by Tina Folsom
“No …” she whispered breathlessly. This couldn’t be. But there was no doubt. Her father wanted to create a master race, a superior race that would rule the world. “No, you can’t …”
He glared down at her. “I own you! You’ll do as you’re told!”
Self-preservation made her struggle to her feet. He didn’t own her. “Nobody owns me!” She would decide who to mate with, and it wouldn’t be a man of her father’s choosing.
Like a vice, her father’s hand clamped around her upper arm, his claws digging into her flesh. An involuntary gasp escaped her. He would stop at nothing. Cold fear gripped her and slithered down her spine.
“Now you listen to me, young lady. From now on, you’ll do exactly as I say. In three days, you’ll be blood-bonded to your mate, and you’ll do it willingly.”
“Or what?” she spat. She’d rather die than do as he said. She had nothing more to lose. Zane had cast her out, and now her father turned out to be a monster. She had nobody.
“Or I’ll hunt down your lover and kill him, very, very slowly. I promise you, he’ll suffer greater pain than this world has ever seen.”
Shock stopped her heart, only to make it restart at double the pace. “No!”
“Oh, watch me!”
If she’d ever had any doubts of who her father was, they were all wiped away now. “I didn’t want to believe him,” she murmured to herself.
Her father jerked her by her arm. “Believe what?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
Portia lifted her head slowly and calmly. “That you’re Franz Müller.”
She saw the final confirmation of the truth by the way he jumped back and how his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. It only lasted for a second, before he had himself under control again. He growled and flashed his fangs at her.
“Who told you?” He shook her.
But she didn’t open her mouth to speak.
“WHO?” he yelled not inches from her face.
Portia pressed her teeth together, unwilling to give in.
Then his face changed as if something crossed his mind. He gritted his teeth. “There’s only one man outside the organization who knows who I am. Only one who’d use this information against me.” He snarled. “Eisenberg.”
She recognized Zane’s last name, but tried to keep her face emotionless.
But her father knew her too well. As sure as she was his daughter, he could always interpret the little tells her face showed.
He raked his eyes over her body in disgust. “You let Eisenberg fuck you? That dirty, filthy Jew?”
There was no need to deny it now.
Portia lifted her chin in defiance. “And I loved every minute of it.” As the revulsion in her father’s face spread, she continued, “I drank his blood, and I gave him mine. And I l—”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. Her father’s fists flew into her. She brought her arms up to shield herself, but it was to no avail. Blows to the head were followed by kicks into the stomach, as claws dug into her chest and ripped her clothes to dig into her skin. The scent of her own blood filled the air.
Her strength, already depleted from the events earlier in the night, left her. The next blow hit her temple. Blackness fell over her, and she stopped fighting against it, welcoming the darkness like a cocoon. In the darkness she would be safe.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Zane paced in his cell. After landing in San Francisco, they’d brought him to Scanguards’ downtown office and locked him up, waiting for Samson and Amaury to get back from Tahoe. At least, they had taken the silver handcuffs off him, but neither Eddie nor Haven had bothered offering him blood to heal his wrists. Not that he would have taken it anyway. He didn’t want any stupid bottled blood.
He kicked his boot against the concrete wall. Then he dropped his forehead against it, feeling the cold smooth surface against his skin.
Fuck, he’d screwed up. What if something had happened after Portia had run off? What if somebody had attacked her, or what if she was injured and couldn’t help herself? Logic told him that he shouldn’t worry: she was a hybrid and near indestructible, and she could fight off any human with her little finger. But logic didn’t rule his mind right now. Emotions did. And they were running high.
He turned and kicked the single chair they’d left for his comfort, then picked it up and slammed it against the wall. The metal bent. Figured that they wouldn’t leave a wooden chair in the cell. It would make creating a stake far too easy.
“Does that make you feel any better?” Gabriel’s voice droned from the door.
Zane swiveled on his heels and faced his unexpected guest. “No, but it doesn’t make me feel any worse either.”
Gabriel’s hulky form filled the door frame. “Wanna talk before the others get here? They’re just crossing the Bay Bridge.”
His heartbeat kicked up. “Did they find her?” He held his breath, hoping for the right answer.
“No.”
Deflated, he dropped his head. Ah, shit, they might as well kill him now.
“Do you care about her?”
“None of your fucking business!” What did Gabriel want? An outpouring of Zane’s heart? Not gonna happen!
“Well, then I guess you don’t want to know where she is.” Gabriel turned to leave.
Zane stepped forward. “You said they haven’t found her.”
Without looking back, Gabriel baited him further. “That’s right, Amaury and Samson haven’t found her. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know where she is.”
Zane jumped toward Gabriel, slammed his hand onto his boss’ shoulder and whirled him around. “Then where the fuck is she?”
A half smile played around Gabriel’s lips, and Zane had the urge to wipe it off him.
“So you do care.”
Zane released his grip and withdrew further back into his cell. “What do you care?”
“I care because I am torn between ripping you a new one and helping you. And right now, with your shitty attitude, I tend toward ripping you a new one. Can you get that into your thick skull?”
