As more crap emerged out of the purse, he decided it was like a clown car for debris, and in spite of his on-alert routine, he found the mess endearing. She was so damned put together, her house so neat, her opinions so direct, her professionalism so obvious, the idea that there was some chaos under the facade made him feel like he didn’t have to be so perfect.
And good job on that, as he was far from an A+ on anyone’s grading scale.
“No, it’s not mine.” She held up an iPhone. “And I only have one—oh, wait.”
She seemed to unzip something. And then she took out a Samsung phone he recognized.
As it vibrated in her hand, she frowned. “I don’t know whose this—”
“It’s mine.” So V knew where he was. Then again, was it really that hard to guess Balz wouldn’t leave her? “That’s my phone.”
“How did it get in my purse?”
She turned the thing over to him—and the second he went in and read the text, he was glad he’d taken all those guns from the garage with them.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We need to stay here.” Shelter in place… which was V’s formal way of saying hang-wherever-the-fuck-you-were. “And I have to find out what’s going on—is there somewhere you can lock yourself in? A bathroom with no windows?”
Although like that was really going to help if there were shadows popping up all over Caldwell, particularly around vampires?
Erika stepped right up into his face. “You’ve got the wrong woman if you think I’m going to damsel-in-distress in some tub while you stomp around and get shot in the back because you’re undefended.”
Balz blinked. And then one and only one thing went through his mind.
Do not tell her you love her right now.
Even though it was his God’s honest truth—
Oh, shit, he really didn’t want that coming out of his mouth right now.
“What,” she demanded. “You might as well tell me because somehow, I don’t think tonight could get any worse.”
His eyes traced her face and he shook his head ruefully. What the hell was he going to do with her?
What the hell was he going to do without her?
“Don’t bet on it,” he muttered. “Worse is always a possibility.”
“Well, all I know is, where you go, I’m going.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “And if you have a problem with that, I’m not really interested in hearing about it.”
He cursed. Then he thought of her upstairs, guarding his six.
With another round of swearing, he went to the living room and came back with the duffle bag full of weapons. “Fine. I want to go clear your basement.”
Erika nodded once. “The door’s right behind you. And I’ll go first.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
How had the Omega changed its mind?
As the male walked down the city street, he was naked and impervious to the cold. He was also invisible to the few humans who were passing in cars. But he was alive.
With the wind blowing through his blond hair and across his bare skin, the sensations were distant and also foreign—and he wondered how long he had been in the miasma, the torturous void, the black oily Hell where he had known pain to the point where he had become pain.
No form, no function, just an agony that was somehow self-aware…
In spite of who he’d been sired by, he’d never thought much about Dhunhd. Now that he’d died, he knew firsthand that it existed—and not in terms of his father’s private quarters, but rather the eternal damnation that humans waxed poetic about and that vampires, too, sought to avoid.
He wasn’t sure why he was back here.
Striding by a parked car, he backtracked to check out the license plate. The sticker in the corner had a date that made sense to him. It was just over two years past when he had “died.”
No, not died. Not in the conventional sense. Rotted out, was more like it, on that mattress, unable to fight the tide of putrefaction that had seeped through and out of his body: Forsaken by his sire. Stabbed and left to degrade and decay in Hell. Abandoned like an experiment gone wrong—or worse, forgotten like a toy that had been explored, mastered, and discarded.
He’d wanted to think his sire had played a long game with his “birth” and the embedding of him in his infant state into the rarefied bosom of that aristocratic family. It had been a very strategic move on the Omega’s part, allowing him to infiltrate the enemy from the very moment of his first awareness, setting his son on a course not only to be trained by the Black Dagger Brotherhood, but to fight with them.
He had been the chosen one, not a lesser initiated into the Lessening Society, but the blooded son, the heir to power, the special gift to the earth.