The Better to Eat You With: The Red Journals (33 page)

Clattering ensued on the line just as the elevator
doors chimed an arrival.

“Vince!” I snapped down the line.

Faster than I could see, Felix was around the desk,
grabbing my arm, and yanking me to a sweeping walkway even as I was tucking the
figurine flash drive into a pocket in my pack and pulling it on.

“Hey! Who are you?” said an unfamiliar male voice.

We didn’t stop.

“Freeze now! I mean it!”

A beat of silence as we rounded the top, and then the
harsh bark of a hand gun going off in a glass maze. Utterly deafening. A bright
spark rebounded off the steal handrail beside me and I squeaked.

“No!” came a harsh command, and then a grunt of pain.
“He wants the girl alive.”

We were running, because I didn’t want to know who
‘he’ was. I wasn’t ready to face the possibilities. I shoved the very idea of
who ‘he’ might be and concentrated on racing across the office for the
emergency exit lit up in green like a bright ‘GO’ sign. My stomach felt so
bloody tight I thought I might puke.

“Vince! Answer me!”

“I’m here, Red, but,” more crackling, like he’d just
exhaled, “there’s something circling the building.”

We slammed through the emergency exit of the executive
offices as Felix growled, “What do you mean, ‘something’?”

My skin felt tight and cold as I took the stairs two
at a time behind the Vampire, my heart beginning to hammer with a sick feeling
of comprehension of denial.
This had been too easy. Getting in and getting
up here had been too easy.

“It’s like…human, but with wings and claws.” Vince
growled, low and furious. “Really sharp claws.”

I swallowed, unbelieving as male voices and clomping
feet followed.
Had we been set up? Had they known we were coming all along?

“Felix!” We skidded to a halt before the roof door,
and I shoved the card reader at him.

My hands were shaking so bad I knew I wouldn’t be able
to disengage the pin-lock on the door to get us out in time. Felix wasted
precious moments simply to cup my cheek, his emerald eyes dark and sharp and
promising. And then he was turning away, accessing the encoded lock with the
swift efficiency I was coming to know him for.

I busied myself getting out Felix’s fold-away
crossbow. I didn’t have a clue where he’d gotten it, how he’d snuck it through
customs, or how he had known he’d need it. Didn’t matter. He was going to shoot
it at the office building across the way. Mark was going to secure it. Then
we’d zip wire it over.

I wasn’t crapping myself.
Really.

But right then, as the roof door security pad chimed
an affirmative, my heart was hammering and my breath was wheezing, my hands
were clammy and my head kept trying to spin. I always thought becoming Immortal
spared me sweat and ill-health. It never occurred to me that emotion was so
inherently involved, though it should have. When you’re sad you cry, when
you’re angry you flush, and when you fear you shake and sweat.

I was scared all the way down to my little black DC’s.

A part of my mind had refused to dwell on the
possibility that Ambrose might come after us. Come after me. I never thought to
plan for the likely event that we might get caught, or by whom. I’d refused to
use any kind of forethought in my plan, unable to face the fact that, though
Ambrose was no longer the man I had married, he still bore the face of the only
man I’d ever loved. Felix was right; I was compromised.

Relieve me of my duty, First Officer.

Felix took the crossbow from my shaking hands and
pushed through the door. I didn’t hesitate to follow him, but the instant I
cleared the door, I was swept off my feet and hurtled into a vent box that
jarred my spine and sent me spinning over the top of it. I screamed. A scream
that was cut off when I landed.

I couldn’t breathe. My vision faded in and out of
focus, blurring to black at the edges. A horrible tingling was racing up and
down my legs, and pain like nothing I’d ever known radiated from my back.

“Red?” A ringing in my ears. “Red! Answer me!”

“Fletch?” I couldn’t hear my own voice.

“What the hell is going on up there?” Vince snapped.

I could just imagine him pacing on the sidewalk like
some caged beast, and that thought had me opening my eyes. The Chicago skyline
spread out before me. Storm clouds were gathering behind it, blocking out the
moon and stars. The concrete was still damp under my cheek. Something swooped
past my view, something big and vaguely human shaped, with black feathered
wings like that of a crow or raven, and claws…

God save me
.

