Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
14
At half past six on Sunday morning, the VIP suite had long since emptied of everyone but Aston’s closest associates. Sprawled on couches and chaises, clothing in disarray—if they wore anything at all. The man himself had commandeered the same banquette that Tavi had availed himself of a few nights ago, apparently seeing its tactical advantage and relative privacy compared to other parts of the circular suite.
Mirko raised bleary, red-rimmed eyes as Tavi approached. His silk shirt was unbuttoned halfway, his sports coat a sacrifice to the hedonistic gods. But he looked in better shape than Rossi from Chicago and the Hollywood hotshot, Keegan, both of whom had misplaced their pants. “Where is Sasha?” he demanded, pouring himself a restorative shot of high-end vodka.
“‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” Tavi quoted, voice heavy with irony. He imagined his old seminarian friend chuckling…even more clearly after seeing Finian again last night. He could also picture quite vividly Nichols’s reaction to him claiming brotherly ties. The purpling of the man’s face. His ineffectual threats. It was beautiful, really. And fucking hilarious.
Mirko wasn’t nearly so amused by his Old Testament reference. He cursed in Slovak, kicking the nearest table and scattering white powder across it. Thousands of dollars’ worth of cocaine had been circulating during the party. There was as much of it ground into the carpet as there was up men’s noses. But this was of no consequence. No, Aston had bigger things to occupy his mind, higher costs. “He was in contact with the clinic. I’m awaiting news on the latest results. He knows time is of the essence.”
If time were truly of the essence, Mirko Aston could just contact the clinic himself, couldn’t he? He wanted to have total control and yet delegate to flunkies at the same time. But this wasn’t something you pointed out to self-proclaimed supervillains. To ambitious arrogant men who wanted to take over the world—and the universe after it. Tavi shrugged again, making a show of retrieving his smartphone from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Sasha’s last message to me was just before 10:00 a.m. yesterday.” Fuck u. i will catch the whore and then come 4 u. Not anything worth repeating aloud. Nothing that inspired any sympathy for what fate might have befallen Mirko’s number one bootlicker. Tavi hoped he’d tripped and fallen through a subway grate and been eaten alive by giant rats. “I can confer with Dr. Schoenlein at the clinic, if you like. Unlike Sasha, people tend to find me charming and easy to work with.”
Aston grunted his assent, his gray eyes narrowing shrewdly. “Or else they’ll find your teeth in their throat.”
A quip about the mark of Cain rose and then died on the tip of Tavi’s tongue. Such jokes were wasted on Mirko, who had very little interest in anything that didn’t involve money, drugs, or murder. Or power. Oh, he so loved power. Because he’d been born without it. “Carajo, Aston,” he swore lightly. “You know I don’t kill them unless I have to. Body disposal isn’t as easy as it used to be when I was young.”
“Acid baths,” Mirko said, trailing one fingertip through the coke or heroin on the table and then licking it. “We use acid baths. Or lye. It is good when there are too many to bury.”
Being on earth for the turn of two centuries meant Tavi had spent all of that time mastering his emotions, his reactions. He didn’t even flinch. Drug cartels had been using lye for corpse dissolution for decades. It was the we that disturbed him. And the too many to bury. There could be only one thing Aston was referencing, since he had no ongoing hits on his enemies in play. Carajo. Not so lightly this time. “The island?” he asked casually. “I can’t imagine there is much free real estate for graves.”
Just hours ago, tucked away at Hector’s, he’d said something flowery and metaphorical about needing access to the cemetery. About Mirko knowing where the bodies were buried. Not letting himself think about how it might be literal. Of course, they would need to dispose of the failed trial subjects. They could not afford to leave witnesses, evidence alive. Not even the innocents. The implications brought bile and rum and blood to the back of Tavi’s throat. But again, he had years of practice swallowing horror, choking it down.
