Stefan didn’t seem to agree with my plan because he immediately closed the distance between us. He might not be able to read my thoughts, but he was pretty good at guessing them. Wrapping one arm around my shoulders from behind, he pulled me flush against him while his other arm went around my waist. It was like being engulfed by the larger man. Or like wearing a protective cloak … with fangs.
Mira smirked at Stefan’s possessive hold on me and then wiped her expression clean as she met his gaze over my shoulder. “Is there anyone in particular who has issue with you?”
“Not that I am aware of.” I could feel him give a little shrug as his chest shifted against my back. “The vampires from Budapest still bear me little love, but all has been quiet on that front.”
“Trouble in your domain?” she pressed.
“None.”
I twisted a bit to look over my shoulder up at him. “Domain?”
“My territory. The place I call home.”
“Which is where?”
“Marseille.”
I smiled up at him. “I knew you were French.”
“No, technically, I am German,” he said, returning my grin for the first time since we’d stepped out of my bedroom. “I was born in what is now Cologne, but I have spent a great deal of time in France.”
“Anyone else?” Mira said, dragging us back to the problem at hand. “No one you’ve angered in your climb to power?
With a sigh, Stefan released me and sat on the sofa beside Mira. He shoved one hand through his hair in frustration, a motion that looked all too human on him. “Too many to count,” he admitted with a frown. Sadly, no one seemed surprised by this.
While Mira and Stefan ran through the extensive list of nightwalkers that Stefan had encountered in his long existence, I walked into the kitchen and started cooking. I was hungry and they obviously didn’t need me. And as Danaus pointed out, I needed to remember to eat when I had the chance. The meal proved to be a strange, hodge-podge of things that I’d had in the pantry and fridge. It wasn’t likely that I’d be taking it with me back to where Mira was staying, assuming that was even where I would be sleeping for the near future.
It was a little more than an hour before dawn when we grabbed my bag of clothes and my other bag of drawing supplies and stepped into the chilly early morning air. Stefan gathered me up in my arms and flew me a short distance to Guidecca rather than back to nightwalker island. From there, we walked a short distance to a lavish hotel of shining marble and gold.
“It isn’t wise to keep you on the island,” Stefan explained as we headed up the elevator. “Danaus comes here after sunrise and sleeps along with Knox. You’ll stay here.”
“Will you be visiting me here?”
“I will try, but we’ll have to be careful.”
Pulling a keycard from his pocket, Stefan opened the door to find Knox lounging in one of the chairs watching TV. The nightwalker didn’t even bother to look up from his program as he waved at us. At least he didn’t find any of this to be strange.
Stefan helped me stow my things in one of the empty rooms before pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Stay here and stay safe.” And then he was gone.
Chapter 10
In my own defense, I was still trying to get accustomed to the idea that my life was no longer my own. Adjusting to the concept that there were people out there who might want to hurt me or see me dead wasn’t easy. I was an artist, damn it! My pictures were of places and people as they existed hundreds of years ago. I wasn’t a threat to anyone and certainly not to the nightwalkers. But it wasn’t that I was a threat. No, I was a pawn.
Sleep was slow coming and didn’t hold me in its grasp for long. After showering and dressing, I stepped out into the main living room shortly before noon to find the place as silent as a tomb. Either Danaus had not yet returned to the hotel room or he was sharing the other bedroom with Knox.
Wandering around the opulent room, I soon bored. Typically, my schedule of research and work drove me each day. There were always drawings that needed to be completed, research that needed to be done, or at the very least, people who needed to be contacted to either finish work or line up new work. It was that random thought about my old life that I’d realized that I need to contact my current employer and at least warn them that I wasn’t going to be able to finish any additional work for them. Mira wasn’t about to let me work on my day job while we were trying to find a killer.
