“It really is a dreadful song,” he said, then hoped it wasn’t Stacy who’d put it on the jukebox in the first place.
She laughed, a little of the tension going out of her. “Yeah, it is. But at least it’s got a good beat.”
He drew her a little closer, until their bodies were almost touching. Her head barely came up to his chin, and she had to tilt back a bit to look up at him. Her eyes were an enchanting shade of hazel, almost green. The hint of uncertainty in them just made her more sexy. Her hair smelled of citrus shampoo, blended with a faint, floral perfume.
Yes, he decided as he smiled down at her. She had definite potential.
He stifled a groan when his cell phone vibrated against his hip. He wasn’t exactly a social butterfly, being something of an outcast amongst the Guardians, so there was only one person who could be calling him. And it couldn’t be good news.
The music was loud enough that Stacy couldn’t hear the buzzing of the phone, but she got the hint when he let go of her and unclipped it from his belt. He tried glaring at it, but it kept vibrating.
He shook his head, giving Stacy an apologetic smile. “I’m really sorry, but I have to take this call.”
She smiled gamely, despite her obvious disappointment. He offered her his elbow. She blinked at him in surprise, then took it as he flipped open the phone with his other hand.
“I’ll call you back in a minute, when I get somewhere quieter,” he practically shouted into the phone, then hung up.
The bartender had cleared both their beers. Drake insisted on buying her another one before he left.
“Maybe we’ll meet again some day,” he said.
“Maybe,” she agreed, but she didn’t believe it any more than he did.
He heard her sigh of regret after he turned his back and headed toward the door. Usually, he enjoyed the work he did for the Guardians, using his superior strength as a Killer to track down and destroy other Killers who preyed on the innocent. But that was before he’d learned some disturbing truths about Eli during his trip to Baltimore several months earlier. Ever since then, the job had become work.
Once he stepped out of the bar and into the relative quiet of the city streets, he speed-dialed Eli’s number.
“Sorry to interrupt your evening’s entertainment,” Eli said, skipping the formal greeting.
Drake raised his eyebrows. Eli sounded odd, his voice a little tight, his tone a little sharper than usual. “What’s up?” he asked, but he already had a suspicion.
“I think this is a conversation to be had in person. Can you come down to the house?”
Drake scrubbed his hair away from his face. It didn’t take a genius to guess what caused that tightness in the Founder’s voice. “It’s Gabriel, isn’t it? He’s made good on his threat to come visit?”
“Just come to the house.”
Drake took that to mean yes. He hung up and hailed a cab to drive him the fifteen blocks to Eli’s house on the river.
Eli’s house, perhaps more appropriately termed a mansion, was a stately Victorian that sat proudly on the banks of the Delaware. The house was surrounded by lovingly kept gardens and lawn, and bounded on all sides by a high fence. The fence, made of almost pure iron, was enough to deter any unwanted vampire visitors. And a powerful glamour like nothing Drake had ever felt before made the house all but invisible to mortals, except those special few he let in.
Drake felt the glamour close around him as he approached the gate, rendering the few mortals who were up and about at this hour oblivious to him as he rang the bell of the house they couldn’t see. The gate buzzed and opened for him. He stepped through, careful not to touch the iron, which would leave a nasty burn.
The front door stood open, so Drake strode in and headed toward the meeting room, where he assumed Eli awaited him. The meeting room had no doubt been a ballroom when this house had first been built, but now made a convenient gathering place for all the Guardians.
No other Guardians were in there tonight. Eli stood by himself, his back to the doorway, staring into the fireplace—something he did often when there was actually a fire in the grate, but just now he was staring at an empty hearth.
Puzzled, Drake took another step into the room. That was when he noticed it. The faint scent of blood. His eyes scanned the room, quickly finding the source of the scent.
The woman lay on her back on Eli’s fleur-de-lis rug, her hands crossed over her belly. Her throat had been practically torn out, and yet no blood seeped from the wound. Drake had a sinking feeling he knew why.
