Lover Unveiled Page 4

Like the other capsules he’d ghosted through, this one was filled with glass shelves. It was what was on them that was a surprise—and considering he had sauntered through an entire room full of Victorian surgical instruments, that was saying something.

Oh, and then there’d been the bat skeletons.

“You went and bought a bunch of rocks,” he murmured. “Really. Like you didn’t have anything better to do with your money.”

Through the darkness, Balz drifted over the fancy parquet floor to something that looked like a loaf of pumpernickel bread that had been overproved. The thing was egg-shaped with a semi-solid core, its outside limits full of holes, the whole production set up on some kind of Lucite stand. A little nameplate that was brushed gold read: Willamette Fragment, 1902.

Each of the hunks seemed to be named for a place: Lübeck, 1916. Kitkiöjärvi, 1906. Poughkeepsie, 1968.

None of it made any sense—

Dover, 1833.

Balz frowned. And then, before he could do any conscious math on the date and place, the past slammed into him: Instantly, he was sucked away from the luxurious, weird condo, teleported by memory back to the Old Country . . . where he and the Band of Bastards had been living on their own in the forests, scrounging for food, for weapons, for lesser kills. Ah, those rough and exciting earlier years. They’d been the very opposite of where they were now, aligned with the Black Dagger Brotherhood and the First Family, crashing in a great gray mansion on top of a mountain, safe, sound, protected.

He missed some parts of the good ol’ nights. He wouldn’t change a thing about the present, though.

But yeah, back in March of 1833, in the Old Country, the bastards had been just rousing from the shallow cave they’d taken refuge in to avoid the sun during the day. Suddenly, overhead, a brilliant flash of light appeared to streak across the entire night sky, burning bright as a star and growing larger by the heartbeat, its tail a streamer of sparkling jewels.

They’d raced back into the cave and crouched down, arms over skulls to protect heads and faces.

Balz had thought that maybe the world was coming to an end, the Scribe Virgin finished with pussyfooting around with the species—or perhaps the Omega had discovered a new weapon against the vampires.

The explosion had been close by, the sound of the impact earsplitting, the ground quaking, stone particles falling on their shoulders as the structural integrity of the cave was challenged. After that . . . several minutes of waiting. And then they’d filed out and sniffed the air.

Iron. Burning iron.

They’d followed the metallic stench through the trees . . . to find a smoking burn pit with a small rock in the center. Like an odd, mystical bird-creature had laid a toxic egg.

Balz came back to the present and looked around again.

These were meteorites. All of these craggy chunks of God-only-knew-what had traveled through space and landed with fanfare on the earth. Only to be corralled here by a collector with a lot of money and an arguably clinical case of OCD.

“Fill your boots,” Balz muttered as he continued through.

It had taken him a couple of weeks to scope out this target—said research and stalking the anticipatory foreplay before the felonious orgasm. Husband was a hedge fund manager—which to Balz conjured up images of a man in a suit safeguarding $27.94 in bush trimmers. Wife was a former model—which meant she was still hot, just not photographed professionally now that she had a ring on it. Unsurprisingly, there was a nineteen-year age difference between the two, and given the life spans of humans, that wasn’t going to matter so much now when it was a case of late fifties vs. late thirties. Ten years from now? Twenty?

Hard to imagine that wife with the good bone structure and the superior posterior was going to find dentures and a walker worth rolling over for.

But whatever, when you were a manager of hedges that had funds, you needed a hot wife. You also required some real estate flex. Or six properties, as the case was. Here in Caldwell, the guy had purchased the top three levels of half the Commodore, and the layout of the triplex was logical. First floor was made up of big public spaces for entertaining—you know, for when you had to throw checks-for-canapés events to support local philanthropies. The second level was this rabbit warren of little rooms with their curated collections of space pebbles, nineteenth-century poke-and-tickle nightmares—and oh, yup, those three dozen bat skeletons that were like model ships only with wings.

Balz actually almost respected the guy’s taste.

As for the third floor? That was what he was after, and when he came up to the staircase, he ascended those marble steps on a whisper. Oil paintings by Banksy marked the curving wall, and up above, a chandelier strung with lead crystal prisms gleamed quietly, like a rambunctious debutante that had been told to pipe down at the ball. Up on the penthouse level, the wall-to-wall carpeting started, and there was a change in scents here, a flowery bouquet tinting the air with lavender, honeysuckle, and the lilting freedom that came with big fat bank statements.

Balz followed along the runner, the pile so thick it was like walking on Wonder Bread, the trail taking him by a lineup of arched windows that let in a glowing view of the skyscrapers and linking roadways below. The sight of the streaming lines of white headlights and red taillights, coupled with the glowing, graceful arches of the twin bridges, was so captivating he had to take a moment to appreciate the urban landscape.

And then he was on the move again.

The security system had been as expected, a high-level, integrated set of belt-and-antiburglar-suspenders that had been a fun challenge to disarm.

Hey, Vishous wasn’t the only one who was handy with the IT shit, ’kay?

It had been a moment of pride for Balz that he hadn’t had to consult the Brother with the Mensa membership about disarming all the motion detectors, door contacts, and laser-sighted sensors in the place. And the fact that Balz did the strip job all on his own was part of the rules he set for himself. These humans with their portable objects of value were sitting ducks for a thief like him: For all intents and purposes, in any conceivable house, condo, apartment, yacht, bunker, whatever, he could just dematerialize in through a plate glass window, put the inhabitants to sleep mentally, and use the five-finger discount to take what he wanted, when he wanted.

But that was like sitting down to Monopoly with a set of brass knuckles. If you could just knock out your opponent, grab all the hotels and houses, all the paper money, and all the properties? Well, congratulations. You just roll those dice and move your little shoe around the board for the next seventy-five thousand rounds, playing with yourself.

The challenge was in the constrictions. And in his case, he applied all human limitations to himself: He was not allowed to do anything that those rats without tails couldn’t. That was the one rule, but it had many, many implications.

Okay, fine. He also cheated on occasion.

Just a little.

But he was a thief, not a priest, for fuck’s sake.

Going along, he wasn’t interested in the lineup of empty guest bedrooms. In fact, the entire condo, including the panic room(s) he was heading for, was vacant. He’d intended to get in when the happy couple were clocking time on the premises—because homeowners were much more of a challenge when they were actually, you know, home—but he was on rotation with the Brotherhood and the Mr. and Mrs. traveled a lot of the time. He was done waiting for the stars to align.

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