After sending a quick email to the gaming company on my laptop, I pulled together the pictures I had completed for them and went in search of a business center. Scanning the pictures and emailing them off would clear my conscience a little bit since I wasn’t going to be able to deliver on the work I’d promised. With any lucky, they’d be pleased with that I had and could start from there.
Of course, the business center in the hotel didn’t have the equipment I needed. Standing in the lobby, chewing on my bottom lip, I weighed my options. I could hide in the hotel room until Danaus showed up — assuming the man would be around before the nightwalkers showed up after sunset — or I could locate a copy center somewhere in the city that would let me scan the pictures. Accustomed to handling things on my own, I chose the latter option.
I didn’t get far. As soon as I stepped onto the sidewalk from the ferry, there were eyes upon me. I didn’t know who was watching me. It was like a shadow hunting me, following my every step, though I never saw anyone that looked out of place.
My heart pounded in my chest and I picked up my pace, trying to stay with the crowds of tourists. Winding down narrow path after another, heading in the direction of St. Mark’s, I moved to where there would be more crowds of tourists. From there, I could easily catch another ferry that would take me back to Guidecca. Maybe even a private ferry back to the hotel. I crossed my fingers and prayed luck was on my side.
But my luck ran out. I turned down a path that I knew would lead me directly to the nearest bridge into the piazza and the lane was completely empty. A sharp cry escaped my lips at the sight. I started to break into a run, but a hand clapped down on my shoulder and pain exploded in the back of my head. There was no sound of footsteps on the pavement. As silent as the wind, they swept up and stole me from Venice while the nightwalkers slept.
My head was killing me. Pain shot through my skull, feeling as if the bone had been fractured and my brains were now in danger of spilling out. Groaning, I tried to raise my hand to my head, but they were bound together and trapped before me, partially pinned under my body where I lie.
An old engine coughed and grumbled along. But it wasn’t a boat engine. I was in a car bouncing along a rutted road. It smelled of rotten food and stale cigarettes. The air was cooler than it had been in Venice, but I could still catch glimpses of daylight. The bench seat squeaked when I shifted, catching the attention of one of my captors. He barked something in a language I didn’t understand and then threw a dirty blanket over my head, blocking out the light and my vision completely. My first instinct was to pull the cover off, but I stopped myself as my fingers grasped the scratchy material. If I removed the cover, my captor might decide that it was just easier to keep me unconscious than to cover me with a blanket. The blanket smelled bad, the scent of sweat, dirt and things I just didn’t want to think about filling my nose so that it had become difficult to breathe. But even so, I’d rather be blind than unconscious when we arrived at our final destination.
I don’t know how long we traveled. My head throbbed. Twisting my wrists against my bindings, I tried to work my way free but they’d left no slack in the ropes. My flesh was raw and bleeding as I fought to get some wiggle room, but it did no good. Time stretched on. We stopped for gas. One of my captors yanked me out of the car and dragged me to the bathroom. While the asshole with the pock-marked face and dull brown eyes was kind enough to untie my hands, he didn’t leave the bathroom. The second I flushed the toilet, he was kicking open the stall door and yanking me out again so that he could retie my
hands.
Shoved into the backseat of the car again, I was forced to lay down with the blanket drawn over my head. My brief trip into the gas station revealed that we were definitely not in Italy any longer. We’d moved northeast, but I didn’t recognize the language I was hearing or seeing. Even if I could escape, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to communicate with anyone to tell them that I’d been kidnapped and needed the U.S. embassy. But my first thought wasn’t of finding an embassy; it was how I was going to get back to Stefan. Night had fallen when we stopped for gas and the nightwalkers would be heading out. Stefan would be looking for me and I wasn’t in the hotel where I was supposed to be. It was my fault.
I drifted in and out of consciousness for a while, lulled by the steady growl of the engine and the weight of fatigue created by worry and fear. The slamming of car doors woke me a second before the backdoor was jerked open. A man pulled off the blanket and pulled me out of the car by my feet.
