Secrets in the Shadows (14 page)

“We can do this one of two ways,” Gabriel continued. “I can overcome the two of you with glamour and force you to open the door. Or you can open the door of your own free will. If I have to use force, I’ll be … annoyed.”

Once again, Jules glanced around the room, wishing he could at least get Hannah out of here. But there was no way out.

To his surprise, Hannah lowered her gun. “Let him in,” she said.

“What?” he cried, unable to believe his ears. “Are you nuts?”

She shrugged. “Like the man said, if he wants in, he’s getting in. It’s actually kind of polite of him to ask.”

She started to walk past him, her obvious intent to open the door. Though she was right and Gabriel could get in with or without their cooperation, Jules still wasn’t ready to give up without a fight. If they stalled for a little while, maybe Drake would get here to help even the odds. Not that the odds would be much better with Drake here—Gabriel had obviously overpowered him before. Jules put a hand on Hannah’s arm to stop her from going to the door. Then, he froze, trapped by Gabriel’s glamour. How old did Gabriel have to be for his glamour to work through a closed door?

“Damn,” Hannah muttered under her breath, then pried his unresisting fingers loose. He couldn’t even move his tongue to tell her once again not to let Gabriel in.

Hannah opened the door.

***

“There’s been a change of plans,” Ian told Harvey Fisher. He drove with one hand while holding the cell phone he’d stolen from a pretty young coed who would have been Camille’s dinner tonight, if Ian hadn’t decided it was time for a strategic retreat. The coed had been a delicious diversion, though he’d been in too much of a hurry to enjoy her as thoroughly as he might have liked.

“What kind of change?” Fisher asked suspiciously.

He was one of Camille’s “initiates,” mortals she was grooming to be her fledglings. She used to make them serve her for two years before turning them. After Ian’s desertion, she’d upped the waiting period to five years. Some she just killed. It had been easy enough for Ian to buy Fisher’s loyalty with a promise of immediate transformation once Camille and Gabriel were dead.

“My idiotic fledgling came to Baltimore alone. It’s only a matter of time now before Camille guesses what I’m up to.”

Harvey started to curse, his voice a mixture of anger and terror.

“Calm down,” Ian said. Fisher was way too volatile for Ian’s taste. And Ian was no more going to transform him than Camille was. Still, Fisher served a definite purpose. “She doesn’t know anything yet, and even when she finds out what I was planning for her, she won’t know that I have contingency plans.”

“What kind of plans?” Fisher demanded to know.

“If the subtle approach doesn’t work, then you go for the bold one.”

“Yeah? What does that mean?”

Fisher wasn’t too bright. “It means I’ll bring my fledglings into the city and attack her.”

“She’ll eat them alive! How old is your oldest?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Which was a good thing, seeing as Ian’s oldest fledgling was only two years old. A veritable baby! “Even the strongest vampire can be overcome with sheer numbers. And I’ve been stepping up production lately.”

Fisher grumbled. “Then why haven’t you turned me?”

“Because I need you on the inside,” Ian explained with exaggerated patience. “I need you to tell me when Camille is unprotected.” Even Ian’s dozen fledglings couldn’t take on both Camille and Gabriel at the same time. Hell, he wasn’t even sure they could take Camille, otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered trying to get the Guardians to take care of her for him.

Fisher was silent for a long time. Ian held his breath. He’d taken a huge risk recruiting this mortal—Harvey knew way too much about Ian’s plans for comfort. But Ian needed a spy, and it wasn’t like any of Camille’s other fledglings, slavishly loyal, would help him.

“She’s alone right now,” Harvey said. “I just came from there. She and Gabriel had a fight.”

Hope surged in Ian’s chest, but it was too late to launch an attack tonight. “If they keep fighting, we’re home free.” An exaggeration, to be sure, but if Fisher began to doubt him, he might be stupid enough to tell Gabriel or Camille the truth.

“The other initiates and me are supposed to take her to the opera tomorrow night. Gabriel never goes.”

True, but Ian could hardly set his fledglings on her and her mortals in the middle of the street. The fledglings didn’t have the power to hide the fight from prying mortal eyes. Maybe they could manage it with his help, but he couldn’t afford to be anywhere near the fight for fear of what Camille could make him do.

