Prince of Shadows (21 page)

Gabby was back in the corner of her room, the one that she'd spent way too much time curled up in during her seventy-nine-year sojourn here. She hurt, her entire body groaning with the mammoth effort it took to breathe. But it was her spirit that was bleeding out.

Christos was alive. And though the body may have changed, the evil core had not. From the moment she'd been turned at the age of fourteen until her escape four months ago, she'd fought and resisted, clinging to the remnants of her humanity, etching out the barest of an existence from beneath the whims of his will. She didn't kid herself into thinking that she'd just been that strong. She'd survived then because he'd had other things to do…and because, she suspected, he found her amusing and enjoyed playing with her. She didn't fool herself into thinking she'd be afforded such luxuries again.

She was going to die here. Soon. Today even. Because the alternative was unthinkable.

He
means
to
break
you,
another her whispered from deep within her mind, the one born of blood and darkness, the one who'd taken her pain and molded it into an angry determination to never, ever yield.

I
know
, she replied, her gut clenching at the visual aids offered from her own memories.

We
can't let him.

I
won't
, she promised.

A pause.
He'll go after those you've helped next.

Warm tears coursed over the bridge of her nose, combined, then trickled across her temple toward the cold floor. No heat here. Not that vampires needed the warmth. No electricity either, though not because they wouldn't have enjoyed such luxuries but because they relied so heavily on magic for their wards. To keep the unwanteds away…and to keep their prisoners within.

Magic and electricity didn't mix well. And this entire place pulsed with the first. Which meant that she had failed before she'd even had a chance to succeed.

Annie was either dead, dying…or they were keeping her someplace else. Regardless, her coming here had played right into Christos's plans.

The door swung open. Even knowing it was useless, desperation made her lunge toward the opening. The predictable lash to her mind cracked like a whip on her fraying shreds of hope. She moaned. Her brain muddled with pain. Her limbs unresponsive as rough hands grabbed her under her armpits, dragging her up. It was as if her body wasn't her own, and all she could do was watch as another tied her wrists and looped them over the hook that hung in lieu of the light fixture from the ceiling.

Not Christos—the coward. After subduing her and stuffing her behind the magical bars of her current prison, he'd yet to come himself. Only the others. Her kin. Her torturers. Christos would use them to peel away every layer of resistance she possessed before coming himself.

She closed her eyes, willing her mind to another place as the hands roamed her body. She hardly cringed as fangs pierced her skin, lapping, suckling, before moving on.

It
doesn't matter. They can do what they want to your body, just protect your soul.

She tried to laugh but choked on the sound. Soul? She still wasn't sure she had one. But even if she did, mental vacations could not help her. She was living her nightmare. And no matter how she fought against the sweeping tide of horror, she knew it was only a matter of time until she succumbed to the onslaught and drowned.

Think
of
Valin. Close the connection between your brain and body and think of how full your heart felt when he held you in his arms.

She swallowed tears. Yes. Valin had held her. He'd made love to her again and again, his gaze burning as he made her unravel in his arms. Until the morning. When he left.

<only reason he ever touched you was to have his revenge.>>

She moaned, shaking her head against the sibilant whisper that threatened to sever her last lifeline.

<>

He
made
love
to
me. He kissed me. He…

<>

No…

<>

Don't listen…Don't listen…

Fangs pierced her throat, their weight suffocating against her windpipe as her attacker pulled directly from the carotid. Her limbs went heavy, clammy sweat beading on her skin and chilling her. Her ears began to ring, her limbs shaking involuntarily.

Holy
crap. He's going to drain me dry.
Her brain screamed at her to struggle, though her limbs still refused to respond under the lock Christos had placed upon her.
Draining
me
dry. Going to die.

Valin…God, Valin!

<>
Her attacker pulled away, his tongue swiping across the tender wound to start the healing. How sweet.

She opened her eyes to glare at the asshole that had made her realize how very unprepared she really was to die. Her eyes widened, her breath catching in her bruised throat as she stared at the man fondling her breast: Christos.

She forced herself to swallow her horror. She'd survived before and would again.

“So you finally decided to come face me yourself?” she asked, inserting every bit of bravado she could muster into her voice. “A girl could almost feel loved.”

