CHAPTER 26
Lexi looked up into Christan’s savagely dark face and reached out with her senses, trying to find the emotional imprints, but there were too many complex layers of love and betrayal, fear and murder overlying everything else. She thought she sensed a threat moving toward them from the side, but Christan detected it too and altered their direction. Her feet stumbled over the uneven pavement. Christan’s aggressive pace increased. Lexi kept even with him, gripping his hand.
“What happened?” she asked despite her rapid breathing.
“The predicted response.”
“To what?”
“The little disagreement we cleared up this afternoon.”
“And Arsen?”
“He’s following Katerina to keep her safe.”
“She won’t want him there. She told me they know you and Arsen are here, that there’s some interest in finding me.”
“Yes.” A slight pause. “This is an effort to get to you.”
“But you’re not going to let them.”
“No,” Christan answered. “I’m not going to let them.”
The night sounds faded. Tall stone buildings and arched passaggios closed in until the entire world seemed made of gray stone. They kept to the deepest shadows. Lexi caught the menace of a pursuer once, reacted to another threat in the distance. Her breathing grew labored and she kicked her endurance up another notch. They reached a road edged with buildings that were silent and dark, an office complex, shut down for the weekend.
“I need you to listen,” Christan said. “This is a fight that won’t stop after tonight, no matter what the outcome.”
“Who are they?”
“Three’s enemies.”
“Why fight here?”
“One’s security is weaker and the targets softer.”
“You knew that when you came to Italy.”
“The same way you knew you wouldn’t follow the rules.”
Christan pulled her around a sharp corner and she cooperated, feeling a twinge of guilt. They were heading toward an enclosed square. Without emotion, Christan told her about a garage door set into the stone wall. It would be hard to see, he said, but the building was to the left of where they would enter and she should go in that direction. He was calm. Lexi noticed how the cadence in his voice changed as he shifted into an implacable place.
“The door is not locked,” he added, “even though it looks that way. Lift the latch and remove the bar. Inside is a Range Rover with the key in the ignition. I would have you drive as far away as you can as quickly as you can and not look back.”
“What about you?”
“I will be... busy.”
Lexi stiffened at the implication.
“It is far more important to me that you get away,” he continued. “You have my phone. There is a second phone beneath the front seat, untraceable. Luca’s number has been programed into contacts. Call him when you are far enough away to be safe. Be sure that no one has followed you, and don’t stay in one place while you wait for Luca’s men.”
He was giving her instructions as if he expected her to follow them. “I’m not leaving without you.”
Christan ignored her. “Luca will know what to do. He will get you back to Three. She won’t let you stay at Arsen's compound. Do what she says.”
“I’m not letting some immortal tell me where to live.”
“She’s already made arrangements.” A flash of lightning overhead, violent and white-hot, illuminating the sharp planes and deadly concentration on Christan’s face. A few seconds later thunder crashed, reverberating off the confining walls of the buildings. Christan had turned from her side. He was beauty and perfection, surveying the way they’d come before he urged her forward.
The dark menace was gaining in strength and Lexi ran, shutting down all outside distraction, jumping over discarded bricks and dodging around the pile of lumber. Christan’s breathing never changed as he paced himself behind her. Lexi could feel the coiled threat, the muscles bunching as if ready for the kill. She didn’t want to see the look in his eyes.
Lexi felt him slow when they reached the open square. Buildings surrounded them on four sides. The roads leading away were narrow and dark. Roosting birds flew into the air like dead leaves in the wind. Lexi searched for the garage, saw the heavy double doors buried in a shadowed wall, dug in for the energy she needed to reach it.
Behind her, Christan was braced in a defensive stance. Two figures were moving through the shadows. Lexi’s fingers fumbled on the antique door latch before she dampened the heat of panic. It was enough. She pressed inward on the heavy metal bar and then lifted upward.
In the dark, she heard the chilling voices, the icy warning, shivered beneath the pressure waves that ripped deep clefts in the air. Then a loud animal scream, sounds she had never heard and hoped never to hear again. She closed her mind to the wet ripping and the rising iron smells of savaged flesh. Until this moment she hadn’t comprehended what men like Christan did, not even in her most vicious dreams.
Do not hope for happy endings with someone as far from you as I am.
Stiff hinges protested as Lexi forced back the wooden doors. Darted inside. The heavy-bodied Range Rover was just ahead, but her hands were sweaty. Her fingers slipped against the driver’s side door before she got it open, found the keys. But the vehicle had a stick shift and Lexi hated driving a stick shift, could never get the coordination right. She twisted around and looked back into the moonlit plaza.
Two massive animals circled while shadowy forms emerged from the alley. Lexi counted three, then dragged her gaze to the two in the center of the square. Tendons and muscles bunched beneath night dark pelts, slick with a wet sheen that wasn’t water.
With a scream, one lunged toward the throat of the other. The predator answered with a savage twist of its jaws. In seconds, the body crumpled to the ground without moving while others approached from the shadows.
Blood flowed. A massive shoulder was ripped open by a slashing claw, a red, gaping mouth hot and slick in black fur. The alpha never hesitated. New attackers lunged. Their bodies collided with such cataclysmic force Lexi felt it in her bones. The alpha turned toward the remaining enemy as more dark bodies swarmed.
Dread closed tight. Lexi’s vision shrank down to such a narrowed point she only concentrated the combatants. Sobs collided in her throat and she wondered why they continued to fight. No one would want this man for an enemy.
She saw Christan now, as he had asked her to see him. As he must have looked through centuries past, an Enforcer fighting for the Calata. He was pagan, ruthless, elegantly efficient. He wielded the righteous power of an avenging angel without a shred of compassion. And it enraged her. Not because of what he was, or the distances between them, but because he would stand alone in a dark alley so that she could get away. They had past wounds, and despite the repeating lifetimes those wounds still bled. But she would not turn her back and leave him to stand alone. Not in this lifetime.
Something urged her to move. Perhaps it was the surge of earth memory, or Christan’s power reaching out. Lexi jerked her attention to the heavy vehicle and slid onto the seat. Her heart thundered, her fingers grappled with the key, forcing it to turn. The engine roared to life.
Lexi’s first attempt to put the Range Rover in reverse ended with a jerking movement forward. She killed the engine, and screaming obscenities, tried again. This time the vehicle cooperated and she backed out into the night. The savage fight had not abated, but she refused to leave until Christan sat beside her.
She leaned over, thrust open the passenger side door and screamed his name. A horrendous animal shimmered, became a blood-streaked man in the blue-white headlights. Not Christan. Lexi slammed her foot hard on the accelerator, jerked the vehicle into motion. The man disappeared while Christan fell into the front seat. He was bleeding so heavily she forgot about driving and tried to stop the flow with her hands.
He reached out, grabbed her fingers slick and sticky with his warmth. “Drive. I heal quickly. Go.”
Lexi shifted into gear, slammed her foot down while she released the clutch, and drove into the night.