She’d been angry when she’d found out too. But anger wasn’t going to save them from the four horsemen. Marina tried to pull her arm from his firm grasp, but found she couldn’t. As a vampire Gabe was far stronger than the Shyeld she remembered and she stopped trying to free herself. “That wasn’t Nick.”
Gabe’s mouth tightened. “Why the funeral?”
“It was all part of Nick’s plan.” A familiar ache began to well up in Marina’s chest. Betrayal. Anger. Fear. Her relationship with Nick had been no picnic. The wind off the water laced with salt whipped stinging strands of hair across her face.
“I thought you didn’t know Nick’s plans.” He dropped his hold on her as if the contact burned.
The accusation she heard in Gabe’s voice only made the ache worse. She tucked the loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Not all of them, no. I only found out later that Nick hadn’t really been beheaded. At first I thought I was seeing a ghost, but…”
“But seeing the ghost of a vampire would be impossible.”
“Exactly.”
“I couldn’t see any other option. Either he was still alive or I was going insane.”
Gabe crossed his arms, distrust still enclosed around him like invisible armor. “And the vampire hunters?”
“They just proved I wasn’t insane. I was a liability. Nick wanted to keep me from talking to the High Council, but he didn’t want me dead. It would have drawn too much attention to him and his plans.”
“Why would he bother with vampire hunters? He’s a royal. He could have gotten rid of you as his consort easily enough. He didn’t have to hand you over to them to drug you and drain you slowly.” The gruff edge to his voice betrayed his discomfort with the knowledge of what they’d done to her.
Interesting. Maybe there was something more to Gabe’s rescue mission than just his allegiance to the High Council. Marina shook her head. She didn’t want to think about what could or might be. Right now the only thing she could see in her immediate future was being on the run.
“That’s what I couldn’t figure out. Not until I realized that having two of us die in such a short amount of time would look suspicious to the High Council. Nick had become fairly tight with Vane,a blond, spiky-haired vamp who dressed like a heavy-metal rock star. They’d sit and talk business for hours, and one night when I was curious enough to see why Nick kept finding convenient reasons for me not to be part of the conversation, I listened in. Turns out Vane isn’t part of any legitimate clan or kingdom in the vampire realm. He’s a reiver from the States, one who preys upon others of his kind and mortals alike to survive.”
Gabe’s crossed arms flexed. “That can’t be good.”
Marina took in a breath she didn’t need through her nose to steady her nerves, the fishy smell in the air strong enough to make it sting. Gabe didn’t know the half of it. If Nick and his associates had their way, the entire civilization that had sustained her kind would vanish, their secrecy shattered. “They’re going to reveal vampires to the mortals.”
Gabe’s mouth dropped. He cupped the back of his skull with his large hand and began to pace. “Dear gods, to what purpose? History has already proven that mortals don’t want to know about us. And anytime they find out all hell breaks loose.”
“I tried to piece together what I’d overheard. From what I gather, the group is going to extract and sell ichor to humans for medical use. They want to corner the market, make a damn empire out of it.”
“Ah. So it isn’t about notoriety, or a power play with the High Council, it’s about cold hard cash. Suddenly it all makes more sense. Nick was never interested in the responsibilities of being a royal, he just wanted the perks, and those come pretty few and far between when you get on the bad side of the High Council.”
The wind sheared through her thin dirty shirt, making Marina shiver. While her temperature was lower than that of a human, it certainly was above freezing and the wind was artic cold and smelled sharply of seaweed. Her instinct was to cuddle up to Gabe’s side, to block the wind and get warm, but her distrust of her feelings toward him held her feet still. Marina narrowed her gaze, her suspicions digging in with sharp little claws. “I thought you and Nick were friends.”
Gabe’s brown gaze lightened, softened. “I did too. Just proves you never know about people.”
Far out in the harbor, the lights of shipping vessels coming into port were growing larger, making her feel as if they were under a spotlight.
She cleared the lump in her throat lightly to ease the pressure. “I would have chosen you.” It was barely a whisper, caught by the wind and dissipated the instant she murmured the words.
The dark flash in Gabe’s eyes said he’d heard every syllable. His bark of laughter was cold and sarcastic. “We both know that’s a lie.”
She reached out a slender hand, laying it atop of his. “No lie. I would have. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”
Gabe looked down at her hand. “Everyone has a choice. I just made the wrong one to think becoming a vampire would make any difference.”
“You know that royals never befriend their Shyelds. But you still thought of Nick as your friend, didn’t you?”
His eyes narrowed, the planes of his face hardening, becoming more intense. An arc of awareness sizzled along her skin everywhere his scorching gaze lingered. He took hold of both her upper arms, pulling her close to his chest so that she was forced to look up into his face. “I wasn’t looking for your friendship, Marina, and you know it.”
“You were looking for something I wasn’t free to give.”
“Because Nick had already claimed your heart?”
She frowned. Good thing vampires didn’t need Botox. Her face would’ve been a road map of wrinkles from the onslaught of emotions she’d wrung out over the last few years. “No. Gods, no.”
“Then why?”
