distance, finally catching his hand. He didn’t brush me off, but neither did his fingers stroke mine as they normally did.
“Where is he?” Kristoff bellowed, his voice echoing in a grotesque parody of his normally velvety smooth tones.
Andreas and Rowan were squatting, peering down at a square hole in the floor, a grate lying between them. It was obviously some sort of a plumbing or electrical access point to the guts of the building. They both glanced up in surprise as the last of the echo died away.
“I told you that we’d let you know once we were sure the way in is safe,” Andreas said, getting to his feet. “Alec was just going to check that it was clear before we started.”
“Alec is doing nothing of the kind,” Kristoff said, his voice a snarl.
Rowan pursed his lips for a moment, glancing at the two brothers. “What’s happened?”
“Alec gave me his reaper journal to read. Kristoff says that it proves that Alec is the one who made him into a vampire,” I said quickly, tugging on Kristoff’s hand. Hello, remember me? I’m the woman who saved your soul. Stop thinking about decapitating Alec. Maybe there is a reason he did what he did.
There is a reason, he answered, and for a moment a bleak despair filled him. He quickly pushed me out of his mind.
Both men stared at me as if I had turned into a particularly unbelievable form of kumquat.
“Alec did?” Rowan said at last, shaking his head. “You must have read it wrong. Let me see the journal.”
I started to open my purse, but Kristoff grabbed my hand. “No,” he snapped. “I did not misread it. Alec was there. He was responsible.”
“Even if he was, there’s nothing you can do about it now,” I said with what I thought was a whole lot of reason. “Yes, it was nasty, and yes, you have the right to have some issues with him about it, but it really has no bearing on things now, does it? What’s past is past. It’s not like it’s going to harm us in any way. Besides, we have bigger fish to fry.”
The two men looked at Kristoff, neither of them saying anything while he struggled with his emotions.
Boo, I know it hurts. I know you feel betrayed. But really, this is not the time to be pissed at him. We need a solid force if we’re going to tackle Frederic. Besides. I nudged his hand. Maybe this was his way of atoning for the whole thing.
Kristoff’s gaze, which had been focused on the black hole before us, swiveled to meet mine. His eyes were still far too light for my happiness. “He is not atoning, Beloved. He is attacking. And I will not allow him to win. Too much is at stake.”
He jumped down into the hole without another word.
“Well, so much for reason.” I crouched down at the edge of the hole, grateful I’d chosen jeans to wear for the day’s activities. I glanced up at the two men standing with identical surprised expressions on their faces. “Magda and Raymond are still at the café. Could one of you get them? It looks like Attack Plan Alpha is kicking into high gear a little early.”
I didn’t wait for their response, just swung my legs over the side and jumped, praying I wouldn’t break a leg in the process.
Luckily, the drop was only a few feet down, the subterranean area obviously used by maintenance personnel. Dim yellow lights hung from the walls, buzzing dully in the closed, sour-smelling area. Kristoff was doubled over in the confined space, about thirty yards ahead of me, heading in the direction of the Brotherhood building.
By the time he stopped and I caught up to him, sweat was beading on my forehead, and I had a painful stitch in my side.
“Kristoff, we need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. Do not try to stop me, Beloved. You have no idea what this means.”
“Like hell I don’t.” I gasped, following him up a row of metal rungs that were embedded into a cement wall. To my intense relief, the ladder led up through another hole in the floor. I hoisted myself up, almost blind in the darkness, but I could tell from the vague black outlines visible by a faint strip of light that we must be in some sort of a storeroom.
Kristoff grabbed me under the arms, pulling me to my feet.
“Are we in the Brotherhood building?” I asked in a whisper.
He nodded. “Stay here while I look for reapers.”
“Oh, no. Where goes my Dark One, so goes his Beloved,” I said, grabbing on to the back of his jacket. “That’s my new motto, anyway.”
A noise behind me heralded the arrival of Andreas. His silhouette moved against the bulky shadows as he climbed out of the hole. “Rowan went to get the others. What do you think Alec is doing?”
“Just what he said he’d do,” I said before Kristoff could answer. “He had no reason to do otherwise. The business in the journal is personal, and doesn’t have anything to do with the mole you’re trying to catch.”
Don’t be so certain of that, Kristoff thought at me.
I put his suspicions down to a normal response to the underhanded way Alec had revealed the truth, and pressed up against him when he opened the door a crack to look out.
“It’s clear. The meeting room should be in the back.”
“I just hope Alec knows what he’s doing,” I murmured, emerging from the room. “If we’re wrong and there is a Zenith, she’s going to view his being a decoy as the perfect opportunity to have a little vampire melting party.”
“He knew the danger when he volunteered to be the one caught,” Andreas said behind me.
The hallway was brightly lit, but devoid of Brotherhood folk. I glanced around, curious, as we passed a couple of closed doors, but despite my worst suspicions, no klaxons went off alerting people to our presence, and no one went screaming down the hallway yelling about vampires. There wasn’t even a security camera tucked away in the corner of the hall. The only noise to be heard was our nearly silent footsteps, and the almost sibilant whoosh of air.
“Don’t you think it’s a little odd that there aren’t more guards around?” I whispered, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. “Or, rather, any guards?”
“If Alec has done his job, they will be swarming him,” Andreas answered.
“Yes, but they’d also want to know where he came from, and be searching for any of us. You said there were a ton of Brotherhood people here, right?” I asked Kristoff.
“No. I said they were preparing for a battle. The two things are not the same,” Kristoff said. “There are fewer reapers here than normal, but the ones who are here are higher in the organization. They are members of the governing board.”
“Brought out the big guns, did Frederic?” I murmured.
As we approached a double door at the end of the hallway, Kristoff paused for a moment, his head tipped as he listened intently. I put my hand on his back, as much for my own comfort as to remind him he was not alone anymore, when I noticed something curious.
“Uh, guys?” I held up my wrist. A crescent moon- shaped light glowed gently as it swung from my bracelet. “There are spirits here. Do you think it’s Ulfur?”
“He is a lich now, not a spirit. He wouldn’t register on your stone that way.”
“Oh. Good point. Well, regardless, there are some ghosties here somewhere.”
“Stay behind me,” Kristoff said, glancing over my shoulder at Andreas. The latter nodded at him as they exchanged some sort of macho guy look, the kind that said they had to protect the poor little feeble female in their care.
Silly vampires. I snorted to myself, flexing my fingers as I gathered a little light, preparing to halt the charge of reapers that was sure to follow when Kristoff flung open the doors to the conference room. They should know by now that this female was far from feeble.
Kristoff opened one of the doors a smidgen. Andreas and I crowded around him to peer in.
“ . . . tried and tried, but I just can’t understand them. Maybe one of you can, but for the life of me, I can’t see how I’m expected to do a job if these people can’t even be bothered to speak something understandable!”
The voice that reached our ears was female, whiny, and had a faint inflection that I mentally termed “mall rat.”
