A Vampire's Honor

by Carla Susan Smith

  I saw the moment he made his mind up to come for me. He took one swaggering step forward, and stopped. A grunt of surprise escaped him, making his expression change from brutal confidence to a look of shocked disbelief.

  The sudden, high-pitched shriek Rat Boy emitted made me swivel my head in his direction, noting that a high C wasn’t the only thing he’d let loose. The dark stain at his crotch became a line that ran down the inside of his leg before ending in a puddle on the floor. The smell of ammonia was strong as he fell to his knees with a whimper.

  Another grunt, this one wet-sounding, had me turning my attention back to Gus. A dark red blotch had mysteriously appeared on his chest and was growing bigger. I could tell something was moving behind him, but I was so mesmerized by the stain on his smooth chest, I paid it no attention. And then Gus’s sternum split open as something inside his chest cavity exploded outward, sending blood and pieces of shattered bone flying in my direction. I don’t know if it was flesh or muscle or blood, but something splattered on my cheek. I barely registered it because my eyes were fixed on the fist that was poking out the middle of Gus’s chest.

  Long familiar fingers uncurled themselves. Like petals of an alien flower, they opened to show me the secret they held. Gus’s heart. I watched as the organ contracted, muscle memory making it obey the final directive of a brain it was no longer connected to. And then it stopped. The hand, shimmering with blood and tissue matter, released its prize, and there came a sickening, indescribable sound as the dead heart dropped on the floor. The only thing keeping Gus’s two-hundred-plus-pound body in an upright position now withdrew itself from his torso, and without Gabriel’s arm to support it, the lifeless body collapsed.

  I stared at the vampire who had come for me.

  I could feel Gabriel’s eyes on me, waiting for me to acknowledge his presence. I continued to stare, seeing, for the first time, what the lesser beasts had seen when they’d approached the Dark Realm, needing a champion of their own. A predator that was different from anything that already walked the earth. One that would make mankind fear the night. I wondered if the lesser beasts ever knew how successful they had been in their quest.

  Gabriel’s expression was a mask of tightly controlled violence. His eyes had turned completely black, and his razor-sharp fangs, glistening with saliva, were extended longer than I had ever seen them. One arm was bloody from fingertip to elbow, and I noticed a sliver of white protruding from between his knuckles. A piece of bone embedded in his skin.

  His lungs were bellows that moved his chest with each inhale of breath. A sheen of sweat turned his skin an iridescent gold beneath the pale light, and I could see the pulse thrumming at the base of his throat, see the blood pumping through his veins. He had never looked more beautiful or more deadly, and I felt my legs tremble as a wave of lust almost brought me to my knees. A dead man lay on the floor before me, his partner on the verge of insanity, and I was aroused. For the first time in my life I understood how closely entwined are sex and death.

  Gabriel’s eyes narrowed, and I saw the corner of his mouth move. It was almost imperceptible, but it told me he’d caught the scent of my lust and was just as stimulated. I have often wondered who decided the Grim Reaper should be a faceless, hooded robe with skeletal hands wrapped around a scythe. I mean . . . really? This is the best you could come up with to depict the specter of death? The scythe and its symbolism I got, but if anyone could see what I was looking at now, they would have no problem giving death a face.

  Perhaps, my inner bitch murmured, they have seen him, and that’s why the Grim Reaper has no face . . .

  I conceded the possibility.

  A palpable tension thickened the air. I didn’t need Gabriel to tell me this was a side of him he had not intended me to see. At least not yet, and I could sense his frustration. Just as the decision to reveal his true vampire nature had been taken out of his hands by Katja’s interference, this too was a premature disclosure forced by events outside his control. The timing, however, made no difference. It would always be wrong for any number of reasons. How I chose to handle it was the only thing that mattered.

  I stepped forward, skirting the pool of blood slowly spreading from beneath Gus’s inert form. Reaching for Gabriel’s hand with my good one, I felt his fingers curl around mine. He radiated a power and strength that I suspected had barely been tapped.

  Do you know who I am . . . truly?

