by Lucy Lyons
Chapter Fifteen
“Oh, look: she’s awake,” Gavin said. Isabel turned over on the bed and saw both men watching her. Oz looked almost as powerful as he had been when she first met him. “We have fifteen minutes to get both of you out of here. Otherwise we’re all fucked. And not in a good way.”
“She’s naked, is that going to fly?” Oz had put his jeans back on and somewhere he had found a shirt. Isabel pulled herself up, looking at the two men.
“Get dressed,” Gavin said, picking up her dress from the floor and tossing it to her. Isabel found herself pulling the dress over her head, zipping it up, before she could even think about it.
“I’d like to know if there’s any way I can get out of this ‘obey any command your makers give you’ thing,” Isabel said, smoothing the fabric over her curves.
“Not that either of us is aware of,” Oz said. “You’re sure this will work?”
“My friends are where they need to be,” Gavin told the angel. “But they won’t be there long; the council will notice.” Gavin licked his lips, looking almost nervous, and Isabel wondered just what Gavin had planned. “It’ll be dawn by the time we get to the safe house.”
“You have somewhere to stay?” Oz’s expression echoed Gavin’s concern.
“There at the house,” Gavin said with a nod. “Okay.” He looked at Isabel. “Remember, you’re hungry, you’re a thoughtless succubus who has no idea that anything out of the ordinary is happening.” Isabel rolled her eyes but nodded, schooling her face into the appropriate expression.
She watched as Gavin went through the same rigmarole with the door as he had before, blooding himself to unlock the inner door and then the outer panel. Oz gestured for her to precede him, and Gavin grabbed her by the hand, pulling her in his wake. Oz barely managed to get through the doors before they closed, and Isabel heard a low, seemingly subliminal trilling echoing through the corridor.
She almost tripped over her feet as Gavin pulled her through the hallway. When it was obvious that she couldn’t keep up with his speed, Isabel gasped as Gavin lifted her off of her feet and into his arms, carrying her with apparently no effort.
Everything became a blur as Gavin and Oz moved through the winding, twisting hallways, down the stairs, and onto the elevator. Isabel closed her eyes, the speed of their movements making her dizzy. “We’re almost there,” Oz murmured, almost too quietly for her to hear. Isabel opened her eyes again as Gavin came to a stop.
“You’d better get under cover in the next thirty minutes,” someone was saying. “And you’d better have an ironclad excuse.”
“Don’t worry about me, Kalima,” Gavin said. “Just get this fucking door open and you won’t have to think about me for at least a week.”
Isabel felt a shudder and heard mechanical, lurching sounds all around her. Looking, she saw that what was opening wasn’t precisely a door; it looked like the access to a vault, with steel rods that went into the ceiling, a seal on the edges of a circular piece of metal bigger than she was. Horizontal bars also apparently held it in place when it was locked, as Isabel saw them retreating into the mechanism of the door as well. All in all, she thought, if she wanted to secure a house of some kind, she couldn’t think of anything better to choose.
Gavin carried her out through the entry into the building, and Oz, his wings disappeared from wherever they’d emerged, fell into step with them. “Car,” Oz said briskly.
“Right over there,” Gavin said, nodding. Gavin set her down on her feet and Isabel looked around while she had the few moments to do so; the building they had left looked more like a castle than a home or a prison of any kind. She supposed that she should have figured that out from the interior. The striking, gothic structure made Isabel wonder just how far she was from home.
The car waiting for them was a nondescript sedan with deeply tinted windows, and the doors to the back opened with no apparent cause. Certainly, there was no one in the back seat as Isabel climbed in, Gavin giving her a slight push on the small of her back. Both angel and vampire climbed in on either side of her, and the doors closed with the same, seemingly automatic movement. The car pulled away from the curb in front of the vampires’ castle. Isabel looked up towards the front of the vehicle, only to see that there was some kind of solid metal or plastic wall – she wasn’t sure – between the compartments.
“So,” Oz said, settling into the seat next to her. “Where are we going, Gavin?”
“There’s a group,” Gavin explained. “Vampires, some of the shifters, even a few other super naturals, who want to stay mythological.”
“How come I never heard about them?” Isabel looked at Gavin; the vampire smirked.
“Even when ‘supes’ agree with angels, they don’t necessarily like them,” Gavin pointed out. Isabel carefully stood, moving to the other seat in the back of the car, which she figured was some kind of limo, to be able to look at both men without craning her head.
“Whatever,” Oz said. “So they’re providing safety for us?”
“A safe house, outside of town,” Gavin confirmed. “But we’re going to have to move on at nightfall.” The car began to pick up speed.
“The vamps will be on us before we even get there,” Oz pointed out.
“I’ve got people cleaning up behind us,” Gavin said with a shrug. “As far as anyone on the council will know, I took Isabel out here so I could give her some personal training.”
