Gabriel reminded himself to breathe, forced air into his tired lungs and let it out. A tight grin pulled on the corner of his mouth. He could still see Amelia’s scrawled message on her e-pad, underlined three times. These guys had nothing on that woman and her needles. “Come on, children, man up a little,” he taunted. “You won’t last ten minutes in the arena like that.”
Their fury made him grin outright. They would really lay into him now, tire themselves out before the big fight. Served them right for being such brainwashed morons. Survival of the fittest—which happened to be him. Something else he’d be thanking Amelia for with a whole lot more of what they’d done last night. Just for that he was willing to let them have their fun. The sooner they tired the sooner they would leave. It wasn’t like there was much to do here before a fight. At least time went by faster this way.
“Leave us,” Soren ordered.
The three gorillas obeyed, giving him looks that promised a painful death in the arena later on. He sent them air kisses and memorized all of their faces. He’d be looking for them, too. There were others waiting just out of sight; Gabriel could scent them. Gladiators, soldiers, slaves too. All were curious to see what was happening but not brave enough to come look. It pissed him off how much they feared Honoria and her minions. He wanted to scream at them to wake the fuck up. He didn’t expect them to rally behind him like Spartacus part Deux, but was it too much to ask that they not help their jailers? If half of them had the guts to stand up to this regime they could rule the damn place.
Soren grabbed Gabriel’s chin and lifted his face so he could look in his eyes. “I know I can’t make you talk,” he said. “I won’t bother asking whom you called.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
Soren said nothing. Meaning no, they didn’t. They must have registered the ping he sent and its source but not the destination. Oh, that’s gotta chafe. He almost laughed. He’d never hear the end of it if the tiger man showed up like Amelia said he would. But, shit, he wouldn’t care. He’d be alive to listen to it.
“You might be interested to know Honoria is choosing to keep your doctor friend close at hand for the time being.”
The reminder made Gabriel’s heart beat double time. It was going so fast it hurt. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood but that made it worse. Claws curled out of his toes and he dug them into the sand, out of sight. He felt bruises fading all over his battered body.
Soren looked down on him, appraising his enemy. He’d wiped the blood off his broken nose but it was swelling. He’d set it himself with hardly a grunt, probably causing more damage in the process. Gabriel could see the wheels turning in his head as Soren watched him healing right before his eyes. A cold fist squeezed his insides.
“Seems to me you have an unfair advantage,” he said and released Gabriel.
A second later Gabriel felt fingers digging into his side where a moment ago a rib had been broken. He groaned but the rib was whole. Sore and bruised, but whole. He met Soren’s gaze in defiance but didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. For all his faults, Soren wasn’t an idiot. He knew something wasn’t right. And like the good little lap dog he was, he would run right along and report it to his mistress.
Gabriel strained against his bonds, fighting for enough leverage to stop him.
Soren slid out of his reach, farther off to a rickety wooden table with a box from which he pulled a syringe.
Gabriel jerked on the binds, felt them loosen and snap taut again. That wasn’t rope or leather he hung from, it was a synthetic material they used for building. It could withstand a full ton of force and not show any wear. Gabriel twisted his wrists, felt the binds cut into skin. If he could get them slippery enough, maybe he could pull his hands free. He couldn’t let Soren take blood samples.
Soren set the syringe aside and picked out a vial. “Let’s see if we can’t even the playing field a little.”
Relief was quickly replaced with deep unease. Soren didn’t want his blood; he wanted to inject him with something. Drugs? Poison? What would it do to him? There were rumors Honoria had gathered chemists and biologists from every known corner of the inhabited universe to find just the right poison to off the old Caesar. They said she’d collected toxins and compounds to achieve any and every possible outcome, from a mild stomachache, to total baldness, to death.
They said she could make death instantaneous, or drawn out over two agonizing months.
Soren filled the syringe, not bothering to measure the amount. He returned to Gabriel and instead of administering the injection with the surgical precision that made him famous in battle, he stabbed the syringe forcefully into Gabriel’s liver.
The acid burned through flesh with rapid efficiency. It spread through organs, into the blood but also his abdomen. It seared like hellfire, burning him from the inside. For a moment he couldn’t move; couldn’t see past the blinding pain. Gabriel gasped for breath and when he coughed, blood filled his mouth, tasting foul. He smelled the acid, the liquefied mess his insides were turning into, and it made him want to retch. The beating had barely affected him. This was going to kill him.
Somewhere nearby, animals driven out of their heads with starvation and abuse caught the scent and threw themselves against the doors holding them in their pens. The tigers roared, leopards screamed, and Gabriel knew on instinct there were a handful quietly pacing back and forth, feral eyes locked on the gate, waiting for someone to open them. Those were the ones he dreaded most; the ones who’d learned to bide their time.
Soren cut his ties, letting him drop to the floor. Gabriel curled in on himself instantly, a vain attempt to contain his insides. He was shaking from the searing pain, feeling his organs giving way little by little. Soren laughed low, finally satisfied to have achieved his ends. The general walked out, leaving him unattended, unguarded; dying.
And all Gabriel could do was pray Tristan would get Amelia out of here safely.