To underscore his statement, Gabriel made a fist and rapped his knuckles on Zane’s bald head.
Insulted, Zane snarled at him. “Don’t pretend you want to help me. You’re not any better than the rest of them!”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what I said!”
“Goddamn it! Talk if you want me to tell you where she is!”
Zane huffed. “Nobody believed her! Not Samson, none of you. She was telling the truth, damn it! Her father, that sick bastard, was trying to keep her a virgin beyond her twenty-first birthday. Hell, she was asking me to help her. I did. If that makes me a criminal in your eyes, so be it.”
“Eddie and Haven already confirmed that she was a virgin.”
Impatiently, Zane wiped a trickle of perspiration off his brow. “Then what do you want from me?”
“I want to know what happened in Tahoe.”
“We fucked. She left. End of story.” The rest was nobody’s business, not that he loved her and not that she was Müller’s daughter. He’d take on Franz Müller on his own as soon as he got out of this hellhole.
“Stubborn asshole!” Gabriel cursed. “If you don’t talk, I can’t help you.”
Zane crossed his arms over his chest.
“Fine. Be that way. But I’m warning you, Samson won’t show you any leniency.” He stormed to the door. “And for you, jerk, I stood up to Lewis not two hours ago. A waste of time and energy that was! I should have tossed you at his feet and let him rip you apart!”
He slammed the door shut before Zane could answer.
“He’s back? Her father is back?” He hammered his fists against the door, but Gabriel didn’t come back.
Müller was in San Francisco? And Gabriel had seen him? And Zane was locked up, unable to get to him. He cursed three ways to heaven. He’d never been so close to him, not in over six decad
es. All that separated him from this monster now was this damn door.
Then panic struck him. Gabriel knew where Portia was, even though he hadn’t said so. This could only mean that she was back. Back at home—with her father.
What would Müller do to her? There was no doubt that he would be able to smell that she’d been with a man. Zane’s scent on her, his blood inside her, was still too fresh. In a few days it would have been gone, but Müller had come back too early. He would know instantly, and while he wouldn’t know who’d touched his daughter, he would be furious. Knowing his vile temper, anything could happen.
Why hadn’t he considered this earlier? He’d been so blinded by the fact that Portia was his greatest enemy’s daughter that he’d overlooked the obvious: Müller hadn’t wanted her to lose her virginity, and now that he had to assume—and rightly so—that she had, he would be furious. Without a proper outlet, without Müller being able to lash out at the man who’d robbed his daughter of her virginity, he had only one person to direct his anger at: Portia.
“Let me out of here!” he screamed at the closed door and pounded his fists against it. “Gabriel! Get back here! Get me out! NOW!”
He screamed at the top of his lungs. Seconds passed, minutes followed. He was at the border of being hoarse when there was finally a sound at the other side. When the door opened, he burst through it, but both Samson and Amaury pushed him back inside the cell.
“Let me go! I have to get to her!”
“Lock us in, Gabriel,” Samson shouted over his shoulder as both he and Amaury used their combined strength to keep him from the door.
When a moment later the door fell shut and the lock clicked, he pulled back. “You have to let me go. She’s in danger. I have to help her,” Zane breathed.
“That’s not how it works, Zane,” Samson responded calmly. “Do you really think we’ll let you walk out of here after all you’ve done?”
“You have to! Portia needs me.” Desperation clawed at him. He had to convince Samson to let him go.
Amaury tilted his head. “Yeah, like a hole in the head. You have some screwed-up notion of what that means.”
“Samson, there’s no time to lose. She’s in danger. Her father—”
Samson jabbed his finger at Zane’s chest. “Her father has every right to be mad at us. You can consider yourself lucky that we’re not hanging you out to dry. He hired us for one specific reason, and one reason only, and we didn’t do our job. No! What did we do? We screwed him over! We did exactly what he wanted to avoid.”
“It was wrong!” Zane yelled.
“You bet it was wrong. What you did was wrong!”
“I had no fucking choice! You wouldn’t listen to me. I told you what was at stake. And you ignored it!”
Samson blew out a breath. “I didn’t ignore it. I was considering your accusations. I was going to investigate.”
“Too late!” Zane planted his hands at his hips and widened his stance.
“Thanks to you!”
“You have to let me go. Her father, he’ll hurt her.”
Samson shook his head. “He’ll ground her, he’ll yell at her, that’s all. She’ll survive.”
Zane grabbed Samson’s forearm. “You don’t understand. I can't let her take his wrath when I’m the one who deserves it.”
“First true words out of your mouth,” Amaury added.
Zane tossed him a glare. “None of you understands. He’ll hurt her. I know him. I know what he’s capable of.”
“What are you talking about?” Samson asked. “How would you know Lewis? He’s been gone the entire time you were Portia’s bodyguard.”
Zane closed his eyes. “I know him from the war.”
“The war?” Amaury echoed.
Zane opened his eyes and looked at the two men who had known him for decades yet knew nothing about his past. This was about to change. “World War II. I was an inmate in Buchwald. The concentration camp.”
