Читать книгу Masked Desire - Alana Delacroix - Страница 13

Chapter 7

Michaela checked the time and rose from her bed. The evening had been quiet and the two had bid each other an early good night. Was Cormac planning something? He didn’t even try to annoy her once.

The whole experience had been far less aggravating than she’d expected, but still uncomfortable. Having him in her space was far beyond dealing with him as a partner in an investigation. This was personal. Her home was where she could be herself, where she could lower her guard and relax.

Still, it was preferable to risking her life at a hotel, where she could be easily tracked by one of Iverson’s followers.

She dressed in the chilly room. Her silk pajamas slid to the ground with a whisper and she pulled on black pants and a black jacket, tucking her long braid down the back. Cormac had joked about watching out for Ivy, but he didn’t know the half of it. She’d played invisible guardian angel to Yao’s descendants for over a hundred years and would until the end of her long life.

Of course, she thought wryly, Ivy had many times the freedom and independence of her mother and grandmother. Not that Michaela was complaining—she wanted Ivy to lead a life unfettered by expectations—but it did make being a guardian a little more difficult, especially now that she had to worry about idiots prancing around who thought killing Michaela might in some way advance their cause of domination over the humans. She could never lead her opponents to Yao’s family. Not that it would happen. She was a masquerada, after all, and confident she could fool her enemies.

Cormac’s door was closed; he’d never even know she was gone. Michaela slid out of the apartment on light feet and ran down to her car. Sneaking by Cormac had given her a silly sense of naughtiness that she hadn’t had in years, like a kid who snuck a cookie out of the jar. You’re over five hundred years old. You should be more mature than to enjoy sneaking around at night.

Should be, but then she hadn’t had much of a childhood. Her first marriage had been at age fourteen and the old man had kept a close eye on her. Even the beautiful garden had been off-limits. Instead she’d been dressed like a doll and forced to sit and sing endless songs to old Zhang as he coughed and wheezed.

Never mind. That marriage, and all the others, were long past.

It was almost one in the morning and drunk people stumbled out of the bars as she parked a few blocks away from the pub where Ivy worked. All Michaela had to do was check that Ivy caught a cab. The alley to the left was dark and Michaela slipped in. When she came back out a block down, she was in what she thought of as her invisible masque. It had taken her multiple tries to discover that no one in the city seemed to notice an older, heavyset black woman dressed in dark clothes.

Today was as true as any other. She walked down the street and saw the eyes of the mostly young crowd skate right over her as if she didn’t exist. How different than when she took on other masques. When she was a man, most people gave her space as she walked, moving out of her way unless they wanted to make some sort of point. As a young woman, it seemed that every eye on the street was on her. She’d spent years experimenting with clothes, hair, skin, and attitude in cities around the world, gauging reactions to her various masques. The only ones she couldn’t use were the very young and very old. Her power, unlike Eric’s, wasn’t strong enough for that drastic a change.

Ivy’s pub was across the street. Michaela bought an orange juice from a hot dog vendor—Toronto’s street food of choice was hot dogs, of all things—and sipped it slowly as she waited on a bench. Ivy usually came out at exactly fourteen minutes past one. Michaela could watch Ivy hail the cab, then get back to her own apartment by half past one. There was no remorse at leaving Cormac ignorant. This had nothing to do with the investigation, so there was no need to involve him.

There was Ivy, right on time. Michaela stood, her body moving slowly against the twinges of age and hard work that came with taking on the masque’s persona. On the sidewalk, Ivy yawned, pulled her hair into a high ponytail, glanced at the sky, and smiled.

She walked east.

Michaela groaned. It was a lovely night and not surprising Ivy wanted to stroll home in the fresh air. Well, it wasn’t a long walk. She limped down the street and crossed to keep Ivy in sight. The walk was pleasant until Ivy decided to take a shortcut through an alley to the right, forcing Michaela to hurry her step. The alley appeared empty, but there could be people hidden in garage niches or in the shadows. Night was a time for arcana as well as humans. Not all of them were sweethearts.

“Check out that one.”

The call came from the other end of the alley as Michaela came up behind a rank, rusted dumpster. A group of young men had appeared at the end of the street. Even at this distance she could tell they would reek of alcohol.

“Out all alone, huh?” The tall one with the ball cap moved forward with a nauseating smile. Ivy had half-turned and eyed him cautiously. A short blond in the back snorted nervously.

“Hey, guys, she’s—” he started, but shut up when the leader elbowed him hard enough to cause a cry of pain. Michaela focused on the tall one. He had something to prove. The others would break if she took him down. Would she wait until he touched Ivy, or do it now? Ivy’s eyes were huge and Michaela could almost hear her heart thumping. She seemed too frightened to run.

There were six of them. Michaela had seen how cruel humans could be when they hunted in packs and found a victim weaker than they were.

Ivy stepped back and tried to scream but it came out as a whimper that acted as a signal. It took only a moment for them to surround her. The tall one licked his lips, and even in the dim light of the alley from her location behind the dumpster, Michaela could see how huge his dilated pupils were.

