A Vampire's Promise (25 page)

Unfortunately, like everything that had taken place so far, I was three steps behind everyone else.

“Rowan—” He stood before me, and I looked up at the ruined face, noting he had made a deliberate effort to calm himself. “I must ask for your forgiveness.”

Only he didn't wait to get it. Before I could take another breath, he spun me around, pulling me out of my jacket, and throwing it on the floor. Yanking up the back of my shirt, he tugged at the waistband of my jeans, exposing my lower back.

And my tattoo. The one Gabriel had said was meaningless.

I flailed pathetically against the sold block of granite that doubled as the big guy's arm, stopping only when I heard him utter, “She carries his name.”

Setting me back upright, Aleksei apologized while trying to straighten my clothes. Angrily I slapped his hand away, but not before seeing the look of admiration he tried to hide as I did so. Guess he was impressed by my show of temper.

Katja, however, seemed completely devastated. Whatever had been on her mind when she had first shown up tonight, whatever she'd thought she needed to tell me about Gabriel had just been airmailed out the window. By some permanent artwork inked on my back.

“Do you think that is just coincidence?” Aleksei asked.

“Okay,” I said, tugging on the bottom of my shirt. “I've had just about enough of this bullshit.” I fixed both of them with a hard stare. “What do you mean I carry his name? Whose name?”

The sound of female laughter filled the hallway again. Not quite as hysterical this time, but it was walking a knife edge.

“She doesn't even know that!” Katja spat out in disgust, looking at Aleksei. “And you want me to believe she's his
Promise?
”

Folding his arms across his chest, Aleksei ignored Katja and addressed me. “The tattoo you have on your back is a name,” he told me gravely, “and it is Gabriel's.”

“Get the fuck out of here!” I so wasn't buying that one.

“You don't believe me?”

“Of course, I don't. It's just a meaningless design.”

“No, it isn't,” the big guy said firmly. “The symbols on your skin are a language, one that only a handful of living creatures know. It is the Old Tongue, and what is written on your back is the word
Gabriel
.”

“What do you mean . . . Old Tongue?”

“The language of the Fallen.” Aleksei placed his hand over his heart in a gesture of reverence.

I could feel my temper rising. Would these people never stop speaking in riddles? What the fuck was Aleksei talking about? Who had fallen? Suspicion suddenly blazed a path in my brain. “Would Gabriel recognize this language, if he saw it?” I demanded.

“Of course,” Aleksei answered, looking slightly perplexed. “It is his true voice, it always has been.”

I could hear Katja's laughter edging a little further up the hysteria scale, and it began to grate on my nerves. The enormity of the big guy's words hit me. If I believed what I was hearing to be true, then Gabriel had lied to me. My legs suddenly felt weird, as if my muscles were collapsing, and my stomach rolled in a way that was definitely nauseating.

A hundred voices began to shout inside my head all at once, demanding answers to questions I didn't even know how to ask. I braced myself against the wall with one hand and wrapped the other around my waist as I leaned forward.

Deep breaths . . . inhale through the nose . . . exhale through the mouth . . . inhale . . . exhale . . . deep breaths.

Aleksei stood between Katja and me, as solid as a giant sequoia, trying to decide what the next course of action should be. My being here was turning out to be a disaster in the making, and I wasn't the only one who thought so. But the big guy had the advantage. He knew the reason why. I did not. He turned his attention back to Katja.

“You must take Rowan back to her home,” he said in a low, urgent voice, “before Gabriel senses her presence.”

The dark curtain of hair swung as she stared at him. I didn't know if she was going to agree with his suggestion or not, but I wasn't about to let her off the hook that easily. I rounded on him as my temper got the better of me.

“Wait a minute—she has the nerve to come to my house in all her Goth Queen glamour”—I stabbed an angry finger over his shoulder—“and tell me I'm not good enough for Gabriel, and then, as if that isn't enough, when I refuse to back off, she kidnaps me and brings me here!” I spread my arms expansively. “And I haven't got a friggin' clue where the fuck I am, but now you think she should just take me back home? And do what? Play nice and pretend this never happened?” I made a sound of complete disgust and put my hands on my hips while Aleksei looked dismayed. “I don't know what the hell's going on, or what you guys are up to, but I can tell you I'm not going anywhere until I get some answers!”

Anger is an intense emotion. It can either propel you to great acts of courage or ones of complete stupidity. The jury still hadn't reached a decision in my case.

“Rowan, now is not the time,” Aleksei implored. “Please just allow Katja to—”

“Shut the fuck up, Aleksei!” I couldn't believe he was pleading with me. “This is between your girl there and me.”

