Chaotic (7 page)

W
e discussed options and settled on hiding in
one of the less “sexy” exhibits—those displaying artifacts unlikely to interest a bored party-goer conducting his own off-limits tour. The ceramics or textiles galleries seemed like the safest bets.

Both required passing the party, but we would take the back hall around it, rather than walk through. Seeing two people die had convinced me this wasn’t the time to worry about my abandoned date.

We hurried into the hall skirting the gala, then veered left. We jogged through the looming skeletons of the dinosaur exhibit, and were crossing to the Greco-Roman wing when I picked up the twang of a supernatural vibe.

I grabbed Marsten’s arm and told him. He listened for footsteps, then inhaled the scents.

“Tristan and the other guard,” he said. “Coming right where we’ll be going. Is there another—”

He stopped and answered his question by looking at the open doors down the hall. A quartet of men lounged in the doorway, ties and jackets off. Beyond them were more gaggles of partygoers.

“We could go back,” I said.

“Too late,” he said, and steered me toward the party.

“We’ll cut straight across to the main exit,” I said as we moved. “From there, the first left will take us to ceramics.”

We squeezed past the drunken quartet who were illinclined—or too unsteady—to move out of our way. Once inside, I motioned to our goal across the room. We were passing the buffet table when I caught sight of Douglas, less than ten feet away, still talking to the Bairds.

Seeing me, Douglas blinked, and looked beside him. Figures. Here I was, worrying that he’d been searching for me, and he probably hadn’t even noticed I’d been gone.

Marsten reached for my arm, to steer me away from Douglas, but I waved him back and veered onto a new course myself. Douglas only lifted his brows in polite question. When I gestured to the buffet table, he smiled, nodded, and turned back to the Bairds.

“Don’t mind me,” I muttered. “I’m just passing through, killers in hot pursuit. No, no, it’s okay. You go back to whatever you were doing. I’m fine.”

Beside me, Marsten chuckled. “Your mother knows how to pick them, doesn’t she?”

As I rolled my eyes, Marsten’s gaze shot back to the door, and I saw Tristan and the other guard brush past the drunken quartet. At that moment, Douglas turned and lifted a finger, motioning me over. Probably wanted me to grab him something from the buffet.

When I hesitated, trying to gesture back, Marsten grabbed the back of my dress and nearly yanked me off my feet. I backpedaled as fast as I could to keep from tripping, as Marsten dragged me into a large group of people and out of Douglas’s sight.

“He’s coming,” he hissed by my ear, as I spouted apologies to the partygoers whose circle we’d invaded.

Tristan’s guard was striding around the back of the buffet table, moving as fast as he dared without calling attention to himself. How he’d seen us in the crowded room, I couldn’t imagine.

As we broke free from the group, Marsten gave me a shove, none too gently, toward the main door. With him behind me, I hurried out it, then left, toward the exhibits.

When I rounded the first corner, Marsten caught up and pushed something at me. A tuxedo jacket, which presumably he had grabbed from a chair in the gala.

“Take it,” he said when I made no move to do so. “Put it on.”

I almost said, “But I’m not cold,” an automatic response that, under the circumstances, would have made me sound like an idiot. Instead, I settled for an equally idiotic “huh?” stare.

“Your dress,” he said.

My . . . ? Oh shit. My canary yellow dress. How had Tristan spotted us in that crowded room? Well, duh. When I’d bought this dress, I pictured myself as a glowing beacon in the black night. Now, I had my wish.

Marsten steered me through around the next corner.

“No,” I said. “The ceramics are the other—”

“I know. We’re circling back. He won’t expect that. Now put this on.”

I took the jacket as we jogged into a room of Grecian urns. The coat fell past my short skirt, and wrapped around me easily . . . could have wrapped around me twice. The sleeves hung past my fingertips.

“A bit big,” I whispered.

“No, you’re just a bit small. Now move—”

He grabbed my arm and
stopped
me from moving. Before I could comment, I caught the distant sound of footsteps—running footsteps, growing louder. Marsten pushed me into a gap between two stelae, and squeezed in with me.

When only one set of footfalls entered the room, Marsten’s eyes narrowed, and his fingers flexed against my sides. As he tracked the steps, his face went taut and a glimmer of that icy rage I’d seen earlier seeped into his gaze.

What had Tristan said about a cornered werewolf? That they were ten times as dangerous as any other supernatural. Looking up at Marsten’s face, I knew Tristan was right, and I knew why: no predator willingly accepts the position of prey.

