The metal pole blurred before his eyes, a silver haze against the orange carpet of the subway car. He waited for Angie to come back as he telepathically kept the train in the Dupont Circle station with the doors open. Humans often complained about the subway service in D.C.—unexplained delays, door malfunctions, trains breaking down—but they would be surprised to learn that the causes for most of the problems were not mechanical at all. Arrogant vampires were hell on public transportation.
Aiden St. Helen didn’t know what he was doing here. And he didn’t care. He followed Angie’s instructions, listened to her complacent taunts, but the world around him was dull and nebulous. He felt as if he had somehow crossed over into the Theater of the Absurd, but hell, even Beckett couldn’t come up with this shit.
His eyes were dry and raw; he hadn’t slept in five days. Not since that night. The longer he stayed awake, the thicker the glass that separated him from reality seemed to become. She almost ceased to be. Aiden wondered if given enough time, the glass would become too thick for the silver cord to reach him. It was a foolish and desperate hope, but it was all that he had left.
He glanced out the window of the metro car, but he still didn’t see Angie. This was the first time she had really left him alone since the night he had failed. She’d been keeping him close, claiming that he couldn’t be trusted any more, but Aiden knew she just wanted to torment him. She’d been livid that night when he returned from the Daybreak compound, pinning him to the wall with a stake through his shoulder and another through his stomach before he’d even made it out of the elevator into her penthouse, but even so, part of her seemed to relish watching him fall apart. She always did appreciate the simple pleasures in life.
He caught sight of Angie then, rushing down the escalators with two other vampires, and his jaw tightened. They hit the platform and sprinted into the subway car and Aiden immediately released his telepathic hold on the doors, letting them slam shut. As his boss slid into a seat and the other vampires took hold of the pole next to him, the train began to pull out of the station.
Aiden recognized the vampire girl, the one Angie introduced as Alexandra Harper. He had seen her in the lobby of Angie’s building one night a while back. She’d been pacing furiously back and forth by the elevators, her shoes slamming hard into the glossy tile floor. To most humans she’d probably appeared to be a young girl having a typical teenage fit, but he had seen the age in her eyes. And the fear. Even in the Night World, there weren’t many people who had that look.
It had shaken him for some reason and he would have been glad to never see her again, but Angie developed a fixation with the girl. Over the past few months, she spent so much time recklessly honing in on Alexandra’s mind that afterward her migraines left her nearly incapacitated. At the time, Aiden hadn’t thought much of it and his boss certainly hadn’t offered any explanations for her fascination, but now he wondered why Angie would intentionally subject herself to all that pain for this one girl.
“Hellraiser,” Alexandra whispered. Hearing that name on her lips startled him, rousing him from his thoughts.
“He used to be,” Angie replied.
Aiden almost laughed at that. I never was, he thought as he let his head fall back. Daybreak had given him that nickname, but he’d never been one of them.
For years, he had slowly worked his way up the chain of command, faithfully carrying out his duties with enough skill and flair to grab the attention of the elders and gain their trust. And then he used it against them.
He had exploited Daybreak’s resources to surreptitiously eliminate his enemies in the Night World. He had sabotaged critical missions. He had sold highly sensitive secrets to the highest bidder. He had been carefully eroding the organization from the inside out and if he’d stayed the course, he would be a legend right now.
Gritting his teeth, he looked down again and found the vampire girl staring at him. To his surprise, something inside of him shifted as her sapphire eyes met his. There was a strange sort of energy churning between them—something akin to desire, but it was even more basic than that.
She tried to look away, but Aiden tilted his head, holding her gaze. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t ready to let her go.
Alexandra stiffened as if she was afraid and in the next instant he felt her pierce through the layer of exhaustion he had created to dampen his pain. For a moment he let it happen. He let her see his anguish and anger, regret and frustration. Watching her eyes widen as she drank him in, Aiden trembled with release. It was insanity, but he couldn’t stop it. Didn’t want to stop it. He was tired and cold, and for a scant second, this vampire girl warmed him.
Suddenly that warmth began to burn as the wall he had erected between him and his soulmate quickly crumbled to the ground. Alexandra was still staring at him, but the only thing he could see was his witch, her violet eyes brimming with perfect love as he slowly wrung the life from her body.
