Night's Cold Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’ll get back to you ASAP.”
    First Antoinette then Viktor. Both disappearing from his life around the same time and now appearing again. It had to be more than a coincidence.
    He typed Antoinette’s name into the Department’s search engine and it came back with numerous hits. Busy girl. He opened her profile and a picture appeared on the screen of a Venator in martial arts gear and standing in front of a low wooden structure next to a large man leaning on a cane. The caption read, “Antoinette and Sergei Petrescu of the Petrescu School of Training.” One of the best private schools in the country for preparing to become a Venator.
    It’s her—I knew it.
    Reading on, he wasn’t surprised to find she’d been trained by her uncle, Sergei, since it was to his care that Christianhad delivered a very young Antoinette and her brother sixteen years ago.
    Antoinette the warrior, even back then. She’d protected her little brother ferociously, trying to keep him away from Christian with fire burning in her eyes and determination fierce on her face. She’d seen him as the big, bad Aeternus boogie man; he should’ve known she’d grow up to be a Venator.
    And she’d been busy. Already one hundred and forty-two confirmed Necrodreniac excisions were credited to her name—one hundred and forty-three, he corrected, remembering the one from the night before.
    Christian hadn’t thought of Sergei in years either. When Sergei was younger, an accident had prevented him from becoming a Venator himself. But that hadn’t stopped him from training some of the best since Antoinette’s father, Grigore. Sergei had started the school shortly after coming to America sixteen years ago.
    The computer chimed incoming mail, breaking his train of thought.
    “You’re a legend, Doc,” he said out loud to the empty room when he opened the e-mail to find the documents he’d requested.
    After decrypting them, he opened the first file and read through the summary notes on The Troubles, as they had been called, over a decade and a half ago.
    At last he came to what he was looking for—the crime scene report of a murder committed toward the end of that period.
    The first attached photograph was of a little girl with blond ringlets and large emerald eyes in her tiny haunted face—a six-year-old Antoinette Petrescu. She sat on a stone floor beside her grief-stricken father as she held tightly to the free hand of a small thumb-sucking boy. The next picture was of a woman with long fair hair lying facedown in a pool of blood on the stone floor. Marianna—Antoinette’s murdered mother.
     
    Antoinette put away her equipment when Sensei Takimura entered the training room followed by the orderly double line of first-grade students. She bowed respectfully to her former teacher as the six-year-olds grabbed their wooden swords in readiness for their kenjitsu lesson.
    She watched the Japanese elder take the kids through their training katas, hardly able to remember when she was that young. The school taught many forms of martial arts, not only training the body but disciplining the mind as well. Anything to give human Venators the slightest advantage against their physically superior foes.
    She ran the end of the towel hanging around her neck across her damp brow and she left the room. It’d only been a week since she and Nici had returned home from the Miami mission, and already she was itching to take on a new job, but her injuries had slowed her down—and she hated it. She was starting to get a bit edgy but even after a fairly light workout, perspiration bathed her skin and her side ached like a bastard.
    “Sis!” Nici jogged up the hall to meet her. “Uncle wants to speak to you in the office—immediately.”
    She headed back the way Nici had come, but after a few steps she realized he wasn’t following. “You coming?”
    He shrugged and shook his head. “But I do need to talk to you about something important later. Come find me when