The ringing in my ears began to dissipate, and I could
just make out the sounds of Felix fighting, grunting, panting noises. Then he
was skidding on the concrete next to me, crouching down to touch my back.

I cried out at the burn that sprang to hideous life at
his touch.

“Shit.” His features were shadowed as he scanned the
sky, then looked back down at me. “You’re nearly healed, but we need to move. I’m
sorry, pet. This is gonna hurt.” He grabbed my arm and pulled, then hooked his
hand under my body and lifted me.

I screamed again. The world spun and flickered to
black.

A pop and a whoosh made me force my eyes open. Felix
had released his crossbow, sending the zip-wire sailing through the night sky
to Mark darting out across the roof of the opposite building. He leaped for the
rope, caught it, and whirled away from the talons of a winged beast intent on
gutting a wolf.

The crossing would be a humbling sixty-five foot
slide.

 “Red?”

I swung my gaze to Felix, who was securing the other
end of the line. His crossbow was hanging from the wire —a makeshift grip for
us. I swallowed hard and looked at my Vampire.

“You need to hold on tight to me, all right, pet?” he
said, pulling me and the crossbow grip to the edge of the building, his eyes
darting up to the sky and then back to my face as we clambered up onto the
wall. “Don’t let go.”

I nodded, “Okay.” And he tugged me close, careful to
avoid touching my back. My legs felt wobbly as I shifted my feet to stand on
his, bracing my arms about his waist and gripping my wrists. I looked up into
his face, and he looked down at me. His eyes swirled like a whirlpool of jade
and lime and olive, gold sparking angrily. Felix was on the edge, his control
threadbare. I wondered why, lifting my fingers to brush his cheek, leaving
faint streaks of red on his pale skin, and then I felt it. He was terrified. For
me. His nostrils flared as my blood patterned his skin.

“What are you waiting for, Alistair?”

Gold flared brightly, consuming green for an instant.
“Brace yourself,” he said, and hurled us off the end of the building.

The feeling of weightlessness was fleeting. The
vertigo-sensation was overwhelming. The flair of pain in my back and arms, the
needle-prickling in my legs, nothing more than a vague secondary thought as the
solid ground of the roof disappeared and a sixty-five floor drop appeared under
our feet.

That’s six-hundred and fifty feet. One-hundred and
ninety-eight meters.

Park Tower was originally going to be this tall.

Jeepers…

Gold instantly consumed my vision, the monochrome
doing nothing to deflate the breath-taking height with which we were sliding
at. My grip on my Vampire tightened as my eyes went wide. Suddenly, I was all
too coherent.

The sudden impact had us swinging a mere ten feet from
our launch site. I yelped in pain, shock and fear, my hands sliding on my wet
arms. Felix cursed, but barely had enough time to check his grip before another
massive wing batted us, like we were nothing more than dust motes.

Our smooth slide became a bouncing, rocking descent,
my stomach dropping out my shoes and bile rising with each sickly rebound. Blood
perfumed the air, intensifying the anise enveloping me. Felix was bleeding, and
I turned my head to look at his face. His jaw was clenched and his pupils were
nothing but pinpricks in orbs of gold lightning.

“Felix, you’re—” A scream was ripped from my throat as
my body was ripped from Felix’s. I was air-born for an instant, swung out wide,
legs swinging up to meet the night sky, and then I was yanked back. I screamed
again as a jerk on my pack had me sliding free of the straps so fast my heart
stopped beating.

“Red!”

My hand snatched out and gripped anything it could,
grappling with straps and finding purchase. I jolted to a stop and swung, and
looked up into the strained expression of my Vampire as he hung from the zip
wire grip with one hand, and held the opposite pack strap with the other as if
his life depended on it.

But he couldn’t hold me forever.

“Felix.”

“Don’t.” He gritted. “Don’t even say it.”

“I have to,” I said, even as my vision began to blur
with tears. I blinked furiously and felt the hot slide of tears down my cold
cheeks. Felix was terrified. I could feel it in my head as surely as if the
emotion were my own. “Neither of us will make it to that building otherwise.”

