Once Bitten (18 page)

“I’m
inclined to agree with Alfred,” Amos said, his finger sliding over the rim of
his wine glass.

Lila’s
face turned bright red. In an instant he went from angry himself to trying to
figure out a way to prevent her from launching herself across the table at him.

“Lila
is speaking the truth. If she hadn’t helped, I would most likely be dead,” he
said, jerking Lila’s attention away from Amos and back to him. The red in her
face slowly turned to a less threatening shade of pink that he found he quite
liked. It was the same shade she had when they—
Focus!

“We
have heard from you both, but we will have to discuss this and put it to a
vote,” Amos told them, rising from his chair. Four other chairs scraped across
the wood of the deck as all the men rose to their feet.

“Please,
Miss Blackburn, finish your lunch. We will call you both into the meeting room
when we have decided what to do regarding the bracelet,” Kevin told her as the
five of them filed off the deck to go back inside.

Lila
and Gabriel stared after them as they left, unsure of how they had let the
conversation go wrong.

* * * *

“Now
what?” Lila asked. She had wasted time and energy getting offended by their
assumption that she couldn’t defend herself and now it was too late to reason
with them. She had let Gabriel down. She had let them both down.

“I
guess now we wait.” Gabriel picked up his wine and drained what was left in the
glass.

She
stared at the door the men had gone through for a full minute before returning
to her meal. Lila took her time out of fear that when she was finished eating
both she and Gabriel would be forced back into that small waiting room. It was
beautiful outside and she was in no hurry to go back in.

“I went
too far, didn’t I?” she asked him after cleaning her plate. She had been
leaning back in her chair, thinking about all the things she could have done
differently since they first got there and was silently kicking herself, even
though it didn’t do either of them any good.

Gabriel
shook his head. “Don’t worry about that. They’re just not used to being spoken
to like that. Especially by a witch.”

He was
pacing along the deck rail, his hands clasped behind his back as he looked out
over the trees. Lila could see the tension in his back and shoulders as he
stood there. He was wound tight. She wished she could find a way to help
relieve it, but she certainly couldn’t do it here. Even if they were in a place
where she could touch him openly, would he even want her to?

She
didn’t know where they stood anymore. After what happened between them the
night before, she knew their relationship had changed and not in the way she
wanted it to. He had been polite to her over breakfast, but the relaxed
familiarity they had experienced together before was gone. Gabriel had turned
strictly professional.

Lila
hated it.

She
wanted what they had shared together back. She wanted to laugh with him again.
He was obviously in a place that he felt she couldn’t understand, but she
wanted to. She wanted nothing more than to understand. Or for him to at least
give her the chance to.

Frustrated,
she topped off her glass with the white wine they had left on the table.
Nursing it slowly, she watched as Cruella made another appearance to take away
the dirty plates.

 
Neither woman spoke. Out of all the
werewolves she had met so far, Cruella was the one she didn’t want to cross.
The woman scared the piss out of her. She’d rather face the three warlocks
again than her.

Luckily,
she left them alone a few minutes later. She and Gabriel played the waiting
game for almost an hour. They didn’t speak again, much to Lila’s
disappointment.

 
When the back patio door finally opened
and Henry stepped outside, Lila climbed to her feet.

“Come
on then,” he said, holding the door open. Together, Lila and Gabriel walked
back into the meeting room to hear whatever decision they had finally made.

Once
Henry took his seat at the table, Amos cleared his throat.

“We
have come to the decision not to take your discovery to the next level of
command. Frankly, Mr. Azarov, I’m surprised by you. You brought this witch into
our headquarters and she has made a mockery of you.”

Lila
was angry, but when she felt Gabriel swell up beside her she knew he was
enraged.

“This
is absurd!” he shouted at them, the walls of the room shaking from his
outburst.

Amos
got to his feet, his eyes glittering at the anticipation of a fight. “Watch
your tone, boy.”

“I’m
not your boy.” The look on Gabriel’s face was murderous. “This entire setup is
ludicrous and you fail to see what is right in front of you!”

“Gabriel,
stop,” Lila pleaded quietly, grasping his arm to keep him from charging at
Amos.

“How
dare you! You are exactly like Malcolm. Your family is full of nothing but
spoiled and self-serving bastards!”

Lila
felt the humming before she saw it. First the claws, then the teeth. “No,
Gabriel. No!” she pleaded, refusing to let go of him.

Amos
knew he had struck a nerve and he didn’t stop there. “You bring this fucking
witch in here but you can’t deny the fact that you’re fucking her! You are a
traitor to your race and while there’s no law that allows me to punish you for
it, know that I will do everything in my power to keep you from making fools
out of the rest of us.”

“Now
hold on there just one minute Amos…” Henry tried interrupting, obviously not
pleased by his last comment. “My wife was a witch and you have no right—”

“Shut
up, old man!”

Lila
had heard more than enough. The district leaders weren’t going to listen to
them, a fact that they had decided on before they ever presented the
bainise
bracelet.

 
Gabriel was rapidly boiling over, murder
in his eyes. His body was contorting and she knew if she didn’t get him out of
headquarters now, he was going to do something that would be punishable.

After
snatching the bracelet from the table in front of a rapidly transforming Amos,
Lila pushed against Gabriel’s chest with every ounce of strength she had.

“Let’s
go, Gabriel. Enough.” He tried to get around her, but she dodged in front of
him when he moved.

