Come Hell or High Water (Hellcat Series Book 5)

by Sharon Hannaford

  Kyle shot out of his chair so fast that Gabi flinched. “Kimberley,” he shouted. “She’s the answer to this.”

  “Holy shit, the Doppelganger,” she whispered, her eyes wide. But then she made a disgusted noise deep in her throat. “That’ll never work.”

  “Why not?” Kyle demanded.

  “Duh…” Gabi drawled. “Shifters can only hold a shifted shape for a few hours at a time and she barely knows me. She would have to be able to act like me, sound like me and smell enough like me to fool centuries-old Vampires. And besides, she’s a complete wuss; this would be a highly stressful and volatile situation. If the Shadow group kidnaps her and finds out she’s not me, she’d be dead faster than you can blink. If the Princeps uncovered the masquerade, Julius’s life might be forfeit, and she’d be at their mercy. What on earth would make her agree to it?” But as she glanced Julius’s way, expecting his acknowledgement that the whole idea was crazy and dangerous, she knew the girl’s fate had already been sealed. Julius had just found the alternative he’d been desperately hoping for.

  Because, no matter what he’d said, how much he’d told Gabi that he needed her at the Estate to protect his Clan, she knew there was more to this than he was letting on. He knew with utter certainty that she was safer and more protected in the City, and he would do anything, including lie to her and manipulate both her and everyone around him, to keep her safe. A fine red fog began to mist her vision and Gabi knew she needed air, and space. Without another word she left the office.

  Kyle watched her leave, and he had a pretty good idea of where she’d go. Luckily she wasn’t inclined to get in her car when she was this upset. She preferred to find somewhere no one would dare to bother her. He glanced back at Julius, wondering if the Master Vampire would follow her now or give her the room she needed. The tension was apparent in every muscle of the man’s body and the rigid set of his jaw. Kyle’s wolf was standing at attention, his teeth bared warningly. Julius always made his wolf uncomfortable, but usually Julius kept his emotions tightly under control. Tonight was very different.

  “Do you have a way to contact this Doppelganger?” Julius asked him, not looking at Kyle but watching the door that Gabi had just left through, as though he could still see her.

  “I think Trish got her contact details,” Kyle told him. Trish had developed an immediate soft spot for the woman.

  “Fer this to wirk, Sire, ye’ll hae tae plan verry carefully. Who else urr ye planning to tae wi’ ye?” Fergus rumbled. The Scotsman too understood that Gabi needed space and Julius needed a distraction.

  Julius sighed, squeezing his eyes shut for just a moment. He looked tired, which was rare in a Vampire.

  “I want you and Alexander both here, along with Nathan. That should be enough senior Vampires to keep the rest feeling safe. I’ll take Charlie, Quentin and Rat,” he told Fergus. Kyle had met Rat a couple of times in recent weeks. He was the newest member of Julius’s elite personal guard, an unassuming-looking man with greying hair and a wiry frame. He was a veteran of the Second World War, a US sniper. His name was Reginald Arthur Turner, according to Alexander, but he’d introduced himself as Rat to Kyle and that seemed to be the moniker he preferred. “Perhaps I should take Liam as well, as a show of strength,” Julius continued. “This time I go as an honoured guest, not a potential criminal.”

  “It’ll look strange if you don’t take someone close to Gabi,” Alexander put in. “It may raise suspicions.” He looked meaningfully in Kyle’s direction.

  Kyle realised a half second later what he was implying and his wolf stood up, growling. “Uh, no,” Kyle said, calm but emphatic. “I won’t leave Trish or my Pack when there is such a high threat to the City.” His Pack might be small, but it was growing, and each of them was as precious as blood family, perhaps more so, because each of them had chosen to be part of his and Trish’s Pack. He also wouldn’t leave Gabi exposed. The Vampires might be fast and strong, but he and Gabi had faced countless dangers together, they knew how to fight side by side, and he had a doctorate in tempering her rage and calming her tendency to run full tilt into danger without considering the alternatives. Julius knew this as well as Kyle did.

  “No, not Kyle,” he told his second in command. “He has too much to take care of here.” His gaze speared Kyle.

