"That's funny. He said the same thing about you. He said a lot of things, actually. Crazy things, like how your partner brutally assaulted him last night."
"What?"
"He said he'd been bitten, Dante. Can you explain that to me? He said the man you were with when the two of you broke into Ben's apartment took him away in a car and then savagely attacked him. According to Ben, he was bitten in the throat."
"Son of a bitch."
"Can that be true?" she asked, horrified that he hadn't even attempted to deny it was possible. "Do you know where Ben is? I haven't heard from him since that call. Have you or your friends done something to him? I have to see him."
"No! I don't know where he is, Tess, but you have to promise me you'll stay away from him."
Tess felt miserable, scared, and confused. "What's happening here, Dante? What are you really involved in?"
"Tess, look. I need you to go somewhere safe. Right now. Go to a hotel, a public building, anywhere --just go right now and stay there until I can come and get you tonight."
Tess laughed, but it was a humorless sound that grated in her ears. "I'm working, Dante. And even if I wasn't, I don't think I'd go anywhere to wait for you. Not until I understand what's going on here."
"I will tell you, Tess. I promise you. I had planned to tell you all of it, even if this hadn't happened."
"Okay, fine. My schedule is booked solid today, but I can break for lunch in a couple of hours. If you want to talk to me, you'll have to come here."
"I... God damn it. I can't do that right now, Tess. I just... can't. It has to be tonight. You have to trust me."
"Trust you," she whispered, closing her eyes and tipping her head back against the office door. "I guess that's something I can't do right now, Dante. I have to go. Good-bye."
She flipped the cell phone closed and shut the ringer off altogether. She didn't want to talk anymore, not to anyone.
As Tess walked over to put the cell on her desk, her gaze caught on something else that had been troubling her since she'd found it earlier that morning. It was a computer flash drive, a slim, portable data-storage device. She'd discovered it underneath the lip of the examination table in one of her clinic rooms--the very room where Ben had been yesterday, when she'd caught him unexpectedly and he'd made excuses that he came in to repair the table's sticky hydraulics. Tess had suspected he wasn't being truthful with her--about a lot of things. Now she knew that was the case. But the question was, why?
In a furious mental outburst, Dante glared at his cell phone and sent the device hurtling against the opposite wall of his living quarters. It shattered with the impact, emitting a shower of sparks and smoke as it broke into a hundred tiny pieces. The destruction was satisfying, if brief. But it did nothing to assuage his anger, all of it self-directed.
Dante resumed the tight pacing he'd been doing while on the phone with Tess. He needed to be moving now. He just needed to keep his limbs in action, his mind alert.
He'd been making a brilliant mess of everything lately. While he'd never held an inkling of regret for being born of the Breed, now his vampire blood seethed with frustration over the fact that he was trapped inside. Denied the possibility of fixing things with Tess until the sun finally retreated below the horizon and freed him to move about in her world.
He thought the wait was going to drive him out of his mind.
It nearly had.
By the time he went to find Tegan in the training facility at a few minutes to sundown, his skin was hot and prickling, too tight everywhere. He was antsy and itching for combat. His ears were ringing, the incessant buzz like a swarm of bees in his blood.
"You ready to roll, T?"
The tawny-haired Gen One warrior looked up from the Beretta he was loading and gave a cold smile as the clip snapped into place. "Let's do it."
Together they headed up the winding corridor of the compound to the elevator that would take them to the Order's fleet garage on street level.
As the doors closed, Dante's nostrils began to tickle with the acrid tang of smoke. He glanced at Tegan, but the other male seemed unaffected, his gem-green eyes fixed before him, characteristic in their unblinking, emotionless calm.
The elevator car began its silent climb upward. Dante felt an intense heat lapping at him from the ghost of a flame, just waiting for him to slow down enough that it could catch him. He knew what this was, of course. The death vision had been dogging him all day, but he'd managed to beat it back, refusing to give in to the sensory torture when he needed his head fully in the game tonight.
But now, as the elevator reached its destination, the precognition slammed into his head like a hammer. Dante went down on one knee, leveled by the force of the hit.
"Jesus," Tegan said from beside him as Dante felt the warrior take his arm to keep him from sprawling on the elevator floor. "What the hell? You all right?"
Dante couldn't answer. His sight filled with billowing black smoke shot with bright plumes of flame. Over the crackle and hiss of encroaching fire, he could hear someone talking--taunting him, it seemed-- the voice low, indistinct. This was new, a further detail in the elusive nightmare he'd come to know so well.
He blinked away some of the haze, struggling to stay present. To stay conscious. He caught a glimpse of Tegan's face in front of him. Shit, he must look bad, because the warrior who was known for his ruthless lack of feeling now suddenly flinched back, pulling his hand away from Dante's arm with a hiss. Behind his pained grimace, the tips of Tegan's fangs shone white. His light brows dropped down low over his narrowed emerald eyes.