by Joey W. Hill
Jacob lifted a brow. He just said the bond between them is recent and functional. They're not a true vampire-servant pairing.
That's not what I see. Lyssa met his eyes, her own warming as he drew closer. When she rose in his arm span, he put his hands to her waist and dipped his head to kiss her, letting his lips linger on hers. He needed no reason to want to touch her. It simply was there, like breathing.
Like all vampires, Cai has the Dominant's drive, but Rand is more like my servant. Service-oriented but not submissive. And I expect in most all his other relationships, Rand has taken the Dominant role.
Her eyes were half-closed and body relaxed into his, telling him she was fully enjoying the contact, but her clever mind was still calculating. Their bond is new, and they are still working it out. But I sense it has the potential to open something inside Cai, locked beneath all the tarnished armor.
From your mind to God's ear, my lady. Because our alternative is sending in an extraction team, and I believe Cai when he says they'll kill her without a thought if they're spooked.
So do I. The humor disappeared from her face. She reached out over the miles, Jacob riding on that pathway, and they touched the soul of their young son, currently safely fortressed at Lyssa's Atlanta estate.
If someone took Kane from me as the Trads took Dovia, I would burn down that mountain range in retribution for giving him a moment's fear, for daring to put their hands upon him. A goddess's rage flashed through her, and Jacob didn't doubt it. He'd be right at her side, adding to her destruction.
And Mason, she added. He thinks of Farida, his own daughter. Who was also in Atlanta, in the same protected surroundings.
I know, my lady. We'll get Dovia back. Jacob was troubled by the seemingly insurmountable challenge, but believing it couldn't be done and they had no options wasn't going to help them discover a strategy that might work. He hoped Lyssa was right about Rand. There was no doubt the shifter was an honorable male who'd throw himself into the situation without hesitation. But for the slimmest chance of success, they needed Cai.
They needed him to have a change of heart, risk what no one had a right to ask him to risk. But perhaps, if his conscience was already overburdened with regrets and things he couldn't change--not an unusual state for a two-hundred-year lifespan--a miracle might happen. Cai would decide he didn't want one more straw on that camel's back.
Chapter Eight
The house was the size of a mountain, but inside it, Cai felt trapped. Too many fucking people everywhere. Like damn bees in a hive, their energy a damn buzzing along his fucking nerves. He exited out the back and found a landscaped garden area and wide lawn that backed up to the forest. As least he could breathe in the night air.
He sat down on a bench and studied an assortment of concrete deer arrayed around a shallow gazing pool. Strange, the things people did to adorn their stationary worlds. His feet were already itching to move, cover miles. In two hundred years, how many times had he circled the globe, left to right, top to bottom?
"When I got free, I decided I was going to explore every square," he said abruptly. "You know, the longitude/latitude blocks? For a long time, I carried a map, and colored them in as I went. Have hit pretty much all the land masses. Ocean's a little tougher. I get seasick out of sight of land."
Rand sat down next to him. The bench was a decorative thing, though sturdy, so it held their combined weights but required Rand to be close enough to brush shoulders with him.
"Shifter territories are pretty big, just like non-shifter wolves," Rand answered. "But we're still homebodies. I've never left the States. Haven't even explored much of that."
"There are a lot of places to see. Maybe you could come on a couple trips with me. If you want." Cai said it casually. "I was thinking I'd do something desert-like next. There's this area in Syria that's cool, and I have contacts there. A real live sorceress. One time I hung out with a special forces guy, tracking WMDs smuggled across the border by the Russians and French before the Iraqi war. Well, he didn't know we were hanging out, but I saved his ass a few times. He never saw me, but we still made a good hunting team, him for his job, me for my dinner. He carried a couple good paperbacks. Robert Ludlum fan."
Rand blinked. "Yeah, because a barren desert in a politically unstable country is everyone's idea of a tourist hotspot."
"I don't go as a tourist. I live there. Adapt to the environment. It's a good way to stay on my toes. And stay out of the way of permanent connections, civilization, all that shit."