  Kyle gave a tiny nod of understanding, he’d watch Gabi’s back regardless of Julius’s silent command, but he wasn’t one to take offense easily. He understood what caring about Gabi entailed, let alone loving her the way Julius did. And of that he had absolutely no doubt. The Master Vampire was as desperately in love as he’d ever seen a man. Losing Gabi would destroy something inside Julius, quite possibly the very thing that kept him acting human.

  Kyle had been on the Estate when Julius interrogated the Vampires belonging to his brother, Dantè, the Vampire who’d tortured and then tried to Turn Gabi so he could lay claim to her. None of the captured Vampires had lived, and what Julius had done to them, using his power over Vampire minds, had been horrific. Kyle would never forget the screams of the dying Vampires. He was both relieved and disappointed that Gabi hadn’t been conscious enough to see what Julius was capable of. A healthy dose of reality might have finally tempered her total lack of caution where the Master Vampire was concerned, but she might never have looked at him the same way again. And despite everything, Julius was probably the only man Kyle would trust to keep Gabi safe and make her happy at the same time. Life would never be easy being the Consort to such a controversial Master Vampire, but then that Master needed to protect the only known Dhampir in existence. Not something many would be powerful or resourceful enough to pull off.

  “He’s not going to be much help if it comes down to physical combat,” Kyle mused out loud, “but Derek seemed to take an unusually keen interest in the Shifter.” His wolf had been the one to point it out, shoving the mental image at him. After Gabi’s departure from the apology session, Derek’s attraction had become even more apparent. Kyle hadn’t had time to tell Gabi about it. She would be relieved to have Derek’s ongoing interest in her sidetracked by another woman.

  Unsurprisingly, Julius looked pleased by the development. Not that Derek stood any chance with Gabi, but it had to be annoying having a man hanging around the woman you loved with his tongue practically lolling out of his mouth. Kyle guessed Julius would happily put up with the man’s presence as long as he was on the other side of the world from Gabi, and attracted to another woman to boot. Intriguingly, attracted to another woman who could make herself look exactly like Gabi if she wanted to.

  ********************

  Julius had been standing quietly at the base of the tree for quite some time. Gabi wasn’t leaving him there to punish him, or to be churlish. She simply wasn’t ready to speak to him yet.

  A year ago she would’ve leapt down and confronted him the moment he appeared, taking her frustration and anger out on him. Venting, saying things that she would later regret.

  Who knew better than her that old dogs could indeed learn new tricks? It had taken nearly three decades, but it seemed she was finally achieving some kind of maturity. And she was surprisingly proud of that. She would never have considered that something to be proud of twelve months ago. She would’ve sworn to the Lord and Lady that speaking her mind was the only way to be honest with herself and those around her, but somewhere in the last few months it had dawned on her that throwing a hissy fit was just a way of draining some of the rage. It wasn’t truthful or honest, it was just a childish release of pain and anger.

  The new-and-improved Gabi was a constant work in progress, however. So it took time to think through the fury, to talk herself into a better mental state. When it all seemed overwhelming, she practiced her meditation skills. Whether it was her newly discovered maturity or the breakthrough when she was being tortured by Mariska and Dantè, she’d found a meditative state much easier to reach lately. When the tightness in her chest eased, the adrenalin ebbed and the buzzing i
n her brain quietened, she blew out one more deep breath and called down to him.

  “You can come up here now,” she said, not raising her voice despite the distance down to him. The old oak was a fantastic climbing tree, and she was probably a good thirty feet off the ground. Her back rested against the sturdy main trunk, and her legs stretched out before her on a branch as thick as her waist. One of the squirrels that called the oak home was curled up asleep in the crook between her neck and shoulder.

  Instead of climbing the tree, Julius chose to levitate himself up to her. She still found the sudden upsurge in his Magi abilities disconcerting, and levitation was the most unsettling of the lot. He was a Fire-bender, one of the strongest that Athena had ever encountered, as well as an Air-Bender. Air-benders were capable of amazing feats, including deflecting flying bullets, removing an element like oxygen from the air around someone or affecting the pattern of the weather. And levitation.

