She'd been the whole reason for calling in this favor with Rowan. He would know what to do with her. He, better than Chase, would be the best one to retrieve her and bring her to the Order where she'd be protected from Dragos and his servants and allies.
Safe from Chase himself too.
"Christ," he muttered, raking a hand over his head as he made another circuit of the study. She hadn't left his mind since the moment she'd run out, and even now he couldn't help wondering where she was, whom she was with ... whether she was safe.
Part of him wanted to go after her, even more than he wanted to feed.
Part of him simply wanted her, and that was not good news at all.
Not in the dangerous shape he was in. Not when Dragos was still out there, making his Minions and plotting his next strike against the Order.
Maybe against the world as a whole.
That thought alone was enough to wrench his head back on track. Chase had no business worrying about the safety of one female - even a female as extraordinary as Tavia Fairchild. His life was already near to forfeit. Hell, he'd been willing to throw it away numerous times in the past few months. If he could get close enough to Dragos to take the bastard out, he'd gladly spend his last breath to make it happen.
But first he needed to be sure that Tavia wouldn't get caught in the crossfire. And that meant getting her under the Order's protection.
Where the f**k was Rowan?
When the rap of the brass knocker on the brownstone's front door sounded a moment later, Chase opened the heavy oak panel on a growled curse. "About damn time you - "
It wasn't Mathias Rowan standing there. It was Tavia. She waited on the stoop in the dark, shivering in just a turtleneck sweater, loose jeans, and leather flats. "I've been walking for hours. I ... didn't know where to go." She took a breath. It was a ragged, shaky inhalation. She blew it out on a steaming gust that sounded very close to a sob. "I killed someone today." "Jesus Christ." Everything else fell away as he stared at Tavia's stricken expression. Chase stepped out and wrapped his arm around her trembling shoulders. "Come inside."
She felt wooden as he guided her into the foyer, moving with robotic stiffness. Shock, he guessed, looking at her unfocused gaze and the slack lines of her face. "Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?"
She gave a weak shake of her head. "He tried to kill me. I think he was going to poison me with something. He said it would make me feel better, but I knew he was lying. There was something very wrong about him. I just sensed it, even before he attacked me. I killed him. I killed Dr. Lewis." She took another hitching breath as a shudder ran through her from head to foot. "I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go or whom I could trust. Somehow, I ended up here."
"It's okay," he said. "Come on, let's get you warm."
He brought her into the study and sat her down on the shrouded chair. He crouched in front of her and took her hands between his to rub some heat into them. When he looked up at her, there were tears welling in her eyes. "My aunt Sarah," she murmured. "She's dead too. She cut her own throat, right in front of me."
"I'm sorry," Chase said, hearing the pain and confusion in her broken voice.
"I don't understand how they could both lie to me. All my life, they'd been lying to me." She frowned, gave a slow shake of her head. "And their eyes. I never noticed how cold their eyes were. Dr. Lewis and Aunt Sarah - they'd changed somehow."
"No, Tavia. It was you who changed." He held her confused gaze. "You wouldn't have noticed anything unusual because until today you were living as a human. Your true nature was being suppressed, no doubt by the same medicines you thought were helping you. I don't think you were ever sick."
She listened in silence for a long moment, absorbing his words. "They betrayed me. They never cared about me, did they? I saw that today, when each of them looked at me. There was such a terrible emptiness in their eyes. Like a shark's eyes."
Chase grunted, knowing that look well. "They were Minions. All of them have that same dead glint in their eyes. You'll know it right away when you see them."
"Minions?"
He nodded. "Humans bled to the brink of death and turned mind slaves by a powerful member of my kind." He traced his thumb over the tangled pattern of dermaglyphs that swept along the underside of her wrist. "Our kind."
She drew her hands out of his grasp. "Vampires." She swallowed, fine brows knit together. "Is that what I am - a vampire? I know that's what you are. Isn't it?"
"Not exactly."
"Then what, exactly?" she demanded, shooting up from the chair, her voice climbing toward panic. "What the hell is happening to me? Tell me what's going on!"
He stood along with her. "I'm not sure what you are, Tavia. Or how you can be what you seem to be. I've never seen anything like you. No one has. What you are is ... impossible." "Great." She made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. "So, I'm a monster. Even by your standards."
Ah, Christ. He was not the person to explain all of this to her. His days of diplomacy and gentle conversation were long gone. Better that she learn what she needed to know from Mathias Rowan, someone still a part of Darkhaven culture who could ease her into the truth. But even as he thought it, Chase bristled a bit at the idea of Tavia being schooled by someone else. Particularly someone as noble and charming and smoothly mannered as Mathias Rowan.
Not that Tavia Fairchild seemed like a woman who needed handling with kid gloves.
And for better or worse, at the moment, Chase was all she had.