“Ah, Gabby, how I've missed the sweet lash of your tongue.” He ducked down, his tongue darting out to cleanse a path of still-moist blood that dripped down between her breasts before moving on to lap at a still-oozing wound below her nipple.

Hate boiled in her veins, her body shaking with the need to respond despite the bonds upon her will. Those bonds would fail, had to, because somehow, someway she would kill him. Sink her fangs in him and drain him dry. And with his blood she could kill every one of the fuckers who'd touched her.

Careful. Remember what he wants. Don't let him win.

Hands cupped possessively beneath her breasts, Christos lifted his head, his eyes filled with crimson fire as he breathed deeply of the pulse point at her throat. “It's no wonder your Paladin was able to fuck you. Monster or not, you are one sweet bit of ass.”

And just like that, the bonds snapped. She lunged, her fangs sinking deep in his neck. The first heady mouthful of warmth slid down the back of her tongue. He stiffened, but then sank a hand into her hair, pulling her closer so she had to swallow hard and fast to keep from drowning on his blood.

“Yes, my daughter. Drink. Let my blood heal all your pains.”

No! He tricks you! He poisons your soul with his evil.

For one heady second she continued to drink before the truth caught up with her battered and bruised mind that had been locked in nightmarish reality. She gagged and jerked away, her throat working convulsively around the last drop of toxin coating it. What had she done? Son of Lilith, favored child of Lucifer, Christos had been evil before the abomination of his hell-born resurrection, but now?

Pure
evil. And you've invited him into your body with his blood.

She screamed, but no sound came from her lips. Only in the distant recesses of her mind could her death cry be heard. For it was not her body that died, but something far worse. She, the Gabby she might have been, the child she'd fought to protect for seventy-nine long horrid years, was dying with each pulse that distributed Christos's poison blood in her veins.

Above the sound of her own silent screams came another—a malevolent chuckle that in no way matched the tenderness of the hands lowering her to the floor. “Ah, Gabby, Gabby, Gabby. Where is your savior now?”

***

Christos twisted his head to the side, studying his child as she arched her wet dream of a body up toward his hovering hand. It mattered not to him that her action was an unconscious one driven by the call of like to like as his blood forged a path through her system, completely and irrevocably binding her to him.

Finally
, he thought as he allowed himself the pleasure of caressing the full swell of her offered breasts. His cock immediately sprung to attention, need pulsing through his groin and echoing in the throb of his fangs. Remarkable. He'd touched her before, but never had it elicited such a reaction. Possibly because she'd been nothing but a task to him them. A work in progress to be shaped and molded. But now that he'd achieved his goal?

Is
this
what
Lucifer
felt
at
my
own
rebirth? The pride that comes with knowing you've created perfection?

Christos had been like a harbinger of evil before, but now? Now he was a plague. One drop of his blood and he'd achieved in Gabby what years of transfusions had failed to do. Gabby was his. Her body. Her mind…her soul.

The door creaked open behind him, the coppery scent of the null's dried-on blood announcing the man's identity. “My king?”

“Cyrus, is our guest properly indisposed?”

“Yes, my king. I doubt she will wake for hours yet.”

“Very good then,” he replied absently, his attention fixated once more on Gabriella and the writhing convulsions her body had started going through. How long would they last? How long before she woke?

“My king?”

“What is it?” he snapped, eager to be rid of the voyeur. He couldn't even count the number of years he'd waited for this. Centuries he'd worked to set up the situation in which the conception of a child of light and dark could occur. And decades more before he'd finally found the key to her conversion. But he'd done it. And Gabriella would be the one to earn him his rightful place to the right of his father's throne. That joke of a general, Ganelon, was wrong. Gabriella
was
the prophecy. They'd simply misinterpreted the signs before. But the prophecy was now on the eve of its fulfillment. Fueled by the potency of his blood and the gift of her Paladin heritage, Gabriella could walk into the depths of Haven and begin the spread of the contagion that would burn like a swath of evil through their ranks. The child of
his
blood. His soon-to-be lover. His future queen.

