by Dee Carney
Cicero.
Chapter Nineteen
Bast nipped at Alice’s bottom lip once. A gentle reminder. He was here and would not let anything happen to her.
Not ever.
He pulled her upright, loving the look of complete adoration mixed with a bit of drunk satisfaction in her expression. Yeah, Cicero had probably messed with her head by stepping in when he had, but Bast wasn’t about to let that go. “Lieutenant,” he growled in warning. He did not want to hear his shit. Especially not about Alice, and definitely not in front of her. The men would be given an explanation for this breach of security, despite Bast not owing them one, but in his own time. Not theirs.
Cicero folded his arms across a brick wall of a chest. “You brought a human here? Do you—”
Rage and righteous indignation propelled Bast forward, the momentum barely allowing him to register that the other members of his team had also approached. Goddamn, he was sick of the man’s constant needling and insubordination. Only one of them could be in charge, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the Hassassin. Enough. The hand that pushed Cicero against the wall had enough force to punch through skin to land on bone.
His lieutenant fared better though. Bast clamped onto his neck with jaws capable of crushing the vampire’s windpipe. His teeth punctured the skin there, blood squirting into his mouth almost immediately.
The battle-seasoned warrior knew better than to struggle. Any movement would have done nothing more than encourage Bast to rip out his throat. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt like holy hell. The healing process even more painful and excruciatingly slow. Whether or not he’d recover his voice, questionable.
Bast drank from the spilling wound on pure instinct alone, the taste coming nowhere close to the sweetness Alice provided him. Cicero vibrated with returned anger but smartly stayed stock still.
Bast wasn’t the oldest vampire by a long shot. Of course, he wasn’t even a full-born vampire like the others. Hell, he wasn’t the most lethal of the men. But he’d been chosen to lead them—him—and he had no problem reinforcing to any of them why that decision had been made. No one but fucking Cicero ever seemed to need a reminder.
At last he pulled away, stepping away from the direct spray of blood once the pressure had been removed. If Cicero wanted the wound healed, he could ask one of the others to lick it over. Bast didn’t give a shit if he bled out. “Let that be the last time,” he told Cicero in a low voice. “The last fucking time.”
For some reason Bast couldn’t be bothered to explore, Cicero was almost fanatical about staying with the guard. If he was going to voice his displeasure again, Bast wouldn’t be the one to hear it. That alone kept Bast from taking his life and being done with it.
He turned his full attention back to his lover by outstretching a hand. “Come here, baby. Let me introduce you to the team.” Once the pale, trembling woman stood at his side, he made his intentions clear to the others. She held his hand tightly, and he returned the hold, knowing how insane this must have all seemed to her. To him, it was just another day. “Alice is under my protection.”
Gray’s eyes contained a mix of curiosity and admiration, but he gave a curt nod. There was no attempt to touch her, even with a friendly handshake, and Bast mentally thanked the vampire’s insightfulness. “And if you are under his protection, you are under mine. Gray Thallum, at your service.”
One by one, the other three members introduced themselves. Drew and the twins, Kemp and Conell. Dressed in tuxedos, none of them managed to hide the innate thug that made most people—vampire and human alike—instinctually fearful. Despite what others might think, he trusted every one of them, including Cicero, with his life...and now with Alice’s.
“She’s our way in, gentlemen, so it’s crucial that we not only keep an eye on the Council, but our human ward as well. They won’t object to the six of us if we say we’re not there for them, but for her.”
Drew nodded. He was not only a sharp thinker, his quick mind made him an excellent strategist. “I think their biggest issue is appearing weak before one another. On top of that, if we’re hovering around all of them, it also looks like they don’t quite trust each other.”
“We’re not trying to exacerbate either of those beliefs. With that in mind, it should be a nice, quiet night. We’re not expecting trouble.” A confirmation look directed at Gray, who nodded his agreement. “Excellent. You ready?” Bast snapped at Cicero. Kemp had tended to his wound, and they were both now checking his shirt for blood splatters.
Cicero returned a glare. “Yeah.” His voice was raspy. Good. It would be a perfect reminder for a while.
“Let’s move. Three vehicles. Drew, with me.” He would have loved to have confided in Gray some of the shit that had gone down over the last few days, but now was not the place nor the time. First protocol held true not only for the Council, but also for their guardians. Both leaders avoided being in the same place at the same time too often.
No further words were needed as they moved en masse to a fleet of black Escalades. He helped Alice into the backseat of one before joining Drew up front. She didn’t seem as discomforted as before, which gave him one less thing to worry about.
For some reason, ever since arriving here, a strange feeling began gnawing at him. Nothing like the illness, but definitely a sense of something...wrong. No. That wasn’t it. Something different. It didn’t hurt, but the presence was there. It knocked at him from the inside. A reminder of something he couldn’t quite place.
