Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
13
He’d been in the same city as Finian Conlan hundreds, thousands of times since they’d last been in each other’s company. He’d felt the city blocks stretching between them. The years too. None of that compared to being mere inches apart. The boy, who’d never really been a boy and had long since become a man, was still one of the most beautiful creatures Tavi had ever laid eyes upon.
“We can’t afford you? That’s despicable, Tav. You were ambitious, sure. Selfish, certainly. But not evil.” The righteous indignation in his voice was almost funny. The disappointed look in his eyes was anything but. It was the same devastation that he’d displayed as a young seminarian when Tavi flashed his teeth outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral after weeks of flirting across the pews and chaste coffees after mass. A show of hope dashed, of a candle pinched out. “So you’re a monster, then. And you’ve come for my immortal soul?” “I have no interest in your soul. Just everything else.” It had probably been their last honest moment before he’d overridden the young man’s suspicions and taken him, turned him…ultimately abandoned him.
“Why Mirko Aston?” Finn demanded in a fierce whisper. And the second part of the question, the silent part, was like a scream. Why Mirko Aston and not me?
The memories, the bite of conscience, itched like a mosquito’s conquest of his skin. Tiny raised dots of what could’ve been. Maybe that was why Tavi actually told him a tiny sliver of truth this time. “Because Aston knows where all the bodies are buried. And I need access to that cemetery.”
“Because he has something on you?” The woman who’d wisely kept her name to herself—though Finn had ruined that by calling her the “Grace” of his heart—didn’t hesitate to ask further questions. She was focused. Unyielding. Clearly protective of Finian. “Or because you have your own designs on the information he hoards?” She was striking too. Tall, brown-skinned, with the high cheekbones of a supermodel and eyes even darker than his own. And her voice was the kind of smooth, commanding tone that both inspired one to fall in line and to fall at her feet.
“If you were me, would you answer those questions?” he countered. “No matter what my alliances are, my reasons are my own.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t be in this position to begin with,” she shot back. “I don’t truck with fascists, Estrada. Never have. Never will.”
If Finian wasn’t already besotted with her, he would be soon enough. He couldn’t possibly resist. They were men of lies. Grace was a woman who radiated truth. The rarest gem in today’s world. A lure to thieves like them. Tavi was almost envious. It had been entirely too long since he’d loved anyone. Longer still since he’d wanted to. He’d had other priorities. And yes, his own designs…yet to be carried out. It wouldn’t do for Finian and his warrior woman to get in the way.
He had one mission and one mission only: getting to the island. Everything else was either in service of that or a roadblock.
“If you’re here to appeal to my better nature, I’m sure you’ve realized that’s a fool’s errand. Nothing and no one can shake me from the path I’m on. Not even you, Finian. Or your friend here, with her passionate convictions.” Tavi pushed away from the table, out of the sphere of whatever dampening bug they’d activated. “This was a waste of your time.”
Finian glowered. All that tumultuous emotion radiating from every line of his body. He might pretend to be the suave, continental vampire, but he’d never quite learned to shield himself. As to Grace? She was cool, collected, a child of the night in spirit if not in body. “Was it?” she murmured, tilting her head. “I think we’ve learned quite a bit, even with your reluctance to share.”
They’d thought to neutralize him with nostalgia, putting Finian before him. But it was she who posed the real threat. She saw right through him. Worse, her forthrightness made him want to expose who and what he really was—the person even he didn’t recognize anymore. He’d known someone like her once. Someone who brought up these impulses in him. That couldn’t stand. It was too much of a risk. He had to separate them. Divide and conquer. Sooner rather than later. Only then would he have a chance to control the situation…to control Finian Conlan.
Finian’s asleep beside him. The light sleep of a human lover, not the death-like rest of the vampire. He wore himself out last night, despite the vigor of youth. Rum on his tongue and rum driving his hips. Tavi should feel regret. He doesn’t. He simply climbs out of bed to the fire escape of the nondescript apartment he’s rented. Lights up a cigarette and watches the moon hang over the Upper West Side. It only takes minutes for the steps above his head to tremble with a slight weight. Her. Of course. Always watching. Because this is their game. Going back decades now. Nearly half a century.
“Enjoying your honeymoon?” she wonders caustically.
