A Vampire's Honor (8 page)

I had no way of knowing what he saw as he looked at me. Was it the girl who wept at seeing him crucified, or the one who grasped his hand and pulled him from the Void? Perhaps he saw the woman-child who gave herself to him as she promised to safeguard his soul. The lover who had been his from the very first. Did he see all of that as he now looked at me? Did he see
any
of that as he looked at me? His eyes, normally so expressive, were like pieces of jet glass, reflecting back my own image and telling me nothing about what he was feeling.

And yes, even though I loved him more than my own life, this version of Gabriel truly scared me.

For all I knew, I might be reduced to nothing more than a combination of scents and sounds and impulses. Familiar enough to alert his senses, strong enough to trigger a response. Except I refused to believe that. Even with Gabriel's transformation into a glorious killing machine, I knew on some level he recognized exactly who I was. It wasn't dumb luck or a twist of fate that had brought him here to me. He had come looking for me.

Carefully I raised his hand and placed his palm against my chest so he could feel the pounding beat of my heart. His fingers curled, cupping my breast, and I blushed suddenly as I remembered why I wasn't wearing a bra. Grasping the shard of bone with my thumb and forefinger, I pulled it from his flesh. I was suddenly envious of those girls who always seemed to have a tissue or wet wipe in their pocket, thinking it might be nice to clean Gabriel's arm. I guess I could have improvised and used my T-shirt, but I wasn't sure if I could get it off using only one hand, and besides, it was probably better if only one of us was bare-chested.

I looked up at him as my fingers moved slowly over the back of his hand, caressing the skin, brushing lightly over his knuckles. He remained impassive, saying nothing, and yet I could tell he still needed something from me.

My approval?

My understanding?

My support?

Now it was my turn to place my palm against his chest, my hand rising and falling with each tortured intake of breath. His heart beat strong and true beneath my fingers. He was my avenging angel, and no matter what, he would always be there for me. God have mercy on those responsible for summoning forth this side of his nature, because Gabriel, I knew, would have none.

A tremor ran through him, and I felt his body quiver with rage as he carefully took my damaged hand in his. He looked at my grotesquely swollen fingers, and I barely felt him lock his thumb and forefinger around my wrist, immobilizing my hand. I had no idea if it was fear or relief that started my own body trembling, but I reached up and cradled his face in my good palm.

His eyes were beginning to lighten. His irises were still inky black, but the surrounding sclera had now turned a lighter gray. A few more minutes and it would become white once more. I stared up at him, losing myself in unfathomable depths.

“You came for me,” I whispered in a voice I barely recognized as my own. The fear that I might be hallucinating, that the pollutant in my blood was having a final laugh at my expense, was very real.

There was a rumble in Gabriel's chest. One that quickly changed to a sexually charged roar as he pulled me to him. He was hard, and I could feel the wave of lust that enveloped me as he answered in the best way he knew how. The only way he knew how. He kissed me.

I grabbed a handful of thick, white hair as his mouth covered mine. I had never been kissed like this before. Not by Gabriel, not by anyone. It was a kiss that had me drowning in a sea of possession. It said he was claiming me as his own, branding me as belonging to him, and he didn't give a damn who knew it. It was pure alpha male, and I had no doubt that if he could have found a way to tattoo his name on my tongue with his, he would have done so.

And I gave myself to him. Reconfirming all I'd felt when I'd first pulled him from the Void. I relished the feel of his tongue pushing its way inside my mouth, searing me with a heat that promised desires I'd not yet realized, and when he withdrew, I followed. Sliding between his lips I felt the razor-sharp edges of his fangs scrape against my tongue, and I felt him shudder with his need for me.

Gently fisting a handful of curls, he pulled back my head and looked down at me. The pulse in his throat was throbbing wildly, and a thin circle of gold now rimmed the dark blue of his eyes. Another appetite had awakened.

“I was going to fight,” I told him. It was important that he knew, no matter how desperate my situation, I was never going to let anyone think they could just take what I freely gave to him.

