Leaving them watching after him, he crossed his way to the door leading into the kitchen. He had every notion of climbing into bed and sleeping the week away. It was unlikely, but even he could dream. Maybe, if he was lucky, no one else would get killed in the next twelve hours.
“Gideon!” Imogen fell into step alongside him as he pushed his way through the swinging doors.
“Hello,” he said. They reached the door leading upstairs and he held it open for her. “How are you holding up?”
Slipping past, she waited for him to follow before starting down the narrow hallway together, their shoulders bumping.
“My family was murdered,” she said evenly. “I’m holding up.”
He glanced sideways at her.
She was a tiny thing, he mused, barely coming to his shoulder. Her frail innocence had never been something he fancied in a bedmate, but even he had to admit there was a slight allure to her. Granted, it was nothing he would even consider. She was just too young and, despite everything, he was very much taken.
“Is there something I could do for you?” he asked.
Next to him, she seemed to straighten. Then she ceased walking altogether and turned to him. There was determination on her face and in the harsh line of her shoulders.
“I want to see my family,” she blurted.
Gideon blinked. “Pardon?”
“My family,” she repeated. “I want to see them.”
He frowned. “Imogen, they’re dead,” he said softly.
“I know that.” She took a deep breath. “They deserve a proper burial. They were my family. It’s my responsibility.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Have you talked with the others about this?”
Her grimace gave her away even before she shook her head. “I wasn’t sure how.” Her blue eyes rose up and met his. “You’re easy to talk to. I was hoping you could help me convince the others to let me go.”
“Imogen.” He faced her squarely. “You’re not a prisoner here. You are free to go anywhere you please.”
It was her turn to look wary. “Really?”
He nodded. “Just make sure that someone knows where you’re going in case something happens.”
She seemed to mull this over carefully before giving the slightest of nods. “Okay. Thank you.”
Inclining his head, Gideon wished her goodnight and went up to his room. He kicked off his boots and dropped face down, fully clothed, onto the bed.
Chapter Six
He didn’t exactly get twelve hours of sleep. It was more like five, and while he attempted to convince himself that it was better than nothing, he couldn’t stave off the urge to punch the person flicking his nose.
“Fuck off!” he grumbled into the pillow, eyes still closed.
“Get your ass out of bed,” came the response from a familiar voice.
“Bite me.”
For a moment, Reggie didn’t respond. Then Gideon was rewarded by the brisk thump of retreating feet towards the door. He smiled happily to himself as he snuggled more deeply into the pillow he clutched to him.
The feet didn’t make it all the way to its destination. Instead, they got midway, and before Gideon could brace himself, stopped at the foot of the bed a split second before the sheets were torn away, bathing him in a rush of frigid, morning air.
“Motherfu—”
“Careful,” Reggie snickered. “She’s your mother, too.”
In a single motion, Gideon flopped over and pitched the pillow at his brother’s head. Reggie caught it.
“What’s your problem?” Gideon snapped. “I just went to bed!”
“Imogen’s gone,” Reggie said. “Dad thinks she went home.”
Gideon closed his eyes and cursed. “That little idiot. I told her to wait for someone!”
“You knew?”
Leaping off the mattress, Gideon marched to where he’d kicked off his boots. “She came to me last night. She wanted to go see her family. I told her to ask.”
Reggie raised a single brow and blinked at him in dry annoyance. “You’re the idiot.”
“What?”
Reggie threw his arms open wide. “She did ask. She asked you and you said fine.”
“I didn’t say fine!” But he couldn’t help grimacing. “I didn’t think...”
“Come on.” Reggie started for the door. “We better get her back before something else gets her first.”
They left his room together, Gideon tugging down the lapel of his coat.
“Do you always sleep in your clothes?”
Gideon spared Reggie a sidelong glance. “No, usually I sleep with my freak flag flying free and the breeze blowing up my ass. It’s very liberating.”
Reggie’s eyes widened. He blinked, shook his head. “I am never going to erase that image from my head.”
Smirking, Gideon quickened his pace. “You’re welcome.”
Magnus, Octavian, and their father were already in the dining area. They glanced up when Gideon strolled in, Reggie a step behind him.
“Imogen has gone home,” Reggie announced. “Genius over here told her it was okay.”
Aiming a misaimed swat at his brother, Gideon scowled. “I did not say it was okay. I told her to ask ... someone that wasn’t me,” he added as an afterthought.
Their father narrowed his eyes. “She asked you to go home?”
“Well, yes and no. It’s a really funny story.”
“Gideon!”
Exhaling, Gideon decided to just get it over with. “She asked, but I told her she would need to make sure a responsible individual knew where she was going. I had no idea she thought I was that responsible person. Clearly the girl has problems that I can’t be held accountable for.”
Frowning at him as though he were singlehandedly liable for the world’s problems, their father turned to the others. “Reggie, come with me. Gideon, go with Magnus and see if you can’t pick up Micah and Cara’s scent.”
Valkyrie took that moment to storm into the room, decked out in her habitual boots, leather tights and a white halter. Her daggers were tucked into the tops of her boots. She had her duster grasped in one hand and a sword in the other; she was a woman on a mission and damn if she didn’t make him tight in the shorts. She took the group in with a flick of her blue eyes.
