Gillian’s smirk was not particularly comforting, but they all believed in her and what she was trying to accomplish.
“There are very few dark-haired Elves, and even fewer who are royalty. It will get to him. I am sure of it.”
Grabbing her backpack, Gillian went to the door. “Wait here for a few minutes. I need to change, then we’ll get out of here.”
She vanished to find Arkady and asked for a room to change in. He showed her a bathroom in his private suite. As soon as he left she stripped down, washed off the makeup, then redressed in her usual garb of cargo pants, black sweater, photographer’s vest and hiking boots. She could purchase anything else she needed personally, like a coat and supplies. The Vampires didn’t need to regulate their body temperature, nor did Pavel.
Rejoining the group, everyone realized they needed a plan for how to get out of the country and back in without tipping off any Dracula operatives. Dionysus, like Aleksei, had a private jet (being reborn apparently had its financial perks) and suggested that if they were making plans to leave the country, they needed to move faster. They could fly out of Brasov straight up to Helsinki. There, they would need a transport helicopter to take them to due north into the heart of Finland.
It was an area surrounded by lakes, mountains, rivers and deep, thick, unexplored forests. It was there that a particular clan of Elves had resided and watched over a doorway into their various worlds for millennia. Finland had over 160 airports, but only 73 with paved runways. The helicopter was their best bet and would not restrict them to governmental airspace.
Gillian made one more call to a friend still in the military, got clearances and waivers for entering and exiting the countries that would be ready within a matter of hours, and arranged for her requested supplies to coincide with their plane’s arrival in Finland.
Thanking Arkady for his hospitality, they all piled into Gillian’s Opal, drove to the village, gassed up, then headed for Brasov. Gillian’s stomach was in knots; she knew Aleksei would be furious and hurt, but she was counting on him being fabulously happy when they brought Tanis home. At least she hoped he’d be, which might deter him from killing her.
CHAPTER
24
T HEY made it to Brasov, then Helsinki without incident. Dawn was cresting, so the Vampires remained on the plane, safely tucked away in the cargo area while Gillian and Pavel disembarked to stretch their legs a little. The air was crisp and fresh, even on the tarmac of the airport. Since they were in a private jet, they were refueling at a hangar rather than one of the main gates. Gill checked on their helicopter—it would be there at sunset—and picked up a duffel bag that held a coat; field rations; mess kit; spade; a small but lethal crossbow with twenty wooden, twenty iron, and twenty silver-tipped bolts in a quiver; an ultraviolet flashlight; water purification tablets and a small packet of compartmentalized napalm. It would burn tinder no matter if it were dry or not, even in rain or snow.
Apprehension crawled through her. By now, Aleksei and the others would know that they’d gone, but not where. An involuntary shiver ran through her but she shrugged it off. She’d faced down horrors on the battlefield. One four-hundred-year-old Vampire was not going to intimidate her. Okay, maybe he did, but she wasn’t going to let him see it.
Bitchy. Yeah, that was the ticket; she’d get bitchy and he’d leave her alone. She had never met a male she couldn’t bully or intimidate. Aleksei had just caught her off guard before, a weak moment or two. That must be it.
Since lying to herself was getting her nowhere, she checked her e-mail to kill time, plugging into a port in the hangar. Pavel was off hunting—for what, Gillian didn’t want to know. Sure enough, there was e-mail from the IPPA, warning her not to take chances, to stay in Romania and avoid conflict. Too bad she’d already taken matters into her own hands. She snorted derisively; they’d get over it. Dr. Gerhardt was used to her handling things on her own. Even if some of her activities occasionally gave him tension headaches and stirred up the ulcer he claimed to have. Gerhardt knew from experience that Gillian wasn’t a thrill junky. He’d defend her if necessary if the board became angry with her current little endeavor.
Returning to the plane, Gillian stretched out on the closely placed seats, two abreast, and covered her eyes with her arm. She wanted to catch a nap before the evening. They’d be on foot for a while after the helicopter dropped them, depending on where the encampment she was looking for was located. She’d never been there, having only heard about it through elaborate description, and was going on a diagram that she’d drawn under the scrutiny of her advance scout, Lieutenant Mirrin Everwood, High Elf Clan. She hadn’t seen him, talked to him or heard of him in years. Assuming he was still alive wasn’t a stretch. Elves were highly gifted in many aspects, intellect and survival skills topping the list. Mirrin was no exception. He was one of a handful of people that she trusted implicitly.
