“I’ll hold him down while you cut a slice of his hide to try,” Alexander offered. He liked Kyle, but still jumped at any opportunity to torment him.
“Where were we?” Murphy muttered, weaving through people, equipment and furnishings to get back to his computer. His heart rate was up, but he seemed largely unaffected by the interruption. He’d heard them discuss her Red Rage before, but he’d never actually witnessed it. Not having experienced it in its full, devastating glory, he was probably wondering what the fuss had been about. Unlike the rest of them, who were tiptoeing around her, despite Kyle’s teasing.
“I need something more substantial than coffee,” she muttered as a hungry ache bloomed in the general vicinity of her stomach. She felt the prickling whisper of Julius’s power over the skin of her forearms and the back of her neck and knew he was sending a staff member to bring her something. It would probably include food: sweet, carbohydrate rich and lots of it. He knew her too well.
“We have a lead,” Kyle announced. “That’s why I’m here. Trish is emailing some files, but I was close by so decided to touch base.” He had her immediate attention.
“Lead? What kind of lead?” she demanded.
“On one of the drivers of the van,” Kyle said.
“I’ve got the file,” Murphy called out.
Kyle nodded towards the bank of screens, and they all gathered behind Murphy.
“Trish managed to pull a decent picture of the driver from one of the cameras on the way out of the City,” he explained. “He had the window open, and the wind had just lifted his cap away from his face. As you can see, it’s a pretty clear image.” A black and white image of a man popped up on one of the screens, his arm halfway out of the window, as though he’d thrown something out of the vehicle. He was largely unremarkable—Caucasian facial features, probably in his early thirties, his hair still mostly hidden by the cap—but Gabi had the disconcerting feeling that there was something familiar about him. “She’s running facial recognition through multiple agencies now,” Kyle continued, “but the local database hadn’t turned up anything when I last spoke to her. She’s moving on to international ones. Gabs, what’s wrong?”
Her distraction must have been noticeable.
“Do you know this man?” Julius asked her.
“I…” She paused, her mind racing, flipping through faces and names. “I just got this weird sense of déjà vu…”
“Does he just look like someone you know, or do you recognise the man himself?” Alexander asked.
“I’m not sure.” Gabi caught the annoyance bubbling up inside her before it leaked into her voice. “Just give me a moment.”
A faint knock at the door distracted them all. The door opened smoothly and soundlessly to reveal Claudia on the other side, holding a large tray laden with drinks and food. Both her hands were firmly clutching the huge tray, making it impossible for her to have opened the door.
“Show-off,” Gabi chided Julius as Fergus strode over to relieve the steward of her burden.
“Expediency,” Julius said with a ghost of a smile. “Thank you, Claudia,” he said and the door swung shut, once again without anyone touching it. Until a few months ago, Julius would never have used his Air-bending gift so casually in front of others. Only a select handful had been privy to his secret. That was until Benedict, the Vampire Magus Princep, had pointed out, in the middle of a crisis meeting with all supernatural groups of the City, that Julius was also a Vampire Magus. There were very few of them in the world; Benedict only knew of one other, and no one was sure if she actually still lived. While Julius’s main strength lay in Air-bending, the ability to manipulate air in any way he chose, he was also a better than average Fire-bender.
“Print me a hard copy of that picture,” Gabi told Murphy, her eye drawn to the tray. It had been nearly twelve hours since her lunch with her mother and she really didn’t feel like eating, but her stomach was about ready to try consuming itself.
Julius pulled out a chair for her at the table, right in front of the tray. She sent him a warning glare, babying her was strictly forbidden, but she took the proffered seat.
Kyle brought over the picture of the man who had more than likely kidnapped her mother and set it on the table beside her before helping himself to an energy drink and a chocolate brownie from one of two boxes of freshly baked goodies.