He touched her cheek, undisturbed by the grayish cast to her face. The blood of the master that ran through his veins would now run through hers as well.
<>

“They approach,” Cyrus said, dousing Christos's good mood.

They'd found them more quickly than he anticipated.

He sighed, reluctantly removing his hand. The consummation of the binding would have to wait until later. After she'd fulfilled her purpose. She would come to him then, having bathed in their blood: the perfect match to his evil soul.

“You may lead those I've chosen through the tunnel.”

“And the others?”

His mouth twisted up at the corners, his fangs scraping more flecks of Gabriella's drying blood from his bottom lip. The others: those that had readily embraced Stephan's leadership and even now would prefer to align themselves with his second. They would never get the chance to share his blood. They were unworthy. Unless…“I think, perhaps, it is time for them to prove the mettle of their faith, don't you?”

“My king?”

“Yes, they shall stay. Martyrs for our cause.”

Reluctantly he stood, his eyes dragging one last time over the yellowing bruises and already scabbed wounds covering his bride-to-be's luscious curves.
<love. Then stand. Stand and fight and kill the bastards who did this to you. Kill them all…>>

Valin shifted from one leg to the other, fighting back the lethargy that threatened his muscles. He was tired of waiting. Weary of staring at the eerily still exterior of the run-down mansion. And sick to death of the endless strategizing going on around him. He'd already put in his opinion: Barge in through those thick wood doors, let loose on any fuckers in his way, and get his mate back. But the others insisted they needed some sort of plan of action. As if killing vampires was really all that difficult.

Crouched by him on his right, Karissa reached over, placing a hand on his forearm. “It's okay, Valin. Bennett, Jacob, and their team are almost in place.”

Valin nodded at Karissa to show that he heard her, though he personally considered the flanking technique a waste of time. Both his own scouting and Karissa and Bennett's radar screens had shown no one outside, which meant the chances of a merker force being present were pretty damn slim. First, those factions didn't normally hang together and second, if they were, then why wouldn't the merkers be out here monitoring the property for potential breaches?

Unless Lucifer's minions were really so egotistical as to believe they would not be attacked in their own home.

Or
if
getting
your
asses
inside
is
part
of
the
trap.

Valin grunted, figuring that was the most likely. Either way, the action was all going to occur on the inside, not out here, which meant all the sneaking around to the back Bennett, Jacob, and his team had done was nothing more than a waste of time. No merkers to alert outside and no vampires were running out the back door on this one. Not with the sun breaking through the low-lying fog.

“Do you know what this place is?” Roland asked from his other side, breaking into his thoughts.

“You mean besides a coven's stronghold?” he answered with the obvious, figuring that, like his mate Karissa, Roland was trying to distract Valin enough to curb his impatience. Yeah, good luck with that.

“Yes,” Roland drew out the word, as if Valin was being particularly dense. “But do you know whose stronghold specifically?”

“Should I?”

“This was Christos's power base. There are dozens of other vampire safe houses around the city, but this is where the bastard lived.” He hesitated. “Gabby too.”

Valin turned his gaze back to the home of Gabby's youth. The place where for seventy-nine years she'd been subjected to whatever forms of torture Christos could think up in his attempt to break her. And though he wanted to personally dig up the bastard's body and decapitate him again, Valin couldn't help but be proud of his mate because Christos had never succeeded. Gabby had fought, slithering countless times from his grasp of evil, bending but never breaking beneath his will. She'd persevered and eventually clawed her way free.

But
she's back in there now. And you know what
they'll be doing to her. You've seen it in her memories.

He shook his head, unwilling to go down that road. He'd helped her move beyond the horrors of her past before and he'd do so again if need be. The important thing now was getting her the heck out of there. As quickly as fucking possible.

“I'm a great fucking father, aren't I? Leaving her there.”

Valin turned to look at Roland. Realized the vampire-Paladin must be referring to past mistakes rather than discussing strategies of the present. Good thing, too, as Valin would have cut off the man's balls before he let him walk away. Furthermore, he really couldn't argue with Roland's self-assessment of his former stellarness. Though in all fairness, Roland had a shitload on his plate back then, and hadn't actually known Gabby was his. From snippets around the Paladin water cooler, Valin heard that Roland had tried to help her where and when he could. That, added to the fact Roland was here now, risking both his and his mate's life on a potentially already doomed rescue mission?

