Lee Child - MatchUp

How he ended up near a small, tucked-away courtyard filled with banana trees and a babbling fountain at its center he had no idea. Inside the courtyard, a coffee shop employee was just closing up for the night, dodging past the tarp-covered cast-iron tables and chairs outside. Of the handful of businesses that called the courtyard home, only one appeared to be open. Through the relentless curtain of pelting rain, Lucan’s acute Breed vision caught the hand-painted wooden sign above the door.

FEU DE COEUR.

A candle shop, he guessed, noting the small gold flame etched above the logo on the weathered wood. Even through the rain he could smell flame-warmed wax. His keen nose seemed to detect something more, but it was impossibly delicate.

Elusive.

And now that he was staring closer at the small shop, even the storefront seemed hard to define. It wobbled in a peculiar way, seeming to fade in and out of his sight as if it wasn’t completely solid.

Or not quite real?

Curious, Lucan started toward the shop.

He didn’t get far.

Before he could cross the small courtyard, he heard the sound of rushing footsteps somewhere on the street outside.

“There she is. Let’s get her.”

A male voice, issuing orders in a low tone that only one of Lucan’s kind could pick up from such a sizable distance.

“You knock the bitch down, Danny. I’ll grab the case.”

The two pairs of footsteps sped up now, heavy boots running hard through the downpour and coming his way.

Lucan didn’t like any of it. In a blink, he was out of the courtyard and back on the street, just in time to see a pair of rangy human males beating feet behind a tall, full-figured, and elegantly dressed black woman who was making her way up the street toward the courtyard.

She toted a briefcase in her right hand.

The case her pair of fast-approaching attackers were intent on taking unless he stopped them.

Hadn’t he just been thinking how ready he was to be back on patrol?

Dispatching a couple of idiot mortal thieves was child’s play, but he’d gladly take it.

Except he didn’t get the chance.

No sooner had he moved to take action, intending to leapfrog the woman and position himself between her and the two assailants, than she pivoted on her heels and faced off against the pair.

Was she crazy?

One of the two rushed her.

She tossed him aside with a sweep of her free hand. She was superstrong. Inhumanly so. A spray of gold dust shot out of her fingertips, trailing after her dispatched attacker like an arc of delicate glitter.

Who, or what, the hell was she?

Still, there were two assailants and only one of her. And despite the fact that she was something Lucan had never seen before, she was still a woman and he wasn’t about to stand by and let her take on these hoods alone. Calling upon his Breed genetics, he moved in front of her faster than any human eye could track. Combat instinct raged through his veins. His fangs punched out of his gums, firing his dark-gray irises to coal-bright amber behind his narrowing, cat’s-eye pupils. He grabbed the second attacker by the collar and held the man aloft, his boots several inches off the ground. The man screamed when he saw Lucan’s face, making a frantic, but futile, attempt to scramble loose from his hold. Across the street, his buddy staggered to his feet and stared slack-jawed. Then he bolted, leaving his comrade to face the music alone.

“Let me go. Please. I don’t wanna die.”

Lucan ignored his struggling, whimpering quarry and turned his head to look at the woman behind him. She was beautiful, with an ageless face and deep brown eyes that seemed fathomless in the darkness.

“You okay?”

She nodded, studying him in guarded silence.

“Please, let me go,” the human whined. “I’s only doin’ a job, that’s all. Me and my friend were hired to jump the lady and see what happened. I swear, we weren’t gonna hurt her.”

The woman scowled.

Her lovely face held an unearthly, dangerous rage. “Who told you to do this? Who wanted to see what would happen?”

The answer came a moment later, though not from the hired thug swinging at the end of Lucan’s grasp.

Headlights blinked on from down an alley across the street.

The twin high beams cut through the rain as a dark van rocketed out of the side street and swung past them in a scream of burning rubber.

The lone driver held a video camera in his hand, its tiny red recording light trained on Lucan’s face as the vehicle sped away.

LILLIANE’S FAMOUS TEMPER SMOLDERED AS she watched the van disappear into the rain-filled night, its taillights swallowed up by the darkness. She cut a glance at the vampire standing next to her.

“Where did you come from?”

He grunted, sounding as displeased as she was. “I might ask you the same thing. What’s your name? How did you end up on the radar of this fool and his friend with the camera?”

Her would-be assailant had since fainted dead away and now hung limp in the big vampire’s grasp. She pursed her lips, her fingers curling tighter around the jeweled handle of her briefcase.

“Only a few people know about the kind of business I do around here and this guy’s not one of ’em. Trust me.”

“Trust is earned.”

He released the unconscious human, letting the man slump to the wet pavement. Gray eyes, shot with amber sparks, met her gaze through the relentless deluge. As she watched, his pupils transformed from narrow vertical slits to rounded pools of black. Behind his lips the points of the big male’s fangs gleamed diamond-bright.

“Your name,” he said again, more demand than inquiry.

“Lilliane.”

“Your last name?” he asked, bearing his fangs slightly.

“Smith,” she lied, summoning a swell of emotion she knew would fill her eyes with a brief shimmer of gold.

He seemed dazed by this display for a second, then he introduced himself.

“Lucan Thorne.”

She smirked. “Your kind isn’t the only thing that goes bump in the night, Mr. Thorne.”

He frowned, clearly taken aback. “You’re not Breed.”

“No.”

“But you are immortal.”

“That remains to be seen.”

In truth, she was uncertain just how to classify what she and the twenty-three other Radiants like her actually were. On some days she felt special. Blessed by her ability to leap several stories into the air, to send would-be attackers flying backward with just a flick of her wrist. She didn’t age. She didn’t get sick. All wonderful things, right?

But on other days, she felt cursed by the fact that a decision she’d made decades before had robbed her of the ability to feel anything close to romantic love for another being, mortal or immortal. She wasn’t alone in this struggle. There were twenty-three others just like her, extraordinary creatures with extraordinary powers. She served as their mentor and mother, even though she played no role in their creation. But none of them could agree on what to call their condition, just that the exact same chain of events had made each one of them what they were now.

Lucan stared at her in silent contemplation before glancing down at the unconscious human at his feet. “Lilliane Smith, whoever or whatever you are, it’s obvious that you and I have a big problem here. We need to talk.”

As much as she wanted to deny it, the Breed warrior was right. “Come with me. Let’s get out of the rain.”

She stepped into the small courtyard, Lucan Thorne walking behind her, carrying the fainted human over his shoulder.

“This way,” she said, leading him to the candle shop nestled in the corner of the square.