Cain's Identity (Scanguards Vampires Book 9) (24 page)

Cain instinctively took a step back. “Disposed of?” What was Robert suggesting?

The captive dropped his eyes to the floor. “My apologies if you think that’s not the right word for what you did. No matter whether he deserved it or not. But you slaughtered him; you let him suffer like an animal before you put him out of his misery.” Robert made a dismissive movement with his hand. “Well, it’s all water under the bridge now. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? And now you’re king. And guess what, you find it just as difficult to make the right decisions as any of your predecessors.”

The words hit him hard. Had he, Cain, really killed the previous king? No, that couldn’t be. He wasn’t an assassin. He was honorable man with ethics. Not a murderer, and for certain not a man who inflicted undue pain. He didn’t torture people.

“You’re mistaken.”

“Why deny it?” Robert asked, meeting his eyes. “Everybody suspects it, though only few know with certainty.”

“That’s enough!” Cain ground out between clenched teeth.

“See, you can’t even take the truth, but you expect me to accept being falsely accused. I’m innocent. Faye believes in me.”

Cain looked away and tried to clear his mind. He didn’t want to dwell on Robert’s revelation that he was a king slayer, because wouldn’t that mean that he, Cain, was evil?

“Faye says you’re her friend.”

“She needed a shoulder to cry on when she thought you were dead.”

“I thought Abel would have been that shoulder.”

Robert scoffed. “Abel? She was avoiding him as much as she could.”

The words only reinforced Cain’s suspicion that Abel had been trying to drive a wedge between him and Faye, even though it appeared that Cain had driven that wedge in himself now by not coming clean with her. It was something he needed to do, or he would lose her. But Faye had given him one other condition to fulfill: she wanted Robert’s freedom.

Cain looked back at his prisoner, staring long and hard at him. Could he take the risk to believe in Robert’s words and free him? Maybe it was time to take that leap.

“Guard!”

***

“Guard! Open the fucking door!” Cain yelled from behind the heavy cell door.

Abel felt like rubbing his hands together and only refrained from it because it was a childish gesture. However, it didn’t make him feel any less giddy. The timing was perfect. And even though this had not been his original plan, he couldn’t have planned it any better himself.

Cain was in the cell with Robert. This was the perfect occasion to pin Cain’s murder on Robert and thus still implicate the Mississippi clan. Everybody knew that Robert had been found with incriminating materials he’d wanted to send to the rival clan. Nobody believed his claim that the blueprints had been planted. Nobody but Abel, because Abel had been the one who had slipped the papers into Robert’s ledger and made sure one of Baltimore’s men would find them there and report it.

It had all worked like clockwork, though Abel had only done it to draw suspicion on the Mississippians, so that once Cain was found dead when the rival clan arrived for the festivities, it would be easy to point the finger.

But the solution that lay in front of him now was even easier. All he would have to do was kill Cain himself, pin it on Robert, then execute him and declare war on the Mississippians.

Abel made a motion to Simon, the guard who was stationed in the cellblock. He was loyal to Baltimore. Simon walked up to him and Abel bent closer, talking quietly into his ear and giving him instructions as to what to do.

Simon nodded obediently and walked to a cupboard. He unlocked it and took out a small-caliber handgun. He screwed the silencer onto its front end.

“Loaded?” Abel whispered.

“With silver bullets.”

Abel took it and cocked the gun. He loved the sound that echoed against the stone walls. “Do you have a stake?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Make sure it’s found in Robert’s cell once we’re done.” Even though Abel was going to shoot his brother with a silver bullet which would incinerate him from the inside out, the end result would be the same. Nobody finding Cain’s ashes would be able to tell whether he’d been staked or shot. All Abel had to do was to remove the bullet and the casing from the cell before he sounded the alarm. Nobody would hear the shot.

“Ready?” Abel asked.

Simon nodded and slipped the key into the lock, then turned it silently. At Abel’s nod, he pushed the door open.

Abel aimed into the dark, his trigger finger twitching.

But he didn’t pull the trigger.

The cell was empty.

Stunned, he turned to his accomplice. “What the fuck?”

