He glanced in, saw a woman bound hand and foot, something stuffed in her mouth and her curly black hair a tangle against the thick gray carpet. Mascara ran down the clammy white skin of her face, terror in her eyes. Lifting a finger to his lips, he checked the rest of the room and found no evidence of another individual. He looked out into the corridor to ensure it remained clear, then went down beside her.

“I’m going to untie you,” he said quietly. “But if you start crying or making any other kind of noise, I might not be able to get you out.” There was no knowing if Giorgio had guards in this place and Cornelius was a powerful angel, even without Lijuan feeding him energy. “Nod if you understand.”

A frantic nod.

Janvier took out the gag first. It turned out to be a balled-up sock.

“My friend, Marta,” she whispered through her dry mouth and cracked lips. “The brunette who brought us here took her.”

“We’ll find her.” Cutting the ropes, he led her to the room with the sliding doors. They proved to be locked by a keyed dead bolt. It took him precious seconds to pick the lock, but when he slid the doors open, he saw his hunch had been right: rusted but with no indications of dangerous wear, there was a large pipe on the outer wall that went all the way to the ground.

It had enough joins to provide a grip.

Shrugging off his leather jacket, he gave it to the woman who’d confirmed her name was Bridget. Her skintight jeans and little boots would protect her legs from the cold, but she wore only a bustier on her top half. “I’m going to help you over the railing to that pipe.” Thinking of her hands on the icy metal, he remembered he had Ash’s gloves in his jacket pockets, told her to slip them on. “Climb down as silently as you can.”

“What about Marta?” she asked, having wiped the backs of her hands across her face. It had further smeared her makeup, but her eyes held more anger than fear.

“I’ll get her. It’ll go better if I don’t have to worry about you as well.”

Giving a jerky nod, she pulled on the gloves. “Should I call the cops after I get down?”

“They’re already on their way. Can you operate a motorcycle?” At the negative shake of her head, he said, “Go down the street and hide behind the house on the corner.” He’d noticed it was empty when he came through. “Our backup should arrive within minutes.”

She didn’t speak again until he’d helped her out. “Please help my friend.”

“I will.” Waiting just long enough to see that she was steady on the pipe, he went back out to the corridor and quickly looked in on the rooms he’d already cleared. The final door on the right was a master bedroom, opulently male in design. Janvier smelled the same cologne he’d smelled in Giorgio’s home, saw a cravat on the bed, a shirt with a fall of lace at the cuffs on a chair.

Of Giorgio himself, however, there was no sign.

He started down the stairs to the second level.

41

Looking right as she moved down the hallway, Ashwini found a spacious living area. Her eye went immediately to the tumbler of red liquid on the antique sideboard, beside a crystal decanter of the same.

Blood.

Nothing else had that same consistency, a consistency that was obvious to her even from her current position. Stepping inside with care, she scanned the large room. There really was only one place anyone could hide and that was behind the sofa by the windows. Instead of walking over, she dropped to the floor and looked beneath the cream-colored sofa with curved wooden legs. Nothing.

She confirmed that by crossing the room and taking a second look.

Now she had a choice to make. Go through the door from the living room to the room on the other side, or enter the other room from the corridor. Eyes narrowed, she looked around and found an ornate chair that was heavy but that she could carry without dragging it on the floor. She moved it to under the knob of the internal access door, blocking it as an exit route, then returned to the corridor.

Back near the entrance, Penelope was flopping around, hair all over her face as she attempted to move, one bare breast and thigh exposed. Confirming with a glance that the other woman wouldn’t be going anywhere, Ashwini opened a door on the left. It proved to be a closet filled with velvet and lace coats, along with what appeared to be a hooded black cape. Closing it, she cleared the two other rooms on the left while keeping an eye on the open doorway that led into the room off the living area.

The first room on the left was some kind of rumpus room with a television and surprisingly laid-back furniture. Either Giorgio hadn’t gotten around to updating it or it was for the women. The other room was a toilet covered in fancy tile. So, likely, the remaining room hadn’t yet been updated. Dead certain someone was in the room she’d left for last, she made her way to the door.

At the same time, she swapped out her guns for knives. They’d make far less noise and not alert anyone else in the house. Then she drop-rolled into the room—to a rushing attack from a supernaturally pretty vampire with waves of golden hair. But Giorgio wasn’t used to fighting for his life. He went for where her body should’ve been, rather than where she actually was.

She’d come up into a crouch and thrust a knife into his gut before he could stop his headlong rush. His blood stained his white shirt scarlet. Well aware how quickly vamps his age could shrug off a gut wound, she thrust a second knife directly into his heart seconds after the first, then rose to stab a third into his neck from the side.