Gabriel might not go to the opera, but chances were he’d be hanging around the house beforehand anyway, keeping Mommy nice and safe. Unless they were still fighting.

“Call me at this number if Gabriel isn’t at the house tomorrow night,” he instructed Fisher. “Otherwise, we’re going to have to be patient.”

“This isn’t your normal cell phone number.”

“No, I ‘borrowed’ a cell phone. I don’t want to leave any unnecessary evidence lying about. But this phone should be good for tomorrow still.” Surely the authorities wouldn’t find the body that soon, if at all. Ian had gotten very, very good at hiding bodies.

“All right, then. I’ll let you know.”

Ian closed the phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. If he got lucky—for once in his life!—by this time tomorrow night, Camille and Gabriel would be dead, and he would be the Master of Baltimore.

***

Gabriel strutted into the room, all pride and attitude. He closed the door behind him, then turned to Jules. He sniffed the air, then wrinkled his nose.

“You stink of Eli,” he said, releasing Jules from his glamour.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jules asked, unable to keep a hint of challenge out of his voice. Gabriel’s very existence tweaked his nerves, set his teeth on edge.

Gabriel opened his mouth to answer, but Hannah—surprise, surprise—interrupted before he could get a word out.

“So, Gabe, you said you had something to tell us?”

Jules almost laughed at the look on Gabriel’s face as he blinked at Hannah.

“Gabe?” he asked, sounding appalled.

Hannah’s face wore another of her irrepressible grins, and Jules had to admire her pluck even while he cursed it. Luckily, Gabriel seemed more amused than angered.

“You should learn to treat your betters with respect,” he said, his voice holding a hint of a growl, though his expression showed grudging admiration.

“When I find my betters, I’ll respect them just fine,” Hannah quipped back.

Jules groaned. “Hannah, please, for once in your life—”

“I haven’t dined yet tonight,” Gabriel said, stalking closer to Hannah, who held her ground though she had to look up to meet his gaze.

“Is that what you came here to do?” she asked. She oozed bravado, but Jules knew she couldn’t possibly be as unintimidated as she was pretending to be.

“Perhaps.” Gabriel reached out with his index finger, his obvious intent to touch her face. She jerked away from the touch, and Gabriel smiled.

“I thought you didn’t like to pick on mortals,” Jules said, hoping to draw Gabriel’s attention away from Hannah.

It worked. Gabriel turned to him, sneering. “True enough. Were I to dine on your little mortal, she would not suffer.”

“I’m not his little mortal!” Hannah said indignantly, but Gabriel ignored her.

“Would you suffer, Guardian?” asked Gabriel.

Jules hoped he didn’t flinch at the thought. “Whatever you want, leave her out of this,” he said. “She doesn’t work for Eli. She’s never even met Eli.”

“But you work for Eli,” Gabriel said, his lip curled in distaste as if even mentioning his father’s name pained him.

“I do.” Or did.

“And you hunt vampires and kill them.”

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it.

“You’re a traitor to your own kind.”

“Your mother seems to think you’ve killed your fair share of vampires yourself.”

Gabriel shrugged. “We all have our foibles. And those I’ve killed have richly deserved every torment they suffered at my hands.”

Jules bristled. “And the Killers the Guardians destroy deserve to die!”

“Don’t give yourself airs. You’re but a step removed from the rest of us. Had my mother made you, you would have hundreds of kills to your name by now. It was only chance that gave you a choice not to kill. A chance that was denied to the rest of us, the ones you so self-righteously murder.”

Something akin to guilt stirred in Jules. In truth, he was lucky. If Ian had had his way, if it hadn’t been for the Guardians, Jules himself would be a Killer right now.

“Oh, yeah, you seem real unhappy with the situation,” Hannah said. “I can tell killing people just breaks your heart. I feel really sorry for you.”

A weird light shone in Gabriel’s eyes as he started to turn toward her. Jules caught a glimpse of his fangs and his heart nearly stopped.

“Hannah, please,” he said. “Shut up before you get us both killed. Gabriel, if you have any quarrel, it’s with me. Leave her out of it.”