Whatever the feeling, its origins were physical. A new iteration on the illness he’d just gotten over, perhaps? He couldn’t be sure. It felt like two heartbeats. His and another echoing right on its heels.
Fucking great. Just what he needed. Another new twist on something he couldn’t get under control.
“Alice,” he grumbled, “any movement on the chart?”
“I’m still running that search we talked about.”
To think they’d tossed around the idea that he was some sort of demon offspring. Not like he’d ever heard of any existing, but he could see the connection. Alice had flat-out refused to believe, despite the evidence. “You’re not evil,” she’d insisted.
Guess that depended on her definition of evil. Didn’t matter anymore, though. When his wings had disappeared, so had her theory, in his mind. Still, she wanted to keep searching for other creatures who might bear the same similarities, just in case. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already spent two hundred years searching, so if she spent even twenty with her theory, it wouldn’t hurt any. All it could do was help, so he’d gone along with the idea.
“I might have something new for you. Be alert, okay?” He wouldn’t discuss the illness in front of Drew but knew she understood him when there was a small squeeze to his left shoulder.
The closer they got to their destination, the more Bast wished she’d continue to touch him. His head pounded, the sensation issuing down his spinal column and radiating through his shoulders. It was a dull, achy feeling, almost too light to be considered true pain. The persistent knock of two heartbeats, one behind the other—the unnatural sensation made his chest ache.
“Boss?” Drew said in that gentle voice of his. “We got a cover yet?”
“Still working.” Rubbing his chest, he glanced out the window, trying to come up with something that Alice could handle. That the Council would buy. If worse came to worst, he could always shove her in the restroom and have
her wait there until everyone was ready to depart.
As soon as the thought finished forming, he tossed it out. She might go along willingly at first, but she’d unscrew his balls later for the mistreatment.
Damn it, if his head wasn’t feeling so fuzzy...
He turned to Alice. “How good are you at genealogy, really?”
“Very. I spent hours researching with my mother. For years.”
“So to someone who doesn’t know much about it, you’d sound like an expert?”
Her mouth turned down at the corners slightly. “Sure.”
“And if someone did know a lot about it, how would you appear to them?”
“More than an amateur, less than an expert, probably. Even then, I can pretty much hold my own.”
Bast studied her again. At the vision she made. Her curls had been piled high on her head, silken strands cascading down her elegant neck in random places. It drew attention to the twin marks of her neck, a distinct signal to the other vampires that she belonged to someone of their kind.
The only makeup on her face was a light layering of lipstick. Just enough to make her lips glisten and her eyes appear an even more rich blue. That intense gaze peered back at him now, so warmly.
They looked at one another, and Bast wondered—just for a split second—if the thing happening between them went further than he’d originally intended. Than he’d imagined.
What would it be like to have someone around all the time? Someone who saw his flaws and didn’t run, but actually embraced him instead?
Alice sat lost in thought again. She blinked in rapid succession, not saying a word. Her throat worked at swallowing several times, and Bast hoped he didn’t ask too much of her. Her hand opened and closed in her lap, but those eyes remained focused on him.
It wouldn’t be terrible to imagine looking into them for a long time to come.
Of course, that would never happen. It just wasn’t in the universe’s plan for someone like her to be with him for a lifetime. He would have to be grateful for the little time together the universe had bestowed upon them.
“Well,” he said after a while. He’d faced front again, using the street lights racing by as a place to focus his turbulent mind. It took effort to shake off the emotion flooding him. The one that had no right to life. “I think then we have our cover.”
Drew turned the wheel effortlessly and glanced at him. “Yeah?”
“I’ll call the others and let them know. Alice, I’m thinking your knowledge is about to come in very handy.” There was no response from the backseat, so he turned to her with a smile. “You with me, princess?”
She shook her head as if dazed. Probably back there doing all sorts of charting in her head or something. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I’m giving you a promotion.”
* * *
They were alone again, the Escalade’s motor still running although it was parked next to the other two. She didn’t have to study the empty lot too hard to know their group was the first to arrive. That didn’t help the churning sensation in her belly any either.
Despite overhearing Sebastian’s half of the conversation to his men, she still wasn’t quite sure she understood. And his instructions didn’t clear the confusion any better. “You don’t have to do anything but be yourself. They’ll spot a lie before it’s out of your mouth, and that does neither of us any good.”
Drew left a few minutes ago to help the others, but Sebastian had stayed behind, keeping his earlier promise.
“So you want me to talk genealogy?”
“Only if asked, and knowing this group and the way they like to show off to each other, they’re going to love you and do plenty of asking. You’re going to be a dream come true...”