So when Marsten’s lips moved to my ear, I knew what he was going to say.

“Wait here.”

I opened my mouth, but took one look at Marsten’s eyes, and stopped. He was right. Things had changed since the last time he’d halfheartedly tried to keep me from following him into danger. Two men had died and I’d learned this wasn’t some movie jewel heist caper. As much as I wanted to help Marsten and stop Tristan, now wasn’t the time to redeem past stupidity.

So I nodded, and let him slip off into the darkness alone.

The footsteps had stopped as if our pursuer had paused to look around. Was it Tristan or his guard? I wished I could tell, but trusted Marsten’s nose could. It would make a difference—facing a sorcerer versus a half-demon . . . presuming that’s what the guard was.

I should have tried harder to figure out the guard’s race when we’d been tying him up. I’d need to practice more.

Practice for what? You’re not—

I stifled the voice and concentrated on listening. With the other man gone still, the room was silent, but Marsten managed to move without breaking that silence. I could see his white shirt gliding—

His white shirt? Why hadn’t I offered him the jacket? I told myself he must have known what he was doing, and prayed I was right.

Pulling the jacket tighter around me, I eased forward enough to glance out. There, about fifteen feet away, by a gilt statue of Athena, was the guard we’d originally knocked out and handcuffed. He faced the other side of the room, his profile to me . . . and his back to Marsten.

Marsten crept forward, his gaze fixed on the guard, managing to skirt obstacles as if by instinct. His feet rolled from heel to toe, soundless. The guard’s gaze swept a hundred and eighty degrees, and I fell back, but Marsten only froze in place.

The guard took three steps, then peered around another statue. Marsten kept pace less than five feet behind, so close I half-expected the guard to feel Marsten’s breath on his neck.

Marsten took one last step. He tensed, then sprang. At the last second the guard turned, too late to fire his gun, but soon enough to throw Marsten off his trajectory.

Marsten checked his leap at the last second and smacked the guard’s gun arm back hard and fast. The guard let out a hiss, part pain, part rage, and dove for the gun as it spun across the room.

Marsten knocked the guard flying. The guard crashed into a vase stuffed with replica scrolls. As he reached up, sparks flew from his fingertips, and I knew his power. Fire.

The guard’s hand closed around the scroll. Even as my lips were parting to shout a warning to Marsten, the paper burst into flame. The guard swung the fiery torch at Marsten, who was already in mid-leap, coming straight at him.

The scroll caught Marsten in the side of the face, and he fell back. The guard dropped the paper, now nearly ash, and dove for Marsten, his good hand going to Marsten’s throat. Marsten drilled his fist into the guard’s stomach. As the guard fell, he grabbed Marsten’s arm, and Marsten yanked away, but I could see the guard’s scorched handprint on his white sleeve.

It was then, as the two men launched into a full supernatural strength versus fire brawl, that I snapped out of my chaos intoxication and realized that I, too, had a weapon—a loaded gun lying, forgotten, less than twenty feet away.

So I left my hiding place. Instead of dashing across the open room to the guard’s gun, I crept along the shadows, moving from exhibit to exhibit. While I’ll admit I was worried about the guard seeing me and deciding I made an easier target, I was even more worried about Marsten seeing me out of my hidey-hole and being, if not concerned, at least distracted.

Whether Marsten
could
be distracted was another question. He fought with a single-minded purpose of someone who’s done a lot of it. Not what I would have expected. But was I surprised? No. I’d seen that look in his eyes as the civilized skin sloughed away, and I hoped never to be on the receiving end of it again.

As the two men fought, I circled around the outside. The gun had slid under a scale model of Pompeii. I managed to get behind the low table, then stretched out on my stomach. I reached into the narrow opening until my shoulder jammed against it, then swept my hand back and forth, feeling nothing but gum wrappers and dust.

I peered under the display table. In the dim emergency lighting, I could see the gun, its barrel pointed toward me, still inches from my fingertips. I wriggled and stretched and twisted and finally brushed the gun’s barrel. Another wiggle, and I got my index finger into the lip of the barrel. Not the safest thing to do with a loaded gun, I’m sure, but I managed to tug it forward an inch or two, enough to grab it from a safer angle and pull it out.

As my hand slid around the grip, I envisioned myself leaping from behind the table, gun trained on the guard, giving Marsten the kind of distraction he could use to get the upper hand.