Aston made another grunting noise of assent, momentarily distracted by his wake-up cocktail of drugs and alcohol. It would be his last indulgence until the next such party. He insisted on remaining clearheaded most of the time. Needed no anesthetizing to order so many deaths. “Our facilities take up most of the real estate,” he boasted after downing another drink. “We have only made a little bit of space with our lye. The ones who were not viable. Those of our own who turned against us. You know how it is. Examples must be made. The bulk disposal will occur after the trials are complete and the product is ready to be administered.”
If Tavi could have breathed a sigh of relief, he would have. The prisoners—the women—were all still alive. And he now knew more about the island than ever before. All because of Aston’s cocaine-laced loose lips. He’d been waiting years. Biding his time. Gathering intel. Gaining access. He was closer than he’d ever been to his goal. Mirko, the consummate braggart, was careful in one thing and one thing only: the identity of the man who pulled his strings. He’d never once uttered a name. It had never appeared in a communication or a document. As if the island and the facility it housed were owned by a ghost. There were rumors. Suspicions. But never anything of substance. Nothing to connect one of the world’s most famous billionaires to Aston’s circle.
Roman Hollister. That was how he was known now. He’d changed his name countless times. Changed his face. But Tavi had always seen him for what he was. A true monster. Even among monsters. A killer of women, of children, of the old and the infirm. He followed no code. Kept to no laws. He just amassed money and power. He’d courted a century’s worth of presidents from both parties. He’d swung the Senate to his whims. He was the Illuminati. And he was the darkness, too.
Tavi had been inching toward him for decades. Infecting his network at the roots, tracing it to the source. Now here was Aston slowly allowing him access to the entire poisonous garden. Finally. The small victory should have tasted sweet. But it was stale on his tongue. Like blood from a corpse. Because he couldn’t shake Finian’s questions from the night before. “Why would you throw your lot in with people like this, Tav? You were ambitious, sure. Selfish, certainly. But not evil.” Or his lovely companion’s fierceness on his behalf. “Then what’s the incentive you need? Money? Information? For us to say ‘please’?”
They were young. They still thought you could keep your honor while playing the game. They were wrong, weren’t they? They had to be wrong. Or he’d spent two hundred years without a soul for no reason at all.
“Tell me more,” he murmured as he dropped down to the banquette next to Mirko. “Tell me all about the trials.”
But before Aston could begin, his phone vibrated. Rattling across the table like a snake. Mirko grabbed it, answering it with a sharp bark of “What?”
Tavi didn’t have to strain to hear the voice on the other end of the line. His supernatural senses meant he could hear a whisper across the room if he chose to listen for it. “The lab!” cried the hapless lackey who probably wouldn’t have a job for much longer. “It’s been compromised! The doctor and one prototype are still out cold. The other two prototypes are meat. Headed for the incinerator.”
“Who did this?” Mirko demanded. “Who dared?”
“The cameras captured only one person,” the lackey sputtered. “The woman, sir. Your woman.”
Meghna.Tavi’s mental curses echoed the ones Aston spat aloud as he threw the cell phone across the room. This was an unwelcome development. And after last night’s strange little reunion…? Not remotely a coincidence.
* * *
Finn and Grace had fallen into bed the night before out of necessity more than desire. They’d climbed onto opposite sides of his king-size mattress in mutual silence after filing reports with HQ. Just before dawn. Going back to her one-bedroom in Astoria had made little sense, and using the guest room seemed silly given what they’d already done in this one. Besides, there was a gulf between them on the massive bed. Both emotional and physical. One that Grace wasn’t sure she wanted to cross, even after she woke up around half past seven. What felt like five minutes after she’d shut her eyes.
She lay there, in the darkness, next to a man who didn’t breathe. Whose chest didn’t rise and fall. He literally slept like the dead. She knew from experience that he woke up with no significant change in movement or sound. It was eerie when you weren’t used to it. When you weren’t used to him. Grace was glad Finn hadn’t initiated sex the moment they’d stumbled—half-exhausted—over the threshold. It would’ve felt too much like erasure…a desperation to replace the memories of Tavi Estrada with the reality of her. Enough had been erased at Hector’s already.
