His sudden concern for Lily had at least one good effect: His rage dissipated enough to allow his thoughts to come back to him, for his brain to re-form and start functioning again.
He watched Daniel sweep his hand in a killing arc toward Lily. He knew the gesture and what it meant, and just how much pain Daniel would deliver in that one blow, pain to the edge of death. Or maybe with Lily, in this one strike, it would take her the entire distance and she would be dead.
A few hours ago Adrien could have done nothing about it, but he was no longer just a vampire; he had the beginnings of his Ancestral-based power that would one day make him as strong as the man in front of him. He swept in front of the blow and took it hard across his face, chest, and left arm, so that he fell prone to the floor at Daniel’s feet, his skin, all over his body, burned from the sheer preternatural power the man wielded. He was bruised as well from the force behind the blow.
But he knew his father, that one strike wouldn’t be enough to satisfy his rage at Lily’s slur. Adrien rose up swiftly as Daniel struck again, this one worse, and this blow would have reduced Lily to ash. Once more, he fell to the floor, dizzy, battered, and burned.
As Adrien recovered, his head spinning, he looked up at Daniel and watched as his father stared at Lily, his eyes wild with his mania, preparing for a third strike.
But something inside Adrien rebelled. He tapped into his growing Ancestral power and a new kind of energy flooded his body so that when the blow fell, Adrien flew up and into it, meeting all of Daniel’s power with an answering power of his own, a release of burning energy that caused Daniel and his sons to fly backward.
Daniel returned swiftly, his gold-flecked teal eyes glowing with a fierce light as once more he caught Adrien’s gaze, his intention to cow Adrien again, to fold him in half mentally, to break his will once more.
But something had shifted deep inside Adrien. This time Daniel couldn’t get in, couldn’t tap into the deep wounds he’d inflicted throughout Adrien’s childhood, couldn’t make him tremble in fear.
Adrien’s need to help his brothers survive, his fierce intention to keep the extinction weapon out of Daniel’s hands, and his mounting drive to keep Lily safe, built a cement foundation beneath his battling abilities. Power flowed like it had never flowed before, as Adrien stood up to his father for the first time in his life.
Sweat dripped from his forehead and chest. The energy he exerted coupled with the pain of the wounds taxed his strength. He stared hard at Daniel and let him feel how much he despised his father, hated him for the vampire he was, for the pain he’d inflicted on him and his brothers from the time he could remember, but mostly for the deaths of all three human mothers.
Yes, he hated Daniel.
And he wanted him dead.
With that desire, he opened up another fraction of his Ancestral power and let it flow. A jolt of energy fell on Daniel and he jerked backward as though punched in the face. A shot of surprise passed through his light teal eyes, then pleasure as he battled back. “That’s it, Adrien, keep reaching for your power. It’s intoxicating, isn’t it? There’s more, so much more. The fullness of your Ancestral power will be like nothing you’ve ever known.”
Adrien reached for his power, deep within his mind and his soul. He saw the open door and a beckoning of bright light and heat. He saw how easy it would be to just take it all in, drawing the power through his body, but he couldn’t for no other reason than doing it would be what Daniel wanted. Beyond that, would walking through that door turn him into a monster?
He had to do something, however. He couldn’t stand against Daniel forever. He knew his limitations.
Lily, I’m getting us out of here. Be ready.
I am. Do what you need to do. I can sense your intentions from one second to the next.
He’ll strike and I’ll fall. Latch onto my back like before.
Do it.
As Adrien drew back his power, Daniel completed the third blow. Just as it struck Adrien and as Lily latched onto his back, he took her simultaneously out of the cavern, engaging in altered flight, straight through the opposing wall of rock. He was right. Daniel didn’t have Silas’s ability to stop him from flight.
The repeated blows, however, had done something to Adrien, and he saw spots in front of his eyes. But he flew fast and hard as Lily clung to him, her arms and legs wrapped tight around him.
