We caught a taxi on Saint-Germain Boulevard and took it across the river, where I told the driver to stop next to an alley. I paid him in cash and pulled Zaq into the alley.
I risked a quick look down the street. Ines had been following on foot. My suspicions had been right; Moreau was up to something. He knew this was my op. That he’d sent someone after us told me he didn’t trust me.
Ines sauntered in our direction.
I set my mouth to Zaq’s ear. “Go into the shadows.” I pushed him further into the alley.
“I can’t.” He slumped against the wall, face pale and drawn under the scruffy beard.
“Yes, you can, damn it. Now is not the time to turn into a fragile flower. Fade. Now.”
His eyelids lifted. The look he gave me was pure toothy-jaguar nasty, but he managed to complete the fade. Then his outline wavered as he started to return to the physical world. I had to reverse my fade, wrap my arms around him and pull him the rest of the way into the shadows.
Ines peered into the alley a second later. She took a few steps in and stopped inches away from me. She sniffed, testing for our scents.
I held my breath. She was close enough to hear the air that fought to push itself out of my lungs.
She spoke into her earpiece. French, of course, but simple enough that I understood. “Oui, I’m here.” A pause. “Don’t worry yourself, I’ll stay with them.” She headed down the street in the direction the taxi had gone.
My breath came out in a whoosh. I waited until I was sure we’d lost her, then dropped out of the shadows along with Zaq and released him. He bent over, hands on his thighs, dragging in oxygen.
I waited until he lifted his head again, then grabbed his hand and pulled him down the alley and around a corner to the Metro. It wouldn’t take Ines long to figure out we’d changed taxis, but I was betting she’d assume we switched to another taxi. Syndicate vampires rarely took public transportation.
I didn’t relax until the Metro pulled out of the station, heading for northeast Paris.
It had taken me two days to come up with the plan to extricate Zaq from Philippe’s lair, and another two to implement it.
But in those four days, Zaq’s condition had deteriorated still further. Now he could barely make it down the Metro steps, let alone to the United States.
I’d decided to hide him for a few days in the bolt-hole I kept in Père Lachaise Cemetery. The 100-acre graveyard was one of Paris’s most popular parks, with tombs and headstones crammed together beneath the leafy trees, and a steady stream of tourists who came to view the graves of the celebrities buried there.
But at night, Père Lachaise belonged to the vampires, the outcasts who didn’t belong to a syndicate or even a coven. A hangout for outcast vampires was the last place you’d expect to find a slayer, which was why I’d chosen it for my bolt-hole. A bolt-hole no one, even Crow, knew existed.
Zaq fell asleep as the subway left the station, his head against my shoulder. He didn’t open his eyes even when the train lurched into the next station and he slipped off the seat.
I managed to grab him before he hit the floor. This time, I guided his head onto my lap. He remained there for the thirty-minute ride to northeast Paris, my hand on his shoulder.
From time to time, I stroked my hand down the back of his skull. His hair had streaks of every shade from brown to gold: walnut, pecan, wheat, corn. It felt like rough silk under my fingers.
It’s all right, I wanted to tell him. You’re safe now.
But that would be a lie. All I’d bought him was a reprieve.
We arrived at Gambetta station. I shook Zaq’s shoulder. “Wake up.”
When he didn’t move, I pulled him upright myself. Yeah, he was exhausted and half-starved, but if I coddled him we’d never get to Lachaise, and I was growing increasingly anxious to get off the streets before a Paris vampire saw us.
I didn’t trust Moreau. He’d agreed to Zaq’s release a little too easily. I’d thought he was involved in Op A only as a favor to Victorine, but I was starting to wonder if he was playing some deep game of his own.
Hell, maybe he’d let Zaq go so he could take him out and blame it on someone else, even de Froulay.
Zaq stumbled to his feet and looked around, wild-eyed, until his gaze settled on me.
“We’re here. Get going.” I steered him off the subway car.
“Where are we going?”
I put my arm around his waist and urged him up the stairs. “Somewhere safe where you can rest up until you feel better.”
