Chains of Darkness (5 page)

Worse, because of the blood-chains, she could feel how aroused he was. The vampire hadn’t had sex in a long time. He was very male and would have needs. Even Rumy had told her that much, trying to prepare her.

But her own case wasn’t much different. She hadn’t been with a man in over two years because of her imprisonment in Florida.

Yet what troubled her wasn’t so much that she might end up having sex with the vampire she’d just rescued, but how much she suspected she was going to like it.

A shiver ran through her.

Claire?
As he continued to draw her blood into his mouth, he stroked the length of her forearm. His touch was so warm, even gentle against her skin. She didn’t mistake the invitation for what it was.

She felt tempted as she never had before and nearly offered up what right now had become an almost painful longing the entire length of her body. But it was way too soon. She looked away from him. “I’m trying to gain my bearings.”

Just as you should.

She didn’t look at him again while he fed. Instead, she looked anywhere else, trying to ignore what she really wanted to be doing.

The first thing she noticed was that someone had taken her shoes off. Then her eye was drawn to the ceiling, which she realized was quite beautiful despite the bland surroundings. A wave of what looked like light blue granite ran the entire length, but carved and polished to resemble a flow of water.

Good. She had something to focus on besides the fact that she was feeding a vampire and really liking it.

When he finished at last, he released her wrist, licking the small apertures at the same time.

She drew her arm close, looking down at the skin, expecting to see a wound. Instead the puncture marks were gone, and only a slight redness to the skin told her what he’d been doing. “This is amazing.”

“We’ve had thousands of years to evolve. And I’ve released a serum into your bloodstream that will replace the supply quickly. You shouldn’t feel faint or anything.”

She shifted to look at him, startled all over again by the fact that she was here in such a strange new environment, sharing a room with a vampire, and that she was bound to him.

He sat back in his chair, definitely more relaxed. His color looked better, and his gray eyes had a brightness they’d lacked before. He was incredibly handsome, which wasn’t going to help her desire for him at all.

“I can see that you’re feeling better.”

He nodded. “Much better. The flight here seemed to help as well. Maybe just being away from that cell.”

She glanced down her arm once more, then back to him. “So what’s it like? Feeding, I mean.”

His brows rose. “I don’t know. Like breathing, I suppose. It’s just part of my life.”

“Of course it would be.” She stared at him for a long moment, wondering so many things. She took in his new wardrobe. “You found some clothes, I see.”

He gestured with a toss of his hand toward the wall at the foot of the bed, where a tall rack sat. “Rumy had clothes for both of us brought in.”

When she’d initially arrived two days earlier, Rumy had given her a few basic garments in addition to the clothes she’d had on. It looked as though he’d since added to her wardrobe. “I can see that.”

She glanced around and for the first time noticed the bed was a little different: The far side had what looked like a low steel bar running its length with some kind of cloth attached to it.

She pushed herself to a sitting position. “What is that?”

“Restraints. Though I’ll be stable for a while, maybe even a few hours, the recovery from blood-madness takes time, and I’ll probably spiral out of control at some point. The bindings will be necessary at least once during the process. But Rumy told you this, right, or some version of it?”

“Sort of. I think he didn’t want to weigh me down with too many details.”

He glanced at her. “So your name is Claire. What did you do before you were abducted? I mean, who are you? Where did you come from?”

“Santa Fe in New Mexico. Do you know it?”

“Sure. What was your life like there?”

“Well, my family has lived in the area for three generations. I had my own place, of course, but my mom and dad were only a couple of miles from my apartment. My brothers are eighteen and twenty-one now. When Rumy brought me here I went on the Internet and found that they’re all doing well. Both the boys are in college.” She repressed a sigh. She didn’t mind sharing the details, but the conversation was reminding her way too much of her family and how much she missed them. She couldn’t imagine how hard her sudden disappearance had been on everyone.

Lucian watched her closely. “And what about your friend, Zoey, were you always close?”

She chuckled, though her throat had started to ache. “More like sisters. We grew up together. Lived on the same street. We even roomed in college. But we’re so different, I mean even physically, she’s shorter and has black hair, blue eyes. And she has a totally wicked sense of humor. She had really long fingernails though, with jewels on them.” When tears touched her eyes, she cleared her throat and changed the subject. “She majored in economics and worked for an investment firm.”

“And you?”

“I have a master’s in social work. Before being taken out of that club in Santa Fe, I worked with ex-prostitutes, not an easy job.”

He frowned. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be.”

She found it a lot easier to talk about her work rather than either her family or Zoey.

She added, “Prostitution is rarely a first choice for these women. Most of them suffered horrendous childhoods before they entered the profession, so trying to extract them from that kind of work involved treating two layers of dysfunction at the same time.”

“We have a similar problem in our world, especially working with the sex slaves we recover. There’s always a lot of damage.”

She watched his gaze slide to the floor and his jaw flex a couple of times. “What are you thinking about?—because the chains tell me you’re really upset. Of course, I can see it as well. What’s wrong?”

He met her gaze. “I’m thinking about your friend Zoey and my brothers, what we’ve all been through, including you. Daniel is the author of all this suffering, and I want him dead. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Daniel—and then there’s Marius.” He shaded his face for a moment as grief swelled over him. She felt ill as she recalled the event. She closed her eyes and let the moment roll through them both, knowing this wouldn’t be the last time.

When he drew a deep breath and seemed more himself, she asked, “So what exactly is Daniel’s role in your society? I mean, I know that he’s in charge right now, but what does that entail?”

