Page 60 of Soulmates
Doubling my speed, I careen around the end of the building. I don’t want to lead any of the black hats to our rental car, so we need to buy some time. The were’s storage site is across the street, and as near as I can tell, we’re not being followed. But if the being who’d threatened to slit my throat drops the knife, I’ll never see her coming.
We run past an alley. Trajan ducks in. “Hey.”
One gasped word grabs my attention, so I pivot and—hoping he has a plan—follow. Thirty feet in, we come to an old fire escape clinging like a rusty appendage to the side of a brick building. The bottom rung is well above my head. Trajan leaps, catching hold with one hand. The other he holds out.
For me.
I take hold, and he pulls me up, grunting with the strain. I still have no idea if we’re being followed, and the uncertainty tightens every muscle. I cling to Trajan till he hoists us high enough that I can catch hold of the corroded metal ladder.
The thing groans beneath our weight, shifting the pegs holding it against the wall. The air is foul with refuse and urine, but none of it smells fresh. Trajan brackets me, and together we take one rung at a time. The top of the building is in sight when the ladder jumps as if someone has grabbed the bottom rung.
“Keep going,” Trajan says, his voice still tight with effort.
I follow his direction, reaching for another rung. The rough bars abrade my skin. I keep going, helped by Trajan’s strong, solid presence. We’re about four feet from the top, maybe one or two more rungs.
“Fuck.”
The expletive catches me off guard. His whole body shudders. I stop moving entirely.
“Go. The bitch has silver. I’ll catch up.”
I’m afraid to leave him, afraid of what I’ll see if I look back. The moon’s hanging low over the horizon, and darkness surrounds us.
He gasps again. “Go.”
I go, crawling up the final rungs of the ladder and shimmying onto the roof. Trajan’s dropped several rungs. He’s awkwardly kicking thin air. There’s a knife hilt sticking out of his calf.
There’s not a lot I can do for him.
I sight down the barrel of my pistol. Damn it. I can’t see who he’s fighting. After a minute or two, I stand down. I pull the package of tracers from my pocket and activate one. They’re small, half the size of a hummingbird, and they carry a charge that’ll keep them flying for at least an hour. Tossing the thing off the side of the building, I should say a prayer for luck, but I don’t actually know any. Finding David soon is good, but if we find him here—with random robbers, crazy Invisible Woman, and her troll sidekick—he’ll have had a rough time of it.
Trajan howls and drops another few feet down the ladder. The whole thing grinds as if the century-old screws are pulling away from the brick. The leg with the blade sticking out of it doesn’t look like it’s holding any weight. He’s got both arms wrapped around the ladder, and he kicks with the good leg. From the way his foot stops dead, I can tell he hit something.
That must give him a break, because he reaches down and pulls out the knife. Maybe he meant to toss it away or maybe he could see a target, but the old fire escape’s ladder gives it up. With Trajan still holding on, the thing crashes to the ground.
Chapter Twenty-One
I’M OH FOR TWO.
I’d brought the Alpha’s son to see his father and had him snatched right from in front of me, and I’d tried to help my ex find his new boyfriend and dropped him into an alley with an invisible opponent.
The moral of this story is, don’t trust the Elite to get you out of trouble.
The building where I’m standing is only about four stories tall, but it’s hard to make out the figure of a vampire in the general darkness covering the old pavement. The fire escape is barely a shadowy lump, and as far as I can tell, Trajan is underneath it. Distant traffic hums along in the background, but the alley is silent. If the crew who were packing boxes out of the storage facility heard the crash, they’re long gone.
Before I leave the rooftop, I do one more thing. I send a message to Dante, asking him to send me some backup. Communicating by text will minimize the amount of scorn he can rain down on me.Yeah, I fucked up. Get over it and send help.
Gun drawn, and with my phone out for light, I find a door that leads inside and run downstairs.
This building hasn’t been deserted all that long. Flashes of color mark the phone’s white light, the residue left whenever a human has passed. I wind down the stairs, stopping at every landing to listen for company. Nothing.Shite.
The main floor must still be a functioning office space. I choose a hallway that should take me to the back door. Along the way, I pass open office doors with the occasional pinpoint red light from a desktop in sleep mode. My gut’s knotted with fear and anger. One of the primary rules for the Elite was not to get attached to anyone. The difficulty of our work, along with the secrecy it requires, made all but the most ephemeral relationships impossible.
But no. Connor Joseph MacPherson had to have it all and fuck the consequences. I’d half expected Trajan to snap my neck for kicks. So many nights I’d spent hunkered down, watching a target, imagining how our reunion would go.
For every tacky Hallmark moment, I saw two or three ways I’d end up dead.
I come to a small lobby with a large double door. The top half of each door is glass, and while I can see the crumpled fire escape, there’s no sign of Trajan and whoever he was fighting.
