“Huh.” She stared at the knife she’d pulled from an ankle sheath. “Habit, I guess.” Placing the weapons neatly in a bedside drawer, she said, “So?”
“Montgomery is courting Sivya.”
“No! Really?”
“You must pretend not to notice,” he cautioned her. “They would be appalled to think they’d been so remiss in their duties as to make you aware of their personal lives.”
Elena pursed her lips, eyebrows drawn together, and began to tug off her T-shirt. “But you noticed.” The sound came out slightly muffled.
“I am their liege. I am meant to notice and make certain they do not sacrifice their joy in the mistaken belief that I would find their coupling discourteous.” He cupped her breasts after she threw the T-shirt over the back of a chair, his need to claim her a pounding in his blood.
He had come to within a split-second of igniting them both on the battlefield in a final attempt to defeat Lijuan’s evil, come to within a split-second of never again holding Elena in his arms. The memory was yet raw. “As my consort,” he said, dipping his head to press his lips to the curve of her shoulder, “your job is to notice when they are a pair, so as to assure their duties don’t separate them any more than necessary.”
Her hands were in his hair, her lips warm and wet against the line of his jaw. “It’s weird to think of Montgomery and coupling in the same breath.” A small gasp when he tugged at one tightly furled nipple. “I’m convinced he sleeps in his suit.”
“Enough talk of others, hbeebti. It is time for our own coupling.” Each hour, every hour of peace was a treasure. War boiled black and violent on the horizon, and when it came, it would engulf the world.
7
The sky was a smudgy gray with only the faintest tinge of orange by the time Ashwini and Janvier arrived at their next destination, located in neighboring Soho—though the area bore that name only until sunset. Then it became the Vampire Quarter. That was when the swanky shops and chichi cafés shut their doors, to be replaced by blood cafés and vampire clubs filled with the cruel and the beautiful.
Hmm . . .
Removing her helmet after Janvier parked down the street from a freestanding dual-level town house on the edge of the Quarter, she said, “The dog, it might be a vamp who’s lost it.”
He took off his own helmet and the silky mahogany of his hair tumbled out. She couldn’t help it; she reached out and scraped her nails lightly from the front to the back of his scalp, the strands cool and the texture exquisite. Leaning his back against her chest, he made a sound deep in his throat.
Her breath caught, her breasts swelling against her bra.
She wanted to wrap her arms around his shoulders, nuzzle her face into the warm line of his throat, and lick him up. Clenching her fist so tight her nails dug into her palms, she got off the bike and hooked the helmet over a handlebar. Doing the same with his own, Janvier swung off the powerful machine with a lazy grace that always caught her attention—and that of any other female in the vicinity.
“Could be,” he said, as if their conversation had never been interrupted by a caress she shouldn’t have permitted herself to make. “You know some vamps don’t do well after three hundred years or so.”
The remembered feel of him burning against her palm, Ashwini unzipped her jacket to give her hands something to do. “What would drinking animal blood do to a vamp?”
Janvier leaned back against the bike after unzipping his own jacket to reveal the thin white T-shirt beneath. He wasn’t, however, wearing the twin blades that were his weapons of choice. Pressed up against him on the bike, she’d felt nothing but Janvier, no sign of the crisscrossing holster he’d normally wear on his back, over the tee.
While he hadn’t utilized the blades during their mission in Atlanta, she’d become used to seeing them on him since he came to New York. “Where are your kukris?” she asked before he could answer her question about animal blood.
He rubbed the back of his neck, a flush on his cheekbones. “The holster snapped this morning.”
Ashwini bit the inside of her cheek in an effort to fight her smile. She’d told him to get the worn leather replaced after seeing the state of it while he’d been staying at her place. While the scabbards were metal, to prevent the razor-sharp blades from cutting through, the holster built around them had to be soft and flexible enough not to limit his range of movement. “That’s too bad.”
Shooting her a look of open suspicion at the bland response, he shrugged. “It’ll take a specialist artisan a week to make a replacement once I send him the old holster. I have no hope of getting myself on Deacon’s schedule for at least a year.”
At that instant, he looked both sulky and irritated with himself. Knowing how naked she felt without her favorite weapons, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer. “Or,” she said, “you could use the holster Deacon dropped off at my apartment yesterday.”
Janvier straightened. “For me?”
Folding her arms against the impact of the fierce delight in his voice, she nodded. “He used your old holster to make a blueprint for the new one while you were out getting me cake that day.” She’d sent him to a specific and distant bakery for just that reason. “The scabbards should slide right in.” Deacon did not make mistakes.
“But how? Deacon is booked years in advance.”
“He always has time for hunters.” Sara’s husband had once been a hunter himself.
Janvier’s smile was slow, deep, and so painfully real, it caught her heart and refused to let go. “I’m not a hunter.”
But you’re mine. Biting back the words she could never say, not if she cared for him in any way, she scowled. “Don’t make a big deal about it or I’ll dump it into the Hudson.”
Cheeks creased and the sunlight in the bayou green of his eyes blinding, he shook his head. “I cannot help it, cher.”
Ashwini broke the eye contact; she couldn’t resist him when he smiled that way. “You were telling me about what happens to vamps who drink animal blood.”
“The blood of animals is too weak to provide nourishment,” he said, his voice liquid warmth that seeped into every cell of her body. “I remember hearing of a vampire who fed on animals for two months after becoming lost in the mountains. Moitié fou Billy, they called him. But since he was so weak, he wasn’t dangerous.”
Ashwini had picked up enough Cajun French from being around Janvier to know he’d just indicated the vamp had gone half-crazy. “So our hypothetical animal-blood drinker might already be out for the count.”
A nod. “But there is the desiccation—it’s unnatural, unless the pup died in an environment that would produce that result.”
Ashwini’s phone beeped at that instant. Glancing at the screen, she saw a note from the vet. “Dr. Shamar decided to have another look at the dog before she left for the night, discovered he had a chip embedded under his skin. Kind of thing pet owners put in so cats and dogs can be ID’d if animal control picks them up.” The doctor had missed it during her initial examination because the chip had slipped between two ridges of bone.
“She was able to scan it, look up the dog in the system. Apparently it went missing a couple of days after the end of the fighting.” Dr. Shamar had added a note that she’d made no notification to the owners and wouldn’t do so until advised otherwise. After thanking the other woman, Ashwini looked at Janvier. “Is that enough time for natural mummification, even in an optimum environment?”
Janvier spread his hands. “We shall have to ask a scientist.”
“Honor might know someone.” Her best friend was an expert in ancient languages and history and had a wide range of contacts. “I’ll give her a call tomorrow.” Sliding away her phone, she braced herself against a sudden, chilling wind that tasted of snow. “It’s possible Lijuan shared her ability to suck the life out of people with someone else.”