Stay the Night

Chris absently followed the jester's lead, moving automatically to the final movements of the boisterous Viennese waltz the musicians were playing overhead. She studied the shoulders, hair, and skin color of every man who passed by her. It wasn't until her partner twirled her around and tugged her up against his body that she realized the waltz had ended and everyone had slowed down to the throbbing, sensual strains of a bolero.



"I'd better go," she said reluctantly. "I don't think my friend will be showing up."



"I could perhaps serve as his substitute?"



Chris gave him a rueful smile. "My friends are not as nice as you, Mr… ?"



"Guy." He slid around her, hands encircling her waist, before he took her hands and raised her arms, bringing her face close to his. "You should take the opportunity to make new friends, Signorina."



Chris saw a man dressed like a medieval huntsman moving toward them. From the width of the shoulders and the silken fall of his black hair, it was Robin. The set of his jaw under the feathered mask he wore indicated that he was not happy.



"Perhaps I should." She smiled up into his black eyes before she spun away, tugging at his hand as she wove her way through the dancing couples.



Guy followed, occasionally catching her to bring her close or drop her in a brief dip before allowing her to lead. Chris kept an eye on the huntsman, who was now dancing with a giggling blond Aphrodite in a ridiculously short toga, and stayed out of his reach.



The bolero ended with Chris bent back over the jester's arm, her hands curled over his shoulders for balance. He brought her up slowly, bending at the same time until she turned her head and his mouth skimmed over her cheek.



Guy brought her upright, his gloved hand curling around her neck. "You are an excellent dancer, Signorina."



"So are you." Chris didn't expect him to pull her into a clinch, but he did, and she stiffened. "I think I'm finished dancing for the night."



"Are you?" He pulled off her mask, caught her face between his big, black-gloved hands, and kissed her. Chris recoiled, but his lips slanted over hers and he tasted her thoroughly before he set her away from him. "Until we meet again, Agent Renshaw."



The next thing she knew he disappeared into the crowd of couples on the dance floor.



Ungentle hands jerked her around to face the huntsman with the brown feathered mask. "What are you doing here?"



"I could ask you the same question." She tried to go after Guy, but Robin's grip brought her up short and, thanks to the borrowed shoes, she stumbled, off balance. When she righted herself, she said, "That man I was dancing with knew my name. He called himself 'Guy.' " She watched his face. "He's Paul Sherwood, or Nottingham, or whatever you call him, isn't he?"



"He is." Robin put an arm around her.



"The contessa called you last night and told you to come to Venice," Chris pointed out, "and he was waiting for you. If you haven't noticed yet, Robin, you're being set up."



"I know," he said, pushing her through the crowd, pausing to take a deep breath before changing direction and walking her toward the terrace. "You were supposed to stay in Rome. I don't want you caught in the middle between us. This is Kyn business."



"What are you talking about? You put me in the middle of this." She tapped his sternum with her finger. "You've illegally entered this country and stolen a Mercedes, an apartment, that costume you're wearing, and God only knows what else. You've caused a priceless work of art to be stolen and compromised a federal investigation, not to mention my job. But that doesn't matter, not if Hutch and the other hostages are killed over this thing. We're going to get the book and take it to the contessa and get Hutch freed. That's all I care about."



Out on the terrace he stopped and put one hand on her throat. He didn't choke her, but he looked as if he wanted to. "Your partner is all that matters to you? Did we settle nothing between us last night?"



She gripped his wrist. "You left me locked up, naked, and helpless in a city where I don't even speak the language. How do you think that made me feel?"



"I wrote you a note," he said, his upper lip curling a degree short of a sneer. "Was that not a sufficient measure to reassure you?"



Chris ducked her head. "Okay. Maybe I deserved that. But I didn't leave you alone and afraid in a strange place."



"Didn't you? That night I woke up and reached for you, and you were gone." He made it sound as if she'd set fire to the bed. "Do you wish to know how many years it has been since I slept through a day? I cannot remember; that is how long. Yet when I am with you—twice now—I have slept without waking."



"I'm not a sleeping pill," she snapped.



"No, you're mine. My kyara, my lover, my heart." He turned away from her and strode the length of the balcony before walking back. "It's right in front of you and you still don't see it? I'm falling in love with you."



