Stop? Go on? A quick, merciful death?
Her lower lip began to quiver again. She was so beautiful, so fucking vulnerable like this, pinned beneath him, he felt a wave of heat envelop his body, desire burning bright as the noonday sun.
Open for me, he thought, kissing first one corner of her mouth, then the other. He pressed the softest of kisses to the center of her lips, the little bow, the lower curve, a place he’d kissed in a million fevered dreams. Open your heart for me, angel. Let me in.
Then she sobbed.
He froze on a breath, his body burning and aching and his heart stuttering along in his chest like something half dead. She convulsed and sobbed again, turned her head to the side and started to bawl in earnest, great wracking sobs that shuddered them both and the bed beneath them.
“Baby girl,” D whispered, mortified. “Ana, Eliana, stop, it’s okay, I won’t kiss you again, just please…stop.”
He released her and sat up. She folded her arms across her chest and curled into a little, protective ball, her knees pulled to her nose, her face turned to the mattress. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know if there was anything he could do. Seeing her like this tore a hole in his chest big enough to drive a truck through.
“G-get out,” she sobbed into the mattress. “Get away f-from me.”
He reached for her, touched her shoulder, but the second his hand was on her she jerked as if electrocuted and kicked him, hard, in the stomach. “Get away from me!” she screamed as he toppled off the bed. He landed with a jarring thump on the floor, and Eliana, eyes wide, shaking violently, scrambled up against the headboard and cowered there, red-faced, staring at him but with a blank look as if she wasn’t seeing him, but someone or something else altogether.
“Ana—”
At exactly that moment, the security alarm went off with a high, electronic shriek, piercing his eardrums. Every nerve in D’s body surged into high alert.
Someone had just broken into the house.
Panic attack.
Eliana knew the symptoms intimately because she’d suffered from these terrifying episodes for years. Not that she’d ever told anyone. With her kind, showing weakness like that guaranteed an expedited route to the afterlife.
Survival of the fittest wasn’t just an evolutionary theory. It was an actual fact of Ikati Law.
The first time it happened was three days after her father was killed. She and Mel and the rest of their group were still on the run from the catacombs, trying to cross the border to France on foot, not knowing if they’d be caught, not knowing where their next meal was going to come from.
One minute she’d been fine, trudging along a dry streambed in warm twilight in the forested Gran Paradiso National Park just miles from the French border, her feet aching, her stomach growling, her mind a tangle of thoughts and memories she kept pushing aside to concentrate on the increasingly difficult task of putting one foot in front of the other. Then, suddenly, from the dry shrubbery alongside the streambed erupted a shrieking knot of kestrels, driven in terror from their hidden nests by the group of much larger predators going by.
Their terror was infectious. For a blinding moment, Eliana couldn’t breathe. Her heart failed to beat. She broke out in a cold sweat, began to tremble violently, and felt tingly in all her limbs. Her chest felt like it was being squeezed by a giant, invisible hand. She thought she might be dying of a heart attack.
Which is exactly how she felt when Demetrius just kissed her.
The last year had been better; once they were settled in France—Silas had the foresight to stuff a bag full of money before they fled, not enough to last but enough to get them established—the attacks tapered off, and for the past year she hadn’t suffered even one. Not when she’d been caught by the police, not when she’d been tortured by Édoard and Dr. Frankenstein, not when the police station blew up around her and she was kidnapped and awoke with two sewn-up bullet wounds, locked in a strange room in a strange house, alone.
No, it took a kiss to bring one on. A kiss from him.
And this was the mother of them all.
Crouched on the bed like a cornered animal, she watched with wild eyes as D leapt from the floor, his huge body coiled to spring, his face tense, a look of pure, murderous rage in his eyes, which were trained on the bedroom door. With a growled, “Stay here!” he moved silently to the door, looked out, and then disappeared though the doorway without looking back.
Once he was gone she felt a surge of relief, but she still couldn’t get her gelatinous legs to move. She gulped large swallows of air, willing her heart to slow its furious beat, telling herself she wasn’t dying, she was going to be fine, she just needed to get out of this room and away from him.
