Chapter 19

Since it was the dead of winter, it was dark by the time six o’clock rolled around and Halo and Danton were able to approach the house from two different directions. One at the front door and one at the back. They had waited until they saw Roth himself arrive before moving in. They didn’t want him to have time to settle in, so they made their move immediately after his arrival. Halo kept his eye on Roth’s energy signature as it moved through the house. Halo didn’t know the actual layout of the house, but he could tell that Roth had gone upstairs to the third floor.

He waited. Danton waited. As soon as Roth came back down the stairs they would strike.

Roth’s energy signature came back down to the first floor.

Halo burst into the front door.

The first thing he encountered was a pair of guards. He had expected them since their energy signatures had stayed in exactly the same spot all the time he’d watched the house. It just proved how incompetent they were that they had not detected Halo and Danton first.

Upon his violent entrance, the first guard was taken completely by surprise. Halo grabbed him by the head and with a sharp twist broke his neck. Then for good measure he stabbed him in the back of the neck with the wicked blade he held in his dominant hand.

He left the knife behind rather than take the time to extract it from the sycophant’s neck. He pulled the gun he had in his waistband and fired two shots at the second guard who had gotten over his shock and was advancing on him. It was a double tap in his throat, and one or both bullets severed his brain stem from his spine. He dropped like a rock.

Mayhem ensued. Sycophants came running from all directions—all but the one Halo wanted most. Roth moved back into the far reaches of the house, out of immediate sight and reach.

That left Halo and Danton with the unenviable task of plowing through a house full of attacking sycophants.

Piece of cake, Halo thought with an inner grin as he dodged a bullet. A sycophant fired a gun at him, which only pissed him off. He was still healing from getting shot the last time; he was in no mood to add any holes to his body that he hadn’t been born with.

Halo grabbed the sycophant’s gun hand and twisted his wrist until it snapped. The phant cried out and dropped his weapon. Halo kept twisting the wrist until the phant had turned completely around in an attempt to alleviate the pain he was suffering. The moment his spine faced him, Halo shot him in the back of the neck.

Just in time too. Two phants came at Halo, sending powerful pulses out in his direction. The two together were powerful enough to send Halo flying backward until a wall stopped his momentum. The phants took advantage and both attacked him at once hand to hand. But Halo recovered from the pulse attack far more quickly than they anticipated. After taking out the smaller phant with a shot to the throat, Halo turned to the second just as it got its hands around his throat from behind. He was strong. Damn strong. And Halo cursed himself for letting the back of his neck be exposed. But he rectified the error swiftly. He turned around hard, breaking the phant’s hold with sheer power, and faced his attacker with rage firing in his eyes. Halo reached out and grabbed the first thing within reach, some kind of heavy marble pyramid, and bashed the phant’s skull in. By the third bash he knew the phant was as good as dead. It took only an instant for him to break his neck with his bare hands. Then he got up and bulldozed his way to the back of the house where he could see and sense Roth.

When Halo burst into the room, Roth was halfway out of a window. The moment he saw Halo, the moment he recognized him, he dove out of the window completely.

Halo was having none of it. He knew Roth thought that if he brought the fight out in public, out in front of the human world, that Halo would be forced to abandon his pursuit of him. And usually he would be right. Protection from exposure was paramount, even over taking the life of a wanted fugitive and criminal like Roth.

But Halo wasn’t about to let it get that far. He dove out of the window after Roth, tackling him and holding on to him as they hit the ground. They were in the narrow alley between the house on one side and some kind of business on the other. If he could keep Roth in that small, dark alley, then he could deal with him without having to worry about too much exposure to the human world.

Roth was not exactly what you would call larger than life or even the warrior type. He was more of an arrogant aristocrat. He had been obnoxious when he’d been legal, and he was just as dangerously elitist now that he was on the wrong side. Roth had always acted like he was better than everyone else. Better than Halo, to be sure. It had always taken something of a concentrated effort not to punch the insufferable ass in the face whenever they had happened to cross paths—which had always been more often than Halo had liked. To be fair, Roth had hated him as well. Halo had gone out of his way to get under his skin. Perhaps that was why he was so focused on him.