At the top of the stairs, he shook off my arm and looked around, eyes narrowed. “This isn’t the way to the airport. Where are you taking me?”
“You’re in no shape to do anything right now. You have to take a few days to heal. Then we’ll go to New York.”
“Fuck healing. What about my brothers?”
“They’re okay for now. I’ll let my alpha know you need a couple of days.”
Sweat had broken out on his forehead. He placed a hand on the wall, head bent and visibly queasy.
“All right.” He drew a breath. “But only because I feel like shit warmed over. And not a few days. One day. I want to leave for New York tomorrow.”
“If you’re up to it, sure.” I moved to put my arm around his waist again, but he held up a hand, stopping me.
“I’ve got it.”
I shrugged and backed off.
He made it the two blocks to Lachaise on his own, but when we reached the edge, he halted and slumped against the cemetery’s tall stone wall.
“Need…a minute.” His eyelids drooped.
I squeezed my nape. If the cemetery’s vampires saw him like this, they’d be on him like a school of piranha, latching onto him and draining his blood.
“Pull yourself together.” I made my tone get-your-ass-in-gear gruff. “Or your brothers will die.”
Zaq’s eyelids flickered. “Fuck you,” he said and pushed himself upright again.
I’d been coming to Lachaise Cemetery for so long that the vampires ignored me. They knew I wasn’t human, and I’d never shown myself as Reaper. Instead, I was a down-on-her-luck dhampir with short dark hair and the nasty attitude of a pit bull with a toothache.
What they didn’t know was that I had a secret way into the cemetery. I didn’t use it often, because if the other inhabitants of the cemetery never saw me coming and going, they might get suspicious.
Now I looked at Zaq’s sagging body and made an executive decision. “We’ll go through the wall.”
“The wall?” He eyed the stones. The top was well above our heads. “What’s wrong with the gate?”
“Too many eyes.” I grabbed his hand and tugged him around the corner and down the sidewalk until I reached a break in the wall that I’d repaired myself without cementing the stones.
A quick glance around assured me we were alone. Fortunately, the vampires congregated near the entrances, waiting for human prey.
I crouched and shoved at a stone about two feet up from the ground, a smallish stone that held the others in place. It fell through to the other side. I pushed and pulled more stones out of the way until I had a space large enough to crawl through, then jerked my chin at Zaq.
“You first.”
He cursed and lowered himself to his hands and knees. He was bigger than me and his shoulders got stuck for a few seconds, but he raised his arms above his head and wriggled through like a snake, swearing the whole time. I dropped down and crawled after him.
Zaq curled up on the ground. He was silent now, no longer cursing.
I put the stones back and helped him to his feet. For once I was grateful I was a dhampir, with a dhampir’s strength. The man might’ve lost weight, but what was left was all hard muscles and solid bones.
I draped his arm over my shoulders. “It’s just up this hill.”
He grunted but shuffled forward with me taking as much of his weight as I could. The walkways started out wide but got narrower with each turn. The asphalt changed first to cobblestones, then to a dirt path barely wide enough to avoid the weathered granite tombs, obelisks and gravestones on either side.
For the last twenty-five yards, we left the path altogether. My bolt-hole was in a section of aboveground tombs that curved side by side up a hill like shrunken six-foot-high rowhomes, their worked-metal doors corroding from the elements.
By then the sky had lightened. The vampires would be seeking their day sleep, but I kept a wary eye out anyway as I half-dragged, half-pulled Zaq up the steep hill to my tomb. Actually, it was the Guilbert family’s tomb, but they’d either died out or moved away. No one had visited in the two years since I’d hollowed out a small underground room beneath it.
Zaq was moving like a sleepwalker, eyes half-closed, and I was cursing myself for choosing this out-of-the-way hideout. But it was far from the cemetery’s walking paths and unclaimed by any of the local vampires.
Two overgrown cypresses shaded the tomb from the rising sun. The metal door opened soundlessly because I oiled the hinges whenever I was in Paris. I pulled Zaq inside and shut the door behind us.
