by Tina Folsom
Cain lifted the bag Wesley had set on the floor and shoved it at Wesley. “Now take your stuff and leave.”
Wes looked at him, genuine surprise in his eyes. “But I’m coming with you! You need me.” Wes pointed at the human. “Why does he get to go? He’s not a vampire! And he doesn’t even have any special skills. I do.”
“Yeah, turning dogs into pigs maybe,” Blake taunted him.
“Shut it, Blake!” Cain snapped. “Or you’re leaving too.”
Huffing, Blake crossed his arms over his chest.
Cain turned to Wesley. “Thanks for the offer, but—”
The witch lifted his hand. “Hear me out first, please.”
Cain sighed and exchanged a look with Haven, who grimaced.
“Leave me out of this,” Haven said. “I don’t want to be blamed later when he screws up.”
Cain shook his head. “Make your case, Wes, and make it quick.”
“So, I was thinking,” Wes started.
Blake scoffed, earning a stern look from Wesley before he continued, “You’re going into the lion’s den.”
“You mean a vampire’s nest,” Thomas corrected him from the back of the plane.
“Yeah, whatever. And you don’t know who’s friendly and who’s not. You need all the protection you can get.” He leaned in and lowered his voice as if the others in the plane wouldn’t be able to hear him then. “I’ve been working on a protection spell.”
“I hate spells,” John grumbled.
Cain couldn’t agree more. Vampires had no protection against spells. And he hated things he couldn’t fight with a mortal weapon. However, Wesley saying he had been working on something didn’t mean he actually knew what he was doing. “Last time you cast a spell, your spell tinted everything red.”
“Which was the intention,” Wesley claimed.
“Granted, at Oliver’s wedding it was. But you turned the pigs red before that, and I doubt that was intended,” Cain reminded him.
Wesley’s lips curled up. “A little mishap. But I’ve got it all figured out now.”
“You say that now, but when push comes to shove, we’re gonna end up with some kind of disaster.”
Wes pointed to Thomas. “I saved Thomas’s life with one of my spells. When he was fighting against Keegan, my spell helped—”
“I didn’t need your help!” Thomas ground out, his normally friendly attitude suddenly changed. Cain knew that he’d been utterly annoyed that Wes had interfered in the fight and not let Thomas prove that he could defeat his evil sire.
When Eddie squeezed Thomas’s hand, Thomas turned and exchanged a look with his mate. Then he added, “However, Wes is correct. His spell worked when it counted.”
Cain contemplated his next decision for a few seconds. Thomas was the most levelheaded of them, and Cain respected the other vampire’s opinion.
“Fine. You may come. But you follow my orders. One instance of insubordination and you’re on the next plane home. Don’t make me regret this.”
Wesley grinned triumphantly. “You won’t. I promise.”
Moments later, when everybody was strapped into their seats, Cain turned to John, who sat next to him. “Now tell me everything I need to know about my former life.”
8
Abel walked through the busy streets. It was shortly after sunset, and the French Quarter was teeming with tourists and locals. He hated the putrid smell in this part of town; that’s why he rarely ventured into this area. He preferred to go hunting in the Garden District or in some of the smaller towns around New Orleans when the urge took him and he needed to drive his fangs into a human rather than drink from the donated supply of blood in his cellars.
Once he was king, he would do away with pre-packaged blood and encourage his subjects to hunt for their food again. How it was always meant to be. Drinking packaged blood had turned them into cowards and weaklings. He would change that and turn his race back into a species to be feared.
No more mainstreaming. No more pandering to the sensibilities of humans. Soon all those things Cain had instituted would be gone, and a new reign would start. Things would be better then. Their clan would become strong again and not be vulnerable to an attack by their rivals any longer. His subjects would be safe again. They needed a strong king, and he would be that king.
“We’re nearly there,” Baltimore said beside him and pointed toward a small alley.
“You’d better be right about this.” He didn’t like to waste his time when there was so much to do before the coronation and the wedding. Abel smiled to himself. Faye would finally be his. Ever since she’d joined their clan, he’d wanted her, but she’d only had eyes for Cain, the hero, the king.
“Trust me.” Baltimore lengthened his stride and turned into the cobblestone alley.
They’d reached the northeast end of the Quarter where few tourists ventured and few hotels were located. Little houses, split up into multiple apartments, lined the street. His faithful guard steered him to one of the houses then stopped in front of the entrance door.
“In there.”
“How many?”
“She’s alone.”
Abel nodded. “What are we waiting for then?”
With one forceful move, Baltimore kicked the flimsy door in so that it splintered at the hinges. His guard had never understood the concept of subtlety.
From inside, Abel heard a surprised gasp coming from one of the rooms in the back. The smell of a human filled his nostrils, while his ears perceived her footsteps as she ran toward the back door in an attempt to flee. Her actions only fueled his hunting instinct.
Stupid human!
No wonder humans were inferior to vampires. They didn’t know the first thing about survival. Though this specimen still had her instinct of fleeing rather than fighting him, she should know better and bow before him instead.
