“You said yourself it would take four or five of you to take me,” Drake said, readying himself for action as he probed with his senses to make sure no one else was sneaking up on him while he was distracted. “I only count three.”
Fletcher grinned viciously. “You take what you can get.”
Drake suspected if the pup wanted to spend a little more time planning, he could have gathered quite a posse. Resentment shot through him. They were happy enough to take advantage of his skills when they needed him. But it seemed nothing he did would ever make the Guardians accept him. No matter what Eli commanded.
Drake’s fangs lowered. Adrenaline pumped through his system, bloodlust energizing him, narrowing his focus. And he suddenly realized why Fletcher dared jump him with only two helpers—the pup knew Drake would have to be careful not to kill anyone, which would significantly hamper his ability to fight. Damn it!
“This is childish,” he said, knowing full well that wouldn’t matter much to Fletcher and his buddies. “We’re on the same side.”
Fletcher rolled his neck from side to side, his spine making tiny popping noises as he loosened up. “So fucking what?” He charged forward, lowering his head like a battering ram.
Drake had a split second to decide on strategy as Fletcher’s flunkies fanned out to come at him from the sides. He used his glamour to freeze both of them in their tracks, then braced himself for the impact as Fletcher’s head slammed into his ribs.
Bracing did no good. Fletcher was strong and solidly built, and the two of them tumbled to the pavement together. Fletcher also fought dirty, so when they went down he made sure his knee landed on Drake’s groin.
Even a century-old Killer was vulnerable to a blow like that, and the pain snapped Drake’s concentration, freeing Fletcher’s accomplices from his glamour. His head snapped sharply to the side from a brutal kick. Fletcher dug his knee in harder, but snarled at his buddy.
“Don’t kick him in the head, idiot! You could break his neck.”
Oh, good, Drake thought dryly as his vision swam and he fought for air. Fletcher was being so considerate, making sure Drake wasn’t accidentally killed.
Drake couldn’t suck in enough air to manage a well-balanced punch, but he didn’t need much leverage to bite, so he sank his fangs into Fletcher’s shoulder.
Fletcher screamed and reflexively tried to pull away. Drake’s fangs tore through his flesh, leaving a huge, jagged wound. The pain and the blood stunned Fletcher enough that Drake was able to pitch him off and leap to his feet.
Fletcher’s two buddies closed ranks, standing between Drake and Fletcher like guard dogs. Drake rolled his eyes, licking the Guardian’s blood from his lips. The taste was sweet and coppery, but subtly different from the taste of mortal blood. Nowhere near as tantalizing.
“Relax, children,” Drake said, baring his bloody fangs at them. “If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d have bitten something other than his shoulder.” This was all so terribly civilized, no one trying to kill anyone. How long would that be the case, if Gabriel continued to hunt the city and raise tensions?
His wound was closing already, and Fletcher was regaining his composure. He pushed up to his hands and knees, still guarded by his friends.
“Good thing I’m not the enemy,” Drake continued, giving Fletcher a droll look. “Never put your throat within reach of a Killer’s fangs, puppy.” Drake couldn’t have killed him with a bite to the throat, but he could have hurt him badly enough to soften him for the killing blow. “Now, have we had enough for tonight, or do I have to teach you all some more lessons?”
Not surprisingly, they charged him again, all three of them together. But now he had a better clue as to how they fought, and he managed to keep his more vulnerable spots protected. A little touch of glamour confused the two youngsters, and they ended up hitting each other. Drake stepped aside to avoid Fletcher’s charge, then used the puppy’s own momentum to slam him into a brick wall, knocking the breath out of him. While Fletcher struggled for air, Drake got a hold of his arm and wrenched it up behind his back.
“Tell your flunkies to call it quits,” Drake snarled in his ear.
“Fuck you,” Fletcher panted.
Apparently, he wasn’t going to give up until he’d been thoroughly thrashed. At this point, Drake was happy to oblige. He grinned as Fletcher’s buddies finally snapped out of the glamour enough to realize they were pummeling each other.