Yet as he flew, the wounds he’d sustained caused more spots to float before his eyes. His disorientation increased.
Adrien, you’re heading deep into the earth. Can you shift course? Adrien?
Was Lily speaking to him? Where was he? I need to stop.
But he couldn’t do that. If he stopped in the middle of rock they’d both die and he didn’t have a sense of where he was. I can’t see or think. Lily, I can’t do this, can’t get us out of here.
He felt pressure on his neck. Yes you can. More pressure. Just keep moving and relax. You’re doing fine. More small bits of pressure. Then he realized Lily was kissing his neck.
For some reason that made him smile. His mind cleared at least enough to allow him to feel the heat of what he knew was the earth’s magma.
He turned, heading back toward the surface.
Much better. I must be siphoning more and more of your power because travel is easier on me now. Her thoughts reached into his mind and eased him. Adrien, is it possible to get a magma burn? I might have blisters on my ass. What were you thinking, vampire?
Adrien smiled a little more and he sped up. Flying through the last of the rock, he took them into the air toward the stars. He could finally breathe.
Oh, thank God.
You okay?
Fine. Just a blistered butt. How about you? Dear old Dad gave you a beating, one of many in the course of your life, I take it.
He didn’t like that you called him an asshole. He would have killed you.
He felt her draw in a long deep breath. She hugged him hard. I think I might owe you one. Again. She fell silent, then after a moment said, I’d be dead right now, wouldn’t I?
Yep.
What a prick, but damn if you aren’t traveling fast. You took on a new piece of power, didn’t you?
Had to.
Where are we headed?
Rumy’s. We’ll be safe there.
He wanted to say more, but the spots began to return. Daniel could never get deep inside The Erotic Passage.
We’re almost to the lake. Hold on. I’m not feeling one hundred percent yet.
I’m good.
He slipped around to Rumy’s private entrance and slowed. His brain was still shifting about so he had to attempt his landing twice. Even then, he ended up on his hands and knees.
Lily slipped off his back as the door opened.
He looked up and Rumy smiled. “On your hands and knees, I see. Looks like Lily’s got you trained. Glad someone finally did.”
As Adrien stood up, his brain refused to function and he listed to the left. He would have gone straight over the low balustrade and into the lake, but Lily caught his arm and pulled him back.
“Hey,” she said. “Where you going?” Then, “Rumy, I need some help here. That bastard Daniel tried to fry him in Mexico.”
Rumy called out and the next thing Adrien knew, he was being lifted up by several pairs of hands. This time the black spots grew to the size of potatoes, and that was the last he knew.
CHAPTER 13
Lily sat at Adrien’s bedside.
He looked really bad. His face was both seriously burned as well as black and blue. Because she’d removed his shirt and leathers to bathe him while he healed himself, she saw how almost half his body had either serious red welts or massive bruising from Daniel’s preternatural bludgeoning.
He lay on his back on a bed in one of Rumy’s guest suites. The curly-haired owner of the expansive nightclub had immediately provided shelter, just as Adrien had said he would.
Now Lily was alone with Adrien, sitting at
his bedside, touching him, wishing he would heal faster, wanting him to wake up to talk to her yet knowing he needed rest more than anything.
Earlier, when Adrien was settled in bed, she’d talked things over with Rumy, needing to be reassured that Daniel wouldn’t be able to reach them here. But Rumy was adamant that his security surpassed everything else out there and that even the über-powerful Daniel Briggs couldn’t get through the layers of disguising shields he had in place throughout his cavern system.
She also got a message to Gabriel about Adrien’s condition since by now she understood that he was like family to Adrien. Gabriel had eventually called her and set up events for the following evening. Apparently, the Ancestrals were having their annual Gala at the Black Caverns Beijing Resort, a place known as a high-end playground for rich vampires and rumored to have extensive human sex-slave trafficking. Adrien, having advanced to Ancestral level, would now be allowed to attend the gala with Lily as his guest.
