Midnight Awakening(7)

Tegan eyed the array of locks on the apartment door. At least these were in working order and she’d had the good sense to set them once she got inside. But for a Breed vampire of Tegan’s power and lineage, tripping the locks with his mind took all of two seconds.

He slipped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. The decibel level in the small studio was enough to make his head shatter. He glanced around the place with narrowed eyes, taking in the odd decor. The only furniture was a futon and a bookcase, which housed a quality stereo system and a small flat-panel television—both on and blaring.

Next to the futon, in a space that might have held a table and chairs, was a treadmill and a resistance-training machine. Elise’s bloodstained parka lay on the floor there, and on the sorry-looking yellow kitchen counter was a cell phone and an MP3 player. Elise’s decorating style left a lot to be desired, but it was her choice of wall covering that Tegan found most peculiar.

Crudely nailed to all four walls of the one-room living space were acoustic foam panels—soundproofing material. Yards of the stuff, covering every square inch of the walls, windows, and the back of the door too.

“What the fu—”

In the adjacent bathroom, there was a metallic squeak as the shower abruptly cut off. Tegan turned to face the door as it opened a moment later. Elise was pulling a thick white terry-cloth robe around herself as she glanced up and met his gaze. She gasped, startled, one slender hand coming up near her throat.

“Tegan.” Her voice was barely audible over the din of the music and TV. She made no move to turn them down, just came out of the bathroom and stood as far away from him as was possible in the cramped apartment. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Tegan let his eyes drift around the meager living quarters, if only to quit looking at her in her state of near undress. “Shitty place you have here. Who’s your decorator?”

She didn’t answer him. Her pale amethyst eyes stayed fixed on him as though she didn’t quite trust him, nervous to find herself alone with him. And who could blame her?

Tegan knew that by and large Darkhaven residents held little affection for members of the Order. He’d been called a stone-cold killer by more than one of the sheltered class of civilians that Elise was a part of—not that he cared. His personal reputation was simply stated fact. But while he could give a shit what others thought of him, it irked him that Elise looked at him now in fear. The last time he’d seen the female, he’d shown her nothing but kindness, deference paid the young Darkhaven widow out of respect for what she was going through. It hadn’t hurt that she was a breathtaking beauty, as fragile as a frost flower.

Some of that fragility was gone now, Tegan noted, seeing the lines of muscle definition in her bare calves and arms. Her face remained lovely, but not as full as he remembered. Her eyes were still alive with intelligence but their sheen was somehow brittle, a characteristic made more pronounced by the trace shadows beneath the generous fringe of her lashes.

And her hair…Jesus, she’d shorn off the long blond waves. The cascade of pale spun gold that used to fall to her hips was now a crown of thick, silky spikes that rose around her head in pixie-like disarray and framed the lean oval of her face.

She was still stunning, but in an entirely different way than Tegan ever would have imagined.

“You forgot something back in the alley.” He held out the wicked hunting blade. When she moved to take it from him, he drew it back out of her reach. “What were you doing out there tonight, Elise?”

She shook her head, said something too softly to be heard over the din filling the apartment. Impatient, Tegan mentally shut the stereo down. He glanced to the television, about to silence that device as well.

“No!” Elise shook her head, wincing, her fingers clutching her temple. “Wait—leave it on, please. I need…the noise soothes me.”

Tegan scowled his doubt, but left the TV alone. “What happened to you tonight, Elise?”

She blinked, shuttering her gaze and tipping her head down in silence.

“Did someone hurt you out there? Were you attacked before the Rogues discovered you in the alley?”

Her answer was long in coming. “No. I wasn’t attacked.”

“You want to explain all that blood on your coat over there? Or why you’re living in a part of town where you feel the need to carry around this kind of hardware?”

She held her head in her hands, her voice a rough whisper. “I don’t want to explain anything. Please, Tegan. I wish you hadn’t come here. Just, please…you have to leave now.”