showed her the way to the bedding platform, and she quickly arranged the pillows and duvets such that it appeared there was someone in there. Then she ran back and put something up to his face.
Spritz!
He coughed as the heavy scent of lavender and something citrus-y shot into his nose. “What the hell—”
More with the spritzing. “That’s a maid’s uniform. No one will question if they happen upon the pair of us together, but your scent is too male. This should cover it up well enough for us to get by. Now crouch down—you’re too tall for the robe. We can’t have your feet showing or they’ll know. Come on.”
He followed her over to the panel, but before she could open things up, he grabbed her arm and spun her around. “You shouldn’t be doing this.”
“We don’t have time—”
“It’s going to get you killed.”
“Your brother needs help. For his mate. Do you have another solution for getting out of here to see those texts?”
When she went to turn away, he pulled her back. “What’s your name?”
“maichen.”
“No, that’s your station. What’s your name?”
“That’s it. Now, come—enough talk,” she said urgently. “And don’t forget to crouch.”
Just like that, he was out of the cell and into the hallway. As he looked left and right, she jabbed him in the side with her elbow.
“Crouch,” she hissed. “This way.”
Bending his knees, he hunched his shoulders and followed in her wake, trying to mimic her spare movements. She was fast and decisive through the corridors, taking lefts and rights in a sequence that rendered him so turned around he was lost in the maze. Incredibly, they ran into no one, but that was the nature of mourning for the s’Hisbe. Lockdown for everybody.
Maybe she could just take him to a rear exit after this?
Yeah, but then what would happen to her?
“The security recording,” he said.
“Shut up.”
“When we’re back, you need to take care of the monitoring video files or they’ll know what you did if they ever review it.”
She didn’t answer him, just pressed on, leading him down the various corridors.
In keeping with the s’Hisbe tradition that simplicity elevated the soul, there was little signage anywhere in the palace, nothing but subtle plates up high on doorjambs to illustrate the covert entrances to various rooms and storage places and exits. Gradually, his years at the palace came back to him, and he was surprised to find he knew where they were: She was taking him the long way to the library, but it was smart. This was the rear of the palace, where if they did run into somebody, it was more likely to be a servant.
Which, considering he was masquerading as one, made the route all the better.
“Up here,” she said, taking one last right and stopping on a black marble tile square, the vein of which ran counter to the prevailing direction of all the others. Putting her palm on the wall, she triggered the door, which slid open readily.
As they stepped into the darkness, motion-sensitive lights came on, illuminating stacks upon stacks of leather-bound volumes. The air was dry and vaguely dusty, but the library was neat as a pin, the floors polished to a mirror shine, the shelving gleaming. There were no chairs and no tables if you wanted to read anything—the expectation was that you’d take whatever you needed to your quarters and sit down with it there.
Shit, how were they going to find anything in here?
“The medical journals have been moved,” she whispered, jogging forward.
He followed her once again, and didn’t bother trying to shrink his stature anymore: No one around to see, and this part of the palace was not monitored.
The cataloging system, such that it was, was noted with black-on-black numerals on the flanks of the stacks. But again, it was vague, and presumed that you already knew where to find what you were looking for.
“Here,” she said. “We go down here.”
Eventually, she stopped and indicated a row of stacks. “This is where they have been relocated.”
Frowning, he stepped in. The numbering system on the spines was no fucking help at all, so he pulled one of the volumes out and cracked the cover. When he finally got to some words in the Shadow dialect of the Old Language, he discovered he was about to read a treatise on setting broken bones.
Going down a row, he took out another random tome. Something on eyesight.
Farther on, he’d made it to pregnancy and childbirth.
“Diseases,” he muttered. “I’m looking for diseases. Or congenital defects. Or . . . recessive genes . . .”
“I shall help.” maichen began pulling out volumes. “What can you tell me about the sickness?”
“It’s called the Arrest. They freeze—they get . . . it’s like bone grows spontaneously . . . it’s supposed to be fatal. . . .”
God, he didn’t know enough about what he was talking about.
As the two of them worked their way down the stack, the categories and organization of the volumes became clearer and clearer. Like all vampires, Shadows didn’t have to deal with human viruses or cancer, but there were plenty of other things that took them down—although not as many as the Homo sapiens had to battle against. With every book he slid out, he was aware that time was passing, and he was more worried about maichen getting caught than anything about himself.
Faster, faster with the reading, the returning, the picking another from the lineup.
There had to be something here, he thought. There just had to be.
* * *
Trez’s entire body was rigid as he remained braced against the interior of the Benz. Fritz was still proceeding down the sidewalk—which would have been great if the doggen had been a pedestrian. Squeezing a sedan the size of an ocean-faring yacht into a concrete lane built for holding four or five people at a time?
Not so great—
Selena let out some kind of a yeeeee-haw! as they came up to another corner and sent a second set of Caldwell Courier Journal boxes airborne.
He was honestly glad she was enjoying herself.
He just really fucking wished they were watching this action movie instead of living it.
