Secrets in the Shadows (18 page)

Drake flicked a glance at Gabriel, who was inspecting his fingernails with great concentration. Had the little shit told his mother what he’d been up to last night? Somehow, Drake doubted it. Getting between the two of them seemed like a very bad idea, but Drake wasn’t sure how to avoid it.

“That was my plan. But apparently your son had other ideas.”

Gabriel tore his attention from his manicure and pierced Drake with one of his unnerving stares. “I’d be happy to be rid of you, old son,” he said.

“Then perhaps you should have kept your mouth shut last night.” Out of the corner of his eye, Drake saw the ever-so-slight dip of Camille’s shoulders. So, she hadn’t known.

Gabriel shrugged. “I can’t imagine what you mean.” He wasn’t even trying to sound sincere. Why he bothered with the words, Drake couldn’t guess.

The countenance Camille turned on her son would have scared Attila the Hun. Certainly it wiped the smugness from his face. He rose slowly, eyes fixed on Camille as though she might strike if he looked away for an instant. Maybe she would have.

Power crackled in the air, raising the fine hairs on Drake’s arms. Instinct screamed at him to get the hell out before something exploded, but he fought against it and stayed put.

It was rare indeed to find a master vampire who would allow a fledgling not her own to be part of her “family.” Without that master-fledgling bond, there wasn’t the comforting assurance of total control and unshakeable authority.

Camille was older than Gabriel, so she could probably take him in a fight, but it would be a fair fight. The kind of fight no master vampire would willingly engage in. It seemed with strength came an inherent affinity for bullying.

Camille bared her fangs in silent threat. For a long, tense moment, Gabriel met her gaze head on. The temperature in the room dropped sharply, the chill deeper than anything Drake had experienced in Eli’s presence. Drake actually shivered in the cold.

Finally, Gabriel broke the eye contact, his gaze dropping to the ground. Anger and rebellion still sparked in his eyes. He was backing down, but not gracefully. Did he know he was one false step away from being killed by his own mother?

“Don’t disobey me again,” Camille said.

The rebellion flared higher in Gabriel’s eyes, but he kept his gaze focused downward.

“Go now,” Camille continued. “Come back to me when you are ready to take your discipline.”

Gabriel gave a curt bow, then whirled toward the door, striding out with anger riding in his wake. The room still had not warmed, and Drake was not overly pleased to have Camille’s attention turn to him. She seemed very much like the type who might make a habit of killing the messenger.

“Once again, you and your friends have proven to have an unwholesome influence,” she said. Her face had gone still and inhuman, an expression reminiscent of Eli’s, except for the rage that brewed behind her eyes.

“Gabriel’s hatred isn’t our fault.”

“I could kill you with little more than a thought.”

Yes, she could. But would she? Drake remained silent. What could he possibly say?

She shook her head. “But I promised Eli I wouldn’t. Not without provocation.” She smiled, an expression both beautiful and icy. “It takes little to provoke me, however. And as Ian failed to return to me last night as I’d ordered, I could suppose that your friends have killed him. Even Eli wouldn’t intervene on your behalf if they have.”

Drake’s stomach dropped. Surely Jules wasn’t that stupid. He knew that Hannah would suffer if he killed Squires. Besides, Squires was more than he could handle.

“I highly doubt that they’ve gone after Ian,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “And even if they have, surely they wouldn’t have caught him and managed to kill him in so little time. Squires is Jules’s maker.”

Camille looked vaguely disappointed. “True. Perhaps there is some other explanation. But I will require you to remain as my … guest until I can discover my fledgling’s fate.”

He should have just left town. To hell with Jules, and even Hannah. No one was forcing them to stay here, in danger.

“I won’t have much success hunting down Jules and Hannah if I’m serving as your hostage,” he pointed out, without much hope of success.

Camille smiled that cold smile again. “I said you would be my guest, not my hostage. I don’t as a general rule keep my guests confined to my house.”

An ornate grandfather clock chimed the hour. Camille pursed her lips. “This has all been most inconvenient timing,” she said. “I had plans for dinner and the opera this evening, and you’ve made me late.”

