Prince of Shadows (20 page)

And didn't that sum up the difference between them in a nutshell. Angeline had been all light and smiles and happiness, and he'd been a grumpy bastard.

Memories filtered through his mind, but this time he was able to smile now by the gentle way they wrapped around him. It had been good. She'd balanced his sullen nature, kept him from drifting too far into the dark. But as much as he'd love her, she hadn't been meant to be his forever.

Gabby. Just thinking about her twisted him up in knots, both the good and bad kind. He loved her so much, would worship the very ground she walked on if she'd let him, but the thought of losing her was driving him mad.

He'd known he was bonding with Gabby. Known it was the real deal. Had thought he'd accepted that eventually his feelings for his mate would hit him on a level that, as much as he may have wished otherwise, he could never have experienced with Angeline. The compatible pair bond that he and Angeline had formed shadowed in contrast to what he felt for Gabby. He thought that would feel wrong, but it didn't. Angeline and their unborn child would always hold a place in his heart, but Gabby was his heart
and
soul. And he knew Angeline would understand.

She would also have been the first one to tell him to stop being stupid and get off his sticky backside and go claim his mate.

He'd run this morning. Those chronic feelings of impotence raising their ugly head again as he realized that loving her was not going to be the cure-all to the darkness that had shadowed her life. Which was damn ironic considering how often he danced with the dark shadows of morality. Maybe it wasn't about him saving her. Maybe it was about them saving each other.

But first he had to get back to the base and convince her to take on his sorry ass as a mate. They'd figure what they needed to do together.

More at ease than he'd been in a long time, he shifted, willing himself along the currents toward the base. He made it most of the way when something hit him: a feeling—terror—that ripped him right out of the shade and sent him smacking into pavement. He groaned, then screamed, arching as a darkness far different from the shade's welcoming solace swelled around him.

“Dude, you all right?”

The darkness eased. Chest heaving, he lifted his head and stared through blurry eyes at the alarmed face of a disheveled teen and his two buddies hovering a couple feet behind him.

Not an attack. Not on him. But that meant…

<<
G
abby!>>
He struggled to rise, his thoughts far from here and the confused trio of teens, but with his mate who was not where he'd left her.
<>

For a moment they connected, a brief moment where her terror grabbed for him and clung like he was her lifeline. And then she was gone. Ripped away. The very pulse of her essence winking out as if it had never existed. Valin staggered, the stunning impact of loss curling around his heart and squeezing so hard he swore it stopped.

Not
yours, hers. Told you this would happen… told you…

“Gabby, no!” He clawed at his chest, as if he could reach in and pump the organ back to life again. Only it wasn't his…

“Gabby…” He'd lost her. Lost. Gabby.

His legs buckled. Someone grabbed him, helping him down to his knees. “Dude…you having a heart attack…”

Whatever else the boy said was drowned out as Valin began to scream.

Valin materialized in his room, his movements quick and efficient as he gathered what he would need. Too long had passed since he'd fallen. He wasn't sure how much time, just that the street had been empty when Valin finally screamed his vocal cords raw, the eerie silence suggesting that the teens and anyone else unlucky enough to be in the area had fled in fear from the crazy naked guy in the street. Probably best. When he'd lost the ability to express his grief, his emotions had switched to the next best thing: anger. It had fueled him on the journey back to the base, his only thought to find and kill the bastard who'd taken Gabby from him.

Clothes, shoes…his knife. Fuck, where was his goddamn knife?

Gabby's room. He'd never gotten it from her after the merker attack that night.

Gabby, oh God, Gabby. He sucked a deep breath into his tight chest, bracing his hands on his knees to keep from hitting the floor with his already abused knees. He would scream again if he could, but since he didn't think his vocal chords would respond, the only recourse he had left was to weep. He couldn't do that now. Not until after he'd found her. And he would find her. She was alive. She had to be. The other option was not acceptable.

It had occurred to him when he'd come to his senses in that empty street that there were other reasons why their connection could have been severed, the most logical being that she'd lost consciousness and had simply yet to wake. Wasn't that what happened to Roland when Karissa had been taken?

But
he'd had the blood bond, so he knew and could find her. You have nothing.

No, not nothing. He knew approximately where she'd been. And whether he had to move heaven and hell to do it, he
would
find her, because if he didn't?

Don't go there.
That was the road to insanity and a sure one-way trip to absolute darkness. If Gabby was truly gone then he would not be able to find his way back, and God help anyone near him if he were to reach that journey's end.

Determined not to waste any more time, he sent out a general ping through the base for Bennett. Almost immediately he got Bennett's absentminded return ping. He followed the response back to Jacob's planning room, then stood in the doorway as he watched the two men face off amongst a handful of other soldiers.