Gabi growled sharply, but anxious nausea still tempered her appetite. She reached for a can of Coke, hoping it would settle her stomach, cracked the tab open, then pulled the picture closer for another look. Taking a large pull of the icy drink, she closed her mind to outside distractions and concentrated on the face, trying to connect it to something else: a scene, an emotion, whether he was friend or foe. Anything that would ignite a full memory.
Razor jumped up onto the chair to her left and purred loudly, his hunger penetrating her mental bubble. Sighing, she opened her eyes and pulled one of the food boxes closer to see if there was something in it for Razor. Kyle’s box had been filled with sweet muffins, brownies and custard tarts, but this one was stuffed full of savoury delicacies. She reached for a bite-sized pie, moving a small, pastry-wrapped sausage out of the way. As the pasty rolled to one side, it reminded her freakishly of a detached human finger. She broke the pie into pieces on a napkin, small chunks of beef steaming in the cool air of the war room, and set it in front of Razor. The cat wasted no time devouring the offering as Gabi’s hand strayed back to the box to find something else for him.
“Holy shit.” The memory burst alive in her mind, the details crystal clear, his face etched into her memory.
“What?” at least three different voices demanded simultaneously.
“It’s him.” She jabbed a finger at the man in the photo. “The finger at Court, Helene… It’s him.” The faces looking at her registered bemusement, confusion and outright concern. She took a breath and tried again. “At Princep Court, when Mariska called the demons to provide a smokescreen so that Helene could have me captured. Kyle, you were there; you should recognise him too.”
Kyle shook his head, and the rest still looked perplexed.
“He is the human who took me to her. At gunpoint. Raz hurt him in the fight.” When Gabi and Julius had been ordered to Princep Court to face charges brought about by Mariska, one of the Princeps, a Vampire named Helene, had been trying to have Gabi killed. She’d very much wanted the position of Julius’s Consort once his new power level had been revealed. When she and Gabi had faced off, Razor had bitten off one of her fingers during the fight. She’d run once Kyle and Caspian had found them, and tried to bluff her way out of her involvement. The severed finger had been the proof Gabi needed to convince the rest of the Princeps of Helene’s ill intentions. The man in the photo had been part of her posse. “I don’t know what would’ve happened to him after Helene ran. I was more concerned with the Werewolves and the finger.”
Julius, Fergus and Alexander now finally seemed to understand who she was talking about. Murphy was too new to the circle to know what she was referring to, and she didn’t care to fill him in just yet. Kyle was the only one, besides Caspian the traitor, who’d been at the showdown. She held up the print. “Wolf, you saw him too. He was bruised, bloodied and only semi-conscious when you arrived, but don’t you recognise him?”
Kyle took the paper from her and studied it, holding it out at arm’s length, his eyes narrowed. Then he nodded. “I’d be more sure if I could scent him, but it does look like him.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then everyone began speaking at once.
As the conversation heated up around the table, Gabi broke open another pie for Razor and popped the sausage roll in her own mouth; either the Coke or the break in the case had settled her stomach.
“Benedict said that Helene was one of the Centuria,” Alexander put in. “High up and trying to make herself eligible for ascension to the Decuria when the time came.”
“Which means if this man was help
ing Helene and he’s involved in Gabi’s mom’s kidnapping…” Kyle said slowly, as though testing his reasoning even as he spoke the words.
“Then it’s th’ Decuria at wark here,” Fergus finished the sentence, and silence once more engulfed the room.
Gabi didn’t know how to feel; she wasn’t sure if this was better news or worse news than when they were completely in the dark. The sausage roll she’d just eaten turned into a ball of lead in her stomach.
“Gabrielle, tell us everything you know about this man,” Julius pressed her, his urgency cloaked in a soothing tone.
She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. She downed the last of the Coke.
“He, uh, he was human,” she finally managed to say, pulling up her memories of their time at Court. It had been a bleak few days punctuated by more than one attempt on her life and topped off with her and Fergus secretly assassinating one of the Princeps, a vile excuse for a man who’d taken pleasure in Turning and abusing young girls.
