I released the window ledge and dropped to the street, landing in a crouch on both feet, with nary a broken bone to complain about.
Too bad I’d lost precious chase time by hanging around.
I ran into the street, sticking close to the buildings to avoid too much undue attention. At least the sword was in a sheath, and with the smooth design of the katana it didn’t appear threatening at a quick glance. I’d seen people with more menacing umbrellas.
Dodging a few slow-moving pedestrians, I scanned the crowd for a sign of Desmond or the man he was chasing. Given I was a mere five four, it wasn’t easy to see much of anything from my lowered vantage point. Hopping up and down to see over people’s heads was always an option, but it tended to take away from my polished badass veneer.
Instead I kept moving and tried to judge where the crowd was parting unnaturally—as though someone was forcing their way through it. The din of shouts and curses helped too. Apparently Parisians weren’t big fans of being shoved.
“Va ta fair foutre, salaud!” someone growled ahead.
Being raised in Canada by a Creole-French grandmother, I had picked up a passable amount of the language. I wasn’t fluent, but I could get by. And naturally, as a teenager, swears had been the most exciting thing to learn. So I didn’t need a translation to know the guy was saying Fuck off, asshole. It sounded much more cultured in French.
It also helped me pinpoint which direction I was going.
I wove my way through the crowd, grateful to find people were either uninterested or more focused on Desmond than on me. My slight frame made it easier to avoid people than it would be for the six-foot-tall werewolf, who cut an intimidating silhouette even in his human form.
The smaller man must have still been ahead of him because the crowd was parting in two discernible waves, like the ripples off a pair of stones thrown a few feet apart. Soon the people began to thin out, and I was able to see my quarry clearly. Desmond barreled after the other man at full tilt, and they both ducked into another alley.
I was getting sick of alleys.
Frankly, I was getting sick of France too. I hoped when we caught up to this guy, we could beat something useful out of him and finally figure out where Peyton was hiding.
A little killing would do me some good.
Chapter Three
Desmond already had the guy cornered when I skidded into the alley. In Paris the alleys weren’t so much back lanes as leaner connecting streets too narrow for cars to pass through. This made it extra difficult as far as cornering went, because the lane was a straight shot through.
But Desmond had caged the man between his arms and was growling at him in a way that reminded me he wasn’t human at all.
I drew my gun and approached the pair, both men glancing up at me in the same instant.
The guy we’d been chasing was reed thin and only a smidge taller than I was. His hair was actually dark blond but had looked brown because it hadn’t been washed in quite some time. Ditto his skin, smeared with soot and dirt. It was impossible to tell what color his tattered clothing used to be.
“Who do we have here?” I asked Desmond.
“Meet the Mouse.” He pushed the guy hard against the wall, making him let out a squeak to do his namesake animal proud. “I’m told if there’s something going on in the city people don’t want getting out, Mouse knows about it. Isn’t that right?”
The man looked at me again, his eyes a shockingly bright shade of blue against the filthy veneer of his face. He was barely a man at all, maybe twenty at best. More like a teenager, though.
“If he lets you go, are you going to run? Because I have better ways to bring you down than he does.” I held my gun so he could see it. “It’s rare for me to miss, but if you’re running, I might aim for the shoulder and accidentally hit your neck, know what I mean?”
Mouse nodded.
“So, kid, let’s talk.” Desmond took a step back, crossing his arms and fixing the boy with a stern no-nonsense glare. I liked seeing him let his inner alpha out to breathe. Living in Lucas’s shadow couldn’t be easy for him.
“Wh-what do you want?”
“We’re looking for a vampire,” I said, wanting to see what his reaction would be. If he thought the idea was ludicrous or shocking, chances were good he wouldn’t have useful information. I was pretty good at reading people’s expressions.
“This is Paris,” he replied. “You’re going to have to narrow things down a bit for me.” He had a soft accent, not French, maybe English. It was hard to tell with the near-whisper quiet of his words.
Not only did he know about vamps, he knew how plentiful they were in the city. Paris was the seat of Europe’s council, where the Tribunal was located. In a sense it was bold as hell for Peyton to come here and thumb his nose at the vampire version of “the man”. But it was a city people could easily get lost in, regardless of how small it was.
He was proving this all too well.
“I’m looking for a vampire named Alexandre Peyton.”