by Jess Haines
Chaz rested his chin on top of my head, the arm not clinging to Tiny circling my shoulder. He stank of blood and sweat, with the underlying musk of Were underneath. I was too upset to care about his decided lack of clothes. I pressed tighter against him, savoring his warmth and the imagined protection of his arms. Though he’d done an admirable job of helping keep the bad guys at bay, he hadn’t been able to save me from being bound. That kind of metaphysical tie wasn’t something he could fix.
That made me wonder. Chaz couldn’t fix it–but maybe Arnold could.
Infused with new excitement at the idea, I twisted a little in Chaz’s arms so I could look at Royce. That almost blasted every notion right out of my head. Somehow I managed to cling to my one, tiny ray of hope. “Where are Sara and Arnold? Weren’t they with you?”
Royce shook his head, folding his arms across his chest. “Your mage friend was quite incensed the police would not believe that you were in danger, and so he caused something of a scene. I could stop them from pressing charges, but since he did some damage to the office of the interviewing officer, he’s being held overnight. Sara did not want to abandon him, so she stayed at the station. He should be released after the paperwork is sorted out.”
Uh-oh. That wasn’t good. Still, maybe once he got out he’d be able to help do something about this unnatural tie I had to the two vampires.
Royce continued, “If you don’t mind, I think we should all clean ourselves up. I’m sure someone here will have some extra clothing you can borrow. I also need to take my rest for the day, so perhaps we can continue any discussion this evening.”
A shower sounded absolutely fantastic. I nodded wearily and we all started for the stairs. I had to release my grip on Chaz’s waist so Tiny could help him up the stairs. A couple of the vampires stayed behind and started cleaning up the unbelievable amount of gore. I had no idea what they intended to do with the bodies. Honestly, I didn’t want to know.
Mouse urged Dawn and me to come to her apartment. Chaz, Devon, Tiny, and some of the vampires all followed Royce farther up the stairs. I noted we were all leaving bloody tracks behind us. Gross. This was all just too much, and I surely would’ve disgraced myself in front of everyone if I hadn’t already tossed my cookies earlier.
Dawn and Mouse let me clean up first. Once I saw myself in the mirror, it was no wonder why. With all the crud clinging to me, the blood on my face and neck, I would’ve told me to shower first, too.
Shuddering at the nightmarish vision reflected in the mirror, I quickly divested myself of my gore-encrusted weapons and clothes. Though it hadn’t been doing me much good lately, I kept the necklace on.
I didn’t have as many bruises as I was expecting. The worst wound I’d suffered was the one where Max’s sword had nicked my throat; a shallow line that stung like a mother when I rubbed a bit of soap around it. Like the cut on my lower lip, it had closed unnaturally fast, leaving a fresh and painfully tender scar behind.
When I stepped out of the shower, someone had left a change of clothes and taken my armor, weapons, and trench coat with them. There was a note with the new clothes. I recognized Mouse’s handwriting telling me she had taken my stuff to be washed. I felt curiously naked without them when I emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, dressed in someone else’s loose-fitting cotton shirt and a pair of draw-string pajama pants. They were a bit too long for me, but nicely comfortable.
Dawn slipped silently past me, barely acknowledging my presence when she hurried into the bathroom. I couldn’t blame her. Even the ethereal beauty of an elf can only stand up to so much wear and tear. She was reaching her limit.
Mouse was in the living room using an oilcloth to rub down the swords. She’d righted most of the furniture. In front of the couch was a low table with a steaming pot of tea and some crackers arranged on a tray. One of the cups had a few drops of tea left in it. Dawn must have had at the food and drink before hurrying into the shower.
I fixed myself a cup with a bit of honey and lemon and settled down next to Mouse on the couch, closing my eyes as I inhaled the sweet scent. The warmth seeping into my palms from the delicate china cup was more than welcome.