Though a couple of Jacob's soldiers noticed his presence, neither Jacob nor Bennett did, and since they were discussing something that, turns out, Valin was eager to hear, he settled in against the doorframe to listen.

It didn't take him long to pick up the bits and pieces of the story he'd been missing. Annie had somehow disappeared, a ransom note delivered: Gabby for Annie. For a moment he saw red, his anger flaring and burning as it found a new source: Fucking selfish brat, if it hadn't been for her…

He took a deep breath, focusing on the conversation again. Jacob, besides sending scouts out and a smattering of patrols to defend the area, had also sent out the command to prep everyone—new recruits included—for war. Bennett was arguing the wastefulness of such actions, demanding instead that they contact the Paladin council and ask for their aid.

“We can't involve the council,” Valin said in a voice that sounded far calmer than he felt.

Bennett spun toward the door, fixing him with a lethal glare. “Why the bloody hell not? They may be our only chance of getting Annie out of there alive…wherever there is.” He mumbled the last under his breath.

“There is somewhere on the north edge of the city.” He pushed off the doorframe and walked over to the table the men had been facing off over, glancing down at the smattering of tack-heads on the map. The greatest concentration was near Prospect Park. “You're not even in the ballpark if you're concentrating your efforts there.”

“That's where the note called for the exchange.”

He would have rolled his eyes if he could have mustered the effort, but he just fucking didn't feel like it. “Yeah, and I'm sure that's where they're holding Annie.”

“Why do you think she's being held at the northern end?” Bennett asked.

“Because that's the approximate location of where Gabby was when I lost…” His breath hitched, unable to go on against the remembered despair of that moment when Gabby's essence had been cut from his senses.

Bennett's eyes widened. He reached out, clasping Valin's shoulder in silent support. “Valin…I'm s—”

“She's alive,” he growled, cutting the Paladin off before he could say the irreversible word. “I lost connection with her, that's all. There are a million reasons why that might have happened.” And only one very probable one that would mean the end of his world.

She's alive. She has to be alive.

Bennett nodded, dropping his hand. “If you think she's been taken too, then the direness of the situation is even worse than I believed.”

Valin knew what he was getting at and didn't give a shit. “And bringing the council into this will make that worse, not better.”

Bennett's mouth thinned, the muscle along the length of his jaw twitching as he ground his molars to bite back the words he obviously wanted to say.

Not. Dead. Because if she was his world was on a free fall to destruction and there was a good chance he just might take the rest of humanity with him.

Jacob tapped the table, nodding his head curtly as if they'd made a decision. “I need to finish gathering my soldiers and we need to leave. Now. Too many hours have passed since Annie was first missing.”

Valin shook his head. On this he and Bennett saw eye to eye. “No offense, but we need more of a strategy than running off in a vaguely northerly direction and hoping not to be ambushed when we draw near.”

“And I suppose you have a plan?” the man asked in a deadly low voice.

“Does anyone have a phone on them?” Valin asked the room in general.

Jacob blinked, but crossed the room, grabbing up a cell from his desk at the back.

“Who do you plan to call?” Bennett asked, his eyes narrowed speculatively.

“The one Paladin I can trust to care about saving Annie
and
Gabby.”

Bennett tipped his head to the side. “You think maybe Alexander?”

With how closely Senior was probably keeping the aider and abettor? Valin shook his head, twisting his mouth up in a semblance of a smile. “Nope. I'm going to call Gabby's father.”

***

The phone slipped from Roland's loose grip, the beep signaling that the call had been ended sounding on its fall to the wool rug. He couldn't move, couldn't think; the shocks were hitting him too fast.

Roland had hardly had time to come to grips with the thought that Gabby was in fact okay, then further had the shock that he was her dad laid at his feet. After the events of his turning he'd been too angry to accept, too self-centered in his own misery to connect the dots and come to the same conclusion himself, but now, with the slick sweat of fear coating him, the crunching sensation in his chest, he knew without a doubt that what Valin had suggested was true: Gabriella was his daughter. And if she had been taken by their enemies, there was a damn good chance he'd never get to tell her how glad he was.

He looked up at the sound of the bedroom door creaking open. Karissa shuffled down the hall, yawning even as her eyes locked on him with concern. “Roland? What's wrong?”

He cleared his throat, shaking his head. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you.”

She'd come in late last night after spending almost forty-eight hours straight at her brother's side. Roland had been itching to talk to her about Valin's visit the day before, but one look at the circles under her eyes had him sending her to bed instead. After all, he'd gone almost ninety-four years without even knowing he had a daughter; what was another few hours before sharing the shocking news with his mate?