Halo rolled with Roth in a tangle of brute force. He grabbed Roth by the throat and slammed his head into the ground. Roth reacted by sending a violent pulse of energy into Halo, the sickening taint of it blowing him completely off Roth’s body and straight up into the air. Halo got his feet under him as he dropped back down to the ground and bolted after Roth who had scrambled to his feet and was headed for the mouth of the alley.

“Oh no you don’t,” Halo growled.

Roth came up short of his escape when Halo grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and yanked him back into the alleyway. He slammed Roth into a nearby brick wall and punched him square in the face, ringing his bell but good. He was pulling back for a second punch when Roth cried out, “Stop! I can tell you things! Things about Draz!”

“I don’t really care,” Halo spat out. “As long as this ends with you dead, I have no other goals. Which it will as soon as I rip your head from your shoulders.”

Roth’s eyes widened briefly at the threat, but then he seemed to calm. He smiled that arrogant “I’m better than you” smile he always had at the ready and said, “Typical. You always were a shortsighted Neanderthal. You either fuck it, eat it, or kill it. That’s the only way you know how to deal with things.”

“I know how to deal with you. And you’re not going to get in my head so you can quit right now,” Halo told him darkly.

“She is beautiful, isn’t she? For a human anyway. Much in the way a collie is a beautiful creature. However, she is nothing more than cattle. It always disgusted me how you could so easily take them into your bed. It only affirmed to me how twisted you are. But to develop feelings for one of them…”

“Who says I’ve developed feelings?” Halo demanded irritably. “You don’t know a fucking thing about me. Or her.”

“It’s so clear. I’ve had you watched. In the hospital. The things you’ve done. The things you’ve said to her. The tenderness with which you hold her and protect her. I know all of it.”

“I never said a damn thing to her. Anyway, it’s not important what your twisted little mind is imagining. It ends when you end.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong. It won’t end. Simone’s reign is drawing to a close. Her weakness is like blood in the water to a phant like Draz. You think this whole assassination attempt was my idea? I’ve been feeding information to Draz ever since I crossed the line. It was his idea to capture you and turn you and use you to kill Simone. And it would have worked too. If only you hadn’t been able to resist the lure of the darkness inside of you so easily. I thought for certain the cross of the divide between good and evil was a short distance for you. You should have turned. Anyone else as undisciplined and walking the edge of sycophanthropy like you were would have turned.”

Halo could easily see why Roth would think that. And it might have been true for someone else in some other situation. But he owed a lot of his ability to resist the lure of sycophanthropy to the fact that Felice had been there—she gave him the strength to resist the temptation. And that her energy, although tainted in that moment, came from a well of goodness and positivity and a being whose natural state was one of cleanliness. She lived a good life. A healthy life. She didn’t indulge in harmful behaviors. She didn’t smoke or drink or do anything else that would have allowed the heroin to taint her beyond repair. Beyond hope for him.

He owed her a great deal for that. He owed her a great deal for a lot of things.

“Yeah well, you were wrong. I’m better than you are—” Halo stopped as understanding dawned. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you have such a bug up your ass about me. You hate that you weren’t able to resist the lure of sycophanthropy but I was. You hate knowing I’m stronger than you were. All this time you’ve looked down your nose at me, treated me like something nasty you stepped in that was stuck to your shoe. But in the end I’m better than you, and that just burns the hell out of you.”

Roth’s response was one of rage and violence. He lashed out at Halo, surging against him, smacking out with both hands and catching Halo in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. Roth was strong. He was an old sycophant and with age came strength. It also meant ability. So Halo knew he needed to end this now. And fast. So far Roth had been more interested in gloating than escaping, probably thinking he could escape at any time if it came down to it. But Halo wasn’t going to give him that chance. He was stronger than Roth gave him credit for.

