Sylvia Day - A Touch of Crimson

She was so screwed.

Syre swiveled his desk chair around and faced the carefully crafted Main Street scene outside his office window. Reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting, the small town of Raceport, Virginia, was modernized by the dozens of Harley-Davidson motorcycles lined in neat rows along the curbs.

“Adrian admitted he killed her? He just came right out with it?”

His lieutenant’s normally melodic voice throbbed with anger and sorrow. Vashti paced like a caged animal, her stiletto-heeled boots clicking rhythmically across the hardwood floor.

“Yes,” he answered quietly.

“How are we going to retaliate? What are we going to-?”

“Don’t do anything, Father.”

The eerie calm in his son’s voice broke Syre’s heart more than fury would have. Pushing to his feet, he faced his only living child. Torque lingered in the shadows by the threshold, avoiding the advancing rays of the sun that slanted over Syre’s desk and cut the room in half.

“Nikki wants- wanted -peace between us and the Sentinels.” Torque’s handsome features were ravaged by grief, his sloe eyes red rimmed and his mouth bracketed with deep-set lines. “She would never wish to be the cause of a war.”

“Your wife didn’t cause this,” Vash snapped. “Adrian’s brought war on himself.”

Syre clasped his hands at the small of his back. “He claims she attacked him.”

“Fuckin’ ridiculous.”

“I would agree, but he said she was foaming at the mouth. Rabid. And he didn’t recognize her-he has no idea he killed my daughter-in-law. How is that possible, unless her appearance was drastically altered? Nikki’s been missing for two days. Who knows what was done to her during that time? She could’ve been poisoned with drugs.” He looked at his son, who’d often witnessed just how horribly a minion’s unique body chemistry could react to certain human drugs.

“Maybe it’s not Nikki, then,” Vash said quickly. “Maybe it was someone else.”

“It was her,” Torque confirmed hoarsely. “I felt the moment her life slipped away.”

Syre nodded, knowing that the usual bond between vampire and minion was doubly strong when love was involved. He himself felt Shadoe’s deaths keenly, no matter the distance between them. “What do we know about the abduction?”

Torque scrubbed a hand over his face. “She was dropped off at the airport around ten o’clock. I called the coven at midnight, because she was late picking me up in Shreveport. Viktor was sent to look for her. Nikki was gone and there was a trace scent of lycan dogs around the helicopter.”

Looking at Vash, Syre commanded, “Track the lycans. Bring them to me.”

“I thought you’d never ask.” Her amber eyes were cold and hard as stone. A half century past, a pack of lycans had ambushed and killed her mate. She now harbored hatred so poisonous it was killing her in slow degrees. “I can get them to tell us what Adrian’s orders were.”

“ If Adrian had something to do with it.”

Torque frowned. “Who else would be responsible?”

“That’s the bigger question.”

Vash cursed under her breath. With her waist-length red hair and black leather bodysuit, she embodied popular-fiction descriptions of vampiric beauty. She never hid her fangs, arguing that some mortals paid for vampire teeth veneers. “Adrian told you he killed Nikki. What more do you need?”

“Motive.” Syre arched his neck to relieve the building strain there. His fangs descended with the stretch, just as his former wings used to express his mood. “At his deepest core, Adrian is a Sentinel. That sounds simplistic, but it’s really not. He’s like a machine-he has his orders and he doesn’t deviate from them. That adherence to accountability is his greatest strength-and his most predictable weakness. He wouldn’t suddenly go rogue; it’s not in his nature. To strike this way-this would be a countermove, not a first assault.”

“Maybe his orders have changed,” Torque suggested wearily.

Vash snorted. “Maybe he’s lying. He might’ve made up the self-defense story to cover his ass, with the ultimate goal being to piss us off and make us retaliate, so he has an excuse to come after us. Maybe he’s sending a message.”

“You forget, he still answers to the Creator,” Syre said wryly. “And if he wanted to make a statement, he would have pinned a note to Nikki’s broken body and left her on my porch. He wouldn’t leave any room for speculation. My guess? Someone wants us to blame him. More disturbing, he thinks I sent Nikki to him in some compromised state of mind, so the reverse is true: we’re being blamed for Nikki’s actions. Who has the most to gain from a war between vampires and angels?”

“The lycans.” Vash exhaled harshly and began to pace again. Her long-legged stride ate up the twenty-foot distance between walls, back and forth, at a speed that would give most mortals a headache to watch. “Underhanded and clumsy suits the dogs, I suppose. But I didn’t think they had the balls-or the brains-to wriggle out of the Sentinels’ collar.”

Syre smiled grimly. It was a testament to Adrian’s leadership that he’d kept the lycans in his service for so long. Somehow he managed to keep each successive generation indentured by the bargain he’d made with their ancestors.

To this day, Syre admired the Sentinel leader for his foresight. The lycans’ finite life spans enabled them to breed. Unlike the vampires, who were sterile. Or the Sentinels, who were forbidden to procreate. Adrian needed those lycan pups to supplement his Sentinel ranks, which had never been reinforced.

“Remember,” Syre said grimly, “the lycans are descended from our fellow Watchers. They’re distantly related to you and me, so certainly some of our rebellious temperament exists in them. And while they were little more than beasts when they were first infected with demon blood, their mortality has given them an advantage-we remain the same while they’ve evolved.”

“So a renegade lycan or few sets us up to war with the Sentinels. Why? Mass suicide? Their sole purpose for drawing breath is to serve the Sentinels. They’re stuck right in the middle.”

“Maybe they no longer want to be. Find the ones responsible for Nikki’s abduction and we’ll ask them, but hold off on taking down any Sentinels for the time being.”

“We’re justified,” Vash argued.

“Do as I say, Vashti.”

“As you wish, Syre.” Pivoting, she went to the door. She moved like the huntress she was, with precision and deliberation. Syre trusted her with his life, just as he’d trusted her with Shadoe’s in her original incarnation. Vash had trained his willful daughter, instilling some much-needed discipline in her, and together the two women had been responsible for the eradication of thousands of demons.

Vash hugged Torque before passing him, murmuring a promise to hunt down the bastards who’d killed his wife. Then she left, taking her agitated energy with her. In the sudden stillness that descended in her wake, Torque’s shoulders drooped as if the weight of the world was upon them. He’d Changed Nikki because he had fallen in love with her, bestowing immortality so that she’d always be with him. Forever. Unfortunately, immortality was no safeguard against a Sentinel.

Torque crossed his arms and glared, his eyes glowing a molten amber. “Avenging Nikki is my right, not yours or Vash’s.”

“Absolutely. But I need something looked into, and it’s too delicate an assignment to trust to anyone else.”

Stepping deeper into the room, Torque halted when the tips of his steel-toe boots touched the line between sunlight and shadow. His brutally short hair stuck straight up in opposing directions, the thick Asian locks bleached nearly white at the tips. It was a style that suited both the exotic features he’d inherited from his mother and his sharp-edged lifestyle. While Syre nurtured small towns that attracted motorcycle enthusiasts, ensuring a steady flow of fresh blood to local cabals and covens, Torque managed an expanding chain of nightclubs that offered haven to fledgling minions.