Vampire Mistress (8 page)

“Mr. Smith.” With additional effort, she kept her tone pleasant, professional. “I’m so glad you stopped in before you left. There’s some paperwork I need you to look over. Mr. Barnabus, if we’re finished . . .” She raised a brow, and looked back at the vampire, hoping her expression was suitably neutral and unassuming.

His lip curled, revealing a flash of prominent fang. “Not finished, Miss Naime. But done for now.” She had the disturbing feeling he was laughing at her, in the nasty way a cat laughed at a mouse for thinking it had escaped, when the cat knew exactly where the mouse’s nest was and would be waiting there later. “If you happen to meet ‘someone’ named Daegan Rei, you tell him that he takes one of mine, I’ll make one of his. He’ll understand.”

Fortunately, there were two openings to the room. The vampires took the other one back toward the lobby, so they didn’t have to come anywhere near Gideon, though the other two vampires kept their gazes locked with the vampire hunter’s until they turned and followed Barnabus. Gideon, however, didn’t take his eyes off of them until they disappeared around the corner.

“Thank you for not interfering.” Anwyn spoke after a still moment, realizing they’d both remained silent, waiting until they heard Jack, the doorman, obliviously bid the vampires good night. She touched the earpiece. “We’re clear, James. They’re gone. I’m with a client now, but will come to the security office shortly.”

Gideon’s hand moved from her hip to her arm, turning her toward him. Anwyn drew in a breath at the feel of his heated palm. “I didn’t give you permission to touch me, Gideon.”

“I thought we pretty much agreed playtime was over,” he returned, his gaze shuttered. “Who is Daegan Rei, Anwyn? I’ve never heard of him.”

“You found out my name.”

“I listen. That’s how I found out you might be in a tight spot. Heard your security chief telling a couple of your guys to be ready if Anwyn needed help dealing with a Code Seven. Which I assume means unruly guests, rather than specifically vampires. Answer my question.”

Her chin came up. “I believe we already covered that. You haven’t earned the right to question me. I’m also sure you heard me say there’s no guest here by that name.”

“I saw the marks. You’ve got a vamp claim on you, whatever you want to call it.”

“Keep your voice down.”

He stepped closer, so the heat between the two of them caressed her face, made her press her lips together in irritating need for what they’d left unfinished. She could have helped him to surrender, given him so much of what he needed. But sometimes a toy was too broken to be fixed, right?

“Do you really know what you’re doing, Anwyn?” The true concern in his gaze leaned on her already thin defenses. He was used to protecting, took it seriously. Seriously enough that it may have destroyed his potential to give any part of his heart to another, as she’d clearly seen tonight. “You can’t be friends with one of them. Their whole world comes with them. Trash like what just left. Does your vampire understand that?”

“You don’t have the right—”

“Don’t play Mistress with me. This is your life—”

“Nothing about what I do here is play,” she shot back, low. “Now, get out. I may not have the manpower to throw those three out bodily, but I think James and his crew can handle you. And remember”—she tossed her hair back—“I’m merely some vampire’s bitch in heat.”

His jaw tightened. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” Her nerves, stretched thin by that near miss, by the personal truths his observations had touched, snapped. “You couldn’t have been more repulsed if you’d seen open weeping sores on my leg. So don’t pretend like you care. This is about you wanting the whole world to see things your way. Black and white. Vampires are evil, and should all be dead. Well, I can tell you something. I’ve seen evil up close, and it didn’t have a whiff of vampire to it when it took what it wanted. It’s not the physical form that makes something evil.

“And one more thing.” She forged on when he opened his mouth. “Nothing outside of you destroys who you are, what you want to be. If you’re strong enough, you can put it back together, no matter who or what shatters you. From everything I’ve seen, you’re strong as hell. So when you look in a mirror, stop blaming vampires for the wreck you’ve made of yourself. There was no vampire in that room tonight. Whatever did or didn’t happen there was your fault, and your fault only.”

She stopped herself, appalled at her outburst. She prided herself on her calm, her reserve, and here she was, snarling at him with almost as little control as he’d demonstrated earlier. His expression was nearly bloodless.

“Anwyn—”

“No. We’re done here, Gideon. For the last time, get out.” When he lifted a hand, she stepped back. “Don’t try to touch me.”

