He slid the door shut and secured it before grabbing a beer from the fridge and heading up to the loft he’d converted into a bedroom. Not the most luxurious place he’d ever lived, but better than a prison cell.
He climbed the steps in twos, his feet drumming softly on the metal stairs as he thought about the comarré. He couldn’t blame her for refusing his offer to spar. If he’d told her he was KM, would she have accepted it? Would she have even believed him? The Kubai Mata were not supposed to exist. Not according to her education. Not according to the education of many. Had to be that way, though. Couldn’t give the vampire nation any idea what was about to rise up against them.
Her refusal hadn’t stopped him from tailing her to the gates of Mephisto Island. Her driver was careless and made the task easy. Creek had driven past the gates, given Chrysabelle time to get through, then circled around and entered without too much problem. The guard was some kind of remnant and easily susceptible to the bribe Creek had offered. For a few more bills, he’d learned her house number.
Scaling the estate’s walls had posed no real obstacle, and after watching the house for an hour or so, he’d gone home. Her security needed tweaking, although he could sense there were wards of some kind protecting the home. He’d come up with some ideas to tighten things and present them to her soon.
Soon as in right after he found a way to run into her again and explain who he really was. Something he was still figuring out himself. The Kubai Mata were a shadowy group; even the information he’d been given had been very need-to-know. And apparently he didn’t need to know much. They’d commuted his sentence to time served and promised it would stay that way as long as he did their bidding, but that’s not why he played along. They’d provided his sister, Una, with a full ride to the college of her choice and a monthly stipend for her, his mother, and his grandmother. The women in his life were everything to him. For them, he would do whatever the KM wanted and not worry that the KM were part Freemason, part Templar, part Cosa Nostra, only more dangerous and in charge of some crazy power. Still, Chrysabelle had nothing to fear from him. The KM might make the Illuminati look like the Boy Scouts, but othernaturals and the humans who served them were the only ones who had anything to worry about.
He climbed out the only window that wasn’t boarded up to sit on the fire-escape steps overlooking the back alley. Few humans lived in this part of Paradise City by choice anymore. It was a vampire/remnant ghetto now, as full of fringe and fae as it was rats. Nothing like it had been when he’d grown up here. He couldn’t imagine a better neighborhood to set up shop in. His sector chief, Argent, should approve whenever he decided to drop in for a visit.
When he did, he’d find that in the two days Creek had been here, he’d already located a well-established vampire club, sussed out its exits and entrances, started cataloging the regulars, and found the comarré. Not bad for a couple days’ work.
He took a long draw off the bottle and wished for a nice Cuban. Vampires picked up the smoke too easy, though, and he’d had to give them up for the most part.
The subtle breeze carried a little salt tang in from the ocean, cutting through the neighborhood’s general oily stench. The combination reminded him of the Glades, where his mother now lived with her mother, out on Seminole land. Both women and Una wanted him to move out there, to reconnect with his Native American heritage, but truth was, he didn’t feel like he belonged there any more than he felt like he belonged anywhere. Maybe when his time with the KM was done. He lay back against the metal stairs, stared up through the lattice of rusted iron and studied the sky. The stars sparkled and shimmered like the signum on the comarré’s skin.
She was like something out of a dream. Nothing in his training had adequately prepared him for seeing one of her kind in person. That sunbeam-blond hair, those eyes like the early summer sky, and those strawberry-red lips combined with all that gold ink made for one hard-to-ignore package. He’d known immediately she wasn’t one of Seven’s brand of comarré. Just like he’d known immediately he wanted to spend more time with her. And not just because of the mission. He sipped his beer and refused to let his head wander in that direction. Being locked up had a way of sharpening a man’s desires to a razor-thin edge. He needed to focus on the comarré and forget about his own wants. The comarré and the ring she possessed were his responsibility now. His to persuade. His to protect. His to recover. He tipped the bottle again. A man could do serious harm to himself around a woman like that, tripping over his words and acting a fool. But he wouldn’t. Because he was stronger than that. He was KM.
In a small way, he felt sorry for her. Despite being free now, she’d spent her life in service to the vampires. Sustaining the one who owned her. That was the whole purpose of the comarré – keep the vampires happy and fed and away from humans. All the decisions in her life were already made for her.
Kind of like being in prison.
Yet there was more to the comarré than that, a darker, hidden side. He knew about the physical training they went through, the weapons skills that were drilled into them.