Katja was staring at me, her eyes wide with disbelief at my outburst; her lids began to shutter, and that beautiful pouting mouth set itself in a grim line. Refusing to back down, I dared her to take me on.

“I want you to explain just what the fuck is going on, and you can begin by telling me what it is about Gabriel that I don't know!”

Aleksei took a step toward me, holding out a placating hand. “Rowan—”

“I already told you to back off!” I snapped, so pissed off, I forgot how big and menacing he actually was. I focused my attention completely on the beautiful girl next to him. “What was so important, Katja, that you felt compelled to abduct me and drag me here? What did I need to see that would make me think twice about, how did you put it, inviting Gabriel back into my bed?”

I could see Aleksei from the corner of my eye. If he'd looked horrified before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now. Clutching his forehead with one massive hand, he began shaking his head back and forth and moaning under his breath. Katja remained silent.

“Cat got your tongue?” I goaded.

That worked. Her head snapped up and her eyes glowed like hot coals. I never saw her move. One minute she was standing next to Aleksei, and the next she barreled herself into my midriff, and I was flying down the hallway slung over her shoulder.

“No, Katja! No!” Aleksei shouted behind us.

But he was already too late. She was definitely much stronger than I'd realized because carrying my weight over her shoulder didn't slow her down at all. Coming to a stop, she dumped me on the floor in an undignified heap and dropped to her haunches, squeezing my jaw painfully between her fingers.

“So you are Gabriel's
Promise,
are you?” I could hear humiliation behind the anger in each word as it fell from her perfect mouth. “Well, Little One, better find out exactly what it is you've been promised to.”

And grabbing my arm, she pulled open the door before us, and flung me inside.

I
landed on my back on thick white carpet, bouncing my head and feeling the air whoosh out of my lungs. Disoriented, I lay still, trying to catch my breath. Movement in my peripheral vision made me turn my head to one side, and I frowned. The wall was moving. The fluidity of motion suggested it was liquid. I was staring at a wall of water.

I felt my eyebrows pull together. A wall of water seemed a little excessive to have inside a room, no matter how eccentric or rich you were. It took a few more moments of focused observation before one of my other senses kicked in, telling me this must be a strange type of water because it was falling without a single splash, gurgle, or drip.

I blinked and refocused, and sighed with relief. It wasn't water after all. What I was looking at was a panel of silky blue material that was moving by some unknown means. Rippling like a waterfall.

Only then I did hear something. A noise that made the hair at the nape of my neck stand up. It sounded part animal, part something I prayed to God I would never meet, not even in my nightmares. Fear got me to my hands and knees, scrambling back against the wall to conceal myself in the shadows. My flight-or-fight response kicked in, its thumb punching my flight button for all it was worth. But the door Katja had thrown me through was no longer open. Closed, it blended seamlessly with the wall, and I had no idea how to locate it. My bounce across the floor had really bamboozled me.

Crouching on the floor, I pressed my back against the wall and wrapped my arms tightly about my knees. I took a number of deep breaths, not opening my eyes until I'd managed to suppress the wave of panic that was threatening to consume me. Hysteria wasn't going to help me find my way out. Able to breathe a little more steadily, I cautiously looked around.

The room was enormous. It probably had as much square footage as the entire ground floor of my house, and it was bathed in candlelight. Not from fancy wall sconces or massive candelabras hanging from the ceiling. The huge pillars of red wax that stood on the floor were bigger than any candles I'd ever seen. I estimated each one to be at least five feet tall and thicker than my thigh. I couldn't see how many there were in total, but they seemed to ring the perimeter of the room, flickering and shimmering as their multiple flames danced. It took only a moment for my eyes to adjust to the illumination. And then I wished they never had.

The room contained a single piece of furniture. A bed. A four-poster eyesore better suited to a Roman orgy than a modern home. Unable to help myself, I found my eyes drawn to the bedpost closest to me. Twining figures elaborately carved from dark, shiny wood were engaged in various acts of copulation. Bathed by the flickering candlelight, the figures appeared to be writhing sensuously, giving themselves over to complete abandon. Heat flushed my face and I assumed the other three posts were carved in similar fashion.

I shifted my gaze to the bed itself. I had a strange feeling of relief when I saw the linens were black and not the red of my fantasies. I have nothing against black satin sheets; they can be just as erotic as red, but I don't think these were actually sheets. It looked more like yards and yards of the glossy material were draped across the mattress, twisting around the limbs of the occupants, with the excess pooling in a black spill on the thick white carpet.