“I found her just inside my front gate,” Eli said, still not turning around.
Drake frowned. “Inside the gate?”
Eli finally turned. His face was as impassive as usual, but there was something in his eyes that wasn’t quite right. He was hurting. Badly. And trying very, very hard not to show it.
“He tossed her over the top of it and just left her there for me to find.” The voice was flat, devoid of emotion, but that very flatness gave away more than he wanted.
“You’re sure it’s Gabriel?” Drake asked, though he knew the answer.
Eli nodded. “He let me sense him, for just the briefest moment, when he was far enough away to escape my glamour.”
Drake regarded the Founder cautiously. “He let you sense him.” He didn’t quite phrase it like a question, but he asked the question with his eyes. Drake and the Guardians—and all other vampires he’d ever known—had to exert some effort to see with their psychic senses. Eli never seemed to need to. It was impossible to come within three blocks of his house without him knowing you were there.
“One of the quirks of his birth,” Eli said. “He seems to be able to mask his psychic presence when he feels like it. Just like a master can mask his presence from his fledgling.”
Drake ground his teeth to keep from saying anything he might regret. When Drake and Jules and Hannah had played their game of cat and mouse with Gabriel in Baltimore, Eli had never once thought to mention that Gabriel could mask his presence. But then, Eli protected secrets as if his life depended on it.
“That will make him rather harder to catch,” Drake finally managed to say, with a hint of dry humor that he hoped covered his annoyance.
Eli gave him a piercing look that said he hadn’t managed to hide anything. “No doubt this is his way of firing a warning shot across the bow.”
“No doubt.” Drake regarded his mentor carefully. “And no doubt he knows you well enough to know just how to hurt you most.”
Eli’s expression wasn’t quite a wince, but it was close. “Yes, he does. And unfortunately, it’s not through doing anything to me.”
Drake nodded. “He’ll hurt you through us.” He made a face. There was no “us.” Drake wasn’t a Guardian himself, was in fact just barely tolerated by the rest of them. “Through the Guardians.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Which means you’re going to have to tell everyone about him, no matter how much you’d rather sweep him under a rug.”
Eli’s eyes flashed with anger. “I haven’t kept his existence a secret on a whim!” he snapped, which was an unusual display of temper for him.
Eli was under the impression that if the Guardians didn’t think he was a saint, they wouldn’t follow him anymore. He’d done everything in his power to keep Gabriel’s existence and his own past a secret. Now, the secret was going to come out, one way or another.
“You know, Jules and Hannah and I all know about him, and we all still work for you. Maybe that ought to be a hint that you can have flaws just like the rest of us and we’ll still respect you.”
Eli’s eyes locked with his, that sudden, penetrating gaze that always seemed to see below the surface. “And do you still respect me as much now as you did before you knew?”
Drake lowered his gaze, unable to face that knowing look.
“I’m not going to tell them much,” Eli continued. “I’ll tell them that Gabriel is my son, and that
he has a vendetta. But most of the details I’ll keep to myself.”
Now it was Drake’s turn to get angry. “For God’s sake, Eli! If he thinks it’ll hurt you, Gabriel will find a way to make sure everyone knows every last sordid little detail, with some extra embellishment just for effect. If you’ve been honest with them, they won’t believe any fabrications Gabriel tells them. But if you’ve lied to them, they won’t know what to believe.”
“I won’t lie to them.” Eli had the grace to look slightly abashed. “I just won’t tell them everything.”
It was futile to argue, though Drake was convinced the Founder was making a big mistake. “I presume you’re going to give Jules and Hannah the party line too. Wouldn’t want us all contradicting each other.” He heard the hint of bitterness in his voice, but he was too angry to hide it.
He looked at the dead woman on the floor. She’d been pretty, and though her suit was rumpled from the rough treatment, it looked expensive. Would her people be looking for her? Would Gabriel try to lead the police to Eli’s Guardians? And how many more dead bodies would Eli find on his doorstep in the near future?
