Bitten (The Graced Series Book 2)

by Amanda Pillar

  “Trust me,” she said, “I don’t want to know everything about you, but I have to know if there are exceptions to my ability.”

  He set his jaw in a hard line. “I don’t like the idea of being a test subject.”

  “I seriously think you’ll be safe, or I wouldn’t do it. I don’t exactly enjoy knowing everything about someone, you know.”

  He — just — it was —

  She dropped to her knees in front of the mattress, and the pain in her face floored him. “Please, Fin. I need to know I won’t be alone my entire life. That there’s a possibility I can touch someone other than my mother without fear.”

  “Fuck.” His head fell back against the stone wall. And then he did something he never thought he’d do for anyone. He offered his hand and his past.

  Hannah closed the distance by reaching out with her arm, and then their palms touched, fingers interlacing. Fin held his breath, and Hannah had her eyes shut tight. He waited, heart pumping once, twice, ten times.

  Then Hannah opened her eyes and jerked her arm backward, but without letting go. Fin fell forward, sprawling on top of her.

  She’s stronger than she looks, he thought, rolling onto his back. Even if she was a vampire with super strength, he’d still be heavy and he didn’t want to squash her. Laughing and grinning like a loon, Hannah followed him, straddling his hips.

  He doubted she realized what she’d done — the intimacy of the position — she was just so giddy with whatever she had learned. Leaning down, she gave him an awkward hug. Then she kissed him. Just a peck.

  But he froze, locked up completely. Once he’d known Hannah had a problem with being touched, he’d never, never in a million years thought they’d be in a cell, him flat on his back, her on top of him, and her soft — really soft — mouth pressing briefly against his.

  He pushed at her shoulders. “Hannah, what are you doing?”

  “I didn’t absorb your memories!”

  Then it dawned what she was doing. The joy disappeared from her face and she fell back from him. Her gloveless fingers touched lips she had just pressed to his. “I’m sorry, I was just so happy and I — I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  She’d been starved, that’s what she’d been thinking. It didn’t take someone with Green eyes to know that she was probably touch-hungry after having lived such an isolated life. But Fin didn’t want to be the guy she went to because he was the only one available to her.

  The awareness of that made him sit up.

  “Byrne has a shield, too,” Fin said into the quiet, desperate to ease the tension.

  “What?”

  Fin wasn’t going to say how Byrne had learned about his own mental shield; that was the bear’s story to tell if he wanted, and Fin doubted he would. Suddenly, he wondered if she would try and kiss Byrne, too. Something dark uncoiled from deep within him, but he pushed the emotion aside.

  It wasn’t Byrne who she’d tackled to the ground, it was him.

  But Byrne isn’t here, his mind whispered.

  Shut up.

  Even his subconscious was a smartass.

  How did Byrne put up with him? He could barely stand himself.

  But, if Hannah wanted to be with him, he wanted her to want him. Not his mental shield. Maybe that was why he’d mentioned Byrne’s. So she’d know there was more than one option out there for her. Plus, he couldn’t be with her anyway, not like that; he wasn’t what someone like her needed. She needed someone stable, who’d stand by her, who’d be with her without fail. It was what she deserved.

  Fin just wasn’t that kind of guy.

  Not anymore.

  Chapter 36

  Pinton City

  “I need to get in contact with the king.” The viscountess’ voice was low and horribly even. Too calm for someone who had just listened to how her mother had been brutally murdered. But Alice knew what it felt like to hear that particular kind of news; it left a person numb.

  To be the one to deliver that information made her skin crawl.

  Alice had explained what she could. She couldn’t provide details about the motive of the killer or where the countess had been murdered. Alice knew that the viscountess wanted them; she understood that. Alice would have wanted the same thing. By the blood, she still wanted to know why someone had stabbed her mother to death in their family home; why they’d taken her brother and why she’d never heard from him again. But wishes were useless. Only facts could tell her the truth. She’d resigned herself to never knowing.

  She hoped the viscountess would get the answers that she herself had been denied.

  Alice looked at the other woman, seeing the drawn face, the burning eyes. The intensity that was held brutally in check.

  “The king?” Alice echoed.

  The viscountess slammed a hand against the bench, making her mother’s body jump slightly. Alice didn’t think the vampire realized. “This cannot be ignored anymore. I brought the previous murders to his attention, but he’s been too busy with his new boyfriend.”

  “The City Guard are looking into it,” Alice said. “They’ll track down whoever did this.”

  The vampire’s lavender eyes blazed. “Not fast enough.”

  Tal stood awkwardly behind the vehement aristo, her gray eyes wide. “I can go upstairs and ask the guards to send someone to notify the king.”

  “Tell them to bring him back here.”

  “Bring him back?” Alice stammered.

  Bring the king to her morgue?

  “Yes, this is now a crime against the kingdom,” the viscountess said. “General aristo deaths? That’s unfortunate, but there’s always more of them. But a countess? That sends a message to the people that cannot be tolerated.”

  It was more than that; this was the vampire’s mother who had been killed. But perhaps the fact that the dead woman was a countess was enough to warrant the king leaving the Crystal Palace to come into the city and its morgue.

