You're So Vein

by Christine Warren

Unfortunately, that was the last thing she remembered until she regained consciousness in a small room, made of stone, and smelling of damp rock and distant soil. A basement, she guessed, which narrowed it down not at all. When she tried to press her memory for more details, all she encountered was a blank wall and a huge, throbbing headache.

  She groaned and reached up to cradle her head, thinking that might be the only way to keep little chunks of it from falling off and bouncing on the floor. When her arms encountered some kind of resistance after moving only a few inches, her eyes flew open and she swore, with great feeling, in Catalan.

  “Thirty-four years I’ve gone without once getting tied up, either professionally or recreationally, and now, after a week as a vampire, I manage it twice.”

  It hurt to turn her head, but then, it also hurt to breathe and, she suspected, just to exist, so she gritted her teeth and craned her neck until she could see the knotted ropes that bound her wrists above her head to the head of a small iron cot. The move sent a wave of nausea rolling through her and she said a prayer of thanks that she’d actually woken up, because if she didn’t have a concussion, she would eat her own shoes.

  The very thought sent her stomach into another round of protests, so she took a moment to relax and let it settle back into stillness while she thought.

  She couldn’t really tell how much time had passed, except to acknowledge that since she was awake, it was most likely still nighttime. Or maybe nighttime again. But she didn’t feel stiff enough to make her think she’d been tied like this for hours, so she was willing to bet on choice number one.

  She wore the same clothes she had carefully donned a few hours ago, a slim pair of dark, pinstriped trousers that flared in the leg and a severely tailored vest of the same fabric, lined in black silk. On her feet were the same Gina boots she had worn the night of her attack. She had been willing to potentially sacrifice herself for the cause, as it were, but not another pair of shoes. A woman had to draw the line somewhere.

  Thankfully, she realized, pulling her knees toward her chest until she could rest the balls of her feet on the cot’s thin mattress, whoever had bound her this time had not been as thorough as Dima. They had neglected to tie her feet.

  While she tried to decide how that might be helpful, she tugged experimentally on her hands. The knots held, and there wasn’t all that much wiggle room to work with. Frowning, she considered her options.

  To her surprise, she actually had very little fear for her own safety, at least for the moment. Since she knew Yelizaveta planned to try to use her to lure Dima and Misha to the mansion, she knew no one would be by to kill her before the brothers showed up. What she didn’t know was when they might appear or what would happen once they did. Better to find out for herself, she decided, than wait around here to have someone bring her the news right before they chopped her head off. That kind of ending did not fit into her plans.

  In order to shake up the evening, though, she’d have to find a way to get herself free from her current situation. Too bad Dima wasn’t in the next room again, waiting to untie her as soon as she woke up.

  The thought made her tense. He had been listening to her conversation with Yelizaveta. She had tried to block him out when the psycho had started to threaten him because she’d been afraid that with him in her head, she wouldn’t be able to hide their connection from the vampiress, and she hadn’t wanted to add any fuel to an already-blazing fire of craziness. She thought she might have managed it partially, but she had still been able to sense his presence in her mind, and she knew he could have been listening to the eavesdropping device along with the others, anyway. In any case, he would have an idea what had happened, and he might be a little bit worried about her safety and well-being right now.

  Damn it, she was going to have to do some explaining when she finally got ahold of him.

  Sighing, she closed her eyes to help her concentrate and began trying to locate his mind with hers.

  For the first ten minutes or more, she had absolutely no luck. She just couldn’t manage to get around the painful throbbing in her skull. It made the kind of concentration she needed to complete the difficult task impossible to come by. Every time she thought she might have found a tenuous thread of communication, her head would throb and she would lose it, forcing her to start all over again. Finally, she began to anticipate the sharp pains and to count on their ebb and flow like a metronome. That helped, and her second set of attempts was more successful.

