Vampire Mistress

When he straddled the seat outside the cell, beside the couch again, she slid down, curling her body in the sofa's embrace, facing inward. “You can feel them coming now, can't you?” she said softly. “You anticipated the last one before I did.”



Her wrist was propped against the back cushion, the curl of her fingers the only thing visible, the rest of her hidden behind it. “Yeah,” he said.



“Just like you knew about the alley. You came back. Gideon, you have—”



“Well-developed intuition.” He hated to hear it calledpsychic ability , as if it was a gift. He and Jacob had both anticipated their parents' deaths, a few agonizing moments before it had happened. He remembered the way the two of them had stopped on the beach, eyes locking, whirling as one to see Mom and Dad out in the waves. They'd been playing the same way kids did, only in hindsight he remembered it was more flirtatious, Mom wrapped around Dad, as she tried to push him under . . .



They hadn't known which direction or how it would happen, just like the night Anwyn had been attacked. Not enough information, not soon enough.



But he could give her this. “I can sense them coming, and I'm not taking unnecessary risks, Anwyn. Be easy on that. I know the most important thing is that I be around to take care of you until he gets back.” Her fingers twitched. “I've lost count. Whose turn is it, on Twenty Questions?”



“If you can't remember, then it's my turn, of course.” He heard her weak snort. Propping his chin on his folded arms, he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, feeling tense steel cables. “Tell me about Daegan. I haven't crossed his path before. Since he has his own bedroom, it seems he's been hanging around here awhile.”



Her chains clanked as she pulled herself up so she could rest her cheek on the back of the sofa, next to her manacled hand. Ragged tendrils of her hair caressed her cheek, and he was struck anew by the beauty of her eyes, no matter what she was going through. He was glad his appreciation was so obvious, because she noticed, and it made some of the tension in her face lessen. The vanity of a woman had its own healing balm. It almost made him smile a little, for real this time. “I don't know if I should tell you more about Daegan,” she said, seeing it. “You are a vampire hunter, after all. You might stake him. Why don't you tell meyour impression of him?”



She barely had enough slack to touch his hair, but she reached out to stroke the short lengths between her knuckles. It felt good for her to initiate touch, good for them both, he suspected. He stayed motionless, watching the curve of her cheek, the tender underside of her forearm. The tenuous grasp of the towel over the swell of her breasts. “He's faster than any vampire I've seen. There's something different about him, but I can't figure out what. He's like the difference between an Army Ranger and a guy who pumps iron to look like a badass. I don't think I could touch him, unless you're going to help me knock him unconscious.”



“Hmm. He sleeps very, very lightly.” She grazed his scalp, pressed down. “There's a scar here.”



“Yeah. Vamp's servant got me pretty good with the sharp end of a shovel. It's the servants that are the trickiest. A hunter has to focus on the vamps, because they can outmaneuver you so fast. That means you sometimes lose sight of the servant, what he can do, if you're not paying attention.”



“But when you kill his Master, you kill him. Two birds with one stone.” Gideon shifted, uncomfortable. “Vampire rules, such that they are, say the servant has to enter a vamp's service willingly. It does happen by force sometimes, but in those cases, the servant would beg for death, so it's a mercy. Otherwise . . .”



“Guilt by association.” Cocking her head, she swept her gaze over him. She'd gotten blood and vomit on him, of course, so he'd stripped his shirt off a few seizures back. Her gaze coursed over his upper body, lingering on the flogging scars, and the pain he saw fill her eyes humbled and dismayed him. “Why doesn't your well-developed intuition keep you out of that kind of trouble?”



“It does. I'm alive.” He tugged her hair.



“Did it bring you to our door?”



Gideon grunted, as always irritable trying to explain the inexplicable, even to this woman who needed his distraction. “I don't know. I just tend to follow my gut and things work out. That's the truth. My brother and I, we share that ability. Sometimes we're led by it. Of course, sometimes it takes us in stupid directions, but we don't seem capable of ignoring it. Hence, here I am and he's with a vampire queen.” Her brows lifted. “Your brother is aservant ? While you're a vampire hunter?”



“I would have expected Daegan to tell you that. My brother's a vampire, as well as a servant. It's a long story.” At her ironic expression, he grimaced. “Yeah, I know, we have time. But when you're ready to explain your relationship with Daegan, I'll give you the write-up on that one.” She gave him a saccharine look. “We're friends. Friends with benefits.” Gideon whistled. “Wow. You've got a pretty good poker face, but I can call that one a lie from a hundred feet.”