Drake had to bite his tongue to keep from saying something stupid. He paused just long enough to get his distaste under control, then said, “I had best be off, then. I’ll get Jules and Hannah out of your hair as soon as I can.”

“I didn’t mean to rush you,” Camille said, and there was something ugly about her voice despite the blandness of her words. “Please, stay for dinner.”

His stomach turned. “Kind of you to offer, but I’m not hungry.” He could go about ten days without feeding, so he had a full week left before the need would be upon him.

“Perhaps I can tempt you into indulgence.” She picked up a delicate brass bell and rang it, the sound incongruously sweet and cheerful.

“I expect our tastes run in opposite directions,” Drake said, wishing he could get out of this room immediately. Better to know Camille was killing some innocent victim than to see it. Or be forced to participate.

One of the side doors opened and a cluster of mortals stepped into the room. Three men, dressed in tuxedos, and one lone woman. A girl, really, no more than eighteen or nineteen years old. A gag had been stuffed in her mouth, and tears streamed from her terrified eyes. Drake’s nose wrinkled as he scented her fear. His temper stirred when he picked out another scent. The girl had been raped, no doubt by one or more of the tuxedo-clad men. Drake clenched his fists against a swell of impotent fury. There was nothing he could do for this poor girl, not with Camille determined to hurt her.

Camille smiled at him and licked her full lips. “Are you sure you’re not tempted?”

Oh, he was tempted all right. Just not in the way she thought. Had she not been in the room, he would have happily fed—on the mortal men who seemed to be so enjoying the girl’s pointless struggles.

Camille turned to the girl and bared her fangs. A muffled scream rose in the girl’s throat, but the gag wouldn’t let her give full voice to it. Camille glided closer, eyes aglow with anticipation. She didn’t even use her glamour. The girl was fully conscious and terrified. Drake could hear the frantic hammering of her heart from across the room.

In her desperate search for rescue, the girl’s eyes locked on Drake’s. He held her gaze, reaching out with his glamour. Her eyes went dull and she stopped struggling.

Camille put her hands on her hips and turned to Drake. “Release her. I want her to feel herself die.”

It was all he could do not to charge across the room and seize Camille by the throat. But attacking her would do no one any good. He had to find some other way to help the poor girl.

“Don’t take out your anger with us on an innocent,” he said. “I won’t interfere with your feeding, but—”

Camille laughed. “Why, how generous of you to allow me to feed. I’m glad to know it will bother you to see her suffer. You’ve caused me no end of grief already. Now, I would like to cause you some as well.” She stepped back and gestured at the girl, who stood unresisting in the arms of one of her captors, her eyes glazed over. “If you hadn’t come to call and chased my son away, he’d have argued for a merciful kill, and I would have granted it. No matter what he says, he is squeamish about hurting mortals, especially females. A lesson he learned from his father and has never been able to set aside. So in a way, you are personally responsible for her suffering.”

Camille licked her lips and gazed at him eagerly. “Unless you’d care to kill her yourself. I think I’d very much enjoy that.”

Drake’s heart sank. If he kept the girl protected by his glamour, he could kill her painlessly and she wouldn’t even be afraid. He’d never killed an innocent, and he wasn’t sure how his conscience would absorb the sin.

He took one step toward the girl, then stopped and shook his head to clear it. What was he thinking? If he killed this girl, he’d succeed in making her death painless, but Camille would simply find another victim for her evening meal. Two would die instead of one.

Camille laughed. “Poor fool. You really do have an excess of conscience. Either kill her or release her from your glamour. Those are your choices. Now hurry up. I’m going to be late for the opera as it is.”

He glared at the beautiful, inhuman creature and wished with all his might that Eli hadn’t sent him down here. If he could turn the clock back twenty-four hours and erase all his newfound knowledge, he would gladly do it. But that wasn’t an option. He cursed Camille for her cruelty, and he cursed Eli for making her. Then he dropped his gaze to the floor and released the girl from his glamour.

