The stubborn climbers who insisted on venturing farther found themselves in an icy, inhospitable region that equaled broken limbs a hundred percent of the time. Anyone who returned a second time didn’t leave alive: angelkind did not play games when it came to protecting the place that sheltered their young.
Nodding at the mechanic on duty, Naasir went straight to his bike.
“She’s ready to go,” the vampire mechanic said in the local tongue, coming over to pat the electric-blue side panels. “I envy you the ride. The weather’s perfect for it.”
Naasir had learned to ride motorcycles with Janvier after the machines first became fast and exciting. They’d both fallen off more than once. Never during that time or afterward, had Naasir worn a helmet. He picked one up today, though—the last time Ashwini had seen him riding without a helmet, she’d gotten so angry that he’d apologized then gone out with her and bought a helmet.
Janvier’s hunter mate had lost her brother and sister less than a year earlier; she’d been so sad for so long that it had hurt Naasir to see it. He wasn’t going to be responsible for making her sad again by getting so damaged even his immortality couldn’t save him—because unlike what the mortals believed, Naasir knew no one was totally immortal.
Then there was Lijuan.
The Archangel of China had a nasty habit of coming back from the dead.
Considering once again what might keep her dead, he put on the helmet then started up the bike. It came on with a silken roar. Gear stowed, he gave the mechanic a thumbs-up and headed out. He’d fed from bottled blood and cold meat on the jet, and it would fuel him for the next stage of the journey. The bike would also need fuel later on, but he, Janvier, and a few others who used this method of transport had hidden caches in a number of discreet locations.
For now, he could just ride the mountain pathways and glory in the wind pressing against him. It threatened to push him right off his bike and into a massive gorge halfway through. Teeth bared at the challenge, he bent lower over the bars and kept going. At one point, after he’d slowed down to admire a sparkling river, he saw a sign that warned of tigers in the area.
It reminded him of Elena’s attempts to find out his origins.
Laughing so hard he almost fell off the bike, he gunned the engine and took off again. He didn’t stop when the hard, clear sunlight turned to shadows, then to midnight, his night vision as good as his ordinary sight. Utilizing a fuel cache when necessary, he continued on. He had to stop and hunt a few hours later, but even if he hadn’t found prey, he was in no danger of starving, old enough that his body didn’t burn through as much fuel as a younger vampire.
Not that he was a vampire exactly, but it was the word most people used to describe him. Elena called him a “tiger creature” and had no idea how close to the truth she’d inadvertently come. He liked teasing her by making her guess, but what intrigued him most was that Raphael played the game, too. The sire refused to tell Elena, either.
Naasir had never seen Raphael play games. Not that way.
Secret rules between mates.
Like the secrets he’d have with his own mate once he hunted her down and growled at her for hiding from him. Or maybe he wouldn’t growl. He might just bite her instead.
Thoughts of his elusive mate in mind, he rode through the night and the next day, resting only when the sun was hot and uncomfortable. During that time, he found a tree, settled on a branch and went boneless. Dmitri had once discovered him in the same position as a child, called up to ask Naasir what he was doing.
“I was sleeping!” Naasir had scowled at being wakened from his nap.
Dressed in pants of a tough black material, boots, and with his upper body sweaty from a combat session against Raphael, Dmitri had raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you worried you’ll fall?”
“No. That’s why I sleep like this.” He’d pointedly waved his arms and legs, which straddled the branch, hanging down below his prone body.
“In that case, rest well.”
Naasir rested well today, too, and when he woke, found some water and drank it. Not as good as blood, but it was fine for now. Riding on through the afternoon, he finally brought the bike to a halt in another garage. This one was built into the side of a mountain and hidden so well that no one who didn’t know it was there would ever see it.
Opening it using his palm print, he rolled the bike into the silence and parked it next to a number of rugged all-terrain vehicles and familiar bikes. Behind him, the mountain closed again, enclosing the garage in unrelieved darkness, as he hadn’t activated the lights when he walked in. He tugged off his helmet and hung it carefully from the handlebar of his bike so others would know it was his, then grabbed his duffel and, running a hand through his hair, began to make his way to the back of the cavernous space.
He hated the tunnel part of the trip, but at least it was a wide tunnel.
Teeth gritted, he broke into a run to more quickly navigate the underground passageway. It was just over a mile, according to the records Jessamy had once looked up for him. Nothing really, not to Naasir, except that he hated being shut inside.
He stretched once he was finally outside, then began to lope across the landscape, his lungs expanding to cope with the thinner air. Having a strong dislike for the cold, he curled his lip at the ice and snow that covered the approaches to the Refuge—though the Refuge itself was generally kept clear of snow by means no one fully understood.
Once, when Naasir was very young, Raphael had answered his curious questions by telling him a story of the Ancestors who Slept below the Refuge. “The very first ones of our kind,” he’d said, his muscular arms on either side of Naasir’s body as he taught Naasir how to use a crossbow. “The ones from before recorded history, before all known Ancients, so old that they are almost another species.”
Legend said it was the influence of the Sleeping Ancestors that kept the Refuge’s weather mild, but for irregular seasons of snow and ice. “When winter comes,” Raphael had murmured, “it’s because an Ancestor is distracted by a dream. Or that’s the story my mother told me when I was a babe.”
No one knew if there was any truth to the legend, but something was different about the physics of the Refuge. Nothing at that high an altitude should be free of the icy lash of subzero temperatures.
Naasir’s secret aerie was outside the Refuge proper, but Aodhan had put in heating for him, including underfloor heating, which kept it at the temperature he liked. All of it was powered by discreet solar panels placed some distance from the actual aerie so no one would discover it by accident.
Today, he avoided going up into the colder altitudes for as long as possible.
When it was no longer avoidable, he washed himself clean in a glacier-fed stream that made him hiss out a breath, then dried off and changed into fresh clothes. On top, he wore the black cashmere sweater he’d bought in New York, below that a dark gray shirt with silver studs that Honor had bought for him. Leaving the tails of the shirt hanging out over his jeans, he threw on the battered leather jacket Janvier had gifted him a decade earlier.
Thick socks, his scuffed and worn-in boots with their special ice-grip soles, and he was done.
It wasn’t that he really needed any of it. He wasn’t going to freeze, his blood too hot. But who said not freezing was the only thing? He fucking hated being cold. He hoped his mate wasn’t someone who liked the cold and wanted to live in snow without heat to offset the natural temperature. That would be terrible. He’d have to persuade her to move to an in-between climate that was cold but not subzero, but if she didn’t want to come, he’d stay. Of course he’d stay.