Deep Deception (3 page)

“Are you kidding?” Adin asked. “The last time we were together for a meal, I was very nearly the main course.”

“But you can’t accuse
me
of ever trying to eat you,” Santos said playfully. “Except once, at the airport in San Francisco, and then I only took a little bite to soften you up. You are perfectly safe with me, for now. Tell him Boaz.”

Boaz nodded and Adin shrugged. “All right. Why the hell not?”

Boaz reached for Bran’s hands where the manacles had chafed his wrists. “Poor baby. I’ll see what we can do about these while you’re gone, Adin.”

“You think you can get them off?” Adin asked. “Thank God. They’re burning his skin.”

“
No,
” Santos said abruptly. A look passed between Boaz and Santos that Adin didn’t understand. “You must not take the irons off. But Boaz can make the boy more comfortable.”

“What do you think, Bran?” Adin reasoned that if the boy could see inside of him, perhaps he could see inside Boaz as well.

“He means me no harm,” Bran answered, indicating Boaz.

“What about this one?” Adin gestured toward Santos. “Can you read him?”

“He is un-living. His mind is closed to me.”

At this, Santos laughed. “Un-living. That’s certainly the glass half full, boy. Adin is an optimist as well.” Santos opened the door and motioned for Adin to pass through before him. “Bran, do you know what an optimist is to a vampire?”

“What?”

Santos grinned. “A happy meal.”

Adin looked back past Santos as he started to leave, giving Bran a last opportunity to speak. He sensed Bran was still frightened. “Say the word and I won’t leave you here by yourself, Bran.”

“Well,
thanks a lot
,” Boaz grumbled.

“It’s all right,” Bran answered. “But…you should never trust a vampire.”

Santos shot Bran a glare but Bran stood his ground, his face impassive.

Adin winked at Bran, who colored furiously. “Got it.”

Chapter Three

“
Zut
,” Santos exclaimed, extending his arms in an encompassing, embracing gesture. “I love Paris. I never get tired of it. Walk with me?”

Adin hoped for the best as he walked beside the vampire for a while, enjoying the way the chilly night air clung to his skin and clothing. He pictured walking along these same streets—or along the quays by the Seine—with Donte, and such a powerful wave of longing came over him, he had to clasp his hands behind his back to keep from reaching out.

“Doesn’t it fill you with contentment to walk the streets of Paris at night? It’s such a mixture of the old and new, of history and hope and passion and humanity, all brazen and tarted up. It’s indescribable.”

Adin grinned. “I feel the same way, but you put a far more poetic spin on it. I wish Donte were here.”

“Why ruin a lovely night?” Santos grumbled.

He led the way to the Pont Neuf, and across the river to the Île de la Cité, stopping—finally—when they were standing in the park-like square in front of Notre Dame’s doors. The edifice glowed majestically in the velvety blue darkness.

“This is arguably my favorite place on earth.”

Adin gazed up and up. The cathedral was at once monstrous and brilliant, beautiful and grotesque. He’d certainly never tire of looking at it, and he didn’t think if he had the advantage of Santos’s years it would diminish his love for the place, either. “Mine too, maybe.”

Santos sighed. “You may have guessed I don’t like to have my plans disrupted.”

“The thought occurred to me, yes.” He’d more than upset a few of Santos’s plans, and he knew Santos had definitely been unhappy with him at the time.

“You derailed any hope I had of destroying Fedeltà’s diary. Even though he’s your lover, you preserved a journal chronicling his passion for my father—another man. I understand him better now, and acknowledge that he cared for my father in a way I didn’t—and still don’t—understand. Now he seems to care for you in a similar way.”

“He loved your father very much,” Adin admitted. “He still carries it in his heart like a flame. What he feels for me is different, but I don’t think it’s less… Maybe I’m kidding myself.”

Santos kicked at a pebble on the ground. “I don’t understand this passion between men at all.”

“Because you don’t share it. Believe me, if the situation were reversed I couldn’t. Well, that’s not entirely true, is it…? Whether I can feel sexual attraction for a woman or not, I enjoy any truly great literary love story. I have a particular fondness for
Tristan and Isolde
.”

“Now there’s a cheerful tale.”

“Nevertheless…”

“I’ve had comrades in arms I have mourned. Men I trusted like brothers.” Santos frowned.

“I have a sister that I love very much, but I would be incapable of romantic love for a woman. I just think that’s how I was made.”

Santos gazed at the cathedral again. “It flies in the face of religious tradition.”

“I can see where you might have a problem with homosexuality, biblically speaking—” Adin tried not to laugh, but it wasn’t easy, “—after its injunction in the Pauline Epistles. Unlike becoming a blood-sucking monster, homosexuality seems to be forbidden to Christians. Why, just the other day I was reading that glowing welcome to the Christian vampire brotherhood in the apocryphal
St. Paul’s Letter to the Undead
.”

