sun. She’d deliberately stayed far enough away that she hoped he wouldn’t sense her, but God knew she could still sense him. Not the killing machine part of him, but the man. The man who, she realized, had wept at the sight of all the carnage he’d caused. The man who’d kissed her as if she were the first shelter he’d seen on an endless trek across a burning desert. As if she were his first sip of water.
And she had to kill him.
God, what the hell was wrong with the world, anyway?
She sighed and dragged her attention back to the scene unfolding below. In spite of her mission, she found herself feeling ridiculously glad some Good Samaritan was taking pity on the once great king. Oh, she had no doubt the guy would regret it later, once he realized that Utana was completely off his rocker—a fact the stranger should have picked up on from the simple fact that Utana was wearing a filthy bedsheet like a toga.
Wait, something was happening. The local was opening the passenger side door of his SUV. Holding it as if he expected Utana to get in.
Hell, no, Brigit thought. There was no way he would trust a stranger, much less a mortal one.
Utana turned then, gazing in her direction as if he sensed her there. She sidestepped, ducking behind a bushy-boughed sentinel pine.
And then she heard him, speaking to her with his mind as clearly as if he were standing beside her, saying his words into her ear, his voice deep and resonant and sending chills up her spine.
I will not kill you yet, Brigit of the Vahmpeers. His thoughts were clear, their meaning overriding his broken English. When I have done the rest, I will ask the Anunaki to spare you. Perhaps they will agree.
A red haze of fury rose up in her, and she stepped out from behind the tree. You’ll let me live to see all those I love die before me? And you’re expecting my gratitude for that?
It is all I can do.
He lowered his head, bent low to get into the car.
Hey! Where the hell do you think you’re going? Don’t you know better than to trust strangers? Hey!
But he got into the car anyway, and the man closed the passenger door, then went around to the driver’s side and got in. The car moved away, and Brigit had no idea where it was taking her quarry.
She was cold, tired, hungry and pissed. She was frustrated as all hell and wishing for a way to shirk the duty that had fallen to her to carry out. And she had a long walk on her hands, back to Bangor where she’d left her car and her supplies.
But she needed to know where this idiot was taking Utana before she acted on any of those pressing matters. And so she set off on foot, calling on her superhuman—though not quite vampiric—levels of speed and endurance to pull it off.
She followed the SUV to a small no-tell motel on the outskirts of Bangor, grateful that they were at least heading in the same general direction as her car. The two men got out and opened a door a third of the way along the single-story motel. Room 6, she noted.
And then, as she stood there, an aroma turned her head around. There was a diner across the street. Her stomach growled like a pit bull at the smell of used French fry grease. God, she needed food. She didn’t know what was going on in that motel room, but she would have a clear view of it from the diner. She could watch just as easily from a table along the front wall, with a big fat plate of empty calories in front of her, right?
Right.
So she straightened away from the telephone pole she’d been leaning against and walked across the cracked blacktop to the greasy spoon.
She laughed, because that really was the name of the place. The Greasy Spoon.
The bell above the door jangled when she walked in, and a woman said, “Just sit wherever you want, hon. Coffee?”
“Yeah. A gallon or so,” Brigit answered without looking.
Then she slid into a booth along the front, her eyes still on the motel across the street.
A filled coffee mug clunked down in front of her. “Are you the wife, or the P.I. working for the wife?” the waitress asked.
Brigit darted a glance the other woman’s way and got stuck. She’d expected the clichéd red or blond beehive with pencils sticking out. Instead, she saw a careworn face, silver-gray curls and a smoker’s wrinkled upper lip. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re watching that mo-tel like it’s gonna get up and run off if you turn your head. You got a husband having a fling behind your back?”
“Oh.” She got it now. “No, no husband.” She showed off a bare ring finger. “Just a friend I’m going to, uh … surprise.”
“Uh-huh. You want food?”
“Something fast. What’s ready?”
“French toast can be on your plate in ten minutes.”
“Make it five and I’ll double your tip.”
“Deal.”
Four minutes later Brigit was wolfing down a stack of syrup-drenched, piping hot, buttery French toast that was actually pretty damned good.
She slugged down the coffee, getting up and digging in her pockets for cash.
“The breakfast is five bucks honey,” the woman called from behind the counter. “And here’s a coffee to go, on me.” She slid a capped, extra-large cup across the counter.
“Thanks. I’m grateful.” Tossing two fives onto the counter, Brigit grabbed the cup and turned. She needed the caffeine boost. She was blocking her presence from Utana as thoroughly as she could, mentally maintaining an invisible and impenetrable shield around her aura. It was exhausting, and yet vital.
The men were still in the motel room. What the hell were they doing in there?
She left the diner, cup in hand, and glanced up and down the winding road. The motel was covered in white clapboard siding, with brick-red trim, shutters and doors. Each door bore a metallic, gold-toned number. A sidewalk ran along the front, and the semicircular strip of blacktopped parking had room for one vehicle per door.
A smaller, square detached structure bore a sign that said Office.
Behind it, there was a big empty rolling field full of brambles, briars and weeds. And that, she supposed, was where she was going to have to go. Sighing in resignation, she headed up the road until she rounded a bend and was out of sight. Then she jumped the ditch and jogged far enough into the giant weed patch to be invisible, and from there she began making her way back toward the motel.
She emerged from the weeds directly behind it and began counting the windows, trying to match them up with the doors in the front. When she got to the one she thought went with Room 6, she crept closer.
The window was a little too high for her, but she located a loose cinder block beneath the oblong fuel tank in the back, dragged it closer and stood on it. She took a quick peek inside, then ducked down,