  I had no way of knowing what he saw as he looked at me. Was it the girl who wept at seeing him crucified, or the one who grasped his hand and pulled him from the Void? Perhaps he saw the woman-child who gave herself to him as she promised to safeguard his soul. The lover who had been his from the very first. Did he see all of that as he now looked at me? Did he see any of that as he looked at me? His eyes, normally so expressive, were like pieces of jet glass, reflecting back my own image and telling me nothing about what he was feeling.

  And yes, even though I loved him more than my own life, this version of Gabriel truly scared me.

  For all I knew, I might be reduced to nothing more than a combination of scents and sounds and impulses. Familiar enough to alert his senses, strong enough to trigger a response. Except I refused to believe that. Even with Gabriel’s transformation into a glorious killing machine, I knew on some level he recognized exactly who I was. It wasn’t dumb luck or a twist of fate that had brought him here to me. He had come looking for me.

  Carefully I raised his hand and placed his palm against my chest so he could feel the pounding beat of my heart. His fingers curled, cupping my breast, and I blushed suddenly as I remembered why I wasn’t wearing a bra. Grasping the shard of bone with my thumb and forefinger, I pulled it from his flesh. I was suddenly envious of those girls who always seemed to have a tissue or wet wipe in their pocket, thinking it might be nice to clean Gabriel’s arm. I guess I could have improvised and used my T-shirt, but I wasn’t sure if I could get it off using only one hand, and besides, it was probably better if only one of us was bare-chested.

  I looked up at him as my fingers moved slowly over the back of his hand, caressing the skin, brushing lightly over his knuckles. He remained impassive, saying nothing, and yet I could tell he still needed something from me.

  My approval?

  My understanding?

  My support?

  Now it was my turn to place my palm against his chest, my hand rising and falling with each tortured intake of breath. His heart beat strong and true beneath my fingers. He was my avenging angel, and no matter what, he would always be there for me. God have mercy on those responsible for summoning forth this side of his nature, because Gabriel, I knew, would have none.

  A tremor ran through him, and I felt his body quiver with rage as he carefully took my damaged hand in his. He looked at my grotesquely swollen fingers, and I barely felt him lock his thumb and forefinger around my wrist, immobilizing my hand. I had no idea if it was fear or relief that started my own body trembling, but I reached up and cradled his face in my good palm.

  His eyes were beginning to lighten. His irises were still inky black, but the surrounding sclera had now turned a lighter gray. A few more minutes and it would become white once more. I stared up at him, losing myself in unfathomable depths.

  “You came for me,” I whispered in a voice I barely recognized as my own. The fear that I might be hallucinating, that the pollutant in my blood was having a final laugh at my expense, was very real.

  There was a rumble in Gabriel’s chest. One that quickly changed to a sexually charged roar as he pulled me to him. He was hard, and I could feel the wave of lust that enveloped me as he answered in the best way he knew how. The only way he knew how. He kissed me.

  I grabbed a handful of thick, white hair as his mouth covered mine. I had never been kissed like this before. Not by Gabriel, not by anyone. It was a kiss that had me drowning in a sea of possession. It said he was claiming me as his own, branding me as belonging to him, and he didn’t give a damn w
ho knew it. It was pure alpha male, and I had no doubt that if he could have found a way to tattoo his name on my tongue with his, he would have done so.

  And I gave myself to him. Reconfirming all I’d felt when I’d first pulled him from the Void. I relished the feel of his tongue pushing its way inside my mouth, searing me with a heat that promised desires I’d not yet realized, and when he withdrew, I followed. Sliding between his lips I felt the razor-sharp edges of his fangs scrape against my tongue, and I felt him shudder with his need for me.

  Gently fisting a handful of curls, he pulled back my head and looked down at me. The pulse in his throat was throbbing wildly, and a thin circle of gold now rimmed the dark blue of his eyes. Another appetite had awakened.

  “I was going to fight,” I told him. It was important that he knew, no matter how desperate my situation, I was never going to let anyone think they could just take what I freely gave to him.

