by Jenna Black
He made a face that was half smile, half grimace. “And which did you like better? The ecstasy of the kill, or the alien chewing through the belly?”
She didn’t dignify that with an answer, but she did venture to address the issue that had set him off in the first place. “I want you to know, I don’t judge you. I’m the last person on earth who’d judge someone for the circumstances of his birth.” Having been born to a junkie mother who had no idea which of the many men she’d slept with had fathered her, Jez knew what it was like to be scorned for something she had no control over. Her mother had been her scarlet letter, the cause of more sneers and insults than she could count. “But just because I don’t judge you for enjoying the kill doesn’t mean I have to like it. Do you understand?”
For a moment, it looked like her words would spark his anger again. But when he answered, both the words and the voice were mild. “Yes, I understand. And I’m sorry that our bond is causing you to experience things you’d rather not. I know so little about what I can do …”
Jez yearned to ask him why he knew so little. He couldn’t be the only vampire in the world who was born that way. And at five hundred years old, she’d have thought he’d have learned more about his own abilities. But one thing she’d learned over the brief course of their acquaintance—Gabriel was about as eager to share information as Eli. She doubted Gabriel would appreciate the comparison.
Gabriel stood abruptly. “I need some time to think.” He shook off some thought that seemed to bother him. “My guess is that Eli will have to tell his Guardians something about me, whether he wants to or not. Make sure you find out what he has planned for me. I’ll come to you tomorrow night and you’ll tell me what you’ve learned.”
She opened her mouth to remind him that Eli wouldn’t necessarily share his plans with her, but apparently Gabriel was tired of talking. He disappeared.
Jez shivered. She knew he hadn’t really disappeared. What he’d done was use his glamour to make her mind take a brief vacation while he walked out the door. That didn’t make the effect any less unsettling.
But then, considering how unsettling it was to feel Gabriel’s emotions, she supposed she’d take the disappearing act any day!
CAMILLE AWOKE TO A sense of peace, the first she’d known in … well, a long time. Perhaps ever since Eli had cast her and Gabriel out of Philadelphia. Or perhaps even longer ago, when Eli’s hubris and Gabriel’s lack of restraint had seen them hounded from their home in a desperate flight to the New World.
She sat up and stretched, and though hunger gnawed at her senses, her head felt clear, her soul centered. Paris hardly bore even a passing resemblance to the home she’d fled four hundred years ago, but even so the place felt like home. Like a piece of herself had slipped back into place, a piece she hadn’t known was missing.
She luxuriated in a long, scented bath, then dressed in her favorite Chanel suit and swept her hair into an elegant chignon at the back of her head. Shoes with toes as pointed as her fangs completed the outfit, and she admired herself briefly before the gilt mirror that adorned the dresser in her room.
Satisfied that she looked as beautiful and as regal as she could manage, she closed her eyes and reached out with her senses.
It was no surprise to feel the presence of vampires below her. If the power structure now was anything like it had been before she’d left, the Seigneur’s sentries would have sensed her invasion almost the moment she set foot in their city. They would give her perhaps a day or two before approaching her, as a courtesy to one of her advanced age. But she would not take a single step unobserved, and if she didn’t formally present herself, her watchers would make themselves forcefully known.
She examined their auras carefully. None of the four who awaited her downstairs came close to her in age, she was sure. But they weren’t fledglings, either. At a guess, they had two to three centuries on them apiece. Old enough that the four of them could overpower her despite her advanced age and power. But that didn’t matter. She hadn’t come here to fight, and there was no point in delaying her introduction to the Seigneur.
Taking a deep breath for courage, she left her room and waited what felt like an eternity for the elevator to arrive. The ride to the ground floor took even longer. But finally the doors opened, and she stepped into the elegant lobby.
Camille suspected she’d have felt the pressure of those four sets of eyes even if she hadn’t detected the vampires awaiting her. They must have sensed her coming down the elevator, for they were all staring at her with unabashed curiosity.