“I think it would be wiser if I went with Magnus,” she stated boldly. “Gideon managed to lose the scent once. We can’t risk that a second time.”
Annoyance shot through him. “I didn’t lose the scent!” he declared hotly. “I misplaced it amongst the hundred other scents swirling around that place.”
Valkyrie didn’t seem to care how it happened, only that he had been the cause of it. “I’m sure you have other more pressing matters to attend to, like going back to bed.”
“Is that an option?” Gideon looked to his father. “Because I pick that one.”
Liam pursed his lips even as laughter danced in his eyes. “That isn’t an option.” he said to Gideon. Then focused on the warrior standing a polite five feet away from them. “Thank you, Valkyrie, but—”
The kitchen door swung open yet again and Riley hurried out, followed by an anxious Kyaerin.
“Any word?” His mother rushed to his father’s side, blue eyes bright with concern. “Is she all right?”
Liam took her small hands in his large ones and brought the knuckles to his lips. “She is fine,” he assured her. “I will bring her back.”
Although a good majority of his mother’s tension melted from around her shoulders, she still continued to eye his father with uncertainty. “She’s so sheltered, Liam. So innocent. If anything happens to her—”
“Nothing will,” he promised. “We are leaving now to retrieve her.”
“I can’t believe she would just leave like that,” Riley murmured, wearing the same anxious mask as his mother. “What if something happens to her? She could get killed and she would be completely alone and helpless.”
Gideon cleared his t
hroat and concentrated on nudging the salt shaker on a nearby table closer to the pepper shaker, tactfully avoiding eye contact with everyone in the room.
“I’m more concerned that we won’t get all the information we need to find whoever’s responsible,” Valkyrie piped in. “She is a witness after all.”
Riley narrowed her eyes. “She’s just a kid!”
Valkyrie snorted. “You can’t know that. We don’t age like you mortals.”
“I think we should concentrate on heading out,” Liam interjected when Riley opened her mouth. “Valkyrie, you go ahead with Magnus—”
“Hey, wait!” Gideon’s head shot up. “That was my job!”
“And Gideon,” his father continued in the same even tone. “Reggie and I will find Imogen.”
“You should go with them.”
Riley had slipped around the group to stand at Octavian’s shoulder. She had one thin arm hooked around his elbow and was looking up into his face with her chin resting on his upper arm.
It always amused Gideon how tiny she was next to his giant of a brother. But she had a strength to her that made her appear much larger, a strength that had nothing to do with her strigoi blood. It was something deep inside her. Something she had been born with.
“A Caster needs to stay behind,” Octavian told her. “Final Judgment can’t be left unguarded.”
Riley squeezed his arm, but said nothing else.
Gideon opened his mouth to offer Octavian the opportunity to prowl the rancid docks in Gideon’s place when he was interrupted by the dark, purple smoke coiling from the ground, rising high to the ceiling before the doors. Everyone in the room tensed as a hulking figure emerged from its core and strode into the room.
Commanding, with skin the color of burnished gold and eyes like the pits of hell, the man was seven feet of raw muscle. He surveyed the room with a flat, cool expression, settling in turn on each face.
“Ramses?” Valkyrie shifted a single step closer, but drew herself up short and straightened her spine. Her face became a blank mask. “Was there another attack?”
“No.” His voice boomed through the room like thunder.
Valkyrie’s posture gave the faintest little jolt. No one would have noticed it, but Gideon had trouble not noticing things when it came to her. No matter how slight.
“Is it my father? Does he wish to see me?”
“No,” the man said again. He turned those dark eyes towards Liam. “He wishes for an audience with the Gatekeeper of the North.”
“My father has already met with your leader,” Magnus interrupted. “We can’t simply drop everything every time a Keeper has the urge for a tea party.”
Liam put his hand up, silencing his son and the man at the door when he seemed to pull himself up to his full height, his features twisted in outrage.
“If Arild wishes to see me then of course I will oblige, but I have matters that need attending first—”
“It is to be now,” Ramses stated sharply. “It is a dishonor to keep—”
“It is also a dishonor to demand another leader to run when summoned, like a dog,” Magnus hissed. “My father will meet with your leader when he is ready.”
“It’s all right, Magnus,” Liam said calmly. “Perhaps Arild has information on the attacks that he wishes to share.”
“Then I will come with you,” Magnus decided at once.
Liam shook his head. “You and Gideon need to find Micah and Cara. Reggie, you and Valkyrie—”
“Does my father wish my attendance?” Valkyrie asked Ramses.
“No,” Ramses said with more than just a hint of frost. “But he has sent you a message.” He paused for a full heartbeat before continuing. “He wishes for me to tell you that you have disappointed him. It has been three days and you have not captured those responsible for these attacks. Had he known you would humiliate him in this manner, he would have sent Erle. Then perhaps the task would have been completed properly.”
His words rang through the room, a sharp slap of cruelty that marked Valkyrie’s cheeks pink. She kept herself rigid, but Gideon could feel her humiliation and her desperation to keep from showing just how badly the message hurt her. Outwardly, she was the perfect mask of indifference.
