Caesar held up his hand. The hammer paused.
“Why didn’t you do that in the first place, Nico? We could have avoided all this if you’d just done your job correctly.”
Not that Caesar wished he had. This was far too much fun.
Caesar liked to watch things bleed. In fact, “liked” was too soft a word, much too tepid to describe the surge of lust and hot excitement that gripped him when he saw blood. Any blood—even his own. He’d gotten into many fights as a younger man simply to watch himself bleed. It didn’t matter that he inevitably lost. Just the sight of that lush, crimson liquid dripping down his face gave him such a raging hard-on he’d explode as soon as he touched himself.
This bloodlust ran in his family. His father had it, and his grandfather, and if the whispered rumors he’d caught snatches of all his life were true, his great-grandfather had it, too.
But as far as he knew, none of them shared his particular attraction to dead things.
His particular sexual attraction to dead things. The females he chained up and whipped until they expired were of use to him long after they grew cold.
Well, no matter. Those men were all six feet under and he wasn’t—he never would be—so what he shared in common with long-dead ancestors was of no consequence. What was of consequence: finding the bland-as-white-bread brunette who would lead him to the male who’d killed two of his men and most probably wanted to kill him, too. They’d almost had her; one of his men had chanced upon a newspaper article featuring a picture of her staring with big, haunted eyes into the camera at the opening of a bookstore a few years ago. Once they knew her name, it was simple enough to find out where she lived.
But then the idiot Nico had botched it.
Caesar made a motion indicating Nico should be released. He slumped in his chair, cradling his mangled hand to his chest, sweating and white and bleeding from a small cut beneath one eye where Marcell had punched him to keep him from Shifting to avoid his punishment. If the skin was broken, Shifting was impossible, so Marcell had surprised Nico with the unleashed strength of his fist as he came around a corner in the dark tunnels of the bunkers, and then dragged him here to face his king.
His peeved, perverted king.
“Nico,” that king said now, drawing the blade lovingly across the flesh of his palm, “I want you to understand something.” He glanced up to find Nico staring at him through a haze of agony. His voice dropped to a low, menacing murmur. “Failure will not be tolerated. Failure is for losers, and fools, and the weak. And we are none of those things. Are we?”
“N-no, sire,” whispered Nico, swallowing around the words.
“I take care of my friends, Nico. You know this. You also know what I do to my enemies.”
Caesar waited for an acknowledgement. It came in the form of a jerking head shake.
“So. My advice to you is this: do not fail again.”
And then Caesar received the pitiful, whispered, “Yes, sire,” he so loved to hear. He smiled at Nico, told him to go, and watched in warm satisfaction as he stumbled from the room, clutching his ruined hand to his chest.
At precisely the same moment, a tall, muscular, bone pale man stepped off a private plane that had just landed at the El Prat airport in Barcelona.
Followed by a silent line of men clad in simple, funereal black garb who spread out behind him over the tarmac in a V like a flock of geese as he progressed toward the sliding glass doors of the gate, he moved quickly and with purpose. He didn’t pause to speak with the bowing man who appeared by his side inside the gate to take his bags, nor glance in either direction as he made his way through the crowded terminal to the line of black SUVs that awaited them at the curb.
Jahad was on a holy mission. He did not have time to stop, or look, or speak.
The SUVs took them to a budget hotel near the Sagrada Família cathedral. Jahad had never been to Barcelona before, and he’d never seen Gaudi’s fabulist cathedral, the enormous bulk of which, awash in a riot of colorful lights, dominated the skyline. Gazing at the extraordinary, soaring spires, he felt gripped by a fervor of kinship for the dead architect, a profoundly religious man whose ascetic lifestyle and devotion to God mirrored his own.
He lifted his gaze to the heavens. In Latin, he recited a line from Psalms.
“Let them be as chaff before the wind; and let the angel of the Lord chase them.”
A prayer against the enemy, one of many he knew by heart. In fact he knew both Testaments, Old and New, by heart. He’d had many years to study, many years to contemplate, many years to think on the moment when all his study and contemplation would come to its ultimate fruition and he would hold the beating heart of his enemy—ripped from his chest, fresh and throbbing—in his hand.
Jahad smiled up at the dark sky. Yes, the angel of the Lord would chase them. And he would find them. And he would smite them from the Earth, one by one, until their abomination was only a distant memory, never to rise again.
Followed by his cadre of silent, watchful men, he turned and went into the hotel.
Once the lodging had been paid, the men had dispersed, and he was alone in the shadowed confines of his room, he slowly removed all his clothing. He folded it into a small, neat pile on the bed, removed the braided length of leather from his satchel, and sank to his knees on the bare wood floor.
The first lash raised an angry red welt on his back, but didn’t break the skin.
He whipped himself harder.
After one hundred lashes his back was properly shredded. Rivulets of blood ran down his naked buttocks and thighs and pooled in spreading circles beneath his knees. Though his breathing was irregular and his pupils had dilated, his hands did not shake. He did not allow himself to utter a single noise.
