Vampires Are Foreve(89)

The streets were relatively quiet. Thomas only past a few people on his way back to the townhouse and had little trouble wiping the memory of their passing from their minds. The last thing he needed was someone calling the police and telling them they saw a man carrying an unconscious woman through town center. Still, he was so relieved to reach the townhouse that he didn’t notice that the lights he’d turned off on the way out were on again as he struggled to unlock the door and get Inez inside.

Thomas had just kicked the door closed and turned to carry Inez upstairs to the bedroom when that realization struck him. He stopped, one foot on the bottom step as adrenaline began to rush through him, then jerked his eyes to the top of the landing as the sound of a door opening upstairs reached his ears.

When no one appeared at the top of the stairs and he heard movement in one of the rooms, Thomas whirled and hurried silently across the hall and into the living room. He set Inez out of the way on the couch, then turned back and crept toward the door, slowing only long enough to snatch a lamp off a table and jerk the cord out of the wall, before continuing out into the hall.

Fourteen





“You can’t turn Inez without her permission.”

Thomas scowled as Etienne repeated that refrain and wished he’d never mentioned his plans, but simply gone ahead and done it. Actually, he wished he’d koshed his cousin over the head rather than stop himself at the last minute when he’d realized who had just walked out of the bedroom.

After leaving Inez in the living room, Thomas had crept upstairs, the lamp at the ready to batter some immortal butt. He’d been on the landing, just approaching the only closed door—the one with the double bed—when it had suddenly opened and Etienne had walked out.

Thomas had lowered the lamp with relief and then the two men had hugged in greeting and Rachel had come out of the bedroom as Etienne explained that he’d met his deadline and she’d managed to get some time off work and they’d come to help in the search.

The crotchety old man next door had let them into the townhouse when they arrived. He hadn’t been pleased to be rousted from his bed in the middle of the night, but Etienne had slipped into his thoughts and erased the whole event from his mind before sending him back to sleep. When he woke up in the morning, the man would think he’d slept peacefully through the night.

When Rachel had then asked what they’d come up with so far, Thomas had recalled Inez and rushed back downstairs and into the living room with them on his heels.

Rachel had taken one look at the unconscious woman lying pale and soaking on the sofa and sent Thomas upstairs to fetch a nightgown or something for her to change her into. Thomas had rushed upstairs, opened Inez’s suitcase, peered at the sexy black negligee that had been purchased and sent to the hotel in Amsterdam, and promptly closed the suitcase. He’d be damned if Etienne was seeing her in that. He’d then gone to his own knapsack and retrieved one of his shirts, sure that—short as she was—it would hang well past her knees. He’d taken it down to Rachel only to find both he and Etienne banished from the room as Rachel stripped the unconscious woman of her wet clothes and replaced it with the shirt.

The two men had waited in the kitchen until she was finished and then Thomas had given them a quick rundown of what had happened and the deductions they’d come up with before heading upstairs to change. On the way to the stairs, he’d looked in the living room to see that Inez was asleep and tucked under a throw on the sofa.

Etienne had approached while he was staring at her and had said quietly, “Bastien says she’s your life mate.”

Thomas had nodded. “She is and I’m turning her as soon as I finish changing.”

“She’s agreed to it already?” Etienne had asked with surprise.

“No, but I’m doing it anyway,” Thomas had announced and turned to head upstairs.

Sucking in a sharp breath, Etienne had immediately chased after him to argue the point as he changed. By the time Thomas had finished and started out into the hall, the argument had been getting pretty heated. Only the sight of Rachel in the hall had calmed them both down. Unfortunately, it hadn’t made Etienne shut up.

“You can’t,” Etienne repeated firmly, following him when he started downstairs.

“You turned Rachel without getting her permission first,” Thomas growled with resentment.

“Rachel wasn’t conscious. I couldn’t get her permission,” Etienne pointed out, on his heels. “And she was dying; it was the only way to save her.”