And whatever else had recently arrived.
Still shaking, she tried to step off the bed and instead fell flat on her face on the floor. She lay there panting a moment, listening hard to catch any noise above the hideous whine of the alarm, but she didn’t hear anything. She finally managed to get her legs to work and crept to the doorway. From the floor she snatched the dagger D had wrestled from her hand. She reached the door and peeked out.
A long corridor lined with doors, some open, a few closed. A spiral staircase at the end, leading up to another floor.
No windows. No other way out.
She crept down the hallway, glancing into each room. All were bedrooms, none had other interior doors. She’d have to go up the stairs.
Taking each step much more carefully than the adrenaline screaming through her veins wanted, she progressed up the steps until she reached the top, then peeked over the last step: Living room. Sofas, huge flat-screen television, modern, masculine décor. No one in sight.
The alarm screamed shrilly on and on, urging her forward.
With her heart in her throat, she eased up the last few steps and ran to the opposite wall, where she flattened herself beside a tall bookcase and paused a moment to catch her breath. Her pulse throbbed through her head, pounding a staccato beat that nearly drowned out the alarm.
She heard voices. Male voices. Shouting. Her heart took off like a rocket, and her hands began to shake so badly she nearly dropped the dagger. She tiptoed across the floor to another spiral staircase that led up to who knows what, the only way out of the room.
When she reached the top of the staircase, she didn’t fall apart so much as implode.
Three huge males, black-haired, strapped with weapons, larger and more menacing than any human could ever be, were wrestling Demetrius down to the floor. Trying to wrestle him down to the floor, without much success. They were all snarling and shouting at one another in Latin, massive arms swinging, black hair and fists flying, a heavy oak kitchen table and wooden chairs knocked aside like children’s toys as they grappled with one another and staggered across the room.
D. Lix. Celian. Constantine. Her father’s personal guard.
Her father’s traitorous assassins.
A thermonuclear urge to kill them all with her bare hands forced blood to her face where it spread, throbbing hot, to her ears and neck. It warred with a deeply ingrained, stubborn survival instinct that screamed at her in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of there while they were busy doing whatever it was they were doing. It seemed like the other three were trying to take D down, but why, she couldn’t fathom. It occurred to her that possibly D had gone rogue and killed her father himself without the knowledge of the others, but she dismissed that thought as quickly as it came, knowing the Bellatorum were like the musketeers—all for one and one for all and all that nonsense. If D had hatched a plot to kill her father, they were all in on it.
And this was her chance to get revenge.
Or—escape.
Which would it be? She couldn’t take them all at once, she only had the dagger—but their backs were turned, they were all distracted, she had the element of surprise—
Then something strange happened. In the middle of the snarling ball of fury
that was the fighting warriors, D spotted her crouched there at the top of the stairs. Over the shoulders of the others, their eyes caught and, for one infinitesimal moment, held. Then he glanced to his right and glanced back at her, a look of intense concentration on his face, as if he were trying to communicate something crucial. Eliana’s gaze darted right, following his.
The sliding glass door in the family room across from them had been smashed. In its place was an enormous, ragged, gaping hole that led directly outside.
To freedom.
The bottom fell out of her stomach. She stared back at D, and he nodded once; then with a thundering bellow, he dragged all three Bellatorum down to the floor with him.
Eliana sprang to life.
In three long bounds she was across the room and through the smashed door, outside into a large yard of trees and grass lit ghostly blue by moonlight. She couldn’t Shift, but she could still run, and run she did, like the wind, never looking back, the snarls of the fighting males she’d left behind fading as she bounded off into the moonlit night, clearing fences, climbing walls, sprinting across lawns and streets and yards, her mind a viper’s nest of unanswered questions, writhing and twisting, spitting black.
D kidnapped her.
D fought his brothers.
D let her go.
What the hell was happening?
