BloodGifted (36 page)

Chapter 42

Hidden Doors

ALEC

I woke to find Laura gone. The fact I had fallen asleep surprised me, as that hadn’t happened in nearly a century.

At first I thought she may have gone to the bathroom, but I had no sense of her there, nor anywhere on this level, although I knew she was in the house. I homed in on Luc and Judith. She wasn’t with them and it was then my scalp started to prickle.

I jumped out of bed, located my jeans on the floor—where I’d dropped them only hours earlier—slipped them on and headed out the door. Halfway down the corridor I stopped, closed my eyes and picked up her scent. It led to the staircase and up to the next level which contained nothing but a mirrored wall. Why would she go up there?

I called out to her as I made my way up the staircase.

She sounded excited, but something was wrong.

It was then I sensed Jean’s presence. I ran up the steps in semi-panic, only to see light spill
out of an opening and Laura staring, rapt, as it widened. Too late, I saw him step out, clamp his hand over her mouth and drag her in.

‘Laura!’ I called out as I raced to her side. But the entrance closed just as I reached it.

An almost infinitesimal crack spliced the mirror in two from top to bottom. Even using full strength I couldn’t pry it apart. Why hadn’t anyone else seen it before?

Jean! I knew he was in love with her and had bee
n since she was eighteen. Surely he wouldn’t try to rekindle… the Serpent Ring on my finger flashed. The eyes of the serpent had darkened.
Holy mother of…

‘Laura!’ I yelled
and hammered at the mirror’s surface. Whatever substance it was made from didn’t even crack under my relentless assault. Nothing. Not even a fracture, but I could hear what was going on behind it. In fact, I heard every word in my head, as if our minds were linked. The telepathic bond between us was growing stronger. It was then I remembered the secret lever beneath the balustrade.

I spun around, groped with my fingers beneath the cold marble till I located the metal and pushed it upwards. N
othing happened. I did it again and still the doors remained sealed. Jean must have somehow locked it from within.

I had to reach her
!

I sensed a new presence and whirled around to see Luc emerge from a wooden panel in the wall.

‘Alec! What are you doing up here?’

‘Ne
ver mind that! Jean’s in there—’ I pointed to the mirror with my thumb ‘—and he’s dragged Laura in!’

Luc’s eyes widened. ‘
Merde
!’ he swore. ‘Have you tried the lever?’

‘Of course I did! It’s not working. He must have done something to the locking mechanism.’

He stared for a moment at the mirror then turned around and bolted back through the panel. ‘This way!’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I’ve been checking the old servant’s passages. Refitting the lights.’

I ran behind him along a musty
, narrow passage that curved gently to the right, all the while listening to what was happening in there. Laura called him Philippe and he appeared to be showing her something. My stomach tightened as I sensed her anxiety. Whatever she saw made her uneasy.

‘What was she doing up there?’ Luc called over his shoulder.

‘Exploring.’

Luc groaned. ‘Just like her
mother.’

The passage ahead of us split in two direc
tions. Luc veered to the left—following the sound of Laura’s voice—sweeping veils of cobwebs out of the way as we darted toward a distant doorway. The closer we got, the more I felt her fear and Jean’s deep hatred of me became clear. He’d loved her first and, in his mind, she belonged to him.

I yanked the door open… and swore loudly. The exit had been bricked up! ‘I thought you knew the way!’

Behind me, Luc cursed. ‘I haven’t been up here for over a hundred years. Got the damn passages confused! This way. Quick.’

As we turned and raced back to the other tunnel, which veered to the right, I
tried to keep track of what was going on between Laura and Jean.

Laura! Laura, are you all right?
I had to know if he’d hurt her.

We reached the end of the tunnel, but another closed doorway loomed ahead.
Laura, answer me!

Her response
caused my fists to clench and I promised myself that Jean would pay! When I heard her cry out I barged past Luc and crashed through the thick wooden door. What I saw froze me in place and my incisors slid out.

Chapter 43

Past Loves

LAURA

My initial shock at being confronted by Jean turned to anger. I slapped his hand off my face. ‘Don’t you ever place your hand on my mouth!’ The last time someone did that I had been terrified and terrorised. The memory made me shiver.

‘I’m sorry. I
don’t want anyone to disturb me up here. No one comes to this part of the house anymore. It’s become my secret place,’ he said as he reached up behind me and pulled down a hook on the wall. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ He spoke lightly but there was a strange edge to his voice.

It was incredible the way he reminded me of Philipp
e. Even his voice was similar—from what I remembered, but it was so long ago.

I twisted out of his hold and moved away from him. ‘
Wandered up here to take a look. Alec and Papa mentioned the ballroom as the perfect place to hold the Pledge.’

‘Y
ou know Luc’s your father? When?’

‘After the Ritual
. They told me everything.’

‘Ah.’ He cocked his head to on
e side, the way Alec did sometimes.

A nervous tingle ran through me. I recalled the
strange way Jean stared at me at the time and his lingering touch on my face in the hospital.

‘You kept the locket I gave you in Sorrento.’