“Fuck you,” he says, inhaling nicotine that won’t get him any higher than alcohol gets him drunk. He shouldn’t look up. Shouldn’t honor her with that acknowledgment. He still does.
“This is a departure for you, Octavio. Caring. Staying.” It’s not jealousy that sharpens the needles in her voice. In all the time he’s known her, she’s had many lovers—husbands and wives too—and never given him any indication she’d like him to join the ranks. No, this is spite, pure and simple. And he’s missed it. What does that say of him? “Does the poor man in that bed know what you really are?”
“Why are you so obsessed with what I am?” he counters. “Don’t you have dragons to slay? Wrongs to right? Bottles to inhabit?”
“Fuck you,” she echoes him, dark-brown eyes glittering just as brightly as the bejeweled brass ring she wears on her middle finger.
He should get back to Finian. To, yes, what feels like a honeymoon. A vacation. A break from the reality of his existence. Tavi stays outside. With the moon and the stars and her judgment. Until he’s done with one smoke and then another. He doesn’t ask her why she’s in Manhattan. She doesn’t wonder the same of him. They sit in mutual silence, in mutual contempt.
In mutual understanding.
Until the rising sun drives him back inside.
Tavi worried his lower lip with his front teeth. Dragged a hand through his hair. All affectations. Bits of theater he’d learned over the years to seem vulnerable or conflicted when he was neither of those things. He stepped back into the dampening field and dropped his voice to a weary whisper. “Okay,” he said, as his shoulders slumped. “Okay, I’ll play along. But not here. And not now.”
He could feel the relief coursing through Finian’s veins as if it were his own. Even now, after all these years, everything he’d done, the altar boy still believed in his inherent goodness. It would be sweet if it weren’t so damn naive. How had he ever survived this long as a vampire? Grace, however, still had her guard up. Smart. And proving he’d assessed her correctly.
“If not now, then when?” she challenged, one hand on her partner’s arm. Calming him. Grounding him. Reclaiming him.
“Monday,” he said, flicking his gaze between them. Lingering deliberately—not that it was any sort of hardship—on Finian’s brilliant-blue eyes. “We can meet Monday morning.”
That would give him plenty of time to find something, anything, to break the Grace of Finn’s heart.
* * *
Elijah took a long, circuitous route back to the city. He turned a two-hour trip into a four-hour one, and it was close to 3:00 a.m. when they stopped just a few klicks outside one of the checkpoints between Connecticut and New York. He’d dragged it out as long as possible, but it still wouldn’t do to have them logged as returning at such an odd hour. Just for the sake of plausible deniability. If they’d been made by the blokes back at the clinic, they’d been made. Nothing to do about it. But better safe than sorry, yeah? No one from HQ had checked in with red alerts. Sasha Nichols’s disappearance and Meghna’s coincidental flounce hadn’t raised alarms yet. He wasn’t naive enough to think that meant they were in the clear. So they caught a couple hours of shut-eye right there in the car.
He’d expected an argument from the glam girl in the passenger seat, but Meghna hadn’t so much as blinked. She’d just asked for him to turn the heat on as a concession to her physiology and then turned toward the window and closed her eyes. Until promptly at 6:00 a.m. when she jolted awake just moments after him. “Any word?” she said instead of “good morning.”
“Not yet.” He turned, reaching into the back seat for his dopp kit. There was a mini bottle of mouthwash within it, and he took a hefty swig, swishing and spitting out the window, before passing it along to her. “Don’t reckon that’ll be the case for long, though. We made too much noise.”
“You made noise. I was perfectly subtle,” she said before she rolled down the window to do her own swish and spit.
A dozen filthy thoughts popped into Elijah’s head. As if he were Finn or JP, who had no filter and no home training. He reined them all in and covered them with light sarcasm. “Well, pardon me, love. Guess I should’ve just let that genetically engineered monstrosity tear you to shreds, eh?”
“It was not going to tear me to shreds,” she said automatically. “I could’ve handled myself.”
He had to admire her confidence, because he couldn’t say he’d had the same thought when he went barreling at the beast full tilt. He was a lion. He went into every fight assuming it was kill or be killed. Anything less than that meant he was leaving himself, or somebody more vulnerable, unprotected. Only since starting Third Shift had he begun to let his guard drop a bit…because he knew he had a team watching his back.