Lily at first refused since they needed to keep searching for the weapon, and not waste their time attending a black-tie affair. But Gabriel then informed her that the Beijing system had numerous associations with the extinction weapon. With Lily’s tracking ability, if the weapon, or some part of it, was there, she’d probably sense it immediately. So she’d agreed to set up the event on behalf of herself and Adrien.
When she told Rumy what the plans were, he offered to arrange to have evening wear secured from their respective Paris and Manhattan homes and delivered to the guest suite.
So there was nothing to do now but to get Adrien healed up, to sleep through the day if he could, then to attend the gala that night at nine o’clock Paris time.
For now, however, she stayed by Adrien’s bed for a long time, just tending to him. When he moved restlessly, dealing with his pain, she would touch him and he would calm down. She watched the bruises grow lighter, the welts diminish, the burns fade. The restless episodes grew fewer and farther between.
Still she waited in the chair, turning everything over and over in her mind: the weapon, her son, the stress of the hunt, all the time pressures, the attacks, and of course Adrien, and all the tenderness she felt toward him.
And then the terrible truth that Adrien was Daniel’s son.
My God, what Adrien must have endured.
Adrien slept with his eyes squeezed shut as though even unconscious he lived with a certain level of tension. And why wouldn’t he?
Daniel was his father and had probably done terrible things to him for who knew how long.
Adrien moaned and, after a long moment, opened his eyes. He rolled his head to look at her. He tried to sit up but flopped back down on the pillow. “Lily.”
She leaned over him. “We’re safe at Rumy’s. Just concentrate on healing yourself.”
His eyes were closed as he nodded. He turned away from her to rest on his right side, the sheet sliding down to his waist, exposing his back. She put her hand lightly on a healed portion of his shoulder and rubbed gently. Adrien sighed and seemed to relax, if just a little.
She loved how he looked but would feel much better when the redness and bruises went away for good.
But as she looked, she saw a thin, silver line that ran from the top of his back, four inches from the base of his neck, straight down his spine. The line continued, so she pushed the sheet away and saw that it ended almost at his tailbone.
She didn’t understand what she was seeing. Vampires always healed … unless … the wound occurred repeatedly. This was one thing Kiernan had told her.
Her fingers trembled above the scar. The edges of the room began to spin.
“No,” she whispered. She didn’t want the vision to come. She didn’t want to see anything that related to the long silver line. And so long as her fingers hovered, the vision remained just out of reach.
She didn’t want to see.
And yet in some inexplicable way, she felt obligated to know the truth, to understand what Daniel had done to his boys.
She summoned her courage, took a deep breath, and pressed her fingers against the scar. Once more, the edges of the room spun, going faster and faster until the vision opened and she saw Adrien as a child, chained facedown to a table, trembling.
Daniel held a thin, sharp blade in his hand. “This will make you a man. The more pain you can tolerate, the stronger you will be. My father taught me and now I’m teaching you.”
He set the blade four inches from the base of the boy’s neck and began to cut, a deep cut that flayed the skin, splitting it into two parts that folded back as he progressed down the spine.
Lily heard Adrien’s screams, watched his legs thumping, his arms thrashing though bound, his body held flat by one of Daniel’s hands as he continued to cut, down and down.
She couldn’t bear watching another second. She moved her hand away from Adrien and the vision ceased, dissolving into thin air. She swiped at her now wet face, then sat back in her chair and wept as quietly as she could. She wept for Adrien and for herself, for Josh and for all her neighbors who had perished, for Lucian and Marius bound by chains in prison, for so much pain and suffering.
When her tears slowed and finally stopped, when she’d blown her nose and no longer felt as though her heart were being ripped from her chest, she marveled at the vampire recovering in front of her.