Power crackled in the air. Even Hannah seemed to feel it, the starch going out of her spine. She took a step backward, then came to a stop with a visible effort. Jules wondered if he should use his glamour to keep her from getting them in any more trouble, but from the look on her face he guessed she was out of quips.

Relief flooded Jules’s system when Gabriel turned away from her. Anger still simmered in those gray-green eyes—eyes Jules now realized were the exact same color as Eli’s—but it was a controlled anger.

“Finding out I’m Eli’s son must have poked some holes in the halo you’ve given him. Yes, Saint Eli practices preferential treatment for Killers who are of sentimental value to him.” Gabriel’s voice seethed with scorn and contempt. “My dear Da gave me this,” he said, tracing the jagged scar that marred his cheek, “but when it came right down to it, he didn’t have the balls to kill me. Would you like to know why?”

Jules felt as if his very soul cringed. No, he didn’t want to know. But Gabriel was going to tell him anyway.

“Because if it weren’t for Eli, I wouldn’t be what I am.”

The shock of those words stole the breath from Jules’s lungs. He shook his head. “No,” he said, the word weak and unconvincing. “I’ll never believe that Eli made you.”

“How about my mother? Will you believe he made her? Because he did, you know. That’s why she still feels inclined to do what he tells her to. Being his fledgling—”

“No!” Jules shouted, lunging at Gabriel. His fangs had descended and his fury reigned supreme. Hannah screamed a warning, but he didn’t care what happened as long as he stopped the words flowing from Gabriel’s mouth.

The next thing he knew, Jules was lying face down on the floor, a heavy, booted foot pressing on the back of his neck. He blinked away a haze of confusion, wondering how much time had passed since Gabriel’s glamour had taken him.

“Shall I snap your neck and put you out of your misery?” Gabriel asked, pressing down harder with his boot.

Jules had no doubt the older vampire was capable of carrying out his threat. Considering how heavy his heart felt, perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad.

“Eli came by his sainthood relatively recently,” Gabriel said. “It was very inconvenient for him that he happened to be the Master of Philadelphia when he changed his stripes. He killed his fledglings one by one, but in his sentimentality, he spared my mother and me. Instead of killing us, he merely banished us forever from our home. A sure sign of his great mercy.”

“You’re lying,” Jules ground out, the words barely audible with his face mashed against the carpet.

“Tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.”

The pressure on the back of his neck let up, and Jules sprang to his feet, whirling around. But Gabriel was gone.

Jules stood staring at the door through which Gabriel had disappeared. Every predatory instinct in his body urged him to charge out in pursuit, even though he knew he couldn’t catch him and couldn’t hurt him even if he did.

“God, I hate vampires,” Hannah muttered under her breath.

Right now, Jules shared that opinion. How could Eli have created a Killer like Camille? How could he have created a vampire at all? He billed himself as a defender of the human race, and he had unleashed that creature and her son!

“You okay?” Hannah asked.

His breaths came quick and shallow, his fists clenched at his sides as his fangs descended. There was no one here he could vent his rage on, but how he wished to kill right now!

Hannah snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Jules. Come in, Jules.”

He drew his lips away from his fangs and glared at her. The last thing he needed right now was to have her poking at him. One wrong word out of her, and the walls around his temper might crumble.

“I know you’re pissed,” she said, “but let’s not go off the deep end. You don’t want to give Gabriel that much satisfaction, do you?”

He just continued staring at her, letting her glimpse the beast that always hovered just below his civilized surface. Letting her see just how dangerous he was.

Her eyes widened. “Jules, you’re scaring me.” Her voice quavered ever so slightly. “You look like you want to hurt me.”

Paradoxically, now that he’d scared her—just as he’d meant to—a hint of remorse crept in to mingle with the anger.

“There are a lot of people I’d like to hurt right now,” he said. His voice held a hint of a growl, and he doubted his expression was much less intimidating. “You’re not one of them. At the moment.”

She held up both her hands. “Okay, I hear the warning loud and clear. I’ll behave like a perfect angel.”

A little more of the rage drained out of him. “That’ll be the day.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I know, I’m not really angel material. But I’ll try really hard.”

“Good idea. And before you ask, no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Got it. Bottling it up inside you is really a much better idea anyway.”

“Hannah …” The growl was back in his voice.

She raised her eyebrows. “What? I was agreeing with you.”