Mouse didn’t say anything, of course. She did smile at me, though she was looking a little transparent around the edges, too. Every vamp in the building would need to feed soon. The thought would’ve unsettled me more if I wasn’t so tired and relaxed from the mix of the warm shower, fresh clothes, and hot tea.
Though it normally would have, Royce’s voice breaking the silence didn’t startle me.
“Shiarra, would you please come with me? I’d like to discuss a couple of things with you before I rest for the day.”
I had an extraordinarily difficult time opening my eyes, fighting back exhaustion so I could get up to join him. He looked a lot better now, his hair slicked back from his face, wet from the shower. He’d put on silk pajama bottoms, but hadn’t bothered with a shirt, thus leaving his scarred chest and arms bare to view. His color was better, and there were no open cuts on him anymore. However, there were too many scars to account for the damage done to him tonight. I wondered if he’d gotten them while still alive. I was also grateful to see he must have fed on someone else.
Taking the tea with me, I carefully cradled it to my chest while Royce led the way. Upstairs, the shutters on the windows were all tightly closed and latched, the only light coming from the tiny spotlights illuminating the statuary. The hostages I’d freed and the bodies of Max’s guards were gone; only a few scarlet stains on the hardwood remained to show where they’d been. Chaz and the other two werewolves were showered and clean, sprawled snoring on some of the decorative pillows on the floor. Tiny was seated on the chaise, plucking at some bandages on his leg and not paying much attention to us when we walked in. Devon wasn’t in sight, but I could hear the shower running. Bitch and moan about Royce as he might, he was still taking advantage of the vampire’s hospitality. Hypocrite.
Royce led me into his bedroom, holding the door for me before shutting it behind us to ensure some privacy from Tiny and Chaz. He moved more fluidly than he had earlier, but I was too tired to be concerned about the implications or repercussions of being led to the vampire’s bed. I stayed where I was by the door while he settled down on his futon, making such a simple, mundane action look effortlessly graceful and sexy. I was too exhausted to care overmuch, though I still needed some answers. Before I lost my train of thought again, I asked the question that had been eating at me for the last couple of days.
“Arnold gave me a charm before I fought you the first time. It was supposed to keep vampires from toying with my thoughts and emotions. I can sort of understand how Max got around it, seeing how I was bound to him. What I don’t get is how you got to me. How did you do it before the bond?”
He gave me a pleasant, all too innocent smile. “I’m an ancient, elder vampire, Shiarra. I think that speaks for itself.”
“No,” I replied, dissatisfied with his answer. “It doesn’t make sense. How could you defeat mage-work like this? I could shrug off Dawn’s glamour like it was nothing, and yet I watched her turn vampires into slaves to fight for her. What you did was … different. I don’t understand it.”
His response was unexpected. He looked sheepish, rubbing at his eyes with his fingertips as he tried to hide something that looked suspiciously like embarrassment. His apologetic manner was cute. I’d never thought I’d refer to the vampire as cute, not even in my head, but his awkward attempt at collecting his thoughts was strangely endearing. Even if the next words to come out of his mouth were anything but.
“I’m sure you’ve figured out by now my specialty is in using my abilities to cloud the minds of others, to manipulate emotions, and to use it as a form of control over people when I need to. Most vampires don’t have the edge I do over wards against mind magic. Even Max does not have my ability to break down walls of will.”
My alarm must have been obvious, since he opened his eyes to s
tudy me when I whispered my next question. “Have you been doing that to me all along? Does being bound by blood make it easier for you to get past my defenses?”
“If you weren’t wearing that charm, you wouldn’t be able to come up with such a lucid question. It does make it more difficult for me to, as you put it, ‘get past your defenses,’ but it wasn’t impossible before you were bound.”
“Why was I able to think straight until Max called me, then? Shouldn’t I have been drawn to him all the time? Or to you?”
“No. With practice, most of us can expend effort to dampen or strengthen the attraction inherent in a blood bond. We can fine-tune it to suit whatever serves our purposes at the time. Max and I have had a long time to perfect that skill.”