He’d survived a horrendous childhood, enduring unimaginable pain and suffering, and had become exactly what Daniel had predicted, a real man, at least by her own definition. A vampire, yes, but one who understood loyalty and service, who cared more about others than for his own safety, who could have fallen into rage and bitterness after leaving his childhood behind but instead served his world with relentless dedication. And he was the man who had swung Jean-Luc in a circle, giving evidence that he knew how to love despite the deprivations of his youth.
Her heart swelled at the memory of being with Adrien at the Trevayne system, at all the memories of Adrien.
Another truth surfaced: In this short but very intense time with Adrien, she’d grown to respect him and to care deeply about him. She might even be falling in love with him.
But as she stared at his back, her thoughts took a hard turn as she recalled Adrien’s reaction to the man in The Ruby Cave, chained to the table, the one Eve had used her floggers and chants on. Eve had told her she should put Adrien on the table, that he could benefit from it. Was this why? Did Eve know what Adrien had endured at Daniel’s hands when he was just a boy, what it would mean for Adrien to be chained to a table?
Her heart rate picked up as new thoughts tripped through her mind, one sensual image after the other, of having Adrien chained and under her control the way Eve had suggested, what it could mean to him but uncertain what it would mean for her.
She stood up from the chair, her gaze still fixed on Adrien’s perfect back and the thin silver line that told the tale of his life. She owed Adrien a lot, even her life. She wanted to repay him, at least in a way that made sense to her. Yes, this she could do for him, especially since everything in her heart told her it was exactly what he needed.
Her chain vibrated heavily now and she left the room, closing the door behind her, grateful that Adrien’s double-chain gave her the extra distance. She withdrew her phone from the pocket of her jeans and called Eve and told her what she wanted to do.
To her surprise, Eve wasn’t flippant with her, nor did she make a sexy joke. Instead, she praised Lily for having the courage to do what needed to be done.
There would be plenty of time before the gala to explore a journey into the darker side of sexual experience. Eve made several suggestions on how to go about it.
After making the arrangements, Lily showered, slipped into a cotton nightgown, and stretched out beside Adrien. His body, tense until she pressed herself up close to him, relaxed into her.
“Lily?” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep.
“I’m here.”
“Good. You need your rest.” r />
A tear escaped her eye. Why did he have to say that, to be thinking about what she needed when he was still raw from his wounds and still purple from so many bruises?
The tenderness that she knew to be at the heart of Adrien’s soul confirmed that she was doing the right thing to take him to Eve’s apartment in Rome, to chain him down on the dominance table, and maybe lay some of his ghosts to rest.
The heat from his body covered her in a drowsy warmth, a very welcome sensation. She had so much to think about, but the night’s adventure had taken a toll. Before she knew it, she joined him in a dreamless abyss.
* * *
Adrien awoke to darkness, his back really warm, his chest cool.
Ah, Lily was curled up behind him.
He reached for her, found her arm then her hip. She snuggled tighter, murmuring something unintelligible against his shoulder.
In the dark, he took a deep breath. She knew the truth about him now, the terrible truth about his genetics and his parentage, something he could never undo. What would she think of him now? Probably the worst, and he wouldn’t blame her.
He released a heavy sigh, but despite his distress, he fell asleep again.
When he awoke later, he was alone, although he heard the shower running.
He recognized one of Rumy’s guest suites, this one very private, in the lowest level of the Como cave system, extremely secure. Rumy had given them shelter.
He could always rely on Rumy.
He stretched his hearing beyond the walls of the suite but could hear nothing. Of course, some of the guest suites were miles away from the club and it was probably still daytime, the hour when all good vampires slept.
He sat up wondering what the hell to do next. This whole thing had to be getting to Lily. That’s when he heard the softest muffled sounds through the noise of the shower. He extended his hearing and realized she was crying.
The last time she’d wept, he’d been making love to her and her grief had overwhelmed her. Was she thinking about her lost family? Probably. Or maybe just the hell his kind was still putting her through.