I froze. How did he know? Philippe had bought me a silver heart-shaped locket and asked me to wear it always. I promised I would, but I’d been only eighteen. I’d kept it all these years as a memento and it hung on my dresser-mirror alongside my other pieces of jewellery. Had he been in my bedroom?

My stomach plummeted as the realisation hit me.
He’d been in my flat, in my room, with the others the night I was taken. Jean… No! The anxious face gazing at me now was not Jean. It was Philippe.
Philippe
!

I had no doubt. Here before me was the young man I’d met in Italy when I was eighteen. He was handsome and I
’d had the biggest crush.

Compared to the boys I had known in high school, his was the first manly kiss I had experienced. It was the most wonderful holiday of my life an
d I didn’t want it to end, but it did, suddenly. He disappeared—never showed up on our last date. I thought I would die, but I didn’t. I grew up and he eventually receded to the memories-you-treasure part of my mind.

‘Philippe?’ I stared at him in disbelief.

‘You do remember.’

‘Yes, but…you had blue eyes then.’ Had he become a vampire after we’d met?

‘I wore contacts.’

‘
Why? So I wouldn’t be curious, you having the same eye colour as myself?’

‘Something like that.’

He smiled and became the handsome young man I’d known all those decades ago. Yet seeing him again didn’t resurrect those same powerful emotions. I was no longer the adolescent girl he met and kissed in Sorrento.

‘Do you want to see what I do up here?’ he asked, just as I was about to bombard him with a million questions.

‘What?’

‘Let me show you.’

He took my hand and led me to the other end of the ballroom, to a small raised area with a wooden railing all around. Presumably, this was where the orchestra had played in the days of grand parties. Candles flickered in ornamental brass holders attached to wall sockets, illuminating—what appeared to be—a number of pictures and drawings.

In the centre of the stage sat an easel covered with a dark blue cloth. The floor around it was littered wi
th sketches, boxes of artist’s charcoal and pencils of various thicknesses and sizes. A fold up stool leaned against the wall.

‘Go ahead, have a look,’ he said.

I stepped into his makeshift studio and picked up one of the discarded drawings. It was a sketch portrait of me, my hair loose and draped over one shoulder. He had captured my image perfectly. Philippe had talent.

I dropped it and scanned the floor around me.
All the others were the same—different scenes, some coloured, some black and white, but they all portrayed one face—mine.

I sucked in a shocked breath
as I remembered him once telling me he was a portrait artist; that he’d wanted to paint me. But over and over again?

He stood behind me. ‘No one bothers me up here and I spend most of my time drawing.’

I gazed up at the wall. Between the candles were pinned hundreds of photographs of me, all taken at various times and on different nights—out shopping, evening school functions, going to the theatre with friends, entering and leaving my unit… and many more. The shock gave way to fear. How long had he secretly watched me?

‘Do you like them?’ I turned to look at him, unsure what to say. His eyes were bright with excitement. ‘This is my latest one.’

He whipped the dark blue cloth from the easel to reveal a coloured drawing of me. But unlike the others, this one was more than a portrait. It showed my upper body, hair flowing down over my breasts, my head turned slightly to the side, lips parted, gazing longingly up at someone outside the picture. My left hand appeared to be poised ready to sweep the hair away from my neck. It was beautiful, but somehow disturbing.

‘Who am I looking at?’ I asked nervously.

Philippe didn’t answer. He lifted the picture and exposed another beneath. I gasped. It was a sequel to the one before and Philippe had drawn himself into it. It showed him standing behind me, having gathered my hair in his hands and exposing the curve of my breasts. My head was angled back onto his shoulder, eyes closed, lips slightly parted, his mouth at my throat.

My
stomach plummeted sickeningly and I wanted nothing more than to get away from him.

‘Tell me what you think of them, Laura?’

What could I possibly say? That they were beautiful and frightening at the same time?

‘They’re beautiful.’
I didn’t want him to detect the tremor in my voice, so I willed myself to be calm.

His smile widened
. ‘I wanted you the first time I set eyes on you.’ He took a step toward me and touched my hair. ‘Jake and Cal were guarding you in Italy. I joined them and persuaded Jake to let me take you out. Luc never knew I was there. By the time he found out it was too late to interfere—we’d already met and he couldn’t let himself be seen by you.’

‘
What happened that night we were supposed to meet? You never showed up at the hotel. I waited for you for hours! Cried myself to sleep, worried you’d been in an accident or something, or that you—’

‘No!’
He groaned and gripped my upper arms. ‘Luc ordered me to return to Paris; even took me to the jet to make sure I got on. I wasn’t allowed to leave you a note, no matter how desperately I wanted to!’ The bitterness in his voice was clear and the pain in his eyes cut straight to my heart.

‘Is that w
hy you disappeared so suddenly?’ I had thought he’d got bored with me. I was only eighteen, after all, and naïve to the extreme. ‘Why now, after all these years? And why not at the Ritual? I saw you there.’