  “I know . . . I heard . . . I saw. You were magnificent.”

  An unexpected jolt of pleasure ran through me at hearing the pride in his voice. He had expected no less from me. His lips brushed my ear as he began to murmur in a voice that was melting honey. It liquefied my spine and ramped up my lust, making me wet. Gabriel pulled back, his nostrils flaring as he ran his tongue up the side of my neck.

  “You’ve been drugged!” he hissed, able to taste the change in my blood through the pores of my skin.

  “Yes—you mustn’t feed from me!”

  Urgency gripped me. There were things I had to tell him. Important details that I needed both Aleksei and Anasztaizia to know, but a flicker of movement distracted me. I’d totally forgotten about Rat Boy. His face was a mask of absolute terror as he stared at Gabriel. He was convinced he would never leave this place alive, and his immediate concern was how much pain he was going to suffer before his death. He flicked his eyes in my direction, his mouth an open, silent plea for mercy.

  “Quick or slow?” Gabriel murmured in my ear.

  Rat Boy had never intended to rape me. I don’t know if that was because he was impotent, or didn’t like girls, or just got off on watching his buddy, but it was the truth. Even holding my hand so Petrov could break my fingers was done because he was more scared of Petrov than he let on. And he had a right to be scared. Rat Boy and Gus might not have known they were taking orders from a vampire, but they were smart enough to recognize a predator that stood several rungs higher on the food chain.

  Rat Boy was on his knees, having pissed his pants, and begging for mercy. His eyes flickered between Gabriel and myself, and the color drained from his face when Gabriel dropped his fangs.

  “Now you know,” I told him.

  “Know? Know what?” he squeaked in a terrified voice.

  “That vampires are real.”

  He stared at his partner’s lifeless form on the floor. He’d been wasting his last few minutes of life convincing himself that he was trapped in some macabre joke, spinning Gus’s death into something his brain could handle without going insane. And now I’d just blown that all to shit.

  “Let him go,” I said, turning my head away. Gabriel snarled in frustration. The ruthless, aggressive side of his nature was unhappy at my request. I put my hand on his arm and waited for him to look at me, waited until all sides of him were focused only on me. “I don’t think he’s going to be a problem, do you?”

  “He wanted to hurt you, Rowan. I can’t—”

  “But he didn’t,” I interrupted. “Do you really think he’s going to come after me? After what he’s just seen? Every time he closes his eyes he’s going to see what you did to his pal. I doubt he’s going to sleep much anymore.” Gabriel stared down at me, and I could see him battling his aggression. “Do it for me, Gabriel,” I said in a low voice. “I can only take having so much blood on my hands.”

  He kissed me, hard and fast, and then picked Rat Boy up by the neck. If it wasn’t so serious I would have laughed at the comical way his feet dangled in the air.

  “Don’t you ever forget you owe her your life. If it were up to me, I’d snap your neck like a twig without a second thought. But if you ever come near her again, I will hunt you down and kill you. I will make what happened to him”—he pointed to Gus’s body—“seem like a kindness. Do you understand me?”

  It took a couple of false starts before Rat Boy was able to nod his head, dropping to the ground when Gabriel let him go.

  How long would it take for the police to arrive? I supposed that would depend on how long it took Rat Boy to pull himself together and make a 9-1-1 call. Would forensics be able to tell what had made the hole in Gus’s chest? Would they think some sort of satanic ritual was involved as the heart had been removed? Was I losing my humanity because I felt absolutely no remorse about his death?

  My head began to swim, and I suddenly had difficulty keeping my balance. I felt as if someone had given me an overdose of Alka-Seltzer, but instead of doing its plop-plop-fizz-fizz routine in my stomach, it had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was now in my bloodstream. I could actually feel my veins popping, my blood effervescing as it moved through me. Was this Petrov’s drug doing its job? Had my demon lied to me, and was I now actually dying? I put out my good hand, feeling Gabriel catch it in his own before sweeping me up into his arms and carrying me out of the cage.

