Before Dawn (8 page)

Bitter anger took over, searing through his bloodstream, and he wanted to seize Vanessa and demand to know why she’d allowed Savage to kidnap Mercy. But he didn’t. He already knew why. Because in the greater scheme of things, it was more important to catch and stop Edmond.

Ryan realized he was strangling the hilt of his own dagger and forced himself to unclench his fingers and even out his breathing.

“Why are you here? Did the Council send you after me?”

She nodded. “The Council was suspicious of you. I was suspicious of the person who sicced them on you.”

“Savage.” He didn’t make it a question.

She looked over her shoulder at him, a trace of uncharacteristic softness in her eyes. “I’m sorry.” Her lips parted as if she wanted to say more, but after a moment, she went back to the surveillance.

“Vanessa.”

She turned and regarded him warily.

“Promise me one thing.”

Her wariness didn’t abate.

“When we go in, no matter what happens to me, you get Mercy out.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “I can’t promise you that,” she said finally.

“Yes, you can.” Jaw tight, his gaze bored into hers. “Vanessa, you owe me.”

Her lips thinned, as if it took effort to keep her words back. Then she gave a single curt nod.

Something inside him eased. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.” There was a wealth of warning and displeasure in that one word.

Head chillingly clear, hands steady, Ryan reached for his firearms and, even though he’d checked them before leaving the Volvo, did so again. “Let’s move.”

He started to rise. Vanessa gripped his wrist, and Ryan fell back to his haunches, his eyes going to the warehouse across the road. The door beside the garage door was inching open.

* * * * *

Hands and feet still bound with duct tape, Mercy sat up on the stone table, legs folded with her heels almost touching her butt, and stared down at the old-fashioned miniature in her hands, heart pounding heavily in her chest. A woman smiled back from the portrait within the heavy gold locket. The details were exquisite. Wavy hair black as ink, porcelain skin, slender nose, and violet eyes with an upward slant set in a heart-shaped face. The likeness was uncanny. She could’ve been Mercy’s twin.

After a lifetime of not knowing the people who contributed the genetic material that had formed her, it was strange to see someone who shared so many of her features. The strangeness wasn’t accompanied by the sense of recognition or belonging she’d foolishly expected as a child though. She’d learned to be alone too well.

“Who was she?” Mercy asked without looking up, yet very aware of Edmond’s scrutiny. They were alone. Shortly after Edmond’s arrival, Savage had volunteered to walk the outside perimeter.

“Angélique,” he murmured. “Your ancestor. Angélique could not bear children, but she had a younger sister who did. You look too much like her not to share the same blood.” He took the locket from her hands, his movements slow, careful, almost reverent. “
Elle était mon ange de la nuit
. She found me, saved me, killed those who…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head, as if to clear it of those particular memories.

He slipped the locket over his head, and it settled against the froth of lace spilling from his throat. He hadn’t changed out of the outfit he’d worn to the museum, and under the harsh overhead lighting, he looked so very young, barely twenty. But vampires didn’t age, did they? Assuming popular myth was accurate, they would remain looking as young as the day they were turned. Eternal youth but with more deadly side effects than Botox.

“She made me into what she was, and we were happy together. I loved her. We were meant to be together for all eternity.
Elle était mon âme soeur
.”

It took her a moment to translate and decide “soul mate” sounded too incestuous in French. Then again, everything about his bond with Angélique was disturbing.

He took a breath, as if bracing himself. “Then they took her away from me.”

He made it sound like the feud between the Montagues and the Capulets.

“Who are ‘they’?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Edmond’s pale face went taut with anger. Had he been human, she supposed it would’ve flushed with color. “The Council.” He said it like the organization was one of the plagues of Egypt. “Back then, I didn’t know who they were. They were small in number and scattered. Narrow-minded, as they are still today.

“Angélique wanted a baby, a child to love, to complete our family. But they didn’t understand. They called her a murderess but it wasn’t like they thought.” His tone turned pleading, as if wanting Mercy to side with him. “The children kept…dying before the transformation completed, so we had to keep trying.”

Mercy stilled, gooseflesh breaking out as her skin became icy.
Oh, Jesus.
She breathed deeply through her nostrils. Bile rose threateningly in her throat and burned, but she managed to keep from embarrassing herself.

Angélique sounded like a candidate for several life sentences in solitary confinement, but she’d been allowed to roam free and even managed to find a man after her own black heart. A soul mate, as Edmond had said. Mercy shuddered. Bonnie and Clyde. Angélique and Edmond. Who knew serial killers were pedantic enough to buy into the whole soul mates thing?

Mercy took a breath. Edmond had said “we.” He had helped Angélique in her sick quest, and in his quest to bring her back, he had tortured and killed at least five women in the last year. She was to be number six. Her laced fingers tightened until the knuckles went white. She didn’t want to be number six.

Her gaze went to the brass urn Edmond had carried in with him and placed beside her, and she tried not to shudder. She purposely kept her eyes from straying to the primitive stone triangle lying next to it, not wanting to remind Edmond of its presence.

* * * * *

Vanessa flattened a hand against Ryan’s chest and kept it there, as if afraid he would go after Savage, all the while yelling like a berserker.

He wanted to, but he didn’t.

Alive, Savage could provide intelligence.

Vanessa took out a semi-automatic and a silencer and screwed them together. Savage moved past them. Coolly, she extended her arm, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. There was a soft
pffft
. Before Savage’s newly injured knee could even buckle, Ryan flew at the man. His fist struck Savage’s ribs, where he recalled the bruising had been ugly, and the knife edge of his other hand cut across the Adam’s apple.

