Page 4 of The Seeker
“In the morning?” Rhys curled his lip. He was a night owl.
“Nine in the morning, my friend.”
Rhys’s eyes locked on the dark-haired man walking out of the diner with a woman on his arm. It was the Grigori and the young waitress. He opened his car door and spit the toothpick on the ground. “Max, I have to go. I’ll call you when I get on the road.”
“What are you doing?”
Rhys slid his hand into his pocket, his fingers curling around the hilt of a silver dagger. “Just a little hunting. No need to be alarmed.”
“Be careful. The Houston house thinks you’re a mild-mannered scholar on vacation.”
“Of course I am,” Rhys muttered. “Goodbye, Max.”
He hung up before his brother could say another word. He tossed the phone in the passenger seat and closed the car door. The Grigori and the woman had disappeared to the back of the parking lot. Perhaps the Grigori had convinced the woman to give him a ride to a more secluded location where he could feed from her.
Grigori were soul hungry. Human mythology called them incubi or vampires. Even cannibals. They fed from the soul energy that all human beings possess, though most preferred women. Women they could lure with their looks and their scent. They were born predators, dark sons of heaven made to seduce and feed.
In a shadowed corner of the back parking lot, Rhys saw the Grigori pressing the woman against her car, kissing her neck as her head was thrown back. She was panting, her breasts heaving in a macabre imitation of pleasure. In reality, there could be no pleasure for her because the Grigori’s bare hands were pressed to her stomach and back, his touch robbing the waitress of her will. She was putty in the creature’s hands, willing to do anything he asked, his touch more effective than a drug.
Rhys approached quietly, but the Grigori sensed him. The creature spun, keeping one hand on the woman.
“You,” he hissed.
“If you were smart,” Rhys said, “you’d already be running.”
The Grigori’s eyes were cold and blank. No hint of conscience warmed them. “She wanted me. She said yes.”
“She doesn’t know what you are.” Rhys glanced at the woman. Her eyes were closed. She was still panting. Her moans of pleasure scraped against his ears like nails on slate. “Get away from her.”
The Grigori hesitated, his eyes narrowed in growing panic. Rhys noticed the second the man decided to run. He broke away from the woman and lunged to the left, dashing between cars as Rhys caught the human woman and laid her on the ground. Then he shot to his feet and ran after the man who was running toward Kirby Drive.
The older waitress walked out of the restaurant just as Rhys ran past.
“Your friend is in the back,” he yelled. “She’s hurt!”
Rhys left the humans and sprinted, waiting for the traffic to pass so he could follow the Grigori. Cars honked and drivers rolled down their windows to yell.
There.
Rhys caught a glimpse of the monster as he darted between two parked cars in a multistory parking garage. The Grigori might have been running to his own vehicle or simply trying to lose Rhys. Either way, it was going to die.
He paused when he entered the garage, brushing a thumb over thetalesm primon his left wrist and waiting for his senses to sharpen. In seconds, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, his heart rate steadied, and his ears picked up the footsteps running up the ramp and toward the roof. Rhys followed the sound, drawing the silver stiletto from its hidden sheath and gripping it tightly.
He reached the top of the garage and was barely breathing harder. The moon had disappeared behind a blue fog that drifted over the city, but yellow lights buzzed on the roof, casting strange overlapping shadows between the parked cars.
There were several rows, and Rhys walked among them deliberately, waiting for a sound, a scent, anything. He sorted through the acrid smells of burning sulfur, exhaust, and mold.
There.
A row of pickup trucks caught his eye, every one of them a potential hiding place for the Grigori.
“Who do you belong to?” Rhys asked. “Who commands you, Grigori?”
A creak near the blue truck.
Not the blue, the red.
“There are ways to live without killing,” Rhys said.
