Blood Vow (Black Dagger Legacy #2)(75)

Now, he was tromping across a slushy debris field of trash, hubcaps, random beer cans and booze bottles, parts of engines, fuck only knew what else. But he didn’t give a shit. He had good treads on his combat boots, sure footing, and razor-sharp instincts that were firing like cannons. In fact, his whole body was humming, his blood crackling through his veins, his trigger fingers ready to party.

And all the time, his eyes scanned the buildings across the way and then flicked to what was ahead of him and then returned to those fucking rooflines and dirty glass panes.

To say he fell into a rhythm was not accurate. There was no rhythm to be had when you were aware that you might have to start either shooting or bleeding at any fucking moment. But he was definitely in a zone—

He caught the scent first.

Just as he was crossing a thin alley opening, a gust brought something that smelled like three-day-old roadkill topped with fake vanilla icing and baby powder.

He knew better than to stop, even though his feet faltered. Instead, he jumped across the opening and back-flatted it against the far corner of the next abandoned building. With a short whistle, he got Butch’s attention—and he didn’t need to explain what it was.

The Brother was already on it, reversing so that he was on the far side of the urban aperture.

Axe was aware of his heart pounding, but he kept his breathing slow and steady. If he started panting, it was going to decrease the accuracy of his hearing and that was not going to help.

Finally, he was going to engage with the enemy—

Shit, he thought as he caught another scent on the breeze.

Blood.

There was vampire blood down there.

At that very moment, his phone went off in his sleeve and he popped his elbow up, reading the screen that showed through the clear pocket retrofitted onto his combat jacket.

Fuck, Qhuinn and Peyton had engaged.

Almost immediately, another text came through. So had Tohr and Paradise. And John Matthew and Craeg.

It was a cluster-fuck.

And as he realized that Rhage wasn’t among them, he thought … fucking hell, what if the Brother was down there fighting alone?

Deep in Allishon’s closet, Elise had worked herself all the way around the space, and what she left in her wake was Macy’s display-worthy, the garments tidy and orderly on the rods, even if some were wrinkled or so deliberately tattered that they barely had enough to hold themselves together on the hangers. She’d also sorted the things on the carpet, putting the bags and shoes in a lineup according to type and color.

As she stepped back to measure her success, she frowned. There seemed to be a wad of something in the far corner, so she got on her knees and pulled the … it was a bundle of cloth, like a large, loose bag, or a—no, it was a black cloak. That smelled like—

Oh, yeah, no. Cigarettes, alcohol, other things.

Elise folded the thing on the floor and was about to put it back when she leaned down and looked into the corner again.

There was something else there.

Reaching forward, she really had to stretch her arm back—

“What the hell?” she muttered.

A box. Metal, by the cool feel of it.

She tried to pull the thing out, but it weighed a great deal. Two hands. She needed two hands, and she grunted.

It turned out to be one of those lockbox, mini-safe things, the kind with the heavy reinforced sides and top. There was a keyed entry to it, and when she tried the latch on a whim, she didn’t expect—

Except it did open: With enough pressure, the top half cracked and then started to come fully up. She stopped her hands from following through, however.

Falling back on her butt, she moved the lockbox between her legs and thought about what she was doing. This was maybe private … something that Allishon’s parents should see first. Yet as she tried to picture bringing anything of their daughter’s to them, she knew that was never going to go well—and though she had mixed feelings, she did peek inside.

Just a bunch of folded-up papers, legal-size. That was it.

Taking them out, she flattened the bundle. It was a real estate contract. For the lease of … what looked like a condo. That was downtown, going by the address of a numbered street?

Was that where Allishon had gone all those nights and days she hadn’t come home—

“We rented that for her.”

With a gasp, Elise wrenched around.

Her aunt was standing in the closet’s archway, and dear Lord … the female looked as if she had been in a car accident—or maybe one involving a motorcycle with her as the cyclist: her hair, once always coiffed and sprayed into a beautiful fall onto her shoulders, was a ragged mess, with roots showing that were two shades darker than the streaky California blond so popular in the glymera. And instead of a fashionable little Escada suit or St. John knit, with plenty of pearls at her throat and on her ears, she was in a stained, wrinkled nightgown that once had been made of silk but now seemed to have more in common with a crumpled paper napkin.

Her eyes were wide and crazy.

She wasn’t looking at Elise, however. She was staring at the order of the hangers.

“Did you do this?” the female asked in a wobbly voice.

And as she came in a little farther, her steps were equally unsteady.

“I’m sorry.” Elise fumbled with the paperwork to get it back in the box and shut the lid. “I just … I didn’t know what I could do to help.”