“I know . . . I heard . . . I saw. You were magnificent.”

An unexpected jolt of pleasure ran through me at hearing the pride in his voice. He had expected no less from me. His lips brushed my ear as he began to murmur in a voice that was melting honey. It liquefied my spine and ramped up my lust, making me wet. Gabriel pulled back, his nostrils flaring as he ran his tongue up the side of my neck.

“You've been drugged!” he hissed, able to taste the change in my blood through the pores of my skin.

“Yes—you mustn't feed from me!”

Urgency gripped me. There were things I had to tell him. Important details that I needed both Aleksei and Anasztaizia to know, but a flicker of movement distracted me. I'd totally forgotten about Rat Boy. His face was a mask of absolute terror as he stared at Gabriel. He was convinced he would never leave this place alive, and his immediate concern was how much pain he was going to suffer before his death. He flicked his eyes in my direction, his mouth an open, silent plea for mercy.

“Quick or slow?” Gabriel murmured in my ear.

Rat Boy had never intended to rape me. I don't know if that was because he was impotent, or didn't like girls, or just got off on watching his buddy, but it was the truth. Even holding my hand so Petrov could break my fingers was done because he was more scared of Petrov than he let on. And he had a right to be scared. Rat Boy and Gus might not have known they were taking orders from a vampire, but they were smart enough to recognize a predator that stood several rungs higher on the food chain.

Rat Boy was on his knees, having pissed his pants, and begging for mercy. His eyes flickered between Gabriel and myself, and the color drained from his face when Gabriel dropped his fangs.

“Now you know,” I told him.

“Know? Know what?” he squeaked in a terrified voice.

“That vampires are real.”

He stared at his partner's lifeless form on the floor. He'd been wasting his last few minutes of life convincing himself that he was trapped in some macabre joke, spinning Gus's death into something his brain could handle without going insane. And now I'd just blown that all to shit.

“Let him go,” I said, turning my head away. Gabriel snarled in frustration. The ruthless, aggressive side of his nature was unhappy at my request. I put my hand on his arm and waited for him to look at me, waited until all sides of him were focused only on me. “I don't think he's going to be a problem, do you?”

“He wanted to hurt you, Rowan. I can't—”

“But he didn't,” I interrupted. “Do you really think he's going to come after me? After what he's just seen? Every time he closes his eyes he's going to see what you did to his pal. I doubt he's going to sleep much anymore.” Gabriel stared down at me, and I could see him battling his aggression. “Do it for me, Gabriel,” I said in a low voice. “I can only take having so much blood on my hands.”

He kissed me, hard and fast, and then picked Rat Boy up by the neck. If it wasn't so serious I would have laughed at the comical way his feet dangled in the air.

“Don't you ever forget you owe her your life. If it were up to me, I'd snap your neck like a twig without a second thought. But if you ever come near her again, I will hunt you down and kill you. I will make what happened to him”—he pointed to Gus's body—“seem like a kindness. Do you understand me?”

It took a couple of false starts before Rat Boy was able to nod his head, dropping to the ground when Gabriel let him go.

How long would it take for the police to arrive? I supposed that would depend on how long it took Rat Boy to pull himself together and make a 9-1-1 call. Would forensics be able to tell what had made the hole in Gus's chest? Would they think some sort of satanic ritual was involved as the heart had been removed? Was I losing my humanity because I felt absolutely no remorse about his death?

My head began to swim, and I suddenly had difficulty keeping my balance. I felt as if someone had given me an overdose of Alka-Seltzer, but instead of doing its plop-plop-fizz-fizz routine in my stomach, it had taken a wrong turn somewhere and was now in my bloodstream. I could actually feel my veins popping, my blood effervescing as it moved through me. Was this Petrov's drug doing its job? Had my demon lied to me, and was I now actually dying? I put out my good hand, feeling Gabriel catch it in his own before sweeping me up into his arms and carrying me out of the cage.