  She located the thread of their earlier communication easily enough. Dima had been careful to make it obvious so that if they were interrupted, as they had been, she would be able to find him again. The problem was that when she picked the thread up, she could follow it only a second before she seemed to hit some kind of barrier between their minds.

  Visualization can be really helpful, she remembered him saying when he’d given her a crash course in basic telepathic communication the other night. If you have trouble with a task, picture it in concrete terms. If something feels heavy, picture a weight that you need to lift; if it feels messy, picture straightening up papers or sweeping debris out of the way. Whatever works. There is no right or wrong way to do it.

  She hoped like hell he was right, because she felt like an idiot when she pictured a drywalled, taped, and painted wall in her head with a piece of blue string the color of a glacier trapped between the bottom of the wall and the floor underneath. Then she painstakingly imagined a door in the wall just where the string was, reached out, and carefully pulled it open.

  In her mind’s eye, a blast of wind tore through the opening with the force of a hurricane and sent her staggering back at least three or four feet.

  Where the bloody hell have you BEEN, woman?!?!? Dima’s voice roared in her head at a volume so high, she thought her eardrums might actually be physically affected by it. I thought you might be DEAD! Do you have any idea how that made me feel?

  Mind you, I’m just guessing here, she thought, trying to regain her balance, but perhaps a tad concerned?

  This was met by a silence that gave Ava a small concern of her own.

  When Dima spoke again, he managed a normal volume, but his words vibrated with the tension caused by such a tight hold on his self-control.

  We can discuss that later, he ground out. First, you must tell me if you are hurt.

  Not as far as I can tell. Someone must have hit me in the head, because that aches like nobody’s business, but I’m not bleeding, and I don’t detect any broken bones.

  She thought she sensed a sigh of relief.

  All right. Good. Where are you now?

  She lifted her head slowly, in deference to the knowledge that it could explode or fall off at any moment, and looked around her. The narrow chamber looked like nothing so much as a nun’s cell. It had bare stone walls, a bare stone ceiling, and three pieces of furniture: the cot on which she lay, a small wooden table—more like a stool really—standing against the opposite wall about halfway to the door, which bore a candleholder and three candles, only one of which was lit. It had burned almost all the way down, and she realized that if she wanted to retain the meager light, she would need to get herself untied soon, so she could put out the candles. The only other furniture was behind her head, pressed against the wall behind the head of the cot; it was a seven-foot-tall wooden wine rack that stretched all the way from the floor to the ceiling, with semicircular notches all along the front for the wine bottles to rest in. It was empty and covered with dust.

  The only information the room offered was to confirm what her sense of smell had already told her—she was in a small room in the basement of an older building. With luck, it was the same building she had walked into just after dusk that evening.

  I’m not positive, she told him, because I was unconscious when they moved me, but it looks like I’m in the basement of the house. It’s a tiny little room, completely stone, that looks like it used to be used as a wine cellar.

  Is
anyone there with you?

  No. I was alone when I woke up a little while ago, and no one has come in since.

  Can you open the door and take a look around outside?

  Um, I’ll have to work on that, she said after a moment’s hesitation.

  Why? What’s wrong?

  She sighed. They tied me up. Until I get free of the rope, I’m not going to be going anywhere.

  He cursed. She was really going to have to learn to speak Russian one of these days.

  All right, then, I want you to stay put, he instructed. We’re going to be coming for you, but things could get … messy. If we know where you are, we won’t have to worry about you being in the way. So stay there until Misha or I come for you, all right?

  No! Dima, you can’t! That’s exactly what Yelizaveta wants. She’s trying to trap you into coming to my rescue so she can kill you. You can’t come for me! I can get myself out of this.

  Hush, lyubimaya. I know. I heard Yelizaveta tell you her plans, but I promise you, nothing will come of them. You cannot trap a wary adversary, da?

  Maybe not, but you can still outnumber him and chop his head off! Dima! I want you to listen to me! Stay. Away. From. Here. I got myself into this situation, and I can get myself out. I don’t need you to come charging in here like the cavalry to rescue me. I’m a big girl, and I can take care of myself. I always have.