“How do you plan to stop him, Eli? You’re the only other person I’ve met whose power is as scary as his.” He risked a glance at the Founder’s face. “Can you overpower him?”
Eli nodded. “Despite his considerable talents, I did it easily two hundred years ago.”
Two hundred years ago. When Eli had tried to force himself to kill his own son and discovered that he couldn’t do it.
“However,” Eli continued, “I doubt he plans to deliver himself into my hands for a fair fight.”
“And you don’t plan to leave the house to go after him.”
Eli shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
Drake made a low growling noise. “Can’t, or won’t?” Eli refused to tell anyone why he wouldn’t pass beyond the gates of his house, why the most powerful vampire he or any of the other Guardians had ever seen or even heard of, wouldn’t help them fight the Killers.
As usual, Eli didn’t answer the question.
“He could kill us all, if he wants to,” Drake said softly. Eli didn’t react overtly, but again Drake thought he saw a tightening around the Founder’s eyes. “If you won’t help us—”
Eli stopped the words in his throat with one icy glance. “The Guardians have destroyed Killers far more powerful than themselves before. They can do it again.”
Yes, with Drake’s help, they’d managed to destroy Killers who had one or two centuries’ worth of experience and power. But Drake knew in his gut that Gabriel was an adversary too strong for any of them. Only Eli could prevail in a fight against his son. And there was no way Gabriel would get close enough for Eli to fight him.
Any way he looked at it, they were thoroughly screwed.
3
GABRIEL REGARDED HIS ONE and only fledgling closely, trying to absorb what she’d told him. He’d expected his bond with her to be different from the bond other vampires had with their fledglings. But he hadn’t expected anything like this.
“You actually felt me feed,” he murmured in disbelief.
She frowned and shrugged. “Yeah. I guess. I didn’t know what I’d felt at first, but when I started thinking about it, these … impressions came to me.”
“And you’d never felt anything like it before?”
She shook her head.
Which suggested the effect had something to do with his proximity. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t killed before during the months she’d been a vampire. At his age, he fed only a couple of times a month, though he suspected he could go a full month between feedings and be only mildly uncomfortable. Not that he’d ever been tempted to test this theory.
Jez stared at her hands, clasped in her lap. “I didn’t like it, Gabriel,” she said softly. She swallowed hard, and he thought he detected a hint of tears in her voice. “I didn’t just feel you kill her. I felt your reaction.” She shivered and hugged herself. They were sitting on her living room couch, and she leaned away from him, probably not even noticing that she did so.
His fists clenched in his lap, and his voice when he spoke was a low growl. “I’m sure it would have pleased you if I’d been overcome with remorse, filled with abject misery and despair.” For all her tough talk, she was just like Eli’s goddamn Guardians, judging and condemning him for a life he did not choose.
She turned her head slightly to look at him. “That’s not what I meant.”
He snarled. “The hell it isn’t.” He leaned into her, capturing her eyes with his glamour, forcing her to look at him, to face what he was, what she was bound to for the rest of her immortal life. “I’m a Killer, Jezebel. I kill mortals to feed, and I like it.” His fangs had descended, and he pulled his lips away from them so she couldn’t help but see.
“When I made you,” he continued, “I gave you the choice not to kill.” Had he been the average master vampire, he would have starved her until she was forced to kill to satisfy the hunger. And once she started killing, the addiction would make it impossible for her to stop. Instead, he had fed her on lamb’s blood and thereby held the addiction at bay.
“It was a choice I never had,” he continued. “But I haven’t survived five hundred years by cursing my own existence, by wallowing in guilt and bemoaning my cruel fate. So fuck your delicate sensibilities, my dear. Deal with it!”
