Jesus heard her utter the other man’s name but couldn’t quite believe it. He also didn’t want Michaela to be caught unawares during her shock.
He stepped away from his hiding spot and leveled the Tec-9 at the man’s back. At this range, he could cut him in half, but he might also hurt Michaela with any pass-throughs, so he held his ground, praying he wouldn’t need to shoot.
“Benjamin!” she repeated, her voice strangled. “It’s not possible. You’re dead.” She took a step toward him, but he raised his hand.
With a dry chuckle, Benjamin said, “Yeah, I am dead, Michaela. Or should I say...undead.”
Fuck, Jesus thought. He stepped forward, coming into the man’s line of sight, and finally seeing for himself the face of the Slayer elder both he and Michaela had thought dead.
He winced at the sight. One side of the otherwise handsome face was marred by a network of crisscross scars and puckers. He thought back to the last time he had seen Benjamin, and recalled the horrible torture the man had endured. The scars fit, providing further proof that he was who he claimed to be.
Not that Michaela seemed to need any proof. She rushed to the other man and wrapped him in a bear hug, a huge smile on her face and tears leaking from her eyes.
“How, Ben? How is this possible?” She drew back and examined him carefully, her watery gaze greedy with joy as it traveled over him.
Jesus’s gut twisted with jealousy, but he fought it back. He was bigger than that petty emotion, even though Michaela’s dead ex had returned, raising all sorts of disturbing possibilities in Jesus’s mind.
“It’s a long story best left for later, Mikey. Suffice it to say, I tracked two vampires to this building earlier this morning, but the sun was too high for me to stay and take care of them.”
Mikey? Annoyance coursed through Jesus as jealousy sank its talons ever further into his gut.
“One of them is Connall,” Michaela told Benjamin.
He straightened with surprise, his eyes widening at the news. “Your father? You’ve finally found him?”
“I have. Or rather, he found me,” she said as the two of them walked ahead, leaving Jesus feeling like the proverbial third wheel. “I killed one of his fledglings—”
“Kieran. I found his body in a cavern not far from here,” Benjamin said, his hand unconsciously seeking the small of Michaela’s back.
Jesus gritted his teeth, but continued to follow, not about to leave them alone.
“He’s made another,” she said. “Kieran’s lover. I think they have a lair somewhere around here.”
Benjamin nodded and paused in front of a door. He sniffed the air and, with a start, finally noticed Jesus. Squinting with a furrowed brow, he held out his hand. “Have we met before?”
“The night you died,” Jesus said, but didn’t relax his grip on his gun to accept the handshake. Jerking his head in the direction of the door, he said, “Is this the place? Connall’s lair?”
Michaela peered at him in a puzzled way that said she didn’t understand what was wrong. But she laid her hand on the door and inhaled deeply. “Blood, for sure, but I’m not sensing any undead vibes.”
Benjamin nodded. “Me neither. Shall we?” he asked, looking from him to Michaela.
Jesus nodded curtly, wanting to move on from their reunion to the reason they had come here—to kill Connall Burk.
“I’ll go first, Mikey,” Benjamin said. He put his hand on the doorknob and it turned easily. Too easily. He threw the door open, but the room was empty. Except for the body of a young woman sprawled on the floor, her sightless eyes staring at the newly drywalled ceiling.
They cautiously walked in to view the carnage.
The woman’s throat had been ripped open, and messy sprays of her blood marred the fresh walls and had soaked into the beige rug and the pale yellow of her dress.
Beside Jesus, Michaela sucked in a breath, wavered, and grabbed his arm for support. The action surprised him until he realized her gaze was fixed on a faded strip of color photos that had been tacked to the wall opposite the door, by the woman's body.
“Michaela?” he asked as she came back to herself. Without answering, she gingerly stepped over the dead woman to the photos.
He followed her, slipping his arm around her waist since she still seemed unsteady. Her hands trembled as she freed the photo strip from the wall and cradled it in her hands as if it were a precious treasure.
“Michaela, sweetheart. What is it?” he asked, worried about her state of mind.
“It’s her mother,” Benjamin answered.
She leaned back against Jesus’s chest, and looked up at him with a tortured gaze.
“Please. I need to get out of here.”
***
Michaela wrapped shaky hands around the mug of tea Jesus had just handed her as she sat at the kitchen table in J’s apartment. From the aroma, she guessed he had added a healthy dose of rum to it along with the tea leaves.
“Thanks.” She met his gaze and offered him a smile to relieve his obvious concern. Behind him, Benjamin stood staring at her, his gaze just as worried. She gave him a brave look to assuage his fears, too.
Jesus shot a glance over his shoulder at the other man, gave a resigned huff, and dropped onto the chair beside her. He wrapped his arm possessively around her shoulders. Looking down at the strip of photos sitting on the table in front of her, he said, “This is your mom?”
She nodded and peered at the photos again, remembering with a clarity undimmed by the passage of time the exact moment the photos had been taken.