“So you’ll have to bring her back?” Oz raised an eyebrow. “Not sure I like that idea.”
“I’ll have to report back within a week,” Gavin said. He shrugged as if the risks of that were unimportant. “But bringing her to you, feeding her with you after she starved herself earlier, that will work to my advantage.” Gavin smirked. “You’re going to be dead, Oz.”
“I am?” Oz looked torn between amusement and concern.
“How … how were you able to get him out without anyone noticing?” Isabel had assumed that there were cameras in the corridors, watching eyes to go with the intense security.
“That is what Kalima, Harold, and Olivia are going to take care of,” Gavin said. He smoothed his hair back from his face. “There’s a record of the escape attempt, but it won’t be tied to me; it’ll look like Oz took advantage of a brief lapse in security for his chamber.”
“So they’ll be tracking him,” Isabel said.
“They will,” Gavin agreed. “Right up until evidence suggests that he’s been murdered.” Oz looked briefly stricken.
“And how is it going to suggest that?” Isabel felt her stomach lurch at the look on the angel’s face.
“I will be bringing his wings to the council,” Gavin said steadily. Isabel’s eyes widened.
“What?!” she looked at Oz. “You’re willing to …”
“They grow back,” Oz said. He smiled. “It’s one of the most painful things an angel can go through, but they grow back.”
“Typically, the only time a vampire is able to get an angel’s wings to present to the council as evidence is when they’ve killed that angel,” Gavin explained. “As you might have noticed, angels and vampires don’t tend to cooperate. The idea that Oz would willingly give up his wings in order to fake his own death won’t occur to anyone.” Isabel considered that.
“It might occur to Portia,” Isabel said.
“Portia’s not likely to be in a position to argue the point,” Gavin said. His voice chilled Isabel almost to the bone.
“Why not?” Oz sounded almost eager. “What has happened to our dear Portia?”
“I informed the council that she was attempting to interfere with my plan to train Isabel myself,” Gavin said. “As punishment, they’ve taken her fangs, and she was exposed to a UV lamp for twenty minutes. She should be sufficiently incapacitated not to bother anyone for at least a month.” There was grim satisfaction in Gavin’s smile, and for the first time, Isabel wondered if her initial impression of him – at least, the impression that she remem
bered – was at all accurate. Was he any better than the other vampires?
“Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person,” Oz said. Isabel looked at him in shock. “Who do you think was in charge of torturing me, Isabel?”
“I’m just …” she shrugged. “I guess I’m not fully transformed yet. Torturing anyone seems …”
“She isn’t tortured,” Gavin said. “Just punished. As she should be. She would have tortured you.” Gavin looked through the heavily smoked glass of the window. “We’re not being followed. Good.” He looked at Oz and smiled slightly. “At least you’ll have our girl here to help you get through the pain.”
Chapter Sixteen
The safe house looked almost as ornate as the castle they had left. As Isabel followed Oz and Gavin out of the car, she wondered once again whose side she was on – whose side anyone was on, in the complicated mess her life had become. The sky was lightening slightly in the east, and Gavin looked anxious to get inside of the building the car had taken them to. Does sunlight actually kill them, or is it just bad for them?
The door opened as they approached, and Isabel felt a shock of recognition, but as she looked more intently at the woman standing at the entry to the building, Isabel thought she had never seen her before in her life. “She’s a succubus, like you,” Oz told her. “Free – both of her makers killed.”
“Get inside,” the woman said. As Isabel passed her, she realized that the fact that the woman was another succubus was exactly what had caused her sense of recognition. The woman’s blonde hair cascaded in perfect waves to her waist, and her ripe – almost overripe – body strained at the fabric of her clothes. Her ice-blue eyes glowed with a kind of supernatural heat, and her lips curled in such a way that Isabel could well imagine that any man who saw her would immediately picture himself pushing his cock between them.
Gavin and Oz both seemed to shudder slightly as they passed the woman, and Isabel was pleased to see that the magic – which she couldn’t use on her two makers – wasn’t something to which they were completely immune. She remembered Gavin telling her that with enough time spent in close quarters with a succubus, even strong vampires and angels would become susceptible to their abilities; maybe that was why they couldn’t stay at the safe house for very long.
“There’s a light-tight room at the end of the hallway,” the woman told Gavin. “The rest of the house is more or less normal,” she added to Oz and Isabel. The succubus smiled at Isabel. “Just finishing up your transition, aren’t you?” Isabel nodded.
“I think I’m almost there,” she admitted.
“Starting to get the little psychic vibes?” The woman looked at her intently. Hear this? Isabel’s eyes widened.
“Wait, I can read minds?” The woman chuckled. Gavin left them, hurrying towards the light-tight room, and the succubus led Isabel and Oz towards a small, elegantly decorated living room.