“Get her!” Abel ordered Baltimore with a motion of his head, while he glanced around the living room they’d entered. The little houses in the Quarter were all like this: the front door led directly into the living area without a foyer or hallway as a buffer. From there one room led into another without the benefit of a hallway.
The furniture in the small place was surprisingly new and luxurious, the decorations tasteful. Despite the fact that the windows sported shutters on the outside, the inside was hung with dark red velvet curtains, a sign that whoever spent time here didn’t like sunlight to penetrate the interior.
Abel turned his head to the door which led to the back of the house when he heard Baltimore return with the struggling human. He ran his eyes over her.
Her skin was the color of milk chocolate, her eyes a mix of blue and grey, attesting to her mixed heritage. A Creole beauty for sure. And who wouldn’t want this luscious woman in his bed, feel her plump lips around his cock, her elegant hands on his skin? Abel saw her appeal immediately. And even though there were no marks on her graceful neck or that beautiful cleavage her dress revealed, he instinctively knew she’d felt the fangs of a vampire in her flesh before. Many times in fact.
Abel inhaled. The scent of her blood sent a thrill through his body.
“A veritable love nest you and John have got yourselves here,” he finally addressed her.
At the name of her lover, the woman flinched.
“Oh, you thought I wouldn’t find out, did you?” He paused and narrowed his eyes. “Is that what John told you? That you’d be safe? That nobody would ever find out that he was keeping a human lover?” Abel chuckled. “How naive of him.”
He motioned to Baltimore, who followed his unspoken command and tossed her on the leather couch. She scrambled quickly to sit upright, fear coloring her pretty eyes.
“What do you want?”
“Ah, the human speaks,” Abel said. “Do you have a name?”
She swallowed. “Nicolette.”
Abel stepped closer. With every step he made, Nicolette shrank farther back into the sofa cushions. He could firmly smell the
fear that oozed from her pores. It made his fangs itch, and he saw no reason to prevent them from elongating. When he was less than a foot away from her, he stopped.
“Here’s what you’re going to do now, Nicolette. You’ll answer the question I ask you without trying to lie to me. Because if you lie, I’ll know, and then I won’t have any choice but to have Baltimore punish you for it. Do you understand?”
Visibly intimidated, she nodded.
“Where is your lover? Where is John?”
“I don’t know.”
Abel pounced, gripping her shoulders with both hands and pressing her against the back of the sofa. “Try again,” he gritted from between clenched teeth, drowning out her shriek with his booming words.
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”
Abel narrowed his eyes and peeled his lips back from his gums, revealing his long, sharp fangs, letting her guess what he was going to do to her if she didn’t comply.
“Please! He didn’t tell me.” Tears formed in her eyes. “He said he had to leave for a few days.”
“To do what?” he ground out.
A sob tore from her throat. “He didn’t want to tell me. He said he couldn’t.”
Abel tilted his head to the side, eyeing her with suspicion. “Now, you wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?”
“No! It’s the truth. He said he’d be back soon.”
He exchanged a look with Baltimore, pondering Nicolette’s words. What was John up to? Clearly something he didn’t want anybody to know about, something he couldn’t even trust his lover with. As if he were afraid that somebody could torture the information out of her.
“Fine,” he finally said. “I believe you.”
A sigh of relief rolled over the human’s lips.
Abel chuckled as he looked back at her. “But it changes nothing about your fate.” He reveled in the panic that returned to Nicolette’s eyes, the shudder that wracked her body, and the smell of fear that leaked from her pores. “Let’s go on a little trip.”
He released her and straightened, addressing Baltimore. “Take her and lock her up.”
His guard nodded and approached amidst the woman’s protests.
“No, please! No!”
Abel ignored her. Instead his eyes fell on a cell phone that lay on the coffee table. He snatched it. “And then let’s find out how much John loves you.”
And he hoped that John didn’t simply see Nicolette as a momentary distraction, but actually had feelings for her. Feelings that would provide Abel with leverage.
9
“I want to see her first,” Cain demanded, looking at John.
Cain, his friends from Scanguards, and John stood in an abandoned shack a few miles from the palace, which was located about a half hour north of New Orleans. John had brought them to this wooded area, avoiding any guard posts that may have alerted the palace security team to their approach.
“I have to caution you,” John said. “If I bring you to her, you can’t let her know that you remember nothing. You have to be careful what you admit to her.”
Cain looked past him. “I know that. Nobody can know that I suffer from amnesia.” It would undermine his position, should John’s claim be substantiated. Nobody wanted a king who was clueless. “Not even Faye. But I need to talk to her in private before we go in.”
“What do you mean to accomplish by that?” Haven asked, putting his hand on Cain’s forearm. “What if she gives away that you’re back and gives your enemies time to prepare? I’d rather we go in without them knowing in advance that we’re coming. It gives us the element of surprise.”
Cain stared at his colleague, appreciating his advice. But this was something he had to do. “Faye will be the most likely person in the entire palace to be able to corroborate John’s story. No offense, John.” Despite everything that John had told him, he needed proof of who he was before he marched back into his old life.
“None taken. You were always a cautious man. At least that hasn’t changed.”