When the sharp knock came on his closed office door, Gregor didn’t bother to look up from the newspaper he was reading. News of the escape of La Chatte from the Paris prefecture of police—accompanied by vivid Technicolor pictures of the gorgeous thief herself and the half-destroyed building—was splashed all over the cover.
“Come,” he said absently, transfixed to the page.
Merck, one of the muscle-bound bouncers from the nightclub, poked his head in. “Got a problem, boss,” he said in his lisping, baby-doll voice that belied the true violence of his nature. He’d spent seven years in prison for murder before Gregor hired him.
“Not the goon squad again,” Gregor muttered, imagining Édoard and his minions at the door. They’d spent an entire day last week tearing up his building and had left in a snit when they hadn’t found anything worthwhile.
“Not exactly.” Merck’s voice held a hint of a smile. Gregor looked up from the paper to find the burly, goateed man staring at him with one of his bushy eyebrows cocked. His brown eyes sparkled with laughter. “Check out camera five.”
Gregor frowned and turned to the bank of video screens on the wall beside his desk. On them were displayed black-and-white images from the dozens of security cameras located all around the property, live-action feeds that showed the building in five-inch squares from every angle. Empty staircases and silent rooms, closed doors and corridors, the bobbing crowds in the nightclub…and one lonely, ill-lit back door near the Dumpsters at the loading dock, which featured the astonishing image of a drenched, shivering, half-naked woman, arms wrapped around her chest, wet hair plastered to her head, huge, dark eyes staring up beseechingly at the camera.
With his heart like a jackhammer in his chest, Gregor shot to his feet.
“Wouldn’t take no for an answer when we told her to piss off. Says she knows you.” Merck’s voice was carefully neutral. He never asked questions, passed judgment, or got involved in Gregor’s business, which was one of the many reasons he made an excellent employee.
“Christ! Jesus Christ! Take me to her!” Gregor barked, red-faced. Merck just nodded and stepped aside, swinging the door open with one arm as Gregor barreled through it.
One elevator ride, two flights of stairs, and three near heart attacks later, Gregor threw open the loading dock door, and a wet and weeping Eliana collapsed into his arms.
“Found me—kidnapped—ran—ran all the way here—” she choked off with a sob.
“Easy, lass,” he murmured, equally stunned by this new, vulnerable Eliana and by her almost nude body plastered against him. Barefoot, wearing what looked to be boxer shorts and a man’s T-shirt gone translucent with the water that soaked it, she was shaking, panting, clinging to him like a buoy in a storm-tossed ocean. He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close, and murmured soothingly, “You’re all right now. You’re safe here, little chatte. Come inside. Come inside with me and let me get you dry.”
He glanced up at the stars twinkling in the mirror-clear night sky, frowned, and then pulled her inside. With her leaning heavily on his arm, Gregor made his way back through the darkened dock toward the stairs.
Gregor took her to a room buried somewhere deep in the building that was decorated with ivory carpets and silk-paneled walls and lit a fire in the cavernous marble hearth. He settled her into the comforting embrace of an overstuffed armchair near the fire and sent Merck for fresh towels. When they arrived and Merck had been dismissed after receiving quiet instructions to bring some dry clothes from Céline’s closet, Gregor spent several wordless minutes drying her carefully and methodically as one would a child from a bath, tousling her hair, wiping her arms and legs and feet, gentle and affectionate yet utterly chaste.
Just that simple courtesy filled her with gratitude.
When he was done, he tossed the towels on the end of the king-size, pillow-strewn bed. Eliana eyed the bed—and the large mirror mounted on the ceiling above it, and the nightstand beside the bed with a discreet gold plaque that read “treasure chest”—and tried not to think about what that was all about. He wound a plush cashmere throw around her shoulders, gazed down at her a moment, then settled his bulk in the armchair opposite hers, steepled his fingers under his chin, and said, “So.”
Eliana bowed her head and closed her eyes.
She’d imagined this moment for years, though of course never dreamed of quite these circumstances. Various scenarios had been considered and disregarded, and the longer she knew him the more she trusted him and wanted to tell him…but could she trust him with this?