“He arrived after the other two thugs had tried to subdue me. He was carrying a Sig Sauer P226, so he had the upper hand despite being human. I’d killed one of the other two human men. They were both hyped up on Vamp blood, and he claimed it was their first time. He seemed disdainful of them. When he realised I’d only knocked the second man unconscious, he killed the man without a second thought and made me throw him down the stairwell so it would look as though the two men had been fighting and killed each other. His utter disregard for their lives chilled me at the time.” She still felt cold when she revisited the memory of the human running a long-bladed knife through the unconscious man. “His attitude and bearing hinted at some kind of military special forces training. He was good at reading body language; he picked up when I considered diving down the stairs and turned the gun on Razor instead of me. And he told me that even though he was only human, he never missed a target.”
“That sounds very much like Sicarius.”
Every one of them jumped to attention as the door to the war room swung open once again and Benedict, the teenage-looking Vampire Princep, lounged in the doorway, his jaw working lazily on a piece of chewing gum, a grin creasing the corners of his baby blue eyes. “I come bearing gifts.” He had his hands up defensively as Fergus and Alexander lunged towards the door, blades drawn.
“It’s alright,” Julius said, calming the atmosphere in the room with a breath of power. “Benedict, you really should announce yourself. We’re all a little tense at the moment.”
Benedict’s grin just widened. “So I’ve noticed. But I’ve come to ease the tension just a little. Come along, pup.” It was then that Gabi saw he held something in his left hand. A length of chain. Something was obviously attached to the other end of the chain. Everyone tensed again, Gabi and Kyle automatically putting themselves between the door and Murphy while Julius strode forward.
Without changing expression, Benedict moved to one side of the doorway and yanked on the chain. A man stumbled into view, the chain padlocked around his throat, his arms secured behind his back. His face bore red welts, one eye was swollen shut, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, but Gabi still recognised him. As the man from the surveillance photo.
CHAPTER 6
“How did you get in here without my guards alerting me?” Julius asked their unexpected guest. Fergus and Alexander had still not moved from their positions blocking Benedict’s entry into the war room.
Benedict shoved the chained and beaten-up human away from the door, and Mac stepped into view.
“Sorry, Sire,” the grey-haired Vampire muttered. “He swore you’d be happy to see him; I didn’t think to check whether you were actually expecting him.”
“You’d better all get inside,” Julius growled. “Benedict, I hope you have a legitimate reason for showing this human where we live.” He stalked away from the door to Gabi, pulling her with him towards the far side of the long table. Fergus and Alexander stood down, Alexander moving to join Gabi and Julius while Fergus stayed on full alert to one side of the door. He’d sheathed his sword, but his right hand hovered just millimetres from the hilt. Kyle and Murphy retook their seats.
Gabi stood frozen, caught between confusion at Benedict’s sudden arrival and wanting to rip the human male to shreds with her bare hands. Mac was her one tiny spark of hope and relief; his weathered face, greying beard and the mischievous glint in his eye never failed to lift her spirits. As a recently Turned Vampire, he understood her brushes with Red Rage and her human idiosyncrasies better than any of the others. He was a true and trusted friend.
Mac entered first, going straight to them, bowing his head subserviently to Julius in greeting and casting a worried gaze over Gabi, but he held his tongue, just taking up a position near them but closer to the door. Benedict strolled in behind Mac, yanking the human in behind him. He slammed the door shut with one booted foot and then kicked the back of the human’s knee so that the man fell to the floor, landing hard with a barely suppressed grunt of pain.
“Sit,” Benedict commanded redundantly, a dog handler cussing out a recalcitrant pup. Then he turned to his audience. “He already knew where you live, Julius. He’s been spying on you for months.”