He managed to hold on to Roth in spite of his powerful strike and elbowed him across the face. While he was stunned, Halo grabbed him by the hair and smashed his head into the wall. Halo used the moment to pull his gun from his belt and fired it point-blank into Roth’s chest. Roth jerked. Then Halo lifted the gun up to Roth’s throat and squeezed the trigger. Roth jerked his head aside at the last possible second and the bullet tore through his neck on the side instead.

Roth choked, coughing up blood into Halo’s face before grabbing hold of Halo’s weapon by the barrel and fighting with Halo for control of it. It was clear that Roth was more interested in winning this contest of strength and wills than he was in escaping. Halo took advantage of that fact. He released his grip on his weapon, startling Roth with the sudden acquisition, and whipped an arm around the arm Roth held the gun in, pinning it to Halo’s side, the gun pointed harmlessly away. Then Halo kneed Roth in the groin with all of his strength.

As painful as it was when a woman caught a guy in the nuts like that, it was a hundred times more excruciating when a man’s strength was behind it. Especially a man of Halo’s significant strength. The air whooshed out of Roth’s lungs and his entire body curled into itself. Halo stepped back as Roth dropped to his knees, cupping his abused parts in one hand, the gun forgotten and falling from nerveless fingers into the slush of the alleyway.

Halo caught his breath for a scant instant, then picked up the gun. Gunshots were bound to draw attention, so he had to end this quickly. He stepped up to Roth and placed the muzzle of the gun to the back of Roth’s neck.

And just like that, with the squeeze of a trigger, it was over. Roth fell over face-first into the muck on the ground. Halo was cold, wet, and dirty from wrestling with Roth, but he knew his task was not finished. He had the rest of the townhouse to take care of and needed to back up Danton.

He left Roth on the ground and climbed back into the townhouse through the window.

Halo didn’t go to Felice until he was cleaned up. Freshly showered and dressed in clean jeans and T-shirt, he made his way to her room. He relieved Rafe with a nod of his head for thanks. Rafe knew not to expect more, so he was visibly surprised when Halo said to him, “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“You owe me nothing,” Rafe said. “This is what friends do for one another.”

Halo’s knee-jerk reaction was to make some sort of denial at their imagined friendship, to cut it off at the legs, but he held back the acerbic impulses. He glanced at the bed, at the first person in decades to earn his friendship and loyalty and decided it wasn’t all that bad of a feeling. One he wasn’t actually adverse to feeling again. He wondered in that moment why he had cut out all possibilities of friendship from his life.

The answer was simple: today’s friend might become tomorrow’s target. Part of him, he realized, was afraid to invest in the emotions of friendship because to have them betrayed was something more painful than he was willing to cope with.

It had happened before. He had once had a friend…a good friend…and that friend had given in to the weakness of the sycophant lure. It had nearly destroyed Halo to have to be the one who had killed him, but he would never have left the task to anyone else. He had felt he owed his friend that much.

“Good night, Rafe,” he said simply, dismissing the other man by sitting down in the chair and effectively turning his back to him. He heard more than saw Rafe chuckle as he moved toward the door.

“You know,” he said softly, “one of these days you’re going to wake up and realize just how alone you are. When that happens, I hope you think of me and remember this moment when I called you my friend…and maybe you won’t feel so lonely after all.” When Halo didn’t respond he said, “She’s good for you, you know. I’ve never seen you give a damn about anything before.”

“Who says I give a damn?” he grumbled.

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Rafe asked. “You could have pawned her off on someone else long ago. You care and it shows.”

“Then I feel sorry for her,” he said, gazing at the sleeping woman in the bed. “People I give a damn about tend to get hurt. They pay a price for it. I don’t know how or when, but eventually there’ll be a price to pay and she’ll get hurt.”

“She’s hurt now. Your attentions and focus on her are saving her, not condemning her. Don’t you realize that?”

