Scorched Ice (Fire and Ice #3)(25)
“You’re right, and I feel them somewhere in here.”
Quinn closed her eyes as she drew on her honed vampire senses and their bond to pick up some hint of Julian. Gradually, she was able to shut out the overwhelming scents of perfume, chlorine, cologne, cigarette smoke, and cooking meat from the restaurant across the lobby from them. The chatter of the humans checking into the hotel faded away.
Her eyes flew open when a bus boy clearing a table dropped the bucket he’d been holding. So focused on trying to tune into Julian, the piercing sound of the breaking dishes caused her to wince. She could feel him somewhere in this hotel, but with the numerous people within, she couldn’t figure out where he was exactly. Turning away from the main lobby, she raced back the way they’d come with Cassie at her side.
Chris, Melissa, and Dani were running toward them when they came around the corner again. They didn’t say a word as they turned to follow Cassie and her back down the hall toward the poolroom. When they returned to the split, Quinn stood and looked helplessly back and forth down the other three halls.
“Can you pick up anything on them?” she asked Cassie, who had far more abilities than she did.
“They’re inside, but they’re moving too fast for me to get a good sense of where they are. The presence of so many others isn’t helping.”
“No, it’s not,” Quinn agreed. “We have to separate.”
A crushing sense of doom descended over Quinn as she said these words. They had to find Julian soon. Devon may be able to keep him from doing something completely stupid, but she didn’t know if he could keep Julian from killing an innocent in order to get at the man he hunted.
“Chris, Melissa, and Dani go that way.” She pointed to the right hall. “Cassie take that hall, and I’ll take this one.”
Without waiting to see if they agreed or not, she broke off to the left. She almost bolted as fast as she could down the hall, but she forced herself to take her time and keep her senses alert for anything unusual. If she was closer to Julian, she would be able to find him.
Outside of a door near her, one of the maids had a cleaning cart in the hall while they vacuumed a room. Quinn stopped to snatch a folded white robe from the second shelf of the cart and tugged it on. The fluffy fabric settling over her made her feel a little less conspicuous than roaming the halls in her bathing suit did. She rolled the ends of the sleeves up and snugged them into place before belting the robe around her waist.
Snatching a butter knife from a plate on top of the dishes piled on the cart, she wrapped her hand around the handle. She kept the knife at her side while she continued down the hall. The butter knife was nowhere near as reassuring in her hand as one of her stakes or one of the knives she usually wore strapped to her would be, but it was better than nothing. Maybe the knife wouldn’t pierce through bone, but it would certainly take out an eye or a jugular.
By now, Julian might have returned to the pool, but she didn’t dare double back to check in case he was still hunting the man from The Commission. Arriving at the end of the hall, she stood and stared up the stairs to her right before looking at the emergency exit a few feet before her. The sun filtering through the window in the door danced across the red carpet centimeters away from her bare toes. They hadn’t gone through this door as the sign beside it read: Alarmed.
She gazed up the stairs again before turning to look down the hall behind her. No one was coming to retrieve her, and aside from the dull hum of the vacuum cleaner, she heard nothing else. She adjusted her hold on the knife, lifted the end of her robe, and placed her foot on the first step. As she climbed, she kept her back against the wall and her eyes focused on the stairs above her.
The Commission here. She didn’t know what to make of that. Her aunt and uncle had faked their deaths in order to keep her hidden from The Commission. Clint’s family had fled from them years ago in order to keep themselves alive. They had done things to Julian that still haunted him. They had no care or value for any life; human, Hunter, and vampire alike were something to be experimented on.
She’d hoped to never come across the sick organization that had created the Hunter line, but now she realized it had been inevitable. Her world had been as sheltered as possible for as long as she could remember, but it was a small world after all.
Now that one of the members of The Commission had walked into their lives, Julian wouldn’t be stopped until he destroyed every one of them. Her stomach twisted at the possibility of him in danger as she reached the landing of the second floor. A humming sound coming from a room set off to the right of the landing drew her toward it. Poking her head around the corner, she discovered a small room housing an ice machine, two soda machines, and a couple of vending machines.
On her right, another room branched off from it. She moved cautiously toward that room until she found herself standing at the edge of the arcade she’d seen advertised at the front desk when they’d checked in. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the pinball machine made a strange sound before it lit up across the back and the flippers flicked loudly back and forth. Perhaps the noise and lights were supposed to lure her into playing the machine, but all she wanted was to drive her knife through the glass to make it stop.
The colored squares of the dancing machine next to her lit up in a wash of reds and blues before going still once more. All the other machines remained silent as they waited for someone to insert tokens into them. The stale aroma of sweat and the metallic ting of computer chips permeated the air. There was nothing sinister about the room, but something about the waiting machines gave her the creeps.