by Opal Carew
“All right then. First, Adonis, I understand you wish to see my niece. Why have you not come to me about this before?”
Chapter 15
A knocking on Tobias’s conference room solid oak door made the hunters all turn to see who it was, giving Adonis a bit of a reprieve.
A gray-haired man wearing gold-rimmed glasses poked his head into the room. Of slight build, and small stature, Adonis imagined that’s why he’d become the family doctor, and most likely didn’t hunt. Dr. Stevens spoke to Tobias, his voice calm, but concerned. “Rachael is conscious, groggy, but rebellious.”
Adonis smiled inwardly. It was a good sign.
“She needs to remain calm. I was going to administer a sedative, but before I do, she’s asked repeatedly to see Danai and her brother.”
Adonis’s spirits lifted. She remembered him. He had every intention of making her remember every detail of him again, if she hadn’t, to stir her memories, arouse her craving for him...
“For her peace of mind, will you permit it, Tobias?” Dr. Stevens asked.
Tobias’s lips thinned. He hadn’t even given Adonis permission to see his niece yet, and now he was being forced to allow him to attend to her in her bedroom of all places. And the silence seemed interminable.
Finally he said, “Michael will take them to see her. If Danai likes, she can stay with Rachael.” He turned to Michael. “But we have unfinished business after that.”
“Yes, Father.” Michael jumped up from his chair, clearly interested in rescuing Danai from Zachary.
Adonis rose and bowed his head slightly to Tobias in thanks. “I thank you for your concession.”
“I only do it for Rachael’s sake.”
And begrudgingly. But would he also allow Adonis to wed Rachael? Then what? Could they live as a hunter turned vampire and a huntress amidst a family of hunters, or would they have to leave and start anew?
He bowed again, then hurried out of the room after Michael and the doctor. Michael headed for Danai who sat in the living room with Zachary. His brother’s leg nearly touched Danai’s and Michael’s face reddened to see the close proximity. But she only had eyes for Adonis.
Adonis shook his head at her, relaying the message that the questioning wasn’t over yet. “Rachael’s asking for us.” He walked over to the couch and offered his hand to her. She quickly accepted it. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Michael still glaring at Zachary.
Adonis led Danai up the stairs after the doctor, and Michael followed close behind them.
When they walked into the room, Rachael’s eyes were closed. The comforter rested under her chin. Her curly blonde hair was tangled over her shoulders, and she almost looked angelic.
His expression filled with scorn, Gregory sat next to the bed. No wonder Rachael had been agitated. Danai squeezed Adonis’s hand in warning to make sure he kept his cool. Already his blood stirred. The air in the room had turned electric, and the intense look in Gregory’s blue eyes, shards of ice daggers, his lips thinned into an angry line, meant before long the two of them would play out the scene between them, one the winner, the other...
Adonis took a calming breath, then turned his attention back to Rachael and walked over to the bed. He touched her cheek. Her skin soft like a rose petal, begged him to kiss it. “Rachael?” he said, gently, not wanting to disturb her if she was sound asleep.
Her brilliant blue eyes fluttered open, making his heart quiver.
“Oh, Adonis.” She spoke more clearly now, her voice full of enthusiasm to see him. She fully recognized him and his spirits soared. She squeezed his hand, then seeing Danai, she reached out for hers. “Danai, you’re both all right.”
The doctor readied a needle. “I told you they were fine.”
Her eyes widened and her voice sounded panic. “What’s that for?”
Did she think they were giving her truth serum again? Adonis crouched before her, and held her hand, rubbing her arm to relax her.
“Something to help you sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep.” The tone of her voice quickly switched to anger.
Adonis knew he shouldn’t do it, not without Tobias’s permission or with so many onlookers, but Rachael was his, and he would have been remiss as her mate not to comfort her properly. He kissed her cheek and nuzzled his face against hers.
Gregory rose from the chair, knocking it over with a clatter, and started to make his way around the end of the bed.
