Claiming the Vampire (12 page)

Jessica’s face hardened. “You were willing to break that rule for Celia, though. Is this the part where you tell me who hired you for that?”

“Just about,” he said quietly. “So, things went along like that for a number of years. It wasn’t long before I had enough money to pay for the magic to heal Mary, and I could have stopped after that.” This was another of the parts he could have skipped over, but he didn’t. “Mary wanted me to stop. But the truth is, I liked the money. I liked being able to buy Mary a mansion in Wales, and to know that we’d never want for anything. And I liked being a badass killer, too. I liked knowing that other vampires were afraid of me.”

Jessica nodded. “You were victimized once, made powerless. And you’d watched someone hurt your sister without being able to do anything about it. You wanted to be sure that could never happen again. That you’d never be anyone’s victim.”

He kept waiting for contempt to darken her eyes, and instead she kept surprising him. “Psychologist, are you?” he asked lightly.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure that out. It’s obvious.”

“Nice to know I’m an open book. That night at your mother’s, you called me a filthy assassin. Why are you going soft on me now?”

“I’m not going soft. I just understand you more now, that’s all.”

He felt an unfamiliar nudge of panic. He’d told her all this so she would know who he was, but he hadn’t counted on the way that would make him feel.

Exposed. Vulnerable.

He tried to shrug off the feeling. “Well. Everything went on like that for a while. And then, ten years ago, I made a mistake. I always checked out my targets before I went after them, to verify for myself that they…”

“Met your standards of villainy?” Jessica asked drily.

He almost smiled. “Yeah. And to be sure the folks who hired me weren’t keeping anything back. Well, this one bloke took out a contract on a vamp I’d heard of. And I knew without doing any checking that he met my ‘standards of villainy’. He was a blood trafficker.”

As a demon hunter, he was sure Jessica had dealt with blood traffickers. Probably killed a few, too. And good riddance if she had. Blood traffickers worked for wealthy vamps with specific tastes in victims—usually children.

“That’s when I made my mistake. I didn’t check out anything else about the job. I just did it. It was only afterwards that I found out that this vamp had a Fae lover. One of your lot. A demon hunter.”

Jessica froze. “A Green Fae warrior?”

The story of his history hadn’t shocked her, but this did.

“Yeah. Deirdre, her name was. An Irish bird.”

“But…she can’t have known what he was.” She sounded bewildered.

“Yeah, she knew. Fact is, she worked with him. They had a partnership of sorts. Catering to vamps with a taste for Fae blood.”

Jessica’s face drained of color, and he had to fight the urge not to reach for her. To comfort her.

“They kidnapped Fae? To be used for their blood?”

“Yeah. Eighth bloods and sixteenth bloods, mostly. They knew there wouldn’t be as much of a fuss about them.”

That was a bit of a nasty crack, but Hawk had always disliked the Fae caste system.

“My God,” she whispered. “But you…you stopped them. Didn’t you?”

“I stopped him, yeah. But I didn’t know about her. Not until she came after me.” He paused. “After Mary, actually.”

“What…what did she do?”

“She killed her.” He paused. “Or so I believed. You know that vampires have a connection with their makers, and vice versa?” Jessica nodded. “The only thing that can end that connection is death. Ten years ago, I discovered Mary missing. Two days later, the connection between us was severed. A day after that I got a call from Deirdre. She told me that she’d killed my sister to avenge the death of her lover.

“I went after her, of course. That’s how I learned about her…activities. I learned that she had fled to America. And in the course of tracking her I met with the queen of the North American royal family.”

“My mother?”

He nodded. “I told her about Deirdre, and she was furious. She said that if I brought Deirdre to her she would be executed at once.”

Jessica swallowed. “I never heard about any of this. There hasn’t been a Fae execution in a hundred years.”

“Your mother didn’t want it known that a Fae could be capable of kidnapping and selling her own people. A few others in the court knew about it, but not many.”

He leaned back in his seat and dragged a hand through his hair. “It had been my intention to take care of Deirdre myself. But the truth is…I’ve never killed a woman. Or a Fae. And so when Talia offered me another way, I took it. I figured the Fae deserved to administer their own justice, and that trumped my personal vengeance.”