I didn’t say anything, just stared down at the cup in my hands and watched the surface of the liquid tremble.
“Theoretically,” he continued, “if you were not wearing the charm, our hold on you would have a greater effect on your thought process. The bond may have temporarily displaced any trace of your own thoughts, your personality would be gone, making you only what we wanted you to be. The change would last for the first few weeks while the bond set in, augmented by additional doses of your host’s blood. Not that it matters at this point.” He sighed deeply, then continued. “Aside from all of that, the bond isn’t why I asked you to come here. It may be an unnecessary worry, but I have the feeling Athena may attempt to contact you. If she does, I would strongly suggest you run as far and fast away from her as possible.”
Right now wasn’t the best time to think about what might happen if Royce changed his mind about leaving me alone. If he offered to prolong the bond with his vampiric charm up on full, there was little chance I’d deny him. Grasping at any opportunity to change the subject, I quickly asked the first question that came to mind.
“Who the hell is Athena?”
Royce smiled, though there wasn’t any humor in it. “Athena is the vampire who made Max and me what we are.”
“Your sire.”
“Yes.”
I mulled over his words, thinking about some of the things Max had said earlier. Suddenly, I wasn’t quite so tired anymore. Royce was in the mood to answer questions, and I was going to take advantage of it.
“Who is Helen of Volos? Why did Max keep talking about her?”
Royce’s expression abruptly darkened, and he no longer met my gaze. “She was something of a bone of contention between us at one time. We were both relatively newly turned vampires. Our passions ran stronger, less controlled, and it was nearly the death of us both.”
“Tell me about her,” I demanded, though I softened it with a “please” when I saw him tense up.
“First, try to understand what it is for vampires to be as we are. The one who makes us holds us in a bond stronger than the one you feel for me right now.”
That was a scary thought. I shivered before gesturing for him to continue. “I think I get the idea. Go on.”
“Max and I loved our sire with great passion. Even men who were not bound or made into vampires by her desired her. Some went to great feats of skill or strength, greater than was normal even during that age of heroism and magic, just to win a smile from her lips or the favorable brush of her hand. Wars have been fought in her name, and she reveled in that adoration and devotion. Thus, you can imagine her fury when she discovered Max felt love for another woman.”
I crept forward, settling cautiously on the edge of the futon. It was so low to the ground, I felt awkward sitting there with my knees practically up under my chin. What a vampire who was impervious to the cold needed with a down comforter was beyond me, but it was plenty comfy to sit on.
Considering his words, I hazarded a guess, intrigued by this glimpse into ancient history. “Are you saying she got pissed when she found out, and sent you to go do something about it? Get Helen out of the way?”
Royce closed his eyes and nodded, his expression remaining carefully neutral. The barely detectable edge to his voice clued me in that he was not happy telling this story. “I was to seduce her away from Max, then destroy her as his punishment. After a time, I found I did not want to kill her. Like Max, I soon fell in love with her, too.
“She was easy to like–pretty, and a very warm soul on the surface. While she did not have the classic, statuesque beauty of Athena, there was much more to her than simple looks. However, Helen had a very shrewd mind. I almost did not discover that fact in time. Max did not believe me when I told him she knew what we were. She told one of the local warriors of the blood-drinking monsters in the people’s midst, and promised him she’d lure us someplace where we could be cornered and destroyed. That way, she’d be rid of us both while opening herself up as an offering to her champion.”