“No!” He adjusted his grip on the pack strap, and an
involuntary cry of fear erupted from my throat when I began to sway. “No.” He
said again, meeting my eyes. “Don’t you dare let go, Red.”

“I have to.”

“Don’t you
dare
!”

I swallowed against the fear clogging my throat,
stealing myself against the pounding of my heart and the sure knowledge that
this was it for me. Felix might survive the fall. I knew I wouldn’t. I was
half-wolf, and as much as I’d love to believe otherwise, I wasn’t invincible. Werewolves
just weren’t. I squeezed my eyes shut, the memory of his kiss before we left
the house a transitory moment of pleasure in my mind, bursting through his
anger and fear clouding the back of my consciousness as thick as fog.

I opened my eyes, looked at my Vampire, and realized
I’d been falling for him since day one. In his eyes, I saw the promise of what
could have been. I saw how the kisses we’d shared could have bloomed into something
truly life-altering. I saw in the tension in his face as he stared back at me
the loss of such a silently offered pledge, and I felt my heart break even as I
felt his do the same.

“You have to stop him, Felix.”

“Please,” Felix pleaded, something in his voice
catching, his eyes bright. He looked so pale, the streak of my blood on his
cheek abnormally bright. “Don’t do this.”

“You have to make him pay.”
I wish I’d had the
chance to love you, too.

“
Red!
” Felix’s roar of denial echoed in my mind
as I released the strap and began to fall.

I fell for an instant. I fell forever, and then the
world went black.

I
looked at the chest, at the familiar iron and wood, and tried to remember what
I had put in it. But I couldn’t remember. All I knew what that something
important was inside, and in order to understand why I was here, I had to know
what that something was.

I
reached out my hands for the corners again, determined to open it.

“You
don’t want to do that, Willow,” said the voice, and I stilled once more, the
tone making me pause out of habit. “Not yet, anyhow.”

“Why
not?” I asked, and the presence rippled, pressing in on my, heating my cold,
cold flesh.

“You
are not ready.”

“Not
ready for what?”

“To
believe.”

I
smoothed my hand over the carved lid as I listened.

“You’re
not ready to accept what is in the chest.”

“Is
that why it won’t open?” I asked.

“It
will open when you’re ready,” soothed the voice, “and not before.”

“But I
want to know now.” I could hear the petulance in my voice, and felt the ripple
of amusement in the air around me. “Can’t I even get a peak?”

“One
trial at a time, Willow.”

I
stared at the wooden flowers. “What trials must I endure before I will know?”

“Well,
first…” The heat of a large hand pressed down on my shoulder, flooding me with
comfort and warmth, but would not allow me to turn and look at who it belonged
to. “First you must deal with your husband.”

Coming awake was like
swimming against the tide.

I hadn’t known how to swim
when I was mortal, but all it had taken was falling in the ocean after being
turned and realizing I couldn’t
 
die
 
from drowning. Merely drown,
revive, drown, revive, drown, revive. The process of suffocation was agonizing.
The course of reanimation even more so.

So I’d forced myself
through the gelatinous cold of water until I reached the surface. My arms had
ached, my legs were sore, my fingers and toes numb, and sucking in air felt
like inhaling fire, but it burned so good I couldn’t stop myself, hungry for
what had been deprived me for however long I’d been under. Forcing my body out
of the heavy weight of water on shaking limbs and collapsing onto cold, slimy
cobbles left me exhausted and elated and ridiculously shell-shocked that I was
even alive at all.

Coming awake was like
that.

The residual ache
encompassing my entire body was the first sensation to batter my subconscious
into wakefulness. The full impact of my recovering injuries resounded like a
deep throb down to my bones, starting at my back and spreading out to my arms
and legs. Every so often, when I least expected it, like a hiccup, a spike of
pain would lance through my temples, causing me to tense in discomfort, which
in turn made my body
 
scream
.

I sucked in a sharp breath
of shock.

The scent that flared my
nostrils and coated my tongue was the second sensation. It was all snow,
ever-greens and the odd spicy tang of Vampire and cigar smoke.
It was reminiscent of a small cabin in the woods,
tracks in the snow and the familiar sound of an axe hitting a chopping block
around back. It was deep brown eyes the color of dry earth, the rasp of stubble
across my skin, and the callused hands of a man who whittled little animals for
me, and brought me to life with his tender touch.