If he did, she was afraid the many things roiling through her now would detonate. She should have had two brandies. What she hated most of all was that she wished Daegan were here. She wished there were someone in the world she could rely upon and trust, no matter what. It was an old longing, and a dangerous one. She shoved it aside.

“Anwyn.” Ignoring her demand, he settled his hands on her shoulders, those long arms easily reaching over the distance she’d put between them. His hands were strong and sure. Reassuring. Gideon’s gaze was steady, not seeking anything from her, but offering something of himself.

“I’ll go, I promise. But are you sure you’re okay?”

Damn it, damn it.
Goddess save her from alpha males, and their irritating habit of switching from emotionally closed, dysfunctional pains in the ass to knights in shining armor in a heartbeat, sweeping a woman’s legs right out from under her.

She drew a deep breath. With deliberate intent, she closed one hand over his wrist, knowing that while she was doing it to appear composed, she was using the contact to actually reclaim some composure. “Thank you, Gideon. Yes, I am. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way.”

His lip curved at the corner, a wry self-deprecation that surprised her. “You weren’t all wrong. Doesn’t mean I enjoy hearing it.”

She shook her head. “I meant saying you don’t care. I know right and wrong matter to you. Protecting those who can’t protect themselves. But I can protect myself. You don’t need to worry about me.”

He brushed a hand across her cheek. “Too late.” Then he hooked his thumbs in his jeans pockets, as if irritated with himself. “I won’t come back here. Not to the club. But . . . if you find you’d like a cup of coffee or something tomorrow . . . You do have a life outside here, right?”

“As much as you have a life outside of what you do. It doesn’t often go well when I try.”

“Well, we’ve already established I’m a train wreck, so what do you have to lose from visiting the crash site and having a latte at the same time?” He sighed, his hands curling as if he needed the restraint to keep from touching her. “I’m rough, and I fuck up everything, Anwyn. But I don’t dress things up, and I don’t play games. When I figure something out, I say it pretty plain. I shouldn’t want anything more to do with you. You’re right about the way I felt, when I saw that mark. The way I feel about them.” He shook his head, a quick jerk, when she stiffened. “But the other things that happened between us . . . I’m no good for any woman, and I fully expect you to tell me to fuck off, but I’ll only be here a little longer. No matter how stupid it sounds, how little sense it makes to either one of us, I want the chance to see you again.”

The residual heat of their battle became a different kind of warmth as he stumbled over the words. But then, she’d known it was a smoke screen all along. “That is a terrible apology,” she observed after a long silence. “Probably the worst I’ve ever heard. You’re not really sorry about the way you acted, but you want to see me again.”

“Well, me and Don Juan, we don’t hang out as much as we used to.”

Reaching out, she touched his face. A long time ago, she’d learned to live in the moment, just as she’d told James. Just because they’d had a pretty bad moment, it didn’t mean this moment couldn’t be better. She had to proceed cautiously, though. It had been a far too interesting night, and while she believed in seizing opportunities, she was careful about her grip. And he was correct. Just because he couldn’t shake the inexplicable connection he felt to her, nothing had changed in his opinion of vampires or those who associated with them. Wanting to be with someone who represented what a man despised usually led to more self-hatred. Gideon was already carrying around a world’s worth of that, enough to bring down everyone in his proximity if his rage and frustration with it got out of hand.

The problem was, she couldn’t shake that lingering sense of connection, either.

Gideon’s hand closed over her wrist, a gentle but firm touch, his thumb sliding up her pulse as he turned his head, pressed a kiss into her palm. He held that position as she stroked her other hand through his damp hair, down to rest on the juncture of his throat and shoulder. “All right,” she said quietly. “Let me think about it. Check back at the desk tomorrow night. If I decide to meet you, I’ll leave a message there. But I’ll set the time and place, and you may want to work a little harder on that apology in the interim.”

“I can’t apologize for my beliefs, Anwyn.” His jaw set, lips pressing together. “I won’t lie about that just to see you again. I can’t be any less than what I am.”

“Can you be more?” Before he could respond to that, she added, “You should never lie to me at all. But I can tell you, Gideon, as repulsed as you are by what I may or may not be, there’s a part of you burning to understand it. Maybe that’s as much why you want to see me again as anything else.”

“No,” he said, locking with her gaze. “It’s something far different from that. Otherwise, I’d be leaving town tonight.”

