Most likely, he was at his corporate office, still picking up the pieces of his empire that his traitorous second in command, John, had torn apart while working for Max.
That didn’t mean this was going to be a cakewalk.
That still left Mouse, Wesley, and Sebastian, at a bare minimum. The odds of walking away from a fight with Mouse were very slim. Like Royce, the only way I could possibly defeat her would be through guile.
Sebastian was handy with a sword, but not old enough to move with Mouse’s speed or to have comparable strength. He’d be dangerous, but a lower-level threat.
As for Wesley, I’d never seen him fight, but Royce didn’t employ weaklings to guard his home. Handsome and flawless as his features were, he’d always moved with the kind of prowling gait I associated with a predator. He would never have been trusted with something as important as the position of house guard if he wasn’t skilled and capable of defending the place.
They had human security guards, too. I wasn’t worried about them. They handled the outside, kept an eye on the security cameras, that sort of thing. No, it was the inside of the house that I was interested in.
The belt agreed when I suggested going in through the roof. There seemed no better alternative. If I went through the front door, the security cameras would catch it, and I’d find myself picked up by the cops in no time. But if I went in through an entrance that wasn’t so well guarded, it would give me enough time to scope the place out, find a decent place to hold my ground, and might fool the vampires into relaxing their guard. None of them knew I was after their blood. Hell, even Royce probably thought I wanted to jump his bones after that last meeting of ours.
Just thinking about it made my lip curl, the desire to retch only barely restrained.
There were a few hours left before dawn. The clubs would be winding down for the night right about now. Some of the vampires and donors would be coming home within the hour. Others would be “stuck at the office” far longer, working on all of the mundane tasks required to keep the businesses afloat. If I spent an hour cleaning house, fighting the house guards, and then maybe another half hour to search the place and find Sara, it would give me enough lead time to send her on her way to safety. I could stay behind and ambush any other vampires who trickled in through the tunnels.
If Royce showed up too close to dawn, the belt would lose its power and I’d be stuck at the vampire’s mercy again. I’d flee if necessary and find someplace to hide during the day, get some rest, then return the next night to fight him. And the next, and the one after that, however long it took to get the job done.
Something told me that was more the belt’s idea than my own.
That didn’t matter to me, though. What did matter was to ensure Sara was safe. I had to get her out of that place. She meant everything to me. If the vampires had hurt her, I would take Jack up on his offer to let me assume the mantle of leader of the hunters and use every resource available to destroy whatever was left of Royce and his people. After all, there were still hundreds— maybe thousands—of the leeches in this state, and they all answered to him. Something needed to be done about that.
With that in mind, I rose, knees popping, to make my way across the street. Cutting between parked cars, I rubbed my cold hands against my legs, every exhalation coming out like a burst of fog in the chill night air. The only illumination, thanks to the heavy clouds above, came from streetlights limned by a fine mist that dampened their radiance to a muted glow. The air was clammy, and many of the branches of the trees lining the street were now bare, scratching against each other like the clawed limbs of the dead.
Fittingly creepy, considering the monsters that lived on this street and how very close it was to Halloween.
I hopped up on the cement wall dividing Royce’s apartment building from the one next to it. A good ten feet off the ground, it afforded privacy on both sides, and was most likely too high for most humans to try to scale. There was too much space on either side for it to be used by anyone normal as a way of breaking in through a window. Though it was narrow, not much wider than one of my feet, it was child’s play for me to navigate. The dark was no deterrent either.
I worked my way about halfway down the side of the building before I found what I was looking for. A drainage pipe—thicker than the usual aluminum crap that most buildings had these days—was bolted to the brick. It looked just strong enough for me to use to climb to the roof.
Light as a cat, I landed in a crouch on the walkway between the wall and the building—and froze as an exterior light turned on.
There was no sound of an alarm or any change in movement inside the building that I could detect, even when straining my senses to the utmost. I waited for a few minutes to see if someone would come out to investigate, but all that happened was the light’s flicking off again after a time. When I stood up, it went on again. A simple motion detector security light. Cheap, and occasionally effective, but nothing I needed to worry about. If there were security cameras set up out here, they’d already caught me, and there wasn’t much I could do about that.
Putting any worries about the light and what it might herald out of my mind, I proceeded to climb up the pipe. Grainy rust or dirt ground under my fingers and palms, and the damp metal was bitterly cold from the rain. The grimy stuff helped my grip, and I moved as swiftly as I dared without risking slipping.
It never failed to creep me out that Royce had somehow gotten permits to hide the windows on the first two floors behind a curtain of bricks. You couldn’t tell from the inside, but out here, I couldn’t help but notice as I climbed past the blocky silhouettes.
His was the only floor that had windows, and they were lovely. Huge, ornate French doors set at intervals, fitted with an automated system of sunlight-blocking shutters, both inside and out. Some of those doors were open, and filmy curtains twitched in the breeze, sucked out into the cool night air. From memory, I knew that priceless works of art were set between those doors, each with its own soft spotlight so you could admire them individually as you made your way across the huge, open expanse leading from the stairwell to his private chambers. Right now there were no lights on inside, which only added to the creepy factor.
I kept going until I reached the roof, hauling myself over the edge and crouching there, listening.
Aside from the usual city sounds—wind rustling the trees, the soft coo of roosting pigeons, the swish of tires on concrete from passing cars somewhere nearby, and the occasional honk or distant siren—there wasn’t anything to be heard. The house slept.
Though I wanted to move silently, the roof must have been fairly recently tarred. My boots made faint crackling noises with every step, and the smell of the stuff burned the insides of my nostrils. My tread was light, but if any of the vampires were alert to intruders, they’d hear me moving around. The smell of tar might also stick to my shoes, making my work with the Amber Kiss moot.
There was a raised structure with a service door to reach the air-conditioning and filtering units a few yards away. I crept along, taking care not to make noise, keeping an eye out for any security cameras I might have to disable. The overhang with the light above the security door could have held any number of traps or security devices.
At first glance, as far as I could tell, there were none. It surprised me, considering how much effort Royce made to protect the entrances below. Surely I couldn’t have been the first person to try coming in this way.