A shiver squirmed down her spine.
Someone was watching them. She suddenly knew it as sure as she knew her own name.
“Come on, you two. Let’s go,” she said, doing her best to sound normal despite her rising anxiety. She urged the two young people toward the escalators that led to the block-long underground corridor connecting the Blue Line to the Red Line.
“Ah, crap. Why’s the up escalator always out when the down always works?” Aidan grumbled as he noticed that the escalator in the distance was at a standstill.
“Hey, Christina. You know that guy that was in your office very well?” Alison asked, apropos of nothing. Christina sensed the intensity behind the girl’s question, even though she seemed so casual asking it.
“You mean Saint?” Aidan asked. “My mom and I know him really well. You should listen to him, Alison.”
Despite her sudden haste to get off the subway platform, Christina’s feet faltered when she heard the very non-childlike tone of Aidan’s voice. Her eleven-year-old pinned Alison with a preternaturally alert stare. She opened her mouth to ask Aidan about his strange steadfastness when something made her turn around.
Dread sank in her chest when she saw several silent figures emerging from the restricted area at the north side of the platform. The shadows seemed to cling to the figures like claws until they finally separated into long black coats that fluttered in the still air.
“Come on. I’ll race you two to
the top of the escalator,” Christina challenged, her voice surprisingly steady.
There was enough of a kid left in Alison to make her dark blue eyes sparkle with mischief when they met Aidan’s. They began to run, their high-pitched cries of excitement bouncing off the walls of the subway tunnel, Alison’s guitar case thumping against her back as she ran. Christina unglued her gaze from the four dark, approaching figures when they, too, began to run.
She raced after Aidan and Alison.
“Keep going!” she yelled when she saw the two young people pull up short at the bottom of the escalator. Christina bumped into Alison’s guitar case as she skidded to a halt. She looked between Aidan’s and Alison’s shoulders and saw why they’d stopped so abruptly.
“Saint?” she asked incredulously.
“No,” Aidan said.
“Teslar,” Alison murmured in a shaky voice. The girl tried to step forward, but Christina restrained her with a hand on her shoulder.
He sprawled on the immobile escalator as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Supple black leather pants gleamed in the dim light when he pushed himself to a standing position, his movement graceful and sinuous as a panther.
Christina realized her mistake even before Aidan had corrected her. This man—this creature—was far, far from being Saint. His face may have been Saint’s, but his luxurious mane of blondish-brown hair hung down his shoulders and back. While Saint wore a neatly trimmed goatee that was a shade darker than the burnished hair on his head, this man was clean-shaven. He wore a pair of circular, mirrored sunglasses that hid his eyes.
Christina saw the reflection of Aidan’s pale, frightened face in them.
“Well, well, well. What have we here?”
His voice was very much like Saint’s—resonant, rich, and mesmerizing. She felt his eyes on her even through the dark glasses.
Heat bloomed beneath the surface of her skin.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw three males and one female standing behind them. All of them studied her with a glazed, manic expression in their eyes, each more rabid looking than the next. Two of the males had long, lethal-looking incisors protruding between their leering lips. The tallest male had a sculpted, classically handsome face and fashionably cut, mussed chestnut brown hair, but his eyes possessed the filmy quality of a corpse. The female’s face was hideously pockmarked with circular, unhealed sores.
She began to tremble at the bizarre, frightening sight. This couldn’t be happening.
Christina turned her attention back to the man who looked like Saint, knowing instinctively he was their leader.
“Let us pass.”
Saint’s look-alike slowly removed his glasses and latched a hungry stare on her. His shapely lips curved into smile that was awful to behold, not only because it reminded her of one of Saint’s infrequent, much-cherished smiles, but because it connoted anything but warmth. When he shifted his gaze to Aidan, Christina pulled her son against her.
“Like a welcoming beacon…a never-ending font of vitessence,” Christina thought she heard him mutter under his breath. The greed in his blue eyes alarmed her. She pushed slightly on Aidan’s left shoulder, nudging him both physically and telepathically toward the down escalator. He could run up it to safety if she could distract these beasts long enough.
“Teslar.”
Christina blinked when she realized it was Alison who called out. Her thin face seemed transformed by ecstasy. “Teslar,” she repeated, this time more loudly. He finally tore his gaze from Christina, a scowl marring his handsome face.