Edge of Night (24 page)

“Nothing too cute or precious.” The witch waved a hand vaguely. “This will probably be my niece’s last adult party for quite some time. No alcohol, of course, because that seems a bit cruel to the guest of honor, but the rest should be prepared with an adult audience in mind.”

“I can do that.” Erin’s lips tipped up in a grin. “Will this be a full meal or a more casual affair?”

“My niece would prefer casual, I think. Heavier savory
hors d'oeuvres
mixed with lighter sweets.” Millie glanced over her shoulder as a servant appeared in the doorway. He nodded to her and she nodded back, then refocused on Erin. “Chloe’s best friend, Tess, will be co-hosting with me, so I assume she’ll wish to have some input.”

Erin’s smile faltered a bit at the mention of Luca’s favorite werewolf, but she took down the information anyway. The signals that had just passed between Millie and her staff member probably meant the mysterious Mr. Night had arrived, which set Erin’s nerves to jangling.

A quiet man stepped into the room—who she thought might be another servant, he looked so deliberately inconspicuous. But Millie swiveled in her chair and motioned him forward.

“Gregor, I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Erin Bates, this is Gregor Night.” She rose, brushing invisible specks from her impeccable skirt. “You’ll take good care of her, won’t you, Gregor?”

“I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.” His voice was pleasantly modulated, his eyes twinkling with good humor as Millie swept out of the room and shut the door behind her with a distinct click.

“Ms. Bates.” He held out a hand and she shook it. There was surprising strength in his grasp, which she supposed shouldn’t be surprising at all, considering he was a vampire.

“
You’re
Gregor Night?” She couldn’t keep the incredulous note out of her voice. He looked…nice. He wore a boyish grin, had hair like a copper penny, and an unassuming manner.
This
was the deadly assassin-cum-bodyguard that every law enforcement agency feared going up against?

“Looks can be deceiving, Ms. Bates,” he said gently, his smile widening until the corners of his eyes crinkled. “I use that to my advantage and, I suspect, I’ll be using it to your advantage as well.”

She swallowed. “You know my…situation?”

He took the seat Millie had abandoned. “When she called, Ms. Standish filled me in on some of it. Why don’t you explain what’s going on and why you think I can help?”

If she was going to hire this man, she should probably be as honest with him as possible. “Okay, but you should know, this might all be in my head.”

One ginger eyebrow arched. “So?”

“Yeah.” She shifted around on the couch cushion, but there was nothing comfortable about any of this. “Okay, here it is.”

She drew in a breath, let it out, and told him everything that had happened recently—told him about her relationship with Asher, his previous stalking, and why she suspected it was him now. Any and every detail she could think of or remember, she laid out for this stranger. He remained attentive, but didn’t interrupt. It was almost an hour later when she finally wound down, and her mouth was parched from all the talking. “So…what do you think? Am I crazy?”

An easy chuckle rippled out of him. “Your relative sanity isn’t something I can judge, but I do think you might have a stalker.” He nodded decisively. “I’ll take your case.”

“You will?” The air rushed out of her lungs. She’d told someone everything and he
believed
her. He could even help her. It was a massive relief.

“Yes. We’ll need to go over my contract, but I’m willing to do my best to rectify this situation for you.” His lips twisted upward ironically. “My best is usually more than enough to handle any situation.”

“So I’ve heard.” She pressed her palms to her thighs. “Millie gave me an idea of your rates. I can wire a retainer fee to an account of your choosing.”

“Excellent.” His gaze was direct. “Does Cavalli know that you intend to hire me?”

She froze like a deer in the headlights, pinpricks breaking across the nape of her neck. “Why would his opinion make a difference to me?”

“Because he’s your lover.” It was stated as a fact, not a question.

“Who told you that?” Her tone was probably too sharp for a man she hoped would help her, but it was disconcerting as hell to have him ask about her secret affair.

“It’s my business to know about the major players in Magickal law enforcement. Luca Cavalli is as major as one can get.”