Brown eyes glazed with
pain, bloodied lips…
Run,
 
Willow… Just run…

My eyes opened and
refocused as if I’d done nothing but blink, rather than waking from the
oblivion I’d fallen into when I’d released my hold on that pack strap, Felix’s
bellow echoing through the chaotic emotions, both mine and his, raced through
my mind. He could have loved me, every part of me. I could have loved him.

“You’re almost healed.”

I stiffened at the voice
that was achingly familiar and icily cold all at once.

“Though I am disappointed
it’s taken so long. Made travelling rather awkward, but then, he was not to use
his venom when he struck you.” A pause, as if he were shrugging, “Never mind. One
manages as one must.” The voice had drifted closer, and the soft surface of the
bed I was lying on, the bed that smelled so much like my husband and a murderer
it made me feel sick to my stomach.

“My apologies for not
providing adequate satisfaction,” I grumbled, slowing rolling onto my back and
avoiding looking at him all together, eyes skimming over the posts of the bed I
lay on.
That’s it, Red. Work that bravado, bluster your way through.
 
I also avoided thinking about the
fact that I wasn’t wearing the uniform I’d changed into at Jade’s house any
longer. I didn’t want to think about who had touched me while I was
unconscious, and why the material was cool and slinky against my skin.

“On the contrary, my
dear.” A brush of fingers down my bare arm that made me tense all over again,
especially when I felt the unmistakable coolness of my chain bracelets on each
arm, “You are as you have always been.”

I looked at him then, for
I could not tell from his pompous tone, for my Glenn was as common as they
come, his accent as comforting to me as down-comforters, whether or not he was
insulting me.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

My insides tightened at
the familiar features, the soft brown eyes framed in dark lashes under the dark
slash of his brows. His lips that were the shape of a diamond stretched wide
under a straight, narrow nose. Dark hair swept back from a face that wasn’t
pretty in the least, but utterly masculine, unmistakably male, right the way
through to the stubborn square line of his jaw. His shoulders were as broad as
I remembered, his body as muscled as I recalled, definition showing through the
crisp whiteness of his shirt. Though the hollows in his clean-shaven cheeks
that defined sharp cheekbones were strange, given my Glenn was very rarely
without a beard since he had begun to sprout facial hair, only added to the
sophisticated, yet lethal air he possessed.

I lost my ability to
breath.
My
heart skipped.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes.

Not my husband.

Ambrose tilted his head as
he perused me with the same yearning intensity. “Exquisite,” he murmured, his
fingers lifting to brush my cheek.

At the soft caress, the
burning behind my eyes strengthened, my vision blurred, and big fat tears
brimmed over my lashes. The yearning on his face softened, taking the harshness
from his clean-shaven features.

“Hey, now, little tree.”

A sob broke free from me
at the sound of that old endearment with his voice.

“No tears.” And he
gathered me into his arms.

I couldn’t resist going to
him. Couldn’t resist wrapping my arms as tightly as I could around his neck as
I’d always done as a child. Couldn’t deny the security that instantly eased my
bones, nor the luxury of being held by someone who’d once known me better than
I had known myself. I forgot that Glenn was Ambrose and that Ambrose was a
sadistic murderer out for world domination, because for that moment, with his
heat against me and my fingers curling in his hair and his deep, familiar voice
murmuring softly to me, he
 
was
 
my Glenn.

My best friend.
My lover.
My husband.

So, when I turned my head,
and he turned his, natural instinct was to kiss. Because the hero always kissed
the girl, the nightmare ended, and they lived happily ever after. I wanted my
nightmare to finally end and to wake up knowing it was nothing but some weird
dream that I could entertain my husband with. I wanted it so bad that I was
willing to let myself get lost in this stranger’s kiss as surely as I’d been
willing to lose myself in Felix’s blood.

Felix.
Felix doesn’t kiss
like this.

I flinched, eyes springing
open as I jerked back. Brown eyes, hot with desire, stared back at me, and I
looked away, rubbing at wet cheeks, sniffling.