  “Show off,” she grumbled as he stepped gracefully onto a branch to the right of and slightly below hers. The squirrel stirred, noticed the newcomer, and immediately scampered away, chittering noisily as it fled.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I warned you that Rocky was an exception to the rule, the rest of them hate me.” Julius once told her he’d tried to befriend squirrels as a child, but had never even come close to success. Gabi, of course, had an unfair advantage.

  “I want to know the real secret,” she said without further ado. “The one you’re not telling me. The one you’re trying to hide from everyone.” She could sense the immediate slamming of his mental shields, but she wasn’t about to be deterred. “You’ve been keeping something from me for weeks now. It has something to do with the Princeps and me. Tell me, be completely forthright, no more lying by omission, and I’ll agree to stay here.” She knew that she had to dangle a huge carrot in front of him to make him open up, a threat wouldn’t work, he’d just find a way to negate it, but this promise was a difficult one for her to make. If his secret involved danger to his own life, she would be hard put to keep her promise. She was counting on the threat being to her life instead.

  His jaw worked, the muscles tensing and untensing in the pale moonlight, his gaze avoiding hers. His mind remained tightly shut down from hers.

  “I want your word that you’ll tell me everything,” she reiterated. His word was everything to him, if he gave it to her, it was as good as written and signed in his blood. He slowly folded himself down until he was sitting on his branch. She could see every line of his face.

  “Alright,” he finally said. “But I’ll have your word that you will stay here and not fight me on this or find a way to follow me after I leave.”

  Gabi gritted her teeth and prayed that she wasn’t making a fatal error in judgement. “I swear I’ll stay in the City while you are concluding your current meeting with the Princeps.” She added a time frame to her promise at the last second, in case he had other ideas of keeping her here on a permanent basis. A wry smile lifted one side of his mouth as he acknowledged her limitation.

  “Fair enough,” he agreed. “Can we do this inside, though? I would prefer to keep this from everyone else for the meanwhile.”

  “Your private lounge?” she asked. In the new rebuild of the mansion, Julius had a suite of rooms, a decadent upgrade from his previous bedroom with en suite. His new suite included a sumptuous living area and a kitchenette for Gabi’s use. It was also soundproofed with a specialized padding from his inventor friend Savannah. The soundproofing was so advanced that not even Vampire hearing could penetrate it.

  “May I?” he asked, before swooping her up into his arms and gently lowering them both to the ground. It was a vastly different experience to the last time he’d done that. And the end result was Julius still conscious and no mansion in fiery ruins around them. A marked improvement.

  A fire danced in the marble hearth, not the smoky, wooden kind, but the cleaner, gas-fuelled kind. It wasn’t really cold enough for one, but it added a warmth and comfort to the room, something Gabi felt she needed as she prepared to hear what Julius had been hiding from her. He pressed a large wine glass into her hand, half filled with a rich, ruby red merlot. She unconsciously drew the plummy aroma deep into her lungs.

  Julius took a seat in the suede sofa next to hers. He wasn’t facing her but the flames of the fire as his eyes went distant, and the solid mental wall between them began to disintegrate.

  “A few weeks after we left the Princep Court, I got word from Xavier,” he began.

  Gabi remembered the dark-haired human very well. He was fiercely loyal to Julius and determined to stay at the Court to gather intel for Julius rather than accept the comfortable life here at the Estate that Julius had offered him. Gabi sipped her wine as she waited for Julius to go on, hoping the alcohol would calm her roiling stomach.

  “One of Santiago’s Clan found a hair in his apartments. Shortly after the time he met the true death,” he said, the words falling slowly from his mouth as if it was difficult forming them.