“Look at you, standing with the garbage, where you belong. Should have stayed in your own country.” A high, wild giggle escaped him and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Too bad. Now it’s time to have some fun.”

Then he reached out and grabbed Ivy’s arm.

* * * *

Cormac stood in the shadows, watching the young woman, Ivy, as she stood against the group of men who now circled her. Men. Humans were brutish, with the same dominance displays as animals, and some were only happiest when they were inflicting pain on others—and even better, had it witnessed by their cronies. Michaela was nearby, masqued and hiding behind the dumpster. She must be too panicked to act. Not what he expected from her, but even the strongest warriors could freeze.

One made contact with Ivy and her strangled moan made his rage spike. On the rooftops above sat a flock of pigeons, the only animals in sight. He could bring them down, send them to Ivy’s aid. Even as the thought occurred to him, a surge of power blasted up from the ground as the intense desire to connect with the dolma overwhelmed him.

He could bring it all under his control again—the trees, the drooping dandelion growing from a crack in the asphalt. It had been 312 years, 5 months, and 13 days since he’d had this.

No.

It took all his willpower but he managed to pull back, dampening his thoughts and forcing them away from the dolma. He had to. Too much would send an upwelling in the natural world that even Tismelda would sense.

He would not break his vow to keep his caintir power hidden, and his sister and forest safe.

However, his brief weakness had been enough to turn fifty pairs of beady eyes towards him before fluttering down. A thick, gray-brown cloud surrounded Ivy and her attackers, whose swagger crumpled as they tried to beat the birds off with weak slaps and shrill squeals.

Even as the flock of pigeons descended, the figure near the dumpster abruptly grew two feet taller. Cormac gaped. The being with the cadaverous face and wicked fangs worthy of a saber-toothed tiger had to be Michaela, but masquerada only took on human forms. He didn’t even think they could take on the masques of other arcana.

The nightmarish vampire-Michaela loped over and took hold of the leader’s hand, giving his arm a vicious twist. Cormac winced as he heard the bones crack and grind. The human’s agonized scream was enough to send the others running. Michaela hissed into Blondie’s face and Cormac saw him whimper and clutch his ruined arm to his chest. He doubled over as she gave him a vicious kick to the groin.

“Leave this place.” The voice was every horror movie come to life. It brought shivers to Cormac’s spine and he wasn’t surprised when the damaged man desperately tried to pull himself away, the birds pecking at his face. He groaned and stopped, lying in an oily puddle.

Ivy had already gone running, screaming at the top of her lungs.

Cormac strode over to Michaela. She made a superb vampire but, as he watched, became herself again.

They regarded each other.

“I didn’t know you could take on arcane masques,” he said evenly, though the vampire had been more of a human perception of a vampire than any vampire he’d come across in real life.

“I didn’t know you could summon a bird army.”

Detente. He glanced down at her hands, which didn’t tremble in the least. Apparently he had been wrong about her fear. “Are you injured?”

“No. How did you call the pigeons? Why pigeons?”

“Why don’t we discuss this later?” He nodded to the twitching human.

Michaela ignored the human, now vomiting in pain. “Ivy. I need to check on her.”

She dashed out and down to the street, making sure not to take the same route as Ivy. Cormac kept close as Michaela peeked around the corner. A group of people were soothing a young woman who cried as she pointed back at the alley.

“She’s safe,” Michaela said with relief.

“You’re not going to see her?”

Michaela had already turned to walk away. “Why? To tell her what happened? That I transformed into a giant vampire to save her life?”

A siren shrieked in the distance as Cormac followed. “Good point.”

She stumbled as they ducked into a side street and he instinctively laid a hand over hers. Her skin was warm and he was astonished when a shiver ran through her.

Then even more surprised when he felt a strange twist in his gut, a warmth that replaced the cold anger that had filled him.

Impossible. They didn’t even like each other.

Yet he hadn’t imagined that shiver. Or his matching reaction.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

“Heard you leave and flagged a cab.”

“No, I mean my masque.”

He could tell this bothered her, and at least this gave him the upper hand. “Instead of that, why don’t you tell me about sneaking out past your Watcher? Your council-mandated Watcher?”

She grimaced. “Look, sneaking sounds so—”

“Correct? Dammit, you could have been killed.”

Michaela glanced around and when she turned back, a thick man with glaring eyes and heavy, pale brows stared back at him. He had no neck, just a solid trunk of muscle from his ears to his shoulders.

He reeled back. “Good God. What is that?” Was it more disturbing to see her as this hulking man or as the ghoulish vampire? He shivered. Both were wrong.

Yeah, like talking to birds is totally normal.

“I am Yuri.”

Her clothes had stretched to the ripping point around the masque’s husky barrel of a chest. She must have considered her point made because she shifted back into her natural self.

“Who the hell is Yuri?”

“I am a masquerada,” she said with heavy patience. She stepped close to him, so close he could smell the tuberose that wafted from her skin. “Not a human woman. Frankly, even if I was a woman, I wouldn’t need—or want—you to take care of me.”

“I was right to intervene.”

“I’m the judge of that.”

“You could have been injured,” he said evenly.

