“This is it,” she said, jerking him out of his dismal thoughts. He scanned the surroundings, moving only his eyes, as he had when scouting the enemy after hearing unexpected voices.
“It’s dark,” he said in surprise.
She gave him a puzzled look. “Uh, yeah? There’s still some light over the horizon, but the sun pretty much set, I don’t know, twenty minutes ago?”
He nodded, eyeing the neighborhood. They were on a narrow street, with limited traffic lanes in both directions, although theirs seemed to be the only vehicle in sight. Widely spaced houses—big houses—lined both sides of the street, with dark green foliage providing shade, as well as concealment for whoever lived there. As they drove, he caught glimpses of water between the properties, with a number of boats tied up at docks. Some of those boats weren’t all that different from the ones used by invaders to challenge his goddess’s rule, with tall masts and sturdy sails. Others were low-slung, elegant things that looked more like something to be admired, rather than sailed across the sea. But then, he reminded himself, the sea here—or the ocean, as Mae would have corrected him—was an enormous expanse of water called the Atlantic. She’d shown him pictures of the ships that traveled that ocean—giant vessels as big as his father’s castle.
He glanced over when she began whispering numbers under her breath, her gaze riveted to the houses on their right. So, whoever this Nick Katsaros was, his home was on the water. They’d reached the rounded end of the street before she pulled to the side and pointed at the house sitting right in the middle of that curve, taking up twice as much space as its neighbors. The house wasn’t as ornate as some they’d passed, but it was still grand, with two stories of white stone, shuttered windows and a wide portico sheltering a pair of glass inlaid doors. The same dark green plants surrounded the house, with the ones edging the doorway sporting brightly colored flowers.
He grimaced, seeing those flowers. They didn’t seem like the sort of thing Nico would have cultivated. But then, maybe he had a woman who did it for him.
“That’s the house,” Maeve said, confirming his assumption. “There’s a lot of cars,” she added thoughtfully, and Dragan noticed for the first time, that there were, in fact, four separate vehicles parked behind the open wrought-iron gates. As they watched, a fifth vehicle—a black SUV much bigger than theirs—passed them and drove through those gates to park next to the others.
A woman opened the passenger door and hopped to the ground. “She’s wearing a shoulder holster,” Mae observed. “That’s interesting.”
But Dragan barely heard her over the noise in his head as the driver opened his door and stepped out. He was a huge man, as big as Dragan himself, with a deep chest and broad shoulders. The man laughed and called something over the top of the vehicle to the woman, giving Dragan his first good look at the man’s face. . . . The noise in his head exploded, leaving his thoughts clear and focused as he shoved open the door and strode down the street, his long legs eating up the distance as the man turned to stare at the stranger coming their way with such startling intent. And then he shouted incoherently and began running.
MAEVE HAD HER door open, and was fumbling to turn off the engine, as she shouted Dragan’s name. He hadn’t seemed to hear her when he charged down the street, his boots pounding with every step as he stormed toward the house that she thought belonged to Nicodemus Katsaros. But it might not, and Dragan’s determined march upon seeing the new couple arrive didn’t do anything to reassure her. For all she knew, they were some ancient enemy in cahoots with Sotiris. Or maybe they were innocent strangers who just happened to resemble that past enemy. All she knew was that she had to catch up with him before the shit hit the fan, because the woman with the shoulder holster had now pulled her weapon and was aiming it at Dragan, her head moving as she kept looking from her companion to Dragan and back again, as if waiting for instructions.
Maeve grabbed her own weapon from the console where she’d stowed it, because carrying it on her hip was too uncomfortable and she hadn’t expected any violence at this point. Maybe a wrong house, a quick apology to a stranger answering the door. But this? What was this?
She raced after Dragan, still calling his name, but he was too fast for her, and now the other man was striding forward with just as much determination, shouting in a language she didn’t understand. The two were only feet apart. Her heart pounded. She was too late. But then . . . the two men embraced with a thunderous clap of massive chests and pounding fists, and she realized . . . they were happy. Dragan’s grin was bigger than any she’d seen from him, the joy on his face so huge that her heart ached just looking at it. Was this big man Nico? And who was the woman?
She slowed her approach, coming within a few feet of Dragan, who seemed utterly unaware of her. She glanced at the other woman, and saw she was putting her gun away. She was beautiful, Maeve noted in passing. Japanese, with gorgeous eyes and long, straight black hair that Maeve would have killed for when she was younger. But she wasn’t about to kill over it now, and since the guys seemed happy enough with each other, she put her gun away, too, clipping the paddle holster, with the gun still inside, to the belt on her jeans. The woman stared at her for a minute or two, then shrugged and turned her attention back to the two men who were going on rapidly and, as far as she could tell, happily in the same unknown language they’d been shouting earlier.
The beautiful woman inched closer to Maeve, clearly wanting to communicate, but not yet certain of her reception.
“Hey,” Maeve said, figuring she was the uninvited stranger and therefore required to begin the conversation. “I’m Maeve, and that’s Dragan. But I guess you know that.”
“Hana,” the woman replied. “And, no, I don’t know Dragan, but Gabriel obviously does. That’s Gabriel,” she added belatedly. “We should probably go inside. Judging by the cars, the others are already here, and it’d be better if this reunion was out of sight.” She walked over to Gabriel, put a hand on his back, and said his name.
He spun at the touch and put an arm around her, pulling her to his side. “This is Hana,” he said just as happily. “Elskling,” he said, with such a strong accent that Maeve knew it was a foreign word, “this is Dragan. He’s the reason we’re here tonight. We were supposed to find him, but instead, he’s come to us!”
Maeve couldn’t help smiling at the joy in those words, and she knew this had to be one of Dragan’s brothers, the warriors who’d fought side-by-side with him. Hana had said the others were inside, which she figured meant that Nico was, too. She’d been right about that much at least. She’d succeeded in helping Dragan find his people, which made it worth all the stress, the vampires attacking her, the guy trying to kill them . . . all of it was worthwhile to see the elation on his face.