He released her from his glamour, and she jerked away. Fury coursed through his veins, looking for an outlet. He wanted to hurt someone, wanted it with an almost desperate passion. Jez was a vampire, could withstand immense amounts of damage without being permanently injured. He glared at her, and she met his gaze, not nearly as scared of him as she should be. It wasn’t quite open defiance, but it wasn’t the proper deferential attitude of a young fledgling, either.
Gabriel raised his fist, an almost instinctual reaction to the impulse to discipline his subordinate. But though the look in Jezebel’s eyes dared him to do it, he felt no true temptation to strike her.
He leapt from the sofa, battling to rein in the anger. It was Eli who’d made him this freak of nature, not Jezebel. He focused his mind on the moment he’d left the dead woman on Eli’s doorstep, remembered the triumph that had surged through his veins at the moment. That was his true battle—to punish Eli for the hell he’d put him through. If Jezebel feared and loathed him like everyone else, who the hell cared? He kept his back turned to her, breathing deeply, tamping down the rage as he promised to feed it well in the following weeks and months.
JEZ’S HEART SEEMED TO have taken up permanent residence in her throat. She stared at Gabriel’s back, wondering if she dared speak to him. She’d thought she’d felt his rage before, when he’d bitten that woman. Now she knew that she’d only tapped its surface. She knew it because she’d felt it, not because she’d seen it on his face or heard it in his voice. Just as she could feel it draining away now.
“Gabriel?” she said tentatively.
He didn’t turn toward her. “What?”
“Umm … I think things are even weirder than we thought.”
That intrigued him enough to get him to turn around. His eyes still shone with that unwholesome anger, and he stroked his scarred cheek with the fingers of his right hand. She suspected he didn’t even know he was doing it.
“When you got pissed at me just now,” she said, looking up at him and hoping this wouldn’t set him off too, “I felt that in here.” She patted her chest. “I mean that literally.”
“You felt it?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” She shuddered. “It was like …” It was like nothing she’d ever felt before, and words stuck in her throat. How could she describe the indescribable?
Inspiration struck. “Did you ever see that movie, Alien?”
His brows drew together in puzzlement, but he nodded cautiously.
“It was like there was something like that alien inside me, struggling like hell to get out. But I had to keep it in, or j
ust like the guy in the movie, I’d be dead.” She shook her head. “I guess that’s a pretty shitty explanation, but it was the strangest thing I’ve ever felt.”
Gabriel’s face lost some of its freshly fed color. He spoke after a moment of stunned silence. “Actually, I thought it an apt description.” He returned to the couch and sat beside her. His eyes had a faraway look to them.
Her mouth was dry, and she found herself idly stroking her breastbone, as if still fearing a monster would burst through her skin. If that was how Gabriel felt when he got angry, no wonder he had such a penchant for cruelty. She thought she’d have done anything to get that horrible feeling out of her, even if that anything meant hurting someone.
“How did you manage not to hit me when you felt so much rage?” she asked in a bare whisper.
He blinked, coming back from whatever distance he’d retreated to. His expression lightened until there was a hint of a smile on his lips. “I’ve lived with it for five hundred years. If I hadn’t gained some control over it, I’d have died or gone mad by now.” He laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Actually, I suppose many people would say I have gone mad.”
She could see how some people might think that, but she knew Gabriel wasn’t crazy. Frightening, angry, sometimes just barely in control of himself—but not crazy.
Not realizing she meant to do it, she reached out to him. As badly as he scared her at times, this little tantrum of his had shown her glimpses of things she’d never have guessed at before. She’d felt the pain that drove his rage. And that pain tasted familiar in her mind. She laid her hand lightly on his shoulder, wishing there was something she could do to ease him.
But whatever shields he’d dropped to allow her to see behind his façade were back in place. He stared blankly at her hand until she sighed and let go.
He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “So, it would seem our bond allows you to share some of my … emotions.” He said it like “emotion” was a dirty word.
“Something like that,” she agreed. “Though I don’t feel anything from you right now. Maybe the emotions have to be really strong for me to feel them.”