He stepped back then, but he held on to her hand a second longer before he let go. Anwyn didn’t say anything further, but then, neither did he. His eyes and expression spoke eloquently for him, though the myriad emotions were hard to untangle. Giving her a nod, he turned on his heel and walked away.

After he disappeared and she heard Jack bid him a good night, Anwyn folded her fingers over the heat of his touch. Closing her eyes, she imagined him stepping out into the darkness, swallowed by the shadows. While he was so close to being consumed by them, he’d been possessed of a deadly confidence and lethal calm with Barnabus. Sometimes, in the struggle to strip a man bare, she forgot how formidable and competent he could be with his armor in place.

Because, as she well knew, those shields weren’t an illusion. People needed them for the daily battle. The problem was, if Gideon had lost the person beneath them, he’d lost the war.

Good grief, enough of the Obi-Wan internal narrative.

She shook her head at herself, shook herself out of this moment. It was time to deal with James and any other pressing matters, take a long, soaking bath and catch up on paperwork. Feed her troop of feral cats. No matter her difficulties taming feral men, she was determined to gentle a feline enough that it would come live in her quarters, curl up in her bed at night. A dependably regular warm body, for Goddess’s sake.

Daegan had teased her about it. He’d pointed out that, while she could easily adopt a kitten from a shelter, she’d apparently be satisfied only with a fierce tom she’d tamed herself.

The thought gave her a bit of a smile. Time to turn it all off for a little while. Like Daegan, her day was her night, and she’d sleep most of tomorrow away, in preparation for Saturday night. It was even busier than Friday. Still, she might make time for a late afternoon coffee break. Particularly if it meant the chance to tame another fierce tom.

Nursing that smile, holding on to it, she strode back into her world.

7

H
E
takes one of mine, I’ll make one of his.

Gideon woke, his heart thumping hard against his chest. Glancing at the clock, he saw it was three thirty a.m. Of course. The mystics all said that evil had a special hold on the three a.m. hour, and that was why so many woke near it, as if something had crawled over their graves. Only his intuition was sharp enough to narrow it down further than that.

Sitting up on the abysmal piece of plywood that passed for a mattress at his cheap motel, he rubbed his face, listening. His body was tense and loose at once, as it often was right before he entered a fight. But there was something else here. A bitter taste in his mouth, a tightness in his gut. Anxiety. He didn’t feel anxiety, not when he was fighting a vamp. Not for some time now. Only if the vampire had a victim . . . someone’s life at stake.

I’ll figure out another way to get a message to him.

“Son of a bitch.” He was out of the bed, pulling on his shirt and jeans fast. What had he been thinking? He should have freaking stood watch outside her place. Hell, followed them out of the club, started to track them. Unlike his conflicted feelings about killing Trey, there was no question in his mind about
those
three making a positive contribution to their human community. Stupid, fucking idiot.

The battered gray Nova had a dragon’s heart. It roared to life as he squealed onto the road from the hotel parking lot, headed back toward the city’s west side, where the lights of Atlantis were still on. He hoped it was a good sign, that the Mistress of Atlantis was shining just as bright.

He practically barreled through the door, mowing down a couple patrons. James was handling the closing shift at the desk. His gaze snapped up, then cooled at the sight of Gideon. “I believe Mistress Naime—”

“Is she here?”

“That’s none—”

Gideon snarled, brought his fist slamming down on the desk. “I don’t need to see her. Is she here? Have you seen her tonight? Verified she’s okay? He said he was going to leave another kind of message. You did hear that, right?” While most of her staff wouldn’t know a vampire from a pasty actor with fake fangs and a trendy hairstyle, it had been clear James was in the loop. Gideon wasn’t in the mood to play games.

The man’s eyes narrowed, but he reached for the radio on the desk. “Tom, I need a location check on Mistress Naime. When was the last time you saw her?”

“About two hours ago. She said she was heading to bed after she checked with the kitchen staff. Aka, after she fed those cats we’re not supposed to know she feeds.”

James’s lips twitched, but Gideon leaned into his personal space, earning another warning look. His hand was already below Gideon’s line of sight, and while he was sure the man had a baton or Taser under there to calmly use if needed, he didn’t give a shit. “Has anyone checked on her?”

“Her private rooms are on an underground level,” James said flatly. “There are no windows or other access points that wouldn’t go past me.”

“I mean, did anyone see her coming back from feeding the cats?”

“That’s the alley outside the kitchen. The staff would have noticed if she didn’t come back in.”