Gideon wasn’t nearly as trained to suppress his emotions.
In three powerful strides, Gideon ate the distance separating him from the intruder and stopped when he was nose to nose with Ramses.
“I don’t know who you are,” he said calmly, but with an edge of barely suppressed fury. “And frankly, I don’t give a shit. But if you ever talk to her like that again, Arild Devereaux will find himself one asshole short of a full deck, do you understand me?”
Ramses’s eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”
Gideon laughed. “God no!” He raised a hand, rested it on the other man’s shoulder. Gave it a pat. “No, no. Of course not.” With the speeds of a viper, he had Ramses by the throat and had him slammed against the door. All humor was gone. He barely heard his father’s shouts to let the man go as Gideon leaned in close. “That, you overgrown prick, was a promise.”
Ramses bared his teeth. “I will have your head for this!” he snarled.
Gideon tightened his grip, relishing in the pleasure of watching the man flail and squeak as his face swelled to the color of an eggplant. He might have had a full foot over Gideon and probably outweighed him by thirty pounds, yet unlike the Harvester women, the men were pretty to look at, but otherwise completely useless and kept mostly for preproduction and domestic necessity. It was the women who wielded the strength, speed, and usefulness.
“Not if I have yours first” He gave Ramses’s windpipe a squeeze in indication.
“Gideon! Get off him!” Octavian snapped from behind him.
Gideon ignored him. “You tell your king that so long as Valkyrie is in my house, he will keep his useless, bullshit little messages to himself. I don’t give a flying fuck how important he thinks they might be. And the next time he sends you, I will send you back to him in a matchbox, do you understand me? Nod, or so God help me, I will snap your fucking neck.”
He was torn away from Ramses before he could get his nod. The man gasped and doubled over, wheezing for breath.
Valkyrie glowered at Gideon. “What the hell are you doing, Maxwell?”
“Teaching this asshole some manners!” he shot back.
This only seemed to enrage her further. “You have no right to put your hands on a member of my house!”
Gideon rounded on her, his fury clouding all other thoughts. “This isn’t your house. This is my house and he’s in my house disrespecting someone under my roof. Tell me you wouldn’t have your blade at his throat for less.”
Her nostrils flared. Her jaw muscles bunched and flexed. She glared at him, but she didn’t contradict him.
He was too lost in his own anger to take pleasure in the victory. “Get him out of my face, Kyrie,” he warned her with all the calm he could muster. “Because I wasn’t kidding. I will cut him up into tiny pieces while he’s still alive and hand deliver him to your father.”
Without waiting for her to respond, without waiting for anyone to stop him, Gideon grabbed Ramses’s by the collar and shoved him to the ground. He wrenched open the doors and stormed out. He made it as far as the bottom steps before Valkyrie charged after him.
“You had no right—”
Gideon whirled around, his breathing barely stable as he shot her a warning snarl not to push him. “Let it go, Valkyrie!”
She blinked in horrified disbelief, like she couldn’t believe her ears. “Let it go?” she repeated slowly. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? What sort of trouble you just caused?”
Gideon fisted his hands at his sides, more to restrain the urge to grab her and kiss her out of sheer rage. “Maybe you’re okay with being spoken to like that, but I sure as fuck won’t let it happen.”
She faltered for a full seconds before regaining her step. “He
is my father!”
“He’s a fucking bastard!” The words tore out of him before he could stop them. “He’s an overbearing, pompous, egotistical douche that doesn’t deserve your respect. He sure as fuck doesn’t deserve your love.”
Her face had gone very pale, but her eyes were bright, snapping with anger and something else.
“How dare you!” she hissed, her voice trembling.
Gideon spread his arms open wide. “Go ahead. Tell me I’m wrong.” He topped the challenge by climbing the steps and joining her on the porch. “Tell me you like the way he treats you, like you’re nothing!” He was practically screaming at her now. “Tell me you think you deserve it.” His teeth creaked as he forced the last words through them.
“This is my life,” she bit out. “I am none of your business.”
He shook his head slowly, his gaze never leaving her face. “You’re wrong.”
Crimson flags rode high along her cheeks. “I don’t need you to save me.”
“No,” he agreed. “You don’t. You can do that yourself. But next time,” he lowered his head and his voice. “Next time, it will be your father’s throat I have in my hands. That’s a promise.”
Not giving her a chance to come up with a counter argument, he hopped down the steps and stalked to his car.
He needed to kill something.
It was no good. It was as though the entire underworld had heard of Gideon’s thirst for blood and had opted to keep hidden until it passed. He prowled the docks, the tracks, and had even scouted eight blocks in all directions to no avail. By the time he decided to turn tail and return home, the sun was beginning to set and his mood was even sourer than it had been earlier.
It was just bullshit.
Magnus was waiting for him on the front porch, a cigarette between two fingers as he kept the railing up with one hip. Gideon arched a brow at the bad habit his brother was bringing to his mouth and inhaling.
Gideon's Promise (Sons of Judgment Book 2) Page 11
