Entangled

by Olivia Stocum

  “Your true self. All that makes you different from anyone living or anyone who has lived before.”

  “My soul?”

  “That would be close enough,” he said.

  “Is that why you kissed me? My essence?”

  He didn’t respond. She felt embarrassed for having asked in the first place. Kendra hugged her knee again.

  “Yeah, never mind,” she said. “I can guess what would happen next if he got his hands on me.”

  Alessandro nodded shortly.

  There was silence between them, save the rev of a ridiculously oversized engine.

  “Then I am your hostage,” she said, staring blindly out the windshield.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Better to be my hostage than my son’s, habibti.”

  “Well, I’m still your hostage. I can’t leave, and you’re using me for your gain.”

  “Mutual gain. I assume you would like to live, yes?”

  “Whether or not you will let me live is debatable.”

  His jaw worked. Good. She was getting to him. Maybe she couldn’t run from him, but she could make him miserable in the meantime.

  Wait.

  Did she want to make him miserable? Did she want to make him kill her? Maybe he was convinced she had to live, for now anyway, but he was a killer. What if she pushed him too far and he killed her because he couldn’t help himself?

  At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that the werewolves would finish him off for it.

  “Did you find a room?” he asked.

  She turned back to the phone. “Two beds, yes.”

  She caught his smile over that one. “It will ask for a passcode before you can access my credit. It’s Aziza. A-Z-I....”

  “Yes, I get it.” She typed it in. “That’s a woman’s name.”

  Black brows lifted suggestively. “Jealous?”

  “Hardly.”

  “My mother,” he said.

  She looked at him, probably for too long, probing his face for answers. All she saw there was reverence. “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Did you get it?”

  “I got it.”

  “You now have access to my credit card.”

  “It’s probably stolen anyway.”

  “I assure you that it is not.”

  “Why give me access?”

  “Because, habibti, I’ve only been driving for a few weeks, and it is easier to have you do everything else.”

  “Hmmm.... Wait, a few weeks?” she sat up. “Where have you been, under a rock?”

  “Close. A monastery.”

  She remembered seeing the crucifix around his neck. “Okay. I’ll believe it.”

  “Of all things, why believe that?”

  “How many vampires wear a crucifix? Is that why you stopped, um, biting women?”

  He flashed his fangs. Instead of scaring her, it pooled warmth low in her stomach as she remembered what those fangs had felt like under her skin. She didn’t like her response. She didn’t want that response. Why didn’t it scare her? Like a normal, sane human being.

  “It was then, yes,” he said. The fangs retracted and he showed her a brilliant smile that Aziza had probably cherished during his human life. Her heart gave an unwarranted squeeze over that. “I lived as a monk up until a few weeks ago.”

  “Not you.”

  “So hard to believe?”

  “Pretty much impossible.”

  He laughed, the sound vibrating through her somehow. She peeled off his jacket, hyperaware of his scent on it, like expensive Egyptian musk. Not the cheap stuff that grandpa wore, but the real deal. How warm it was suddenly in the enclosed space. She turned the heat completely off since she figured whatever he was doing to her was steamy enough.

  Even if he didn’t kill her, or change her, there were other things he could do, and she’d be too high on his pheromones to know until afterwards.

  “I’m not for your amusement,” she said firmly. As firmly as she could, all things considered.

  He sobered. “I am aware of that, my lady.”

  My lady again. He was old.

  “But if you wanted to use me for yours, the offer is there,” he said. He looked straight out the windshield as calmly as if he’d been talking about the weather. “I won’t hurt you,” he said more quietly, merely a breath in the air between them. “Other than the scars. Which you already have.”

  It took her a few uneven heartbeats to find her voice. “And other bites too.”

  “No. I’d use the same entry points.”

  Her breath stopped, hitched once, and then she began to breathe again. He picked up on it. His chin lifted. He didn’t look at her but his scent seemed stronger. She was getting seriously uncomfortable.

  “Some monk you must have been,” she managed.

  “None of us are perfect. We do slip from time to time. Especially when the temptation is strong.”

  “Just because I’m female and you’re here with me.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What then? My soul?” She laughed, but it came out strained.

  He didn’t seem inclined to clarify and that made her more uncomfortable than she already was. Breathe. Breathe normally. You’re panting like a dog. Just stop it.

  She cleared her throat. “I’ll never be your sex slave, okay.” Best just to get that out in the open before he got any more ideas.

  “I was referring to my being yours.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “And you would know all about it too.” She stopped when he looked at her, his brows arched tellingly.

  “I was one,” he said.

  “You were a Slave?”

  “Not like that, no. But I once existed to please someone.”

  Holy crap. Think, Kendra, say something. “How old are you?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “Games then, huh?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “Fine.” She thought about it. He was powerful, and obviously from a time distanced from this one, because vampire or not, he couldn’t seem to help but to remember that she was not just his potential victim, but a lady too. “At least five hundred,” she said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “For starters, you’re too powerful to be any younger.”