Grace still felt invisible now, as the sun rose outside this underground haven. Maybe her hand was visible on the pillow next to her cheek? Maybe her legs had materialized beneath the covers? She was returning in pieces. And the vampire four feet away might as well have been thousands of miles across the desert.
“Gracie?” He turned to her then. Waking as soundlessly as she’d expected him to. A pale sylph against the black silk sheets. He swore he wasn’t psychic, but it felt oddly like he’d picked up on her thoughts. “Thank you.”
“For what?” She shifted to face him.
His eyes glowed just faintly. Like the blue flames of a gas burner on low. “For being you,” he said hoarsely. “For being with me last night. It was…harder than I reckoned it would be.”
Nearly everything came easy to Finn. He’d led a charmed life these past few years with Third Shift, work-related injuries notwithstanding. For him to admit difficulty was significant. Grace felt the punch of it to her solar plexus. Tavi Estrada had genuinely gotten under his skin. First at the briefing and then in person. More so than she’d even suspected. And now he was seeking reassurances. A tether. A port in the storm. Grace had always been that for him. This time, though…this time, she hesitated to let him drop anchor. “I’m not a replacement for him, Finn,” she warned. “I will not be used because you miss him.”
“I wouldn’t want you to be.” His words came out in a rush, almost cutting off her own. “Not you or Nathaniel. I’m not using you. You’re nothing like him. You could never be, love. You have to believe that. What you give me…it’s nothing Tavi Estrada was ever capable of.”
Was that deliberate? The cynic that took up most of the space in her brain couldn’t help but wonder. Had Finn connected with her, and then with Nate, because they were so different from Tavi? Because they’d never betray him in the same ways? Because there was no way either one of them could remind him of the one he’d lost? She didn’t ask the questions aloud. They weren’t productive, not when there was still intel to gather. She’d said all she really needed to say by stressing that she was no substitute for his first love. “Do you think he’ll tell us anything useful tomorrow?” she asked instead.
Finn sat up, a mound of pillows pressed between his shoulders and the headboard. “I don’t know,” he admitted quietly. “I wish I could say ‘aye.’ But it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”
Everything was worth a shot at Third Shift. It was how they rationalized so many of their missions. How she’d rationalized so many of her choices. And any further rationalizations were cut short by the sharp trill of her phone on the nearest nightstand. As well as Finn’s on the far side. Fuck. That couldn’t be good news. She scrambled for the device with one hand even as she shoved the bedcovers away with the other. Sure enough, the ten little words on her screen had her rolling out of bed and into action.
Arson. Saunders’s residences. No casualties reported. Present at HQ ASAP.
Finn’s dismount was slightly less graceful, for all that he was a creature of the night. He hit the marble floor with an audible thump. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” The curse was so very Irish, so very Catholic, that it brought a smile to Grace’s face despite the emotions warring inside her. Maybe the memories that Tavi Estrada was stirring weren’t all problematic. Maybe, just maybe, they were reminding Finn what it had been like to be human. What it was like to be her and Nate.
Grace excused herself to the guest bathroom, cleaning up quickly and throwing on a set of the clothes she kept at Finn’s for just these sorts of emergencies. Less than ten minutes tops. By which time there were already follow-up texts on the encrypted app 3S used for all communications.
Simba and Nala en route to safe house.
Simba? From The Lion King? And calling Meghna Nala? If that had gone out to everybody on the 3S roster, Elijah was going to kill Joaquin. Or, at the least, lock their Nintendo Switch in the vault. Grace snorted as she met Finn by the front door. He was chuckling, eyes bright. “Simba. Can’t believe I didn’t think of it first.”
The next messages wiped away any more merriment, dried the laughter in her throat, and replaced it with sand.
Two fatalities reported in a Los Angeles nightclub shooting.
Chase Saunders spotted at the scene just prior. Status TBA.
It was barely 5:00 a.m. in California. Aston’s people had already managed to target Meghna’s ex-husband as well as burn down her homes. Their operation was in trouble. Big trouble.