“Well, I want to find her too, but…” Thomas paused in the alley, frustrated that he couldn’t find the words to say what he felt. He was terrified of losing either woman, but Marguerite might already be lost to them, and he didn’t want to lose Inez to find that out. Hell, he didn’t want to lose her at all. Given a choice between saving one woman or the other, Thomas would rather die himself.
“But Marguerite is your aunt and Inez is your lifemate and you’d rather not lose either of them,” Etienne said quietly, saying what he thought Thomas was trying and failing to verbalize.
“Marguerite is my mother too,” Thomas snapped bitterly. “She’s the only mother I know.”
“You called her Mother as a child,” Bastien said quietly.
“Yeah, well, Jean Claude soon put a stop to that,” he muttered wearily, and then shook his head and turned away to continue up the alley. “Let’s go. The women are waiting.”
Bastien and Etienne hesitated and then fell into step on either side of him to walk out of the alley. They walked the rest of the way in silence, coming around the corner half a short block up from the coffee shop in time to see Terri come rushing out of the café, panic on her face.
“Something’s wrong,” Bastien growled and burst into a run.
His heart lurching with alarm because Inez was nowhere to be seen, Thomas raced past his cousin.
“Where is she?” he demanded, grabbing Terri roughly by the arms.
“I don’t know,” Terri cried with distress. “We all went down to get coffees for everyone and I went into the bathroom. But when I came out, Rachel and Inez were gone.”
“Rachel’s gone too?” Etienne asked with alarm as he reached them.
“Where did they go?” Thomas asked, ignoring him.
“Someone must have seen. Did you read the guy behind the counter? He had an eye for Inez and would have noticed her leaving.”
“I tried, but…” She shook her head helplessly, guilt filling her eyes.
“It’s all right,” Bastien said as he caught up. Slipping his arm around her, he gave her a quick hug as he explained to Thomas. “She hasn’t finished her training Thomas. Terri can’t read mortals well yet. I’ll do it now,” he added, giving his fiancée a quick squeeze and then releasing her to hurry into the café.
Thomas whirled away from the woman, not angry at her but just plain angry as he peered up the road one way and then the other. There was no sign of either woman.
“Maybe we should split up, you go one way and I go the other,” Etienne suggested anxiously.
Thomas turned cold eyes on his cousin. “The plan doesn’t look so good when your own lifemate gets caught in it, does it?”
Etienne winced and briefly closed his eyes, then blinked them open and said, “I’m sorry, Thomas. I deserve that. We thought we had all the bases covered.”
“The fact is, Etienne, that you can cover all the bases you want, but if you put a ball into the game, it’s going to get hit by the bat at some point,” he snarled.
“That way!” Bastien yelled, rushing out of the café.
Thomas glanced toward the man, and then burst into a run in the direction his cousin was pointing. The others were immediately on his heels.
Sixteen
Inez woke to the sound of, well it sort of sounded like sex—with grunts and moans and sighs and—Realizing she was making the sounds and definitely wasn’t making them out of enjoyment, Inez forced her mouth closed and opened her eyes.
The good news was that she had control of herself again, or still, Inez supposed since she’d got it back just before the tumble they’d taken. The bad news was she was lying on a path at the bottom of a set of stone steps, bloody and broken…and she definitely felt broken. Pain was attacking her everywhere. Her leg, her back, her stomach, her head, one arm…#p#分页标题#e#
Gritting her teeth against the pain, Inez lifted her head and tried to peer at herself. She didn’t see much before her head began to swim and she fell back, and yet it was more than enough. She was on her back, her lower leg bent to the side mid-calf in a most unnatural way, her left shoulder looked funny and she thought it was either broken or dislocated, there was some kind of wound on her lower stomach that seemed to be bleeding copiously, and the minute she’d tipped her head up, blood had poured down over her face from a head wound. Oh yeah, she was broken all right.
A furious growl caught her attention, and Inez shifted her gaze to the side, eyes widening slightly as she saw Rachel fighting with the blond immortal some feet away.