Both had been waiting outside the neighborhood Laundromat, a nondescript hole-in-the-wall between an Italian deli and a convenience store that sold more comic books and cigarettes than milk and bread.
The building that housed the laundry — and, to some degree, the deli and convenience store — had been built over the second entrance to the abandoned subway tunnel. Or rather, there was a door in the laundry’s basement, which descended into a mechanical room that held another door that opened into a corridor filled with pipes — leading to yet another hall that had a metal grille in the floor — which, when lifted, revealed a ladder that descended into a hand-dug corridor that spilled out into the subway tunnel.
One had to be very brave or very stupid — and sometimes lucky — to find certain secret places. It also helped that the owner of the Laundromat was sympathetic to folks who lived underground. Mostly because they washed all their clothes at his place.
Lyssa had not felt brave, stupid, or lucky when the cops pointed guns at her. She felt no surprise, either, not even when a tall, African-American woman in a red jacket glided from the shadows.
Nikola.
The men handcuffed Lyssa while she watched, and their scents washed over her in a wave of body odor and sweat, and nauseating fear.
No rights read. But why would they? Rights didn’t exist. Not here, not now.
All that mattered was power.
“Lyssa Andreanos,” said Nikola, and the police officers flinched at the sound of her voice.
“That’s me,” she said, staring the woman in the eyes. “Sorry about Betty.”
Nikola punched her in the stomach, then grabbed her hair, yanking back her head.
“You will be sorry,” she whispered, then frowned when Lyssa’s only response was a quiet laugh.
Nikola drove a red Corvette. During the ride over the Hudson, she pulled alongside the police sedan and looked into the backseat at Lyssa — who stared back, straight into her eyes, with a smile.
You can’t make me afraid of you, she thought. Not unless I choose to be afraid.
The witch’s frown deepened, and she gunned her Corvette ahead of them. Lyssa kept smiling but for a different reason.
Five minutes after crossing the bridge that spanned the Hudson, the police took an exit off the freeway and cruised down a series of twisting streets that carried them into a quiet riverside neighborhood filled with expensive homes nestled in expensive gardens, where a person could smell the money in the breeze, and the breeze smelled good.
At the end of the street, the police pulled into a long, curving driveway that wound up an increasingly steep hill. Delicate lights illuminated the way. Lyssa didn’t see guards or security cameras, but it was night, and there were a lot of trees. Anything could be out there.
The house was too big to take in at one glance. It seemed to sprawl over the hill in climbing layers of glass and stone, and the light from within shone in the night with a warmth that would have been, in another life, comforting.
The Corvette was parked in the driveway. Nikola leaned on the hood and watched, unmoving, as the police helped Lyssa from the back of the sedan. The men did not speak as they unlocked her handcuffs. Both kept their gazes down, and oozed sweat.
Nikola sauntered close. The men trembled, cowering like abused dogs. Lyssa knew they had no control over their reactions. It would have hit them like a bomb in their heart. If the witch asked them to, they would crawl on their bellies into the river and never come out.
Nikola, however, did not look at them. Her focus remained on Lyssa.
She stared back, her gaze flat and calm, and unflinching. It wasn’t difficult. Rage might have had something to do with it. Maybe she should have snapped before this, but discovering that Jimmy and his mother had been kidnapped, his body cut, blood consumed. . that he could have been subjected to emotional torture. . put her on a whole new level that transcended anything she had felt since her parents’ murder.
And then, there was that scrap of fur stapled to the note in her pocket. Another reminder of what Estefan had suffered — as if she hadn’t already seen enough.
“You’re not afraid,” Nikola said to her, trailing an elegant hand over the younger police officer’s shoulders. He squeezed shut his eyes, shaking violently as her fingers stroked his hair.
Lyssa gritted her teeth because she was very afraid and determined not to show it. “Why would I be?”
Nikola frowned. “Just like the young man who saved you from the fire. I don’t like mysteries.”
She pushed the police officer away from her, and he stumbled against the car, one hand on his weapon, the other clutching his chest as he panted for air. Lyssa felt the break in the air around them, a release of tension — the witch pulling back her influence.
The difference in the men was immediate — as if the hands squeezing them to death relaxed enough to let them breathe.
“You can go,” Nikola said to the officers. “You should go. Now.”
No hesitation. No questions. Lyssa had not heard those men make a single sound the entire time she’d been in their presence, and nothing changed when they left.
Leaving her alone with Nikola.
The night was very quiet. Lyssa felt reminded of another evening, ten years in the past, when she had stood bound and captured. The memory made her heart quicken, but she thought of Jimmy and his mother. Estefan.
Eddie.
She was not bait this time. She was not a kid.
“You’re wasting time,” she said. “I want to see Georgene.”
A muscle twitched in Nikola’s right cheek, and deep in her eyes there was a glint of unease. Defiance — and simple knowledge — unsettled her. Made her uncertain how to proceed. This woman — likely any who served the Cruor Venator—had relied on power too long and forgotten what it was to be vulnerable. If she had ever known.
Nikola reached inside her jacket and pulled free an obsidian blade. “How do you know the Cruor Venator’s name?”
“Easy,” she replied, ignoring the weapon. “We’re cousins.”
The witch blinked. It would have made Lyssa smile, under different circumstances.
Or maybe not. It wasn’t really that funny. Over the years, when she’d let herself think too much about the truth, it all seemed rather disgusting.
“She didn’t tell you much of anything, did she?” Lyssa said. “How many surprises can you handle?”
Nikola’s face hardened. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me? You’ll scare me to death?” Her stiff lips curved into a cold smile. “You have no power over me. Betty found that out the hard way.”
The witch edged forward. “Are you stupid?”
“Are you? Who do you think you are?” asked Lyssa, feeling the night air warm around her body. “What has Georgene told you? That you’re a Cruor Venator, like her? That you can be like her if you continue to serve her?”
Nikola said nothing, but she didn’t have to. Lyssa felt a terrible sense of déjà vu, as though she was living inside her mother’s skin — ten years in the past. Her words, so similar to her mother’s as she had stood in the snow and confronted a woman just like Nikola.
“You’re nothing,” she whispered to the witch. “Do you think Georgene would keep you so close if you had the ability to kill her?”
Nikola tensed. Lyssa said, “Go on. Try and take her life. See the truth for yourself.”
“You’re only a dragon,” she said, but the obsidian blade wavered. “You’re just a shape-shifter. You cannot be her cousin.”