She smiled but looked so sad at the same time that his heart felt crushed. “No, of course not. I felt what you’re feeling and it came as a profound sense of finality. But I don’t feel ready to leave.” Her gaze flitted around. She blinked several times, and he watched tears fill her eyes.
“It’s time.”
She met his gaze once more and took several deep breaths. He felt her pulling inward and he didn’t like the sensation because she was gathering her emotions and shutting them down. “I’ve been here long enough, interfering in a way I never would have in a culture I’d come to study. Of course it’s time for me to go. I can see that. I know you’re right.”
She drew another deep breath, then suddenly a wave of grief hit Marius, emanating first from Shayna, then swelling within him at almost the exact same moment. “Oh, God, Shayna.” He opened his arms and she fell against his chest.
His throat tightened all over again as though he had a noose around it. Tears burned his eyes. His shirt grew damp and the soft sobs that came out of her tore at his heart, making him wish so many things at once, but mostly that she would stay with him forever.
He held her for a long time, rubbing his hand up and down her back until the worst was over and even his own sadness had dimmed. Emotions always felt eternal, but they weren’t, and this would pass like everything else. The only constant in his life was the sudden guilt that surged within him yet again as he remembered the sins of his past, the real reason he’d always be alone.
I wish I understood your suffering. Her voice was the softest murmur through his mind.
He’d miss this as well, the intimate sharing of telepathy, something he’d been able to do with her from the beginning, as easy as shifting into altered flight, like feeling feathers through his mind.
And I wish I could explain it.
I hope one day you’ll be free of this, because it’s like a living thing inside you.
She’d said it exactly right. A python inhabited his soul, tightening at times until he could hardly breathe.
But he’d done the unforgivable and the only thing he could ever hope was that if he continued waging war against his father, maybe then his continual sacrifice could make up for his betrayal of his brothers.
She drew back and he stared down into reddened eyes and cheeks, but she looked as beautiful as ever. “You think that what you’ve done crossed a line that can never be taken back.”
“You don’t know who I really am.”
She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I know exactly who you are. You’re one of the kindest, best men I’ve ever known.” She put her hand on his face and reached up to kiss him.
He drank the kiss in, knowing it might be their last. Thank you for everything, Shayna.
After a moment, she pulled away from him. He saw that her eyes had filled with tears once more, but it couldn’t be helped. She turned back to her worktable and began gathering up her notes.
He was a little surprised that she didn’t make more of a push to stay. “You’re okay with this, then?”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Of course. I never really belonged here. I’m an intruder and I should leave.”
“You’re not an intruder. How can you say that?”
“Maybe I used the wrong word, but I’m human and this is your world. I’m trained by profession to be very respectful of the customs of other cultures. In some ways, my involvement here has gone against my training, but that doesn’t matter now.”
At that, he chuckled. “You weren’t invited here as an anthropologist, Shayna. I abducted you.”
“You sort of abducted me. Mostly, you saved my life.” She glanced around. “This was amazing, though, a gift I’ll always treasure for so many reasons.”
He glanced into the adjoining room, at the tall stacks of tablets, waiting to be studied and translated. “I can see how you’ll miss this.”
“Oh, Marius, you’re such an idiot.” And before he understood, she’d thrown herself against him once more and slid her arms around his back, holding him tight.
He was an idiot and the thought came to him that he’d never have to watch her leave his world if he just stood here for the next hundred years holding her in his arms.
* * *
Shayna leaned her head on Marius’s shoulder and sighed heavily. His hand moved up and down her back, soothing her as he’d done many times before. She didn’t want to leave, even though she knew it was the right thing to do. In the two days they’d been together, she’d grown attached to him.
Maybe the bond of the blood-chains had forced them to grow close, but in this case proximity had bred a very deep affection. If she didn’t know better, she’d actually say she was in love with him.
Love.
Oh, God.
She was.
She hugged him harder still.
Love was what she felt right now. She would define it as nothing less.
She loved Marius and probably always would.
What she couldn’t know was whether or not what she felt, if given the chance, could stand the test of time. Did she love him enough to leave Seattle, to set aside the life she’d planned for herself, the one that seemed as far away from her as the moon right now?
Part of her wanted the chance to discover if this could be something more than just a sense of kinship as a result of having shared hardships with him.
Always analyzing, that was her. Even now, she couldn’t just let Marius go, she had to extrapolate and wonder, asking herself a dozen what-if questions.
She released another sigh and forced her brain to shut down. Instead, she just savored the feel of his muscular body, the one that had held her, loved her, caressed her, and given her unimaginable pleasure
She would definitely miss the sex. All future relationships would pale in comparison.
I loved having sex with you.
He nuzzled her neck. Same here.
Drawing back, he leaned close and kissed her forehead. “I’d offer to do it again, but I don’t think that would be wise.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” She had to leave.
Finally, she pulled away from him and continued gathering up her papers. “I suppose you should take me home pretty soon. Now that we’ve made the decision, I don’t think I want to hang around, although I do have a concern. Is there a chance Daniel will come after me, in Seattle, I mean?”