Chapter 27
All pretense of civility had been abandoned. Guards followed Amelia everywhere she went. They stood at the entrance to the baths while she washed and though they kept to their stations they watched every move she made. She felt dirtier coming out of the bath than she had going into it.
Another atrocity of a dress was waiting for her. This one pure white with dark blue silk scarves to hold it in place instead of ropes. They tied at her lower back, with the ends left to trail down almost to the floor. She could really hate this fashion. There was nothing to go underneath this thing, Romans didn’t bother with underwear. But knowing they were waiting for an excuse to put her in her place, Amelia kept her mouth shut and her pendant tight in hand. She’d removed it from around her neck and looped it around her wrist. It felt more secure that way. Even though her wrists were chafed raw from her little enforced exercise earlier, the pain reminded her the pendant was still there.
As the servants led the way to another chamber, this one with food laid out on long tables, she worried the pendant, looking around for any sign of Gabriel. There was no one she knew and no one who would tell her anything. She was afraid something bad was going on. They’d had to shackle his wrists and neck to keep him in line on the way here and Soren had been in a temper when they’d led him away to his cell. The man was loyal to Honoria to the point of obsession. If she ordered Gabriel not to be harmed, he would obey but he had to have his limits. If Gabriel pushed him past them…
And what if Honoria didn’t give that order?
“The fair Caesar has provided breakfast,” one of the servants told her with a deep bow but his eyes were terrified. Amelia nodded her thanks, which was a signal for this man to leave. She was left on her own with a banquet fit for a legion. Well, except for her guard dogs.
“Are you two hungry?” she asked them.
They didn’t even twitch.
“Not even a little? It looks delicious.”
No reaction. They’d showed more awareness that she was alive while she’d bathed.
She shuddered and turned away to hide her blush. It didn’t help; she still felt them at her back and it was worse to not have them in sight. She hated feeling this way!
“Oh well, more for me then.” But there was no way she was eating or drinking anything else Honoria gave her. Besides, she was too unsettled to feel any hunger. Being here, humiliated and guarded every second, as if she would jump out the window and fly off, was the least of her problems. Worse was the ever present fear that physically manifested as slight dizziness and vertigo. She couldn’t shake the suspicion that everything since the moment she and Gabriel stepped foot in Rome had been deliberate. Every action, reaction and set up, every time she knew she was being watched, and the times she felt safely out of sight had been Honoria moving the players into position.
But for what?
The Caesar already held the Or Else card against her. Amelia could only hope Gabriel wouldn’t be so easily controlled.
She felt her own puppet strings pull taut and she wanted to swipe the fancy dishes off the table and hear them shatter. Uncertainty, any deviation from the known parameters, wreaked havoc in her life; she’d learned that long ago. Now, here, the only solid parameter she’d had had been taken from her and fear for him was as bad as the fear she felt for herself. It was a constant hum in the back of her head, distracting her when she needed to keep her focus.
Her patient was out there somewhere, having God knew what done to him and she could do absolutely nothing about it. What if he changed? What if they found out somehow? What if they did to him what Amelia had always feared someone would do to Tristan? Far too many people would be willing to do anything to possess the ability to change their shape. Even more to possess someone else with that ability.
And what about Tristan? He could be on his way here right now. Just what was she supposed to think about that? He could get her out of here. The chances of there being anyone on this messed up planet who could stand up to Tristan’s telepathy were astronomically in their favor. If he found her, they could probably walk right out of Rome without anyone noticing until they were long gone.
But what if someone did notice? What if he changed and got caught?
Objectively speaking, she ought to be praying Tristan would get here soon. Yet for once, Dr. Amelia Marguerite Chase was beyond objectivity.
Emotions clouded judgment and for once she couldn’t shut them out. She worried for herself, for Gabriel, for all of her friends, each of whom was now in danger because of her. Simply by knowing her, having associated with her in the past, they might be on Honoria’s radar right now.
She could never go home. Probably not to Torrey, either. Which left her … what?
That was assuming she got out of here in the first place. Amelia was on extremely thin ice now. One wrong move and she could find herself in a very unpleasant situation.
“You are not hungry?”
Amelia started and spun around to face the speaker. The woman was a stranger, Amelia was certain of it but she still got a feeling she should know her. “After a night with Gladius I wake up famished.”
Breakfast with a side of poison. Amelia smoothed her dress slowly to give her hands something to do besides wrap around the woman’s throat and squeeze. It never ceased to amaze her how some women had a natural gift for destroying others with a well aimed, perfectly delivered remark.
But looking closely at the woman, Amelia noticed something that eased her jealousy. The other woman felt it too. Last night, the harem gossiping about Gabriel had stung, true. Today, this woman simply did not pack the same punch. For one thing, she was by herself. For another, Amelia suspected whatever she’d had with Gabriel had been over for a long time. That was what really made her so bitter.
Amelia kept her back straight and her chin high, her expression carefully blank, checking her childish impulse to thumb her nose and say, Gabriel’s mine now. Yay for you, you got to have him for one night. You never will again.
