A Touch of Crimson

Like him, she probably had a very small group of people she trusted. He wondered if she’d ever shared her gifts with anyone else. Shit, why did she have them in the first place? She was a great big question mark, and everyone wanted a piece of her. And it was his job to make sure no one but Adrian got any.

She reappeared a moment later, swigging from a bottle of some neon-colored liquid that boasted its nutritional content. “Ya know… I feel like I got run over by a freight train while suffering a hangover.”

The Sentinels had worked her hard all morning, so hard Elijah had had to step in a couple times. They hadn’t liked that, but they knew Adrian would back him up. As for Lindsay, she’d put up with the brutal pace without protest, taking the occasional dirty hit and brushing it off.

The Sentinels clearly didn’t understand the significance of Adrian’s display of sexual dominance the day before, or they would have been more careful with her. Perhaps even Adrian didn’t understand the entirety of the driving need he’d felt to claim, mark, and possess her, a need aggravated by her attempt to get away. Female lycans knew better than to flee. Rousing the beast by denying him his mate wasn’t the smartest idea. Elijah had once assumed it was the demon in the lycan bloodline that made them so primal with their mates, but he’d been careful with Lindsay from the beginning, just in case. A smart move, if he said so himself. Now it’d been proven that the angels were capable of the same possessive and wild carnality. Perhaps the angelic contribution to the lycan genetic makeup was the largest source of that near violent covetousness.

Regardless, the lycans had gotten Adrian’s message loud and clear. Unfortunately, Elijah feared the awareness of Lindsay’s importance to the Sentinel leader only made her more vulnerable. Those who whispered about rebellion had been looking and waiting for a chink in Adrian’s inviolate power, Elijah realized, and Lindsay was it.

Fuck. He scrubbed both hands over his face. How had he missed how fanatical the others had become? How long had Micah been filling the others’ heads with the pipe dream of freedom?

“I can hear the wheels in your head turning,” Lindsay said drily, setting her empty bottle on the dresser so housekeeping would recycle it. She was somewhat of a tree hugger, he’d noticed.

He needed to be hunting down whoever had set him up, but he couldn’t leave Lindsay, and there was no one he could trust with her.

She went to the closet and pulled out her messenger bag, perfectly comfortable with walking around with an arsenal slung over her hip. “I need to go out.”

He pushed back from the desk. “For what?”

“Seriously tacky touristy Disney and California stuff. Hats, sweatshirts, shot glasses, et cetera.”

His lack of excitement must have shown on his face, because she laughed.

“I have to get my dad stuff he’ll roll his eyes over,” she explained. “But, lucky for you, we won’t be gone too long. I’ve got an interviewee coming in at three.”

Elijah looked at the clock and noted it was one. He had to hand it to her-she’d taken a beating all morning and kept on ticking. “Do you have plans tonight?”

“I need to get my car from the Point, but otherwise you’re free to do whatever.”

He nodded. “Good. Thanks.”

Once she was settled in the hotel for the night, he could talk to Rachel by phone. He had to get some idea of how pervasive Micah’s rebellion plans were. Elijah knew he had to rip that weed out by the root as soon as possible-a damn near impossible task when he was away from the rest of the pack most of the time.

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” Lindsay asked him as they exited the elevator on the bottom floor. They usually took the stairs-all seventeen floors-but she was too wiped out to need the exercise today.

“Too complicated, too time-consuming, too much work.”

“But you like girls, right? Or don’t you?”

His gaze darted to hers, only to find her dark eyes laughing.

“Made you look,” she teased.

He snorted in lieu of laughing, but it was a close race between the two.

Lindsay stopped abruptly just outside the revolving doors leading to the awning-covered bellhop and valet area. Bellmen were going through training in front of them, while gardeners put the finishing touches on the flower bed framing the crescent-shaped driveway. Life as mortals knew it was carrying on as usual, but the sudden stiffening of Lindsay’s posture and her intense focus was like a dog on point, signaling the proximity of prey nearby.

Abruptly, his senses went on alert. Elijah scanned the immediate area again, just as he’d automatically done before they’d exited the lobby. The uncanny wind that always seemed to follow Lindsay blew past him, carrying the blood-rich scent of vampire. The beast inside him coiled in readiness, growling softly in anticipation of his order to attack.

The vamp responsible for their instinctive reactions appeared a moment later, strolling into the parking lot from the public sidewalk, blissfully unaware of the predators she’d roused.

Her looks hit him like a sledgehammer. She was tall and stacked, with curvy hips and full, firm tits. Her hair hung to her waist, straight as a board and blood red. She was clad like a goddamned dominatrix, with spiky-heeled boots, tight black pants, and a leather vest dipping in a low V that displayed the deep valley of her cleavage.

Elijah was blindsided by the insane urge to bend her over the hood of the Mercedes she was walking past, wrap her hair around his forearm, and drill her lush body until he came with a roar.

He fucking hated vampires, especially the females, who were more vicious than the males. Yet his cock was swelling with feral lust the longer he watched her.

She jerked violently, jolting him back to reality. She spun wildly, as if felled by a blow, then rounded back with fangs bared.

It wasn’t until he saw the glint of sunlight on something metallic embedded in her shoulder that he realized what had happened.

“Shit,” he muttered, barely catching Lindsay by the shoulder as she darted forward.

“Let me go, El,” she snapped, yanking to be free of his unyielding grip.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he barked. “It’s goddamned daylight. That’s one of the Fallen.”

Lindsay sliced across his forearm with her blade, eliciting a roar of pain and garnering her release.

She was halfway to the vampire when she answered him.

“That bitch killed my mother.”

CHAPTER 20

Vash stared down at the burning pain in her shoulder and realized she’d been hit with a silver-plated throwing knife. Ripping the blade free, she looked up in time to catch sight of another volley a split second before it caught her in the bicep.

“Fuck!” she hissed, unprepared for a full-on attack in the middle of the damn day.

A blonde was racing toward her, another blade flying from her grip. Vash barely lurched out of the way in time, the smell of her own blood stirring the hunger in her.

A human. What the hell?

Vash charged, ready to take the crazy bitch down, when she smelled lycan. He raced out from beneath the shadow of the hotel’s front awning, chasing the crazy blonde with the death wish.

It hit her then: Shadoe. Followed swiftly by the identifying scent of her guard dog…

The fucking bastard who’d kidnapped Nikki.

Stunned into senselessness, Vash skidded to a halt, earning her another blade in the thigh.

The two people she was in town to capture were coming straight toward her, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Not while she was alone. Not without her weapons. Not with witnesses.

Another blade nailed her in the shoulder, damn near dead center of the first hit she’d taken.

She had taught Shadoe how to throw like that. She had taught her how to hunt, how to kill. It was clear to Vash right away: Shadoe was deliberately avoiding hitting vital organs and arteries. The crazy blonde thought she was going to capture a vamp.

Vash grabbed a blade out of her shoulder and lobbed it at the lycan, then discarded the one in her leg and lunged forward, hitting Shadoe in the chest with her palms and throwing her backward several feet to crash into her