He dressed, not bothering to wipe away the blood or tend to his wounds, and called his second-in-command. To the man’s deferential, “How may I serve you, electus?” Jahad responded with only four words.
“Find me a goat.”
Then he disconnected the call, lowered his bulk to an uncomfortable chair in the corner of the room, and settled in to wait.
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
Ember had frozen stiff in Christian’s arms. Gazing up at him, with her arms still wrapped around his shoulders, her unblinking eyes grew so wide he saw the whites all around her dark irises.
“You’re moving in with me tonight,” he repeated. His voice was low but the tone indicated there was no room for discussion, which, of course, made Ember’s face flush with anger. The woman just hated being told what to do.
How inconvenient.
“Not only is that not your decision, it’s totally crazy,” she replied bitingly. She tried to extricate herself from his embrace but he held her against his body, pinning her arms to her sides when she tried to wriggle free.
He ignored her cries of protest.
“I’m not asking you, Ember, I’m telling you. You’re moving in with me, and it’s happening tonight—”
“Just like that? We’re not going to talk about what happened? You’re not going to even ask me if I want to?”
“—so go and pack a bag.” He paused a moment. “And I dare you to tell me you don’t want to while keeping a straight face.”
Her mouth opened—outrage or alarm, he couldn’t tell—but he could tell the thought of moving in with him excited her. Her blood had begun to pound through her veins and a sweet bloom of heat rose from her skin, tinged with the scent of delicious hot readiness.
God, what that scent did to him. His body reacted on a molecular level and an erection charged to life between his legs.
Seeing how he was naked and pressed tight against her, she didn’t miss it. Her face flushed a deeper shade of red. She bit her lip and gazed up at him, the expression on her face alternating between a furious scowl and something else. Something a little more ambivalent.
“Why?” she whispered. “Why now?”
Fighting the urge to kiss her, tear her clothes of
f, or otherwise get her into a compromising position, he hesitated, deciding whether to tell her the truth. But no—he had to tell her. She deserved to know what was happening.
Watching her face carefully, he said, “Those men in the alley, that night in Gràcia.”
Her breath hitched. She stared at him, silent and apprehensive, waiting for him to continue.
“Their group knows where you live. Or at least they did—they were at your old apartment earlier today. It’s only a matter of time before they find you here.”
Judging by her reaction, it might have been wiser not to tell her the truth.
At the top of her lungs, she shrieked, “What?” then spun wildly out of his arms, frantically looking around the apartment as if expecting them to leap from behind the furniture. Her eyes grew even more huge than before, her face paled to white. “The ones you said would kill us both?”
He felt a little awkward standing naked in the middle of her living room, aroused, but he only said, “Yes.”
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God! What are we going to do?”
“I told you. You’re moving in with me.”
“I can’t—I can’t—this is insane! What am I supposed to do, hide for the rest of my life?”
“No,” he said, very calmly. “Just until I kill them.”
She gaped at him. Several seconds ticked by and then slow, spreading recognition transformed her face from panic to understanding.
“That’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re in Spain. You’re an…an…” she trailed off then swallowed. “Assassin,” she finished in horror.
“No,” he protested instantly, then paused to think about it. “Well, yes, but not really. That’s not what I normally do, this is a special circumstance—an emergency, really—I can’t exactly explain it.”
She was still gaping at him. Outside, the sound of two cars colliding in a traffic accident on a street a few blocks away underscored the lunacy of the situation with a thunderous, metallic bang.
“I knew it,” she whispered. “I knew it the first time I saw you.”
His brows raised. “That’s very interesting. You can tell me all about it in the car.” He was by her side in two long strides and pulled her up against him. Gazing intently down into her eyes he said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to let anything hurt you; you have my word. You’ll be perfectly safe in my home—”
She sputtered a horrified laugh. “Safe in the home of an assassin?”
“I just told you, I’m not really an assassin—”
“Not really an assassin is pretty much the same thing as being not really dead, or not really pregnant! You either are or you’re not!”
His face hardened. “Ember, this is no time to split hairs—”
“No,” she declared with a hardness to her voice that brought him up short.
He glowered at her, but she only shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest, edging out of his grip.
“No, Christian. No way. Absolutely not. I’m not moving in with you. And I’m sure not moving in with you under these circumstances, especially with all the baggage we have to sort through. We’ll just have to figure something else out.”
He felt anger begin to thread a burning path through his nerve endings. Very quietly, doing his best to keep his anger and frustration in check, he said, “They will kill you, Ember. If they find you, they will kill you. But not before they’ve had a bit of fun with you, if you get my meaning.”
Her nostrils flared. A little muscle beneath her eye twitched.
He said, “Yes. Use your imagination. Think of the worst thing that a sadistic, genocidal madman might do to you, and then multiply that by a hundred. Maybe a thousand. Then think about how I would feel, knowing I put you in harm’s way, knowing I failed to keep you safe. What do you think that would do to me?”
His voice, the dark, menacing tone of it, the weighted way it emerged from between his gritted teeth, made her hesitate. She actually did appear to think about it. Then she haltingly said, “You would…you would be…”
“Devastated,” he finished roughly, closing what little distance there still was between them. She dropped her arms to her sides but didn’t move away, and he got right up in her face and looked down at her, letting her see the truth of his words. Letting her see the emotion in his eyes.