I
don't remember much about the drive home, except being grateful that Gabriel had come in a vehicle big enough for me to remain sitting in his lap while he kept one hand on the steering wheel. Neither one of us was about to let go of the other. I had a vague recollection a new mirror had been installed in the private elevator that took us directly from the garage to the penthouse. Some crazy abstract spider-web design that reflected my face back in multiple images. It was odd, but I kind of liked it.

I'd never appreciated the level of privacy I was afforded by this simple mechanical box until now. Explaining my appearance would have been bad enough, but Gabriel still had body goop smeared on his arm. Of course it was a safe bet that none of the building's other tenants, had they seen us, would have been so tactless as to have commented on our appearance. At least not to our faces. Gabriel was the wealthy recluse who lived in the penthouse. I was an unknown factor, but being with Gabriel made me acceptable.

And then my lover was barking orders at Tomas as he carried me through the penthouse door. Now that adrenalin was no longer surging through my body, I was a road map of aches and pains. Some I could attribute to the Mazda being used as a bumper car, and some I figured could be blamed on Petrov's concoctions—both of them. It was foolish to assume that just because I couldn't die—and to be honest I was still sitting on the fence about that—there wouldn't be any physical effects from the unknown chemicals in my system.

I took it for granted Gabriel was going to put me to bed, but he bypassed the massive king-sized-and-then-some in our bedroom and continued to the walk-in closet. It wasn't until I saw him punch the numbered keypad on the back wall that I understood what he was doing. Taking a step back, and refusing to put me on the ground, he waited for the section of wall to slide silently open and reveal the hidden room.

Built originally as a panic room, it was the perfect place for his sarcophagus.

Living with a vampire had some unique challenges, one of which was learning to adapt to a nocturnal lifestyle. It wasn't easy. For twenty-five years my body had followed the rhythm of the sun. Behavior that's more instinctive than learned. But now I was asking it to do a complete one-eighty and adopt a nocturnal lifestyle. And trying to synchronize my sleep pattern with Gabriel's was still a work in progress. There were nights when I couldn't keep my eyes open past four a.m., and days when they wouldn't stay closed past four p.m. And although Gabriel always made certain I fell asleep in his arms, I didn't always wake up in them. Two or three times a month he would slip out of the huge bed we shared and bring himself here, to the hidden room and his sarcophagus.

Of course I'd been excited to see it the first time. Images of the boy king Tutankhamun swirled in my head, so you can understand my disappointment when the sarcophagus didn't look the way I imagined it ought to. It was bad enough that there was no pharaoh wearing more eyeliner than your average heavy-metal rocker, and it wasn't even shaped like the coffin of an Egyptian ruler.

A sarcophagus is actually the name for a stone or marble coffin, shape unspecified,
my inner bitch pointed out.

Yep, that was this, all right. A block of solid marble, it reflected every possible shade of blue in the spectrum. Some of the colors were
fluid,
changeable, and while I was pretty sure I was looking at the color blue, I wouldn't have bet my life on it. If these hues were in our color spectrum, then they were at a place human eyesight didn't register. But all of them, even the funky, way-out-there colors, made me think of Gabriel's eyes.

The block itself was approximately ten feet in length and six feet wide, and it was the only item inside the reinforced room. Carved into the top were symbols that held a certain familiarity. I just couldn't place where I might have seen them . . . or when.

“They are runes,” Gabriel had told me, standing behind me with his hands resting on my shoulders.

“What do they do?” I didn't think they were to make the top look pretty.

“They protect me.”

“How?” I turned and looked at him, all curiosity.

Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back until his long white hair fell free of his shoulders, turning into a heavy curtain that covered the scars there. His nostrils flared slightly, as if he was searching for a specific scent in the air. I sniffed too, trying to be discreet, but unable to dismiss the suspicion that I probably looked more like a cocaine addict. I couldn't smell anything save for a faint woodsy scent. Kind of like one of those plug-in air fresheners that needed replacing.

“What time is it?” Gabriel asked as he straightened up.