They appeared to be a matched set, two men and two women. Their clothes were chic moderne, and all four were meticulously groomed. Camille was glad she’d chosen her own outfit with such care.
The petite dark-haired woman appeared to be their spokesperson, for she stepped forward to meet Camille. She smiled, but didn’t offer to shake hands.
“You’re trespassing,” the little woman said, still smiling. Her French was fluent, but there was a touch of accent to it. German, perhaps. She used not a hint of glamour, but no one could have looked at that sweetly innocent, smiling face and guessed she’d just issued what amounted to a threat.
Camille inclined her head in acknowledgment. “I would have tried to make contact before I arrived, but I didn’t know how,” she responded in English. She’d have had no trouble speaking her native tongue, but she suspected her French would be … embarrassingly archaic.
The woman shifted easily to English. “Ah, so you are an American.”
Camille couldn’t help wrinkling her nose. “I was born here. In Paris. But I have lived in America for … quite some time.”
Finally, the woman extended her hand. “I am Brigitte Arnault. I speak for the Maître de Paris.”
Camille shook hands, stifling the urge to sigh. Only a few words exchanged, and already she saw that the vampires of the Old World still followed the almost feudal structure of yesteryear. In the U.S., there was no such thing as a “vampire society.” Each vampire family operated independently, a nation unto its own. In Europe, the birthplace of their kind, there was structure, and protocol, and diplomacy. Which meant Camille would have to work her way through the underlings before reaching the Seigneur.
“I am Camille Crom—” she started, then stopped herself. She’d been carrying Eli’s name for so long she’d almost believed it her own. Silly, really, as she was sure Cromwell wasn’t Eli’s real surname anyway. In fact, she suspected Eli was born before surnames even came into use. “Camille Hébert. I would like to beg an audience with the Seigneur.”
Brigitte blinked a couple of times at what might have been an impatient-sounding statement. Still, that sweet smile stayed plastered on her face. Her three companions stayed well back, but eyed Camille with a combination of curiosity and distrust.
“It is up to the Maître to decide whether you shall speak to the Seigneur,” she said. “Or have you been away for so long that you have forgotten protocol?”
Camille swallowed her first two responses. She could crush little Brigitte in a fight, but not Brigitte and her three friends. Besides, if she wanted to make a place for herself in the Old World structure, she had to play the bureaucratic games that were soon to follow.
“Your pardon, Mlle. Arnault. Americans tend to be more … forthright than perhaps you are accustomed to. I’m afraid I have absorbed some of their less attractive qualities. I will, of course, be delighted to meet the Maître de Paris.”
Brigitte’s lips twitched into something more like a grin than a smile. “Of course you would. How could you refuse, when he’s sent you such a welcoming committee?”
“Indeed.”
The “welcoming committee” fanned out around her. It looked almost casual, as if they were joining her for a friendly talk, but only an idiot wouldn’t see how they’d cut off her escape routes. As if she’d come all this way just to run away!
So she had to go through the Maître before she could petition th
e Seigneur for a place in his entourage. It was a price she was more than willing to pay. She gestured toward the front doors of the hotel. “Shall we?” she asked.
Brigitte flashed her that saucy grin again, then linked arms with her like they were best friends. “Bien sûr!” she said, and led Camille out into the welcoming Paris night.
AS GABRIEL HAD PREDICTED, Eli called a meeting of the Guardians for the next night. Usually, the only time all the Guardians gathered together was on Wednesday nights, their regular weekly gathering. After the first few weeks of feeling like an interloper, Jez had started feeling comfortable during these meetings, getting to know the other Guardians, and even to like some of them.
Now she felt worse than an interloper. She was a mole, a spy. And she hated it.
She sat with head bowed, hands clasped in her lap as Eli told his Guardians about Gabriel. Well, not that he actually told them much of anything. He admitted Gabriel was his son, that he was born a vampire, and that he had a vendetta. But there was a lot he left out.