“What?” Alexander demanded, his eyes narrowing in anger and suspicion. “How? And how do you know this? How long have you known this?” His tone was curt to the point of disrespect. The animosity between Julius’s second and the Princep hadn’t abated since the battle for the Source. A love triangle had the tendency to do that, Gabi sighed. If Athena could just pick between the two men, maybe they would settle their differences and move on, but, with the Magus attracted to both men and unable to make a choice, she’d instead been keeping both at arm’s length while she figured out her own feelings. Gabi sensed the thread of warning Julius sent to his second. Benedict might be an uninvited guest, but he was both a Princep and one of the Higher Order of the Lucis. They needed to tread carefully.
The amusement had left Benedict’s face, his lips thinning slightly, but he allowed Alexander’s insolence to slide.
“We received intel a couple of weeks ago that Sicarius has been following a designated target for several months now,” the Princep explained. “I tend to keep an ear out for unusual movement around the City, and I finally picked up his trail.” Gabi knew his ear referred to his ability as a clairaudient. He could ‘hear’ something happening, or about to happen, in the next room or in a city on the other side of the world, much like a clairvoyant could envision something before it happened or a world away from where it happened. “Sicarius is more a title than a name. It is given to the official assassin of the Decuria. I caught him a few blocks from here.”
Gabi’s nails were digging into her palms; only Julius’s calm presence and her own exhaustion were keeping her from flying at the kneeling captive. Common sense was calmly reminding her that hearing the whole story and keeping the man conscious and alive was the quickest way to find out where her mother was. But oh…the need to rip him to shreds for daring to touch something precious to her was so intense that it tore at her with wicked fangs and claws.
“You know that I was on my way here anyway,” the man ground out from between clenched teeth. “You didn’t need to capture me.” It was the first time he’d spoken, and it was all Gabi needed to be sure this was the same man who’d held her at gunpoint in a Vampire castle all those months ago.
“You weren’t waving a white flag,” Benedict commented mildly.
“I didn’t come here to surrender; I won’t be waving any white flags.” Annoyance poured from him in waves.
His misplaced anger snapped the fragile threads holding Gabi back.
“What have you done with my mother?” she hissed, her rage honed to a fine edge. She evaded Julius’s grasp and stalked down the length of the table towards Benedict and the human. The Princep moved a fraction of an inch, keeping himself between them.
“I believe he has a message for you, Gabrielle,�
� he told her. “You should probably hear him out first. After that I’ll help you dice him into cubes and feed him to the cat.” A low growl erupted from beside her right knee. It seemed that Razor recognised him as well; he’d given the man some permanent reminders of their encounter.
The man straightened a little, his eyes widening as he swallowed noticeably, his anger doused by wariness. “My employer sent me to you,” he said quickly, his eyes fixed on Razor. “I am just the messenger.”
“I’m pretty sure you were the messenger last time too,” Gabi snarled, “only you had a gun last time, and the package you were delivering was me. To a Vampire who wanted me dead.”
“I’m an employee; I was doing my job.” His tone was sharp, but a slight whine spoilt the show of bravado. “Just like I’m doing my job now.”
“Your employers don’t seem to like you very much,” she noted. There was no way they could expect this man to walk out of here, was there?
“I think you should give us your message,” Julius said, appearing on her left.
The man shrank back, turning his head away from Julius slightly, the tendons in his neck straining beneath his skin.
It was only in these rare moments, when he was staring down a stranger, that Gabi caught a glimpse of the fear and awe his presence invoked in others.
“Who exactly is your employer this time?” Gabi demanded.
“My employer has remained the same for the last several years,” he replied, licking at a drop of blood that trickled from a reopened cut in the corner of his mouth.
“That’s impossible, Helene was executed months ago,” Gabi seethed. “Don’t lie to us.” She could already feel the satisfying pain that would flare in her hand when her fist connected with his jaw. She heard rather than felt the pops of her knuckles as she strained to contain the urge.
There'll be Hell to Pay (Hellcat Series Book 6) Page 8