So guess what? I’m a shape-shifter exiled from my colony of shape-shifters who live hidden in the catacombs beneath the Vatican. Oh, and there’s several more colonies of us hidden throughout the world. I’m not human, you see. Isn’t that great? Let’s have a drink!
Somehow she didn’t think it would go over.
But she’d come here. Here, not to the old abbey and catacombs with the rest of her exiled kin. Here, to the safety offered by a human who’d never denied her anything and had accepted all her secrets and strange comings and goings without even a question. She didn’t try and fool herself that it was because Gregor’s building was closer, though it undoubtedly was. Once she found a main road that led away from the house she’d escaped from in the suburbs and had her bearings, she just ran straight here, though only a few miles more and she’d have been home.
Home, she thought with a sharp pang in her chest. Would she ever really have a home again?
She glanced up to find Gregor considering her carefully, his eyes warm but very shrewd.
“Those feet need looking after.” His gaze dropped to her bare feet, resting gingerly on a tufted stool. The soles were cut and torn from running so far, something she never did in human form. They hurt like hell, but she’d suffered worse, and said so.
“Worse than shredded feet?” he mused, brows lifted.
Try a shredded heart, she thought, then slammed that thought back into the little dungeon in her mind where she kept errant demons. She was calmer than when she first arrived, more clear-headed, but still in a state of shock, and if she let herself think…
Demetrius. The Bellatorum. Her father. Édoard and the German. Silas. Caesar. It all swirled around in one howling, teeth-gnashing twister inside her brain, pulling her down, down—
“How do you know who to trust, Gregor? You’re a businessman, a man of the world. You’ve seen and done almost everything, I’ll bet. How do you decide when it’s time to give someone your trust?”
He gave her a knowing little half smile. “Someone?”
Her heart banged against her ribcage. “Y
ou,” she finally said, bluntly. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“You don’t, princess,” he replied softly, holding her gaze. “You just close your eyes and let yourself fall, and see if I’m there to catch you. That’s why it’s called trust. It’s a little like faith, only you don’t have to wait until you’re dead to see if it’s real.”
She didn’t smile at his joke. “There are too many lives at stake for me to indulge in a luxury like trust without some kind of guarantee it won’t be broken.”
He huffed a breath through his nose. “There are no guarantees in life. Without risk, there’s no reward, and trust is a big risk, I’ll grant you that.” His voice gentled. “But you already know I’d do anything for you, don’t you? You already have your proof. You’re just gettin’ the feel of the wind on your face before you jump off the roof.”
Eliana furrowed her brow at him. “Is that a Scotsman’s version of a pep talk? Because it’s awful. By the way, I could really use a drink. Whiskey if you’ve got it.”
He gave her a look. “Alcohol doesn’t solve any problems.”
“Yes, Mother, but neither does milk.”
Gregor gazed at her for a beat, then rose from his chair and crossed to a sideboard laden with bottles of whiskey, port, vodka, and gin. He poured a stiff measure of amber liquid into two glasses and handed her one, then quaffed his in one long swallow. He settled himself back in the chair while she gazed down at the glass in her hand.
After a moment of silence he said, “Why don’t you just tell me a story, Eliana.”
Wary, she glanced up at him. “A story?”
He slowly nodded, his warm hazel eyes trapping hers. In the fireplace, the wood snapped and settled with a muffled thunk into the grate, sending a spray of orange ash floating up into the chimney. “A story. It doesn’t have to necessarily be true, you see, we can just be two friends sharing a story over a fine glass of single malt. Something unbelievable and fantastic, you know, like, ‘Once upon a time, there was a mysterious woman who could appear out of thin air, and just as quickly, disappear. Just like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland, she flitted in and out of locked buildings like a ghost…” His voice turned gently ironic. “A ghost who needed semiautomatic weapons and land mines and showed up soaking wet and terrified in the middle of the night after being sprung from jail by a gang of ninja munitions experts.”
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