I checked the Altiplano on my wrist. Part of Piaget's Skeleton Collection. I refused to think about the sixty-thousand-dollar price tag because if I did, then I'd talk myself into giving the damn watch back. And I didn't want to. Being able to see the inner workings of the timepiece fascinated me. “Six seventeen,” I said, answering his question.

“Sunrise,” he murmured. Un-tucking his T-shirt from the waistband of his jeans, he pulled it up over his head.

“Um . . . what are you doing?”

While Gabriel and I had had sex on every conceivable surface in his apartment, I was more than a little hesitant about this hunk of marble. The distinct possibility that my ass might slide off the glass-like surface was reason enough, but I also had the strangest feeling that fornicating anywhere near it would be akin to an act of blasphemy. Like having sex in a church. Any church. Any part of any church. There were just some things you simply didn't do. At least I didn't.

Gabriel's fingers, now busy with the buckle at his waist, stayed their movement. “I thought it was time you knew where I am when you wake up alone.” He looked slightly puzzled by my question.

“And you have to take your clothes off to do that?”

He nodded. “Yes. I always sleep naked, Rowan, whether I am with you or not.”

“Oh, so you're going to sleep then?” It was my turn to be puzzled.

He took both my hands in his, turning them over so he could kiss the inside of each wrist. The gesture always struck me as being seductively intimate. “Yes, and so should you,” he said, giving me a knowing look.

Like I said . . . a work in progress. That was the first and only time since moving in with Gabriel that I did not fall asleep in his arms.

Completely nude, he lay down on the top of the marble slab, arms by his sides, hands relaxed. It was difficult not to notice he also had a raging hard-on. I could have run a flag up the damn thing, except I had enough on my mind dealing with the unexpected flame that had ignited somewhere in my pelvis. After licking its way up between my breasts, it now scorched my face.

“Yes, I do,” Gabriel's voice murmured to me.

“Yes, you do what?”

“Go to sleep with an erection. You are the last thing I picture in my mind, so it's a natural reaction.” Keeping his eyes closed, he pulled his mouth into a grin at hearing me gasp. “I know that's what you were wondering.”

I muttered something under my breath that I was certain he heard but was too sensible to comment on. And then I gasped for an entirely different reason.

A soft blue glow began to pulse from the marble, washing over Gabriel's body and filling every part of the otherwise empty room. It took me a few moments to realize the light was keeping time with the beat of his heart, and it was slowing down. A moment later I covered my mouth to stifle a shriek as Gabriel's body sank into the marble block and disappeared from view. I stood completely transfixed before a rush of adrenaline carried my legs to his coffin.

The top had changed from an opaque, impenetrable covering to one that was now transparent, allowing the inside of the crystallized rock to be viewed. Gabriel lay cradled in a depression that was shaped to fit his muscular frame perfectly. I stared down at him. His eyes remained closed, his features relaxed, and I knew that his mind and body had entered a quiescent state, completely closed off from his surroundings. The lack of stimuli would permit him to disconnect from the physical world and reconnect to the inner essence that made him . . . well . . . Gabriel.

It was something every Original Vampire had to do in order to stay sane through the passing of the centuries. And why, on a less-intense level, all vampires found it necessary to sleep during the daylight hours.

Movement dragged my eyes away from his face. The mystical runes carved in the top of the sarcophagus now began to move. Whether by their own inclination or responding to the presence inside the sarcophagus I had no way of knowing, but each throbbed with a soft glow. One after the other, they lit up and then darkened, reminding me of flashing Christmas lights. I covered my mouth with a hand to stifle a giggle, although I didn't think Gabriel could hear me.

I took a moment to catch my breath, finding the entire spectacle mystifying, awe-inspiring, and breathtakingly beautiful. As my eyes moved from the runes to Gabriel's still form, which I could see clearly through the top of the sarcophagus, I pressed my lips against the cool surface directly above his mouth. Almost immediately the room was filled with the most glorious scent of pine trees, crisp, fresh snow, and something that I recognized but still couldn't name. It was an aroma I was all too familiar with. It was the scent of Gabriel's blood.