“You're not the shittiest father of the year.”

“Gee, thanks,” Roland muttered, eliciting another pull at the corners of Valin's mouth. The fact of the matter was Roland was here, by Valin's side, ready to fight. And Gabby was in there waiting to be rescued, which they were going to do in
mucho más rápido
fashion—as soon as Bennett and his buddies got their asses in gear, that is.

Valin cleared his throat, his eyes fixed firmly ahead. While he was waiting, there was no time like the present to kill…or be killed, right? “I'd ask you for her hand so that when we get her out of here…you know…but frankly I don't give a damn if you approve or not.”

Roland shifted, and damn if Valin couldn't feel the weight of his crimson gaze on him. “That's okay. I don't care if you want my blessing or not.” He paused, leaning in closer to whisper, “Just know that if you ever hurt her, if you ever cause her so much as one tear, I'll fucking kill you.”

“Roland!” Karissa gasped, but Valin ignored her, turning his head to meet Roland's red eyes.

“I would never do that,” he vowed.

Roland lifted his brow, a blatant not-buying-it-bastard.

“She's my mate.” Emphasis on the
she is
, not
was
. She had to be in there. In there and alive.

Roland's eyes narrowed, the crimson subsiding as he glanced past Valin to meet Karissa's gaze. Valin felt the soft brush of their silent communication. Roland's probably asking
WTF, does he actually believe that shit?
and Karissa's own perplexed
believe
so
.

“Yeah, unfuckingbelievable, right?” Valin cracked his neck first one way, then the other. “Bands of misfits, vampire-Paladin who walk in the sun, freaks of darkness like me. Makes you wonder if He's even still up there or not.”

“He is,” Karissa said, her voice soft yet filled with conviction. “And He has a plan.”

Valin's brow furrowed as he turned to stare at her, wondering when she'd grown two heads. “Then why the fuck is Gabby in there?”

It was Roland who answered, his hand gripping Valin's shoulder to draw his attention back to him. “Have you forgotten it's our duty to make sure His plan comes to fruition? Annie, Karissa, Gabriella…they are as much His warriors as the rest of the Paladin. You know as well as I that being one of His soldiers often comes with hardship.”

Valin chewed on that, not liking the thought that Gabby, if truly one of His warriors, would be called upon to place herself in danger. If they got her out of there—no,
when
they got her out of there—he wanted to carry her away, wrap her up in silk, and stuff her as far away from Lucifer's hordes as he possibly could. But if she was His, then Valin wouldn't be able to do that, nor would she let him.

He squirmed, thinking his ability to play in the gray area between good and evil could be part of some grand plan, that he might be as beloved as someone like Logan or Alexander—it just felt odd and somehow blasphemous. “You really think that what I am, what I can do, is really part of His plan?”

“No, I don't know what the fuck you are, you freak.” The quip was delivered with such indifference that Valin had to chuckle.

“Takes one to know one, huh?”

“Damn straight.” Roland sobered, his face grim as he met Valin's gaze. “I don't presume to understand how we fit into His greater purpose. But I know one thing. If you're my daughter's mate, then you're not half as bad as I or even you think you are.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Don't thank me.” He looked back at the shuttered mansion. “Just help me get Gabriella out of there.”

***

Unloved. Unwanted. Evil…Monster.

Gabby lay on the floor, her body twisting and contorting to escape the horrific truth seeping through her veins. Like black oil, the dark poison eating at her caught and flared, burning away the agony of her loss until she didn't even remember what that loss was. All she knew was the fire's blistering heat had come, consumed, and obliterated everything but the last command her master had given her.

Stand. Stand and fight
.

Breathing through the smoldering heat in her lungs, Gabby pulled herself up to her feet. Not sensing anyone nearby to actually fight, she surveyed the room. The dark paneled walls stained darker by their gaslights, the floor sticky with blood, the hook in the ceiling, and the coil of rope tossed negligently in the corner. Something about it all struck a deeply buried chord of familiarity. She tested the connection, automatically recoiling from the images that swept over her, before she forced herself to stand before the onslaught.