He noticed the surprise in Samson’s and Amaury’s eyes, but they remained silent, their bodies rigid in attention.
“Portia’s father was a doctor there. His name isn’t Lewis, it was Franz Müller. If you think Josef Mengele had a reputation for torturing prisoners with his horrendous experiments, you haven’t met Franz Müller. He makes Mengele look like a choirboy. I can’t tell you all the things he did, how he tortured us, killed so many of us.”
Compassion spread in the eyes of his friends.
“He was obsessed with creating a master race. When they captured a vampire one night, he got what he wanted. I was one of his guinea pigs, so was my sister.”
“Are you sure it’s he?” Samson interrupted, his voice calmer and quieter than before.
Zane nodded. “It’s a face I could never forget. I’ve hunted him for years. Samson, you have to believe me when I tell you this: he’s just as mad and as dangerous as he was then. He’s started up an organization to create a new master race.”
“What kind of race?”
“A race of hybrids, stronger than any others, stronger than all vampires. He’s still obsessed. It was a mistake for me to send Portia away. I know that now.”
“You sent her away?” Amaury asked.
He gave his friend a rueful look. “When I saw a picture of her father and realized that she was his flesh, I told her to run or I would kill her. I threatened her.”
“Oh God, why?” Samson gasped.
“Don’t you see? I’m in love with the daughter of the man who destroyed my family, who tortured and killed my sister. I had to send her away. I couldn’t trust myself not to kill her in my rage.”
Zane dropped his head. He should have never let her go. Now he knew that even in his rage he wouldn’t have harmed her.
“My God, Zane, what now?”
When he met Samson’s gaze and realized that his boss believed him and was willing to help him, relief swept over him like a soft breeze. “We have to get her away from her father.”
“And then?” Amaury asked, his voice solemn.
“You have to protect her.”
“We?” Samson asked softly.
“She won’t want me around anymore. She hates me now.” And he could live with that as long as he knew she was safe.
Chapter Thirty-Four
There was a cold chill in the air when Zane alighted from his Hummer half a block from Portia’s house.
According to Gabriel, Oliver had been assigned to watch the house while Samson and Amaury had searched for Portia in Tahoe. After she had returned home and Oliver had reported that fact to Gabriel, Oliver’s assignment had ended, and he’d left his observation point. Considering that Scanguards’ assignment had terminated as soon as Portia was back with her father, Gabriel’s action was only logical, however, knowing what they all knew now, it would have been more prudent to keep an eye on the house.
Behind Zane, Amaury and Samson got out of the car and quietly eased the doors shut. It was past three in the morning, and the streets were quiet. Any sound they made would carry far, and the last thing Zane wanted was to alert Müller to his presence before he was in position to strike.
The house was shrouded in darkness, not a single lamp illuminating it from the inside. He didn’t know what to expect. Had Portia told her father who her lover was? She knew his real name: Zacharias Eisenberg. Had she divulged it to her father? And why wouldn’t she? She was angry with him because he’d rejected her and threatened to kill her. What could be more logical than for her to tell her father where he could find his greatest enemy? It would be the easiest way for her to take her ultimate and well-deserved revenge on him.
But what was unclear was how Müller would punish his daughter for going against his wishes. Zane feared the worst. Müller was a fanatic. Would he really tolerate his daughter having slept with a Jew, even if this brought him closer to exterminating said Jew? Would he first lash out at his daughter because she had betrayed him? There was no way of knowing for sure until he actually saw
Portia.
For all he knew, Müller could be lying in wait in the dark house, ready to plunge a stake into Zane’s heart not only to end the chase that had lasted for over sixty years, but also to punish him for defiling his virgin daughter.
Zane sighed. How ironic that he’d been in Müller’s house and never realized it. But there had been no family pictures, nothing that would have given Müller’s identity away.
“You okay?” Amaury whispered next to him.
“No.”
He would probably never be all right again. Whatever he did now, it would hurt somebody. He had to get Portia out of the house, most likely against her will, because she wouldn’t want his help now, and at the same time, he had to take this chance and kill her father. She would hate him even more for that.
They approached the house from the north side, which had no windows. Only the front door was on this side. Their footsteps made no sound on the cold concrete, all three of them were well versed in stealth. Communicating only with hand and eye signals, they positioned themselves around the door.
Zane slid his key into the lock and turned. With a nod to his colleagues, he jerked the door open and lunged inside. Samson and Amaury did likewise. Within a second, they were inside the small house, each positioned against a different wall from which to attack or defend.
Zane inhaled and allowed his senses to reach out. Emptiness greeted him.
“They’re gone,” Samson said, letting out a breath.
But Zane barely heard his boss’ voice, because the scent that drifted into his nostrils had set alarm bells ringing in his head, and catapulted him toward the stairs. He crouched down and wiped his fingers over a spot on the railing.
Blood. It was dried blood.
“Portia …”
His eyes focused, and he discovered more spots of dried blood.
“Oh God, no!”
Samson’s hand clamped down on his shoulder. “We’ll find her.”
Zane raised his lids. “He hurt her … She bled. Samson … it’s all my fault. He hurt her because of me.”
