Cold Hard Secret (Secret McQueen) (2 page)

I wanted very badly to
be
with Desmond and Holden the way I once had been, but every attempt ended with a panic attack. After a while we’d just stopped trying, and I was waiting for the right time to make another attempt.

When I’d gotten free of The Doctor, I had wanted to be held all the time. I’d clung to Desmond and Holden like they were all I needed to keep myself together. But things got harder after I got home, and didn’t look to get easier anytime soon.

Holden didn’t know how to deal with it. I think he was grateful when I told him to stay behind during my Paris trip.

He was getting frustrated with me, and I could understand why. There were moments I was frustrated with myself.

Desmond didn’t let it show, but I was wearing him down too. He was the kind of person to see the positive side of things—a real bonus for me, given everything I’d put him through—but I knew he was having trouble seeing the light at the end of our tunnel.

So was I.

Though the good nights had started to outnumber the bad, my dark moods were still
really
dark. And the nightmares persisted every day.

He unlatched the gate and stepped through, where I lost him to the night. I’d need to get down to street level if I wanted to follow him, and that defeated the whole purpose of sending him in alone. He was a big boy, I shouldn’t be worried, but the moment I let anyone I loved out of my sight, a part of me was convinced I was seeing them for the last time.

A fragment of memory flashed into my mind, Holden crumpled in the corner of a concrete cell, his body wasting away to nothing with gaunt cheeks and pale skin.

I blinked a few times, hoping to chase it away, but the scene faded out and was replaced with another. Maxime, a young vampire I’d met in Los Angeles who was from Holden’s line, tethered up and split open, his insides spilling out onto the floor.

Gagging, I braced myself on all fours on the roof and closed my eyes.

“Ten…nine…eight…seven…” Each word was sounded out fully and slowly, and I concentrated on the count, trying to picture the numbers the way a preschooler might, in terms of shiny red apples or colorful rubber balls. Anything to distract myself from the flashbacks.

These weren’t nightmares, they were memories, and they’d been haunting me for months. Any time I thought I was free of them, one would sneak back in and grab hold of me, as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.

In my almost twenty-four years of life I had seen gruesome things. I’d once watched a demon rip out my ex-boyfriend’s spine. But none of that had stuck with me like my experiences with The Doctor had. I used to think I could forget anything and keep moving on with my life.

Turns out I was wrong.

A loud metallic clang in the alley brought my attention back to the present. A small man with a ratty nest of brown hair bolted towards the main street, and a moment later Desmond followed him.

“Anytime now,” he growled, casting a glance upwards. Considering he couldn’t have known where I was, he came close to looking right at me.

Having my cue, I straightened up and jumped across the alley to the next roof just as Desmond reached the street. The chorus of shocked cries and French expletives from his emergence onto the main road led me in the right direction. The roofs were slick from the evening’s earlier rain, and as I went to clear another gap, I slipped.

I went down like a sack of bricks, smashing my hip and shoulder onto the hard surface and sliding towards the balcony below. Unfortunately my momentum had been enough that I was also still moving forward, and I hit the end of the building before I had a chance to latch on to the balcony railing.

Soon there was nothing beneath me except the potential for a long fall.

For a split second I panicked, not sure what to do.

Then my brain kicked in, and survival instincts overrode my momentary flailing stupidity. I grabbed the edge of the roof, struggling to find purchase on the slippery material and finally getting a decent hold.

I got my toes in on the top of a window frame and stayed put for a moment, catching my breath. Given my precarious position, I could either try to get back up on the roof, or dangle down enough so I could fall into the alley at an angle that wouldn’t break my neck.

I had to get down eventually somehow.

Dropping straight wasn’t an option. Even if I didn’t break my neck I would probably break my legs, and though it would heal within hours—twenty-one, to be precise—I didn’t relish the idea of dragging myself home with two broken legs while Desmond chased some random informant through the Parisian streets.

The walls on both sides of the alley were set with boarded windows, but with enough ledge under the frames I could theoretically scale my way down. Big emphasis on the
theoretical
.

Bracing my feet against the wall, I eyeballed the alley for my best target. One of the windows on the opposite side had a decent lip. Below me there was another window with a half-broken wooden sill. Easy-peasy.

I pushed off and twisted in the air—made only slightly more difficult by the sword attached to my back. When I hit the ledge on the opposite wall, I realized I’d overestimated the depth of it and scrambled to get my feet balanced for the split-second I’d need. Then I shoved off again, mirroring the move to get to the window that had previously been below me.

The wood sill crumbled under my boot.

I wasn’t having a hell of a lot of luck here.

Between the two windows, I’d managed to drop at least fifteen feet lower than where I’d started. I’d come far enough I could fall the rest of the way with no magnificent injuries. I propelled myself across one more time, grabbing hold of another ledge by the tips of my fingers. The impact of my body crashing into the wall reminded me of the hard fall I’d taken up on the roof.

There would be some bruising.

I released the window ledge and dropped to the street, landing in a crouch on both feet, with nary a broken bone to complain about.

Too bad I’d lost precious chase time by hanging around.

I ran into the street, sticking close to the buildings to avoid too much undue attention. At least the sword was in a sheath, and with the smooth design of the katana it didn’t appear threatening at a quick glance. I’d seen people with more menacing umbrellas.

Dodging a few slow-moving pedestrians, I scanned the crowd for a sign of Desmond or the man he was chasing. Given I was a mere five four, it wasn’t easy to see much of anything from my lowered vantage point. Hopping up and down to see over people’s heads was always an option, but it tended to take away from my polished badass veneer.