“Willow?” A hand cupping
my cheek, and I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of my husband saying my
name. “My apologies. You’re recovering from a near fatal injury and I took
advantage.” He lifted from the bed, his tone authoritative once more, stony.
“Are you hungry?”

“Where am I?” I asked
instead, glancing around the small room that barely held the bed I lay on and a
vanity in the corner.

There was a small cove
where a bathroom stood open-plan. No curtain. No door.
Great.
The walls
were a non-descript grey, but the floor was carpeted in a lush deep blue, and
fluffy cream rugs abounded, matching the midnight-colored satin sheets and
comforter. There were cameras too; one in the corner by the dark wall, above
the bathroom entrance, and one other in the opposite corner. He’d be able to
see me wherever I was.

“My home,” Ambrose absently
replied as he turned away and moved to one of the walls. It was darker than the
rest, and strangely smooth in comparison. “Or one of them,” he finally added,
like he couldn’t resist boasting to me, distracting me from wandering about the
dark wall. “This one,” he waved a dismissive hand at the room, the tan in his
arms enhanced by the whiteness of the shirt he wore, “was as far as I could get
from Chicago without leaving the country.”

At least I was still in
the States. I kind of knew my way around all the major cities of the U.S. in
this decade. Most countries outside of it I wasn’t quite so familiar with. I’d
be lost. I made a show of looking around, the mumbled, “And I was expecting
gold-veined marble.”

Glenn—Ambrose—turned to me
and arched a condescending brow. “Not in this part of the house. I learned that
the hard way.”

I frowned at that comment,
and he smiled. A smile of true amusement I hadn’t seen in three centuries. It
stole the words from my throat, left me breathless with longing, and I took in
the full extent of him for the first time. He wore black slacks and shiny shoes
that matched his belt. He looked…weird.
Impressive,
but weird.
Then again, this was the male who’d had me dressed in a floor
length white gown with skinny straps and pretty little shoes, my hair brushed
out and unbound.
Everything I would hide was
exposed.
I felt like a doll that had been primped and dressed
appropriately for my master, and nothing like the female I knew myself to be.

Could it be that Ambrose
still saw me as the wife I’d been? I fought so desperately to remind myself
that Ambrose wasn’t my husband at all.
Could he be utterly ignorant—or more
likely, dismissive—of the changes three hundred years had wreaked on me?

“How long has it been
since that night—” My mind rebelled against the memory of letting go. “Since
that night?” I finished. No need for clarification.

“Four days,” Ambrose
replied.

Four days.
I’d been
unconscious and at the mercy of a killer for four days.

Pressing a hand to my
stomach, I forced myself to ask, “You knew we’d go to Natasha’s work, didn’t
you?”

Ambrose peered at me, like
a scientist at a rare species of butterfly before he pins its wings, his eyes
scouring me with frost burn right to my soul. “Of course,” he replied.

“It was a trap.”

“Only after I saw you at
Emerald City.”

“Why only after?”

He shrugged. “I acquired
what I went there for, and saw my next acquisition.”

Oh, God…
“What did you go there for?”

“The snake Shifter, of
course.”

“And,” I swallowed, “your
next acquisition?”

Ambrose stopped his
aimless wandering around the bed and turned to me, his expression bland, his
eyes cold. I don’t know why I kept expecting anything else.

 “You’re not that stupid,
Willow. Although, perhaps you harbor that much denial.” His head tilted at me, and
then he was suddenly in front of me, straddling my hips, his gaze burning into
mine as his hands slowly rose to cup my cheeks.

 I jerked back to my
elbows and froze like a deer, making no move he might interpret as threatening.
A full-blooded Vampire could kill me in one-on-one combat. His fingertips
brushed my skin, skimmed along my jaw and down my bare throat.

Did he do this with the
Immortals like he used to do with his little wooden creations?
Running his fingers over them searching for
imperfections? His… collection… Oh, God…All the missing Immortals. All the
special ones, the half-breeds…

Ambrose
was
the
Collector.

“Me?”
Shit. Fuck.
“Because we were married.”

“
Are,
” He snapped,
“married. We are married.” Ambrose waved dismissively as he sat back on his
heels, his fingers threading through my hair. “Lustrous…”