***

Hannah was hungry enough to eat a horse, but the Harborside Inn didn’t exactly do room service. At least, not any kind of room service she was interested in. She and Jules agreed—what a surprise!—that wandering into a restaurant for a casual dinner wasn’t the brightest idea, so she settled for a lukewarm hotdog on a stale bun from some no-name convenience store. Given the neighborhood, she attracted way more attention than she would have liked and was very glad to have Jules at her side.

Even so, when they left the convenience store, she noticed a couple of thuggish teens peel away from the shadows and amble in their direction. She could almost feel their hostile eyes boring through her back. She glanced over at Jules, who was as usual wearing a full-length cashmere coat and a rakish black felt hat. He looked good enough to eat. But he also looked like a tempting target. Not good. Her gun was a solid, comforting weight in her coat pocket, but she sure as hell didn’t want to have to use it.

A police car cruised slowly down the street. Hannah glanced at it from the corner of her eye and saw one of the cops giving her and Jules the once over. Great. They were drawing attention from all corners. Perhaps this wasn’t the best part of town for them to go incognito after all.

Jules’s face was closed and shuttered, his eyes strangely distant. She didn’t think he could afford to be lost in thought just this moment, so she gave him a gentle poke with her elbow.

“Carolyn called this afternoon,” she said. That got his attention. He blinked and came back from la-la land.

“What did you tell her?”

Hannah sighed. “I didn’t tell her Eli’s little secret, if that’s what you’re asking.” She hadn’t liked keeping secrets from her best friend, but she figured she couldn’t drop a bombshell like that over the phone. “She asked me what you’re planning to do next, and I told her it beat the hell out of me. So, what’s your grand plan? Or are we still making this up as we go along?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Well work fast. I don’t think hanging around this neighborhood has good long-term prospects.” Not unless Jules planned to go on a killing spree. The two punks from the convenience store were still shadowing them, no doubt waiting for the right opportunity to attack. They’d get a rude surprise if they did.

Jules glanced over his shoulder, making no attempt to be subtle. “You’re not afraid of those two, are you?”

So, he hadn’t been completely oblivious to his surroundings after all. “I’m sure you could take them, but do we really need the hassle? It’s not like we don’t have enough problems already.”

She would have loved to get out of town the moment the sun set, but they were still without wheels. She’d called the impound lot, and they’d insisted she had to pick up the car between the hours of nine and five. At the Harbor Court, she’d have felt safe enough leaving Jules alone for an hour or two while she went to the impound lot. At the Harborside Inn, she wouldn’t feel safe leaving him alone for five minutes. So, no car.

“True,” Jules agreed. “Let’s just stay on the main street until they lose interest.”

She doubted the punks were going to lose interest when the two of them looked like easy money, but she didn’t say so. “Regardless, we can’t stay here indefinitely. Street punks aren’t the only problem. You’ve got to figure out where you want to go, then we’ll have to figure out how to get you there.” And even when they figured all that out, Jules would still have some serious issues to work through.

“Of course,” she continued, “that’s easier said than done. How can you pick a place to live where you won’t be trespassing on a killer’s territory?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what about food? You’ve got a nice stash in that cooler of yours, but it won’t last forever. And keeping the cooler iced up was a pain in the ass when we were in a nice hotel with an ice maker. How will you—”

“I don’t know,” he said again, more abruptly. “One problem at a time, if you please.”

She swallowed about a half-dozen more questions. She already knew the answer would be “I don’t know.” She liked Eli less and less the more she learned about him, but he was still seeming like the lesser of about a hundred evils right this minute. Jules seemed unlikely to agree.

“We have to get your car back,” Jules said. “Or can you just rent another one?”

She might be able to, if she went to a different rental company. She honestly didn’t know. But she also knew she had to get that rental back, unless she wanted to be arrested as a car thief. “We’ll just have to go by the lot and hope we can persuade someone to give us a break.”

“And how will we do that?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

He got the hint and nodded briefly. They were almost back to the hotel. “Do you suppose we can get a cab to come pick us up at this miserable place?” she asked. It had taken a touch of Jules’s glamour to persuade last night’s cabbie to venture into this part of town, but it wasn’t like he could use his glamour over the phone.

“I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”