The only reason she didn’t say it was Gabriel wasn’t hers to claim. Amelia had seen to that with the deal they’d both agreed to. No emotional attachment. She was beginning to regret it now. Every time Gabriel said something that made her melt for him, she felt him steal a little deeper into her soul. He made her want to believe he meant it.
“I apologize,” the woman said with a smile too sharp to be called bright. “Where are my manners? I am Galanta, Caesar’s lady in waiting, so to speak. She asked me to keep you company this morning, as she is quite busy with matters of the republic.”
What good would it do to hope for more? In a week, a month, maybe a year she might be in Galanta’s shoes, bitter, lonely, alone. Only it would be her own doing. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account.”
Galanta’s saccharine smile was all venom and bile. “Nonsense,” she said. “I relish any opportunity to share gossip.” She looked Amelia up and down. “Maybe compare notes.”
You took your pleasure from him. I changed his life. The two weren’t in any way comparable. She didn’t know how much of what she’d done had changed Gabriel. That the regenerative abilities could be used externally indicated there might be more anomalies. She needed him in a controlled environment for tests to make sure his anatomy and chemistry were stable, not running around an arena playing gladiator for the amusement of masses.
Amelia uncurled her nervous fingers from her dress, ignored the satisfaction on Galanta’s face. “What could be keeping Caesar so busy she can’t attend to her guest?”
Galanta didn’t press. “My dear, I don’t know and would never dare to ask. It’s not our place to question what Caesar does or does not do with her time. But I can wager a guess she’s picking up where you left off. Gladius is a man of varied and vigorous tastes, after all.”
The viper was fishing for a rise but she’d cast the wrong bait. Amelia smiled. “Somehow I doubt that.”
Galanta measured her again, wandered to the fruit platter and toyed with a grape. Curiously, though, she did not put it in her mouth. “We have a history, you know. Gladius and I. I was his first.”
Ah, that was where she knew her from. “I’m sure he remembers that time with the same fondness.” Suspicion confirmed. This wasn’t an adversary worthy of anything but Amelia’s sympathy, a lonely woman carrying a torch for someone who’d forgotten her a long time ago.
She could see by the way Galanta’s smile turned brittle that she still wanted him. She might have been his first but not his only and holding that rank over others was a vain attempt to make herself feel better about having been left behind.
“You pity me,” Galanta said with disgust.
“No,” she replied gently. Amelia felt sympathy for what Galanta had lost, perhaps, but she and every other noblewoman here was much too cruel and unfeeling for pity.
Galanta sneered. “Yes you do. I can see it on your face. You think you’re somehow special? That you will fare any better?”
“I think you’re grasping. How do you know I want the same things from Gabriel you did?”
“Has he told you that you make his world brighter?” she asked, eyes narrowing with malice. “Has he looked deep into your eyes and thanked you for easing his pain? Has he called you his everything?”
“No,” Amelia said. Considering what he’d been dealing with as a gladiator, Amelia could well believe any moment of intimacy would have been a solace to him; would have eased him. But Galanta had taken far too much meaning from his words. As for being his everything, coming from Galanta’s mouth the sentiment sounded so utterly insincere she couldn’t imagine Gabriel ever uttering it to her.
“What?”
Amelia shrugged. “He hasn’t told me any of that.”
Galanta frowned. “But he has promised you something, hasn’t he?”
I won’t ever let you go.
Amelia had completely forgotten about that raw declaration. And then earlier, what was it he’d said? At the end of the day, I’ll always come back to you.
She’d never
wanted any promises from him and anything that might have been construed as one she’d let pass. But it was getting more difficult to ignore them. The way he spoke to her now, the way he looked at her and touched her felt like a promise in and of itself.
Oh, Ams, you’re dreaming. Emotions were running high on both ends. Tense situations tended to bring people closer together than they would get under normal circumstances but sooner or later everything would be returning back to normal. What would happen then?
Gabriel might want to renegotiate their agreement now but he might change his mind later on. He might die. No, whatever they had had always been temporary and that was the way it needed to stay. It was the only way Amelia could walk away from it in one piece. She’d played the emotion game before. She’d laid all her cards on the table and lost every time.
It would be a thousand times worse with Gabriel. They’d shared too much already and there would be a price to pay.
I won’t ever let you go.
“In his case I think it was more of a threat,” she said to Galanta. Good thing the woman was so preoccupied with her own misery she didn’t hear the subtle difference in Amelia’s tone.
Galanta scoffed. “It’s true what they say about you. You’re cold as ice. Completely heartless.”
Amelia flinched.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say so, my dear.” Honoria made her entrance with a train of attendants following in her wake. She wore a golden wig today, glittering strands braided intricately over her head. Silver adornments secured the design in place and delicate chains hung around her face, almost like a knight’s chain mail, but much more feminine and graceful. Her dress was a midnight blue with pearlescent white scarves tied over it. She’d dressed a mirror image of Amelia.
“My lady.” Galanta curtsied so low she nearly knelt before the Caesar.
Over her head, Honoria smiled at Amelia, amused by the bowing and scraping. “Our good doctor is much more complicated than that, aren’t you?”
Blood Debts (The Blood Book 3) Page 25