She
could hear the shouting behind her, the other men arguing with Amos and then
amongst themselves. When Cruella stood in the doorway behind Gabriel to see what
all the commotion was about, Lila cast her a pleading look.

Gabriel
was changing and she didn’t have much strength left to push him out the door.
If he completed the change, she would never be able to stop him. “Help me. Help
me get him out of here.”

Maybe
Cruella wasn’t as bad as Lila had originally thought. Seeing her desperation,
Cruella nodded and grabbed Gabriel’s arms, locking them behind his back as she
helped pull him from the room.

“Stop
it Gabriel!” Lila screamed at him once the women had wrestled him outside.

He was
growling, his muscles stretched the fabric of his shirt to its limit. His
clothes had managed to stay on so far, but they wouldn’t for long. Lila knew
she couldn’t let him change. She knew that as soon as he did, he would be too
strong for either Cruella or her to hold. He would go tearing back into that
building and probably end up getting himself killed. Maybe not right off the
bat, but in no world would it be okay to murder a district leader over a few
insults.

“Gabriel!”
Lila shrieked, smacking him full in the face before she even had time to think
about it. Her palm stung from the impact, but her eyes never left his.

It was
as if everything stopped. The growling. The humming coming from his chest. His
eyes narrowed on her and she could feel him deflating against her chest.

He
stayed focused on her. When his breathing steadied, Cruella released his arms
and stepped back.

“Lila,
I…” he started, unable to get the words out. He sounded defeated.

“No,”
she said, shaking her head and stopping any apology he was about to give. “Just
get in the car and let’s get the hell out of this place.”

She and
Cruella stood, watching as Gabriel climbed in the passenger seat of the Jeep.

 
“He baited him on purpose, you know,”
Cruella told her as she watched Gabriel pull the door closed.

“I—”

Her
rushed words came out in whispered tones. “Don’t tell anyone I told you this,
but you need to take that bracelet to Celeste. If our district leaders won’t
help you, then yours will. Any ammunition you have against the warlocks needs
to be taken to the witches.”

“But,
I—”

“She’ll
know what to do with it. You need to get out of here before they realize you’re
leaving and try to stop you.”

“Thank
you…”

“Annabelle.”

“Thank
you, Annabelle,” Lila told her, never more grateful for anyone in her life.

“Get
out of here. Get out of Long Lake.” Lila heard her instructions as she hurried
to the driver’s side of the Jeep.

It didn’t
take more than a minute to get the key from Gabriel and tear away from the
cabin, leaving Annabelle standing there looking after them.

* * * *

Gabriel’s
silence was bothering Lila as she drove out of Long Lake and out of New York
state altogether.

She
stopped just outside of Rutland, Vermont to get gas and something to drink. And
hopefully to talk to Gabriel about what their next plan of action was. She hadn’t
mentioned anything to him yet about what Annabelle had said.

He
waited for her in the car, his head in his hands. When she climbed back into
the driver’s seat and drove them around the side of the small convenience store
and parked, he looked at her questioningly.

She
handed him the bottle of water she had purchased for him and turned off the
engine, leaning back in the seat and watching as a family of four climbed into
their station wagon next to them.

“What
are you doing?” he asked her when she didn’t say anything.

“I’m
sitting here.”

“Why?”

“I’m
waiting for you to get it together so we can talk.”

That
wasn’t what he had been expecting to hear. “You can talk to me.”

“Are
you sure? Because I can wait here all day.”

“Lila,
just say what you want to say.”

She
turned in her seat and looked at him. “Annabelle said that we need to take the
bracelet to Celeste, that she’d know what to do with it. Who’s Celeste?”

He
groaned. “Oh Lord, I don’t want to go to Celeste.”

“Who’s
Celeste?” she asked again.

“Celeste
is the leader of the witches. And she’s…well, she’s going to be a hard one to
convince that you’re a witch, to put it mildly.”

“So
what? The werewolves thought I was a witch, I’m sure we could convince her too.”

She saw
his hesitation. “If she even meets with us.”

“Why
wouldn’t she?”

“She’s
a busy woman.”

He was
trying to feed her excuses and she didn’t want to hear it. “Gabriel, if it
helps us, then why not try it?”

“I
guess we could,” he gave in after a minute. “She’s in Boston at the council, I’m
sure, but I don’t want to take you into the city. It’s too dangerous.”

“Then
we find some place outside of the city to meet with her.”

“Even
that’s risky. Boston and most of the area outside the city aren’t controlled by
any one territory. Warlocks, and fae for that matter, come and go as they wish.
If they saw you…” He actually looked pained.

“I’m
willing to chance it.”

She
knew he wanted to say no, but thankfully he didn’t. “Fine. Let’s head in that direction
and find somewhere to stay for the night. I’ll get in touch with her in the
morning and see if she will meet with us.”

With
that settled, Lila turned over the engine and pulled out of the parking lot,
driving them out of Rutland.

She
left him alone with his thoughts as she drove toward Massachusetts. He spent
most of the drive staring out the window, only saying a few words to her when
they crossed the state line. When she entered the city limits of Lowell,
Gabriel began looking for a place for them to stop for the night.

It was
after dark by the time they found a hotel that he was satisfied with. After
parking in front of a large brick building, Lila grabbed her bag and followed
him into the lobby.

The
inside of the hotel nearly took her breath away. All around her was marble,
crystal chandeliers and the most beautiful purple orchids she had ever seen.
She knew instantly that her bank account was going to take a little while to
recover after she paid for a room.