We were in a four-by-eight-foot space. Zaq’s head almost touched the ceiling. At the far side was a bench covered by a stone slab. I propped him against the wall and heaved the slab aside.
“Almost there.” I urged him toward the opening I’d uncovered.
He swayed and tripped over his feet. I swung around and caught him before he fell. We ended up facing each other, my hands gripping his torso.
“Hey.” I shook him. “Stay with me.”
He scrunched his face like a sleepy kid, then focused on me.
“Reaper.” His tone was bedroom-husky. The gold flecks in his eyes seemed to glow.
His hands were on my shoulders to help him keep his balance.
I knew that was the only reason he touched me, but we were so close, gazing into each other’s eyes like we were about to kiss.
His new T-shirt was damp with sweat. He should’ve smelled bad after all those days in the cell, but he didn’t. He smelled good. Not as good as that morning at the airport—and his scent had a metallic undertone from the silver poison—but still good. Dark and spicy, like the cypress.
My spine melted, along with other parts of me lower down. I stiffened my vertebrae and ordered those other, lower parts to settle down. This was not an embrace, even if I was breathing in the man like a drug I couldn’t get enough of.
“You—” My voice had developed a bullfrog croak. I cleared my throat and tried again. “You have to go down a ladder.” I nodded at the opening. “There’s a sleeping bag down there, and food and blood-wine.”
He straightened up, visibly pulling himself together. “Ready.”
“Okay. Me first.” I helped him to the bench. When he was seated on the edge, I swung myself into the hole and braced my feet on the ladder’s second rung.
Zaq followed. He had trouble getting his leg over the bench’s short concrete wall, but he managed it. I guided his foot to the ladder’s top rung.
“That’s it. Now the other leg.”
He swung his second leg over and slipped down two rungs, ending between me and the ladder. I pressed my body against his to keep him steady.
Out of nowhere, a chuckle bubbled up. A chuckle that was a shade hysterical, but it relieved my tension. “That’s one way to do it.”
Zaq gave a rusty laugh.
My face was up against his back. Unable to resist, I drew a lungful of Zaq-spice.
“Keep going. Four more rungs and you’re there.”
“Aweshome,” he said in a sleepy slur.
Somehow we made it down the last few rungs without falling, me supporting most of Zaq’s weight. His feet touched the dirt floor.
He turned and smiled into my eyes. “Did it.”
Then his knees gave out and he crumpled to the floor in slow motion. I caught him and eased him the rest of the way, making sure he didn’t hit his head on the hard dirt. He sighed, turned onto his side and went limp.
I shrugged out of my backpack and left him there to shimmy up the ladder. I moved the lid back over the opening, then dropped to the floor beside him. The underground room had fresh air from a PVC pipe I’d inserted in the ceiling, but almost no light; the cypress trees blocked the rising sun. My dhampir vision meant I could see, but everything was shadowed.
The only “furniture” was the sleeping bag and a narrow table against the wall that held dried food and two bottles of blood-wine. Above the table was a battery-powered camping lantern on a shelf I’d chiseled out of rock. I flicked on the lantern and put the bread and cheese I’d brought on the table along with Zaq’s sandwich and the open bottle of wine.
I stowed the backpack under the table. It held a change of clothes, underwear, and extra switchblades. In a hidden inner pocket were two tranquilizer-filled syringes in case things with Zaq went south.
Pulling off the dark wig, I tossed it on top of the backpack and turned back to Zaq.
Jesus, Ridley. I stared down at his curled-up body. Have you lost your mind?
I’d gone so far off-script, I’d landed in a whole different play with a setting and characters I didn’t recognize. Starting with myself.
Especially myself.
I’d pushed for Zaq’s release from the cell. Karoly Kral hadn’t tried to rescue him, and it looked like he didn’t intend to. According to Moreau, the primus had slipped into Paris under cover of a glamour. If he had, he’d evaded the traps set for him. Either way, he’d dropped off the radar. Even our informants in the Kral Syndicate didn’t know his current location.
