“He’d never know who it was from.”
Beep.
“Oh, believe me, he has his ways.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t trust me but you’ll trust someone who isn’t even here?”
Beep.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. Amelia had no way of knowing if Tristan would take up their cause but she knew without the faintest shadow of a doubt if he did, he would succeed. He would get them out. They had to at least give it a try.
“I don’t like it,” Gabriel said.
He was wasting time! “It’s a ping, it can’t take longer than it takes to say the word.”
Beep.
“Long enough to get us noticed. Honoria is cruel beyond your imagination. By the time your knight gets here he might have only pieces of us to pick up.”
“So we should let her rule our lives? I won’t accept that. You are so eager and prepared for death but now I have a chance to get out of here—we have a chance to get out of here—and you hesitate?”
Beep.
“Your kni—”
“I swear to God if you call him my knight one more time I will slap the hell out of you.” This was getting them nowhere and every second he did nothing was more time for her to get angrier. She hated not being in control of a situation. Gabriel was keeping her deliberately off balance and helpless. Why? So she would have to rely on him? When he himself didn’t expect to survive?
Gabriel’s eyes glowed, his anger palpable yet she was unafraid. Amelia was just as pissed and was ready to fight him if need be. “What did he do to earn such trust from you?”
Beep.
“You’re wasting time.” She could feel the window of opportunity closing on them. That signal wouldn’t be there forever. “Just ping him already.”
“Not until you tell me.”
Beep.
“What does it matter? The point is I trust him with my life, isn’t that enough?”
Gabriel slammed a fist down on the console. “What did he do?”
BEEP.
“Ping him!”
“Answer me!”
“He lived!”
Silence.
They stared at each other, their harsh breaths the only sound in the underground chamber.
And the silence stretched on.
Amelia was so furious she could cry. She set her teeth against angry tears, refusing to blink and force them out. “Did we lose the signal?” she grated.
Still glaring, Gabriel turned to the computer. “I’m not getting anything anymore.”
Helplessness nearly crushed her again and she wanted to wail in denial. She blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek unchecked. “Can you still ping him back?”
He sighed heavily. “The seeker was wide range. He’s probably getting a billion pings by now. Even if I did he wouldn’t be able to sort through them all to find mine.”
Amelia hung her head. She’d been through a lot in her life. She’d kept her composure for years in New Alaska; had faced a shape shifter in a blood rage. She’d seen her sister destroy her life, and struggle to get it back. But none of that compared to what she felt now. Her legs held steady but inside she was shattering.
Gabriel muttered something she didn’t catch. She heard him typing but didn’t trust herself to look up and see what he was doing. “It’s done,” he said.
Amelia raised her gaze to the computer screen where a confirmation message blinked. The two of them watched the screen without a word, waiting for something. A call from Torrey. Another alarm warning that they’d been discovered. Amelia’s heart thumped so hard in her chest she shook with it.
After a while, when nothing happened, Gabriel sighed. “We should go.”
“Wouldn’t it be safer to stay here?” she asked.
“I’m hoping the ping won’t register on Honoria’s system as more than a tiny blip but if her monitors are looking for it, they’ll have our position by now.”
Her instinct went against leaving a perfectly good hiding place. The cave was so well camouflaged and fortified it felt like they could be safe here forever. But it was no better than a child closing her eyes and pretending it made her invisible. Sooner or later they’d be found. Much better to take their chances outside than corner themselves in here.
“We go out there and you get taken to the arena,” she said. She hadn’t forgotten today was his big day, the champion’s return to glory.
Gabriel shrugged. “Just another workday.” He wasn’t nearly as self-assured as he wanted to appear. Whatever Honoria had planned would be bad, made worse by his alter ego. There was no telling how the panther side of him would react to so much blood and death.
“As your doctor I would advise against excessive stress, both mental and physical.”
He rose and caught her face in his hands, brushing away her tears. “As your lover, I would say don’t worry. At the end of the day, I’ll always come back to you.”
* * * *
“Sweet Jesus, if you don’t stop that noise I will hurt you.” Hailey wasn’t really sure which she was talking about, the deafening beeps echoing in the lab, which has become dusty while she’d been on honeymoon, or the screech of the wriggling infant in her arms. The threat didn’t work on either.
Hailey bounced the child in her arms, hoping it would calm the girl enough to stop crying but it only agitated her more. Why couldn’t she have gotten the male instead? Tristan’s son, Jonathan was snuggled in his mother’s arms, cooing softly and tugging on Dara’s loose hair as if none of the chaos fazed him. That kid was a marvel.
Juliana, the evil spawn of Satan screamed so loud her entire body shook. How could something so small be so freaking loud? “Oh, my God!” Hailey yelled. She couldn’t take this. Her head was splitting open and she’d about had it with the way everyone ignored her.
“Where the hell’s the sound control?” Tristan growled. He had to be in as much agony with his super hearing. His skin wasn’t just tattooed with stripes anymore, it was turning orange. She wasn’t sympathetic at all.
“How should I know?” Jer yelled back, fumbling with the computers.
Hailey growled and marched over to the tiger man, shoving his uncooperative daughter at him. “Take that and move,” she told him.