She shook her head. "You just like having sex with me."



"You've never been in love, so how would you bloody well know?" He laughed as she flinched. "You're brilliant to hold on to your heart the way you do. Me. I fall in love with a mortal. A mortal who wishes to imprison me. This should end very well."



She lifted her face and saw the bitterness in his beautiful eyes. "It doesn't happen like this. Not this fast. I've only known you for a couple of days. We have nothing in common. You kidnapped me. I'm supposed to arrest you." Suddenly she realized she wasn't trying to talk him out of it. She was talking to herself. "You don't know anything about me."



"I know you don't want me," he snapped. "That seems to be the only sort of woman I can fall in love with."



Chris looked out at the water. She wanted him, all right. More than her career, her self-respect, her dignity, even her humanity. She was in love with an angry, handsome, omnipotent immortal who could have any woman just by sweating around her.



"Chris," Robin said. "You've just gone completely white."



"Yeah." The balcony began to whirl a little. "I need to sit down."



He brought her to one of the stone benches, sat down with her, and pulled her into the circle of his arm. They both watched the lights scatter on the gently rippling surface of the canal.



"Is this because of me?" she heard him ask. She shook her head. "You didn't know how I felt. I shouldn't have said anything. I frightened you."



"Sometimes you do. The fangs, the drinking blood, the way you drive. I should have had three heart attacks and a stroke already." She glanced sideways at him, and what she saw in his eyes decided everything for her. "You are wrong about one thing, and so was I. I've never been in love before… until now."



Robin stared at her for a long time. "God." He pressed her face into his shoulder.



"How scared are you?" Chris asked, her voice muffled by his tunic.



"You broke out of the apartment. You tracked me here. You are wearing a dress made out of silk scarves." He set her at arm's length and gave her a crooked smile. "You terrify me. So what will we do now?"



"We're in this together, Robin." she said. "I don't have any superpowers, but I am a trained investigator. From now on. I watch your back and you watch mine. When we recover the manuscript, when we save my partner and your friends, then we'll deal with the rest of it."



"This practicality of yours is a superpower, as well as a damned nuisance," he said, tucking her head under his chin. "We'll find a way to make it work, Chris. I swear to you."



She blinked back stinging tears and cleared her throat before she drew back. "How do we find Nottingham now?"



"By his scent. My kind can track one another by following it." He looked out into the night and breathed in. "He's moving east, toward the old part of the city."



"There's just one more thing." She straightened her legs to show him the too-large stilettos. "I need some new shoes."



After convincing one of the human females at the ball with the same-size foot as Chris to give him her slippers, Robin took her with him, following Nottingham's scent through a labyrinth of ancient streets, pausing here and there to be sure he had not doubled back or left a false trail by using a human upon whom he had fed to scatter his scent.



Chris kept pace with him, her eyes alert and her movements as economical as his. He knew from making love to her that she kept her body in superb condition, but now he saw how beautifully she had honed her senses as well. Twice she tugged him back just as he heard approaching footsteps; for a mortal she had almost Kyn-like instincts.



Together they tracked Nottingham's path until his scent led Robin to a twenty-foot-high brick wall with a narrow gated arch. Through the bars of the gate he saw an empty, boarded-up palazzo surrounded on all sides by other smaller, abandoned outbuildings. Mold marks and the crumbling condition of the outer walls suggested that the former tenants had been driven out by flooding, a problem that regularly plagued Venice.



"This looks new." Robin reached for the padlock on the gate, then hissed and pulled back his burned fingers. "It's made of copper."



"Wait." Chris looked all around the entrance until she spotted a disconnected pipe sticking up out of the ground near the gate. "That looks like it's made of steel; do you think you can break off a piece?"



Robin snapped the pipe off at the ground level and handed it to her.



"Thanks." She ignored the padlock and went to the side of the gate. There she used the end of the pipe like a chisel, not on the gate but on the decaying brick to which it had been attached. Small chunks of the brick began flying away from the wall, loosening the bolts that had been driven into it.



"If I may?" Robin held out his hand.



She scowled a little but handed him the pipe. Robin used it in the same way she had, but put his Kyn strength behind each jab. Within seconds he had freed the gate bolts and hinges from their moldering frame on one side. Chris pulled it out until the gap was wide enough for them to pass through.