  Tal turned to leave, but the viscountess gently grabbed her wrist. Their eyes locked, and so quietly Alice could barely hear, the viscountess said, “Thank you.”

  Tal nodded and then headed up the stairs, her shoulders tense.

  To get the king.

  Alice’s life had just gotten far more interesting, and she didn’t like it. Tal might be happy to date an aristo, but Alice liked to keep a lengthy distance between them and her. Except for her friend Billie, of course, but that was different. Aristos weren’t like ordinary people; their lives were one of privilege and comfort. Folks like Alice only usually saw them from afar; they didn’t have dinner with them and they certainly didn’t hang around in a morgue with them. Her previous conversations with the single aristo she knew had been limited to whether or not her patient would survive. She tried not to look nervous, but what did a commoner say to a peer of the realm?

  Best not to say anything.

  So Alice quietly sorted through her paperwork, then checked her supplies, leaving the viscountess alone with her mother. Alice wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but she was running out of things to tidy. She straightened up the pile of body bags next to the human corpses.

  The viscountess spoke into the quiet. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite.”

  I must look more panicked than I thought.

  Embarrassed, Alice shuffled back to the other side of the morgue, away from the cadavers. She hoped the viscountess would follow her; she wanted to put some distance between the bodies and the noblewoman. Spending too much time with her dead mother might not be healthy. Taking hold of the single stool, Alice used it like a miniature ladder, climbing up to sit on the edge of the stone bench. She’d leave the chair itself to the viscountess.

  For a moment she sat, watching her feet as she swung them back and forth. When she looked up, the vampire was standing directly before her; she’d crossed the room so quickly and silently, Alice hadn’t even heard her.

  Alice stopped swing
ing her feet. Vampires certainly did bite. Maybe the viscountess would, even though she’d said she wouldn’t?

  But then Alice met the woman’s gaze, and all she could feel was sympathy. The aristo’s expression spoke to Alice on a level that only someone who’d had a parent murdered could understand.

  “Mind if I sit?”

  Alice nodded her head at the chair. “I left it for you.”

  “Leave the vampire with the wooden stool,” the viscountess said with what might have been a half-smile.

  Alice stiffened. She hadn’t thought that providing a seat would be considered an insult, but she should have known better. “I don’t have any other kind—”

  “It’s fine. I’m sure I can manage to sit on a chair and not impale myself.” The vampire’s voice was dry as sand. Perhaps she was trying to be funny; gallows humor.

  The viscountess settled on the stool, somehow managing to look elegant and beautiful, despite her distress. Alice hoped her white clothing wouldn’t get dirty; the cleaners didn’t like spending a lot of time down in the morgue, and while Alice kept it pretty tidy, she didn’t have time to ensure it was spotless.

  The vampire’s eyes fixed on her, as if she was waiting for Alice to say something.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” It was all she could think of. But she meant it.

  “Same.”

  They settled into an uncomfortable silence.

  At last the viscountess broke it. “Why did you become a dead-person doctor?”

  “Dead-person doctor?” Alice echoed.

  The other woman waved a hand around, indicating the morgue.

  “A coroner?” Alice asked. The vampire nodded. “You don’t really want to know why I became a pathologist.” Then, realizing she’d not addressed the aristo properly the whole time she’d been in the morgue, she tacked on, “my lady.”

  The viscountess rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know. And call me Misty.”

  “I can’t call you by your name!” The words burst forth before Alice could stop them.

  “You can if I give you permission, which I just did.”

  Where was Tal? What was taking the other woman so long?

  “So, why did you become a pathologist?”

  The viscountess was persistent, Alice gave her that. She couldn’t know that Alice rarely talked about her reasons why she chose this job; that she usually just gave a flippant answer and left it at that. But Alice didn’t think she could brush off the aristo — Misty — like that. Not with her mother lying in the morgue with them.

  She took a deep breath. “When I was fourteen, my mother was murdered.”

  Misty said nothing, but her expression grew thoughtful. Alice suddenly knew her initial impression of the other woman had been completely wrong. She’d thought Misty flighty and a bit naïve; but there was a greater depth to her than possibly anyone else knew. You couldn’t face what Misty had and be so composed; not unless you hated the victim or you were completely numb. But Alice hadn’t gotten that impression at all.

  “I was stabbed too, but only once.” Alice settled on the abbreviated version of the story. “I woke up in hospital, lucky to be alive. I decided then that I wanted to help people; to save victims of violence like my mother and me. But there were so few survivors. And so I turned to learning about the dead; taught myself to read a body so that it could give me all the information possible to help solve the murder.”

  “Have you managed to achieve that?” Misty’s head was tilted slightly, as if studying Alice like she was some kind of interesting insect.

  “A little,” Alice admitted. “I have a theory that this killer is human, but I need to check the sample of sperm I’ve found in the bodies.”

  “Sperm?”

  “It’s all the killer left behind, aside from some skin under the nails, but I can’t really use that, not unless we find someone who has some suspicious wounds.” Alice shrugged. She didn’t mention the powder, because it hadn’t been consistent at all the crime scenes. She still wasn’t sure what it was.