"Yeah, you're right." Rand pursed his lips. "That hot shower and steak was the worst. Don't get me started on the Egyptian cotton towels."
"See how easy it is to succumb? A cushy prison is still a prison. Would you want to be chained to a doghouse just because it's comfortable and safe? Or do you want to be able to run?"
"I want to be able to run," Rand said. "And at the end of the day, I want to be able to come home."
Cai shifted his attention to Rand's profile, which was quiet and contemplative as he considered the garden features. Something with large white blooms climbed up the trellis arched over their bench. Cai reached out and touched one. "Wonder what these trumpet things are?"
"Trumpet flowers."
He glanced at the shifter, assuming he was being a wiseass, but saw Rand was serious. "Hmm. Something with a name that actually reflects what it is. Unique."
"Sometimes the answer's pretty obvious, even if we don't want to hear it. I might be interested in going to Syria with you. After we go get the girl."
Cai blinked. "Come again?"
Rand turned his head, met him squarely eye to eye. "You know you need to do it. Lady Lyssa's right. You're the only one that can. You've been where she's been."
Cai suppressed the urge to get up, move. He wasn't going to lose it again. He had this shit locked down and it was staying down.
"The Trads have had a lot of victims," he said. "They're not exactly forming an army of retaliation. Probably because ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent of them are dead. And why the hell would you want to come with me to do something like that?"
"Because I owe you a debt for my life. And because it's another chance to get myself killed in an honorable way."
Cai curled his lip. "Yeah, because once you're worm food, how you died really mattered."
"It reflects how you lived," Rand said calmly. "Or wished you'd lived, if it's an act of redemption for past shortcomings."
Deciding to leave that alone, Cai raised a brow. "You didn't want me to save your life. Cursed me repeatedly for it. And now you think you owe me?"
"Doesn't change the code. A wolf owes a favor to the one who saved his life, even if he didn't want it saved. If I'm going to my death, which it happily sounds like I am, I don't want any debts left unpaid when I cross over. Don't want to be saddled with your ass forever."
"Good thing I didn't give you the third mark, then," Cai said.
"So that part is really true? That the vampire and servant are eternally connected, and the servant has to follow the vampire not only into death, but into the afterlife?"
"It's absolutely true. Countless vampires and servants have returned from the dead to verify it." Cai surged up off the bench. "It's bullshit. All of it. I'm not doing it, Rand. Yeah, my conscience will grow thorns like a damn rose bush for a while and keep me up at night, but it took me a hundred years to get free, and fifty after that to completely cut those ties, which was part of what all the traveling was about. It took a hell of a lot of distance and keeping as far away from wherever Trads were holed up to make it work."
Cai shook his head. "Staying clear of Goddard I could do, but I was considered part of the Trad world. Took me years before I could come back to West Virginia without worrying about them messing with me."
"That's where your family was from, wasn't it?"
"A different part of it. It's a big state."
"That's why you're there, instead of Syria or some far away longitud
e/latitude block," Rand realized. "It's home."
"It's not home. No place is home. It's just a familiar stomping ground." Cai made a slicing motion with his hand. "Get back on topic. I'm sorry about it, but I can't change a damn thing for her."
"Even if you get her out of there? You got out."
"Did you miss the hundred years part?" He leveled a hard gaze on Rand. Why wasn't he walking away, telling the guy to give him some fucking space? Why was he still talking? "And yeah, I got out. Look what a waste of cell matter I am. I go where I want, do what I want, take what I want. I don't feel, I don't connect, I don't get close. I choose to be a shallow pond rather than a deep ocean, even if it's a muddy, nasty bog that nobody wants to be around. I prefer it that way."
"Yeah. Except you don't." Rand's attention remained on him, too close, too personal. "You could have gone into town to get a good fuck anytime. You didn't have to hang onto me. You could say it's the freak factor, getting the chance to fuck or feed from something like me, but I'm not buying that, either. You can't connect to humans, you can't connect to vampires. But I'm something else, and you connect with me."