Elves were extraordinarily honorable, even the Dark Grael were no exception. If any Elf said they were going to kill you, love you or stand loyal to you, they were honor bound to complete the deed. Mirrin was probably not thrilled to hear from her; they’d left things strained between them, but she hoped for the sake of loyalty and old times, he’d help.
As her mind wandered, she drifted gently into a light sleep. Soon her dreams began to develop into fantasy. Desire flooded through her. Penetration. Heat. Climax. Gillian woke gasping, her eyes locked with those of a snarling Werewolf in Human form. Pavel’s deep-throated growl raised the hair on her arms.
“Do not move, Gillian.” Pavel’s order was imperious and final. She didn’t move.
“Remove yourself from her, spirit.”
That was delivered in the same flat monotone, followed by another growl. Pavel started to shift, his face becoming longer, sharper, blue eyes unblinking and beginning to burn with an internal flame. He was staring at the empty air just above her prone form.
It took Gillian a moment to comprehend what he’d just said. Spirit? What the hell? All at once, understanding flooded her: horror, fury, disgust and pure unadulterated rage.
“Get. Off. Me. Dante.”
Each word was enunciated clearly, with glacial calm, though she was quivering with anger. The pressure between her legs eased gradually, as did the unseen fingers that were gripping her hips. Gillian scooted off the chair and backward toward Pavel.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She was incredulous and furious…and talking to thin air. The Werewolf stepped in front of her, the upper half of his body had shifted. He looked like an upright wolf wearing a flannel shirt and jeans. That was the power that made him a candidate for Alpha. Partial shifting was not possible by but a few powerful individuals of werekind. Right now, he had imposed his body between her and a certain Ghost who had just taken advantage of her.
Dante shimmered into solidity, lacing his pants casually as if all was well. He could have solidified fully clothed if he’d wanted to; as it was he was taunting her, a smirk on that lovely mouth of his. Gillian murmured a quick binding spell for malicious spirits, pivoted around Pavel and punched Dante in the mouth. Since he was solid for the moment and her spell held him where he was, she connected fully and he went down, astonishment written over his aristocratic and lovely face.
“You son of a bitch!” If Dante hadn’t already been dead, she would have shot him. Ghost fear flooded over her and Pavel, leaving their teeth chattering and both of them trembling. Gillian reached for Pavel’s hand only to jerk back as the wolffaced man snapped and snarled at her to take care; the Human tones muddled with his lupine muzzle. Looking down, she saw the thick claws that had erupted from his former fingertips. If she’d grabbed his paw, she might have been scratched.
“Thanks, Pavel,” she whispered gratefully, knowing the Lycanthrope was near to panic from the level of fear clawing at her empathy and the slight foam forming at the corners of his mouth, but he stood his ground between her and the threat. So was she for
that matter—close to panic, that is. She could hear his labored breathing and her own pounding heartbeat. The wolf’s eyes were dilated but burned with a hellish light. Turning back to Dante, who was rising from the floor, fully solid and looking murderous, she drew her gun anyway and leveled it at him. It was a fruitless, stupid gesture, but it made her feel better.
“You! It was you all along, giving me those dreams!” Green eyes snapping in fury, Gillian confronted her now former patient. Former indeed. There was no way in hell she was going to revisit a therapeutic relationship with him now.
Dante laughed, his voice deep and cavernous. “What are you complaining about, dolcezza? You enjoyed it. Every. Single. Time.”
That was a cheap shot. Fucking Ghost. Literally. Gillian wasn’t that easily provoked into fury. Keeping her temper had saved her ass many times. Dante wasn’t this far from his natural haunting grounds without some magic being involved, that she was sure of. What to do, what to do?
Sunset was still at least an hour away, and while Dionysus might have something in the line of actual magic in his repertoire, she and Pavel wouldn’t last that long in the midst of Ghost-generated fear without succumbing to panic and fleeing the plane into the darkening Finland evening. Dante certainly wasn’t going to suddenly get all repentant. There had to be a way to tip the scales.