Even so, a sense of shock hovered over the collected Guardians. Jez raised her head and looked from face to face. Drake, Jules, and Hannah, who had all met Gabriel a few months ago on an ill-fated revenge quest in Baltimore, were unsurprised. Everyone else looked disillusioned, at best.
She swallowed hard and dropped her gaze as the Guardians started to bicker. The bickering was common enough—vampires as a general rule grated on each others’ nerves unless there was a master/fledgling bond between them. Most gatherings of vampires—“families,” as they were euphemistically called—consisted of a master and his or her group of fledglings. But Eli had no such bond with any of his Guardians, and it was only the force of his personality that kept them working together as a group.
Some worked together better than others. As usual when things started to get tense in the room, Jules and his nemesis, Gray James, started sniping at each other. Jez turned toward their angry voices, smiling even though the situation wasn’t funny. God, the two of them were predictable!
Hannah, Jules’s girlfriend and fledgling, had both hands on Jules’s arm and was pulling hard, trying to get him away from Gray. Carolyn, Gray’s mortal fiancée, was trying the same maneuver with him. Neither woman was having much success as Jules and Gray snarled at each other, flashing fangs.
“Enough!” Eli said, his voice cutting through all the arguments and grumbling. “Gray, Jules—sit down. Now.”
Neither one of them was happy to back down, but they let their women pull them away from each other and shove them into chairs.
“I understand that many of you find all this very … disquieting,” Eli said, his voice soft and yet full of power. “But fighting with each other is only going to play into Gabriel’s hands.”
“So what are we going to do about him, Eli?” Drake asked. “He’s a five-hundred-year old Killer, and we don’t even know the full extent of his power.”
Eli didn’t answer, but one of the other Guardians, an especially aggressive hunter named Fletcher, stood up.
“What do you mean, ‘What are we going to do about him?”’ Fletcher asked. “We’ll do the same thing we do when any other Killer decides to make himself at home in Philadelphia.” He sneered a bit, giving Drake a disdainful look. “Except you, of course.” He turned his glare to Eli. “We kill him.”
If Jez hadn’t been watching Eli’s face closely, she wouldn’t have noticed the slight tightening around his eyes that was almost a wince. But she was watching, and she did notice. No matter what Gabriel thought—and no matter what Eli thought—he wasn’t eager to see his son dead.
“It isn’t that easy, Fletcher,” Drake said, his voice surprisingly calm when Fletcher was obviously trying to get a rise out of him. “I’ve met Gabriel. I’ve even fought him, or at least tried to.” Drake shook his head. “I couldn’t land a single punch. He was too fast, or his glamour was too strong, or a combination of the two. If I can’t take him …”
“I wasn’t offering to go up against him one-on-one in a fist fight,” Fletcher retorted. “We’re always outpowered by the Killers.” He grinned, but it wasn’t a nice expression. “Hell, I bet it would take at least four or five of us Guardians to take you down.”
Jez rolled her eyes. Although Drake was an integral part of the Guardian organization right now, he was a Killer himself, and most of the other Guardians took that badly. Drake only killed “bad” people, hunting the really bad neighborhoods of the city where he fed on drug lords and murderous gang members. But he would always be an outsider, would always get those subtle—or sometimes not so subtle—little digs.
Drake had as hot a temper as any vampire, but though Fletcher pissed him off enough to draw a snarl, he for the most part didn’t rise to the bait.
“Well, it would take more than four or five of you to kill Gabriel, even with my help. You don’t understand what you’re dealing with here.”
Fletcher threw up his hands in exasperation. “What do you want us to do? Go hide under the furniture and pray he goes away? He’s in our city. Killing our people. The people we’ve sworn to protect.”
“No one’s arguing that we don’t need to kill him,” Eli said, and he’d hidden any pain he might be feeling. “I should have killed him long ago, and I regret that I let sentimentality get in the way. The only issue up for debate is how. Drake is right—I’m not sure that all of you put together would be enough to stop him.”