“Maybe we’re just friends.” She linked her fingers in her lap primly.

Gregor snorted. “Is he off women now? After enough years, I understand most Magickals try batting for the other team, just to see what it’s like. Apparently, heterosexuality gets boring after a couple of centuries.” He shrugged. “I’m not there yet, but it should be interesting.”

She coughed into her fist, trying to stifle her laughter. “Uh, Luca isn’t at a couple of centuries yet either.”

“Then he’s your lover.” Again, a statement of fact, not questioning.

“We are friends
and
we sleep together, but that’s it. So no, he doesn’t know about you, and we’re not serious enough that I’d want to discuss it with him.” Because she had a feeling he’d be unhappy with her hiring a mercenary as her bodyguard.

“I see.”

There was absolutely no inflection to his voice, so the bite of guilt was her own conscience rearing its ugly head and she slapped it back into submission. Her safety and peace of mind were more important than making Luca happy. And they weren’t committed to each other for anything other than friendship. She wasn’t telling any of her other friends or family about this either.

She owed him no explanations.

Chapter Eleven

Luca pulled open the program on his computer that would allow him to look up information on Asher Kondan. Not a strictly kosher use of his authority in the Bureau, but it was for a good cause, so he didn’t think twice about bending the rules. The phone on his desk rang, and he glanced at it, seeing Tess’s name on the small screen.

Since she wasn’t the type to call and chat him up, he snagged the phone and pressed it to his ear. He continued to click through pages on his computer that would lead him to a search field. “Cavalli.”

Not bothering to say hello, she got right down to business. “Elinor Hammond is down here to collect her son’s effects and officially identify his remains. She asked to see you.”

He fought a snarl at the interruption. He really wasn’t interested in being yanked away from something relevant to deal with a dead case, but tough shit, that was his job. “I’ll be down there in a bit.”

“Hurry.” The word was furtive, edged with nerves. “She’s freaking me out, Cavalli.”

That made him sit up straight. If Tess was asking
him
for help, she was serious. “On my way.”

Bypassing the elevator, he took the stairs down three at a time. In less than a minute, he was pushing through the door to the morgue. The same keening wail he’d heard from Elinor the day her son died pierced the air, making his sensitive vampire ears ache in the enclosed glass and tile space.

Tess stood outside her own exam room, watching the female vampire through the window. The she-wolf paced a few steps, stopped, fidgeted, her hands clenching and unclenching. Relief flooded her face when he approached. Definitely not normal.

“What’s she been doing? Just screaming like this?”
Luca sent his private thoughts to her telepathically, not wanting to run across the same issue they’d had with Elinor listening in as they’d had at her son’s house.

“It’s not the screaming.”
Tess was sharp enough to respond in kind, keeping their conversation confidential. Distress shone in her golden gaze.
“It’s…I can’t put my finger on it. Some wolf instinct I don’t understand. A warning, maybe? Something’s not right. Something’s wrong with this woman.”
She fidgeted some more, cleared her throat. “Peyton’s out of the building, so I called the agent in charge.”

“Understood. I won’t take it personally.” He stepped around her and into the room. There was no way for him to know what a werewolf might sense about Elinor, but he’d been around enough of them to understand they had abilities similar to vampires. Not that most vamps would admit that aloud, but those similarities meant Luca took wolf senses as seriously as he took his own.

If Tess said something wasn’t right, then something wasn’t right.

“Why don’t you call a couple of agents down to help me escort Mommy Dearest out of the building?”
He didn’t even glance back as he sent the thought to her.

There was a low-level hiss to Elinor’s voice as she cried over her son’s body. A vampire’s hiss usually meant danger, or a warning for others. Perhaps that was what tweaked Tess’s senses.

Elinor’s face pressed to Robert’s chest. He’d been cleaned off, sliced open, and sewn up again during the autopsy. Now his sheet-shrouded corpse rested on one of the tables that retracted back into the wall behind a metal door. His wife’s body had also been slid out of her refrigerated compartment.