I crouched, steadied the gun, then jumped up—

Marsten was sitting beside the guard’s prone body, surveying the burn damage to his own shirt. He looked over at me. I was poised Dirty Harry style, gun drawn, hair wild, still drowning in the oversized tux jacket. His lips twitched.

“I, uh, have the gun.”

“So I see.”

“And
I
see you have the situation, uh, under control. So I’ll just . . . ”

I let the sentence trail off as I lowered the gun and moved from behind the table, ignoring his barely stifled laughter.

“If you can stand guard, I’ll hide this one,” he said as I approached.

I looked down at the dead guard, and pushed back the initial stab of “did we really need to kill him?” regret and doubt. This had long passed the point of “just knock him out” solutions. We already
had
knocked this guard out, and handcuffed him, and he’d still come after us, ready to kill. A solid justification, but still, if I
had
leaped up from behind that table, what if I’d needed to do more than distract him? Could I have pulled the trigger?

You’ve been carrying a gun for a year, and you don’t know whether you could have fired it? What did you think it was? A fashion accessory?

“Hope?”

Still crouched beside the body, Marsten touched my leg, gently prodding me back to reality.

“If you are not up to it—” he began.

“Guard duty. Got it.”

T
he burning scroll hadn’t triggered any fire
alarms, nor had the grunts and punches of combat been loud enough to bring partygoers running. As Marsten stowed the dead guard, I concentrated on both exits, looking, sensing, and listening. I caught a supernatural vibe just as Marsten looked over.

“Footsteps,” he said. “Supernatural?”

I nodded. “Are they coming—?”

“This way,” he said. “From the direction we did.”

I glanced toward the far exit but knew without asking that Marsten had no intention of fleeing. Only Tristan was left, and when he realized he’d lost both his guards, he wouldn’t walk away. He’d call in reinforcements.

“Hide back where you were. Keep the gun ready but—”

His eyes narrowed as he turned to track the approaching footsteps.

“More than one set,” he murmured. “Probably party-goers. Can you tell?”

I concentrated, but my heart was pounding, reminding me with each rib-jangling beat that those footsteps were getting closer, and I didn’t have time to dawdle. My powers caved under the pressure, and I couldn’t even pick up one vibe anymore.

“It doesn’t matter,” Marsten whispered when I told him. “We’ll see them soon enough.”

The last word was leaving his lips as Tristan came into view, flanked by what could only be two additional guards. Marsten let out an oath, biting it off mid-syllable. He propelled me back to our original hiding spot between the stelae. This time, when we heard footsteps into the room, Marsten didn’t move. One opponent was fine, two maybe, but three at once? Not if we didn’t have to.

As they passed, Tristan took his cell phone from his ear and scowled.

“Russell still not answering?” one of the guards said.

Tristan shook his head. “I’ll try Mike. See if he can go look for Russell.”

Marsten and I looked at one another, then at the spot where Marsten had hidden Mike’s body—less than three feet from us. As Tristan finished dialing, Marsten tensed and I fumbled to get the gun from my pocket, then leaned out to see Tristan as he kept walking, phone to his ear. Seconds ticked past. He stabbed the disconnect button.

“Vibrate,” Marsten whispered.

That made sense—that they’d have their phones set to vibrate. Nothing blows your cover faster than
The Ride of the Valkyrie
resounding through a supposedly off-limits hall.

When the three were gone, we headed back the other way, across the main hall and into the “biodiversity” wing, a.k.a. the stuffed animal gallery. On the other side was the ceramics exhibit. Halfway across the bio-diversity room, we caught strains of a lively monologue coming from the ceramics gallery. The midnight behind-the-scenes tour.

Marsten frowned at the direction of the voices, as if debating joining them and taking refuge in numbers. That depended on how likely he thought Tristan was to avoid public confrontation. After a moment, he shook his head and prodded me toward the narrow opening between a pillar and the African savanna diorama.

When I stepped into the gap, he tugged me out, then backed in and crouched, sitting on a fan box. He motioned for me to turn around and back onto his lap. As I did, I knew why he’d picked the lower position—we’d be hidden from casual viewers by a nearby meerkat display.

As I shifted onto his lap, his arms went around me, holding me steady . . . or that’s the excuse I let him have. We settled in for what could be a long wait. As things went quiet, I struggled to hold back all the thoughts I didn’t want to think, all the regrets and self-recriminations I’d deal with later. My heart raced, filling the void by indulging in replays of the running, the fighting, those delicious spurts of chaos that only sent my heart tripping faster still.