Fletcher gaped. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Eli shook his head. “There are only so many of you who could get to him at one time. Say, three or four. So imagine attacking him, three or four of you actually reaching him while the rest have to wait behind. He uses that immense glamour of his on the three or four who’ve reached him and tears out their throats while they’re too stunned to resist. Then the next handful wade in … .”
“Sounds like a job for a gun to me,” Hannah said, startling everybody.
Every eye in the room turned to her, and she shrugged. “If you can’t take him in hand-to-hand combat, then you’ve got to shoot him.”
Eli shook his head. “Letting someone with a gun get anywhere near him would be a disaster. He’d use that person to shoot everyone but himself.”
Carolyn, who’d been a police detective and then a private investigator before she’d become the Guardians’ mortal helper, spoke up. “So you have to make sure the person with the gun isn’t close to him. You need a sniper.”
Eli raised an eyebrow at her. “How far away can a sniper be and still have a reasonable chance to hit his target?”
“Depends on the sniper. And the equipment.” She frowned. “But probably not far enough away for someone of Gabriel’s age not to sense the sniper’s presence. Obviously, if the sniper’s a vampire, Gabriel would be far too suspicious to step into the trap. But if the sniper were mortal …”
Gray shot to his feet. “Don’t even think about it, Carolyn!” he barked.
She blinked up at him with innocent blue eyes. “Think of what?”
Gray turned to Eli. “You are not sending Carolyn after this guy! I don’t want her—”
Carolyn stood up and punched him in the arm. He turned to her indignantly. “If you’re going to argue about it, argue with me,” she said. “But ask yourself whether Gabriel is going to be suspicious if he senses a mortal presence fifty yards or so away from whatever trap we set up. If he’s like most vampires, he’ll dismiss me as no possible threat—if he even deigns to notice me.”
“I don’t remember you being a sniper when you were with the police!”
Gray was towering over her, his face flushed with anger, but though Carolyn was both petite and mortal, she stood her ground and didn’t look the least bit intimidated. “I would need some practice time,” she admitted. “It’s been a while since I’ve fired a rifle, but it’s not like I haven’t done it before. And they’re easier than handguns.”
The argument raged on, but Jez tuned much of it out.
She knew Carolyn was going to win, because Carolyn’s argument sounded like it made so much sense.
Jez’s chest ached. This sucked. Because she’d promised Gabriel that she’d tell him what the Guardians had planned. After everything he’d done for her, she couldn’t go back on that promise, couldn’t just let him be killed.
And if he killed Carolyn because of it?
Then she’d be questioning her decision—and her integrity—for the rest of her life.
DRAKE KNEW HE WAS being followed. And, unfortunately, he had a pretty good guess as to why. The meeting at Eli’s had left many Guardians unsatisfied. What better way to work off their displeasure than to take it out on the outsider?
He shook his head and sighed softly, reaching out with his senses and feeling three vampire auras behind him. The damn fools! If they were going to jump him, they needed more than three of them.
He spun around and glared at the advancing vampires. Fletcher led the way. No surprise there. The pup had a fiery Irish temper that he’d learned to keep contained in Eli’s presence. Outside of Eli’s influence, though …
At the middling age of forty, Fletcher was nevertheless one of the Guardians’ best hunters, cunning and single-minded. At Eli’s orders, he’d grudgingly accepted Drake’s help from time to time, but he’d always made it clear that he thought Drake would look good with a stake through his heart.
The other two Guardians were younger and not as powerful, but their grim-faced hostility said they had no fear of taking on an older, stronger, more experienced Killer.
The three Guardians came to a stop about five feet away, Fletcher standing a little ahead with the other two hovering just behind his shoulders. The good news was, no one seemed to have drawn a weapon, which meant they probably didn’t intend to kill him.
Drake glared at Fletcher, who was too smart to meet his eyes, though it must have offended his male ego not to be able to.