I put my hand over my mouth to stifle any inadvertent sound I might make, because you didn't need a college degree to figure out what was going on. The urgent slide of fabric, accompanied by soft moans and excited inhalations, were descriptive enough. I was grateful, however, that the two lovers were so deeply engrossed in each other that they hadn't realized they had gained an audience of one. I wanted to look away. Truly I did. But some awful voyeuristic inclination took hold of me, making that impossible.

The woman was on her back, her long hair a splash of pale moonlight spread out across the dark fabric beneath her. Her hands were over her head, her wrists held easily by her lover, immobilizing her arms. She raised her legs, wrapping them around his waist, cradling him against her sex, and I noticed, in a purely feminine observation, that her finger and toenails were both painted vivid scarlet. I doubted her lover had detected such a detail. His attention was completely engrossed by the voluptuous swell of her breasts, which were bared for his admiration.

Arching her back, the woman undulated and rolled her more than generous assets across the smooth surface of his chest. From the way she was lying, I could see her face. With closed eyes and a glow of anticipation highlighting her delicate bone structure, she was the embodiment of pure ecstasy.

She pushed her hips up against him, and I saw her mouth turn into a moue of frustration as his superior strength kept her firmly in place. It seemed to me she was upset by his resistance. Putting his lips to her ear, her lover murmured softly. In response she gave a moan of ecstasy, and I watched as her skin flushed pink and her tongue danced across the curve of his collarbone.

My embarrassment changed into something else as my internal flame soared, fanning out to brand my chest while licking its way across the inside of my skin. I knew that it was wrong to keep watching, and that shame would consume me later, but I couldn't look away if my life depended on it. There was something fundamentally mesmerizing about the couple on the bed.

The man lowered his head, his lips against the white column of her throat, and he was pulling her skin into his mouth, sucking slowly. Something about his movements seemed odd, almost as if they were forced, and it made me turn my attention to him. The woman was unknown to me, so it was obvious Katja meant for me to see the man. I felt the breath catch in my throat, because only one person I knew had hair that particular shade of white.

Everything stopped. It was as if I had come across a terrible multicar accident, and even though I didn't want to look at the mangled bodies, I couldn't stop myself from doing just that. Knowing every shattered bone, every open wound, would stay with me for the rest of my life, I still could not look away. And with this mind-set, I stared at the man on the bed.

Because of the angle at which he had positioned himself, his face was concealed from me, but there was no mistaking the power in his upper body. A power that was disturbingly familiar. I watched the muscles bunch and flex in his arms and shoulders as they supported his weight. And then he moved. Sitting up, he gathered the woman to him, twisting his upper torso so I could see his broad back. The hand that I had clamped over my mouth tightened, and then released.

Katja had made a mistake!

This man before me now was admittedly similar enough in build and coloring to make my heart trip over itself, but he wasn't Gabriel.

Katja had screwed up big-time.

How could she have made such a fundamental error? The only thing I could think was that for some strange reason she must have assumed I hadn't actually seen Gabriel totally naked or that I would be so distraught I would accept this imposter in his place.

As if!

Gabriel's body was completely unblemished, and this guy was not only tattooed, he was viciously scarred. Damaged, puckered skin made two angry lines that curved down each shoulder blade, as if someone had taken a knife and cut something out of his back. Only what, I couldn't begin to imagine. I found the scarring strange . . . and troubling.

The tattoos were something else altogether. Running down the length of his spine, they began somewhere up in his hair and disappeared below the black, silky fabric wrapped around his waist. The design was large and complex, each individual symbol linked to both the one above and the one below. It was a moment or two before I realized that what I was looking at were markings similar to the symbols I had inked in the small of my back. Aleksei had said I had Gabriel's name tattooed on my back in the Old Tongue. Was that what I was looking at here? More words in a language I didn't know?

Before I had time to ponder this further, the couple on the bed moved. The woman was now also sitting up. Wanting to face him, she pouted when he swiveled her around, pulling her so her back was flush against his chest. I held my breath. If she moved her head just a little more to the right, she would be able to see me.

Christ Almighty! I had no idea when I'd gotten to my feet, but not only was I now standing, I'd also taken several steps closer to the bed.

One powerful arm went around the woman's waist, keeping her in place, while the other swept her hair free from the left side of her neck. Something glinted as she lifted her arms, making her heavy breasts ride higher on her rib cage. Both of her nipples were pierced with small silver rings that flashed in the ambient light. She stretched, reaching over her head and behind her for her lover. I wasn't that surprised to see that her belly button was also pierced.