Blinking against the darkness, I was initially shaky on my feet after lying in the car for so long. I looked around, trying to catalogue my surroundings. Maybe I would recognize something that would help me later or maybe I’d be able to tell Stefan about my location and he could find me. But I couldn’t see much. The darkness was thick. Stars sparkled overhead but were mostly blotted out by the heavy band of clouds surging across the night sky. No other houses could be seen. Just open lands and what appeared to be tall trees. It was a pretty safe guess that I’d been taken to the middle of nowhere far from Italy.
One of my captor roughly grabbed my arm and marched me forward toward a set of warped and worn wooden stairs leading up to an equally warped wooden front porch. Our footsteps echoed through the oppressive silence, announcing our arrival to the owner of the house. The double front doors squeaked in true horror movie fashion as they were pulled open and I found myself faced with a lean, pale figure with narrowed cold eyes as black as the night surrounding me. He had thin lips stretched into a flat line of irritation. His clothes hung on him, making him look almost like a scarecrow, but his skin was luminous in the thin candlelight in the hallways. Without question, he was a nightwalker.
Unconsciously, I tried to take a step backward, but my captor tightened his grip on my arm and jerked me forward a step so that I nearly fell into the unknown nightwalker.
The newcomer asked my captor a question, but the two continued to speak in some unknown language. Maybe something Slavic. It was thick and complicated. I could speak little bits of the romance languages, but that was all. This was nothing like French or Italian.
In the end, the nightwalker seemed pleased with what the man told him because he turned a pleasant smile on me. “Welcome to my home, Miss Prescott. I am sorry for your rough treatment, but haste was a factor and we could not concern ourselves with whether you would come willingly.”
“Who are you? What do you want?” I demanded, slightly relieved that I could at least communicate with my host.
“My name is Vanko and I am trying to protect your life,” he said with a heavy accent. He stepped forward and took my bound hands in his. I flinched and again tried to pull away, but my human captor had yet to ease his hold on me. There was nowhere to go. The nightwalker carefully pulled at the ropes so that they snapped in his hands like an overstretched rubber band. “Would you come inside so that we may talk?”
“I don’t see that I have a choice,” I mumbled as he released my hands. I slowly moved my wrists around, flinching at the pain that shot through them. The skin was rubbed raw and crusted with blood. Hopefully my host had already fed tonight. I wasn’t about to let another nightwalker use me as dinner. My blood was shared with only Stefan.
“Of course you have a choice,” Vanko said with a little laugh. “You can come inside and we will have a pleasant, civilized conversation.” He waved one hand toward the dimly lit interior, “or my friends here will kill you,” he finished, motioning toward the man at my back.
I smiled broadly at my host, flashing my clenched teeth at him. “A pleasant, civilized conversation sounds lovely.”
“I thought you might see it my way.”
The nightwalker led the way into the house, stepping into the yawning darkness fully confident that I was going to follow him. My captors even released me and took a step back, waiting with no expression on his ugly face. He was waiting for me to choose. Conversation with a nightwalker or death by human — that was a tough choice. Of course, I had a feeling that I was still facing death if I stepped into the house. Vanko had just put a pretty wrapping on it.
On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine that I’d been brought here for the strict purpose of being turned into dinner. There had to be other humans far closer that could serve as dinner. Then again, maybe he’d sent out for Italian and got stuck with American by mistake.
I sighed. My thoughts were churning in useless circles and I was no closer to getting back home or even Venice. No, if I was going to accomplish anything, I apparently needed to follow Vanko into the darkness. With a sigh, I stepped into the house, following the sound of the nightwalker’s footsteps across the creaking hardwood floor.
The front doors slammed shut behind me and locked as I neared the stairs that led to the second floor. I swung around to see who else was in the house since my captor had remained on the front porch, but the foyer was empty. Yeah, this was looking more like a bad horror movie.
“Come along, Miss Prescott.” Vanko’s voice drifted down the hall to me, sounding almost taunting. It certainly wasn’t an enticement.