And now my lover was crossing the threshold of the panic room, and I had a pretty good idea why. He intended to put me inside his own sensory deprivation chamber.

Carefully he set me down, placing my bare feet on the cool marble ledge that sat at the base of his coffin. The extra height didn't put me on the same level as Gabriel, but I didn't have to tilt my head back quite as much in order to look up at him.

His eyes were now almost all the way back to the neon blue I was used to seeing. I smiled, much preferring this color to the stormy sea shade they became when his temper was riled. The tips of his fingers brushed against the side of my breast, causing heat to arrow through me and making me realize I was naked. My clothes, the T-shirt and jeans I'd put on in a snit after our earlier disagreement, lay in a pile on the floor. When had he undressed me?

“What the—”

“You can't wear anything to sleep with me,” Gabriel said in a low voice.

“Sleep . . . with . . .” Panic made me step back, or try to. The feel of cold stone against my ass propelled me forward, back into his arms. I looked over my shoulder at the sarcophagus, then at Gabriel, then at the sarcophagus again. “You mean in there?” I whispered.

“Uh-huh.”

“With you?”

“Yes, with me.” A frown appeared, marring his smooth brow. “You haven't become claustrophobic over the years, have you?” I shook my head. I didn't think so, but then I hadn't put myself in a sensory-deprivation chamber recently. “Well, we'll find out soon enough,” Gabriel said confidently.

“Yes, I suppose we—no, wait! I-I can't get in there, not with you.”

He put both hands on my shoulders, and strangely enough I wasn't bothered that one was caked in dried blood and other . . . stuff. Instead I was mildly disturbed to notice he wasn't wearing any pants. Gabriel was now as naked as I was, only I didn't recall at what point he'd stopped to undress not only me but himself as well. Had I passed out?

His hand moved from my shoulder and lifted my chin. He gazed at me. “Rowan, sweetheart, you have to get in there, and the only way you can be in there is with me.”

I shook my head and winced. The icepick throb at the base of my skull didn't want me to forget it was there. I took hold of Gabriel's hands, clutching them tightly, and forced myself to focus. “But why do I have to get in there?”

“Because I don't know what that fucking bastard injected you with, but I do know what it's doing to you isn't good. This is the only way to purge it from your blood.”

I wasn't so out of it I couldn't tell that Gabriel was having a hard time holding on to his temper. If I pushed him any further, he might snap. “Oh,” I said in a small voice. There really wasn't anything else to say, so I slipped my hand in his. “Then let's do it.”

Gabriel lay on his back and positioned me on top of him. He tucked my head beneath his chin, and I put my hands around his neck while his arms encircled me. We lay together on the surface of the marble coffin, and then suddenly we were inside it. I sucked in a breath and raised my head, wanting to tell Gabriel his cock was poking me in the hip, but he just chuckled and moved his hand between my shoulder blades. I could feel the stone expanding and contracting to accommodate my body, and then came a series of light, almost ticklish pricks as the protective runes moved over my skin. I felt them on the soles of my feet, the back of my thighs, and my buttocks, back, and shoulders. They clung to me, intent on completing their appointed task.

I pressed my head against Gabriel's chest, breathing in his scent and hearing the steady beat of his heart and the hypnotic inhale-exhale of his breathing. Listening as each breath stretched out longer and longer, as each beat of his heart grew fainter, until I couldn't hear either anymore.

And then I was all alone.

Awash in a sea of pitch black, I didn't even realize Gabriel was no longer holding me until I stretched out my hand and connected with . . . nothing. How had I lost hold of him? One moment his arms were around me, and I could taste the sweat of his skin on my lips, and then he was gone. As far as I could tell, there was no violence to our separation. He wasn't yanked from my arms, nor I from his. It was as if we had simply drifted away from each other. Loosened our hold and slipped away. Only I hadn't noticed.