“He might, but I’ll make sure that you have a security detail on you for as long as needed.”
Holding her notes in her hand, she held his gaze. “And what do you plan to do about Daniel?”
“I intend to take him down.”
She put her hand on his arm suddenly. “Marius, you should tell your brothers how you wronged them.”
He appeared shocked. “I can’t do that.” He shoved a hand through his hair, and she felt his remorse flow through him yet again.
“Tell them. It might help. It might even surprise you. I think you’ve carried this damn thing long enough.”
“You don’t understand. My brothers are all I have. They’d never forgive me.”
“Well, I would.”
He laughed harshly. “Only because you don’t know the truth.”
She grew very still. “You’re right. I don’t know, but isn’t four hundred years of service a proper length of time for atonement? Because I’d bet my life that you never betrayed them in all that time.”
“No, I never did.”
“So as I recall, you were a child when this thing happened.”
“My age doesn’t change what I did.”
“Well, there’s no point arguing, and once again I’m intruding way too much. But would you mind if I had a little time just to be here, before we left? It’s a way of saying good-bye, because I’m pretty sure I’ll never be back.”
He nodded. “Whatever you want to do.”
She could hear his phone ringing as he suddenly slid his hand into his pocket. He glanced at the screen. “It’s Gabriel. I’ll need to tak
e this.”
He moved quickly away from her into the adjacent room.
Shayna watched him for a moment, then sat back down in her chair in front of the computer screen. She almost went right back to work as she clicked the mouse and the Frenchman’s dictionary popped back up on the monitor. She was a worker bee by long and enjoyable habit, so it took her some doing to close the search engine for good.
Knowing she’d fall into a funk, she rose from the chair and pulled on her gloves. She decided to use her last moments examining the tablets as her way of saying farewell.
She brought a new tablet from the stack, placing it beneath the magnifying glass, getting lost in the imagery within her mind, trying to picture the vampire so long ago who had made these indentations in the soft clay.
She often made up scenarios in her head. Would the scribe have kept a beverage in a cup nearby? Did he smoke hemp rope beneath a canvas with some of fellow scribes during his breaks? Did he have an exercise program to keep fit while spending most of his life hunched over slabs of clay?
“What do you see?” Marius settled a hand on her shoulder.
“Just looking at the level of detail, the precision of the length of each indentation.” She glanced at him. “Everything okay?”
“Actually, yes. My brothers are coming here, to Gabriel’s conference room, to discuss the possibility that Daniel is up to something. We’ll be talking new strategies as well.”
“Good. That’s good.” She wanted to ask a few questions, but held back. Her job here was done. Still, she smiled. “I don’t suppose you could let me stay here while you have your meeting.”
She felt the tension drain suddenly from Marius. “I’d like that. I really would.”
She turned and put her hand on his shoulder, caressing him. He responded by taking a step toward her and sliding his arm around her waist. She moved closer still, pressing up against him.
A soft moan escaped his lips as he tilted his head and kissed her.
Shayna slung her arms around his neck. She hadn’t meant for this to happen, but her need for him rose like a tsunami. Desire flowed through her until she writhed against what had become firm really fast.
But this wouldn’t do at all. She was leaving.
She drew back. “Marius, what is it with us?”
“I don’t know.” He chuckled and leaned his forehead against hers. “But I have a meeting I need to get to and now I’ll have to calm down before I can show my face.”
She smiled, loving this between them, wishing like hell it didn’t have to end.
She said nothing more, but waited with him. She took care not to fondle his arms, one of her favorite things to do. She didn’t even speak, but let her breathing settle down.
After a couple of minutes, he released her completely. “I’ll probably be gone for at least two hours. But when I return, I should probably fly you home.”
She nodded. He stepped away and shifted to altered flight. A moment later, he was gone.
Shayna stood staring at the empty space, grateful to have this respite before facing her empty apartment and her miles-away life.
But just as she turned back to the magnifying glass and the ancient tablet beneath, a man’s voice forced her to grow very still. “I think my son has fallen in love with you, which means that my current plan has worked out perfectly.”
She turned, and Daniel was just there, stroking his goatee and standing ten feet away. He’d broken through Gabriel’s layered cavern disguise that even Marius hadn’t been able to penetrate, and now he smiled at her in the middle of the room full of ancient tablets.
She squared her shoulders. “I’m guessing you’re not here to share a cup of coffee, maybe have a little chat. I have so many questions—”
“None of which I intend to answer.”
Instinctively, she picked up one of the tablets and threw it at him, but they were large and heavy. He laughed as it dropped to the floor several feet in front of him and broke into pieces.
Before she even blinked or saw him move, she was trapped in Daniel’s arms, flying through rock then into the air above North Africa.
How did you find me? I can’t believe you actually got through Gabriel’s disguise.
She felt him laugh again. Remember that sharp little pain in your arm, the one you might have thought was a pinch? Let us just say that I embrace technology in all its forms.
A tracking device?
Shayna, you certainly don’t lack for intelligence. And he laughed again.