Ego. Dante was an egomaniac, and that was his Achilles heel. “You dumb shit, you may have generated some sort of response, but you can’t hold a candle to a warm, breathing male in my bed. As far as I’m concerned you were only big enough to generate a mild wet dream. Nothing spectacular, really.”
Forcing her mouth into a taunting smile took some doing, but she managed. “Were all your little conquests in the past virgins? Didn’t know what to expect? Or did they just start out with very low expectations of you as a lover?”
Utter rage suffused Dante’s remarkably handsome features. Every wound on him opened up and he bled copiously. Tipping his head back, giving Gillian and Pavel a marvelous view of his slashed throat, he screamed his rage, spraying both of them with wet, red spray. The fear intensified and even Gillian wondered if she’d be able to last the next few seconds. One more turn of the “screw.”
“Oh now that is really attractive. Every girl wants to fuck a drippy, butchered body,” she chattered out between her jiggling teeth.
That elicited another furious shriek from the now-humiliated and enraged Ghost. Pavel chuckled but it came out more of a choking cough from his elongated lupine lips. Her binding spell picked that time to crumble. Dante’s innate magic finally overrode it and he crackled out of existence, taking his blood, gore and anger with him, his howl of rage echoing in the confined, tubular space of the plane.
Gillian and Pavel climbed over seats and very nearly each other in their haste to get off the plane and out into the still-bright sunlight. The chill from the Ghost’s manifested fear had reached down to their bones. It took twenty minutes of standing in the sunlight and Pavel shifting back to Human form before they both felt calm, warm and strong enough to reenter the plane.
“That transparent, unearthly son of a bitch!”
Putting it mildly, Gillian was furious. Dante had a few sneaky-ass tricks up his lacy sleeve. How and what, she didn’t know. At least her instincts had been right; he was far from the average Ghost.
Pavel was also not amused. “I will help find a way to destroy him. He assaulted you, Gillian.” A low, deep growl came from his chest and his eyes glowed dark purple in his rancor.
She thought about that for a moment. Damn him, anyway; Dante was right. She had enjoyed it. Every. Single. Time. That pissed her off.
“No, he actually didn’t, Pavel. In my dream state, I was not unwilling. It wasn’t rape, but he did take advantage of the situation. Let’s go back on the plane and figure out how the hell he’s manifesting this far from his haunting.”
Reluctantly, they mounted the stairs to the plane. Pavel went first, insisting that he face any threat ahead of her, Gillian close behind, nearly mirroring his steps in an effort to keep the big Lycanthrope as close to her as possible. She didn’t bother to point out that neither of them had been effective against the Ghost.
There was no sign of Dante but the Vampires would rise soon and the chopper was on its way, so they had to hurry. A quick look through her backpack and laptop case delivered several small stones that Gillian couldn’t remember being there. As her abilities extended to a minor amount of touch telepathy, Gill closed her eyes, held the stones tentatively, concentrating on them. The smell of blood crept into her nose and the impression of cold fear. She opened her eyes, finding Pavel crouched in front of her, looking very concerned.
“I know how he did it. Dammit, he has to be either part Fey or was a necromancer in life. These are part of his hallway. He must have put them in my bag when we were there last night. That’s how he’s manifesting this far away—transference through an object.”
“So he followed you here?” Pavel asked, his voice a soft growl.
“Yes. I don’t know why, but I’m going to put a stop to it.”
The growl intensified. “I will take the stones far from the plane, Gillian. He will not trouble us again.”
She chuckled. “As much as I’d love for you to do just that, Pavel, dissociating Dante totally from his haunt would be disastrous for him and for me.”
Pavel looked confused, so she explained. “If we take away his ‘anchor,’ so to speak, it would be tantamount to murder in the Ghost domain. He’s too far away to get back to the castle, so he would be a stranded spirit, unable to leave this place—or he’d simply dissipate into oblivion. Either way, I’d be responsible. He’s an ass, but I can’t just destroy him.”
“What will you do then? You can’t allow him his freedom, knowing what he has done to you.” Pavel was angry. Retribution was a big concept in Lycanthrope society and Pavel definitely wanted retribution for the insult to Gillian.