She sighed, the heaviness of it a palpable thing in the air between them. “Because alliances in the vampire world go back centuries. I was a pawn in the game for an alliance with the royal house for my family, and they weren’t about to lose the game just because I wouldn’t play along. I was told in no uncertain terms that I had two options—play nicely and become Nick’s consort, or block his advances and have my head severed from my shoulders.” And you murdered, Marina thought bitterly. “You were a Shyeld—a mortal. No one would have thought twice about your disappearance. By the time you told me you’d become a vampire it was already too late.”
“So you’re saying you went with Nick to protect me?” The sarcastic male disbelief of his tone only made her angry. He had no idea what she’d suffered for her choice. Was it really so hard to believe that she’d cared for him deeply?
“Don’t thank me all at once.”
He let go of his hold on her. “Guess that makes us even, then. I only accepted the assignment to retrieve you because the council told me it was to get you out or have you beheaded by an assassin. No matter what’s passed between you, me and Nick, I couldn’t see having your pretty little head taken for something you didn’t do.”
“Great. Makes me warm and tingly all over.”
“We’d better get going. Those Shyelds will have already started checking all my known locations and eliminating the most obvious places we might have gone.”
Marina’s mouth dropped open. “So soon?”
“Shyelds aren’t stupid, honey, just because they’re mortal. That’s the first mistake vampires make. The second is believing that just because vampires can transport, they can escape being found. If I know Nick’s methods, they’ll check out anyplace I’ve been before, then be contacting local vampire hunters here in Seattle to find us long before they hop on a plane.”
His eyes narrowed as he glanced at the street leading up from the waterfront. “We have to get to the Seattle Clan headquarters before sunrise.”
He turned on his heel, his footsteps echoing off the water below the planks as he walked toward the tall buildings, leavin
g her to follow. Just over the mountains behind the city the sky turned a paler blue with the first rays of the rising sun.
Marina took off after him, jogging to keep up with his longer, purposeful strides as they hit asphalt, crossed a nearly deserted street, then stepped up onto a concrete sidewalk. “How do you even know where we’re going?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “You don’t think I spent all those years just hanging outside the door waiting for you to invite me back in, did you?”
“No.”
He quirked a dark brow, his sensual lips tipping up at one end in a way that made her heart flip. It had been so long since she’d had a true mortal heartbeat, but at that moment the phantom sensation came back and she could feel the steady thrum of awareness pulsing in her ichor.
Gabriel Forrester wasn’t a man, or vampire, easily forgotten. Just his presence made her tighten and ache from head to toe with need. The warm sandalwood and cedar scent of him made her remember how blissful laying her cheek against his bare chest had been once upon a time. And her body responded to the memory, her breasts growing heavy and peaking against her shirt.
His gaze sharpened and he slowed to a stop in the center of the sidewalk. “If you insist on tripping down memory lane, do you think you could wait until I’m not with you?”
“Stop reading my thoughts, damn you.”
He shrugged. “Not by choice, I assure you. I have enough memories of my own.”
A flash of memory, so vivid, so intense that it made Marina gasp, seared across her mind. She saw herself, her dark hair spilled across dove-gray silk sheets that looked like liquid silver beneath her pale skin. Her mouth was swollen and deep pink from his kisses and partially open as if she was moaning, her eyes half shuttered and softly unfocused.
She pressed her fingertips to her temples and closed her eyes tightly, trying to rid herself of the erotic image he held of her. “Well, I have no problem seeing the direction of your thoughts.”
Gabriel’s sinful mouth curved into a sensual smile that melted her resistance. He reached out, his hand gently tracing the curve of her cheek. Her traitorous body responded to his touch, growing damp with want. The warm pad of his thumb rasped lightly over her lips, making them tingle.
“Even after all that’s passed between us, you’re still the most beautiful woman in the world.”
The words struck hot and deep, unfurling in her chest until the warmth of them radiated outward to awaken every cell just as his ichor had. “You still see me that way?”
He didn’t say a word, merely tilted his head down and kissed her with a sweet tenderness bordering on worship. “I gave up my humanity for a chance to be with you,” he whispered against her lips. “There’ll never be anyone for me like you.”
Marina leaned in, craving another kiss, craving more than a kiss, but he pulled away from her.
“Nah-uh, sweetheart. This is neither the time, nor the place. We’ve got to get out of the open and under cover.”
“Our timing never seems to be right, does it?” she said wistfully, walking a little faster to keep up with him.
“I make it a policy never to say never.” He wrapped his large hand around hers in a warm, reassuring grip.
They walked two more city blocks, the shushing of car tires on dew-damp pavement the only early morning soundin the chilly air. Gabriel ducked into a parking garage. He led them past rows and rows of empty slots in the low-ceilinged concrete bunker, making a beeline for a nondescript gray metal door near the elevators that blended in seamlessly with the gray of the concrete around it. It looked like the entrance to a service stairwell. He took a key out of his pocket and shoved it into the lock on the doorknob, then shoved open the heavy door.
Marina stepped inside an elevator. Gabriel flipped a card out of his back pocket and slid it through the card reader near the button panel. The small indicator light went from red to green and the doors slid shut.