I glanced around the house as I followed the voice down the hall, looking for something that might pass as a weapon, but there was nothing. While the exterior of the house had been rundown and overgrown with vines, the interior of the house was spotless and in perfect order, if a little barren. There were no pictures on the walls and no rugs on the floors. The other rooms on the first floor were pitch black, offering up no heavy brass candlesticks or fireplace irons I could use as a weapon. As it was, I was following the meager light cast by widely spaced nightlights plugged into wall sockets near the floor. Even walking nearly blind through the place, there was a sense of emptiness here. If this was Vanko’s home, he hadn’t lived here long.
At the end of a hall, I finally reached a room that was bathed in the warm glow of two lamps. While they still weren’t bright, they were heartening beacons after spending so much time wandering in the darkness. Stepping into the room, I found Vanko sitting in a high-back chair before an empty fireplace. It would have been nice if there had been a fire roaring there. The chill in the house was seeping into my flesh through my clothes that had been appropriate from a Venice spring, but were no match for the cold air of wherever I had ended up.
“Join me for a meal. Your companions were unable to stop after leaving Venice. You must be hungry,” Vanko said, waving a hand toward the table sitting near him.
My stomach grumbled at the mention of food and I frowned. Taking food from my kidnapper seemed like a very bad idea, but I needed answers as to who the hell he was and why I had been taken. Talking while eating seemed the best way to accomplish that goal. It might also give me access to a weapon at last.
Sitting on a small wooden chair opposite Vanko, I hesitated before picking up the spoon. The bowl of steaming soup smelled delicious, but I didn’t trust him. Was it poisoned? Or maybe it had something to knock me out?
“It’s not poisoned,” he said with a smile. “If I wanted to kill you, I’d take a more hands-on approach. That way is always more enjoyable.”
“Do you plan to kill me?” I asked, picking up the spoon and stirring it through the soup. I couldn’t identify it, but my first taste revealed that it was good if not a little bland. Of course, it wasn’t like a nightwalker would know much about food anymore.
“Not right away.”
I choked, spraying soup across the table. Dropping the spoon, I jumped up from the table and turned to run from the room, but Vanko was already there in front o
f me, blocking my exit. There was an amused smile on his lips as he forcefully turned me around and marched me back to my seat. Bland or not, my appetite was gone.
The nightwalker’s hands remained on my narrow shoulders, holding me down with mild pressure, as if he expected me to leap to my feet again. Yeah, that was really effective.
“I’m sorry. I have handled this wrong. I didn’t mean to alarm you,” he apologized, but I could hear the amusement in his voice even if I couldn’t see his face.
“I can’t imagine how you expected me to react when you claim that you plan to kill me,” I bit out, wishing I could shrug off his hands. His touch made my skin crawl.
“It was not my intention to threaten or frighten you.” Vanko’s hands moved, squeezing my shoulders in a light massage before sliding away. He returned to chair and his expression was a mask of sincerity that I wasn’t buying. “You have been brought here for your own protection.”
“Protection from whom?”
“Mira, of course,” Vanko said earnestly. “She means to kill you.”
“Mira wouldn’t hurt me. She has no reason to hurt me.”
Vanko shook his head, giving me a pitying look that I wanted to smack off his face. Or maybe I would just throw my soup on him. It wasn’t as if I was going to eat it now. “Mira doesn’t need a reason. Mira likes to kill for fun, but killing you would have a purpose. It would hurt Stefan and she wishes to weaken him before she removes him from the Coven.”
I clenched my teeth together to hold back my words of disbelief. Did I know Mira? No. Did I understand all of her motivations? Definitely not. I wouldn’t pretend to, but I had a good understanding of Danaus from our afternoon together. There wasn’t an ounce of guile in the man. He just didn’t believe in it. If Mira wanted me dead, Danaus would have made that clear. There would have been no pretending.
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