To Hell and Back (Hellcat Series Book 4) (21 page)

“
Lea.” A pause, then again, more urgently. “Lea, breathe,
slowly.”

“
Gabi, are you all right?” Kyle’s voice muttered in her other
ear. “What’s Benedict talking about?”

With a huge effort Gabi subdued the storm in her mind.
Avoiding Julius’s and Benedict’s eyes, she sought and found Byron’s
gaze across the table. She stared pointedly at him, and he nodded,
understanding.

“
Ladies, gentlemen.” Byron stood up from his seat, catching
everyone’s attention. “I think it’s time for a short recess. Take a
few minutes to digest and regroup. There are refreshments in the
next room.” He glanced at his watch and at Irene. “We’ll reconvene
in forty-five minutes.”

There were no words of disagreement, though more than a few
suspicious gazes were fixed on Julius and Benedict as the rest of
them stood and began to file out to an adjoining room.

Gabi mouthed a word of thanks to Byron and saw his face cloud
over with concern. She sent him a reassuring ghost of a smile, and
he nodded, leaving the room with the others.

In a few moments only Julius’s retinue, Athena, Kyle, Mac and
Benedict remained. Gabi stood, hoping her legs would hold her; she
felt off kilter, as though the world had shifted underneath her and
she hadn’t moved with it.

“
You and you,” she said, pointing at Julius and Benedict. “We
need to talk somewhere private.”

Julius was close to her, but she was still avoiding his gaze,
and she had blocked their mental connection while she tried to make
sense of this new reality. She pushed away from the table and
strode for the door, anger flooding in to replace the confusion and
shock. Alexander, Kyle and Athena all made to follow the trio as
well, but she turned back and glared at them. Something in her gaze
made all three falter and stop. She didn’t bother with words; she
didn’t know what would come out when she opened her mouth. Better
to limit the extent of the blast when it happened.

She marched down the wood-panelled corridor, the two men
making barely any noise in her wake, until she found a small,
deserted sitting room. A gas fire warmed the room, and book-filled
shelves lined two walls.

“
Seal it,” she commanded Benedict.

His eyes narrowed at her tone, all hint of amusement gone, but
she felt the familiar pressure against her ears as he did as she
told him.

“
Did you know?” Her words were flat as she finally rounded on
Julius, her eyes searching his. The gold in them was all but gone,
the sapphire bleeding to black. They made for a sinister look, and
Gabi resisted swallowing as some part of her psyche reminded her
that she was in the presence of two beings who could kill her as
easily as look at her.

“
Don’t fear me, Lea,” he said, his voice a husky whisper. He
was fighting hard to control whatever emotions were running through
him at that moment.

Benedict moved away from them towards the fire, giving them
what privacy he could in the small room. Julius reached out a hand
towards her, leaving it to her to make contact. She didn’t
move.

“
I didn’t…know,” he finally said, his words hesitant. “I swear
I’m as stunned as you are. Probably more so. I…” He trailed off and
raised his eyes to the ceiling. “It seems so obvious now, but I
never connected the dots. I just explained it all away with the
Vampirism. I’ve just always been different.”

Gabi could understand the sentiment. She hadn’t connected the
dots either despite him telling her about his occasional flashes of
clairvoyance; he’d seen a vision of her bleeding to death at
Dantè’s hand. Then he’d saved her life when the car bomb exploded
in the underground garage, collapsing the mansion and sending both
of them plummeting several floors downward; he’d used his
telekinesis to limit her impact with the concrete floor. Then there
was their inexplicable mental link. Lord and Lady, how could she
not have known? How could he not have known?

“
Touch me, Lea. Open your mind,” he whispered. “You’ll see the
truth. I wasn’t trying to mislead you, I swear it.”

In her anger and confusion she didn’t want to give him the
benefit of the doubt. Didn’t want to be reasonable.