“In a limited capacity,” the woman told her. “Mostly, you’ll be able to read – from a man – exactly what their deepest desire is. You’ll get it like a feeling, or like a craving. You’ll want nothing more than to suck them off, or hold your ankles while they plow you. But over time, it’ll become clearer, especially if you spend a lot of time around other super naturals like your angelic maker, here.”
“So when …” Isabel looked at Oz, feeling almost suspicious. “When you asked me what I wanted …”
“He was testing you, in more than one way,” the succubus said. “I made tea if you’d like it.” Isabel looked at the woman up and down, wondering.
“What’s your name? And how are you able to live like this?” The woman laughed and sat down.
“My name is Moira,” the blonde said. “And as to how I’m able to live like this, well, that much should be obvious.” Isabel shook her head.
“It isn’t,” she told Moira.
“Think about it for a moment,” Moira suggested. “I can give men everything they want – their deepest desires – and, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed, I can also convince them to pay whatever I want for it.” Moira smiled. “So I’ve made a tidy little fortune.”
“But how are you safe from the vampires?” Isabel looked at Oz; he hadn’t given her any indication in their time together that she would be able to live independently.
“The current war between the angels – and some of the other supes – and the vampire council is pretty new,” Moira said. “I became a succubus about …” she frowned, lost in thought. “Four hundred years ago. By the time the vampires tried to round me up, it was pretty easy to show them that they couldn’t contain me.”
“They couldn’t?” Moira shook her head.
“The longer you’re a succubus, the more you’ll be able to control your abilities,” Moira said. “And the more powerful they become.” Isabel shot an irritable glance at Oz, who hadn’t specifically told her that. “On the other hand, the hunger grows, at least for the first two hundred or so years,” Moira added.
“It grows?”
“At the peak of my hunger, I worked in a brothel and serviced twenty men per night on a regular basis,” Moira told her. She laughed, almost to herself. “Back then it was the only way I could reasonably feed as much as I needed to. Now, of course, there are other options.” She looked pointedly at Oz. “I have to admit, I envy you your makers.”
“Did the vampires kill your makers, or something else?” Moira grimaced.
“They killed my angel,” she replied. “Darius …” she shook her head. “He was always a risk-taker, always impulsive. Someone figured out what he was and took him out.” Moira looked at Oz again. “Are you sure you’re fully recovered from your ordeal?”
“As recovered as I need to be,” Oz said, smiling. “Isabel’s a prodigy.”
“So it would seem,” Moira said. “We have another twelve hours or so before Gavin can come out. Why don’t the two of you relax a bit?” She rose to her feet. “I have a client I need to get to.”
Chapter Seventeen
Isabel stared up at the bathroom ceiling in the room Moira had given her, thinking. Oz had gone to sleep, leaving her alone, and it was still hours until Gavin would wake up; but Isabel could already feel the hunger beginning to stir deep down in her body, the need mingled with desire that drove her feedings.
She pushed the prodding need out of her mind and tried to think. So much had happened in a week that Isabel wasn’t entirely sure that all of it was even real.
Isabel absently scrubbed at her limbs, shifting in the warm, scented water of the bathtub. Obviously, Moira’s story at least confirmed that the vampire council wanted to go public, and that they were pulling in succubi as some part of the plan to that end. The angels seemed to be – predictably – the “good guys,” but Isabel thought that the common perception of angels was less than fully accurate. She shivered, remembering the rapt, intent look on Oz’s face as Gavin had taken her, the comments that the two men had exchanged about how easily they could make her do whatever they wanted for their attentions.
But how do I know there aren’t good reasons for the vampire council to want what it wants? Away from the direct influence of the two men, Isabel was able to question their motivation. Obviously, Gavin wasn’t merely interested in keeping her from being tortured and manipulated into supporting and promoting the vampire agenda of going public; he had hinted more than once that he wanted her personally.
Isabel heard movement, and turned her head to see Oz walk into the bathroom. “Gavin will be up soon,” Oz told her.
“How long have I been in this bathtub?” Isabel sat up and shivered as the water sluiced down her body, caressing her nipples on its way down. Everything had become even more sensitive, and she thought – somewhat grimly – that she could probably, under the right circumstances, get off even from literal torture, if the person doing it to her was a man. Don’t even think like that. You’re going to be fine.
“Gavin’s an early riser,” Oz said. “As long as he a
voids the windows, he’ll be able to leave the room. It’s sunrise and midday that the vampires really need to stay out of; sunset isn’t as potent.”
“Everything is so complicated,” Isabel said, knowing that she was whining and not caring.
“We’re moving on to Paris, tomorrow,” Oz told her. “I’ve made arrangements. Gavin will have to stay behind. He’ll meet with us after he convinces the council that I’m dead.” Oz looked her over slowly, and Isabel could sense the stirrings of desire from the angel.
“Is it really that painful?” Isabel pressed her lips together, cringing at the thought of Oz losing his wings. “You know …”