He groaned again.
‘I was forbidden to come anywhere near you. It was made very clear you were not meant for me. When we met in Sorrento, I wanted to make love to you.’ His voice softened. ‘But I daren’t. You were so innocent. Luc showed up… I knew I couldn’t live apart from you, so I left my home in France to settle here—be near you. If I couldn’t touch you, at least I could watch you from a distance. These thirty-two years have been torture.’

‘I had no idea!’

‘Of course not. They kept you well hidden and ignorant till you came-of-age.’

‘
You know the reason for that, so please don’t accuse them of wrongdoing. It saved my life, Philippe.’

He smiled again. ‘It’s been a long time since anyone has called me that.’

‘Where does “Jean” come from?’

‘That’s my name—
Jean-Philippe Louis Auguste Reynard,’ he said proudly. ‘Although I prefer Philippe.’

His eyes travelled to my mouth and he leaned down toward me.

‘Don’t.’

‘Why not? I’ve been waiting a long time. Now here you are as if sent by fate.’

‘It’s different now. I don’t feel that way toward you anymore.’

‘Can’t you even try?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t.’

Silence.
He leaned toward me and sniffed, and his expression changed. It hardened. ‘
He’s
bedded you! All these years, waiting, watching—all for nothing!’ he said bitterly. ‘I defied Luc, left France for you. Would have done anything for you! Dared anything! I didn’t do all that and wait for you to come-of-age only to see you choose
him
.’

‘
It’s not what you think—’

‘I waited for you!’ He shook me.

I winced as his fingers dug into my shoulders and my fear escalated. ‘Let go, Philippe. Stop!’

‘Don’t you see? Luc planned for you to be with
him
. All because of his Pictish blood. Luc chose him when you were a child. It was all planned.’

‘That’s not true!’ I tried to wriggle free but his grip only tightened.

‘I don’t lie, Laura. Ask him yourself. Luc won’t be able to deny it.
He
went to meet you the night of your birthday because Luc ordered him. I heard it all! He didn’t want to go, had no interest in meeting you, but Luc promised to end his servitude if he did this for him, otherwise he’d increase it indefinitely and he’d be indentured to him for life!’ he sneered.

I stared back at him, unwilling to believe what he said could possib
ly be true. ‘What do you mean?’

‘When we’
re transformed, we serve our sires for a century. Munro has five years left and if he doesn’t do Luc’s bidding that could be increased for another century, even more. That’s why he’s doing this!’

I felt the blood drain from my face. If Philippe wasn’t lying, then
my falling for Alec was the stupidest thing I could have ever done, especially if it meant I was nothing more to him except a ticket out of servitude. It would explain his eagerness to end the curse and if “bedding” me—as Philippe put it—achieved that, then Alec had succeeded.

No wonder he
’d been so keen to point out I’d be free to marry whomever I wanted afterwards—Alec Munro had no intention of remaining my guardian or perhaps, even Princeps. After I gave birth, he’d be free!

Horribly, it all made sense, but what was worse, was that my own father was behind it all. Was that also for my benefit?

Alec made you no promises
, my inner voice yelled at me.
You went along with his proposition knowing fully well he didn’t love you
.
It was a business arrangement and you consented, so you have no right to be angry with him!
You’re the one who made it more than it actually was by falling for him.

My inner voice
was right. It was heart that was diseased. Why did I listen to it?

Y
et it didn’t ease the pain and I had to swallow the rising lump in my throat.

Laura! Laura, are you all right?
Alec’s voice boomed in my head. I blocked my ears and refused to answer.
Laura, answer me!

Go to hell, Alec
Munro!

I was sure I heard him swear, but I could
n’t care less, as I was angry and hurt enough to spit! And I was angry with Philippe for telling me.

‘You must r
eally hate Alec. You can’t even say his name.’

‘I hate anyone who tries to take you from me. I love you. I never stopped loving you.’

Philippe crushed me to him and kissed me, his mouth fierce as if making up for those lost years. All his pent up feelings come out in one explosive contact. He crushed my shoulders and painfully bruised my mouth. It was impossible to scream as his tongue forced its way past my teeth and down my throat.

My struggle to free myself only enraged him further. He pressed my mouth even harder until our teeth clashed. I struck out and he grabbed my wrists.

Finally he raised his head. ‘You once loved me. I remember and so do you. I’m not giving you up that easily, especially not to that son of a blacksmith. He’s not worthy of you.’ His eyes blazed, his face contorted with rage.

‘And you are?’

It was pointless struggling against him. Philippe’s strength was far greater than any human’s and I would only end up hurting myself. He imprisoned both my hands behind my back in one of his while he held the back of my head with his other.

‘Yes. I have every right to claim you!’ Philippe said.

‘Claim me? What era do you think we’re living in, the Middle Ages?’ I spat out at him. ‘This is the twenty-first century in case you’ve forgotten. Women are no longer taken by the toughest thug around.’ I kneed him in the crotch.

He look
ed at me, stunned for a moment and his grip temporarily relaxed. I tried to take advantage and break free. And failed.
He must have balls of steel
.