Halo snorted out a laugh. “You only think that way because you’ve got a new woman and you’re smiling rainbows and farting unicorns. You see love and devotion everywhere you look. Even when it isn’t there.”

“Who said anything about love?” Rafe said. He was thoughtful then as he asked, “What do you feel for her, Halo?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business,” Halo snapped, turning in his seat to glare at him in warning. “See, this is the problem with friends. They are always up in your business,” he said angrily.

“But you do feel something for her,” Rafe pressed, ignoring Halo’s assessment of friendship entirely.

“I feel this conversation is coming to a close otherwise you’re going to feel something, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“Halo?” came a sleepy murmur from the bed. Instantly dismissing Rafe and the disturbing conversation from his mind, Halo sat forward in the chair and reached to grab hold of her hand. Felice was barely awake, hardly clear enough to think, and yet his name was the first thing on her lips and in her mind. The realization affected him powerfully. It had the power to make him humble. To make him think she deserved so much better than he.

“I’m here,” he said, hoping it meant something to her. Hoping it gave her comfort.

She opened her eyes, saw him, smiled. She shifted and winced in discomfort. Her arm was in a sling on the side where she’d been shot, an effort to keep her still while she healed from her surgery. He sat on her opposite side and held her uninjured hand. She squeezed his fingers, comforting herself with his strength and support.

“It’s over,” he told her softly as he stood up and then sat on the edge of the bed facing her. “I got Roth. And Michael. We even got Jonah…he was in the house too. They’ll never come after you again. You’re safe.”

“I always was as long as you were with me,” she said softly, her large eyes soft on his as she smiled. He knew that was a lie. She didn’t mean it to be, but it was. He had been partly responsible for her being used against him. He had played a part in it. If not for him they would never have had the need to use her as feed for what amounted to a beast.

“Anyway, I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to be able to relax and heal without worry.”

“Are you all right?” she asked, inspecting him with her eyes to see if he had any new damage.

“I’m fine.”

She nodded and her hand stroked over his chest, shaping his pectoral muscle with warm, enticing fingertips. The simple touch had the power to stir him. It lured him into her spell. He felt her draw.

He gave in. He leaned forward and caught her mouth with his. He knew he had to say goodbye to her. To put distance between them. If he kept her close, Draz or some other enemy would use her against him one day. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being hurt because of him again.

He kissed her deeply. Passionately. As if it were the last time he would ever kiss her. And maybe it was. If Roth’s spies in the hospital had already been able tell of his growing attachment to her, then it would be just as easy for Draz’s spies to do so. The sooner he put distance between them the better. He should make a scene. Give the spies something to report about that told Draz he wanted nothing to do with her any longer. That he felt nothing for her.

Which made him realize just how untrue it was. It made him realize just how much he did feel for her. Enough to want to be selfish. To want to keep her.

Goddammit son of a bitch. Finally he felt something for a woman, found a woman he thought could keep his attention for more than two seconds at a time with her sass and intelligence, clever strength and resourcefulness…and he couldn’t even keep her. If only there were a way to find these spies…but he knew it would be an impossible task. There would always be more.

He broke away from her and stood up. He had to rip the Band-Aid off. He had to do it and do it quickly. It would hurt her—or at least he thought it might. He had no idea if she felt the same for him as he felt for her and he wasn’t about to ask. But better this small hurt now than a more severe consequence later.

“I’m taking off,” he said. “You’ll be safe here. Danton and the others’ll look after you when I’m gone.”

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“I won’t. There’s no need for me to hang out any longer. Nothing to keep me. I’ve got bad guys to hunt down and a life to get back to. I said I’d keep you safe and I have. I’m sure you have a life to get back to as well. One that has nothing to do with us vampires.”

“But…but I thought…” She reached out to grab his hand but he jerked out of her reach.

“You thought what? That just because we fucked we’d ride off into the sunset together? Please. Can you be any more naïve? I thought you knew me better than that.”