  “What would sperm tell you, though?”

  “I think there may be differences between vampire, were and human samples. I need to compare.”

  The viscountess tapped her chin and frowned. “I see. You remind me of my brother.”

  Alice wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not.

  Then Misty straightened on her chair, turning toward the door of the morgue. A few seconds later, Tal entered the room with a tall man emerging right behind her. He had olive skin, with black hair that was swept away from sharp features. His bright violet eyes searched the room, skipping over Alice to land on Misty.

  Alice would have known who he was just from his bearing alone; she didn’t need the expensive silk or the arrival of the palace guard behind him to fit all the pieces together.

  King Johan had arrived.

  Chapter 37

  Skarva City

  Hannah couldn’t believe that she’d kissed Fin.

  Well, sort-of kissed him.

  Blood rushed to her cheeks and she turned her face to the wall of the cell. What had possessed her? Poor Fin, he’d probably been mortified. He was a ladies man, that was pretty obvious, but he wouldn’t want to be accosted by someone like her.

  Someone...damaged.

  Shutting her eyes, Hannah breathed in deeply. The smell that she’d begun to associate simply as Fin filled her senses. Her heart pattered uncomfortably, and she was glad that Fin was human; he wouldn’t be able to hear how her body reacted to him. It had been easy to ignore that he was handsome, especially since his face was all battered — although it had been harder to ignore the fact that he was endlessly charming, even when he bickered with Byrne. But he’d just been Fin. Now she knew what his lips felt like. And that changed things.

  She was a fool.

  Pretending that she wasn’t embarrassed right down to her toes, she turned and met Fin’s Hazel gaze squarely. “You said Byrne has a mental shield, too?”

  A shadow flitted across his normally smiling face, but he nodded.

  “What are the odds?” Hannah muttered to herself, wrapping her arms around her torso. But it explained why her trip with the two men had been so successful, how she’d been able to ride in the cart without absorbing any memories from them. She’d just thought her clothing and her increased mental protections had saved her. But she’d been wrong; it was Fin and Byrne’s own natural defenses that had protected them.

  “Of bumping into two people with natural shields?” Fin ran a hand through his hair. “Pretty low.”

  Hannah sat down on the stone bed. Her head ached, as it always did when she absorbed someone else’s memories, but she was strangely calm. Randall’s recollections weren’t battering against her mind, swamping her personality now she was awake. She was still Hannah. Somehow, in her comatose state, she’d managed to wrangle what she’d absorbed into something manageable.

  Twining her fingers around each other, she considered just how lucky she was, despite being trapped in her mother’s dungeon, subject to the whims of her mother’s assistant. Now, Hannah had friends, something she hadn’t thought she’d ever have. Byrne and Fin had simply just accepted her for who she was. She couldn’t be touched: okay. She was a bit odd: that was fine. She had a baby that she’d found on the side of a mountain: they’d argue about whose turn it was to feed her. Or what her name should be.

  By the blood, she had a daughter.

  And a brother.

  She didn’t even know what his name was. Or how to begin processing that information. Her mother had never told Hannah that she had siblings. Ones who were alive, that is. Oh, Hannah knew about the children that had died in the Civil War thousands of years ago, but she hadn’t known that Tatiana had more living offspring than just her.

  Was that why she’d shipped Hannah off? To enjoy spending time with her other children? Was she ashamed of her?
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  “So, that Randall fellow knew touching you would disable you?” Fin asked, interrupting her degenerating thought process.

  Hannah nodded. Fin’s bruised face grew taut. “He was a trusted retainer of my mother’s,” she said. “He knew I was ‘special.’”

  Not many people knew why she was different, only that the duchess’ daughter couldn’t be touched. Some assumed it was her mother’s overprotectiveness, and that alone was enough to ensure Hannah wasn’t the subject of unwanted attention.

  But Randall had been with Mother for centuries, certainly longer than Hannah had been alive. He’d known about her ability, even if he didn’t know what Graceds were. But considering that Hannah had spent so little time at the estate, she’d never had much to do with him. And he’d never shown any inclination to want to hurt her before now. If anything, he’d maintained an aloof distance; probably terrified that an accidental touch would mean his execution.

  So why would he risk betraying her mother, and why hurt her now? Tatiana did not take disloyalty lightly, but if Hannah could work out Randall’s reasons, then perhaps she could prevent her mother slaughtering too many people in her revenge.

  Shutting her eyes, Hannah opened a door in her mind to the memories that had been dumped there. She flicked through Randall’s remembrances as if they were the pages in a book, skimming through the few intact memories of his early years.

  He’d been a human child, born to merchant parents and raised with love and laughter. But the family aspired to a title, so they’d married Randall to a vampire baronetess. Randall had been happy with the match; the aristo had needed money, and he’d desired the status. She had Chosen Randall, but eventually his wife had wanted offspring, which he hadn’t been able to provide. Rather than seek a breeding contract as was normal, she had divorced him.

  His position no longer secure, his family’s wealth long gone, and his parents long dead, he’d had to seek employment.

  Randall’s disgust at the word seeped through to Hannah, even through the memories. Randall hated having to earn a living.