  Lyubimaya, he said tenderly, and she swore she could feel his fingers touching her face, don’t you see that this is the reason I must come for you? I must do this for you, because no one else ever has.

  Then the door she had created in her mind slammed shut, and when she raced back to haul it open again, she found it had been carefully bricked up from the other side.

  “Dima!” she screamed, and set to work frantically on freeing herself from her bonds.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Noah Baker may have been human, as Dima learned, but he had a trick or two up his olive drab sleeves that had made him quite useful even among his Lupine pack-by-marriage. He had been waiting when the truck carrying Dima, Misha, and Graham had pulled up outside the home he shared with his wife in Gramercy Park, and he had greeted the newcomer with quiet strength. He had also wasted about five seconds doing that before he got down to the business of loading bags and boxes of mysterious “equipment” into the back of the truck.

  “I was in the army before the pack lured me away,” he told Dima, grinning. “I was Special Forces, but Graham made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  Behind them, Graham snorted. “Sam made you the offer you couldn’t refuse. I just gave you a job.”

  Noah wriggled his eyebrows. “Like I said, they’re a hard bunch to resist.”

  Dima nodded and stowed another bag. “What did you do in the military?” he asked as the human loaded the last of his gear.

  The man’s face bloomed in a grin wide enough to cross the Black Sea. “Demolitions.”

  Then he slammed the truck’s back doors shut and jogged around to climb inside the passenger compartment. Dima followed, feeling a stirring of exciting hope in his chest. A useful man to have around, indeed.

  Graham drove, blithely ignoring the safety and welfare of himself, his passengers, and nearby pedestrians, as any good New York driver would. “Were you able to get everything you needed?” he asked, glancing at Noah in the rearview mirror.

  The human nodded. “Pretty much. I’d have liked some narrower fuse cable, but what I have will do the trick. It just won’t look as pretty.”

  “We’re after function,” Misha assured him. “Not form.”

  Noah grinned. “Ah, but the form is half the fun.”

  From the front seat, Misha glanced back to where Dima sat behind the driver. “You’re okay with this?” he asked.

  Dima barked out a sound something like a laugh. “Not even remotely, but I can’t think of anything better, so what the hell? I’ll give anything a try.”

  Graham rolled his eyes and swerved around an Asian delivery person on a bicycle. “Now that’s the positive attitude we like to see.”

  Misha glared at him. “And how would you feel if it were Melissa in that building?”

  “Come on, D, don’t try and piss me off.” Graham frowned, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “There’s no comparison. Missy is … hell, Missy is practically an angel. There’s no living creature on this earth who’s ever met her who hasn’t liked her, and every damn man she meets falls half in love with her at first sight, the bastards.” The pride and love in his voice were obvious. “Ava is an entirely different story. She’s a stone-cold—”

  “She is my mate,” Dima bit out, leaning forward and catching the Lupine’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “I suggest you take care in how you describe her.”

  Graham’s eyes widened and his jaw bounced off his collarbone. “You’re shitting me!”

  Misha slapped the side of Graham’s head. “Mudak! Dumb shit. Do you think we’d be doing this for just any woman?”

  “I thought you were doing it for Reggie! Everyone knows how she feels about Ava. I mean, no one understands, but everyone knows. The two of them can’t be in the same room anymore without trying to strangle each other, but you can bet that if you ask anyone, they’ll say the reason no one has killed Ava yet is because they know they’d have to take on Reggie to do it, and that means they’d have to take on you, too.”

  Dima reached forward and smacked the same spot his brother had. “Do not speak so of my woman,” he snarled. “And certainly do not ever mention her death again if you do not wish to witness your own.”

  Graham scowled. “Hey, I didn’t mean I was going to kill her. I’m in the same boat as Misha. She might get on my last living nerve, but Missy loves her like a sister. No way in hell am I going to do anything to upset Missy. Not when it comes to her friends. With these girls, friendship is like a blood oath. They take it seriously.”