  Chapter 8

  I don’t remember much about the drive home, except being grateful that Gabriel had come in a vehicle big enough for me to remain sitting in his lap while he kept one hand on the steering wheel. Neither one of us was about to let go of the other. I had a vague recollection a new mirror had been installed in the private elevator that took us directly from the garage to the penthouse. Some crazy abstract spider-web design that reflected my face back in multiple images. It was odd, but I kind of liked it.

  I’d never appreciated the level of privacy I was afforded by this simple mechanical box until now. Explaining my appearance would have been bad enough, but Gabriel still had body goop smeared on his arm. Of course it was a safe bet that none of the building’s other tenants, had they seen us, would have been so tactless as to have commented on our appearance. At least not to our faces. Gabriel was the wealthy recluse who lived in the penthouse. I was an unknown factor, but being with Gabriel made me acceptable.

  And then my lover was barking orders at Tomas as he carried me through the penthouse door. Now that adrenalin was no longer surging through my body, I was a road map of aches and pains. Some I could attribute to the Mazda being used as a bumper car, and some I figured could be blamed on Petrov’s concoctions—both of them. It was foolish to assume that just because I couldn’t die—and to be honest I was still sitting on the fence about that—there wouldn’t be any physical effects from the unknown chemicals in my system.

  I took it for granted Gabriel was going to put me to bed, but he bypassed the massive king-sized-and-then-some in our bedroom and continued to the walk-in closet. It wasn’t until I saw him punch the numbered keypad on the back wall that I understood what he was doing. Taking a step back, and refusing to put me on the ground, he waited for the section of wall to slide silently open and reveal the hidden room.

  Built originally as a panic room, it was the perfect place for his sarcophagus.

  Living with a vampire had some unique challenges, one of which was learning to adapt to a nocturnal lifestyle. It wasn’t easy. For twenty-five years my body had followed the rhythm of the sun. Behavior that’s more instinctive than learned. But now I was asking it to do a complete one-eighty and adopt a nocturnal lifestyle. And trying to synchronize my sleep pattern with Gabriel’s was still a work in progress. There were nights when I couldn’t keep my eyes open past four a.m., and days when they wouldn’t stay closed past four p.m. And although Gabriel always made certain I fell asleep in his arms, I didn’t always wake up in them. Two or three times a month he would slip out of the huge bed we shared and bring himself here, to the hidden room and his sarcophagus.

  Of course
I’d been excited to see it the first time. Images of the boy king Tutankhamun swirled in my head, so you can understand my disappointment when the sarcophagus didn’t look the way I imagined it ought to. It was bad enough that there was no pharaoh wearing more eyeliner than your average heavy-metal rocker, and it wasn’t even shaped like the coffin of an Egyptian ruler.

  A sarcophagus is actually the name for a stone or marble coffin, shape unspecified, my inner bitch pointed out.

  Yep, that was this, all right. A block of solid marble, it reflected every possible shade of blue in the spectrum. Some of the colors were fluid, changeable, and while I was pretty sure I was looking at the color blue, I wouldn’t have bet my life on it. If these hues were in our color spectrum, then they were at a place human eyesight didn’t register. But all of them, even the funky, way-out-there colors, made me think of Gabriel’s eyes.

  The block itself was approximately ten feet in length and six feet wide, and it was the only item inside the reinforced room. Carved into the top were symbols that held a certain familiarity. I just couldn’t place where I might have seen them . . . or when.

  “They are runes,” Gabriel had told me, standing behind me with his hands resting on my shoulders.

  “What do they do?” I didn’t think they were to make the top look pretty.

  “They protect me.”

  “How?” I turned and looked at him, all curiosity.

  Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back until his long white hair fell free of his shoulders, turning into a heavy curtain that covered the scars there. His nostrils flared slightly, as if he was searching for a specific scent in the air. I sniffed too, trying to be discreet, but unable to dismiss the suspicion that I probably looked more like a cocaine addict. I couldn’t smell anything save for a faint woodsy scent. Kind of like one of those plug-in air fresheners that needed replacing.