“This is going to hurt like hell, puppy,” Drake warned, then shoved upward on Fletcher’s arm until he heard the sickening pop of his shoulder dislocating.
Fletcher howled, and Drake backed up to let him fall to the pavement. He turned to the others and smiled pleasantly, sure the expression in his eyes was anything but pleasant. “Unlike most wounds,” he said casually, “this one won’t heal by itself. You’re going to have to pop his shoulder back into its socket first, then he’ll be just fine.” He grinned. “Of course, he won’t like that very much, so I suggest you stay out of range of fists and feet and fangs.”
The two of them stood there, cuts and bruises healing on their faces, as they looked back and forth indecisively between Drake and Fletcher.
Drake stared at them coldly. “Unless you’d like to find out first hand how lovely it feels to have a dislocated shoulder, I suggest you quit while you’re behind.”
They looked at each other, then at Drake, and then nodded simultaneously, holding their hands out from their sides in surrender. Both of their faces were pale with fear, all their toughness faded in the face of their leader’s pain. At his feet, Fletcher moaned pitifully, his breathing labored.
Drake pressed his lips together. Fletcher might be in enough pain and be frustrated enough to be a danger to the others if they tried to pop his shoulder back into place.
Pissed though he might be, Drake didn’t want anyone dying because of this foolishness. He lowered himself to one knee and stilled Fletcher’s struggles with his glamour. He didn’t make any attempt to kill the pain, though, figuring Fletcher was getting exactly what he deserved for trying to jump someone older and more powerful than himself. Matter-of-factly, he manipulated Fletcher’s shoulder back into position, ignoring the howls of protest.
It would take a couple of minutes for the muscles and tendons he’d torn along the way to knit themselves back together. With a final snarl that encompassed all three of his would-be attackers, Drake turned his back on them and hurried away before Fletcher could recover enough to pick another fight.
4
JEZ WASN’T SURPRISED TO see Gabriel making himself at home in her apartment, even though her tentative probe before she’d entered had told her the place was empty.
He’d gone for his most aggressive look tonight, using some kind of product to make his short blond hair stick up in messy-looking spikes. His black leather jacket—way too hot for this temperate spring evening—was adorned with silver studs and chains. And his feet—which he’d rudely propped on her coffee table—were shod in boots that looked like they must have weighed five pounds each with all the metal on them.
She sighed quietly and closed the door behind her. After squirming through the entire meeting tonight, she could have used some time to herself to come to terms with what she had to do. Apparently, that wasn’t one of her options.
With her back straight and proud, and her chin lifted, she faced her maker.
“I want you to promise me that you’re not going to kill anyone,” she said.
That startled him enough to get his boots off her coffee table. One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Perhaps I have become hard of hearing in my old age,” he said. “I thought I just heard you making what sounded suspiciously like a demand. But no, surely you’re not that foolish.”
She moved carefully, keeping a wary eye on him as she took a seat on the sofa beside him, just out of reach. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she met those cold, gray-green eyes, but whatever he was feeling right now, it wasn’t strong enough to
bleed into her.
“I know I made you a promise—” she started, but Gabriel cut her off.
“Yes, you did. And I expect you to live up to it. And do as you’re told.”
His voice, and the look on his face, chilled her to the bone, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t back down. Not this time. “You saved my life,” she said. Her voice quavered a bit, so she lowered it. “In so many more ways than you know. I’m so thankful—”
“Cut the crap and get to the point,” he snapped.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “This is the point. Sorry if being forced to listen to me is an inconvenience. If you wanted a slavishly loyal pet who wouldn’t talk back to you, you should have gotten a dog.”
He bared his teeth at her, but he hadn’t lowered his fangs, so the threat wasn’t as scary as it might have been. Then he shook his head and laughed softly. “You and Hannah must get along great. You have the smartest mouths of any women I’ve ever met.”