So I’d suggested we enlist Zaq’s help.
“Karoly will let him get close,” I’d told Moreau. “If we explain to Zaq how Karoly has left him to twist in the wind—and possibly his two brothers as well—he’ll stake Karoly for us.”
Moreau and Co. had already primed the pump. Zaq had gone from waiting for his father to rescue him to doubting Karoly. It wouldn’t take much to nudge him further along the spectrum to resentment and anger, and from there it was a short hop to kill-or-be-killed. Especially if Zaq believed it was the only way to save his brothers.
Initially, Moreau had appeared skeptical, but he’d liked the irony of sending the man’s own son to slay him. He’d taken my idea to Prima Victorine, and when she’d approved the change in tactics, I contacted Crow and presented the new plan as their idea, not mine.
She’d immediately seen the possibilities. “I’ll have to get the Board’s approval, but I think they’ll agree. You’ll go with him, keep him on task. And if he fails, you know what to do. Eliminate them both if possible, but the father is more important.”
“Acknowledged.”
At my feet, Zaq hadn’t moved. I unrolled the sleeping bag and unzipped it to make it wide enough for two, then rolled him onto it. He turned onto his back, one arm bent up by his head, the other by his side.
I knelt next to him. Beneath the dark facial hair, he looked…harmless. Relaxed, his expression open.
Something moved in my chest. I wanted to protect him, keep him safe.
“If he fails, you know what to do.”
I swallowed hard.
You won’t have to, I told myself. This will work.
It had to work.
I smoothed a wavy lock of hair away from Zaq’s brow. Then it struck me what I was doing. I was hunched over the man, stroking his hair and figuring out ways to keep him alive.
I sat back on my heels.
I was falling under a Dark Angel’s spell. Me, Ridley Crawford.
Just like all those other women.
The man’s a Kral. He’s anything but harmless. He’s been raised since birth to take what he wants, when he wants. Yeah, he does some good deeds, but he’s a fucking syndicate prince. If he sees you’re weakening toward him, you can bet he’ll use it against you.
But I couldn’t shake off the protective feeling. So I surrendered to it.
For now, I’d take care of Zaq.
He’d scraped his wrists when he’d fallen down the ladder. The festering wounds wept blood. Not much, but the scent teased at me.
I picked up one of his hands and examined the wrist. Like vampires, a dhampir usually heals without scarring, but the silver cuffs had burned such a deep line, he’d probably always have scars.
If I licked the marks, though, they’d heal faster. Something in our saliva does that.
And I’d get to taste Zaq’s blood.
My fangs elongated. Eager—no, aching—to bite. I stared at the bloody scrapes on his wrist and beat back my vampire self.
Not to feed. To heal.
In fact, it would be best to spit out his blood so I didn’t risk taking the silver into my own body.
Okay, then. I cradled his wrist in my hand and licked it. Even with the bitter taint of the silver, the taste nearly overwhelmed my good intentions.
My vampire-half was starved for fresh blood, and like Zaq’s scent, his blood was so rich, so right.
I clenched my teeth together and pictured myself with fangs and blue-rimmed eyes, a trick I used to keep the vampire under control.
I finished one wrist and spit the blood on the dirt, then licked the other wrist. Zaq murmured as I set his arm down, and I froze, heart beating like I’d been caught stealing, and almost swallowed the blood in my mouth.
He curled onto his side again, and I leaned over and spit it out. I scratched at the dirt to cover the blood, then got the open bottle of blood-wine and took a long drink, rinsing his taste away.
I tried to give Zaq a little blood-wine too, but couldn’t wake him up. I crouched on my haunches and finished off the wine, then made a lunch of bread, cheese and a strip of beef jerky. Dessert was a handful of dried apricots.
I glanced at the unconscious Zaq and decided I might as well get some sleep.
First, I texted Crow, updating her on the situation—that Zaq was too sick to travel and we’d be in Paris for another few days before leaving for New York.
I’d have to text de Froulay at some point too, and tell him what I knew about Philippe Moreau. But that could wait.