The vampire guard looked just as surprised. Only moments earlier, Abel had heard Cain call out to the guard to be let out of the cell. But Simon hadn’t opened the door.

Abel had to think quickly. If Cain and Robert had escaped somehow, it wouldn’t take long until they were coming back around the other side, exposing his plan. He had no time to wonder how they’d done it. He had to cover his tracks. This instant.

“Sorry about this,” Abel said, looking at Simon.

The shot was muffled by the silencer, hitting Simon in the forehead. Slowly the vampire disintegrated into dust.

Abel cursed. He was back to square one, and would now patiently have to wait until he could execute his original plan. So much for golden opportunities.

35

In the tunnel, Cain turned to Robert. “Take off your shirt.”

“What for?”

“So I can blindfold you.” After all, even though he’d found the entrance to the tunnels that John had mentioned and had managed to get himself and Robert out of the cell before somebody had thrown the door open, Cain wasn’t about to reveal all his secrets to Robert. He couldn’t allow him to actually see the tunnels. It was bad enough that he now knew about them.

“One word about the tunnels, and I’ll stake you myself.”

Robert took off his shirt and handed it to Cain. “You have my word.”

Had Cain not heard the cocking of a gun through the door as well as some low whispers, whose origin he couldn’t discern, he and Robert would have been sitting ducks. Dead sitting ducks. Who the would-be assassin had been, he didn’t even want to speculate about at this point.

As soon as Robert was blindfolded, Cain took him by the elbow and guided him through the labyrinth until he reached the secret walkway that led to the king’s suite. He let himself in, dragging Robert with him. When the piece of artwork snapped back into place in front of the hidden door in his room, he turned Robert around his own axis several times.

“Now you can take off your blindfold.”

When Robert did so, his eyes roamed the room. “What now?”

Cain had already marched to the door, but stopped himself before he reached it and rushed to the bedside table. He bent down and pulled a gun from the drawer and holstered it, when his eyes fell on something beneath his bed. A cell phone. His hand instinctively went to his pants pocket, but his cell phone was where it was supposed to be. Not having time to investigate this any further, he rushed to the door and opened it.

“Haven?” he called out.

A moment later, his Scanguards colleague popped his head out of his room, his cell phone pressed to his ear. “Yeah?”

“I need you, now!”

“Gotta go. Kiss the baby for me. Love you,” he said into the phone then disconnected the call and rushed toward Cain. “What’s wrong?”

“I believe somebody made another attempt on my life.”

“Shit!”

“Get your gun.” Then he turned to Robert. “Stay here.”

Haven returned to his room and was back two seconds later, his gun in his hand. Behind him, a sleepy looking Wesley emerged. “What’s going on?” His clothes looked rumpled.

“Go and make sure Faye is in her suite. Then guard her with your life.”

Not waiting for his answer, Cain charged down the hallway, heading for the cellblock, Haven on his heels.

When he entered the anteroom to the cells, Cain already knew he was too late. The door to Robert’s cell stood wide open, but the cellblock was empty. The guard was gone, and so was whatever visitor he’d had. His eyes fell on a cupboard whose door was still swinging as if somebody had slammed it, but failed to let it snap shut. In the cupboard, several guns hung on hooks.

Cain walked to it and sniffed. One of them had been fired recently. He could still smell the residue.

“Shit, look at that!” Haven called out to him.

Cain turned and saw him crouching down near the door to the cell. When he approached, Cain could see what his friend was looking at. A fine layer of ash. Amidst it lay a cell phone and some coins. The keys still stuck in the door.

“Somebody killed the guard.”

Cain nodded and tilted his head toward the cupboard behind him. “One of those guns was fired. And I’m sure once we examine it, we’ll find out that there are no fingerprints on it.”

“Let’s give it a whirl anyway,” Haven suggested.

“You and Gabriel check it out. Then go get Robert and bring him to a safe place.” After this attempt, Cain was certain that Robert had been framed as he’d claimed. “I have to talk to John.”

Cain turned on his heel and left. He found the leader of the king’s guard in his new room on the first floor. When Cain ripped the door open, an only half-dressed John reared up from his bed.