She grimaced. “Actually, Hannah and I can barely tolerate each other,” she admitted. “Eli decided she should teach me something about martial arts since, as he puts it, I fight like a girl. Hannah isn’t exactly the most patient teacher, and for some reason she doesn’t trust me. It’s all very ‘innocent,’ but our sparring sessions all seem to end with me aching from head to toe.”
He laughed again. “Yes, that’s Hannah all right. Quite a little spitfire.”
Jez was surprised at the zing of jealousy that shot through her. There was a hint of softness around his eyes that suggested he actually liked Hannah. Usually, he gave her the distinct impression that he didn’t like anyone. She knew he and Hannah had met in Baltimore, and she knew he’d admired the woman’s spunk. Too bad he didn’t seem to feel the same way about Jez.
She didn’t mean to say anything, but she just couldn’t help herself. “So, Hannah can trade insults with you and you get all nostalgic about it, but if I even hint that I might not want to obey your every order, you get pissy.”
He arched a single brow. “You’re my fledgling. She’s not.”
“And ‘fledgling’ is the same as ‘slave’?”
“My patience is nearing its end. What do Eli and his Guardians have planned for me?”
She almost snorted. His patience was nonexistent. Even knowing that, she held firm. “Promise me you won’t kill anyone, and I’ll tell you.” A spark in the center of her chest told her she’d tweaked the well of anger in him, though his expression didn’t change much.
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
She swallowed hard. There were so many worse things he could do to her than kill her. She didn’t believe he’d do any of them, but if she was wrong … Even so, she had to stand firm, or she’d never be able to look herself in the mirror again. “Then I can’t tell you what you want to know.”
His eyes seemed almost to glow as he leaned into her space. She put her hand to her breastbone, feeling his anger seething in her center, creeping through her limbs.
“Think long and hard about defying me, my dear,” he said, and his voice would have scared the devil himself.
The painful burn of his anger continued to spread and intensify. There was so much of it, boundless, bottomless, looking for an outlet. And here she was defying him, practically daring him to hurt her. Terror merged with the anger, forming a writhing, twisting struggle in her chest. Gabriel’s eyes drew together in what she’d have described as puzzlement if she could think of any reason why he’d be puzzled. She could hardly breathe through the sensations in her chest, but she forced words out anyway. She had to reach through his anger and her fear, had to try to explain why she was defying him. He might not care. But then again, he might.
“All my life,” she panted, “people have always thought the worst of me.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she wasn’t sure if it was an emotional response to what she was saying, or a physical response to the pain. “I’ve been treated like the dog shit you scrape off your shoes, and nothing I could do would ever make them see me for who I really am.” Visions of her grandmother’s stony-faced disapproval flashed through her mind. The pain was unbearable, and her voice when she spoke was hoarse and broken. “Now, for the first time ever, I’ve got people who think I’m a good person.” A sob escaped her. “If I betray them and you kill them, I’ll have proved everyone else was right.”
The pain pushed everything aside, made Gabriel’s anger into a distant, unreal threat, her fear nothing but a nuisance. It was an old pain, one she’d been shoving into the back of her mental closet from the moment she’d awakened to find herself born anew. She drew her knees up to her chest, buried her head against them and drowned under the hurt of it.
And once again, she was a ten-year-old girl, standing at her mother’s grave. Her mother, the junkie slut who’d accidentally killed herself with a heroin overdose. Her mother, who’d gotten lazy with little Jezebel’s insulin injections and started using dirty needles because she was just too damn wasted to care.
Behind her stood her grandmother, her mother’s mother, who would grudgingly take in her only granddaughter for however many years she’d manage to survive before the HIV grew to full-blown AIDS and killed her. Even as Jez’s mother was being laid to rest, she could hear her grandmother talking worriedly with her like-minded friends. It was God’s will that her mother had died, and God’s will that had given Jezebel HIV. It meant she was marked by the devil, a bad seed, doomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
Afterward, she’d seen the minister take her grandmother aside. She’d snuck up close enough to eavesdrop, heard the minister counsel her grandmother to show “the child” a more Christian attitude. Her grandmother had been deeply offended by the suggestion that it was un-Christian of her to condemn a ten-year-old she barely knew as a lost soul. She’d demonstrated just how offended she was by switching churches.