  “Yes.”

  “You were created to be someone’s son, right?”

  “Or was I?” Again with that damned smooth voice making her breath ragged.

  Or, he was created to be someone’s mate?

  Of course he was. He’d as much as told her that. He had been infected by a female vampire to serve as her lover.

  He was old, which meant he was powerful.

  He was beautiful, probably from birth.

  Just what had she gotten herself into?

  Shock faded though, followed by an immediate sense of loss. Why should it bother her, that he’d been created for another woman?

  “Where is she?” Kendra asked, trying to sound casual about it.

  “Killed, long ago.” She could only see his profile, and even that was swathed in shadow.

  “Did you love her?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Yes. “No.” She shrugged for good measure.

  “Yes, I did. She was my first.”

  First love, first vampire. First, first. What kind of first? “Really?” she asked quietly.

  “Really.” His gaze slid in her direction, hesitated, then turned back to the road.

  “Was she your first, first?”

  He seemed to be decoding that one. “No,” he said finally.

  So much for a kinship between them in that regard.

  He looked at her and smiled ruefully. “I was thirty years old, habibti. She was my first mate, but I’d waited a long time before allowing myself to be tied down, by the standards of the time. Most men my age had a wife or two and a handful of children by then.
”

  “Or two?”

  “It was Egypt.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “What’s there to be sorry for?” So gentle was his question, so ready to assure her that she had done nothing wrong.

  Think, Kendra. Say something. “I’m sure you’d rather not give me your life story.”

  “Not all of it, no. Some things I would rather forget.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Did you love your husband?”

  “Yes. Of course I did.”

  “Are you surprised that I loved my mate?”

  “No. I can get that you’re capable of that. I mean,” she backtracked, embarrassed.

  He waited, but now she was too flustered to continue. She covered for herself.

  “You’re a monster. You killed your own kind back there.” She pointed, not even sure if it was in the right direction.

  “I killed mindless Slaves, who were trying to kill you by the way.”

  “You plan to kill your own son.”

  “To pay a debt.”

  “What debt?”

  “One I owe.”

  “Well, that’s obvious,” she said, annoyed with him. She looked at the speedometer. “You have a lead foot. Speed limit is 65.”

  He slowed down, but not by very much. “Too bad,” he said.

  “We just passed the sign.” Then she stopped, staring at him. “Wait. Have you ever been to the US before?”

  “This wasn’t much of a country when I joined the monastery.”

  She looked at his phone in her hand for a moment. Then out of curiosity she scrolled onto settings and found what she was looking for. She switched it to Arabic. Wordlessly, she handed it over.

  It made her feel for him. He was out of place here. An alien.

  He glanced at his phone, said something in another language she assumed she was better off not understanding then handed it back to her. “You’re directing,” he said.

  “All right.” She switched it back to English. “How did you know how to spell your mother’s name?”

  “I am fully capable of communicating in several different languages.”

  “But Arabic is easier for you.”

  “More natural, yes.” He smiled then. “You do realize that English numbers are actually Arabic.”

  She opened her mouth to say something then thought better of it. Duh, he was right. Most of the world used the Arabic numeral system. “Still, I was right,” she said finally. “About you.”

  “I was raised in ancient Egypt. We spoke a different language then, one that is now dead. But yes, that land is my home.”

  “Is a language really dead when even one person speaks it fluently?”

  “No one to speak it with, habibti.”

  “You’re very understandable. Just a light accent.”

  “I have had years to work on it.”

  “Yeah, I guess you have.” She shifted uncomfortably on the black leather seat. “So, I kind of need you to keep me alive,” she said, offering an olive branch. “I’ll make sure we can get around. Sounds more than fair to me. I have the easy job.”

  “Staying alive is not always easy.”

  “I could have done without that last statement, thanks.”

  He smiled, and she was glad to see she hadn’t gotten him too angry. “My apologies,” he said, nodding his head.

  “Hey, no problem.”

  Good Lord, she was befriending the vampire. No, not befriending. That was too strong a word. They were allies, temporarily, so he could do what he had to, and she could do what she had to—remain human, fully alive, and not a member of the undead.

  “You never told me how old you are,” she said.

  He shrugged. “I can’t give you an exact number since I do not know the year of my birth.”

  “Holy crow,” she muttered.

  “Yes, I know.”

  She waited impatiently for him to continue.

  “Three thousand. Give or take.”

  Her eyes must have been huge. She couldn’t speak. How on earth was that even possible? He’d eluded the werewolves for three thousand years?

  He glanced at her and lifted his brows. “Yes?”

  “I can’t even imagine. How did you not get yourself poisoned by werewolves?”

  “I watched, I listened, I learned.”