“This was your Friday night crowd. You’ve had what, a billion people come through here? Would the staff really be paying attention to whether or not she came back in?” Gideon clenched his jaw hard enough to break. “Check on her. Get a visual. Where’s that alleyway?”

James proved he was worth the money Anwyn paid him by not getting his dick in a twist at Gideon’s attempt to order him around. In fact, Gideon could see him considering his words seriously, though his gaze remained steel. “If it gets you out of my face, it’s on the east side, in the back, behind the Dumpsters. We’ll go check her rooms. But I can tell you, you aren’t going to get anywhere with the stalker routine. She’ll eat you for lunch. She doesn’t intimidate.”

“That’s what’s worrying me,” Gideon said curtly. “I’ll be back here, waiting for you.”

He strode back out the front doors, checked the gun in the small of his back and wrist gauntlets loaded with wooden arrows as he cut past the corner and into the darkness on the east side. No matter what demons had rattled him earlier, this he knew. He fell into hunter mode, moving with the shadows. He knew where his weapons were, was ready to use them in a blink. Faster than a blink even, his intuition on full alert and sharp as a blade.

Despite that, he hoped he was wrong, that he was crazy paranoid and she was fine. She was going to be in her bed, as James said. Maybe she’d don some satiny, flowing robe that showed off all those curves, march up to the lobby and tell him he was a fucking menace who needed to be committed. And that would be just fine.

As he slid deeper into the alley, his heart rate increased. Laura had been killed in an alley. Her pale yellow dress had been soaked with blood, the gold chain with his senior high school ring wrapped tight on her throat to keep it out of the way of the vampire who’d torn into her carotid. The ring idea had been old-fashioned, yeah, but she’d been like that. So had he. She’d even liked wearing his varsity jacket. Guess the two of them would have made more sense in the fifties. When what scared people were Communists, not vampires. Not facing a lonely, empty existence because you threw away what you loved, didn’t protect her when she needed protecting.

Fuck it. Focus.

He saw the line of Dumpsters, the service door to the kitchen. He remained motionless in the darkness, his gaze coursing over every object, identifying it, searching for movement or any still spot that felt wrong. There was no wind in the alley to carry his scent, but if they’d heard him coming, they could have melted back. He knew he wasn’t alone. He felt it, crawling up his neck. But it wasn’t someone ahead. It was behind. It was—

He twisted, the gauntlet already in position to fire. The arrow sliced through the air high, his arm knocked upward. His body was spun around and slammed face forward into the brick. A relentless hand clamped on the back of his neck, another pinning the arm.

“I am not here as your enemy, vampire hunter.”

The voice was how a ghost’s might sound. A whisper in the night that sent chills up the spine and made the gut tighten. Then the grip was gone. When he shoved away from the wall, whirled around, nothing was there. Except the voice, now coming from above.

“She is here.” With those words, the whisper became a hiss and the shadow sprang from the fire escape above him. It landed on the Dumpster and then made the jump into the debris behind it, practically faster than he could follow, and in total, eerie silence.

Gideon’s feet were in motion, his heart in his throat. When he skidded around the Dumpster, past and present meshed, and he reeled, disoriented.
No.

So much blood. She was wearing . . . God, what
was
she wearing?

After seeing her earlier in the latex and sexy silk, the simple cotton nightgown embroidered with blue flowers at the modest vee neckline was a bit startling. A blood-soaked ribbon caught in her hair suggested she’d had it tied back, maybe her face washed, ready for bed. She’d been wearing ridiculous, cliché bunny slippers. One was still half on her foot. The other was upside down, a few feet away, the pale pink now marbleized brown with dried blood.

He focused on the clothes, because he couldn’t yet handle seeing the remains of the woman beneath them. He shifted his gaze to the male crouched over her.

The ghost who’d spoken in his ear tilted his head up in a quick jerk, an animal’s movement. Gideon had an impression of a pale face, glittering dark eyes and close-cropped dark hair. Fangs glistening as the vampire bared them in a snarl. In a coil of unleashed power, he leaped.

Gideon cursed and activated his other gauntlet, but the vampire had already cleared him, the rush of air startling for its force. It whipped him around, let him see the vampire land on what he’d flushed from the shadows. Another vamp, young, maybe just a fledgling. He had a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. Not high enough in the pecking order to be in on the entertainment, but left behind as a scavenger to enjoy the dregs, because what Gideon saw on the ground had been a group effort.