I switched off the lantern and curled up on the sleeping bag next to Zaq.
The sun was high in the sky when Zaq bumped against me, bringing me awake with a jolt. He croaked out a string of unintelligible words, head thrashing from side to side.
I sat up and peered at him. The dim light from the air shaft fell on his face, pale except for the twin red spots on his cheekbones. He mumbled something else, then stilled.
I laid the back of my hand against his cheek. He was burning up with fever.
I muttered a curse and jumped up for a bottle of blood-wine. I opened it and kneeled on the sleeping bag. “Drink.” I slid my hand under the back of his head and touched the open bottle to his mouth.
His head lolled to the side.
“Hey.” I gave him a light shake. “Stay with me.”
He didn’t move.
Panic sleeted through me. “Drink, damn you.”
I tipped his head back until his mouth opened and dribbled some wine into it. To my relief, he swallowed.
“That’s it.” I tipped a little more into his mouth.
He swallowed that, too. His eyes opened. “More.”
I put my arm under his shoulder and lifted him partway up. He drank another few mouthfuls, then turned his head away. “Enough.”
“You sure?”
“Just…need sleep.”
I nodded and laid him back on the sleeping bag and examined his wrists. They looked better, although not much. At least the scrapes had scabbed over.
“I have to go out,” I told him. “There’s no toilet in here.”
He didn’t answer.
I put the wig on and left. Outside, tourists were strolling the cemetery, visiting the graves of famous people like Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf. I made my way out of my private corner of Lachaise, then hurried down the wide, paved stone walkway until I reached the bottom and the building with the bathrooms. I used the john and washed my face, then jogged to a bakery to pick up a baguette and chocolate croissants. I bought cheese at the fromagerie next door, then hurried back to Zaq.
He was still sleeping. I touched his cheek. He was still hot.
I swallowed a sliver of panic. Shouldn’t he be healing by now? I’d never dealt with someone with this degree of silver poisoning.
He’s a dhampir. He’ll heal. He just needs rest and blood-wine.
I hunkered down against the wall and ate a couple of chocolate croissants. This time, I was able to wake up Zaq and get him to drink a few mouthfuls of blood-wine.
I passed the next few hours doing tricks with my switchblade—spinning it by the point on my finger, twirling it through my fingers. At lunchtime, I had some bread and cheese and another strip of beef jerky.
Zaq groaned and muttered in his sleep. I got a little more blood-wine into him and considered my next step.
It was time to change things up on Moreau. He’d expect us to fly out of Paris, but I didn’t trust him not to be watching for us. I hadn’t forgotten that he’d sent Ines after us.
So we’d take a train south to Provence and fly out of Nice. The small airport there had a direct flight to Newark. From there it was a short taxi ride to Manhattan.
Another hour inched by. Zaq woke up enough to say he had to piss. I helped him pee into a bottle, then urged him to drink some more wine. Heat radiated off him. He peered at me like he didn’t know who I was.
He lay back down and went so still, I touched my fingers to his neck to make sure he was still with me. His pulse was fast and thready.
The sliver of panic expanded, filling my throat and landing with a sick thud in my belly.
He can’t die. He’s a dhampir. We don’t die from dehydration.
But we could die from silver poisoning, especially festering wounds like those on his wrists.
Especially if the dhampir was already weak from blood loss and dehydration.
It was a slow, agonizing way to die.
The blood-wine wasn’t enough. He needed fresh blood.
I looked at the switchblade, then at my wrist.
No. Hell, no.
I jumped up and paced across the tiny dirt floor.
I’d done what I could. Whether Zaq lived or died was on him.
I was a slayer, for chrissake. And he was my target.
I wasn’t supposed to keep him alive.
I’d already stuck my neck out to win him this reprieve. I would not allow him to drink my blood.
He groaned. I swung around and stared at him.
His eyes popped open. He stared up at me, his pupils dilated. “Mom?”
That’s all he said. A single, fearful word.
One goddamn word, but my chest felt like it had caved in.
I swore and slashed open my wrist.