Cain's Identity (Scanguards Vampires Book 9) (7 page)

“Who knows of the tunnels?” Cain wanted to know.

“Only a select few.”

“Abel?”

John shook his head. “You and I. Though it’s possible that you told Faye, but I can’t know that for sure. You never said anything to me. But we have to assume since you were going to make her your queen, you would have told her about the tunnels.”

“How come only you and I know about the tunnels? Why not Abel?”

“The first leader of the king’s guard was a descendent of the plantation’s foreman. He passed the knowledge on. And now it is passed on from the leader of the king’s guard to whoever becomes king. And Abel isn’t king yet.”

“Does he suspect that there are tunnels?”

“No. Though he knows that the leader of the guard will pass all he knows to the new king after the coronation. He must assume that there are things only I know.”

“Good, we’ll take the tunnels. Thomas will come with us. The rest will stay here,” Cain ordered.

“No!

John’s protest took him by surprise. Cain glared at him. “As your king—”

“As my king, you would never demand such a thing,” John interrupted, his voice firm, his face unflinching. “You would never reveal the location of the tunnels to a stranger, let alone allow someone into them. If you insist on Thomas coming with us, I won’t show you the entrance.” John crossed his arms over his chest, waiting.

Cain didn’t move. He simply stood there facing John in a silent battle. But it was clear instantly that John wouldn’t budge. On one hand, Cain had to admire him for it. It showed loyalty and strength. On the other hand, it ticked him off to have to concede to this man who he still couldn’t fully trust. But if he wanted to see Faye in private without anybody knowing, he had no choice.

“Just you and I then. But I’m warning you: I might not remember who I am, but I’m deadly with any weapon. You cross me, you’re dust.”

John acknowledged the threat with a curt nod. “Follow me.” He turned and walked out of the shed.

Cain glanced at his friends, then addressed Thomas, “Any trouble, you text me immediately. My cell is on vibrate.”

“Understood. Be careful. If you’re not back within an hour, we’ll head for the palace.”

Without another word, Cain walked outside. The air was humid, so different from what he was used to in San Francisco, where even summer nights could be chilly and require a light jacket. Here, his cotton shirt already stuck to his sweaty body. To his surprise, he didn’t mind the heat, almost as if he were used to it.

In silence Cain walked alongside the other vampire, his eyes watchful, his body ready to attack should anybody approach them. Scanguards had taught him well. He wasn’t afraid of any enemy he would encounter, but that fact didn’t alleviate the knot in his gut. He was uneasy about seeing Faye, seeing the woman he’d made love to in his dreams, the woman who in his former life had belonged to him. Did she now belong to Abel, the man John claimed was his brother?

“We’re here,” John announced and stopped.

Cain looked at the spot John pointed to, which didn’t look any different from the terrain they’d crossed during their short walk. There were moss-covered trees, bushes, and dirt. They hadn’t walked on any sort of recognizable path, but had gone clear through a wooded patch.

“I don’t see anything.”

“It’s well disguised.”

John walked toward two trees which stood at a slight incline. Behind them, moss covered a boulder. Instead of walking to the boulder, John veered left to another copse of trees where broken branches had accumulated and were rotting. He gripped one of the protruding sticks and pulled on it. The entire hovel of branches moved, and only then did Cain notice that they were all interconnected in such a random but ingenious way that to a casual observer it didn’t look like anything else but a heap of rotting branches, while in fact it was a door.

When John held it open for him, Cain suppressed his surprise. “Lead the way.”

Cain walked into the tunnel behind John, immediately inhaling the scents around him. The air was stale. When John closed the door behind them, the earthen tunnel was robbed of the moonlight that had guided their way earlier. Cain’s eyes immediately adjusted to the darkness, his vampire vision compensating for the lack of light.

“What keeps the tunnel stable?” he asked quietly, knowing his voice would travel far in this confined space.

John pointed to the ceiling. “Every few feet there’s wooden reinforcements, but it’s old construction and nobody has done any repairs here in decades. There’s more and more moisture penetrating and weakening the structure. We’re close to the bayous. Katrina did some damage here. One day, the tunnels will collapse.”