As I luxuriated in the memories, other visions crept in: a vulture circling overhead, an ocean of long, dry grass whispering, a breeze bringing the heavenly scent of musk, my stomach growling, tail twitching in anticipation—

Marsten shifted, his fingers accidentally brushing my hardened nipples and I groaned, my breath coming faster.

He chuckled. “Not immune to me after all, I see.”

“Hmmm?”

He cupped his hand under my left breast, and pressed it there as my heart raced beneath his fingers. When those fingers climbed to my nipple again, I let out a soft moan.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s not you.”

Another chuckle. “If you want to tell yourself that . . .”

I closed my eyes and saw the lioness crouch, hind quarters twitching, mouth watering in anticipation. I could feel her excitement, pulse racing, and my own raced to match it. I moaned again, as Marsten’s hand slid up to my shoulder.

He hesitated. “Either you have some strange erogenous zones, or you’re right. It’s not me, is it?”

I opened my eyes. “It’s—” I waved at the display. “I pick things up, from the past . . . chaos.”

Another brush against my hard nipples. “And this is what happens?”

“Mmm, yes.” My eyes closed again. “Strange, I know . . . ”

“Actually, no, not to me, at least. Should I stop?”

“Mmm, no.”

A soft laugh. He unzipped my dress and tugged it off my shoulder, pulling the bra down with it. A wave of cool air rushed over my bare breast and I shivered, backing against him as his hand went to my breast, lips to my neck, tongue sliding over the sensitive spot behind my ear, raising more shivers. I shifted again and he put his free hand around my waist and repositioned me on his lap. I felt his erection hard against my rear, and pushed against it, thrusting softly. He let out a low growl and moved his lips to my ear.

“Tell me what you see,” he whispered.

When I hesitated, his free hand moved to my leg, pushing up my skirt, fingers tickling up the inside of my thigh. He traced the edges of my panties, then slid a finger under it. I parted my legs to let him in, but he only teased me with his finger.

“Tell me,” he said.

“It’s . . . a hunt.”

“Mmmm.” A growling chuckle. “Nothing like a good hunt. What do you see?”

I told him, the words coming hesitant at first, then flowing faster as his finger slid in, moving expertly as he thrust against me, egging me on when I slowed, my excitement feeding his. As the lioness sprang for the kill, I felt the first wave of climax—

Then he stopped.

“It’s still not me, is it?”

“Wh—wha—?”

His lips moved down my neck. “It’s insufferably vain of me, but if I’m going to seduce you, I want to be the cause of your arousal, not passive recipient.”

“You don’t seem all that passive to me.”

He laughed, but shook his head, fingers on my thigh.

I craned around to look at him. “So you’re just going to leave me hanging?”

He hesitated, then shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me, would it?”

“Not at all.”

“Hmmm.”

He still hesitated, toying with the edge of my panties.

“Well . . . ?” I said.

“I’m trying to decide . . .”

“I say yes.”

He laughed. “I doubt it, and I doubt we’re thinking of the same question.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“Control. As in, can I help you without helping myself to you.”

I stood, turned around and repositioning myself on his lap, facing him, squarely straddling him, hands around his neck. “What if I’m offering?”

He growled deep in his throat and reached for me, pulling me against him, hands tugging up my skirt as I unbuttoned his pants—

An alarm rang, so fast and sudden I almost toppled backward off him.

I looked around. Smoke wafted from the hall. I pictured the fire demon again, reaching for the vase of scrolls, sparks raining from his fingertips. A few must have fallen into the vase, smoldered there and caught fire.

From the other room came the shrieks of people hearing alarms, smelling smoke, and reacting as if the building had transformed into the Towering Inferno. I caught the first lick of chaos and shivered, then shut it off.

Marsten’s arms went around me, pulling me back against him with a hard thrust and a soft growl. I rotated to face him, my hands going around his neck, mouth finding his, drinking in the chaos arising around us. Burning building? Who cared? I had a more urgent fire to put out.

Marsten growled again, this one harsher as he pulled his lips from mine.

“I hate to be the one to bring this up, but . . . ”

“The building’s on fire?”

“Unfortunately.”

I slipped my hands under his shirt. “How fast can it burn?”

A low growling chuckle as he pressed against me. “You have no idea how badly I’m tempted to test that. But I have to remind myself that you’re acting under the influence of something.”

“Something
other
than you, you mean.”

“There’s that, too.”

“Vain,” I said, poking him in the chest.