“You simply can’t help yourself, can you? You always make a joke when you should be pissing yourself with fear.” Santos reached out and cuffed Adin on the shoulder. “A better question is why you’re still human?”

Adin paused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Look around you.” Santos motioned toward the Cathedral’s flying buttresses. “Man reaches for immortality like a frantic junkie looking for drugs. He will claw and devour and kill for it if he sees it within his grasp. You remain human, and
I
want to know why.” Santos turned so they were facing one another. “Have you already displeased your vampire protector? Is my father’s eternal flame proving hotter than your human love?”

Adin swallowed hard.
Why does that feel like tearing off a scab
?

“For your information, I don’t choose immortality. I don’t want it. I’ve told Donte that, and we don’t see eye to eye at all. He worries that I’ll be hurt, and so he wants to turn me. For the last three months there have been alternating bouts of heated debate and brooding silence, interminable kendo and self-defense lessons, and what Donte tells me are bodyguards, but can only be described as sloe-eyed, brooding undead nannies.”

“What an inconvenient pet you’ve turned out to be.” Santos laughed. “Color me delighted.”

“I’m thrilled you approve.”

“Since your lover is my oldest enemy, don’t you worry that we’re meandering around Paris together in the middle of the night? Tell me you fear me still or I will weep.”

“It’s always the same with the undead. Do you ever ask why people skydive or swim with sharks or walk on hot coals?”

“I do not. In general, people are fairly stupid, and you may consider it a compliment that I don’t think that’s true of you, Adin.”

“I see the compliment. Thank you.” Adin stopped midstride. “I didn’t get the chance to thank you for your help this evening. You and Boaz saved me a great deal of trouble.”

“You may thank Boaz. He insisted.” Santos stopped in front of a café that was still open for business. “Are you hungry?”

“No.” Adin stepped aside as Santos opened the door. “But after everything that’s happened, I could very definitely use a glass of wine.”

Adin entered the café first, and Santos helped him out of his coat. He found a rack and hung it up before they scouted a suitable table. After sitting, they ordered a bottle of Bordeaux. While the waiter uncorked and poured it, Santos showed the same disinterest Donte usually displayed. Adin wished it were Donte sharing the cool Parisian evening with him. He felt hollow and sad at the thought of Donte brooding alone somewhere.

“What?” Santos asked. “You’re thinking of Donte again…?”

“It’s nothing. What brings you to Paris? If it’s not a deep and arcane secret…”

“It is!” Santos’s eyes fairly sparkled with excitment. He was an extremely handsome man, and his smile held a certain boyish charm. Adin couldn’t help noticing and even enjoying his enthusiasm. “It’s the oldest, deepest and most arcane of all secrets. I almost always spend
Pâques
in Paris. I like to come for Easter services and stay through the end of May for the feast of the Ascension, although this year that will not be possible. I need to leave tomorrow for a series of business meetings in Taiwan.”

Adin blinked in surprise. “You celebrate
Easter
services?”

Santos nodded. “Of course.”

Adin shook his head and drank his wine. Why shouldn’t Santos still be an observant Catholic? “I guess I didn’t realize it was so close.”

“Next Sunday.” Santos appeared to be reasoning something out in his mind. “I have a place in the seizième. The sixteenth Arrondissement. It’s a nice neighborhood.”

“I know.” Adin blinked at the understatement. It was
the
nice neighborhood in Paris, on the west side across the Seine. It boasted upscale businesses and grand apartment homes.

“If you run out of options, Boaz can take both you and the boy to my home where he can look after you.”

“What on earth would make you think I’d take you up on an offer like that?” Adin wasn’t entirely over nearly being killed the last time he’d been forced to accept Santos’s hospitality.

“Bygones,” Santos murmured. “Besides, I won’t be there but Boaz will. You’d be safe as a child with its mother.”

“In a species that eats its young,” Adin snarked.

Santos shot Adin an exasperated glance and then looked down at his untouched wineglass and chuckled. “You really are a handful. I hope someday Donte realizes that by letting you live, I’ve given him far more grief than I had reason to hope for by killing you.”

Adin’s muscles relaxed as the wine hit his bloodstream. “Wasn’t that your plan all along?”

“Well, no, it wasn’t.” Santos grinned, and it was the first time Adin had ever seen his smile when it wasn’t meant to be cruel. Santos could be attractive, dark like Donte, but with curlier hair and softer features. Very much the offspring of the beautiful boy Adin had seen illustrated in Donte’s journal, Donte’s dead lover, Auselmo. Even if Santos was far more deadly than he was letting on in that moment, Adin was taken with him. “But I have to take it as a win that he’s tearing his hair out with worry over you.”

“As long as you’re happy.”

“I am happy, actually. For now.”