The doctor quickly grabbed his arm with a jerk and pulled him back. “If you don’t behave, I’ll give the sedative to you.”
“Do it!” Rachael said, she scowled, but her eyes sparkled with mischief.
Gregory glared at her, shoved his fists into his pockets, then remained where he stood.
“Danai is staying with you. You need to rest.” Adonis whispered into her ear for her benefit only, “We have work to do.”
“I’ll be with you the whole time,” Danai chimed in, smiling.
“And you, Adonis?” Rachael looked up at him with soulful eyes.
He wanted to hold her whole body against his in a loving embrace. He attempted to smooth away the wrinkle creasing her forehead. “If your uncle permits me to.”
She tried to pull her covers aside, but he grabbed them from her and covered her back up, making her stay put.
“I want to speak to my uncle,” she curtly blurted out.
Michael cleared his throat. “I’m speaking on Adonis’s behalf, Rachael. But I’ll only do it if you stay in bed and mind what the doctor says.”
She pouted her lips. Then a devilish smile curved them. She pulled Adonis closer. When he was in reach, she wrapped her arms around him and gave him a weak embrace. He squeezed her tightly back. She melted to his touch, warming him through and through.
“Okay,” the doctor interrupted. “It’s time for you to sleep for a while.”
“Come back and see me soon, Adonis.”
Adonis wasn’t sure Tobias would allow it, but he nodded to give her peace of mind. If Tobias wouldn’t allow him to see Rachael, he would do everything in his power to change his mind. He was determined to have family sanction, if he could have it, but if not...
Before leaving, Adonis gave Gregory a look of domination.
Michael nudged him to leave. “We have business to take care of.”
Gregory retook his seat by the bed, giving Adonis a superior look. But the hunter wouldn’t stay there for long, if Adonis had any say in the matter.
Already Rachael’s lids were halfway shut. She closed them and gulped when the doctor injected the needle into her arm. Danai held her other hand and caressed it.
Michael motioned to the hall. Adonis pinned Gregory with another dagger of warning as Gregory mirrored the expression.
Then Adonis followed Michael back to the conference room. Tobias had to know his niece was in love with him. Tobias couldn’t deny Adonis’s seeing her.
Zachary quickly hurried to join them.
When they walked into the room, Curt and Tobias ceased speaking and took their seats. When everyone else was seated, Tobias began again. “My question was why did you not ask my permission to see my niece?”
Adonis stiffened his back. “Rachael didn’t want me to.”
Tobias raised his brows. Adonis was sure Curt, Michael, and Zachary disbelieved him just as much as Tobias did, but Adonis had told the truth... in part.
Tobias folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Explain why.”
Adonis never took his eyes off Tobias. It would have been a show of weakness. Just like with Piaras, he’d never back down. “She warned me you wouldn’t want her to see a hunter who wasn’t from here, an outsider like me.”
“Where are you from exactly?” Tobias’s expression remained hard, disbelieving, in part. And yet his voice betrayed he was softening his stance. She’d had her uncle pegged and he knew it.
“Panama City, Florida. The rest of my hunter family was massacred, except for my pare
nts and two sisters.”
Zachary let out his breath. “Two sisters in the same family!” Then he paused. “Is she unmarried, too?”
Tobias cut him an angry look. “Let Adonis tell the story. Why did you come here? Why not settle somewhere else?”
“My sister came here. Not Danai, my youngest sister. Pasha came here looking for her huntress friend who had run off to be with a hunter her parents didn’t approve of. When she hadn’t had any word from Meghan, she pleaded with my father to allow him to find her. He refused to give her permission to go. She did anyway.”
He looked down at the floor for a moment, trying to contain his anger. He had to keep telling himself that sometimes things had to be the way they were, there was no going back and changing the past. But the knots bunched in his stomach, and he took a deep breath to settle his fury.
This time he didn’t look at Tobias, but at the wallpaper behind him, the colorful floral pattern blending on the silk paper, calming his thoughts. “As soon as we realized Pasha had left to come here, I planned to go after her. My father said no. We would both go. As head of the hunter family he shouldn’t have. It was my place to go. But he wanted to find her, too.”