“Besides, I need to know whether she’s still . . . with me,” he said, instead of saying what he really wanted to know: whether she still loved him or had turned her affections over to Abel.
“Very well,” Haven conceded. “But how are you going to arrange a meeting with her without anybody knowing?”
“It won’t be a problem,” John claimed, before Cain could answer. “There are secret tunnels underneath the property.”
Cain raised an eyebrow. “Tunnels?”
“It’s an old plantation, and the owners had the slaves build tunnels underneath it. A precaution when the civil war broke out,” John explained. “Once the tunnels were built, the master killed all the slaves involved in the construction, making sure there was nobody left who knew of their existence but him and his foreman.”
“Who knows of the tunnels?” Cain wanted to know.
“Only a select few.”
“Abel?”
John shook his head. “You and I. Though it’s possible that you told Faye, but I can’t know that for sure. You never said anything to me. But we have to assume since you were going to make her your queen, you would have told her about the tunnels.”
“How come only you and I know about the tunnels? Why not Abel?”
“The first leader of the king’s guard was a descendent of the plantation’s foreman. He passed the knowledge on. And now it is passed on from the leader of the king’s guard to whoever becomes king. And Abel isn’t king yet.”
“Does he suspect that there are tunnels?”
“No. Though he knows that the leader of the guard will pass all he knows to the new king after the coronation. He must assume that there are things only I know.”
“Good, we’ll take the tunnels. Thomas will come with us. The rest will stay here,” Cain ordered.
“No!
John’s protest took him by surprise. Cain glared at him. “As your king—”
“As my king, you would never demand such a thing,” John interrupted, his voice firm, his face unflinching. “You would never reveal the location of the tunnels to a stranger, let alone allow someone into them. If you insist on Thomas coming with us, I won’t show you the entrance.” John crossed his arms over his chest, waiting.
Cain didn’t move. He simply stood there facing John in a silent battle. But it was clear instantly that John wouldn’t budge. On one hand, Cain had to admire him for it. It showed loyalty and strength. On the other hand, it ticked him off to have to concede to this man who he still couldn’t fully trust. But if he wanted to see Faye in private without anybody knowing, he had no choice.
“Just you and I then. But I’m warning you: I might not remember who I am, but I’m deadly with any weapon. You cross me, you’re dust.”
John acknowledged the threat with a curt nod. “Follow me.” He turned and walked out of the shed.
Cain glanced at his friends, then addressed Thomas, “Any trouble, you text me immediately. My cell is on vibrate.”
“Understood. Be careful. If you’re not back within an hour, we’ll head for the palace.”
Without another word, Cain walked outside. The air was humid, so different from what he was used to in San Francisco, where even summer nights could be chilly and require a light jacket. Here, his cotton shirt already stuck to his sweaty body. To his surprise, he didn’t mind the heat, almost as if he were used to it.
In silence Cain walked alongside the other vampire, his eyes watchful, his body ready to attack should anybody approach them. Scanguards had taught him well. He wasn’t afraid of any enemy he would encounter, but that fact didn’t alleviate the knot in his gut. He was uneasy about seeing Faye, seeing the woman he’d made love to in his dreams, the woman who in his former life had belonged to him. Did she now belong to Abel, the man John claimed was his brother?
“We’re here,” John announced and stopped.
Cain looked at the spot John pointed to, which didn’t look any different from the terr
ain they’d crossed during their short walk. There were moss-covered trees, bushes, and dirt. They hadn’t walked on any sort of recognizable path, but had gone clear through a wooded patch.
“I don’t see anything.”
“It’s well disguised.”
John walked toward two trees which stood at a slight incline. Behind them, moss covered a boulder. Instead of walking to the boulder, John veered left to another copse of trees where broken branches had accumulated and were rotting. He gripped one of the protruding sticks and pulled on it. The entire hovel of branches moved, and only then did Cain notice that they were all interconnected in such a random but ingenious way that to a casual observer it didn’t look like anything else but a heap of rotting branches, while in fact it was a door.
When John held it open for him, Cain suppressed his surprise. “Lead the way.”
Cain walked into the tunnel behind John, immediately inhaling the scents around him. The air was stale. When John closed the door behind them, the earthen tunnel was robbed of the moonlight that had guided their way earlier. Cain’s eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness, his vampire vision compensating for the lack of light.
“What keeps the tunnel stable?” he asked quietly, knowing his voice would travel far in this confined space.
John pointed to the ceiling. “Every few feet there’s wooden reinforcements, but it’s old construction and nobody has done any repairs here in decades. There’s more and more moisture penetrating and weakening the structure. We’re close to the bayous. Katrina did some damage here. One day, the tunnels will collapse.”
“Then let’s hope this is not the day,” Cain remarked dryly.
John turned and walked down the long tunnel. Cain followed, taking in his surroundings.
“How long is the tunnel?”
“It’s actually a tunnel system with many branches. It stretches over several miles, but the branch we’re going down is only about a mile long. We’ll be there shortly,” John assured him.
“Where do all the different branches lead to?”
