s, not Rome. Alexandre Peyton was somewhere in the French capital, and it had become my single-minded purpose to find him and kill him once and for all.
I tracked Desmond while he moved through the Paris streets with the fluid grace of someone who was not altogether human. I definitely didn’t have the appearance of a run-of-the-mill tourist from where I was situated, either. Strolling light-footed along the sloped roofs of the city with a sword strapped to my back and a gun holstered under my jacket, I looked anything but normal.
It was for the best no one could see me.
Paris was prone to childish fits of weather, and it had rained sometime during my sleep. Either that or Mother Nature had started syncing her bad moods with mine. The cobblestone street below glistened in the yellow streetlights like it had been covered in gold foil.
I slid down the slick face of the roof and onto a small balcony where a cluster of potted herbs were gathered. The basil and rosemary smelled sweet, and the dirt had a woody, wet aroma that reminded me of being in the forest.
I missed home. True home, where I’d grown up in rural Manitoba. New York City might be home now, and I loved it, but Central Park couldn’t compare to the Canadian Shield for proper woodland living.
Desmond ducked into an alley.
Goddammit, he’d forgotten to give me the signal ahead of time.
I balanced on the edge of the wrought-iron balcony railing and judged the distance from one side of the street to the building across from me. It was doable, but tourists and locals alike were thick in the street below. It was risky to make the leap with so many potential witnesses.
Fuck it.
I checked my weight, then propelled across the gap, landing on the identical railing opposite me and slipping easily onto the balcony. There were no fragrant herbs here, just an empty pet-food dish. After hoisting myself up, I took careful steps in the direction of the alley Desmond had chosen, and perched like a gargoyle at the apex of the roof, staring down into the murky dark of the lane below.
Desmond waited alone at a black gate.
The problem with me hunting a fugitive vampire was finding a reliable source. Within the vampire community, I was too well-known. As a former assassin, getting information would be difficult enough. But now I was one-third of the New York Vampire Tribunal, making me one of the most powerful vampires in all of America.
And I wasn’t even a full-blooded vampire.
Quibbling over semantics didn’t matter, because no one was going to tell me squat about Peyton. Non-vampires wouldn’t trust me, and vampires would be wary of crossing a Tribunal leader. One bad bit of advice and I might be signing a warrant with their name on it.
Add to that the bigger problem—someone on the Los Angeles council was feeding information to Peyton, and I didn’t know who—and I was cut off at both legs.
Holden Chancery, my vampire companion, friend, and sometimes lover, was useless in this quest too because everyone knew him as my consort.
Which was where Desmond came in.
He could move around in daylight, making him more trustworthy to the non-vamps with information. And his affiliation with the East Coast werewolf king, Lucas Rain, led any vamps with information to believe he wouldn’t be mixed up with the vampire council.
Our romance wasn’t exactly below radar, but it also wasn’t as well broadcast to the vampire world as my connection with Holden. Most supernaturals in Europe wouldn’t have the faintest clue in hell who Desmond was, and that’s how I liked it.
It meant he could get to places and people I couldn’t.
And brought us closer to Peyton with each day.
Desmond, for his part, saw it as fair trade for all the times I’d gone off with Holden and left him waiting at home. Too bad I wasn’t the most romantic date these days.
In spite of Holden and Desmond coming to a tense understanding with each other to let me put off making any choices between the two of them, it was still Desmond I lived with. And in the months that passed after I’d left California, understanding or no understanding, no one had been sleeping with me. Neither the wolf nor the vampire were getting any hot Secret action.
Secret was temporarily out of sexual service.
And who knew how temporary it was.
I’d tried, God knew I’d tried. I could handle the kissing and the cuddling, but the second Desmond’s hand moved towards my breasts I’d break down in tears. Nothing killed the mood faster than bloodstained tears and a hyperventilating girlfriend.
I wanted very badly to be with Desmond and Holden the way I once had been, but every attempt ended with a panic attack. After a while we’d just stopped trying, and I was waiting for the right time to make another attempt.
When I’d gotten free of The Doctor, I had wanted to be held all the time. I’d clung to Desmond and Holden like they were all I needed to keep myself together. But things got harder after I got home, and didn’t look to get easier anytime soon.
Holden didn’t know how to deal with it. I think he was grateful when I told him to stay behind during my Paris trip.