No, don’t see her eyes again. Don’t see that love in the last glimpse of shining violet eyes, don’t feel her love course through you like cyanide that just won’t fucking kill you! Don’t see it again! Don’t see her love with your hands around her throat!
Aiden wrenched his gaze away from the vampire girl, struggling to keep his breathing deep and even. His hands were squeezing the metal pole so tightly that his knuckles were white.
Damn it, he should have known better. By letting Alexandra in, he had opened himself up to everything else as well. The memories and emotions that he had tried so hard to bury over the past few days were drawn back to the surface. He could feel his witch again, so close. She was invading his senses, boring a hole in his soul, cutting him to pieces. There was so much pain and at that moment, he desperately wanted to die.
No, that wasn’t him. That was her. Her thoughts, her despair.
Get away. Get away from me!
“Do you have something you’d like to add, Hellraiser?” Angie asked sweetly. The sound of her voice jolted his mind back to the subway car, freeing it from his witch’s grasp.
“No,” he replied, his voice surprisingly steady.
A smirk appeared on Angie’s lips and then it was gone. How far the great and untouchable Hellraiser has fallen, her telepathic voice whispered in his mind.
Aiden didn’t reply. He was sure that she had read his soul just now, undoubtedly finding an arsenal of painful details that she would use to needle him later, but he didn’t care. After working with her for so many years, her power no longer fazed him.
“Right, the details,” she said as she looked back at the other vampires. “Daybreak is moving our little witch today. They have a small haphazard group taking her out of the compound.”
Aiden looked sharply at her. “Moving her where?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“I’m not sure,” Angie replied shortly. With all of her power, she hated admitting her occasional ignorance. It was one of the reasons she had been so enraged by his failure—she hadn’t seen it coming. “I only know that it will be done today. Now, there are only two ways out of the compound: the main entrance and an underground tunnel that leads to the Silver Spring metro stop.
“Any information you’d like to divulge about the compound itself, Aiden?” she asked him.
“No point,” he replied. “It’s a fortress. There’s no way in for them. Wait until the witch is out.”
“Any details about the witch you’d care to share, then?”
“Genevieve Harman.” He kept his voice monotone. Cold. Unwavering. “Blond hair, fair skin, violet eyes. Slight build, average height.”
And then the words were coming to him rapidly. Useless words, caught in his throat like a clump of broken glass.
She likes the fuzz on peaches and the grainy sugariness of pears; she paints her nails outrageous colors every few days; she takes twenty minute showers and never blow dries her hair; her face glows when she laughs and when she smiles; she has pink, fluffy slippers and purple satin sheets; she likes soft kisses on the back of her neck, but not near her ears; she knows how to stroke your hair when you’re plagued by stress; she keeps a picture of him inside her pillow case; he was her first kiss, her first touch, her first love; she’s wise and yet naïve; she’ll forgive, but never for—
“Forgetting anything, Hellraiser?” Angie’s husky voice invaded his reverie.
Aiden tightened his fists, tasting blood as he forced himself to swallow the words, feeling them shred his insides all the way down. “No.”
“All right, then,” she said, turning back to the vagabond vampires, “I think you two have everything you need. You have twenty-four hours to report back to me.”
The vampires just nodded dazedly. The girl had turned her head away to look out the window so that Aiden could only see the gleam of her thick, black spiraled hair. He could sense her weariness and in spite of the cost, he wished for a moment that she would look at him again.
The train pulled to a stop at the Chinatown station. Angie slid off the seat and gave Aiden’s shirt a firm tug. He reluctantly let the girl and her glossy curls slip away as he followed his boss onto the subway platform.
He hated being here during rush hour, feeling the droves of humans bumping into him as they hurried to work. They pushed and trampled and crammed, each one believing that their time was more valuable than that of everyone else, but in truth they were nothing more than cattle.
“You’re so very lucky,” Angie purred next to him, raking her long fingernails up and down his arm. “If they succeed, I may not have to kill you after all.”
“You’ve been saying that for days,” he replied dispassionately. “Have you nothing new to add? You’re beginning to bore me.”