“
I didn’t come here to cause strife between the two of you.”
Benedict’s voice broke in as he moved closer to them again.
“Julius, my apologies, I know I have a propensity for making
mischief when I can, but I didn’t come here with that in mind. I
truly assumed you knew of your heritage. It’s so clear to me; I’ve
known since the first time I saw you. I assumed your Consort would
know too, though suspected you’d have kept it secret from the
others.” He turned to Gabi, his face almost as serious as it had
been at the Princeps’ vote. “Gabrielle, I ask you to do as Julius
suggests. We need to move forward here. The threat against the City
is genuine and imminent. If you need to set your mind at ease over
this, and you have a way to do it, please proceed.”

“
I assume you don’t often beg,” Gabi said dryly, Benedict’s
words stealing the anger and annoyance from her. She knew her anger
wasn’t justified; it was just a quick, easy coping mechanism.
Benedict’s self-deprecating smile answered her question. She took a
deep breath.

“
Actually, it doesn’t matter. Even if you did know, there was
no obligation for you to tell me,” she said to Julius.

His eyebrows drew together in a frown. “It matters to me,
Gabrielle,” he said, reaching over and taking her hand. “I wouldn’t
keep something like that from you, and I don’t want you to believe
that I would.” He pulled her fingers to his lips, kissing the ring
he’d given her, and opened the gates to his mental defences. It was
the first time he’d ever truly let her inside his mind, and he
didn’t only open the gates, he yanked her inside.

It could’ve been seconds or hours later that Gabi became aware
of the feel of Julius’s shirt against her forehead. She was
breathing heavily, and he was holding her, supporting her as she
withdrew from his mind, pulling away from his whirling emotions,
his confusion, self-recrimination and sense of amazement at what
this revelation meant. To him, it meant he had more power to
protect her and his Clan.

“
That wasn’t very subtle, Julius,” Benedict admonished. “You
could do with some training.”

“
Until ten minutes ago I didn’t know I had anything that could
be trained,” Julius replied. “Besides, I seem to remember you
sending her to her knees the first time she met you.”

Benedict chuckled, unrepentant. “I was just showing off,” he
countered. “And testing her.” He threw himself into one of the
wing-back chairs, sprawling gracefully across it, apparently
satisfied that the tension between Gabi and Julius was over. “She’s
very sensitive to all supernatural power. It’s an unusual talent,
and not one I’ve ever seen attributed to Dhampirs.”

“
What are you thinking? Is there something else we should
know?” Julius asked him.

Gabi pulled away from him, looking sharply between the two
men.

“
I’m just musing, Julius,” Benedict said. “If there’s one
thing I’ve learnt in my years on earth, it’s that things aren’t
always as cut and dried as we think. Rules we assume to be written
in stone are more like general guidelines, and there’s almost
always an exception.”

“
Like you,” Julius said, “and me, apparently.” He kept Gabi’s
hand in his as he moved to a double-seater couch and pulled Gabi
down next to him. “You’ve always said you managed to survive the
Turning because you were so young, young enough that your powers
hadn’t fully manifested yet.” He cocked his head at the other
Vampire. “I was a lot older than you when Simone Turned me. How
come I survived? And the biggest puzzle in all of this is how I
became a Magus after I was Turned. I wasn’t born a Magus, Benedict,
my parents weren’t Magi. I didn’t go through any kind of rite to
accept Magi powers. Are you absolutely sure?”

“
I just told you there are exceptions to every rule,” Benedict
pointed out. “I know of cases where Magi are born to couples where
just one of them is Magus, so perhaps only one of your parents
were, or perhaps you were a foundling. Is that not also a
possibility? If you didn’t know of your heritage and didn’t make a
formal choice of whether or not to accept your powers, they would
lay dormant until you made up your mind. Did you never have
anything unusual happen to you as a human? Get a sense of impending
doom before a disaster happened, know what others were thinking,
turn people to your way of thinking even if they didn’t like
you?”

Julius was quiet, giving the questions some serious thought.
Gabi knew without a doubt that Julius was a Vampire Magus, the how
of it wasn’t important, but something else was bugging
her.