“We had finally stopped moving around and my mom had gotten a job at a local luncheonette. It’s where she met my adoptive father. He was a cop who used to come into the diner for breakfast and lunch.” She smiled. “She had a day off, and we walked up to Asbury Park. There was some kind of fair going on and they had an old-fashioned photo booth on the boardwalk. I begged and begged to get some photos taken,” she said, gazing at the strip with fondness. She passed her hand over it tenderly, almost able to feel the soft fabric of her mom’s dress.
Jesus leaned forward, sneaking a peek at the strip. The woman in the photos looked a lot like Michaela, but her features were not as refined. Nor as youthful, despite the fact that she couldn’t have been much older than Michaela was now when the photos had been taken. Worry, and a lifetime of hiding, had taken its toll on her beauty.
“You look like her. She was beautiful,” he said, and eased his hand over hers, gently stilling the nervous way she kept touching the strip.
“He killed her a few weeks later.” She swallowed. “I used to keep this in my pocket because we looked so happy, but I lost it that night. Now I know where it went,” she said in a faraway voice, back on that beachfront where her mother had given her life.
“He’s using it against you, Michaela. Remember what I said about this being too personal? He’s playing on your emotions to make you vulnerable.” It was typical of some sadistic killers, wearing down their prey until the distractions they created provided an opportunity for them to strike.
“He’s right, Mikey,” Benjamin said, and took the seat on the other side of her, splaying his big hands on the table. It was impossible to miss the scars on his arms where his demented brother had slashed Ben’s wrists in order to punish him for imagined infractions with a slow, painful death. She could also see the bite marks where she had fed from him in order to sustain herself as she lay dying beside him.
Only she hadn’t died, and neither had Ben, apparently.
She started to reach for him but pulled back, aware of how Jesus might see the gesture. Uncertain in any case of just what Ben was now—part Slayer and part-demon, just as she was—but which parts? Which raised another ugly question.
“Who turned you, Ben? And why?” As she spoke, she tightened her hold on Jesus’s hand, reaffirming to him where her affections lay.
With a graceless shrug of his immense, leather-covered shoulders, Ben said, “Why? I wasn’t ready to die. I thought I would be, when the time came, but the time came much sooner than I had imagined. Courtesy of someone I loved,” he murmured, hurt searing through his voice.
He looked at her, and there was no doubting the message there. As he had once loved her.
“Diego did this the night we left him with you?” she asked, dreading the answer. Diego Rivera was Ryder’s friend and business partner.
It was bad enough she was dealing with the possibility of having to stake Ryder. But staking Diego, a vampire elder and member of the Vampire Council would have even farther-reaching consequences—which she undoubtedly would not live through.
“Don’t blame Diego. I asked him to do it,” Ben said, then looked away in shame, shaking his head and laughing harshly. “Hell, I begged him, Mikey. I begged him like a coward. I didn’t want to die. Not then. Not ever.”
His explanation brought a trickle of relief to Michaela. With both his and Diana’s turnings being completely voluntary, she could make a case before the Council for leniency. If she even went back to them. All their damn rules grated on what her heart said was right.
“There’s no crime in wanting to live,” Jesus said, offering the other man his understanding. Michaela gave him a pleased smile. She knew the doubts he must be having about their relationship, given first her failure to admit her love for him, and now being faced with Benjamin’s sudden reappearance.
Facing Jesus, she gave her lover a reassuring squeeze and an equally welcome smile. “Thank you for taking care of me, J. I wasn’t thinking straight and that does make me vulnerable, just as Connall wants. I won’t play that game with him.”
“Are you sure it’s Connall? I mean, you’ve been searching for him for so long,” Ben said.
Michaela pulled herself back to the moment when her gaze had first connected with Connall’s across Union Square. His features had been so familiar, and despite the distance, her blood had answered the connection to his. When he locked his blue-eyed gaze with hers, she had known without a doubt that he was her father.
“I’m sure, Ben. I have no doubts. But I’m sure I’ve lost him again. He won’t go back to that lair now that it’s been discovered. Especially since the police are crawling all over it after Jesus called in the murdered woman.”
“You’re probably right,” Benjamin agreed. “But we’ll find him again and—”
“No, we’ll find him again,” she said and gestured to Jesus when it was clear Ben meant just himself and her.
Ben looked across the table at her lover and barely controlled a sneer. “He’s a human, Mikey. No match for a vampire like Connall.”
Jesus tensed, but she gave him a knowing smile and, without moving her gaze from his, said, “You’d be surprised at how resilient and resourceful humans can be, Ben.”
“Don’t be foolish. Don’t refuse my help,” Ben pleaded, hands outstretched before him.
Michaela kept watching Jesus, and as the brown of his eyes warmed with relief and pleasure at her vote of confidence, he said, “No reason why the three of us can’t work together.” Turning to the other man, he said, “Right, Ben?”
Apparently feeling a newfound, grudging respect for Jesus, Ben nodded. “Right. So. What’s our battle plan?”