Instead I kept moving and tried to judge where the crowd was parting unnaturally—as though someone was forcing their way through it. The din of shouts and curses helped too. Apparently Parisians weren’t big fans of being shoved.

“
Va ta fair foutre, salaud!
” someone growled ahead.

Being raised in Canada by a Creole-French grandmother, I had picked up a passable amount of the language. I wasn’t fluent, but I could get by. And naturally, as a teenager, swears had been the most exciting thing to learn. So I didn’t need a translation to know the guy was saying
Fuck off, asshole.
It sounded much more cultured in French.

It also helped me pinpoint which direction I was going.

I wove my way through the crowd, grateful to find people were either uninterested or more focused on Desmond than on me. My slight frame made it easier to avoid people than it would be for the six-foot-tall werewolf, who cut an intimidating silhouette even in his human form.

The smaller man must have still been ahead of him because the crowd was parting in two discernible waves, like the ripples off a pair of stones thrown a few feet apart. Soon the people began to thin out, and I was able to see my quarry clearly. Desmond barreled after the other man at full tilt, and they both ducked into another alley.

I was getting sick of alleys.

Frankly, I was getting sick of France too. I hoped when we caught up to this guy, we could beat something useful out of him and finally figure out where Peyton was hiding.

A little killing would do me some good.

Chapter Three

Desmond already had the guy cornered when I skidded into the alley. In Paris the alleys weren’t so much back lanes as leaner connecting streets too narrow for cars to pass through. This made it extra difficult as far as cornering went, because the lane was a straight shot through.

But Desmond had caged the man between his arms and was growling at him in a way that reminded me he wasn’t human at all.

I drew my gun and approached the pair, both men glancing up at me in the same instant.

The guy we’d been chasing was reed thin and only a smidge taller than I was. His hair was actually dark blond but had looked brown because it hadn’t been washed in quite some time. Ditto his skin, smeared with soot and dirt. It was impossible to tell what color his tattered clothing used to be.

“Who do we have here?” I asked Desmond.

“Meet the Mouse.” He pushed the guy hard against the wall, making him let out a squeak to do his namesake animal proud. “I’m told if there’s something going on in the city people don’t want getting out, Mouse knows about it. Isn’t that right?”

The man looked at me again, his eyes a shockingly bright shade of blue against the filthy veneer of his face. He was barely a man at all, maybe twenty at best. More like a teenager, though.

“If he lets you go, are you going to run? Because I have better ways to bring you down than he does.” I held my gun so he could see it. “It’s rare for me to miss, but if you’re running, I might aim for the shoulder and accidentally hit your neck, know what I mean?”

Mouse nodded.

“So, kid, let’s talk.” Desmond took a step back, crossing his arms and fixing the boy with a stern no-nonsense glare. I liked seeing him let his inner alpha out to breathe. Living in Lucas’s shadow couldn’t be easy for him.

“Wh-what do you want?”

“We’re looking for a vampire,” I said, wanting to see what his reaction would be. If he thought the idea was ludicrous or shocking, chances were good he wouldn’t have useful information. I was pretty good at reading people’s expressions.

“This is Paris,” he replied. “You’re going to have to narrow things down a bit for me.” He had a soft accent, not French, maybe English. It was hard to tell with the near-whisper quiet of his words.

Not only did he know about vamps, he knew how plentiful they were in the city. Paris was the seat of Europe’s council, where the Tribunal was located. In a sense it was bold as hell for Peyton to come here and thumb his nose at the vampire version of “the man”. But it was a city people could easily get lost in, regardless of how small it was.

He was proving this all too well.

“I’m looking for a vampire named Alexandre Peyton.”

“
Merde,
” Mouse spat.
Shit.
Couldn’t mean anything good. “The Angel of Death?”

It had been ages since I heard Peyton called by that moniker. I’d been sixteen the first time I met him, before I worked for the council, before I had a werewolf boyfriend. Hell, my acquaintance with Peyton predated my sense of self-preservation, since the guy had damn near killed me.

To thank him, I’d ripped out one of his fangs.

It was the only surface wound a vampire couldn’t heal, and he’d never forgiven me.

Oh yeah, we went way back.

In his heyday he’d been famous in Europe. His sadistic appetites were well-known among the vampire community, the nasty violence at odds with his beautiful, youthful face.

The Angel of Death.

“Where is he?” My voice hitched up, making me sound a lot less calm and cool than I was pretending to be.

“Look, lady. You don’t want none of him, okay? People go in, they don’t come out. He might be pretty, or whatever. Maybe he’s great in the sack, I dunno what you two are into. But it’s not worth it. Some vamps it’s a bite and flight. They take your blood and bounce. But not this guy. This guy will use you up until there’s nothing left.”

Yup. Sounded like the Peyton I knew and loathed.

I couldn’t blame him for going a bit blood happy now that he was free again. Because of me he’d been chained in silver for over a year and starved the entire time. If I was deprived of food for a year…well, I’d die. But if I were a normal vampire and denied the feed? I’d be ravenous. A bottomless pit of hunger. It was no wonder he was eating his fill and then some.

I wasn’t trying to defend the actions of a serial-killing maniac vampire, but I
got
it.

Maybe it was time to start worrying, since I was sympathizing with Alexandre Peyton.

“Does it seem to you like I’m on a mission to get my rocks off with him?” I waved the gun again.

“I dunno. People can get weirdly motivated when it comes to vampires. The blood, the sex, the whole, you know…immortality thing.”

Point taken.

“I’m not here to fuck him. I’m here to kill him.”

“And this guy?” Mouse jerked his chin towards Desmond.

“Trust me, I’m not planning to fuck him either,” Desmond replied dryly.