“Do you really want to get into the lies we tell ourselves?” Before he could rally to that, she shook her head. “Never mind. I'll let you get away with that one, not because you're threatening me with quid pro quo, but seeing as you're trying to overcome your antisocial skills and talk to me.”



“You're a generous Mistress, Mistress.”



“Did you find the answers you were seeking, our night together?”



“Not sure.” He gave her a wry smile. “We seem to have gotten derailed.” The glance she gave him this time passed over the lean muscle and scarring of his upper body, then followed the stretch of denim over his splayed thighs where they straddled the chair. “Delayed, not derailed,” she said.



“Hmm.” He told himself under no circumstances should he imagine that scenario between them again.



No way in hell would he ever willingly allow a vampire to chain him up, even if he'd known her before.



However, each time her eyes focused on him this way, or that tone crept into her voice, he sensed, remarkably, that current circumstances were only solidifying what had started the second he decided to cross the threshold of Atlantis. The answers were here, with this woman. It was just a hell of a situation, because she was no longer human.



“The silence is driving me crazy. Will you play some music for me?” Her fingers bit into his scalp, an urgent, unsteady note to her voice, though he didn't yet sense another attack. “Over in that cabinet. It's wired into the music system in the main room.”



“Sure.” He left her with a reassuring squeeze of her wrist and strode to the player. “Any preferences?”



“There should be something already keyed up.”



As he depressed the play button, the room filled with a soothing mix of woodwinds and piano, a nature-oriented New Age sound.



She was watching him. “Do you like it?”



“Yeah. Yeah, actually, I do.” It was calming and something else, something . . . He hesitated to use the wordhopeful , because it wasn't his nature, but she filled in the blanks.



“It transports you to a different place. When I close my eyes, I'm in deep woods, an enchanted forest.



There are fairies and unicorns, all a young girl's dreams.”



“Like that old movie,Legend .”



“Yes. Without Tom Cruise.” She'd lain down on the couch again, her chains gathered against her, legs drawn up. Her lips curved in a mysterious, sad way. “I prefer my men less pretty.”



“I'm your man, then, because pretty I'm definitely not.”



“You're mine . . .” Her eyes narrowed to blue-green slits so the color was all he could see.



Mesmerizing, like a Fey princess peering through the leaves. “I like the sound of that.” He cleared his throat. “Daegan would be crushed if he knew your opinion. He's been hosed down with pretty all over.”



“Shhh . . .” Her eyes closed, as she obviously let the music relax her. Gideon watched her for several moments; then his grip tightened on the chair next to the player.



Shit.Another fucking one coming. It had been barely minutes since the last one, it seemed. But as she spoke again, he was loath to interrupt her, the drifting lilt of her honey-spun words.



“Listen to those notes. It's a magical place. You can see all of it, laid out inside your heart, in the place where this world hasn't intruded. If a hero is brave and strong enough, then all will be right again. Light will forever reign. And his heroine will love and be with him always. True to him forever.”



“I like the sound of that,” he said. “Anwyn, I need to take you back to the wall. Okay?” Her brow creased, her lids squeezing tighter. “No,” she said softly.



“I don't want the chains to drag you, honey. Just get up and walk over there—” Her fingers dug into the couch; then the first shudders began.



Damn it.He moved swiftly to the controls, only this time he had to close his eyes when he depressed the dial. It was bad enough to hear her cry of protest; he couldn't bear to see her pulled off the couch while she tried to hold on to it, then was dragged step by resisting step to the wall. If she fought it with a vampire's berserk rage, he could take it, but she was fighting it with the panic of a strong woman who couldn't handle being made helpless.



“Can't breathe . . .” her voice rasped. Though he knew she no longer needed to breathe, the sense of suffocation was still no less real to her. He steeled himself against it, kept the chains retracting. Then the thud, the click of the control turning off, told him she was back against the wall.



When he opened his gaze, he saw one last second of that panicked anguish on her face an instant before red flooded her eyes like an injection of ink, spreading out and overflowing into bloody tears. Her mouth opened, the fangs glistening and frighteningly long. She uttered a hiss a dragon might have made in her magical world, before it opened its jaws and snapped up the hero in one less-than-heroic bite.