She saw in the mirror that he was staring at her back and at the damp towel beside her.
“What’s wrong with your blood?” he asked.
“Nothing’s wrong with it.”
“It has no color at all.”
“What’s that to you?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, or like you.”
“No,” Avery agreed, sliding her arms into her sleeves. “Other than your comment being incredibly rude, I’m sure you haven’t seen anything like me.”
Glossing over her feisty comeback, he tried again to engage her. “Where do you come from?”
She was fairly sure he didn’t mean the city or region of the world, but something deeper and having to do with her origins...as if she’d blow more of her cover and cough up her secrets because he asked her to.
Turning halfway around, she parried, “Is this an interrogation? Are you London’s supernatural sheriff?”
“Only an interested party.”
“Where I came from is none of your business.”
“Maybe it isn’t. What about your scars?”
“Rude again, and definitely not your concern.”
Persistence was another well-honed Blood Knight trait.
“Is there anything you can tell me about yourself that might help me to understand what you want here?” he asked in a lowered tone that caused Avery’s new tats to ache more than they already did.
“It’s late,” she said. “Maybe you have a job to do that doesn’t include wasting time in a tattoo parlor.”
“Not tonight. Everyone got a free pass in your honor.”
“Do you suppose the bad guys will thank me?”
Don’t let him in. Do not get close, Avery’s mind warned.
Remember who you are, and get away.
None of that was easy at the moment, however. She wasn’t just confronting a Blood Knight. She was confronting an old set of wishes long ago tamped down. This glorious creature had always made her want to forget her rage and her vows to keep clear of him and the others like him. The pressure she felt to fight her way out of the room was outrageous.
If she’d had her wings, the real ones, she could have bested this Knight in seconds. Although he was incredibly strong, she would have been the strongest. Wingless, she was unwhole, halved, severed from the rest of her kind with her strength vastly diminished.
“Go away,” Avery managed to say.
“Answers first,” he said.
Pursuing their prey is what Blood Knights did best, and she was now at the top of that list.
Want to know who I am, Knight?
What if I tell you that your inner light was stolen from me, tortured out of my veins? What then? Would you thank me for your light and for your agile prowess? Someone should.
Stopping the internal chatter was imperative. She felt him tuning in to her. Hers wasn’t the only pulse skyrocketing. The rapid beat of his heart added to the tension in the air.
The truth was that in this guy’s voice, and in his golden presence, Avery heard the far-off rattle of the chains that had bound her to the Earth in his honor.
“You’re immortal, and yet have no sigils,” the magnificent bastard noted with a focus hotter than the artist’s needles.
Avery hated how he unsettled her.
“I suppose the saving grace is that the new designs look like they belong there,” he added. “Somehow, the wings suit you.”
Too damn personal...
Avery whirled around. The creature in the doorway had seen the wings, her new talismans, when she hadn’t had the chance. He had viewed her bare skin, scars and all. And now that she had lost some of her hard-won control, he had seen her face.
Would she let him get away with that? She had wiped minds for less. She had killed to remain anonymous in a crowded modern world. But none of those things was an option here with someone whose strength so closely matched hers at the moment. She had been sloppy and had not covered her tracks well enough. This meeting was her fault. There was no do-over, only escape.
She did not meet that heated gaze.
“Sigils are in these days. Didn’t you know?” she remarked, reaching for her jacket.
“Sigils.” He repeated the word. “Was that what you were looking for here, in a place like this?”
“Actually, that would have been useless, don’t you think, when you have to be born with those kinds of marks, or be born because of them?”
She was getting warmer, catching the fever that came with speaking about forbidden things. Her shoulders were on fire. Real wings would have taken her away from this confrontation. An inked span was nothing more than make-believe.
Still, the inked wings were an added reminder that if she stopped looking for the missing pieces of herself now, she would never know a moment’s peace. If she became distracted after all this time, and after believing she was closing in on the very thing she sought...all the years of searching and hating and destruction that had gotten her to this point wouldn’t be worth one single breath.
She wanted to look at him, but didn’t dare.
“I wonder if you’ll tell me what you are if I ask nicely enough?” he said. “And also who made you.”
“I’m afraid you have taken up far too much of my time already.” That remark actually sounded breathless. The airless room was stifling.
“Places to go? People to see?” he asked.
Avery ignored the remark. She was in need of fresh air and alone time, and he was in the way.
“I’m leaving.” She got to her feet, meeting his gaze at last.
He leaned against the doorjamb as if he had suddenly experienced a moment of weakness. But he rallied quickly. The devastatingly handsome head shook. Blue eyes burned bright.
“They will be waiting for you. London’s monsters,” he warned.
“They won’t find me.”
“I did.”
“You don’t understand...” Avery began, without finishing what she had been about to say. This Knight wasn’t to know anything about her quest. The Perceval of old had died, losing his mortal flesh, and had been resurrected by a golden kiss from a holy relic. After feeling Death’s black breath, his path had been clear. That had not been the case for her. And by the way, she wanted to shout, monsters no longer concern me.
“I’m trying to be polite, and you’re not making it easy,” he said. “What if I came here to welcome you to London, or to warn you about what lurks here?”
“Have you honestly come here for either of those things?” Avery challenged.
“No,” he confessed. “I came because I was intrigued by the sudden appearance of a stranger I couldn’t place.”
The tractor-beam of his blue-eyed scrutiny left Avery feeling as though she were still half naked. She also felt vulnerable when vulnerable wasn’t in her vocabulary and never had been. She’d been in battles this Blood Knight couldn’t even dream of, and had emerged unscathed. Damn straight she could handle this unexpected meeting.
“I