After a minute of standing there waiting, Luca tried to break into the woman’s wailing. “Mrs. Hammond, you asked to see me.”

“He’s been cut open like some science project.” Her gaze went red when she looked up, that rattling hiss still underscoring every word. “You’ve
desecrated
my baby’s body.”

Considering the man was over a hundred years old, Luca had to wonder when he would have stopped being a baby in her eyes and started being a grown man. Probably never. “It’s standard procedure to perform autopsies when a person is murdered. I’m sorry if it upsets you.”

“You can’t understand.” She sniffed. “You don’t have any children.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” No need to make this confrontational if he didn’t have to. The warning hiss wasn’t something he could ignore, and this woman was clearly imbalanced by grief and probably far more than that. “Your son and daughter-in-law’s remains will be released to the mortuary of your choice. There are many excellent options that specialize in traditional ritualistic vampire cremation.”

“I want
nothing
to do with that filthy bitch,” she snapped, her fangs extending. “Throw what’s left of her into the gutter. That’s where she belongs.”

Luca kept his voice soothing, the kind of tone that often lulled a human just before mesmerization. “The All-Magickal Council clerk can take care of those arrangements for the Hammond family, then. You needn’t worry about it.”

“
In the gutter
, I said.” Her voice rose, the dangerous hiss growing louder. “It’s my fucking choice what to do with the sheep!”

He felt Tess come up behind and to the left of him, no doubt drawn by the volume increase. Dropping his hand to the side, he turned his palm to face her and spread his fingers slightly, silently telling her to come no closer.

Elinor’s nostrils flared in distaste. “You let that animal touch my baby.” Her hand came up from behind the table, a pistol clenched in her shaking fingers. “I don’t want her in here.”

Adrenaline surged through his system, but years of experience let him ruthlessly control it, channel it. He kept his muscles relaxed when they wanted to tense, kept his voice steady despite the danger. “All right. Tess, why don’t you step out?”

“No, actually, I changed my mind. She can stay right where she is.” Elinor’s gaze flicked between him and Tess. “
Don’t move!
”

He sensed Tess freeze in place, smelled a whiff of her fear. He edged ever-so-slightly to the left to try to block her as much as he could without pushing the she-vampire over the edge. “Elinor, we can discuss this. Put the gun down.”

“What’s left to discuss, Agent Cavalli? My bloodline is ended, my only child dead from a sheep bitch who didn’t understand her place.” Her eyebrows arched, the hand holding the gun shaking harder. “What can you possibly say to that?”

Not a damn thing, but that wasn’t going to shut him up. As long as he could keep her talking until the agents he’d had Tess call arrived. “I can say that you don’t want to make all of this worse by landing yourself in jail.”

“Jail? You think I’m afraid of
jail?
” Her laugh was a hollow, ringing hiss that grated on the ears.

The elevator pinged as it arrived on their floor, and Luca sensed Tess take a single step back. Elinor’s focus snapped to the werewolf. “You called them, didn’t you, wolf bitch?”

There was a split-second, the mere space between heartbeats, when he saw her finger tighten on the trigger. Luca threw himself toward Tess, tackling her as the gun went off. The window above their heads exploded. Luca shoved Tess out of the lab. He rolled, pulling his own weapon in the same motion and bringing it to bear on Elinor.

He needn’t have bothered. Her weapon was pressed to her temple, a last twisted snarl on her face while she pulled the trigger. The side of her face caved in, and her brains splattered over the wall. She seemed to hang there for a moment before she crumpled to the linoleum.

There was an image to haunt his nightmares for years to come. But he couldn’t think about that now. Holstering his weapon, he looked to the elevator, where Jack, Merek and Delta spilled out, their guns drawn. “Show’s over, people. Get this floor cordoned off, get all surveillance video for the last hour and get another M.E. in here to help scrape Elinor Hammond off the floor.”