The Mech Who Loved Me(77)

McLaren? Her throat tightened. What was going on? First her driver tried to kill her, and now.... That was when she saw the split tail of his coat.

He'd been the one who locked the steering wheel on the carriage and tried to force her off the road.

What had happened to the driver she'd first hired?

He saw it in her eyes. "Nothing personal, you see. Just doing what I'm told." Rubbing at his cap, he dislodged it just enough for her to see his hair, and suddenly it all made a horrid sort of sense.

His extremely pale skin.

His icy blue eyes, so translucent they looked like a glacier.

His hair, a shock of white that resembled the down of a swan.

The scarf, gloves, hat, and coat, which covered as much of his sun-sensitive skin as possible.

For the last month they'd been searching for one of the dhampir that conspired against them, and here one was, right in front of her.

"Hey," another man said. "Do you need help? What's happened?"

"She's all right," the dhampir said, swinging Ava up into his arms, where she had no choice but to flop as though she'd come down with the vapors. "My wife was feeling poorly this morning, and I guess she's taken ill from the shock. I'll get her home and tuck her up in bed. She'll come round soon enough."

"Aye, good luck to you." The stranger surveyed the scene helplessly, even as sirens began to peal somewhere nearby. "What a mess. Good luck with your wife.""Thanks."

Ava made a choking sound in her throat as the dhampir carried her away from the carnage, though she couldn't so much as cry out for help.

"Let's get you someplace private," the dhampir murmured, "where we can have a little chat."





Eighteen





"WHERE IS SHE?" Kincaid demanded, leaping from the carriage almost before it had finished moving. Gemma and Charlie had made a mad dash for the guild, but he and Malloryn were using Malloryn's tracking device.

"Give me a moment," the duke replied tersely. Malloryn had insisted when they first started working with him that a tracking beacon be implanted beneath their skin at the back of their hairlines. It was some sort of gadget the Nighthawks had come up with. The compass hand spun, heading directly to the south. "There."

They both looked to the south. 

Some sort of crowd gathered, hovering around the crossroads ahead of him. A chill ran down Kincaid's spine. They were too late. He just knew it.

Slamming past people, he shoved through the crowd. A carriage was smashed against a wall, the under-carriage snapped in two with the force of the impact, flames licking around the boiler.

"What happened?" Kincaid demanded, and a young girl beside him babbled about a runaway carriage, and a woman on top who'd steered it into the wall.

"What did she look like?" He grabbed her by the shoulders, and only refrained from shaking her when she began babbling in fear.

"I don't know! A lady. Dressed in green-"

"Pale green?" That was what Ava had been wearing when she left the house that morning.

The girl nodded in fright.

"Where is she now?"

"I didn't see what happened to her," the girl blurted.

"Leave her be," the duke commanded, turning this way and that through the crowd. "She's not here. She went this way." Malloryn started running.

Why would she leave the scene of the crime? Kincaid sprinted after the duke, his coattails flapping. "It's unlike her to leave injured people behind."

"Agreed." The duke paused in the next intersection. The arrow spun. "This way."

Left. Down a smaller street, then across another. "You think she's been taken?"

"Possibly," Malloryn called, sliding to a panting halt as he stared up at a small house across the street from them. "Unless she was injured and the craving virus overtook her. Then she might have sought privacy, away from any potential victims."

That made sense too.

Malloryn's head tilted sharply. His face paled. "I can hear her. She's in there." Kincaid shoved past him, and the duke caught him at the gate to a small Georgian townhouse.

"Have you got your pistol?" he demanded.

"Do I need it?" Kincaid replied.

"I don't know." Malloryn pushed on ahead of him, snapping the tracking device shut. "But I can hear Ava screaming. Be ready for anything."



* * *

The oddest thoughts kept running through Ava's head as she tried to still her panic. CV levels: 23 percent. And seven minutes of paralysis... possibly more. Seven and a half? Ava groggily forced herself to count. Curse her confounded desire to not drink blood. If she had, then perhaps her CV levels would be higher, and she might have begun to pull out of this already.