“It would kill me, Ember. It would be the end of me. If anything happened to you…” he stopped himself because his voice had grown unsteady, his tone a little unhinged. He breathed in a deep, lung-clearing breath and started anew. “I wouldn’t be able to live with it. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
She stared at him in silence, her brown eyes burning his. Her gaze flickered to his mouth, drifted back up to his, and then a tiny, tiny smile lifted the corners of her lips. “I think you’re saying you’re in love with me.”
He breathed out, closed his eyes, and reached for her. She allowed him to gather her into his arms.
“Which is only fair,” she continued with her cheek pressed against his bare chest, “seeing as how I kind of told you the same thing.”
Feeling as if his heart would claw its way out of his chest, he murmured into her hair, “Kind of?”
“This is no time to split hairs,” she said, throwing his earlier words back at him. “But yeah, kind of. It’s not official yet because we haven’t actually said the words, but…” She looked up at him, and something in her expression brought a smile to his face: mischief.
“It’ll do for now.”
Christian exhaled slowly, shaking his head. “Will you please just go and pack a goddamn bag?” he said, his voice low and rough. “And stop trying to give me a stroke?”
She pursed her lips, considering. “I want my own room,” she pronounced, and he made a sound that was both a groan of disbelief and a growl of frustration.
“I’m not going to hop into your bed and set up camp there. We have shit to work out, Christian. A lot of it. We’re going to actually have to talk.”
He lifted his gaze to the ceiling and slowly counted to ten.
More softly, she said, “Maybe I’ll visit your bed, however.”
He looked down at her.
Her smile was both shy and beautiful. “Maybe.”
“You have five minutes before I throw you over my shoulder and forcibly remove you from this apartment,” he said gruffly, feeling not anger but almost a fierce sort of glee that he’d soon have her in his home, near him, able to touch her and kiss her whenever he wanted. He tried his best not to show how happy he was, how eager, because the situation was still dire and dangerous, but God—he was so happy he could sing.
Sometimes terrible situations had a silver lining more precious than sterling. You just had to look at them the right way.
He turned her around, smacked her on the ass—which elicited a startled, outraged cry—then gave her a little shove toward the bedroom. “Five minutes,” he repeated firmly. “Only the necessities. Hurry.”
As she threw him a sour look over her shoulder and disappeared into the bedroom, he crossed to the front door and opened it.
The clothes he left on the floor in the hallway when he’d Shifted to Vapor had disappeared. With a hissed curse under his breath, he slammed the door and startled Ember when he barged into her bedroom.
“One of your very fine neighbors has stolen my clothing. Do you have anything I can wear?”
She pretended to think. “Um, I have those kitty pajamas Asher gave me—”
Christian said her name on a growl and she had the audacity to smirk.
“Actually, I do have something you can wear.”
She went to a tiny door in one corner of the tiny bedroom and pulled it open. From it she produced the pair of jeans and sweatshirt he’d given her that fateful day two weeks ago, when he’d thrown her out of his house. She’d washed them and kept them among her things—the thought of it made his heart do a funny little flip inside his chest. She handed them to him with a
pointed look, then turned back to the dresser and began to fill a small bag with clothes.
She was ready in less than five minutes. He hurried her downstairs to the Audi and Corbin, awaiting them in the back alley. She and Corbin exchanged muted hellos, and the car pulled silently away.
“This is only temporary,” she said quietly, staring out the window, deep in thought. “I can’t hide forever. This is just temporary, until you…until…”
Gripped by the sudden, awful realization that temporary could mean anything from one day to one week to one month, depending on how long it took him to find Caesar and his colony, Christian murmured his assent. He reached across the seat and took her hand. He gave it a squeeze and she glanced over at him. All traces of humor and anger and confidence were gone, and now she looked at him with only deep worry and more than a little fear on her face.
“What about work?”
Christian slowly shook his head.
Her brows rose. “Volunteering at the shelter?”
Another head shake and her voice climbed an octave. “Asher?”
“Not until I find them. You can’t go anywhere you usually go. Your normal routine is off-limits, it’s too dangerous. In fact…I think it’s best if you don’t leave the house at all.”
She pulled her fingers from his and dropped her head into her hands. “This is unbelievable,” she whispered, and Christian had the sinking feeling she was beginning to rue the day she ever met him.
Just as they turned the corner onto the main street, he saw through the window a trio of rangy, unkempt young men, fighting beneath the flickering fluorescent glow of a street lamp over a small pile of clothing. A suit jacket, trousers, a shirt, and a pair of polished, gleaming shoes. When he recognized the items as his own, his skin crawled with the sudden memory of a reading an archbishop had given at the pope’s funeral just months before. It had been an international event, televised all over the world, full of pomp and somber regalia, but the reading had stuck with him more than the pageantry. As the pope had died a martyr, that theme permeated the proceedings, and the line that stuck like a burr was from the gospel of Matthew, about the death of the most famous martyr of them all.
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