Her grip tightened on his arm as she led him to a deserted corner of the platform and backed him against the wall. “Don’t try my patience, Aiden. I don’t have much left for you.”
“Then why don’t you let me go?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is that what you really want? To spend eternity nursing your newborn soul, while our race—everything we’ve fought for—is lost?”
Aiden sighed and looked up at the ceiling. God, how many times had he asked himself that question these past few days? It swarmed around his head incessantly along with the afterimage of her and her violet eyes that looked upon him with love even as he was strangling her.
If Angie read him right now, she gave no sign. She merely waited for his answer with her hands pressed against his chest, her face close to his. Maybe they looked like lovers, standing there against the wall, so far from the rest of the crowd, their voices hushed and heated. Aiden felt a wave of revulsion go through him, making him want to claw his skin off.
Instead he shoved Angie, pushing her back until she had reached the edge of the platform. She stumbled, but caught herself before she fell onto the tracks.
“Don’t question me,” he snapped, stepping towards her. “You foolish, arrogant bitch. You may be the most powerful telepath in the goddamn Western hemisphere, but that doesn’t make me come unhinged. I’m not some vagrant, damaged vampire like your Alexandra, who just happened to stumble into your fantasies. I sought you out from inside Daybreak. Your business here would have been annihilated by now if not for me.
“I failed with the witch, obviously, but I am weary of your endless threats. And I’ll tell you something else, Angie: You’re going to fail as well. Those drifters don’t even know what she is or how to kill her. They’ll be incinerated before they come within ten feet of her.”
Angie stared at him for a long moment. Then a smile cracked on her face and she began to laugh hysterically. “Would you do that speech for me again? That was priceless. You should see your expression, Hellraiser.”
“Don’t call me that!” he roared. He strode up to her, grabbed her collar and threw her back against the wall. Still clenching the fabric of her shirt, he hissed, “And don’t—don’t—patronize me.”
She stopped laughing and looked at him soberly. “Careful, Aiden,” she said quietly. “If you ruin this blouse, I really will kill you.”
He let go of her, backing away and realized his hands were shaking; he’d been holding on to her too tightly. Fine tremors shot up his arms.
Don’t see that love in the last glimpse of shining violet iris. Don’t see her love with your hands around her throat!
He put his face in his hands and rubbed it roughly, trying in vain to scrub away the images behind his eyes, trying to will himself away from his soulmate and back into the present, but it was no use. His walls were gone.
Damn that Alexandra Harper. What had she done to him?
“Go home,” Angie said suddenly.
“What?” Aiden looked at her in shock. She was still standing by the wall, watching him with uncommon graveness, her arms crossed over her chest. He couldn’t recall a moment that she seemed more serious than she did just then. In spite of the wrinkled blouse and second-skin leather pants, she could have been a trial attorney, standing there. Or a judge. Yes, that was it. A judge about to pass sentence.
“You heard me,” she replied. “You’re no use to me. She’s all you can see.”
He shook his head vehemently. “No.”
“No, what? It’s not true? You know that it is. I’ve been watching you for days now, Aiden. I thought this might pass, that your loyalty to the Night World, to me, would override her, but you’re barely even here. You’re stuck in that night with her. And you’re no good to me like this. You’re done.”
“I want her dead, Angie! Just as you do.” He knew his voice was cracking and he had the humiliating urge to fall on his knees before her. His eyes burned. “I want her dead and gone from this world so I can be free. So I don’t have to see her every time I close my eyes. Don’t write me off now.”
Angie looked at him thoughtfully, waited for him to swallow, to catch his breath.
“I don’t—I don’t have anything else,” he finished softly.
“I can’t help you,” she said calmly. “I can’t trust you. And time is of the essence now, so I can’t stay here and watch you beg, as much as I might enjoy that. Go home and take solace in the knowledge that your witch will be dead by nightfall. I’ll decide what to do with you then.”
She walked past him coldly, her shoulder roughly brushing against his.
“No, she won’t be,” Aiden whispered. “The drifters will fail.”
Angie stopped and turned her head so he could see the profile of her smile. “Oh, I think I’ve learned something about trusting others with an assignment of this magnitude. Don’t you?”
Then she slowly turned back and walked toward the turn styles, quickly becoming lost in a sea of people.
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