  She took a breath. This hole of hers she was in just kept getting deeper. Talk about power. The older the vampire the more power he accumulated. He could probably read her thoughts. Kendra glared at him. “Are you in my head?”

  He glanced at her, mouth tipped in a subtle smile. “Heaven forbid, my lady. I would never even try.”

  “Why not?”

  “I may not be human, but I am still male.”

  “That wasn’t much of an answer.”

  “I could never navigate the inside of your head. Too complicated. Men I have, and can with accuracy.”

  “But not women.”

  He shook his head. “No, not women. If I took more blood from you, if we were to live as lovers I would be able to sense you and to know when you needed me, but I still would not be able to decipher your thoughts.” He paused, watching her for longer than was safe before turning back to the road. “Any more questions?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We have a little time before dawn.”

  “Okay then. Who was your mate?”

  He shook his head over that one. “Women are still unpredictable,” he said.

  “Some things will never change, huh?”

  “I think they will not, but then I doubt I would want them to.”

  She fumbled, then said the one word that had been her best defense since she was eight years old. “Whatever.”

  “Sha’re,” he said calmly. “We were betrothed.”

  “Betrothed? Wait, you knew her in your human life?”

  “Yes, and very well.”

  “In Egypt. Ancient Egypt.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it all happen?”

  He sighed heavily.

  “You don’t have to talk about it.”

  “It’s no secret,” he said. “She was admired by Amar. He was a prince at the time. He was also a god.” Alessandro glanced at her, brown eyes serious. “He was a vampire.”

  “He turned her?”

  He looked back at the road. “He drank from her, raped her, made her his human concubine.”

  Oh, God. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”

  “Finally, Amar turned her,” he said, either too wrapped up in his own thoughts to acknowledge her sympathy, or unable to accept it. “But only when he had no choice,” Alessandro continued. “Her body was used up.”

  Kendra knew she’d done it this time. But he wasn’t angry. What she’d made him was worse. He was sad.

  “And then?” she asked, frustrated that she could feel compassion welling inside of her. Damn her compassion. She’d inherited it from her mother. Sure, feel sorry for the bloodthirsty murderer. That’s a great character trait, Kendra.

  “He was killed shortly after by werewolves. She came to me the next night and turned me.”

  “So you could be together.”

  “In a sense. But she was truly broken. I believe she turned me out of some vestige of human need left within her. She was a goddess, and she ruled Egypt like her predecessor.”

  “What did you do?”

  His face hardened. “I learned well from her. I became her god.”

  “And then the werewolves killed her too?”

  “She was too powerful, and yes, they killed her. They would have killed me as well, but I learn.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” She wiped her hands on her satin pants, nervous, sad, still attracted to him, and wary all at the same time.

  “I fled Egypt and became a wanderer.”

  “Is that what you are now?”

  “Now I am hunting for Theron.”


  “Will you go back to the monastery when you’re done?”

  He looked at her curiously. “You do ask a lot of questions.”

  “Gee, sorry.”

  “I’m not sure what I will do,” he said hollowly.

  They sat in silence for a time. Kendra picked up the phone mostly as a distraction, but it was good that she had. “We’re almost to the exit. Fifty-five west.”

  Once a mortal was turned into a vampire, the reason behind the turning colored their existence. Alessandro had been changed by the woman he had loved in his human life. That would be forever a part of him.

  Kendra couldn’t begin to fathom anything about either his life or his un-life, and not just because it had begun so long ago, but for the tragedy of it all.

  The vampire who’d killed Kendra’s husband had been a Slave, and only one of many males that a female vampire had turned. The Slave had simply been looking for a meal at the time of Jason’s death.

  “No more questions?” he asked. “Have I finally shocked you?”

  “Turn here,” she mouthed.

  He shook his head as he took the off-ramp.

  She looked at the GPS. “Take a right. The hotel should be on the left just ahead. I don’t have any shoes on. You’ll have to check in.”

  “I think I can handle it.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  He parked the car and got out, looking at the sky. It wasn’t quite dawn, but there was the telltale glow on the horizon. False-dawn. She doubted false-dawn ever fooled him.

  Alessandro turned back. His long body bent to look at her in the car. “You better come with me.”

  “What, like this? No.”

  “I don’t dare leave you out here alone.”

  She looked around the quiet parking lot. “But there’s no one here, and we’ve driven for two hours.”

  “I can’t take that chance.”

  “No way you’re going to lose your bargaining chip, huh?” She unbuckled her seatbelt and got out, the pavement freezing against her bare feet. She rubbed her arms.

  He grabbed a bag out of the back then came around the car so quickly she hardly saw him. Next thing she knew he’d swept her into his arms.

  “Not this again. Put me down.” She pressed against his chest, remembering how she’d gotten into those arms the first time, feeling absurd now that she was there again. She looked at his face, too close to hers. Dangerously close, honey eyes studied her as if he really could read her mind.