  Gabi froze with a mouthful of wine, suddenly unable to swallow it. Santiago had been a Princep. She’d met him when she and Julius had been called in front of the Princeps to explain why a Master Vampire had knowingly been harbouring a Dhampir, and to account for the ‘murder’ of Julius’s brother, Dantè, after the Dark Magus Mariska had outed them, hoping to exact revenge for Dantè’s death. At a formal dance Gabi had discovered Santiago’s sick, dark perversion: his love of young girls, and that he’d been allowed to Turn some as young as eight or nine years old. She’d known, the instant she recognised him for what he was, that she would find a way to kill him. And it hadn’t taken long to discover that she wasn’t alone in her revulsion. She wouldn’t have been able to achieve her objective without some help in several crucial areas. She’d included a handful of people in her dangerous scheme, including a few members of Court staff, but she’d been very careful to keep everything from Julius. She’d been determined to ensure that he could not be held personally accountable if she was caught or killed in the attempt to end the Princep’s existence.

  Miraculously they’d pulled it off and had even managed to leave Court before being questioned. Her team had thought of everything, including cleaning up and destroying evidence. She trusted them to be thorough, for the sake of the young girls he’d been abusing if not for her. Gabi knew it was widely surmised that she’d been the one to kill him, but she’d been confident that there would be no way to physically tie her, or the small team that accompanied her, to the crime.

  Julius had figured it out within seconds of hearing the keening wails of Santiago’s Clan members, he’d responded instantly, mind-controlling Vampire guards so they could all escape the castle before questions could be raised. Though his disappointment in her actions had been clear, he’d never spoken of the incident other than to reassure her that it didn’t change how he felt about her.

  But it seemed like she’d been wrong about the evidence; she already knew who the hair belonged to. She forced herself to swallow the mouthful of wine.

  “According to Xavier, it is a long, auburn strand,” he continued, his voice now carefully neutral. “They have yet to turn it over to the Princeps, as they fear the evidence will be disappeared or switched out before a likely suspect is found to compare it to. Even they know he was despised by most of his peers and that his death is not high on their list of priorities. Xavier has tried to gain access to it, but they’ve removed it from the Castle and have it stored somewhere secure. So secure that Xavier hasn’t been able to locate it yet.”

  Some of his anxiety and anger was trickling into his tone. “Their plan is to wait for you to be summoned back to Court on some other matter. Once you’re there, where they can force our hand, where there is little room for us to manoeuvre, they’ll demand a DNA comparison to determine your guilt. I’m not convinced it wasn’t planted there by someone; this fits in too well with the Shadow group’s schemes, and it would be exactly the kind
of upheaval that would suit them.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face, his concern for her radiating through her mind. “Planting of evidence would be our only defence, with no idea which way the eventual vote would go, now that there are two new Princeps appointed. The fact that your name is on everyone’s lips in regards to his death, and the open confrontation you had with him at the ball, is likely to sway the vote. I am not prepared to take the chance.”

  He fell silent as he finally looked her way, his disconcertingly beautiful sapphire eyes boring into hers, daring her to contradict him. “I also would prefer that you stay here, at the Estate, instead of your house while I’m away. Without the protection of Irene’s ward around your property, you’re completely vulnerable there.”

  The wine glass that Gabi had been holding shattered, spilling wine and shards of broken glass across the sofa and the shag pile carpet underfoot.

  CHAPTER 5

  Certain people just set Gabi’s teeth on edge. Often there wasn’t even a reason for it, like in the case of Athena. The High Magus and Gabi had detested each other on sight; for years they’d only just been civil to each other when they were required to work together. Only the events of recent months, including Athena helping to save Gabi’s life, had changed their relationship from barely concealed antagonism to mutual respect, bordering on a tentative friendship.

  In Kimberley’s case Gabi had more than reason enough to despise the younger woman; she’d betrayed her race as well as all the other supernatural races, and almost caused the deaths of three of Gabi’s closest friends. On top of clobbering Gabi hard enough to crack her skull. She’d used her gift to bluff her way past the ward that protected Gabi’s house. A ward that helped Gabi sleep at night, that gave her a sense of security in her own sanctuary after Vampires and Demons had attacked her there. A ward designed and maintained by Irene, one that rendered a magical, John Cena-strength body-slam to uninvited supernatural beings. A ward that had died with the High Magus. No other Magus had the ability, or cared enough about Gabi, to recreate the ward. At one point that ward had been all that kept her sane. Now it was gone, and she hated to be reminded of its absence. Hated it because it reminded her of her human vulnerabilities, of the fact that she was still terribly, intrinsically mortal.