“That is why the brother’s here,” Dillon said sardonically, as though she assumed he knew this information and was just trying to annoy her with questions. “Has been for years. Erasing traumatic memory from the brain is her life’s work. You know, the fire she accidentally started when she was—” Dillon stopped talking. She turned, shook her head. “No, Alexander.”
Alexander didn’t respond, his gaze still trained on the woman who refused to come home, the woman he refused to let walk out of his life.
Dillon shook her head. “You can’t do it.”
“Do what?”
“Oh, please.”
“Chill out, Dillon.”
“You’re one selfish prick, you know that?”
He turned on her, growled his response, “It would be a gift to do this for her.”
“A gift?” She snorted.
“Yes.”
“No strings attached, right?” she said with obvious sarcasm.
“I have to go.”
“Good.”
“I have training.”
“Maybe you should feed first, clear your head.”
“Already done.” He pushed away from the wall and without another word, headed for the tunnels.
Standing brazenly on the lawn outside of Dare’s town house, Nicholas breathed in his two favorite scents: sex and drugs. His body screamed for both, pushed him to go inside and find both.
But that was an urge he kept hidden, an urge he was forced to quell.
He took out his phone, dialed.
Lucian answered before the first ring died. “Dare on the move again?”
“Long-term this time,” Nicholas told him. “He’s gone. They’re all gone. Including Trainer, who I thought would’ve been easier to kill than a fly once upon a time.”
“Shit. You checked the entire house? Every bedroom?”
Damn right he had, stayed a moment too long in each one, in fact. “Bet they’ve gone into hiding. After Alexander’s minimassacre they know we mean business. Dare must truly fear us now.”
“I would say so.” Lucian was quiet for a moment, then, “You know we’re running out of time—you’re running out of time.”
“We’ll find him.”
“I say we contact the ‘eyes.’ ”
Nicholas shrank inside of himself, and the scent of sex and drugs from the town house interiors searched out his nostrils again. “We’ll never be able to fully trust them.”
“Doesn’t matter at this point. We need the help, and they see everything.” He could almost hear Lucian shrug. “But it’s up to you. Those street rats were your past. If contacting them will bring back your need for gravo or—”
“No,” Nicholas interrupted brusquely. “They’ll have no effect on me now. I’ll do it.”
After ending the call, Nicholas pocketed his cell and turned from the town house, headed toward his car. The thought of gravo made his mouth water. The dried, poisoned blood was a fucking menace to vampire society. It had killed his mother, not to mention his years as a balas, but there wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t think about it, or a night he didn’t crave the complete silence of emotion and the utter deadening of pain it provided.
31
Sara stared, completely disinterested, at the beautiful plate of roasted mussels in a tomato and basil broth.
“Are you going to eat that?”
She glanced up, smiled into the curious, ravenous eyes of her boss, Dr. Pete Albert. “No.”
“May I?”
“Of course.” She inched the plate toward him. She loved the East Village, and Lavagna had been a wet dream on her culinary brain for more than a year. Now she couldn’t conjure up an appetite no matter how hard she tried. She refused to use her emotional state as an excuse, so work-related frustration would have to do. Good thing she had plenty of that. She sat back in her chair, focused on her boss over the easy candlelight.
“Listen, Pete,” she began as he poured her plate of mussels over his rigatoni with sweet fennel. “I need to know what I can get away with legally in the McClean case. I want to go to the house, talk to Mommy.”
He shook his head as though he’d heard it all before. “I think you should leave it alone. Let the police and social services handle it.”
“You mean wait six months?” she said dryly.
He paused, his fork in the air. “I admire your commitment to your patients, you know that.”
“Thank you.”
His eyes warmed. “I admire many things about you.”
“I appreciate that—”
“But,” he jumped in, “breaking rules and breaking laws is one helluva career-ending move.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know any other way. Things don’t get done; problems don’t get solved—people remain broken unless you’re willing to go out on a limb ...”
“Are we still talking about Pearl?”
The cozy one-room restaurant seemed to go silent, as if all the guests were leaning toward Sara and Pete’s table, listening to their conversation, waiting for Sara’s response. Total imaginary bullshit, but it felt that way for a moment.
Pete continued eating. “Just because Gray hasn’t responded to the treatment yet—”
“I can’t even get to the treatment,” she interrupted. “I’m still working on the hypnosis.”
“—Doesn’t mean he won’t respond.”
Above her, the tin ceiling felt as though it were closing in. She understood that perseverance was the only way to get results. Odds were good that at some point Gray would give in and go under, and then changing the image in his memory would be cake. It was just that her morale was slipping, and she couldn’t seem to stop it.
“Let’s get back to talking about Pearl, okay?” she said.
He reached across the table and touched her hand. “Sure.”
“I don’t think her mom has any clue what’s going on with her daughter. That boyfriend of hers ...” Sara wasn’t sure what happened first, if Pete jerked his hand away or she did, but the next thing she knew, her boss looked white as a sheet and was grabbing his stomach with both hands and moaning.
She leaned forward, concerned. “Pete? What is it?”
His face contorted with pain. “I . . . I ...” He shook his head. “Oh God!”
“Are you all right?”
“I have to go to the restroom.” His chair scraped back and he got up, heading for the back of the restaurant. Sara stared after him, then dropped her gaze to the mussels. Oh jeez. And she’d invited him—
The sudden quiet in the room—real, not imaginary this time—clipped her thoughts short and she looked up, hoping not to see Pete laid out on the mahogany floor, convulsing. But the silence had nothing to do with her boss. Walking through the restaurant, looking like six feet three inches of branded, terrifying sex appeal was Alexander. The other patrons seemed to either shrink in his presence or, and this was mostly the female clientele, stare covetously while their dates slumped in their chairs unable to compete with the godforce walking past. Even the staff stopped what they were doing and had the good sense to look nervous.
He sat down in Pete’s chair and glared at her. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Having dinner with a colleague.” His scent seized her nostrils, made her stomach growl for the first time in twenty-four hours.
He lowered his voice. “Trainer is still out there and bloodthirsty.”
“And Dillon’s right over there.”
He snorted, as though the veana he’d recruited to protect her had zero skills to actually do the job.
Sara leaned forward and whispered, “You need to leave. My boss will be right back.”
“Don’t count on it.”
Her eyes widened. “What did you do?”
He shrugged. “Stomach issues.”
“You gave him a stomachache?” she said, furious at his cavalier attitude.
“I suggested it.”
“Unbelievable! Why the hell would you do something like that?”
Barely controlled possessiveness rolled off of him. “I don’t want him around you. I don’t want any male around you.”