Cai turned away again, but the wolf wasn't finished. He continued, in that matter-of-fact deep timbre that stroked his nerves in the right way, while disturbing him at the bottom of the muddy, nasty bog that was his soul.
"Can't really say I like you much yet," the wolf mused, "but we're still hanging out together. Maybe because we're both pissed at what the world's taken from us and we haven't figured out how to work that out. Waiting together for that knowledge to come is a hell of a lot less lonely than doing it alone. So, in the meantime, here's this do-or-die situation that's fallen into our laps. Maybe someone's trying to throw us a bone."
Cai sighed and tossed him a look. "You really didn't just use a canine metaphor."
Rand's mouth quirked. "It happens. Those lamb chops smelled really good. I was wondering if they kept any bones."
"Well, before you get yelled at for going through the trash, let me ask you this." Cai pivoted and crossed his arms over his chest. "Have you lost your fucking mind? Fate doesn't throw anything at anyone. Life just sucks for some, doesn't for others, and the wind changes direction for fuck-knows-why. That's life. You start reading signs and meaning into things and--"
"Life might just start to have more meaning again."
"Ugh." Cai spat in disgust. "Fine, okay, I get it. You lost your family and you're trying to deal with that pain. But sorry, getting me killed isn't going to make me feel better."
"What about having the vampire queen owe you a favor?" Rand suggested shrewdly. "The whole Council? She knew how to aim that arrow."
"Yeah, she did. Doesn't mean I have to prove her right. I prefer to be contrary even if it's against my own best interests."
"You don't say," Rand said dryly. He glanced at the bench next to him. "Why don't you come sit next to me again? I want to show you something."
"Saw that earlier. Wouldn't mind seeing it again, but timing's a little off, wolf."
"Bite me. That's one that works for wolves or vampires. Come sit down."
"Careful. That almost sounded like an order. I'm the only one who gives those around here."
"In your dreams." Rand's gaze had stilled, become steadier. Cai sighed and grimaced.
"Fine." He sat down next to the wolf. He couldn't deny that the press of the broad shoulder and hip against his own was welcome, but he stilled as Rand ran a caressing hand along his back to his waist, hooking his thumb in the waistband of the jeans to tug.
Affection. Wolves were into physical affection. With no other motive than that, Cai could relax into it, even though most of his body felt rigid as a tent pole. Rand kept his gaze on the flowers, rather than looking at the vampire. But after a moment, he bumped Cai with his elbow.
"Tell you what. If you do this, I'll keep having all the sex with you that you could want. And provide you meals."
"You're a terrific lay, wolf, and your blood's incomparable. But getting my appetites met doesn't balance with happily walking back into the bowels of hell."
"What would? Killing this Lord Graham asshole? Taking out the Trad that took you from your family?"
"Yeah to the first, no to the second."
He felt Rand's puzzlement. "Why are you dead set to take out Graham, but not the Trad that took you?"
Cai shifted his attention back to the gazing pool. "Goddard was too powerful. I didn't stand a chance against him. Maybe one day."
It was more than that. It was a deep-seated feeling of revulsion, a terribly strong and overwhelming need to avoid the world that had held him for so long. That compulsion was far stronger than needing to take out Goddard. So Cai had told himself, for years and years and years. But Graham...Graham had hurt his mother.
"Besides, none of it would change anything."
"Exactly." Rand's tone of satisfaction suggested Cai had made his point. Rand's gold-flecked blue ones met his. "Nothing will change any of it. Because nothing can give you back what you really wanted. Your life, before it all happened. The only thing you can do is try to help her."
Rand dug into the back pocket of the jeans. "I snagged this from a small stack of them on the hallway table. Leona was holding one. She's way messed up. If Sheba had lived, she would have been the same. No way she would have survived losing two litters like she did."
He handed the small portrait to Cai. Vampires couldn't be photographed or reflect in a mirror, so those who wished to have their image captured did it the way that it was done prior to the invention of the camera. A painting. Only modern technology could now turn the portrait into prints, so proud vampire-servant parents like Georg and Leona could be just as annoying as the family who went to the mall portrait studio. Provide the picture to all friends, family members and Christmas card recipients in handy-dandy wallet size. Christ.