He sighed. “And that was that. I found Deirdre and brought her to the queen, and the next day she offered me proof that the execution had taken place.”

“Proof?”

“She showed me Deirdre’s head.”

“Oh.”

“And so I went back home. But with Mary gone, I found I no longer had any desire to pursue my profession. I already had more wealth than I could use in a hundred lifetimes. I retired to my home in Wales, and let it be known that I was out of the assassin business. Until last month, when I received a phone call.”

He looked across the table at Jessica. There was a kind of peace between them right now—not trust exactly, but a tacit truce. She looked absorbed in the story he was telling, her expression thoughtful and a little frown between her brows.

That peace was about to end.

“The phone call was from a Fae. She told me that Mary hadn’t been killed ten years ago—that she’d been sold. Sold to the Dark Fae as a prisoner. When she crossed into the other dimension, the connection between us was severed. That’s why I couldn’t feel her anymore.”

Jessica’s eyes widened. Her hands were on the table, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for one of them. “That’s the reason I agreed to take out Celia. The Fae told me that if I did, she would restore my sister to me. If I didn’t, she’d ensure that Mary was killed. I would never…” he swallowed. “I would never have taken the job otherwise. But if there was even a chance that Mary was alive, I couldn’t abandon her. I couldn’t leave her in another world, a prisoner…” He stopped, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to justify myself to you, when I know there’s no justification you could accept.”

Jessica hadn’t pulled her hand away yet. “Celia told me she doesn’t think you would have gone through with it. Killing her.”

He smiled grimly. “Celia judges people by her own heart. Don’t believe that, Jessica. If I had no other choice, I would have killed her. But luckily for Celia it wasn’t necessary. After your engagement was announced, the threat Celia represented to the Fae way of life was neutralized. And I was told that my services were no longer needed. So I went to the Fae who hired me, and told her that I still expected my payment. My sister returned to me.”

Surely she would connect the dots now, realize who his client was. It was so bloody obvious…

“Hawk—you have to tell me who it was. Who hired you.”

She hadn’t made the connection. Her aquamarine eyes were wide and curious, undarkened by any hint of the truth.

“Jessica. I’m putting myself…and my sister…in your power. After I tell you, if you choose, you can go to that person and confront them, tell them I spoke to you…do anything you want. But if you do that, it’ll jeopardize my chances of getting my sister back.”

She frowned. “I get that, Hawk. And I’ll wait until your sister is safe before I do anything. But why…” she trailed off. Her eyes searched his, and his hand tightened on hers involuntarily.

“Why what?”

“Why are you telling me this? What advantage do you gain?”

A reasonable question to ask of someone like him.

“I don’t gain anything,” he said quietly. “I just thought it was important for you to know. For you to have all the information.”

“All the information?”

“Yes. Before you make any decisions that will change your life.”

She still didn’t suspect the truth, but there was a flicker of unease in her blue-green eyes.

“Hawk…who was it? Who hired you?”

He forced himself to let go of her hand. Then he spoke in a low voice, keeping his eyes on hers.

“It was your mother.”

Chapter Eight

Jessica heard the words, but they didn’t seem to mean anything. She felt like she’d been turned to stone. She was aware of time going by, of the sounds of the club around her, of Hawk’s black eyes watching her. There was compassion in them.

They’d been sitting here for a while now, while Hawk told her his story. It was obvious that he expected her to recoil from some of the things he told her, but she’d been going on missions with the Green Fae since she was fourteen. She’d seen bodies torn by shifters, drained by vampires, dismembered by demons. She had witnessed death and violence and she’d dealt out her share of both.

She could imagine herself doing as Hawk had done after he and his sister escaped from Hector. Going after him and anyone else who’d hurt them. As for what he’d done afterwards…well, she wouldn’t have become a hired assassin. But that was because she had something that Hawk didn’t have: a community. The Green Fae.

The only thing that had shocked her was Deirdre. She had truly believed what she’d told Hawk—that there were certain lines no Fae would cross.

