Page 65 of Lover Forbidden
Except maybe it would have been better to free-fall.
A large figure cut a shadow through the glare coming out of the stairwell, and she had an instant regret. She had no weapons, no training, and if this was the slayer she’d sent her brother to kill—
Whatever it was turned its head toward her. And that’s when sheheard an all-too-familiar voice—and not her brother’s or L.W.’s or Shuli’s.
“Lyric? What are you doing out here?”
Oh,fuck.
Dev.
Getting into the apartment building had been the work of a moment, and Shuli was glad that at least the entry had been no-drama. The other two had waited for him to arrive around back, and then even before they’d gotten a plan together, someone had come out of the rear door—not that they couldn’t have opened the thing, but hey, easy peasy thanks to the unwitting welcoming party. The basement had been clean—both from a housekeeping perspective and because it waslesser-free—so they’d found the open stairwell and gone up to the lobby on the first floor.
Nothing.
No baby-powder bullshit. No sounds of any struggle. No guns discharging anywhere.
“Up,” Rhamp said softly.
L.W. and Shuli nodded, and they silently ascended in formation, with Lyric’s brother in front.
At every level… nothing.
Well, nolessers. There were a lot of humans behind the numbered doors—which was a big change from the walk-ups and buildings Shuli usually swept through: The real estate in the field was always vacated and crumbling. Here, you had voices, televisions, food smells. And on the whole, he never had any problems with those rats without tails, at least not until they were inducted into the Lessening Society—hell, he got very close to countless women on a very regular basis.
At the moment, though? He found himself hating everybody in the building.
Okay, not all of them, he corrected as they continued upward. Just the man Lyric was clearly seeing.
Holy fuck. It had been plain as the expression on her face she wasinvolved with someone—and it was also very obvious that whoever it was, she wasn’t saying anything about him.
Had to be a human.
As Shuli stepped off onto the fourth floor, his eyes scanned the hall. Which one of the doors was his? Probably better not knowing—given how protective Rhamp was of his sister, if they found the fucker, things were going to get real messy, real quick, and not because of anything to do with a slayer.
Hell, Shuli was feeling a little fangy himself.
Make that a lot fang-ish, even though he had no right.
They kept going on the ascent, saying nothing, communicating through eye contact, not that there was much to talk about.
When they got to the top floor—lucky number seven—they stopped and listened. Tested the air for scents. Looked around—
A sudden creak and thump shot his head to the left.
Next to the stairwell, a door marked “Roof Access” was closing next to him, and he flared his nostrils. No scent oflesser.
Meanwhile, Rhamp leaned over the stairwell banister and looked all the way down to where they’d started their march. L.W. was the one who wandered, stalking halfway down the hall.
After glancing around, Shuli reached out and quietly cranked the door’s knob. There was a dead bolt mounted on the jamb, but as he pulled things open just a little, he saw that the slug had been removed from its internals, and the hole it was supposed to plug into was stuffed with what looked like paper.
Flaring his nostrils, he leaned into the chilly staircase, and caught sight of the door at the top bouncing closed. Thanks to thermodynamics, the heat from the hall wafted upward, greedy for its liberation into the cold, so he got nothing.
If it had been a slayer who’d passed by here in the hall to get the door? They would have left plenty of nasty-scented molecules lingering in the air. The half-life on that shit was a good two weeks.
“Guess she was wrong,” Shuli muttered as he eased back and shut things.
“Or it left.” Rhamp shrugged as he straightened and turned away from the drop. “We could stake out, but I’m supposed to be in the field with John Matthew. A position here would be hard to account for.”