“You’re used to doing it all alone, aren’t you? Handling yourself?” he observed, glancing at Meghna. “Well, that’s not how we do things at 3S. We look out for one another. We trust one another.”
“So you trust me?” Her brows rose with skepticism.
“Do you want me to trust you?” he countered. “I don’t think that fits your agenda.”
Maybe that was why it had all gone sideways at the clinic. Why they’d learned a little but still made a big mess. Because he and Meghna were on shaky ground with each other. They’d started with lies and they were still lying, still keeping parts of themselves on lockdown. Their narrow escape was the price.
As if he’d summoned it, the portable comm on the dash came to life. “ETA?” Joaquin’s voice. Light and soft, but no less insistent for it.
“Forty-five minutes, I reckon? We’re on I-95 in Greenwich. Just closing in on the Port Chester checkpoint. Why?”
“You might want to reroute, Teacha. Don’t come to HQ.”
Dread uncurled like a dragon in the pit of his stomach. Fuck. Fucking shite. “Explain,” he bit off, gripping the steering wheel hard enough to break it.
His tech geek didn’t mince words. “You’ve been made,” Joaquin said apologetically. “I just pulled it off the party-suite feed. From Aston’s phone. They know about Connecticut. They caught a glimpse of Ms. Saunders on the surveillance video.”
“So I’ve been made,” Meghna corrected, her posture straight as a pin. “Guess covering my digital footprints was pointless, wasn’t it?”
“Tweeting from Ibiza is never pointless,” Joaquin assured her, even pronouncing the city’s name with the traditional lisp. “Don’t go home. Don’t call anyone you love. Sit tight. Elijah will take care of you.”
The vote of confidence should have been comforting. All it did was put Elijah further on edge. Because he’d done a bang-up job of taking care of her so far, yeah? “Thanks, kid,” he said nonetheless. “I hope that’s not you angling for a raise.”
“Jefe, please.” Joaquin scoffed. “I could hack into payroll and give myself a raise,” they pointed out before signing off.
Ending on a light note did nothing to ease the ensuing tension in the car. It felt thicker and thicker with every mile. Getting through the New York State checkpoint had become the least of their worries. So it was ironic that they breezed through in mere minutes. With the guards scanning their IDs and waving them through with no questions whatsoever.
“That was too easy,” Meghna said as they continued south on I-95 toward the Belt Parkway and Brooklyn. “I don’t like it when things are too easy.”
Like breaching Schoenlein’s clinic had been. “Easy” was a warning that things were about to get difficult. So it came as no surprise whatsoever when the comm rattled again and Joaquin’s voice piped up as clearly as if they were in the car, too. “Was Ms. Saunders attached to her places in Tribeca and WeHo?”
“Joaquin…” Meghna had a condo in West Hollywood and a loft in Tribeca. Expertly designed setups that had been showcased in a number of fancy magazine spreads. The dread dragon in Elijah’s gut flapped its wings. “What’s happened to her properties?”
“They’re on fire,” Joaquin said, tone all businesslike this time. “Engines en route in both cities. No preliminary reports yet, but I think we can infer arson given our intel.”
Yes. Yes, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? Aston’s people had acted quickly, recklessly, but emphatically. Their message was clear. They’d sent Meghna a literal burn notice. Helluva way to break up with someone, Elijah thought grimly.
“Goddammit!” Meghna followed up with curses in Hindi that he vaguely understood, thanks to his Punjabi mates back in Hackney. She thumped her head against her seat, fists clenching in her lap. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen.”
Because he’d come in and mucked up her solo operation. She didn’t say it aloud, but the implication was clear. “I’m sorry,” he said as soon as Joaquin went off-line. “We didn’t mean for you to lose your homes—”
“Fuck my homes!” Meghna cut off his apology before it was even half out of his mouth. “In our business, we live every day prepared to lose our lives. I don’t care if those assholes make a bonfire out of my CD collection and my throw pillows. What I care about is that we’ve completely lost control of this mission. That I’ve lost control of this mission.”
It was uncomfortably close to what he’d been thinking before Joaquin’s communications. “We’ll get it back, Meghna. No matter what, I promise you we’ll get it back. You’ve just got to trust me. You need to let us help.”
Her beautiful dark eyes blazed at him, turning him to ash like her loft. “What if I can’t? What then?”
Elijah didn’t have an answer for her. He wasn’t sure he ever would.