“No, I can’t.” Gillian frowned, thinking. “Damn, I wish I had some sea salt to put the stones in to bind his ass; as it is I’ll have to just cast another binding spell directly on the stones and hope it holds.”
She wasn’t a witch or a sorcerer but she could perform simple spells for specific purposes; some for helping her clients in her practice and a few for self-defense. Holding the stones, she murmured over them, concentrating on an impenetrable shield around them. Pavel rummaged around in the galley of the plane and managed to find a salt packet. Apparently, Dionysus kept a stocked larder for his Human servants. Gillian sprinkled some of it over the stones for good measure, then dumped the lot into a small plastic bag, also from the galley. Pocketing the stones, they were on the verge of being pleased with themselves for outsmarting Dante, when the Vampires rose, climbing out of the cargo area, looking stunning as ever.
“Have you been entertaining yourselves while we slept?” Maeti’s eyes were bright and sparkled with laughter. Gillian glowered at her.
“Not hardly.”
The tone in her voice and the scent of fear was enough to bring questions to the Vampiress’s eyes and Dionysus’s arm protectively around Maeti’s shoulders.
“That Ghost followed us here,” Pavel said for clarification. “He has been molesting Gillian.”
“What?” There was no hint of laughter in Maeti’s voice now and her eyes grew cold.
Gillian explained the situation, adding that Dante was now safely bound and would be dealt with later. Dionysus and Maeti exchanged a glance.
“We are remiss then, in keeping you safe young one, if this has occurred right under all of our collective noses.” Dionysus was appropriately concerned and angry.
They hadn’t done their jobs if the little Human had been violated in this manner. He knew Aleksei’s fury would have another target when Dante’s duplicity was exposed. Right now the other Vampire was justifiably incensed over Gillian’s overt disobedience. Dionysus had been able to reach Aleksei through their link and assured the Romani
an Count that Gillian was alive and well and being looked after.
To say that Aleksei was less than soothed was fitting. He would have come straight away, but Dionysus assured him that Aleksei was needed in Romania to keep the current Paramortal population somewhat united and safe and to assure that Dracula gained no further allies in his effort.
“The spirit is contained now?” Dionysus wanted to know.
“I think so. When we get where we’re going, my friends might have some magic to throw on him to permanently put a stop to his shit. If not, he’ll just have to remain bound until we get back to Romania.” Gillian was annoyed and it showed, but she was also focused. Dante was a pain in the ass but he wasn’t the threat at the moment. Her dignity was ruffled but she was basically unharmed.
The roar of the approaching helicopter interrupted her thoughts. All of them piled out of the plane to meet it. The airplane pilots, Human and loyal to Dionysus, would stay here until the rest of them got back. The chopper pilot was another USMC captain that Gillian had known. He was also a Vampire. “Hey sexy!” He waved at her, shouting above the roar of the propeller blades.
“Hey Luis!” Gillian climbed aboard, taking the time to shake his hand as she scooted into the copilot’s seat. “Luis, this is Dionysus, Maeti and Pavel…guys, this is Captain Luis Clemente. Best damn chopper pilot ever.” Her grin was infectious and they all slid into their seats smiling.
Luis saluted Dionysus. “I am honored, my Lord. I am of your Line.” Luis’s dark eyes met the Greek Lord’s.
Dionysus acknowledged him. “I am pleased to meet you as well. If Gillian trusts you, that is all I need to know, but I am honored that you are of my Line. This is my mate, Maeti.”
Luis grinned, nodded to Maeti—“Ma’am”—and Pavel, then turned his attention back to the controls of the chopper. Gillian watched him as he took the machine airborne. Luis was a fairly young Vampire, only about eighty years old. He looked exactly the same as she remembered him, like a devastatingly handsome, tall Puerto Rican man. His black hair was a little long for the military but the Joint Chiefs of Staff were a little more lenient with their paranormal enlistees and officers than with their Human counterparts. His eyes were deep brown and intelligent, his features breathtaking and even. Luis had flown night reconnaissance flights for her in the past and his skill was impeccable. Gill trusted him with her life then and she did now. Reaching over, she patted his arm suddenly and was rewarded with a smile and questioning look.
Key to Conflict Page 26