When one vampire took a human life for an annual kill, the amount of visible blood was very little, of course. Anwyn had been attacked by a vicious pack that wanted only to play. The purpose here hadn’t been nourishment.

I’ll figure out another way to get a message to him.

Perhaps the fledgling tried to run, for his muscles tensed with the futile effort. However, like a baby gazelle flushed by a cheetah, the predator was on him before he could manage more than a frightened hiss. One strangled protest, and then Gideon’s ghostlike vampire had taken his head with a blade he hadn’t even seen. A simple, economical slice, made with enough force that the decapitated portion spun off and hit the pavement, rolling across the alley. The body sank to its knees in a parody of how it would have moved with a brain to direct it, then collapsed, alone. His executioner was already gone.

No, not gone. The tall, swift vamp was back in a half kneel next to the body. Gideon didn’t want to face it, didn’t want to know they were too late, but he forced his feet to move. As he did, he kept a watchful eye on the shadows in the alley, covering their backs instinctively, even though it was obvious the vampire was more likely to sense a lingering threat than he was.

As Gideon approached, he saw that her chest and neck had been torn open, exposing glistening muscle. The bodice of the gown had been ripped down to her navel. Blood gathered in the crease beneath one breast. He saw puncture marks in the nipple, around it.

He remembered the soft press of her lips, the sharp intelligence in her eyes, the foolishly brave way she’d held her ground against the three vampires. How she’d seemed to know him from the inside out . . .

The nightgown was hiked up. They had bitten her everywhere, everywhere they could find tender, sensitive flesh. The vampire was doing the same assessment Gideon was doing, such that they reached the juncture of her splayed thighs at the same time. There was torn and bleeding flesh there as well, unmistakable bruising.

The vampire’s hand passed over her upper thigh, his thumb wiping away the blood that had obscured the bite scar to which Gideon had reacted so strongly earlier in the evening. A scar he was now certain this vampire had made. This had to be the elusive Daegan Rei.

Those dark, glittering eyes rose, and though the vampire’s face remained unreadable, Gideon sensed the monster beneath the opaque surface. Barely leashed violence emanated from the tensile body. Since he wasn’t bothering to fight a similar fury rising inside of him, it was an unexpected moment to feel a click of solidarity, a shared purpose, with the creature that was his enemy. Then Daegean’s head turned, and he was leaning back over Anwyn.

Gideon couldn’t bring himself to look, couldn’t bear to see the empty, staring eyes. But the vampire touched her forehead, and suddenly Gideon’s heart jump-started, so abruptly it was almost painful. She moved, her lips parting to let out a soft moan of pain.

Though the vampire cut him a measuring glance, Gideon lunged forward, dropping to one knee on her other side.

“What,
cher
?” Even with his exceptional hearing, the vampire had to fold his large frame down farther to bring his ear to her mouth. He closed his eyes at her whisper, one large hand cradling her face with undeniable tenderness. “It’s all right,” he murmured.

“What is it?” Gideon demanded in a low voice. “What does she need?”

The vampire shook his head. “She is saying, ‘Stop.’ Over and over. She is in shock.”

Gideon closed his own hand over her other one. It was sticky with blood, the fingers twitching. He was afraid to hold it too tightly, for fear it would distress her further. Instead, his heart broke when she clasped his hand like a lifeline, her dilated pupils going to him. They began to swing back and forth between him and Daegan Rei in an eerie rhythm, like one of those old cat clocks. Though it was unsettling to watch, the rock of it seemed to soothe her.

She had some abrasions around her mouth, the corners of her lips torn. Bruises where she’d been struck in the face. She would have fought; he was sure of it. They’d had to knock her down. While her hair was disheveled, he could tell it had in fact been braided, held with that ribbon still snarled in the thick strands. He wanted to fix it for her, comb it out and braid it again, as if by doing that he could fix what had happened.

What the hell are you doing?
She was in pain. She needed help.

Laura had died when he went for help, though. She’d died alone. He hadn’t even done that right. He couldn’t let go of Anwyn’s hand, not when she was clasping it so weakly. He wouldn’t.

“Do you have a cell phone?” he asked. Dimly, he realized his voice sounded hoarse, stricken. “We need to call an ambulance.”

“No. They cannot help her.”

Gideon jerked his attention to the vampire. “What the fuck are you talking about?”