She looked so wounded, and it was no wonder. Every word was a slap in her face. It was mean and cold. It was exactly what it needed to be.

A nurse entered the room to take her pulse and blood pressure, standing in between them. Felice jerked her head to the side so she could see around the woman’s body and look into his eyes. He made certain to keep his expression as blasé as possible.

“You don’t mean that. You don’t mean any of it! You aren’t as cold as you like to pretend you are. I mean something to you. I know I do.”

“You’re fooling yourself,” he said, grateful for the nurse who would witness the cruel way he was treating her. If she were a spy, she would report back about the fight going on before her eyes. Halo stepped back to the foot of the bed and gave her as cold and cruel a smile as he could muster, which wasn’t easy. He didn’t like hurting her. The more he did it, the worse he felt. “You were a nice convenient piece of ass. No different than all the others in my life. Granted I did find you interesting for half a second, but that second is over. I’m bored now. So, like I said, Rafe and Danton will look after you. They’ll probably wipe your memory as soon as you’re healed in any event.”

“Is that why you’re doing this?” she asked, tears heavy in her voice. “Is that why you’re being so cruel? Are you putting distance between us so it won’t hurt you to have to say goodbye? We can go to the committee. We can convince them to let me keep my memories! Danton says—”

Halo scoffed. “Danton says? Did Danton tell you he is part of the committee? No?” He registered her shock and it made him angry with Danton. It was a dick move to get her to talk to him and confide in him without telling her he was on the committee that would be deciding her fate. The next time he saw him he was going to smack him around a little, he thought.

“No, he didn’t,” she whispered.

“Don’t you get it? You can’t trust a vampire. We’re only out to protect ourselves. Humans mean very little to us in the grand scheme of things. You’re food. Period. You have no value otherwise.”

In a sense it was true. Maybe he didn’t see it that way, but most other vampires did. Only, what he wasn’t telling her was that it was part of vampire law to protect humans from sycophants and lawless vampires. They were a food source it was true, but they were also a more delicate race that needed to be protected overall. Perhaps much in the same way the ASPCA protected the lives and well-being of animals…so it was that vampire law was meant to safeguard humans. Also it was a matter of protecting themselves from humans learning of their existence. Because when it came down to it, humans outnumbered vampires by a thousand or more to one. No one had really ever done the math. If they learned of vampires and decided to eradicate them from the face of the planet, it was no doubt going to be easy for them to do so just by sheer force of numbers.

“I don’t believe that. Vampires aren’t as cold as you make them out to be. They’ve been nothing but kind to me. They could have rejected me, refused to protect me from Roth, but they didn’t. They took me in.”

“And we’ll continue to protect you.” Rafe spoke up from behind Halo. Halo ground his teeth. Rafe wasn’t making this easy for him. He was interfering in something that was none of his business. Still, it was comforting to know that Rafe planned on offering the protection of the vampire nation to Felice even after Halo was gone, even after Roth was gone.

“Okay, fine. All the more reason you don’t need me. Don’t embarrass yourself by begging me to stay,” he said, holding up a sharp hand to deter her from doing just that. “You’ll be fine without me.”

“I don’t want to be without you,” she said softly, her voice full of tears.

“Too bad. You don’t have a choice.”

“Why are you doing this? Even you aren’t this much of an asshole,” she said bitterly. “Are you being mean to hide your true feelings? Are you afraid of them?”

Halo refused to let her words impact him, even though they rang all too true. He didn’t like to admit to fear of anything, but his feelings for her scared the hell out of him. He was afraid. He was afraid of not doing right by her. He was afraid of not being able to protect her as he should. He was afraid that if he was in her life she would always be in danger.