He lifted his head, his gaze darting to the entrance of Pomodoro di Oro, which had been shut down for the night in order to cater to its auspicious guests. Who knew vampires had a thing for Italian food? She could have laughed at that. Then again, maybe it was all that marinara sauce that appealed to them, with the color being the same as their favorite nourishment and all. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing to do this. What else do I need to know here? What happens if they don’t believe me? I feel like I’m flying blind.”
“All right, slow down and take a deep breath.” He paused as she tried to rein in her nerves. “Now, don’t think. Start with one question. Ask me the first thing that comes to your mind.”
“Who is the Council that they need to be guarded?”
Her question raised his brow. “Not they. It. We’re not here for the individuals. They have their own private security for that. My men protect the group. The idea. The symbol...the Council. Not the Council members. Does that make sense?”
Alice’s head hurt. “No.”
“It’s a new concept for us.” She figured he meant the vampire populace. “One ruling body to keep us from being hunted, from warring over territory, from trying to take over. There are thousands over the world. Way too many people to be governed by one person, so some of the younger vampires came up with this. It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually it was an idea most could agree upon. But there are those who want nothing to do with the Council, preferring the old ways. So we guard the Council, to ensure that any threat to it is immediately squashed.”
“So wait, are you saying that even if one of the actual members was a threat to the group...”
“He or she would be sacrificed for the greater good. Yes.”
“Whoa.” Talk about hardcore.
“I’m telling you this so that you understand that if you go in there with your intentions centered on the group, and not the individuals, you’ll support us being there with you. And when they all find out why you’re there, there isn’t a single one of them who won’t be curious.”
She dropped her face in a hand, covering her eyes. After a deep breath, she said, “All right. Tell me again who I’m dealing with.”
By the time Sebastian finished, an hour had passed, and Alice’s head was buzzing. She stared down at her short, blunt nails, noticing the distinct lack of professional care. Odd that her natural nails didn’t bother her before. Dolled up now next to Sebastian, about to face men and women who could buy and sell her, she couldn’t help but notice how different she would be to them.
Where was Richard now? He probably couldn’t ever imagine that his older sister sat in a car worth more than the rundown two-bedroom he shared with his crackhead friends, nor that the cost of her dress could have bought them groceries for a few months.
Hell, she’d stopped trying to figure out what she could lift for quick resale from Sebastian from the first day she’d met him. If she thought hard enough about it, within hours of meeting him, he’d stopped being a walking dollar sign.
It seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d been eating out of garbage bins, cursing violently if their lids had been locked tight against people like her. Homeless. Desperate.
A sense of shame, not pride like she expected, washed over her at the thought of walking into a room where people—vampires—had no clue about the struggles of humans around them. She would not only pretend to be like them, Alice would have to dust off creaky manners and long-gone charm in order not to be an embarrassment to the man who’d brought her here. The pressure was excruciating.
“Hey,” Sebastian called softly. “You’re going to do fine. Relax.”
She cut her eyes to him. “You a mind-reader now?”
“No, but I can detect the change of your scent. It’s wild now. Not like before.”
“Wait...” Her eyes narrowed. “You can smell my emotions?”
His grin didn’t put her shock at ease. “Something like that.”
Alice’s stomach did a barrel roll. “You’re not helping. Not even a little bit.”
“Come on, let’s go. I think anticipation of the event is making it a lot worse than it’ll ever be.”
Blowing out a breath, she nodded. Still, as she waited for Sebastian to exit and then come to her side of the vehicle, she couldn’t help but visualize what others saw if they’d happened to turn right now—a tall, brooding man built like a badass intent on intimidating anything or anyone in his way opened the backdoor to a luxury vehicle. A woman who’d missed one too many meals stepped out in heels and couture. Before both feet were on the ground, a five-man contingent of even more badasses surrounded her and Bast.
The men paid her little attention; instead, their focus trained on their surroundings. None spoke, but hell, she’d probably not want to know what was on their minds anyway. They moved with quiet efficiency, jaws clenched, hands deceptively loose. She knew better. Bast had already warned her they would be armed to the teeth.
Seriously. Don’t let the tuxedos and stiff collars be deceiving, or end up at the business end of a gun or a stake.
Butterflies still spiraled in her belly, but Alice straightened her back and did her best to look the part of someone important. One glance at her trembling hands would immediately squelch that image, so thank God for a small clutch she clung to.
The small group hovered at the entrance as Kemp—maybe it was Conell?—spoke in low tones with a steely eyed man. Her guards tightened their formation around her, acting as a single unit, to the point she could have questioned her own value if she didn’t know better. Bast covered her hand with his own warm one, and Alice let loose a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.