Adonis interlocked his fingers together and squeezed hard. “We arrived here, but we were too late. When we found Meghan, she’d been dead for several days, her throat torn out by a vampire. We found no sign of Pasha. But several days later, a cousin called, on the verge of death. The rest of our family had been attacked by the local vampire family. They were massacred. Not one survived. My father, well, all of us, were shocked. If we’d stayed in our hometown maybe none of them would have died.”
He paused, not being able to go on any further for some time.
Finally, Tobias asked, “Your parents and Pasha—what has become of them?” His voice had taken on a fatherly tone to Adonis’s surprise.
He met his gaze and shook his head. “We found out Piaras had taken Pasha prisoner. My father was out of his mind with grief over the rest of our family. He charged onto his estate with the rest of us trying to stop him. We were all doomed from the beginning.”
Again, he hesitated. If he wasn’t careful he’d tell more than he could and risk having the hunters who scrutinized him and his story, kill him right then and there. “Only Danai and I made it out of his estate.”
“Piaras killed your family, then?”
“We don’t know.” He hoped they couldn’t tell he was lying. “Danai and I have been planning for a month how we could infiltrate his estate and locate our family, killing Piaras and his cohorts in the process.”
His eyes widening a fraction, Tobias cleared his throat and leaned forward. “You know the layout of his place?”
“Yes, in detail. We were able to get inside, then searched for Pasha for some time, before we were caught. I mean, before human hosts realized we were in the house. We killed several of them, but we were overwhelmed and Danai and I escaped.”
“You know your family is most likely no longer alive.”
They were, but only at Piaras’s whim. He wanted Rachael, and he’d use them as his leverage. Only now he seemed to worry about Adonis’s loyalty, and tried to take Danai as a hostage, too.
Michael spoke up. “That’s why he went after Danai. Because he figures she and Adonis will try again to free their family.”
“I have to agree,” Curt said.
“We have to help get her out... I mean them,” Zachary blurted.
Michael rubbed his chin, then turned to Adonis. “But Danai said she came here because she didn’t want to marry a hunter. That she was alone.”
“We knew of your hunter circle here, of course, but not before disaster struck our own family. Our father wanted Danai to remain behind. Well both she and my mother. But he’d wanted Danai to marry a hunter of his choosing, not hers. She’d been fighting him for some time over it. The bastard had been seeing some other huntress behind Danai’s back. If Danai hadn’t come with us, my father would most likely have made her marry him before we left. So by leaving there, she avoided the marriage. Our mother wouldn’t stay behind, not if her whole family was leaving. So we came here as a family... small as it was.” And having left Florida, they’d survived another vampire massacre.
“We didn’t wish to impose on your good will at first, but then I overheard one of Piaras’s minions saying Piaras was going after a huntress named Rachael Bremerton. He hoped Piaras would be in better spirits once he had the huntress in his clutches. I didn’t expect you to welcome us, but I made it my duty to protect Rachael in a way to get her returned to your home so that you could keep her safe until I could bring Piaras down.”
Adonis couldn’t tell if Tobias believed him, but he looked and seemed to be pondering the possibility. The man wasn’t a fool. No hunter could lead a League of Hunters who was and Adonis figured the man wouldn’t swallow his whole story. But hopefully enough to satisfy him.
“Jeez,” Zachary finally said. “We have to help them.”
Curt shook his head. “They’re most likely dead, like Tobias says. Piaras and his blood-bonded relations don’t keep hunters alive for their amusement.”
“But you seem to think they’re alive still, don’t you?” Michael asked, sounding hopeful.
“A vampire I had cornered one night said Piaras still held them, just waiting for me to try to enter his estates again as if it were some bloody damned game. So yes, I have to hope they still live.”
His expression grave, Tobias spoke to another concern. “You said a hunter had encouraged one of your huntresses to come here. Do you know who he was?”