They arrived at the car. She glared at him. “I needed to check on Ivy and I had it under control. They were only humans.”

“What if they hadn’t been?”

“Get in the car, Cormac. Now.”

“Not until we discuss this.”

“Here? You want to discuss this on the street.”

“Yes. Better start talking.”

She opened the door with a savage yank. “Fuck you I will. Walk if you don’t want to drive with me.”

“I need to drive with you, remember? I’m the Watcher. Mandated to be with you every minute. Watching your every. Goddamn. Move.”

“Let’s get this sorted, right now. I don’t like being with you. I don’t like you around me. I don’t like having you hanging over me, breathing down my neck as I try to work.” She blew her breath out and controlled her voice. “Yet I bowed to the will of the council.”

“With such grace.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“No, but you know what part of the deal was? You don’t go out alone. You did. I can report this to the council and have you removed from this case.”

She got in the car and powered down the passenger window. “This had nothing to do with Hiro, and I don’t like threats.”

Didn’t she get it? It didn’t matter what she thought. They were stuck together. “Then stop acting like a petulant child and giving me something to threaten you with.”

* * * *

Michaela laid her hands carefully on the steering wheel, the right at two o’clock and the left at ten, before she leaned over to address Cormac through the open window. She wanted her hands fixed on something to prevent her from getting out and throttling him.

“I fail to understand how continuing my commitment to Ivy makes me more petulant than the man yelling at a car in the middle of the street.”

She could almost hear Cormac grind his teeth as he got in the car and slammed the door.

When he huffily crossed his arms over his chest, she laughed out loud.

He glanced over, a small reluctant smile quirking his lips. “Not funny. You broke the rules.” His eyes widened as if he just realized what he’d said. “You broke the rules.”

“Not that big a deal.”

Now he faced her with a huge grin. “Wait until I tell the Council this. They probably won’t even believe me. Michaela Chui, stickler extraordinaire, sneaking out of her room in the middle of the night like she’s trying to beat curfew.”

“Look, I really—”

He didn’t even pause. “Do you even feel guilty? I didn’t know you had it in you.”

Michaela focused on driving until he finally stopped. “I don’t know that the Council needs to hear about this,” she said.

“Oh, I think they do.” Now Cormac sounded serious, and when Michaela checked his expression out of the corner of her eye, she saw that he was frowning slightly. “The Council assigned you a Watcher for a reason. Your protection. I can’t protect you if you’re sneaking around. I’d be derelict in my duty.”

Did he think she was so stupid? “Please. Don’t make my car a den of lies. We both know that your offer had nothing to do with me. You want something.”

“Maybe I want you to be safe.”

“Maybe I’ve managed to do that myself for a half-millennia and have a pretty good handle on it.” Now she was getting a little pissed. Her own protection had been the same excuse her parents had used when they brokered her first marriage to a doddering old man. By the time they’d married her the third time, she’d realized she’d had enough of people protecting her. Whenever someone decided to protect her for her own good, they usually had a stake in the result, one of more benefit to them than her. She’d learned the lesson early and learned it hard.

“My reason doesn’t matter,” Cormac said with delight. “What matters now is that we have a situation where you have a secret you don’t want me to tell.”

“Blackmail?”

“Think of it more like a negotiation for mutual benefit.”

“What do you want?”

“An apology,” he said softly. “I want you to say you were wrong and I was right.”

“The hell with that.”

“Fine.” He spoke with an air of extreme unconcern. “We’ll chat with Madden in the morning.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

They said nothing to each other for the rest of the ride but by the time she pulled into her parking spot, the car was filled with words left unsaid, mostly hers. She wanted to point out—God, that she didn’t need a Watcher and that he was an asshole and how dare he treat her like some stupid underling and she didn’t owe him an apology and he should screw right off.

The problem was, as her temper cooled, she knew she couldn’t.

She didn’t like his motives but Cormac had acted correctly and was well within his rights to report her. She had broken the rules and left him behind. She was going to have to apologize. Not to avert the threat, but because she was in the wrong and owed it to him.

Goddamn it.

Michaela did not enjoy apologizing. Best to get this over with.

Cormac had already cracked open the door when she held up a hand.

“I apologize,” she said.

“For what?”

“That you felt I shouldn’t have left without you. Even for Ivy.”

Now he turned back and Michaela dropped her eyes. “Look at me.”

The power in his voice forced her eyes up. “What?”

“That’s a shite apology and you know it. I want you to say I was right.”

“I…you.” It was difficult to concentrate. Cormac leaned towards her, his tall body twisting until she was almost suffocated by his closeness and even then wanted him closer.

What? No, she didn’t.

“Say you won’t leave again.”

She shook her head. She’d experienced vampire compulsions before and this was similar, though far more intense. With a quick motion, she opened the car door and let the cool night air flow in, restoring her equilibrium.

He might be her Watcher, but he wasn’t her controller.

He got out of the car and came around to her side while she sat thinking, then opened the door and held out his hand.

Slowly, she pulled the keys out of the ignition with trembling fingers and brushed him away as she got out of the car.

A mocking voice came from behind her as she walked to the elevator door.

“Apology accepted.”