Tristan took the girl, snuggling her against his chest and within seconds Juliana quieted. Like he’d flipped a switch. Hailey snarled at them both and took over the controls. This was Amelia’s system, a purpose for everything and everything with its purpose. The only problem was that someone—meaning the striped, orange moron—had the brilliant idea to route the program’s output through the alarm system, rather than straight audio.
“I can’t turn it down,” she said. But she could damn well turn it off. The flood of responses they were getting was turning into one long beep, instead of hundreds of thousands of short ones. Never again was she letting Tristan Hunt near her stuff again. She typed a few commands, because voice was beyond the realm of possibility right now, and shut off the alarm. Blessed silence filled the lab. Though she could swear the ringing in her ears was still echoing.
All of them breathed a sigh of relief.
“Did it stop?” Dara asked. She was perched on the gurney where not so long ago Hailey had died. A couple of times. Dara wasn’t looking much better than Hailey had back then. She was pale and still weak, having to deal with two newborns and the complications she’d had giving birth to them. That little psychotic episode she’d had in the night hadn’t helped, either. The woman should be on bed rest, not traipsing across town with her hulking husband and infant twins in tow.
But damn, Hailey was glad she had.
Tristan went to Dara, took Jonathan from her and put both babies down in the makeshift crib they’d made out of an old incubator. She wanted to tell him it had been used to mix toxic chemicals. For all she knew, it had been.
But the way he looked at his wife when he sat down next to her locked her mouth shut. “You shoul
dn’t be here,” he said, rubbing Dara’s back. ”You’re still weak.”
Dara leaned against him. “Better here than at home by myself.” She shuddered.
Tristan pulled her into his lap to cradle her. He exuded peace as if he was willing Dara to relax and Hailey found herself swaying on her feet, suddenly very tired.
Then Jeremy grasped her hand and the feeling was gone. Did he just…? she asked in the privacy of her mind.
“Dara needs it,” Jeremy answered in kind. “Don’t worry, he’s not trying to calm you down on purpose.” There was wry humor in that she wanted to kick him for, but then he put his arms around her and said, “Amelia will be fine. We’ll find her.”
Now you’re trying to calm me down on purpose, she groused. But she was grateful.
Hailey felt sorry for Dara. The woman had enough problems without adding freaky, telepathic nightmares into the mix. When the four of them had shown up at Jeremy’s doorstep at 4AM this morning, she’d looked like the hounds of hell were chasing her.
Jeremy said it was like the dreams they shared sometimes, only theirs were pleasant. Dara’s weren’t. The telepath couldn’t seem to shake them.
Tristan speared Hailey with his glowing yellow gaze. “Has it stopped?”
Hailey shook herself inwardly and checked the computer. “It seems to be winding down. There’s too many responses, though. The program is storing them, instead of tracing because it can’t keep up. It might take a while.”
Dara shook her head, looking up at her husband. “No, we don’t have a while.”
If the look on Tristan’s face was anything to go by, that small plea was enough to make him go berserk trying to change the universe so it made sense for his mate. Too bad this time there was nothing he could do.
“What exactly did you see?” Hailey asked. All she knew was that Dara had had some sort of nightmare involving Amelia. She wouldn’t say what it was about but offered to show Hailey—and no, thank you. She’d tried before with a non-Jeremy person. Not about to do that again.
Dara closed her eyes. “I’m in darkness, like a cave, or a tunnel. Everything is blurry; I can barely see where I’m going. I’m so cold, and my feet feel like I’m walking on glass. There’s so much fear and confusion, but not only for myself. And I can feel something coming after me.”
Tristan rumbled some primitive purr that soothed Dara.
“And you don’t know where it’s coming from?”
Dara sighed. “No, just a general direction. But I know there is a computer of some sort there.”
That’s what she’d said earlier. That she knew even that much was, apparently a big deal. So they’d pointed the seeker and let it do its thing. None of this equipment was designed for something like this. Dara could point at the sky and they could aim the signal that way but it wasn’t laser straight. The farther it went, the wider it spread out. Who knew how long they’d be getting flooded with responses before it stopped?
If it wasn’t her sister Dara was channeling, Hailey wouldn’t give a damn but she owed Amelia her life, in every sense of the word. And because she wasn’t the only one, here they all were, grudgingly putting their heads together for her.
The numbers slowed from three thousand pings per second to a hundred, then rapidly down to ten. A few moments later, it was one every couple of seconds, then a long stretch of nothing, during which the computer started analyzing all the inputs. A whole lot of entries started streaming down, virtual addresses of every single response they’d gotten. “Looks like it’s over.”
And it was a giant mess. Hailey wondered what sort of divining rod Dara would use to find the needle in that haystack.
“Just wait,” Jeremy said.
Hailey hated waiting. She wasn’t the sit on the sidelines kind; she wanted something to do. She was already contemplating using an algorithm to sort through the mess when the computer blinked one more time, a new response ping delayed enough that it wasn’t registering as part of the massive group.
Hailey paused the analysis before the ping disappeared and traced its address back to the source. Wait… “Is that right?”
