There was a beat of silence, then, “I’m in the living room.”
The hair stood up on the back of his neck. That primordial thing in all bonded vampires roared to life as the unease in her voice registered on a subconscious level — a plucked string in the very foundation of his being.
TWENTY-NINE
Luis movedbefore the possibilities of what might be wrong even registered.
The house wasn’t huge. It didn’t take him long to leave the entryway and come to a grinding halt in the doorway of the living room.
The salty night breeze swept the long white curtains that framed the back door deep into the room, partially obscuring the man who held a gun to Frankie’s head.
They stood together by the glass door, the curtains brushing their sides with every salty gust of late summer wind. For a long second, no one moved or spoke. Luis stared at Frankie with wide eyes, frozen, as Maxine skidded to a halt behind him.
The security perimeter had only been down for a minute. That was apparently all it took for a rat to slip through.
“Easton,” she breathed, voice trembling, “what… are you doing?”
“Come here, Max,” her cousin barked. He tipped his head toward the door. His left arm was wrapped around Francesca’s front and the right held the bolt gun dangerously close to her temple.
Luis didn’t move a muscle. There were guns all over the house, but none on his body. It made Francesca uncomfortable when she accidentally brushed against it, so he’d taken to leaving it in their bedroom. Of course, he had the knife he’d taken back from the bastard who stabbed him, but he couldn’t risk reaching for it with the business end of the gun touching her.
Speaking through lips that felt curiously numb, he demanded, “Did you bring him here?”
“No,” she gasped, staring with open horror at her sweaty, disheveled cousin. “I never?—”
Easton flashed his fangs. Shifting his feet in a dangerously erratic movement, he snapped, “Max!”
“Fuckyou!” Maxine’s face went from bone white to red in an instant. She moved to charge forward, her lips peeled back from her fangs and claws curled, but Luis grabbed her arm when Easton stiffened, the hand holding the gun pressing hard into Francesca’s temple.
“Stop,” he hissed. “He could kill her by accident.”
When he was certain Maxine wasn’t moving, he swallowed past the lump in his throat. “What do you want, Easton?”
The man’s face was pallid and sheened with sweat. His auburn hair stuck up in almost every direction, and it looked like he hadn’t changed his clothes in days, if not weeks. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, giving him a wild look that made Luis’s heart drop.
“I’m taking her,” he announced with a hesitant half-step toward the door.
Luis held the man’s gaze. With every ounce of quiet, deadly rage he possessed, he calmly replied, “You’re not taking my anchor. You’re not leaving. The only choice you have now is how badly you want to die.”
Maxine held up her hands. “No, this doesnothave to go this way.” Gesturing in the direction of her car, she pleaded, “Easton, if you drop the gun now, we can leave together. No one has to get hurt.”
“I can’t do that,” he whined before Luis could firmly explain that his leaving wasn’t, in fact, an option.
Maxine’s gaze bounced between Easton and Francesca’s pale face. “Why?”
“Because he sent me with a message, and if I don’t deliver it, he’ll kill me,” Easton explained, all stumbling syllables and spittle — the favorites of the desperate. “I’ve been following you forweeks,waiting for you to find them.”
He knew the answer already, but Luis in a bid to buy time, he still asked, “Who sent you?”
Easton tilted his scruffy chin up. The line of his sweaty neck stretched, showing off the raw, raised flesh and the blue-black tattoo of a snake it framed. “He doesn’t want my money anymore,” he explained in that high, weaselly voice. “He said he’ll take me apart if I don’t do this. All he wants is what you can give him.”
Luis took one step into the living room. “What’s the message, Easton?”
“Luis!” Francesca’s eyes widened half a second before a warmed barrel kissed the back of his neck. The power of the charged battery pack hummed through the delicate vertebrae like a promise of a quick, white-hot decapitation.
He stood perfectly still as some of the tension bled out of Easton’s expression. He wore a look that was a little too close to relief for Luis’s comfort. Ignoring the way her fingers dug into his arm, he dragged Frankie a little closer to the door. “Don’t you fucking move,” he ordered, “or Bite’ll blow your head off.”
“Seems like that would make delivering your message a little more difficult,” Luis replied. He kept his gaze lockedon Francesca’s, half afraid that if he looked away for even a moment, she’d try something reckless that’d get her killed right before his eyes.