Repositioning her arms back in her lap, the man put his lips against her ear, whispering. I saw her eyelids flutter as she surrendered herself to him completely, becoming liquid within his embrace. My own arousal manifested itself in an explosion of wetness inside my panties.

Leaning forward, the man buried his face in the curve of her neck, his hair fanning across her shoulder and falling like a silken scarf over her skin. Strong fingers cupped her chin, tilting her head over until her ear was pressed against her shoulder. Stretched taut, I could see the thick vein running beneath the surface of her throat.

Putting his mouth against it, he began sucking the flesh erotically, making the woman respond with a moan of lustful greed. She didn't care what he was doing; she just didn't want him to stop.

I was soaked. Drenched in my own need, I could feel perspiration trickling between my shoulder blades. My breasts felt full and achy, my nipples hard, and my internal flame a hair's breadth away from total conflagration as desire spiked through me.

I knew that if I were to slip my hand inside my jeans and touch myself I would climax immediately. Any Peeping Tom inhibitions that I might have felt had long since vanished. I should have been mortified by my reaction, but I wasn't.

I thought I knew what was coming next, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Pulling his head back, the man opened his mouth wide. I blinked and stared . . . and blinked again, unsure of what I was seeing. Horrified disbelief overtook me as I watched two long canines drop from among his upper teeth. Brilliant white and razor sharp, they glistened, and just when the realization hit me that what I was seeing was real . . . he struck.

Puncturing the soft skin of her throat, his teeth found the life-sustaining artery, and I watched, aghast, as a fountain of blood erupted from her neck like a crimson gusher, splattering over her pale skin.

Screaming, she tried to reach for her neck in an effort to stanch the wound with her hands, but she was locked in place by the strong arm clamped across her upper body. Blood poured out of her at an alarming rate, a direct response to the frantic pumping of her heart. In a pure moment of complete disassociation, I suddenly knew what the phrase
arterial spray
meant.

She struggled against her lover, legs kicking frantically as her fight-or-flight instinct took over. It was useless, and she was unable to break free of his embrace. Staring at him, I saw his expression was one of clinical curiosity as he watched her blood flow down her neck and chest, and over the arm that was securing her. Dark and glossy, it pooled like an oil slick on the satin sheet.

My impending orgasm came to an immediate screeching halt as my brain frantically tried to interpret the information being relayed by my eyes. Tried and failed. The breath that I didn't know I'd been holding suddenly escaped in a gasp loud enough to make the woman on the bed turn her head and lock her eyes with mine.

Unable to reach out with her hands, she opened her mouth. I'm sure her brain told her she was screaming as loud as she possibly could, but all that issued was a soft, wet gurgle, followed by a trickle of blood that bubbled over her lower lip and ran down her chin.

Falling to my knees, my stomach contracted violently, expelling its contents. The sour burn of bile coated the back of my throat as I kept heaving, caring nothing about the mucus and half-digested particles of food that splattered in my hair. Tears streamed down my face, and I felt like my gut had been shoved up against my backbone. I lifted a hand to wipe my mouth, and it shook violently, as if I had some terrible affliction.

“Rowan?”

The silken voice, edged with sexual overtones, that had seduced me the first time I'd heard it was unmistakable. The world as I knew it imploded. Unless Gabriel had a twin, one who could match the exact timbre of his voice, Katja had made no mistake. The bitch's arrow had found its mark.

Some sort of weird noise jumped out of my mouth. It was the word “no” jammed in a repetitive loop. I got to my feet, stumbling in my haste to get away from him, needing to get out of this damned room. Turning, I crashed into the wall.

“Rowan!”

There was no liquid silk this time. Instead, his voice was a whiplash that forced me to stay on my feet as I ran my hands over the smooth panels of silk. I almost cried when I found the door, my fingers curling around the handle as he spoke again. This time I froze.

“Rowan . . . what are you doing here?”

I pressed my forehead against the paneling, willing my hand to tighten its grip on the smooth lever and pull the door open. If I could do that, then I would always be able to tell myself it wasn't him, convince myself it was someone else after all. Someone who just bore an uncanny resemblance to Gabriel, but was not really him. That's what I should have done.

So why didn't I? My brain was on my side, telling me desperately that this was a mistake. It wasn't Gabriel I had seen on the bed, his body pressed tightly against that woman's as he butchered her. It was a trick of those huge floor candles. Someone who wore his face, had his voice, who even—a familiar scent replaced the stench of my own vomit—smelled like him. But it couldn't be him.
Please, dear God, don't let it be him
.