Jeremy leaned in closer and Tristan came over with Dara to see for himself. The two exchanged a long look that made Hailey want to growl. “Non-mind reader on board here. Talk.”
“It’s Rome,” Tristan said.
“Oh, well, that’s nice. Should we call them back?”
“No,” the three of them barked.
Dara was wringing her hands and the brats were getting fussy again.
Jeremy brought up a map of that solar system. “That’s Rome,” he said, pointing out one of the planets. “See the big glow right there? That’s a very strong signal. Means whatever is there has massive power.”
“But that’s not where the ping came from,” she said. If it was, the computer would have already matched an entry to it but it hadn’t. The last ping to come in had come from close to there, enough that they had to zoom in to a continent to see its origin, but it was a distinct entity of its own, and one much dimmer than the one Jeremy was talking about.
“Right,” he said. “This one hasn’t responded, which means someone is overriding it.”
“Which means it’s being monitored,” she said.
Jeremy wasn’t liking this. His agitation was making her inner Hellcat very unhappy. “It doesn’t mean that’s where she is,” he said and it sounded like he was willing it to be true.
“She’s there,” Dara said bleakly.
Jeremy sighed and rubbed his face wearily. “The Chase women don’t do anything by halves, do they? One tries to prove her mettle and what does she do? Nearly kill herself. The other gets herself into trouble and where does she end up?”
“In Rome,” Tristan said with a growl.
Hailey looked at Jeremy askance and in response knowledge trickled into her mind through their link. Rumors, gossip, innuendo, and a few cold, hard facts so disturbing she sucked in a sharp breath and braced herself against the desk, fighting down a sudden wave of nausea.
Jonathan and Juliana started crying. Dara looked in their direction and hissed a shushing sound. The babies calmed a little.
“Are you sure?” Tristan asked out loud.
Dara met his gaze. “As sure as I am that she’s not there alone. But whether it’s a friend or foe I have no idea.” She sighed. “We have to help her, Tristan.”
Tristan squared his jaw in bleak determination. “Looks like we’re taking a trip.”
Chapter 25
Gabriel took his time dressing. Amelia was trying to knot the ties in some sort of order to keep her gown in place and avoiding his gaze.
The way she’d looked when they’d traced the signal, as if the sun had come up in her world was making him want to growl. She’d looked so damn happy because of some other guy it had stabbed right through his heart.
What the hell would it take to have her look at him that way? What would it take to make her see that his heart beat stronger, surer when she was around? Caesar didn’t have to dream up any tortures for him; it killed him to know Amelia was stuck here, and he might not be able to keep her safe. Worse, she was fully aware of it, ever the realist, looking at the facts. They were trapped, outnumbered, and soon it might not be “them” anymore, only her.
It killed him that she was probably right to pin her hopes on someone other than him. Gabriel had dug this hole for himself but he’d never expected her to fall into it right along with him. He didn’t want this—any of it. Amelia belonged at home, in her exotic garden, weeding her plants and being happy. He wanted to give her that.
Gabriel looked around his little sanctuary, knowing once he left he wouldn’t be coming back to it. Whether Honoria knew about it or not, whether she chose to destroy it or not, it wasn’t enough anymore.
Amelia’s bulla lay on the floor, half hidden beneath the couch. He bent to retrieve it, hating what it represented. Yet as he held it in his hands it didn’t feel like a leash; it felt lik
e a symbol. Amelia had given him a gift he never could have imagined. For a few hours last night, he’d felt peace. In Caesar’s hands the pendant was a distortion of its true purpose but to Gabriel this particular one would always be a reminder that for a little while he’d slept in peace, with the woman he loved tucked safely against him, her heart beating a lullaby to him alone. Her scent would never leave him as long as he lived. Her taste would never be surpassed.
Her warmth would never be forgotten.
“I guess it’s time,” she said.
Gabriel tucked the bulla into his belt. “Guess so.” He held out his hand.
Amelia hesitated, eyes unsure when they looked into his. He’d never seen her looking so vulnerable. When he thought she would refuse, she squared her shoulders and placed her hand in his, allowing him to lead her out into the tunnel.
He’d set the system to deactivate on its own. As soon as they left the cave, the computers powered off. The lights had motion sensors, turning off behind them when they left a section of the tunnels. It was more than a little eerie to have the deathly silent darkness nipping at their heels. Amelia kept close, clutching his hand, looking behind them often. Gabriel could scent her fear, her need to go faster, but the faster they went the sooner the lights would go out.
“It feels like we’re closing a crypt,” she said nervously. She shuddered and faced forward. He quickened his stride, forcing her to hurry up to keep up with him.
By the time they emerged into the main tunnel and he could see the ladder at the end, she was winded. “Hey,” she said. “Slow down.”
“Were you in love with him?” He stopped so abruptly she collided with his shoulder. He hadn’t meant to ask; didn’t know he wanted to hear the answer.
“W-what?”
“Tristan,” he said. “The tiger man.” Who she’d told him was dead. “Did you love him?” He turned his head sideways, but his gaze never touched on Amelia. If he looked at her now, it would mean acknowledging something he wasn’t ready to face. He was having a hard enough time holding her hand.
Blood Debts (The Blood Book 3) Page 23