“Then let’s hope this is not the day,” Cain remarked dryly.

John turned and walked down the long tunnel. Cain followed, taking in his surroundings.

“How long is the tunnel?”

“It’s actually a tunnel system with many branches. It stretches over several miles, but the branch we’re going down is only about a mile long. We’ll be there shortly,” John assured him.

“Where do all the different branches lead to?”

“Other exits around the property, as well as entry points into the palace.”

“Where in the palace?”

“One directly into the king’s suite, another into the cells, and a third one underneath the fireplace in your office.”

“Underneath the fireplace? Sounds kind of hard to get to.”

John gave him a sideways glance. “There’s a mechanism to shift the fireplace to the side. Of course, it’s best not to do that when there’s an actual fire burning in the hearth.”

Cain made mental notes of the entry and exit points and the branches that led away from the tunnel they were in, committing as much of the path to memory as he could. If John led him into a trap, he had to be able to find his own way out. However, Cain had to admit that had John wanted to kill him for whatever reason, he would have had ample opportunity earlier.

Still, trusting somebody didn’t come easy. Even when he’d joined Scanguards a year ago, it had taken some time to trust his colleagues. Now, of course, he knew they had his back and he trusted them with his life. Just like they trusted him. They’d become more than just colleagues to him. They’d become his friends. His family.

But now this stranger was upsetting the tentative peace he’d found with his new family by making him want something that lay beyond his reach. He wanted his old life back, if only for one reason: to know what it felt like to be loved by the woman from his dreams.

“I carried you out through this tunnel when you were injured. You don’t remember. You drifted in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t risk anybody finding out that you were alive but without a memory. At first I thought it would come back, but when you woke, it was clear that the memory loss was permanent. For your own safety I had to get you as far away as possible.”

“I don’t remember waking up and seeing you.”

“Because you didn’t see me. The blow to your head injured your optic nerve.”

Was that what the dream had wanted to show him when everything had gone red in front of his eyes?

“It was healing only slowly, as was the rest of your body.”

“Yet you abandoned me while I was still in recovery,” Cain interrupted him harshly. “So much for your concern for me.”

“I couldn’t stay with you. I only had enough time to make arrangements to get you as far away from here as possible, before my absence would have been noticed. I had to make sure whoever wanted you dead thought he’d succeeded. Only that way could you be safe.”

“Any thoughts on who wanted me dead?”

John hesitated, breathing audibly.

“Spit it out!” Cain ordered.

“I have a suspicion, but no proof. And if you remembered me at all, you’d know that I don’t like to accuse anybody without being able to back up my claim.”

“Well, that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it? I don’t remember you.”

“You trusted me once.”

Cain locked his jaw, trying to appear unaffected by the other vampire’s words, when in reality he sensed John’s need to gain his approval for the decisions he’d made when Cain had been incapacitated.

“Trust isn’t something I give freely.”

John gave a slight nod. “You didn’t back then either. But we were more than just a king and his guard. We were friends. And I mourned the loss of that friendship more than the loss of my king.”

“Was I not a good king then?” Cain deflected, not wanting to respond to his guard’s claim.

“That’s not for me to judge.”

John’s words were too evasive for Cain not to react to them. “Are you trying to say I was a bad ruler, and that’s what prompted the assassination?”

“As I said, that’s not—”

“—for you to judge, I get it,” Cain finished the sentence.

Suddenly John slowed and turned to him, placing a finger on his lips thus ending their conversation. He pointed to another tunnel. From where Cain stood, he could see that it was short, only a few yards. At the end of it, he could make out the outlines of a door.

John bent to his ear, whispering now, “It leads to the secret corridor that connects the king’s chambers with those of the queen. The king’s are to the right, the queen’s to the left. You will find Faye in the queen’s suite. When you get to her door, move the lever on its left. It’ll open a tiny spy hole to look into her room, so you can assure yourself that she’s alone before you enter. Don’t worry, the door is disguised with an elaborate piece of art on the other side, so that nobody will notice the spy hole or the door itself.”

Cain nodded, his heart suddenly thundering.