Too
long. You waited too fucking long.

“Roland?” Karissa crossed to him, her brow knotted with worry as she slid her arms around his waist and looked up at him expectantly. “Why are you blocking me? Correction, why have you
been
blocking the bond?”

“I'm sorry, I didn't even realize…” He took a deep breath, trying to release some of his tension in the comfort of her embrace, simultaneously letting go of the walls he'd built around his turbulent thoughts. He couldn't project, but Karissa could read him anyway, merely one of the miracles of being her bond mate.

“Valin found Gabby,” he told her to clarify the most pertinent of what must have been an avalanche of turbulent thoughts.

Her eyes widened, relief spreading across her features before her brow furrowed again, marring her face with confusion. “But this is good. Why are you so upset?”

“Do you remember how I was turned? How I said there was a woman? A succubus.”

She nodded, pulling her bottom lip through her teeth as he watched her mind tumble toward the obvious conclusion. “Roland, does that mean…”

“There's a chance, a good one, that Gabby might be mine.”

“Oh Roland…That's wonderful.” A smile spread across her lovely face, her grip tightening around him in a hug. “You didn't think I'd be mad, did you? You know I would love someone to talk girl-talk with.”

“You unman me.” He closed his eyes, his love for her, for her acceptance, overwhelming him. He knew what this cost her. Knew that she wanted children of her own, but given what she was, what he'd made her, she'd never have them. He felt so deficient in the fact that he couldn't provide her heart's desire, had half-feared she would feel awkward that he had a child by another, so her obvious happiness, the bright love for his child that streamed across their bond, was almost enough to have him crying tears of joy. Except for one thing.

“Roland?” she asked again, her happiness dimming as his misery fed back across their link. She stepped back, searching out his face for an answer.

“She's missing. Valin thinks she might have tried to trade herself for the null that broke into Haven.”

Her hand lifted to her mouth, his fear, her terror eating up the air in the room. “Oh no…” A second later she was pushing away that fear, her shoulders straightening as her face set with determination. “Do we have a plan yet for getting her back?”

And that's why he loved this woman. Fear, hopeless odds, neither ever stopped her when it came to fighting for someone she loved.

“Not yet, but we will,” he said, taking her hand.

***

Christos stopped inside the dimly lit room, waiting for his eyes to adjust. It had taken him longer than he thought it might to subdue his prodigal daughter enough to leave her unattended, and he worried that his men might have become…creative…in their torture of the null without him there to provide instruction. He was a bit surprised to find only two bodies in the room. One the unconscious form of the null stretched out on the bed, the other his chief surgeon who was currently tying off his last suture.

“Where is Stephan?” Christos asked, having detected his heavy residual scent in the room.

Cyrus shrugged, setting the thread and needle on the steel tray on the nightstand as he stood to face his master and king. “I don't know. He got frustrated and left.”

“Frustrated?”

Cyrus jerked his head toward the bed. “She doesn't respond to a thrall.”

“Ah….” And Stephan was such an egotistical bastard that he probably took that as a failure. “And you? What do you think of her gift's resistance?”

“Me?” Cyrus lifted his brow, his mouth curving up into a smile. “I consider her a welcome challenge.”

Christos grunted, moving over to the bed to study Cyrus's work so far. The ravaged neck that Cyrus had just finished stitching would have been Stephan, and he made a mental note to speak to his second about risking the commodity's life. The rest? Well, he had to admit that Cyrus had a skill for the type of pain that wouldn't actually kill, but would make the recipient wish he would. Results had proved Cyrus's method highly effective in breaking the spirit, but also time-consuming.

“You might not have as much time as you normally do,” he warned. The moment Ganelon got wind that Christos had captured the null, he could be assured that the bastard would be breaking down his door. And no way was he going to hand her over—or his other ace in the hole for that matter—without making sure that no matter where they were, they'd answer to him first.

“Hmmm. That does make things more difficult.” Cyrus looked at him with glowing red eyes. “How far did you want me to take this, my king?”

“However far you need in order to make her break. Just don't kill her.” Christos's gaze flicked up toward the ceiling and the present that waited for him on the top floor of the other wing. “And keep her in a state that she won't interfere with my other project, of course.”

“Of course,” Cyrus agreed, sweeping his arm in a wide arc as he tipped his torso toward the floor.

Christos swept by the bowing vampire, his blood already churning with anticipation on how next to break his daughter. Oh yes, Gabriella was indeed proving to be the best welcome-back-to-the-living gift a minion of his Lord Lucifer could hope for.