“Count yourself lucky,” he said softly. “As long as I’m in your life you’ll be in danger. Without me you can go back to your simple, quiet life and your store. You couldn’t possibly fit into the vampire world. You’re not made that way. You have a life. Friends. Family. All the things you’d have to put at a distance for the sake of protecting vampire secrets and upholding vampire law. It’s very rare that a human has what it takes to integrate the vampire world into their own. Most find it difficult to lie to their loved ones. To keep secrets from them. Think of how lucky you are not to have to manage that.”

“Don’t tell me what I am and am not capable of,” she said with hard determination. “That’s up to me to decide. I am perfectly capable of integrating the vampire world into my own. I can’t go back to doing what I was doing before, simply running a shop in ignorance of the war going on between vampires and sycophants. I want to help. I want to do something.”

Halo scoffed, even as panic infused him. “What could a weak human like you have to offer the powerful vampire nation?” he asked her. He had to make her see. He had to make her want to keep herself safe from the war between vampires and sycophants. He had to make her go back to her innocent life where she would be safe.

“I don’t know. But I’ll figure it out. We can figure it out together.”

She held out her hand to him, the hope in her eyes that he might reach out and take it killing him softly.

“You’re an idiot. Only a moron would purposefully insert themselves into a war that has nothing to do with them. I’m not going to stand here and watch you commit what amounts to suicide.”

He turned sharply to leave the room, only to find himself face-to-face with Rafe. He could see the censure in the other man’s expression…and something else. Pity. Rafe was feeling sorry for him. “I’m out. There’s nothing here to keep me. I’m not the keeping sort.”

“I don’t believe you!” Felice cried stubbornly. “You’re braver than this. You’re stronger than your fear!”

He wasn’t. Not in this instance. Her bravery astounded him—impressed him—but it also scared the hell out of him. How could he make her go back to her world? Her safe, comfortable world.

“You need to go,” he said harshly. “We don’t want you or need you here.” He glared at Rafe. “Tell her. Tell her she needs to go. It’s what’s best for her.”

“It would be safer for you,” Rafe said in agreement as he looked at Felice. “There’s nothing you can do about this war. You’re not cut out to fight in it, that much is clear. You are too gentle a soul.”

“There. See? See some sense. We don’t want you here. Get better and leave.”

Halo stepped around Rafe and headed out of the door. But as he crossed the threshold she called out, “I don’t care what you say. You need me. I can fight this war just by being with you. By giving you strength and comfort and support I can help you fight this war.”

Halo ignored her, although it was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do in his life. He strode down the corridor away from her, all the while trying to convince himself he was doing the right thing. But it was difficult when such a large part of him wanted to go back to her, wanted to take back all the hurtful words he had said to her. A large part of him suddenly couldn’t imagine what life would be like without her.

No. Damn it, no. He had had a good life before he’d met her. It had been easy and carefree. He had not had to worry about anyone but himself and that was just the way he liked it. He didn’t need support and companionship and all the things she was offering him. He didn’t need love and comfort in his life. He got along fine without it.

He reached the elevators just as the word “love” floated through his mind. It made him hesitate, his finger hovering over the buttons to the elevator.

Love? Who said anything about love? Certainly she hadn’t. So where had the word come from? It wasn’t a word from his usual vocabulary. Not one he took out all that often. If ever. He simply saw no use for the emotion. He was unencumbered by it. Free from it. It had always seemed a little needy and juvenile to him. He had grown far past the need for love and such other such imagined affectations of the heart. Love was simply a state of mind, a trick played on the brain by out-of-control hormones.

So then why did he feel the lure of it now?

Why in hell was he bothering to examine his feelings at all, he thought angrily as he punched the button to the elevator. He didn’t have feelings. He didn’t waste time with them. He was better off without them.

Just look at what they were doing to him in that moment, he thought painfully.

The elevator arrived and Halo stepped inside. As the doors closed he put aside all of his roiling thoughts and emotions. He would continue on as he always had. He would be free. Unencumbered. A hunting machine with nothing on his mind but the hunt for prey.

And he knew exactly who was topping his list of prey.

Draz.