“I’ll wait for you here. If you’re not back within fifteen minutes, I’ll come for you.”

Wordlessly, Cain conveyed his agreement. Taking a deep breath, he marched toward the door and walked up the few steps that led to it. He eased it open, making as little noise as possible as he stepped inside the corridor and pulled the door shut behind him.

The hallway he found himself in was made of stone, and the air inside was cleaner and less damp than what he’d encountered in the tunnel.

His eyes darted to the right. He felt physically drawn in that direction, as if the answers to his questions lay there. But he forced himself to go left, knowing there wasn’t enough time to both investigate the king’s rooms and talk to Faye. His friends from Scanguards wouldn’t hesitate to make good on their promise to search for him should he not return in time, and he had no intention of putting them in undue danger. There would be plenty of time later to find out more about his old life.

If
this was indeed his old life.

Careful not to make any sound with his shoes, he walked to the door John had indicated and perused it. The lever next to it was shaped like a stake. Cain shook his head. Somebody around here had strange tastes, and he sure hoped that he wasn’t the one to blame for this odd choice of handle.

Cain twisted the lever and immediately saw a tiny beam of light shine through the hidden door. He moved to bring his eye in line with it and peered through the small hole.

His heart stopped.

There was no mistaking her. Faye looked exactly like she’d appeared in his dreams, though she was dressed in casual clothes, a pair of tight jeans and a loose-fitting sweater. It had slid to one side, exposing one creamy shoulder. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders and back, and her eyes were as green as a meadow in the spring.

The room looked eerily similar to the one in his last dream. He’d been here before. He’d made love to her in this room. Yet as much as he wanted to open the door and walk to her, he couldn’t.

Faye wasn’t alone.

The vampire who was with her stood with his back to Cain, preventing him from seeing his face. The stranger now extinguished the distance between him and Faye, his hand already clasping her bare shoulder, the other one sliding around her waist to pull her to him.

The moment the vampire kissed her, Cain closed his eyes.

The man whose face he couldn’t see had to be Abel. Faye had gotten over his death and maybe even forgotten him. She was in love with somebody else.

Cain released the lever. He’d come too late.

His entire body numb, he walked back to the door that led to the tunnel. When he reached it, he rested his forehead against it, feeling the cool surface against his skin. Could he really blame her? She’d thought him dead for a year. She had to get on with her life.

Yet that thought was no comfort to him. Although Cain had no memory of her or the love they’d shared, he knew instinctively that had Faye died instead of him, he would have grieved the rest of eternity for her. Yet she had given herself to another man a mere year after his death.

However, nothing of this would change anything now. He’d come so far and wouldn’t turn back. This was his old life, and he would reclaim it. And he’d be damned if he wouldn’t mount a fight to win Faye’s love back, because one thing was clear: in his dream he’d loved her. Having seen her in the arms of his brother only moments earlier made his heart clench in pain, a pain he had no trouble identifying: he was jealous.

With purpose in his mind, Cain lifted his head and opened the door to the tunnel, leaving the corridor behind him.

He let his gaze roam, but only emptiness greeted him.

“John?” he whispered.

But John was gone.

10

Faye felt Abel’s lips on hers and tried to let herself go. But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t do this. Kissing Abel was nothing like kissing Cain.

She pressed her hands against Abel’s shoulders and pushed him back, not forcefully, yet determined. She wasn’t ready for intimacy with him. Would she ever be ready?

Abel’s eyes blazed at her with unchecked lust, his fangs already extended. Had she never met his brother, she would have found him attractive, handsome even. And maybe she would be able to fall in love with him. But the moment she’d laid eyes on Cain, her heart had spoken, and she’d known even then that she could never love another.

Faye averted her eyes and stepped back. A low growl came from him, confirming that his vampire side was ruling him in this moment. She sensed his displeasure physically, felt the waves of annoyance rolling off him. Could she blame him? No. After all, she’d accepted his proposal, and they didn’t live in the Middle Ages where intimacy before the wedding night was unacceptable. This was the twenty-first century, and sex was expected, particularly by a virile vampire like Abel.