“So this clan, they’ve accepted you as one of their own?” she asked. If they had, it would be a minor miracle. In Europe the lines between clans were strongly divided, each operating like its own country. Each clan laird reported only to his clan’s council, which in turn reported to the High Council in Rome.
“Yeah, I’d guess you’d say they’ve taken me under their wing. I’ve been training with their Trejan.”
That he’d immediately turned to others in charge of security when he’d been a Shyeld, didn’t surprise her. What surprised her was that they’d accepted him far more easily than those who had transformed him from mortal to vampire in the first place. In the eyes of the High Council and the royal houses he was meant to serve, never to rule.
She, on the other hand, had been painstakingly selected from her mortal life, raised and tutored since her creation to become the consort to a royal. Their roles in the vampire world were as different as daylight was from dark.
The elevator opened into a soaring atrium built of chrome and translucent glass. The wide-open space, filled with clusters of comfortable white couches and chairs, resonated with the sound of water splashing in a soothing burble down the stones of a wall waterfall. The place was filled with artificial daylight and smelled of lush green vegetation.
“Why did you take us through the parking garage? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to transport here directly?”
Gabriel smiled back at her. “They’ve got charms and protections against direct transport from the outside. Apparently the reivers aren’t just pirating in our part of the world. The Seattle Clan is having problems of their own with ichor being sold illegally, and vampires being created outside the clan’s control.”
Marina shivered. Vane wasn’t just a reiver or a pirate, he was trouble with a capital T. Whatever he’d cooked up with Nick was going to suck her in like a vicious undertow, pulling her and anyone connected to her into the scheme, no matter how she resisted. The outcome wasn’t going to be good, she could feel it deep in her bones. Her stomach curdled at the thought. Marina didn’t want whatever Nick was planning—whatever Nick was doing—to impact Gabe again. He didn’t deserve the pain.
She gazed up at his strong face, wanting to touch the rough shadow of stubble along his jaw, but not daring to. He’d already shared his ichor with her and that was already too much of a bond between them, making her response to him far stronger than it had ever been before. The last thing she needed was to complicate matters by getting physically involved with him again. The kiss had already proven she couldn’t resist him.
Sooner or later she was going to have to pull away from him to keep him from being dragged under with her in Nick’s scheme. Marina licked her lips, unsettled at the warring desire and knowledge within her.
“So what happens now? We can’t hide out here from the horsemen forever.”
“First we get you looked at and see if there’s been any lasting damage from the dead man’s blood they were pumping into you. Then we get you settled in.”
“And how long were you planning on leaving me here?” Irritation laced her tone and scented the air with the acrid stench of smoke.
He didn’t answer her, making her angry, rather than merely annoyed. The smoke-scented air surrounding her changed to the sharp smell of pepper in response. She was tired of being treated like a pawn. If she was going to be part of this game, she wanted to be a player able to determine her fate.
Gabe’s hand pulled away, leaving her feeling his absence even though he was right beside her. He rubbed one hand over the fist of the other, cracking the knuckles. “I’m going to talk to the clan Trejan and decide how best to crack a few horsemen skulls.”
She placed her hand on his arm. “But they’re mortals. You’ll kill them.” As much as she feared the presence and menace of Nick’s four horsemen, at her core she believed killing mortals was wrong.
“They should have thought about that before they threatened you.”
“But they only did it on Nick’s orders.”
“Gods
, Marina, how can you defend the bastards who left you to be a juice box for those ichor leeches?”
She pulled her hand away and straightened her shoulders, pulling all the training and royal demeanor she’d mastered around her like a protective cloak. “Because I don’t blame the dogs who hunt on their master’s orders. I blame their master.”
One swift curt nod was all the reply she got.
“If you really want to help me,” she said, “then find a way to trap Nick. The problem is, he’s only been allowed to play this far because someone on the High Council is benefiting from this game.”
Gabe leaned in closer, his jaw clenching. “Who?” The word slipped between his teeth.
“If I knew that I could have saved myself by trading my silence for freedom.”
Marina’s words sent a cold wave of dread washing through Gabriel’s system. He couldn’t trust anyone, not even those on the High Council, until he knew precisely what Nick was after. Sure there was money to be made, but what advantage did Nick see in a whole host of new hungry vampires? Somehow Nick and this American reiver were tied to the High Council, in something larger than just illegal ichor trading, which made his every movement critical.
He forced himself to release the hands fisted at his sides, ready and wanting to punch something. “Everything will be fine. Just trust me.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile he didn’t feel, but he could tell she wasn’t buying it.
“You’re asking for—”
“More than you can give?” He cut her off. With an index finger he gently lifted her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his direct gaze. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. I let that stop me once. It’s not going to work this time. You’re mine, Marina, and I fight for what’s mine.”
Her eyes flashed blue fire. “I don’t belong to anyone, Gabe. You’d do well to remember that. Whatever we once had was changed the day Nick entered the picture and screwed up everything for both of us.”
He pulled back, but his hard stare told her he didn’t give a damn. He’d already decided she belonged to him, and he was willing to take the risk. Again.
A Vampire’s Mistress Page 3