“Fritz,” he yelled over the roaring engine. “Head down toward the river.”
“As you wish, sire!”
Without warning, Fritz wrenched things left and sent them flying toward a pedestrian mall that skirted another of the skyscrapers. The Benz took to the stairs like a man wearing knee braces, the bumping, jostling, disjointed ascent the kind of thing that left your molars clapping and your kidneys begging for mercy. But then they were on the flat area that gave people all kinds of choices as to which of the four different entrance points to head through.
Fritz, naturally, choose the most direct route.
Through the fucking lobby.
Glass panes exploded as the S600 plowed into a wall of see-through, shards flying forward and to the sides before landing on the slick floor and coasting away like snow across the frozen surface of a lake.
Glancing out the side window, Trez got a good look at the night watchman jumping to his feet behind the bank of desks in the lobby. Seemed impolite not to acknowledge the poor uni’d bastard, so Trez popped a Queen Elizabeth and floated a wave as they roared through the interior and busted out the other side.
Smash!
Round two with the glass was just as trippin’, the Benz’s grille shattering through as they exploded back into the night.
“I believe we shall go airborne,” Fritz called out. “Do secure yourselves.”
Roger that, big guy.
Trez went rigid as they approached the lip of the set of stairs, and then—
Zero gravity, or as close as you could get to it without doing a U-ie at thirty thousand feet, happened as they soared, the ride getting super-smooth and relatively quiet, nothing but the throaty engine hitting the ear.
All that changed as they skipped over the sidewalk and landed on the paved road. The suspension absorbed as much of the impact as it could, but sparks flew out behind as some portion of the undercarriage got a dental file.
“Please forgive me,” Fritz said, looking up in the rearview.
“The terrain is hardly your fault,” Trez hollered back. “But not sure about all that glass.”
He glanced over to make sure Selena was still whoopin’ it up across the way. Yup. She was smiling and laughing, eyes bright as Christmas lights.
When Trez glanced up front again, the butler was still looking into the rearview mirror and talking to him. “Sire, I’m terribly sorry, but I must needs return home—”
“Fritz! Focus on the road, buddy!”
“Oh, yes, sire—”
Screeeeeeeeeeech as the butler course-corrected and narrowly avoided weed-whacking a lineup of parallel-parked cars.
“As I was saying, sire, I must needs return home,” the butler continued without losing a beat. “Last Meal preparations have to be supervised.”
Like this was just a video game you could put on pause? “Ah, Fritz—”
All at once the Mercedes went black inside and out, the lights extinguished. And at that very moment, from high up in the sky, a blaring light pierced down to the road, flashing over them for a split second.
“Helicopter,” Trez muttered. “Fantastic.”
Twisting around, he checked out the rear window. Blue and white flashing lights were speeding along, but the cops were cutting across their path instead of following—which would give them a pass for only a block or two before the CPD pulled a recalibration of their own.
Shit, how were they going to get out of this?
Before he knew it, Fritz had them down by the river, but not on a road. Instead of taking one of the legal routes, he popped yet another curb and began to fly directly under the raised highway. Pylons the size of redwoods passed by the windows, the doggen playing dodge-’em car, jogging left and right like a runner in an obstacle course.
No one was behind them, but they could hardly keep this up indefinitely. The Northway, which was what was overhead, was going to rejoin the earth—
Sure enough, the descent from up above started to happen, and at such a velocity, Trez became convinced they were going to mash-potato themselves into the coming horizontal asphalt merger.
Except, no. Fritz jerked out from underneath, riding a ridge of pavement around to the roads that ran parallel to the Hudson. Somehow, he managed to get them in between a break in the guardrails and then, justlikethat, they were on an exit ramp that would take them onto the highway in the right direction.
Heading away from town.
Trez waited for a lineup of CPD units with their lights going all Fourth of July to fall in behind them.
Instead, he saw a fleet of those boys in blue tearing it up on the other side of the Northway, heading to the site of all the fun and games.
Fritz slowed down and put his lights back on. Pulled into the stream of traffic. Floated away at a modest seventy miles an hour.
“How the hell did you do that?” Trez said with H2G respect.
“Humans are rather easy to lose. They tend to track lights, rather like cats with a laser pointer. Without the illumination? It gives one a serious advantage—well, that and possessing twice their horsepower.”
Trez turned to his queen. “You okay—”
Selena reached over and pulled his mouth in for a kiss. And another. “What a night! That was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me!”
Adrenaline quickly transferred into lust as he kissed her back and pressed her into her seat. Licking his way into her mouth, he found one of her breasts with his hand.
“Should I tell him to gas it again?” Trez growled against her mouth. “’Cuz I don’t think I can wait. . . .”
“We’ll be home soon,” she murmured, smiling. “And I like anticipation. I’ve been hungry for you since the ride in.”
Trez groaned deep in his throat as he reached for the button to raise the partition. “Fritz?”
“Yes, master?”
“A little faster, if you don’t mind.”
“My pleasure, sire!”