“Happy Easter,” Adin said over the rim of his wineglass. “A new life awaits.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t share that information with Donte. I find I’m reluctant to let him relax.”

“Fine.” Adin watched as Santos’s eyes strayed every now and again to the door. “Expecting someone?”

“I estimate I have about twenty minutes before Donte finds you, and I’d rather he didn’t find you with me.”

“
What
?” Adin nearly knocked his chair over in his haste to rise from the table.

“He may have called Boaz to aid you with your little problem, but I doubt he’ll be satisfied to leave your safety to someone else for long. I imagine he’s hopped a flight to be here and is even as we speak racing to the rescue in a cab.”



“
Shit
.” Adin made for the coat rack even as Santos dropped extra coins on the table for the waiter.

“How romantic you are.” Santos caught up with him at the door. “Someday perhaps the thought of seeing me after a respite will inspire some young woman to profanity as well.”

“You don’t understand. He’s only coming here to yell at me and tell me I’ve proven his point. He’ll try to change my mind about being turned and we’ll only argue until he goes back to Spain.”

“Adin.” Santos’s brow furrowed as he caught Adin’s hand and stopped him. “I hate him for turning me. I
hate
him for it. If it’s truly going to come to that, you must accept protection from me.”

Adin gaped at Santos. “
Why
?”

“Why what? Being turned is a horror I wouldn’t wish on anyone, even those who desire it.”

“Bullshit.” Adin would never forget Elian, the young man who’d died trying to protect him from Santos’s men. “You turn members of your own family without their consent. Elian told me he didn’t have a clue what was going to happen to him when you took him under your wing.”

“Yes, all right. Elian.” Santos shrugged. “One of my descendents, a boy I found in the worst of slums, picking through garbage to survive. The violence he grew up with, every day of his life, would astound you. So yes, he was my family. I took him from a life with no future and I gave him eternity. It was far better than what he had. I did that
because
he was family.”

“So don’t be a superior asshat. You’re not above anything.”

“I’m certainly not above attempting to deprive Donte Fedeltà of his pretty toy. Moral superiority is simply an added incentive for me to help you.”

“As if I’d trust anything you say.”

“Adin, listen. The process is painful and disorienting and the results are anything but guaranteed. You’re entirely right to refuse him, but tell me, why would you?”

“I am who I am,” Adin whispered. “I never want to be loved
if only
I were something else, even if it means I get sick and rot and die. It’s
my
journey. And without its beginning, its middle and its end, I’m not ever going to be the man I was born to be. Do you understand that? Does it surprise you so much?”

“Yes.” Santos gripped Adin’s arm. “It’s extraordinary, really, but not unexpected from a troublemaker like you.”

Adin shrugged and retrieved his coat, then donned it and his scarf before exiting the restaurant.

“Come to my place in the morning. I’ll be gone, and you’ll be free to come and go as you like. As for your boy problem—” Santos looked around at the darkened street before he spoke again, “—I have information that may change things.”

“What?”

“Harwiche fears the men he’s dealing with, he used you as an intermediary, and now that you have made the monetary exchange, he will either try to trade for him or take him from you.”

“That much I figured out all by myself.”

Santos cuffed Adin’s shoulder again. “Patience, pet,” he warned, but without the usual heat. “Boaz can and will get your money back.”

“But—”

“Don’t ask how. It’s confidential but I will tell him to do it. Or Donte will.”

“Donte?”

“Yes, I never know who Boaz is serving from one moment to the next. But there’s something Harwiche has recently acquired, and Fedeltà will do anything he has to do to get it. Including giving up the boy.”

“What could Harwiche have that Donte will want so badly?”

“My father’s letters.”

“Your—” Adin’s stopped, closing his mouth over an expression of shock.

Santos’s eyebrows rose slyly. “I may have told Donte at one time that I burned them.”

Adin grasped the lapels of Santos’s suit. “Your father’s letters? Truly? Donte would kill for those.”

“Ah.” Santos peeled Adin’s fingers from his coat. “If that’s the case, it might be wise to turn the boy over to him. Harwiche will ask for Bran in return for my father’s letters.”

“But I promised to protect—” Adin gasped. “You
bastard
! You knew.”

Santos shrugged, then shot Adin a radiant smile. “I suspected. Well…maybe I suggested to Harwiche that the men he was dealing with were unsavory and his problems might be solved by an intermediary. The Harwiche family and I have a history, of sorts.”

Adin closed his eyes. “You are
such
a shit.”

“It’s really a simple matter, Adin.” Santos draped an arm around his shoulder and began walking him back toward the Pont Neuf. “All you have to do is give the boy to Donte—”

“You know I won’t do that, I can’t. And Donte will try to force me…”

“Yes…” Santos gave Adin’s shoulder a hard squeeze, just short of painful. “Well. Eternity isn’t much fun unless I’m making some kind of trouble for Fedeltà.”