CHAPTER 15
Marius sat down at an ebony conference table thinking he’d never been so glad to see all these men gathered in one place. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been with both of his brothers, as well as Gabriel and Rumy, at the same time.
He sat across from Adrien and Lucian, while Rumy sat on his right. Each of his brothers bore a resemblance to Daniel, just as he did, their parentage impossible to refute.
Adrien had thick dark hair to his shoulders and muddy teal eyes with brown flecks, while Lucian had gray eyes and kept his black hair cut short. Both were handsome men, six-five to six-six, and muscular like thoroughbreds.
He loved them and loved being with them, though he always felt separate because of what he’d done. In the past, he’d used a lot of humor to mask what he really felt.
Gabriel sat at the head of the table and had provided coffee. Marius sipped from a heavy red mug, his thoughts disjointed. He didn’t want Shayna to leave. He needed to find a way to end Daniel’s reign. He also wondered if Shayna was right. Maybe he should finally confess his sins to his brothers.
But would they ever forgive him?
“So what’s your plan? With Shayna, I mean,” Gabriel asked.
“I’ll be taking her home, of course. We’ve already discussed it. She has her life well planned.” He went on to speak about her fieldwork in Malaysia, her intention of earning her doctorate, her love of anthropology. The words flowed and he couldn’t seem to stop them. He then launched into all the ways she’d helped him and saved his ass over the past two very short days.
He ended with, “Shit, I’m going to miss her so much.”
No one said a word, maybe because they were stunned by his admission. But both Lucian and Adrien were fully bound to human women whom they now lived with.
He glanced at each in turn and saw eyes full of compassion. But all that did was fill him with his usual remorse.
Clearing his throat, he shifted the subject to the critical matter at hand. “So, I take it we’re all here for the same reason.”
“Yep,” Adrien said. “To go after Daniel and bring him down for good.”
Marius related Shayna’s most recent discovery, of a hawk emblem on Daniel’s shirt and those of his security team, as well as the symbols above the hawk’s head.
Once he was done, everyone at the table fell silent as the tension in the room rose a notch.
“Is there anything else?” Gabriel asked, a tight frown between his brows. He scrubbed the side of his head, just below the spikes.
Rumy jumped in. “Marius, remember what Shayna learned at the refugee center. Tell them what she said about the IQ tests.”
“IQ tests? What the fuck?” Adrien had never looked more surprised.
Marius shared what Shayna had learned from the most recent group of refugees out of the Dark Cave system. He especially emphasized the amount of time the women believed that Daniel and his other sons spent away from their massive sex-slave operation.
A new heavy silence fell on the room as all eyes turned to Gabriel. Marius’s surrogate father had always been the unacknowledged leader of the vampire world, at least the portion who wanted better things for their world, like civil law and the ability to enforce that law through a decent court system.
But Gabriel turned to Marius. “You’re the one he’s after, the one he’s wanted more than any of his sons.”
Marius wasn’t sure he’d heard right, even though Shayna had once
said something similar. “That makes no sense to me, none at all.”
“Then tell me this, where’s Shayna right now?”
“You know where she is. I left her in the guest room with the tablets.”
Gabriel angled his head and narrowed his eyes. “And how far away is that in terms of yards or even miles?”
Most vampires could tell distance by an innate homing ability. “The guest room is two point three miles from here.”
“And is that a single blood-chain around your neck or a double?”
He felt agitated by the question, especially since the answer was so obvious. “You know it’s a single.” He touched the links anyway.
“I rest my case.”
Marius held his gaze. At the edges of his mind, he knew where Gabriel was headed, but Marius couldn’t bring himself to say it. “What’s your point?”
Gabriel’s gaze lowered to the single-chain around Marius’s neck. “That you’re wearing a single blood-chain and you haven’t risen to Ancestral status, but your woman is two point three miles distant. How is that possible?”
“Shit,” Adrien murmured.
“Holy fuck.” Lucian leaned forward. “Even after I rose to Ancestral status, Claire and I couldn’t be more than sixty yards apart.” He gestured with a swing of his hand toward Gabriel. “I needed a lot of practice to broaden that distance to encompass a couple of miles.”
“Same here.”
Lucian pushed his hand through his short black hair. “How much fucking power do you have?”
Both of Marius’s brothers wore the double blood-chains that had helped each to achieve Ancestral status.
Marius rose to his feet and addressed Gabriel. “There has to be some mistake or some bizarre explanation. I mean, both Adrien and Lucian outperform me in every possible way.”
Gabriel lowered his chin, his eyes holding Marius’s gaze fast. “Because you’ve kept it that way. For reasons I’ve never understood, you’ve held back. You always have.”
Marius recalled Shayna saying something similar, if not about holding back, then about insisting he might be special, might have something more to offer—and that Daniel was after him.
Gabriel continued. “You told me about what happened at the Dark Cave system. But the bottom line is that Daniel had intended to kill Lucian, and he would have but Claire helped him escape. He’s never made a serious attempt on your life that I know of. And he could have taken you out any number of times over the past two days. Admit it.”