“We discovered the site Meghan used to meet him. Some hunter dating site on the Internet. Hunters-for-Love, was what it was called. The hunter’s name was Gregory Devine. Meghan Tanner was the huntress’s name.”
Silence consumed the room. Tobias stared at Adonis as if he couldn’t believe it. Then he said, “You have proof?”
“You can go to the site administrator and learn the truth yourself, sir. That’s what my father did.”
Tobias leaned back in his seat, then he addressed Zachary. “Check into it after the meeting.”
“Yes, Father.”
“And how do you feel about this?” Tobias asked, his voice quiet, as if he were a psychiatrist, judging a hostile patient.
“How would you feel if a hunter lured one of your huntresses from her home, encouraged her to travel miles away, and then didn’t protect her in an unfamiliar place once she arrived? If she hadn’t come here, she would still be alive. If we had stayed at home, we might have prevented the massacre of our family. If Pasha hadn’t insisted on coming after her friend, she and my parents would not now be hostages of Piaras. So how would you feel if your family had been torn to shreds all because one hunter had targeted a huntress for his own, without obtaining the permission of her family or his, and then neglected to protect her?”
“We will check into the matter further. None of us were aware of this.” Tobias let out his breath. “We have a raid planned tonight. Will you join us?”
The invitation Adonis was hoping for. But would he be able to kill a vampire? He had to prove he could be a good addition to the family and particularly a suitable mate for Rachael.
“Yes, I’m honored that you’d invite me. Can I suggest a house to hit?”
Curt slapped his knee. “Damn, Tobias, I told you he’d be a help to us.”
Tobias stiffened his back. “We had already planned on raiding a place on 1st Street.”
The place wouldn’t yield half the rewards that the one Adonis had in mind would. “May I make a suggestion?”
“By all means.”
“One on Fifteenth Street. I’ve monitored the house for several nights in a row. Several of Piaras’s blood-bonds lure fresh meat there nearly every night. They’re renegades, every one of them. It doesn’t matter the age of the victim, or whether the host dies in the process. The vampires who use that house are ruthless.”
; Frowning, Tobias rubbed his chin. “I’ll have to discuss it with the others.”
“Of course.”
Tobias studied Michael for a moment, then said to Adonis, “Before consulting Michael first, I believe he wishes to see Danai socially. Since you seem to be the only one left in the family who could sanction this, what have you to say about it?”
“I’ve already given him permission. But I realize others will wish to seek her hand. I have to deny this to them. Emotionally, she’s drained right now. She’s not been eating well. Maybe Michael’s attentions to her will help. But I think it unwise to have others pursue her at this time.”
He noticed Michael’s chest swell with pride. But would that feeling turn into something ugly if he learned the truth about Danai?
“And Pasha?” Zachary asked, his voice hopeful.
“Pasha is a wildcat. If we can even free her unharmed from Piaras’s claws, you might not be interested in her.”
Zachary folded his arms. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Later, Zachary,” Tobias warned. “We have no idea what’s become of the huntress.” He stood.
“And Rachael?” Adonis asked, standing.
“I don’t like it that you’ve been seeing her behind my back. And Curt has said she’s seen you several times, not just the once as we’d assumed. However, while she’s recovering, I’ll permit you to see her.”
Michael stood. “She loves him, Father. It’s evident in the way they act toward each other. If you want her to marry—”
Tobias motioned for his silence. “After she’s recovered, I want Adonis and her chaperoned at all times.”
Adonis didn’t want to wait to marry her, but he knew for now, he still had to prove his loyalty to the family. “May I see her now?”
Tobias nodded. “Michael, call the rest of the family together for a hunters’ meeting.”
Adonis said, “If you won’t be needing me... “
Tobias shook his head. “See Rachael. We’ll have lunch in a bit and work out the details of the night raid. Also, I’d like for you to get together with my cousins, Curt and Brent, and give us detailed descriptions of Piaras’s estate.”