  “As do we,” Misha agreed.

  Dima grunted. “Fine. But I will hear no more insults directed at my mate, is that clear?”

  “Absolutely.” Graham held up two fingers in the Cub Scout salute. “Just let me ask you one thing. Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?”

  Dima thought of Ava, of her entrenched arrogance, her volatile temper, and her stubborn insistence on running the show—all the shows, everyone’s show—all by herself. Then he thought of her dark eyes cloudy with desire, of her incredible strength, of her neglected past, and he nodded.

  “One hundred percent certain. There is not a doubt in my mind, and there is no other woman for me.”

  Graham nodded and stepped on the gas. “Okay, then. T minus thirty-seven minutes and counting. Rafe will meet us at the mansion, and we can get this show on the road!”

  Graham was grinning until out of nowhere Noah leaned forward and slapped him hard on the side of the head.

  “What the shit was that for?” he growled, barely dodging a double-parked car while he glared at the other man in the mirror.

  Noah grinned back. “Just for luck. I was feeling left out.”

  Rafe met the men on the sidewalk three blocks from Wadsworth House near the van where the rest of the Silverback team had camped. “Any trouble?” he asked as the other four approached.

  Graham shook his head and gave a coded knock to the van’s back door. “Nah. We’re good.”

  The door opened a crack and Missy stuck her head out.

  Graham pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “Anything?”

  She shook her head. “No. We’re pretty sure they must have destroyed the purse. Either that or they searched it, found the bug, and destroyed it, but we didn’t hear anything that would indicate they’d located it, or that they suspected anyone was listening.”

  “Good.”

  “What about Ava?” Dima demanded. “Has she made any contact?”

  He wasn’t sure which answer he’d been hoping for, but his gut clenched when Missy shook her head.

  “No,
she’s still quiet. But that’s a good thing, right? It means she’s staying put like you told her to.”

  His jaw clenched. “With Ava, it’s impossible to tell.”

  “Amen,” Graham muttered under his breath. Missy smacked him. He jerked his head around to glare at her and lifted a hand to rub the stinging spot. “All right, I’ve had about enough of that!”

  The group ignored him.

  “All right,” Misha said, taking a look around and nodding. “Let’s gear up.”

  For the four men whom Yelizaveta had tried to lure into a trap, that meant very little. They knew that the chances of their being allowed into her presence while clearly armed were slim to none, so they didn’t bother to carry any weapons. Not where they could be seen, at least. Dima never went anywhere without a long, slim blade strapped to his boot, and unless his brother had changed drastically over the years, he doubted Misha would be without a knife of some sort, either. Rafael De Santos was himself a weapon, a jaguar coiled in a man’s skin, with teeth and claws that could rip a body in half with one swipe, and you would never know it from glancing at his lean, elegant form, unbearably chic in a tailored Italian suit. Between the Felix and Dima’s older brother—also wearing an expensively tailored jacket, though this one had been dressed down with sharply pleated black trousers—Dima felt like a poor relation, dressed as he always was in black BDU-style trousers, battered black boots, and a close-fitting black pullover shirt in a wrinkle-free, moisture-wicking, temperature-regulating fabric. At least Graham—another weapon in human clothing—was wearing jeans, even if they and the button-down shirt he wore with them did sport designer labels.

  Noah and the Silverbacks took slightly more outfitting. Thanks to Noah’s military connections, each one carried a 5.56 mm M16 assault rifle fitted with night scope, laser sight, and flashlight, and had a small M9A1 pistol strapped to his side. They also each wore a high-tech communications headset to allow them to communicate with the other members of the team. In one of the pockets of his trousers, Dima had secreted a small handheld communicator, like a walkie-talkie on steroids, that operated on the same frequency as the headsets. Just in case. Noah alone carried a backpack over his shoulders, filled with goodies Dima didn’t know the names of and probably shouldn’t be able to testify about anyway.