While the bigger man choked and gasped, Ryan slammed him against a wall, face first. He seized a wrist and twisted it high up the center of Savage’s back while he fisted his other hand in short black hair. When he felt the other man’s muscles tense, Ryan lashed out his foot, aiming for the bleeding kneecap, drew back Savage’s head, and slammed it into the wall again. There was a crunch, like celery snapping, and he didn’t know if it was the knee or the nose. Maybe both. With his own knee, he struck near the small of Savage’s back, aiming for a kidney. Savage’s yells were muffled, and his back arched as he tried to throw his body away from the wall for either escape or maneuvering distance, but Ryan only twisted the captured wrist until something popped out of place.

More muffled sounds of pain. Even then, Ryan didn’t let go. He’d seen the other man continue to fight while hurt worse. Besides, he had nothing to use to restrain Savage. He didn’t carry handcuffs like a cop because he destroyed the monsters he went after, not arrested them.

Quickly, methodically, he divested the other man of his modified firearms, silver knives, wooden stakes, incendiary grenades, and the retractable silver garrote wire, of which Savage was particularly fond.

Finished, Ryan applied pressure on the sprained wrist. Savage moaned.

“He needs to be able to talk,” Vanessa said in his ear via the earpiece.

“He can and he will,” Ryan promised grimly.

* * * * *

“How did she die?” Mercy forced herself to ask, dreading the answer but knowing she had to keep him talking to give her a chance to do something…anything.

“They found our home, and those cowards put a stake through her heart while she slept.” His eyes closed and anguish crossed his boyish features. “I…escaped. When I returned, only ashes remained of
ma belle
Angélique.” His lips trembled. “Two hundred years, and every day I feel the pain as if it were only yesterday.”

For a moment, she expected him to put the back of his hand to his forehead.

“Two centuries?” She tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice and didn’t quite succeed. “You’ve been trying to bring her back for two centuries?”

He stiffened, his eyes darkening with guilt. “I-I foolishly tried to…forget her.” Those ridiculously long sweeps of lashes lowered, but there was a spasm of emotion on his pale countenance. “But there are no others like her.”

And how long had it taken him to reach that conclusion? How many women had there been before he realized the supply of psychopaths in the world was—thank, God—severely limited? And how had he auditioned the potential replacements?

He spun around suddenly, his cape flaring. Seizing her chance, Mercy snatched up the stone knife and hid it between her hands. It was heavier than it looked and surprisingly smooth. She didn’t want to know if the smoothness was a result of passage of time or frequent use. Edmond spun around again, his cape flaring once more, and she wondered if he simply liked the theatrical flair of it.

Edmond went to the urn, laid his hand upon it, caressed it like it was a lover. “I was wrong to think she could be replaced. I was wrong to think there could be another like her,” he murmured, his fingers stroking the urn, back and forth, back and forth, back—

His hand stopped mid-stroke. A soft curse, then his head shot up, and he glared at her, his eyes narrowed. “Where is it?”

Her hands twitched, clenching around the solid piece of stone until the sharp edges of it nearly broke her skin. She didn’t answer. How could she with her heart wedged in her throat?

He came closer, reached for her, and Mercy acted. Stone knife clutched tightly between shaking hands, she slashed at his throat. She didn’t feel the sharp tip cut into flesh, but it must’ve because Edmond jumped back from her, his mouth gaping open, a hand pressed to his neck. Something gurgled, bubbled. Frozen with a sick kind of disbelief, Mercy stared as bright crimson blood poured down between his white fingers. She’d nicked an artery. His lace cravat sucked in every drop that came into contact with it, making the blood seem to blossom and spread.

With his eyes holding hers captive, Edmond slowly took away his hand to reveal the dark, wide wound that was, before her very eyes, getting smaller and smaller as the flesh re-knit itself. Soon, there was no sign of the injury except for the blood staining his neck, hand, and formerly white garments.

A choked sound squeezed past her constricted throat, jarring Mercy out of her petrified state. But it was too late. Edmond had closed the distance between them. She brought her knees to her chest and struck out with her bound feet. The impact jolted up her legs, but Edmond absorbed the blow to the center of his chest like she was a mere child. He carelessly knocked her feet aside and bore down on her.

Pain exploded in Mercy’s left cheek. She cried out as she fell back onto the table, her head bouncing once on the solid stone. Flashes of light behind her eyelids, then shooting pains in her head. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth, and she convulsively swallowed, nearly choking. Dazed and uncoordinated, her hands came up, more defensive than offensive, but he simply captured her bound wrists, pinned them over her head with one hand, and encircled her neck with the other. A wickedly pointed nail dug into the side of her neck, very close to her own carotid artery, and despite trembling muscles, she ceased her struggles. The fingers imprisoning her wrists squeezed until the knife clattered onto the slab.

Her body went limp, and her chest rose and fell with her ragged breaths. She let her head fall to the side. Her eyes closed, tears on her lashes.

“You resemble her so much,” murmured Edmond, running the backs of his fingers over her tender left cheek, making her wince.

Biting down on her bottom lip to keep quiet, she shook her head.

He sighed. “You are right. At first, I thought you were her. I wanted you to be her.
Mais non
. You have her eyes, her nose, her lips.” He skimmed a finger over each feature, ending at the corner of her throbbing mouth.

“
Regardez-moi
,” he ordered softly. The hand around her throat tightened. Her lashes lifted. Through the shimmer of tears, Edmond was blurred, and she was glad for that small favor. He lifted his finger, allowed her to see the red stain of her blood on his skin. “You share her blood.” He licked it away. For the space of a breath, his eyes swam with a pleasure that was deeply, darkly sexual. Terror squeezed Mercy’s insides, and her body shook, the tremors seeming to rattle her heart, her lungs, her stomach. His lips lifted in amusement, then he sighed. “But you do not have her soul.”