“Cain!” John set his feet on the floor and jumped up. “What do you need?”

“I need to know the truth. Did I assassinate the old king?”

Clearly stunned, John blinked. “How do you—?”

“—know? Robert alluded to it. Is it true?”

John looked down at his bare feet. “Yes.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

John lifted his head. “It wasn’t important.”

“It wasn’t important? I’m a murderer, an assassin!”

“And it’s always haunted you. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to go through the same thing again. You blamed yourself for how savagely you killed him, despite the fact that the old bastard deserved everything that he got.”

All air rushed from Cain’s lungs. “I slaughtered him, didn’t I?” Was that what he was, a man without scruples? A cold-blooded murderer?

John nodded. “When you saw what he’d done, you flew into a rage. And when you saw his victims, when you saw Faye, there was no stopping you.”

“Faye?”

“She was one of the unfortunates he’d locked up in a part of the cellars that’s now been filled in with debris. You found out that the old king liked to make it a sport to capture vampires from other clans and torture them. Faye was one of them.”

Cain rubbed a hand over his face. “Oh, God.”

“I didn’t want you to have to think about all this again. I needed you to have a clear head.”

“Who else knows I killed the king?”

“Your brother, of course. He was your second-in-command when you were leader of the king’s guard. A few others knew, Robert included. But the rest of your subjects only suspect it was you.”

“There must be members of my clan who hate me for it.”

“No doubt, but the few who know for certain never breathed a word about it, and the others won’t raise a hand against you.”

“They’re afraid of me, aren’t they? Afraid that I’ll kill whoever rises against me.”

“Every king has his enemies.”

“And I have more than my fair share. No wonder somebody wants to get rid of me.” Cain paused, taking a breath before asking the question that was most important to him.

“And Faye? Does she know?”

“She knows. She watched you when you delivered the death blow.”

Cain jolted back, shocked at the revelation. “Why would I let her watch?”

“You wanted her not to be afraid any longer. You wanted her to know that you’d slay any dragon for her.”

Cain dropped down onto the bed. Faye knew all his secrets, had seen him at his most savage, yet she still loved him. She was stronger than he could have ever guessed. If she had stood by him when he’d killed the evil king, would she stand by him now when he laid himself bare before her?

36

Faye heard the knock at the door to her suite and stopped pacing for the first time in the last two hours, ever since Wesley had come to see her and told her to remain in the safety of her own rooms until he told her otherwise. She hadn’t protested. Past experience had taught her to heed warnings when their bearer issued them with a glint of fear in his eyes. And the witch had looked alarmed enough to make Faye follow his command without question.

Her heart pounded into her throat when she answered, “Come in.”

Her eyes on the door, she watched it open. None other than Cain stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He remained standing there, his eyes searching hers then running them over her body as if to assure himself that she was all right. That action made her even more nervous. Her hands clasped in front of her stomach, she took a hesitant step toward him.

“What’s going on?”

Cain motioned to the sofa in front of the fireplace. “I think you should sit down.”

So the news was bad. Really bad. Nobody ever asked another person to sit down for good news. “I’d rather stand.”

“Fine.” She saw him swallow hard, before his mouth opened again to speak. “There was an attempt on my life.”

Faye gasped and instinctively pressed one hand against her chest. “Oh, God, no!”

“I’m all right.”

“What happened?”

“I went to see Robert in his cell to talk to him. When I called the guard to unlock the door, I got no reply. But I heard a gun being cocked.”

Her feet carried her to him, and her hands reached for him, finding hold in his shirt. “Cain! Oh, no!” The thought of Cain’s life being in danger cut off her air supply. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

Faye tilted her head to the side. How could he not know? He’d clearly survived. “But you must have killed him. Otherwise, how would you be alive?”

“I managed to escape through the tunnels.”

Stunned, she stared at him. While she was aware of the tunnels and the secret passage way between her and the king’s suite, she didn’t know all the other underground routes. Cain had only shown her the one entrance she needed to know. “There is an entrance to the tunnels in the cellblock?”