Jezebel dragged herself back to the present by sheer force of will. All of that was behind her now. Not only was she no longer dying, she was practically immortal. And she would never lay eyes on her grandmother or any of the proselytizing, holier-than-thou bitches who formed her circle of friends, clucking worriedly about the state of Jez’s soul while wisely nodding to each other and muttering that her mother’s choice of name had been prophetic. Actually, Jezebel knew for a fact she’d been so named specifically to spite her grandmother.
She suffered a moment of disorientation as she stuffed the last of those memories back in her mental closet. Her head was pressed against the thick leather of Gabriel’s jacket, one of the studs digging uncomfortably into her cheek. His arms were around her, but it was like he had no idea how to give a hug, and he felt stiff and awkward. He patted her back in what she assumed was supposed to be a comforting gesture. Apparently, he didn’t have much practice at those either.
For a moment, she remained where she was, despite his awkward hold and the discomfort of the studded jacket. Though her nose was stuffy from crying, she smelled the warm leather-and-man scent of him, and it eased something inside her, helping her calm the inner demons his rage and her fear had inadvertently summoned. It felt good to be held, even by someone who sucked at it. Her grandmother had barely touched her, as if afraid the taint—or, more practically, the HIV—would rub off. Hell, she wouldn’t even give Jez her insulin injections. Luckily, by the time she was ten years old, Jez had gotten very good at jabbing herself with needles because her mom wasn’t dependable enough.
If only she’d taken over the job completely once she’d learned how … . She never would have used a dirty needle. She knew better.
Eventually, the awkwardness became too much, and Jez pushed away, surreptitiously wiping her eyes even though it was no secret she’d been bawling like a baby. Gabriel spoke before she had a chance to pull the last vestiges of her self together.
“I will offer you a compromise,” he said, and his voice was strangely subdued. “I won’t promise not to kill them, and I won’t promise not to hurt or sca
re them, but I will promise that I won’t kill unless it’s absolutely necessary in self-defense. Which, considering my advantages, is unlikely to be the case. Will that ease your conscience?”
Jez swallowed the last of her tears and raised her head to look at him. In reality, she couldn’t possibly hold him to any promise he might make. But his reluctance to make a promise in the first place suggested he might actually keep one he did make. The guilt would weigh heavily on her even if he didn’t kill anyone, but she’d made him a promise, and she would keep it.
“All right,” she said. “There’s a mortal woman named Carolyn who’s engaged to one of the Guardians. She used to be a police officer, and she helps the Guardians by doing things in the daytime and lending her expertise. They’ve decided to set a trap for you, though they haven’t quite figured out how they’re going to bait it yet. They’ll have her planted with a rifle somewhere, and she’s supposed to kill you as soon as you come into sight.”
Gabriel’s features hardened, the anger stirring once more. “You’ve got to love my dear old dad. He doesn’t have the guts to kill me himself, but he doesn’t mind sending someone else to do his dirty work for him.”
“Yes, he does,” she said softly, not sure Gabriel was willing or able to hear what she had to say. “I saw his face when he gave the order. He doesn’t want to do it. If you weren’t forcing his hand …”
He acted like he hadn’t even heard her. “This ought to be … entertaining,” he mused. “I’ll have to see if I can help Daddy come up with a tempting trap. I will so enjoy turning the tables on him.”
“Gabriel—”
“I promised not to kill anyone unless necessary. That’s the best you can hope for from me.”
He did another of those disconcerting disappearing acts of his, and Jez slumped down on the couch, praying that he would keep his word.
GABRIEL SAT ON THE front stoop of Jezebel’s apartment building for a while, gathering himself. He was shaken enough that he actually dropped his glamour, but none of the mortals passing by paid him any attention.