The slight sneer on his lips did not hide Royce’s pain at this betrayal, even after all these years. I placed a hand lightly on his knee, as I was sitting too far down on the bed to reach his arm or shoulder. I kept my voice as low and neutral as possible since I didn’t think he’d take pity or sorrow well from me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he muttered, not opening his eyes. It was probably the only reason I could think straight just then. “Max did not believe me when I told him. He didn’t want to believe Helen was capable of such deception. I brought him with me to the place where she was to meet the man she’d arranged to have kill us. We were too late; a division of the local town guard was already searching for us, and I reacted badly to her betrayal. Even with the evidence right in front of him, Max still thought I was only acting out of jealous rage. We fought until I managed to pin him to a tree with my sword–I didn’t want him dead. I was sorely wounded from the battle and Helen was the closest human. Though I should have held my rage in check, I fed too deeply and killed her, fleeing before Max could free himself.”
I listened in spellbound fascination, finding a few things Max said suddenly making sense. “So Athena was pleased by what you did and rewarded you, and then cast Max away, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” he replied, voice faint. “Max was not allowed to come back to her side for over a century. He was lucky to have survived so young without the benefit of a mentor and the protection afforded by an elder. By the time he returned to her, I had been set loose to expand our sire’s holdings and influence in other countries. We have rarely crossed paths since then. I never really bore Max any true animosity, but he has viewed me as a threat or an adversary ever since.”
“He thought if you loved me, he could use me to take out his revenge by making you feel the same loss he did when Helen died.”
“Exactly.”
“Wow,” I said, though that seemed pretty inadequate under the circumstances.
“Wow, indeed.” Royce smirked, opening those glittering black eyes to regard me. It took an effort to concentrate on what he was saying instead of drowning in the depths of his gaze. “We vampires tend to hold grudges. We do have the luxury of time in order to plot our vengeance in ways no other creature on heaven or earth can conceive. He set himself up so, if he succeeded tonight, he had many things to gain by my death. Accomplishing that would have been made easier if I’d been incapacitated with grief as he was by Helen’s murder. He’s been planning my downfall for a long, long time.”
I decided to ask the one thing that bothered me most about this story. It wasn’t the right question to be asking and probably didn’t matter, but I had to know.
“Would his plan have worked if he killed me? Do I mean that much to you?”
Royce arched an eyebrow at me, a hint of a grin tugging at his lips. “You can’t tell as much for yourself?”
The slightly playful turn of the conversation threw me. “Uh, no. Not really.”
He closed his eyes and settled into the pillows, his roguish grin growing wider. For once, the sight of his fangs didn’t inspire any fear in me.
“Go back to your boyfriend’s side and get some rest. I’ll answer that quest
ion another time.”
I felt the compulsion behind the words, the touch of his will making it an order instead of a simple brush-off. It pissed me off, but I had to obey, rising unsteadily to my feet.
“Asshole,” I muttered, and made sure it was loud enough so he could hear it.
His soft laughter followed me out of the room.
Chapter 36
I woke up in a dark, unfamiliar place, the smell of vampire and Were overwhelmingly thick on and around me. For a second, I felt a rush of panic, but only for as long as it took me to remember I wasn’t at home in my own bed.
I was sprawled across someone’s chest–Chaz. He was awake, but unmoving, lying quietly beneath me. The others were awake, but seemed happy enough to lounge on the cushions. We were in an open space, the only illumination coming from a computer monitor halfway across the room from where we lay. With the windows shuttered up tight, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night.
When a dark figure cut across the meager illumination given off by the computer monitor, I started. Chaz’s arm tightened around my waist in response.
Royce turned back to the desk and tapped a few keys. He made a vaguely dissatisfied sound under his breath before turning away from the computer, walking past us. He glanced our way as he moved toward the stairs.
“Finally awake, hmm? Mouse arranged some food and clothing for you both. I’d suggest taking some time to call your office, perhaps your family. The newshounds seem to have gotten quite out of control regarding your disappearance.”
“Good morning to you, too,” I muttered. My ribs and joints ached enough to merit a groan as I sat up, fixing Royce with a mild glare as I lay on the sarcasm. It came more easily than it had yesterday, even though I still felt the desire to get up and wrap my arms around him, to press as close to his body as I was to Chaz right now. “Did you sleep well? Oh, sure, I did, too.”
