“Answer it so he’ll stop.” Craeg rolled his hips and made her moan. “I’m going nowhere.”
Hitting the accept circle, she whipped the thing up to her ear. “Will you cut this out—”
“Parry…?”
The instant she heard his voice, she frowned. In all the time she had known him, he’d never sounded like that. Lost … like a little boy.
“Peyton? What’s wrong?”
“Something very bad has happened, Parry. There’s blood … everywhere…”
“What?” She pushed back and Craeg put her down immediately. “Peyton! Where are you?”
“I’m at my cousin’s … my cousin … the one who was supposed to be gone…”
Paradise locked eyes with Craeg. “Peyton, Craeg and I are on the way—but where are you?”
When he stammered out an address, she repeated it, and then thrust the phone at Craeg. “I have to clean up, you stay on the phone with him—do not let him hang up.”
Ten minutes later, Craeg was walking into a fancy human apartment building with a dark green awning, a marble lobby, and a doorman wearing a uniform that was the same color as that overhang outside.
While he hesitated and expected to get kicked out or be asked to submit to a cavity search before he stepped off the welcome mat, Paradise walked right over to the desk.
“Hello,” she said in a perfectly calm and reasonable tone. “My friend Peyton came to see Ashley Murray, and he’s asked us to join them.”
“I’ll just call up then,” the man replied, reaching for the phone. “Hello? Yes, it’s the front desk. Are you—great. I’ll send them up.” The guard nodded to the elevators. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you so much,” she said smoothly, and held her hand out.
At first, Craeg couldn’t figure out what she was doing that for—and then he realized he hadn’t moved from where he’d stopped just inside the revolving door.
Hustling over, he ignored the guard and kept his head down—because a beautiful young female was one thing, but he was very aware that he was five times her size and more likely to be viewed with suspicion. They made it into the elevator, however, and then they were getting off on some high-up floor.
The first thing they saw down the long, beige hallway was Peyton at the far end, sitting on the carpet, cradling his phone in his palms.
The scent of blood in the air was thick to Craeg’s nose, but probably wouldn’t have been noticed by a human.
Paradise rushed over and knelt beside the guy. “Peyton?”
He didn’t look at her until she touched him on the shoulder—and oh, God, his face was pale as chalk and his eyes were too wide. “It’s bad.”
“Is she … in there?”
“No. But the bedroom … God, the bedroom.”
Craeg left her with her friend and pushed the door open. Instantly, the death scent grew stronger—and became ever more intense as he walked into an open room with wall-to-wall white carpeting, a white couch, and a wall of windows that, given a lack of heavy drapes, should have precluded a vampire from residing in the space.
Cold, it was very cold. And there was a stiff breeze shooting through the place.
Glancing to the right, there was nothing of note in the open galley kitchen, no mess, everything put away, a bowl of fresh-looking fruit—no, the apples were plastic, scratch that.
A hallway led off straight ahead, and there was a single light glowing down at the end. Zeroing in on it, he proceeded across the fine-napped runner.
Turning the corner, he stopped in the doorway. Across the way, a queen-size bed was stained with so much red, it was as if paint had been splashed across its white duvet and sheets and pillows and headboard.
There was some more on the floor, marking a path that went over to …
The sliding glass door that led out to some kind of terrace had been left open—and as the filmy white drapes wafted in the gusts, bloody handprints on the glass and the jamb were exposed and then covered, exposed and then covered.
Pivoting back to the bed, he noted the drugs on the side tables: syringes, spoons, little nubs of tinfoil. There were no condoms. No weapons. Also nothing personal—no photographs, mementos, clutter. This was a place to fuck and do drugs and get gone before the morning. But it was expensive.
“Oh, my God…”
At the sound of Paradise’s voice, he looked over his shoulder. “You’re not going to want to come in here.”
She entered anyway, and he couldn’t say he was surprised.
“Where’s Peyton?” he asked.
“Right here,” came a dull voice from the doorway.
As the three of them stood together, he was pretty damn sure they were thinking the same thing: nobody survived something like this. Nobody.
“I need to call my father,” Paradise said roughly. “This is far beyond what we should be dealing with.”
Craeg shook his head as she got out her phone. “No, we need to call the Brothers.”
Peyton interjected, “That’s why she’s phoning her dad.”
As Paradise put the cell up to her ear and paced around, Craeg frowned. “What?”
Peyton shrugged. “Her father is First Adviser to the King. It’s the right thing to do.”
At first, the words failed to translate, the string of nouns and verbs and other shit going in one ear and out the other. But then he replayed them a couple of times … and felt the oddest chill go over his entire body, from eyebrow to ankle. His heart kicked in his chest. Stopped. Resumed at a bad pace.