He caught me up in a hard, deep, tongue-diving, groin-grinding kiss, then put me back on my feet.

“Time to go,” he said, and started across the room.

“Tease.”

He tossed a smile over his shoulder. “Just giving you something to remember, once all this interference is out of the way.”

W
e reached the main hall to find it log-jammed with people. Marsten hesitated, then took my arm and led me straight into the heart of the mob. The crowd buoyed us along, and before I knew it, the cool night breeze was rippling through my hair. I looked up, and only then, seeing the stars winking against the city’s glow, could I truly believe it.

We were out. Free.

If Tristan and his guards were here, they’d be watching with dismay as the museum expelled a steady river of white shirts and black jackets and nary a yellow dress to be found. The crowd was so thick that even if I hadn’t covered my dress, they’d probably never have picked me out.

As fire engines and taxis competed for curb space, sirens and blaring horns rose above the din of partygoers yelling for their lost spouses and friends. A few taxis managed a passenger snatch-and-grab before the police cordoned off the area.

We let the crowd carry us across the road, where the taxis were regrouping. Marsten’s grip suddenly tightened, and he ducked sideways, nearly plowing me into a white-haired woman with a walker. As I glared at him, a voice cut through the din.

“Hope? Hope!”

“Don’t look,” Marsten muttered by my ear as he steered us into another pocket of people. “Just pretend you don’t—”

“Hope?”

Douglas cut between a couple. He smiled at me. There I was, bedraggled and dirty, hair flying everywhere, wearing a tux jacket, running from a burning building, and he only smiled, as if I’d just popped back from the buffet line.

“The Bairds have invited us for drinks,” he said.

I stared, the words not penetrating, certain I was mishearing and somehow the din around us had turned “Oh my God, are you okay?” into an invitation for post-inferno cocktails.

“I—I have to go,” I said finally. “The—the paper. The fire. I need to—”

“Oh, you’ll need to write it up, won’t you?” He smiled and winked. “For a cause, I’d go with spontaneous human combustion.”

“I was thinking more of fire demons,” I muttered.

“Sure. That’s different. I’ll let you go, then. Have fun, and don’t work too hard.”

Marsten yanked me backward again, as Douglas slipped off through the crowd. When we reached the sidewalk, Marsten body-checked a young man and shoved me through an open cab door, then crawled in after me and slammed it.

He looked over. “Your address?”

I gave it.

To the driver, though, Marsten just said, “Head east.”

“Oh, Riverside is beside the river,” I said. “Which is north.”

Marsten didn’t correct the driver, just shut the panel between the front and rear seats and buckled up.

“To be safe, you should spend the evening someplace else. Your mother’s maybe? Is she in the city?”

“Yes, but if I’m in danger, I’m certainly not taking it to her, no matter how slight the risk.”

“Friend, sibling, cousin . . .”

I shook my head. “Same thing. This is my problem, so until it’s resolved, I’m keeping it that way. We should find a hotel or motel on the outskirts of town, and get some rest before we figure out how to resolve this, because I’m assuming Tristan won’t just give up and go away.”

“He won’t. All right then. We’ll find a hotel, and I’ll make sure it’s safe. Then, when I come back—”

“Back? Where are you going?”

He patted his pocket, where the jewels were. “I need to take care of these tonight. I shouldn’t be more than an hour or so—”

“Just long enough to hunt down Tristan and kill him.” When Marsten looked over sharply, I said, “I may be foolish, but I’m not stupid and, after tonight, not nearly so naïve. The only way to end this is to kill Tristan, so that’s what you’re going to do. That why you said you’d retrieve my bracelet ‘later’—you meant once I was out of the building and you went back for Tristan.”

He hesitated and studied my expression, then nodded. “I’ve tried walking away twice, and he refuses to leave it that. As much as I hate to bother with someone like Tristan Robard, I can’t walk away again.”

“That’s why you asked for my address, isn’t it? Because you think that’s where he’ll go. Right now, I’m the more urgent threat, the one who could let his Cabal know about his extracurricular activities.”

Marsten nodded.

“Well, you know I’m not going to any hotel.” I held up a hand against his protest. “Have I interfered yet?”

“No, but—”

“And I won’t. I am so far out of my league—” I shook my head. “Let’s just say I won’t embarrass myself further or endanger you by interfering. But Tristan wants me, and if you show up alone at my townhouse, he’ll know something’s up.”

For a moment Marsten and I just looked at each other, then he nodded and gave the driver my address.