That's right. That had been her life. Though no longer. Now she had but one purpose. One reason for being here: revenge.

Stand
and
fight. Kill all the bastards who've done this to you.

Good idea. Now all she had to do was find them.

She moved out into the hall, making her way on some sort of subconscious memory toward the main stairs. The place seemed strangely empty. As if there had been a mass exodus by its occupants. As if they knew she came and thought it prudent to vacate the building. Wise, but it did nothing to ease her hunger.

Blood. Death. Destruction. Nothing else would feed her need for revenge.

She neared the central landing. Movement caught the corner of her eye, someone making his way down the last curve of twisting stairs. She edged forward toward the banister, twisting her head. The soft hiss of arguing voices rose like sweet music to her ears from the hall below.

“…said to remain here,” said a man sitting in the largest leather armchair centrally placed in the spacious foyer. The sour taste of bitter memories had her stomach churning even as saliva pooled in the back of her mouth. Oh, he was definitely one of the ones she would kill, this vampire with his superior sneer.

“You expect me to sit and wait patiently like a lamb for the slaughter!” replied another, presumably the vampire descending the stair. She recognized him now too. His voice at least, and decided he was a fit companion for the impending bloodbath.

She began edging down the stairs, far enough back from the edge to be hidden in shadow, but not so far that she couldn't keep an eye on her quarry. There were almost a dozen of them there, but only the man in the armchair and the man she followed down seemed to be close enough in status to quarrel.

The vampire sitting in the armchair pulled back his lip, revealing fangs that he had to have forcefully elongated. “Are you so weak that you fear a handful of part-bloods?” he addressed the latecomer.

“Not weak. Wise. Though it's not the part-bloods I fear, but who comes with them.” He stopped before the vampire Gabby presumed held the higher rank based on the uncomfortable silence that surrounded them. Cowards, all of them. Cowardly enough to torture and abuse, but only when the victim in question was tied up and already weakened.

Kill
them. Kill them all.

“Who?”

The other vampire smiled, folding his hands. “Roland.”

Gabby tripped, her hands grabbing for the banister. Somehow she managed to grasp the grime-covered oak without making any noise but for her thudding heart…surely they could hear her heart.

That name. It meant something…

Unloved. Unwanted. Evil…Monster.

She sucked in air, trying to fill the hole that had opened in her chest with great gulps of air. Why the name would cause her such pain, she couldn't fathom, but it was there, drilling through her like her insides were a cavity that needed to be eradicated.

<< He abandoned you…remember?>>

That's right. That was right. He left her. Abandoning her to the type of monsters who gathered on the marble below her now.

“Cyrus said nothing about Roland being with the part-bloods.”

“Because Cyrus knows how to pander to your ego, you fool. And saying the name of your executioner might even make
you
balk.”

Gabby didn't see him move from his chair. One second he was there, the next he was across the room pinning the other vampire to the wall by the throat so that his feet dangled well above the floor.

“Don't call me a fool,” Armchair sneered, the violence of his action centering her enough that she was able to resume her progress down the stairs. The situation was so intense no one noticed her, even though she'd stopped trying to hide her approach. She made it all the way down, her hand resting on the finial before a single one of the vampires in the room looked over at her.

<>

Bull. Shit. She could make them hurt as much as they'd hurt her. If not for the fact she was too damn impatient.

“Gabriella?” a vampire from across the room asked, his eyes wide as he stared at her. His clothing was coated in dried blood. The scent? Her own.

And what do you know…he'd just volunteered to die first.

Gabby leapt across the room.

***

Annie woke to the adrenaline-pumping sound of a dying scream. She stumbled out of bed, her legs collapsing beneath her, sending her smacking onto the floor. Pain hit her, firing across every nerve in her body and stealing her breath. For long precious moments she lay there silently gasping for air, her hands clawing desperately at the damp carpet.

It was the second scream that seemed to open the block on her windpipe. Another surge of adrenaline doing for her what she could not do herself. She had to get up. Had to figure out what was going on.

Where was she?

Don't know.

What happened?

You
don't want to know.