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When Cassidy met his eyes again, tears dripped from her chin into Eddie’s fur. Her whispered words shook with despair. “Right now…I don’t know how.”

11

You Belong to Me

Bijou will not survive this night.

That was Dominique’s first thought as he burst out of the dune the following evening. He didn’t know how the “vamp bitch” had found his lair, nor how he would hunt her down, but hunt her down he would—and destroy her. Avoiding her was no longer an option. Bijou would return and continue dismantling his life, even his sense of self, at leisure. She would condemn him to a hell of her choosing.

A hell Cassidy had no hope of surviving.

As he expected, the cottage was empty. Cassidy would be with Samantha, and, by extension, Serge, who had sworn to act as her vigilant guard tonight, leaving Dominique free to “pursue his destiny.” Destiny had nothing to do with the mission of extermination he had in mind. Nothing would stop him—as long as he could find her.

Which he did moments later.

The cloying gardenia scent enveloped him the moment he stepped into the boarded-up back bedroom that had once been his sanctuary. Growling, he scanned the deserted room. She couldn’t possibly have been here tonight already. So, how had her fragrance lingered in here for an entire day?

The answer sat propped against the lamp on the nightstand. He snatched up the envelope emblazoned with his name in elegant cursive script and tore it open. The velvet green card inside held a silver-inscribed invitation.

“Club Bijou,” he read, incredulous, and flipped the card over. A West Palm Beach address. Too easy.

Dangerously easy.

As he got into his leathers and secured the boots on his feet, his mind sifted through the possibilities. She would expect him. Taking her up on the invitation was the surest way of locating her. Also, the surest way of walking into a trap.

Either way, he would be prepared.

Hung up in the center of one wall was a daisho set of sixteenth-century samurai swords. He retrieved them reverently, feeling the weight of their history balance in his hands. Sinuous dragons circled the ebony scabbards and brass hand guards. Their tiny golden brothers lay embedded in the hilts' wrapping, waiting to lend their mythic powers to the bearer. A gift from his once dearest friend, they had been merely decorative collector items during his mortal days. During his immortal nights, these blades had become indispensable tools of survival. And the dragons—symbols of wisdom and cunning—served as his frequent reminders that he was more than a creature of raw strength and impulse.

He slung them across his back cross-wise so that one hilt was accessible over each shoulder. Feeling them settle against his back calmed him, helped him focus on the task ahead.

The card, he tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket. He would be on guard, but he would proceed. He couldn’t afford not to.

Club Bijou was a converted two-story storefront on Clematis Street, the glittering hub of West Palm Beach nightlife. Most establishments were closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, but Club Bijou was lit up in a garish red as though dipped in fresh blood. Mesmeric music throbbed from deep within.

Two bulky, grim-faced men in suits, their eyes hidden behind dark glasses, flanked the double brass doors. A velvet rope blocked access, but they unlatched this from time to time for a trickle of patrons. When Dominique approached, one of the men held up his hand. “I’m sorry, sir. You can’t bring in weapons.”

Dominique pitched his voice into its more persuasive registers. “Yes. I can.”

The human bouncer raised a brow. “No, sir. You can’t,” said his partner.

Taken aback, Dominique tried again with more force. The reaction was slower, but the brutes still refused the compulsion…because someone had already compelled them, he realized. Someone formidable.

Unease crawled under his skin. Just how strong was this Bijou? Or were there others here? How foolish would it be to confront her—them?—without his weapons? He glanced up the front of the building, seeking a place to leave the swords where they might still be accessible, and found instead a still figure silhouetted in the smoked upstairs windows. He didn’t need to see the face to know who was watching him. So much for the element of surprise.

He blurred away. Twenty seconds later, he was back, minus the blades, which now lay tucked away on the roof of a neighboring restaurant. One of the recalcitrant bouncers scrutinized the invitation Dominique presented, nodded his approval, and unhooked the velvet rope to the golden doors encrusted with imitation gemstones.

The club’s ground floor was a restaurant and bar filled with small tables and booths. Engraved slabs of glass glowing with green light served as partitions, making the whole interior feel like an algae-infested underwater venue. A “Closed for Thanksgiving” sign hung at the hostess station, but a handful of humans hunched at the bar, their attention glued to the game on the flat-screen. The chandelier hanging over the reception area clinked with the thumping music upstairs.

Bijou waited for him at the foot of a curved, translucent stairway. A black leather mini dress appeared to be painted onto the porcelain canvas of her skin. Stiletto-heeled boots rose to her thighs. She regarded him with eyes like cold emeralds set in white satin. Her petite mouth pouted. “Do you bring weapons to all your social engagements?”

“I like to be prepared,” he countered, every sense keyed for clues about her intentions.

The smell of gardenia swamped him. It was a strange, too sweet scent, and he wondered if he read it correctly. Blood-drinkers could estimate each other’s age and abilities on a scale that followed the progression of time in the natural world. The ice and snow of winter belonged to the newly turned, like himself. Serge’s mossy aroma heralded the beginning of summer and several centuries gone. Somewhere in between there was spring, a time of sweet grasses and flowers, presumably like Bijou. Or so he believed. Given the power of the compulsion on the bouncers outside, he was no longer so sure.

“So you come prepared to kill your own kind? A little extreme, non?”

Several replies crowded his tongue. He swallowed them all. Betraying the extent of his fury would put her on guard and lose him whatever advantage he still had. While she considered his silence, he calculated the odds of shattering the glass steps and using a sharp edge to rid her of her head. Then she laughed, shattering his concentration instead.