Cai guessed the stack of them was to spread hardcopies to other vampires and servants in the area, in case they'd seen something helpful. Vampires watched crime shows too, apparently.
Yet when Rand placed the picture in his hand, and Cai looked upon it, his iron-clad hold on his cynicism slipped a notch. He'd have to be heartless not to feel something as he looked at the young female. Dovia had red hair, a soft smile and the glowing beauty of a young vampire. But her eyes were what caught Cai's attention. Direct and intelligent, with a hint of laughter in them, as if the portrait painter had said something to amuse her.
The smile possessed that genuine quality that occurred when laughter and smiles didn't have to be manufactured by cynical bullshit and one-liner comebacks designed specifically to keep actual emotion at bay. Her expression also reflected a trace of poignancy. Since this was a recent picture, Cai guessed that had taken root while watching her father's illness advance.
He handed the photo back to Rand. "How strong do you think she is?"
Kudos to the shifter, he picked up on what Cai was asking immediately. "I see what you see in that picture. I also got some further hints from Leona. She talked to herself while I was with her."
Or she talked to the wolf, Cai surmised. An animal who required nothing from her and was a nonjudgmental, listening ear.
"Growing up, Dovia wouldn't play with female servants or vampires. She always wanted to play with the boys. Even now, she competes with them in sparring, running, strength. A bit of a tomboy, in vampire terms. But one who still likes all the perks of being a girl."
"Okay."
"Okay?" Rand raised a brow. "Meaning?"
Cai leaned forward, clasping his hands loosely between his knees. "Do that thing to my back again. What you were doing before."
"Petting you?"
"Not if you're going to call it that. Fucking asshole." But as Cai rubbed his hand hard over his face and the back of his neck, fighting a hundred different things inside him, Rand complied. His strong hand swept over the curve of his spine, palm pressed firmly against Cai, so he felt the warmth through his shirt. Rand hooked h
is fingers in Cai's waistband again, stroking and teasing the top of Cai's buttocks, thumb sweeping over the dip in his spine just above.
Maybe if Rand hadn't been here to ask the questions that unlocked that memory box, Cai could have kept it closed and moved on, just as he'd described. But he had a full list in his head of the despicable things he was and wasn't, and coward wasn't one of them. He'd put aside personal vengeance for the same reason anyone stayed away from the most horrible nightmare of their life; to try and keep their head above it, not be sucked into who and what they'd been in that nightmare. As long as he could keep Goddard a figment of his past, he could move along in his life without going back there.
But now Dovia was in that nightmare. Cai had no reflection in a mirror, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to look someone like Rand or Lyssa, or even the earnest Giles, in the face and see the reflection of what he'd be if he didn't do something. Something he had no chance of surviving.
Well, fuck. Two hundred years was a good run, right? Way more than he would have had as a human.
"I have a condition," he said abruptly. "You become my third mark servant."
When he turned his head toward Rand, the male's blue eyes were puzzled, wary. "You want to link our souls."
"I don't believe that shit. The only verifiable thing about the third mark is that it links your life to mine. They kill me, you die."
Rand blinked. "That's kind of you."
"Yeah. It is." Cai set his jaw. "I won't go in there knowing if they kill me, which is a pretty damn certainty, that you'll be left to their mercy. A fucking shifter? Might as well call it Christmas. There are legends about your blood, and what it can do for a vampire's strength and mental acuity. It's probably just mythical bullshit, but I don't deny it's like a high-octane energy drink next to human blood. However, the guy that leads this little sect of Trads has pursued every damn wives' tale, no matter how unlikely, to figure out how to conceive upon vampire females."
Cai put his hand on Rand's thigh, gripped. "Apart from being staked through the heart with steel or the obvious stuff, like decapitation, you're also pretty indestructible. My blood and our bond can bring you back from almost anything."