“
Benedict, why did you bring this up in front of everyone?”
she asked him. “You could’ve just ruined the tentative alliance
Julius has worked to establish. You already said that you figured
Julius hadn’t told everyone else. Were you just stirring trouble,
or did you have a reason?”

“
While stirring mischief is its own reward, I did need to
deflect some of the attention off of myself, and Julius’s little
secret seemed a good way to do it at the time.” Benedict pulled a
sour face. “If I’d known you hadn’t accepted the truth yourself
yet, I’d have tried something else. But we do need the Council to
stop focussing on me and start worrying about the Dark Ones.” His
lip curled again as he referred to the Elders. He had a serious
grudge against them, which Gabi was going to hear about, but not
right now. Those details could wait a few hours. “We’ve thrown
their attention off me. They already know and trust Julius; they’ll
get over the revelation soon enough. Now we can redirect their
minds back to the matter at hand. Trust me.” He smiled
sarcastically. “I have some experience manipulating a group of
high-ranking, self-important bureaucrats.”

This time Julius snorted.

“
So what’s your plan of action?” Gabi asked, willing to give
him the reins when it came to things she couldn’t beat up or kill.
“What are we going to tell the rest of the conference hall when we
go back? How much are we going to tell them? And how do we get them
back on track?”

“
I think we need to get some of the others here. It’ll be good
to have some extra opinions,” Julius said.

Gabi suddenly felt a twinge of guilt at how she’d sent them
away in a fit of childish temper.

Julius snorted a small chuckle. “Consorts are expected to have
moments of pique,” he assured her. “The Clan won’t hold it against
you. Athena and Kyle may be a different story, though.”

She sighed. “I’ll go and get them.”

Julius held her in place with one hand. “I’ll call
them.”

She felt the brush of his power against her skin as he sent
out the call, and the slight pop as Benedict disengaged his spell
of protection around the room. Gabi wondered if either of them
realised how naturally they’d just fallen into working in unison.
Less than two minutes later several pairs of footsteps approached
the sitting room.

“
Well, that went better than I expected,” Gabi mused on the
drive back to the Estate.

Benedict’s ploy had done the trick. When the meeting resumed,
the focus had shifted away from Benedict’s presence and back to the
problem of the Dark Elders. Athena had more than a little to do
with the smooth acceptance of Vampire Magi in their midst. Gabi had
to give her credit for that. She’d done some fast talking during
the recess and convinced the rest of the Magi Council that both
Benedict and Julius could be trusted as allies. Gabi was going to
be keeping her eye on Benedict, though. While she trusted him to be
helpful against the Elders, her gut told her that there were
ulterior motives at play here, and that Benedict shouldn’t be
blindly trusted in all things. She could sense similar feelings
coming from Julius. He was still reeling in shock from Benedict’s
revelation, though his outward demeanour was calm and in control.
His mind was whirling with possibilities, and he didn’t for a
second believe that Benedict had revealed the knowledge of his
heritage purely to get the Magi Council to move on with their
discussion.

“
Yes,” Julius agreed, glancing over at her, “they were
surprisingly well behaved.”

“
You aren’t happy about the suggestion that you undergo
training, though,” she noted, keeping her tone mild.

Julius was quiet for a long time, watching the road
unseeingly. Gabi didn’t fill the silence, knowing he needed time to
think.

“
Old dogs don’t like being forced to learn new tricks,” he
finally said with a wry twist to his lips. He looked at her, his
gaze serious. “It’s a lot to take in. I guess I just need time to
process it all, wrap my mind around it. Their suggestion is valid,
when looking at it from an outsider’s point of view.”

Gabi had to concede that one, especially after the way
Benedict had sold the others on the idea that having two Vampire
Magi on their side was a major point in their favour. The Magi
Councillors had been quick to counter that Julius was entirely
untrained in their ways.

“
Valid maybe, but not practical.” Gabi snorted. “How much can
they realistically expect you to learn before the Dark Ones make
their move?”