Obviously she’d been wrong. But when he’d told her about Deirdre, he hadn’t looked amused or superior at her naiveté. He’d only looked sorry for her. Like he felt badly that he had to be the one to shatter her illusions.

He was looking at her like that right now. With compassion. There was a reason for that, something he’d just said. Something that seemed to be taking a long time to filter through her consciousness, the way words did in dreams sometimes.

It was your mother.

No.

“Jessica.”

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think.

“Jessica,” he said again, more insistent now. She knew she was staring at him without moving, without blinking. Why couldn’t she think clearly? He’d said something…something…

It was your mother.

“No.” She’d said it out loud this time, because Hawk answered her.

“I’m sorry, Jess. But it’s true.”

He’d called her Jess. How strange. No one had ever called her that, even though she thought of herself as Jess sometimes, and had imagined what it might feel like to be called that. She remembered the first time she’d called Elizabeth
Liz
, after she’d insisted. A shortening of a person’s name felt like an endearment, somehow.

A sudden wave of nausea made her double over.

“Jess!”

Hawk surged to his feet and came around to her side of the booth. He got to her just before Liz and Celia and the other vampires did.

“What happened?” Liz asked sharply.

Jessica couldn’t speak, couldn’t answer. She was shuddering, her eyes squeezed shut like a child trying to shut out something unendurable.

She heard a ferocious growl, and her eyes snapped open. Hawk was standing between her and the others as if he were shielding her. His lips were drawn back from his fangs in an animal snarl, and his eyes gleamed yellow.

“Don’t crowd her,” he said, in a voice that made all the tiny hairs on her body lift.

Liz’s eyes widened. “Well,” she said, glancing at Evan. “I guess you were right.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Jessica said, and they all turned to her again. Hawk looked agonized, the expression oddly poignant on his demonic visage.

She stumbled to her feet and pushed past them all, and then she was running, running, towards the door and then through it, and then down the street in the cold night air.

An ancient Fae instinct took over, making her yearn for grass under her feet instead of asphalt. The city, which she had always loved, suddenly seemed hard and brittle and alien. She needed to connect with the earth, with things no man could make.

She let instinct lead her to a tree-filled park, dark and shadowed and deserted in the December chill. She almost sobbed with relief when she felt the ground beneath her, smelled the cool dry scent of fallen leaves and the fecund scent of moss-covered bark.

“Jess!”

It was Hawk, running behind her. She was fast, but so was he, and it only took him a moment to catch her.

“Jess, goddam it—”

And then the wind was knocked out of her as he tackled her, looping an arm around her waist and jerking her off her feet.

They went down, but Hawk had wrapped both arms around her to shield her from the fall, and he took the brunt of the impact on his forearms. Jess struggled like a wild animal, violent and frantic, but Hawk just held her, his arms like steel around her upper body and his powerful thighs trapping her legs against the ground. And all the while he was murmuring in her ear, his voice low and gentle and soothing.

She wasn’t sure exactly when she stopped thrashing. But at some point she became aware that she had gone still, that she was lying on a bed of pine needles and fallen leaves, and that Hawk was lying on top of her.

His scent was tantalizing—like resin, like musk, like the essence of nighttime itself. She was surrounded by that scent and by his body.

His arms were on either side of her, supporting most of his weight. Her breasts were flattened against his chest. He’d stopped whispering in her ear and his dark head rested against her shoulder. He was perfectly still, like her.

She found that if she focused on the way Hawk’s body made her feel she could push away the knowledge that her mother had hired an assassin to kill one of her own people.

If she could only lie here forever, cradled by mother earth at her back and Hawk’s strong body all around her.

She felt no need to move or think. Her mind was numb, and all she could do was feel.

From the time she was a little girl, she’d always hated anything that constricted her movement. She hated formal clothes, and she wouldn’t wear the armor some Green Fae did when they went into battle. Even on the coldest winter days, when most Fae wore coats to avoid attracting notice from humans, she went without. At night, even if she started out under a blanket or sheet, she usually kicked off the covers by the time morning came.