“Daniel set himself up as head of the Ancestral Council and now rules our five governing courts. He has tremendous power as an Ancestral. But he also has great wealth because of the sex-slave operation he’s built. That wealth has bought him many allies, which is part of the reason he succeeded in taking over the Council. Right now he’s damn near invincible.”

“And what’s an Ancestral?”

“It’s the name given to any vampire who achieves a certain level of preternatural power. Only a small portion of our population become Ancestrals, and Daniel’s at the top of that food chain.”

A knock on the door made her jump.

“Are you okay with someone else coming in here?”

Claire glanced at Lucian, almost startled by the question. For some reason, maybe because of the brutality of the situation she’d found him in, she hadn’t expected him to be concerned about her comfort level.

“And now you look surprised. You don’t think me capable of kindness or consideration?”

She met his gaze. “I just thought, given what you’ve been through … I don’t know, you just surprised me.”

He looked away from her, his jaw hardening. She hadn’t meant to offend him, but she could see that she’d touched a nerve. She just wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

Rumy’s voice sounded through the door. “Okay to come in? I brought food.”

“Well?” Lucian asked, but this time his voice had an edge.

“Of course. It’s Rumy. And I’m sorry if I offended you.”

His jaw worked. “You didn’t.”

Right.

“Come,” he called out.

His voice had an authoritative ring. Rumy had told her that Lucian ran a small policing force in their world, protecting as many innocent people as he could from the depredations of Daniel and those aligned with him. Clearly, he was used to command.

Rumy came in, along with wait-staff and a trolley bearing two covered dishes. Her stomach rumbled, partly no doubt because she’d just fed a vampire, but she also hadn’t eaten for several hours.

Rumy glanced at Lucian. “You’re looking better.”

“I feel much better, thanks to Claire.”

*   *   *

Later, after he and Claire had consumed a simple but savory meal of burgers and fries, Lucian knew the time had come to get down to business.

Rumy had left so that they could eat in peace, especially since the subjects that would soon be under discussion weren’t going to be pleasant. But Lucian now got Rumy on the room’s landline and asked him to rejoin them, to discuss how to proceed with finding out what had happened to Zoey and with locating the weapon.

When Rumy came in, however, he wore a serious scowl.

“What’s wrong?” Lucian offered Rumy his chair, but the short vampire paced instead.

“We’ve just had word that Daniel is offering a big reward to anyone who can give him solid information about the whereabouts of the remaining extinction weapons.”

Lucian’s nostrils flared. “How much is the bastard offering?”

Rumy turned toward him. “Millions, in increments, depending on the value of the information given. That asshole has set up a goddamn tip line.”

“Oh, that’s bad,” Claire murmured.

Lucian glanced at her, then back to Rumy. “Well, the good news is that it won’t be an easy process—he’ll have thousands of crackpots leaving false information. That alone will slow him down.”

“But his organization is big enough to handle it. I think we’re in serious trouble. All he needs is the right bead on the weapon, and he’ll gain control of everything,”

Claire tilted her head. “Do you think he did this because he no longer has you under his thumb?”

“Maybe. This move smacks of desperation.”

Rumy rubbed his thumb against the side of one of his always present fangs. He finally sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the table. Lucian’s gaze fell to the low steel bar that could be raised to hold one of the restraints. He didn’t want the reminder that at some point he’d once more spiral with blood-madness.

“Rumy, is something else on your mind?” Claire asked. “Please, don’t hold anything back on my account.”

Finally Rumy met her gaze. “Here’s the thing, Claire. I have a connection who found out who Zoey went to after she was abducted, because the truth is she never went to auction. Daniel kept her for himself.”

Claire put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, God.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lucian watched tears rush to her eyes—this woman who wasn’t a weeper. But he couldn’t fault her, not when she’d just heard that her good friend had been at Daniel’s mercy for the past two years, if she’d even survived that long. He couldn’t imagine a worse fate for a young human female than to be taken into Daniel’s Dark Cave system.

Claire, to her credit, straightened her shoulders. “Is there even the smallest hope she’s still alive?”

“We have no way of knowing.”

At that, Lucian shifted his gaze back to Rumy, and a certain suspicion entered his head. “You haven’t told her everything, have you?”

Rumy met Lucian’s gaze. He didn’t blink, but his tongue flicked out and licked both of his fangs. “I didn’t think it was wise.”

Lucian’s temper shot through his skull and he was on his feet. “What the fuck? Rumy, are you telling me you sent Claire into that pit of hell to rescue me without letting her know the score first? Dammit, she should have had the facts laid out for her before she made a decision to do something that dangerous. You used her.”

Rumy spread his hands wide. “I was thinking about you, boss, and about our world.”

Lucian didn’t care. “The day we set the worth of our society above the value of the individual is the day we’ve lost the right to survive as a species.”

“Lucian, as much as I want to believe that, we needed you here, doing what you’re doing now. I didn’t know what else to do. Adrien had to go underground to protect Lily and Josh. And you needed out of that hellhole. Daniel would have found a way to force you to do his bidding.”

“You had no right to do this.”

*   *   *

Claire felt so sick to her stomach that she struggled to hold down the meal she’d just eaten. Daniel had bought Zoey, and Rumy hadn’t told her something so critical that Lucian was actually yelling at him.

And though she’d asked if Zoey was still alive, something about Lucian’s outrage indicated that her friend was probably long dead.