A Vampire’s Mistress (3 page)

But at the top of the stairs, a wooden door, banded with thick black strips of metal, barred their way.

Marina squirmed. “Put me down.”

Gabe waited a moment after her feet hit the floor to be sure she’d be stable enough to stand, then threw his weight against the locked door. It groaned against the assault, pulling free of its hinges with a resounding
crack
and crashing to the floor. He whipped around and grabbed her hand, his eyes flicking to hers.

Marina nodded, and together they ran.

Guards shouted, leaping to their feet as they bolted through the barracks, no more than a blur of movement as Marina recovered her vampire abilities more each second.

Pop. Pop. Pop.
A series of darts whizzed through the air, brushing her hair at her nape, and landing to quiver in the wall as the weapons barely missed their targets. One huge guard stepped into their path, blocking them. Gabe thrust his hand out as they ran full speed ahead, sending the giant man sprawling, his chest caved in from the force of the blow.

They raced up the stairs and down a vaulted, whitewashed plaster tunnel. Bare bulbs gave off a meager light. At the end, another wooden door, banded in black iron, waited for them.

Marina glanced over her shoulder, only to find they were utterly alone. “Why aren’t they following?”

Gabe paused at the wooden door, listening. “Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m getting you out of here.”

They opened the door and found themselves in an enormous crypt. Row after row of mummies, their skulls mostly chalky-white bone, stood shoulder to shoulder against the whitewashed curved walls of the catacombs. Some were only skeletons draped in ancient rough-woven dark brown cassocks. Others were wrapped in sunken dried skin and expensive period clothes more than a century old, down to the fine kid-leather gloves covering their bony fingers and the ribbon rosettes on their frilled bonnets. Dust and the musty smell of decay permeated the air. Gaping empty eye sockets seemed to follow their every movement with silent interest.

Marina shivered. “Where are we?”

“Looks like the Capuchin catacombs.” Which explained why the guards weren’t in a hurry. “They’re banking on the crowds of tourists to slow us down enough to radio ahead and have a welcoming party waiting to get us at the exits. Keep moving.”

The hall twisted, branching off yet again. Still more mummies, this time on narrow stacked shelves carved into the walls, their families unable to continue paying to have them on display, lined their passageway. Voices echoed off the vaulted ceiling above them, growing louder.

“Left or right?” Marina paused, her free hand pressed to her side.

Gabe glanced around trying to decipher the direction from his other senses. The traffic was louder toward the right. Only a limited amount of tourists were allowed in at a time to keep the moisture controlled in the catacombs. The entrance must be there somewhere.

He grabbed Marina’s hand in a death grip as they jogged through the thickening crowds of tourists clumped together in a group as they followed a radio tour on headphones. They talked amongst themselves as they stared at the children’s section where the miniature mummies lined up along the high ledge.

A skeleton of a little girl in aged off-white satin and lace sat in the lap of a little boy dressed in faded navy velvet knee breeches, the pair nestled together in a rocking chair. Even in death the little boy protected his sister, just as Gabriel had vowed to protect Marina, even after his death as a mortal and rebirth as a vampire. Her rejection of him didn’t matter. A vow in his book was a vow.

Gabe turned right again, pulling them into the thickening crowds. He could smell the exhaust from traffic growing stronger, the sweat from the tourists and the unmistakable scent of salty sea air curling in on the currents as the crowds entered the catacomb tour. Their combined heartbeats roared liked ocean waves, a constant ebb and flow difficult to ignore.

“Almost there.”

A shout rose up from directly behind them as tourists were shoved out of the way by a uniformed guard.
“Arresto! Al ladro!”

Marina whipped around. Thieves indeed. She was the one they’d been stealing from. The tourists crowded together more tightly, the guard’s voice drawing their interest like fish to bait.

Gabe squeezed her hand. “Do you think you can flux?”

She didn’t waste words and went invisible, still holding tight to his hand. Gabe followed. Around them the crowd gasped, followed by shouts.

“Madre di Dio!”

“Ghosts!”

The crowd began to panic pressing for the exit. Gabe and Marina were pulled along, invisible among them as the mass of humanity screamed and shouted.

Not ghosts, Marina thought, her mind becoming clearer now that the dead man’s blood in her body was beginning to dissipate, but something they probably would fear far more if they had any idea vampires were real.

All she knew was the moment they were out of the catacombs she didn’t plan to stick around and find out what had changed Gabe’s mind about coming back. He’d hurt her once when she’d put her faith in him, and she’d be damned if she was going to let him do it again.

They spilled out of the entrance at the edge of the monastery into the busy streets of the city. The sidewalks were crowded and the evening traffic bumper to bumper as it wound down along Via Cipressi to join the Via Giuseppe Pitrè leading like an artery to the heart of Palermo. Marina was too exhausted from fluxing to maintain it any longer and became visible again at the edge of the tourist crowd.

An invisible hand manacled around her wrist and she knew from the electric slide of it on her skin it was Gabe’s and not another vampire lying in wait for her.

“Let me go,” she muttered, her tone low and grating.

“Not when Nick’s men are waiting across the street to snatch you up and haul you back down there.”

Marina’s eyes narrowed. He was right. There, across the street, were four of the goons Nick’s business associates employed to enforce their own brand of rules on everyone else. Her stomach shriveled out of sheer terror.

She’d found out the hard way that Nick had no compunction or morals when it came to taking what he wanted. A spoiled vampire prince through and through, being undead had only encouraged him to use his power to get what he wanted, when and how he wanted it.

Nick handed her over to the vampire hunters to sweeten the deal he’d cooked up with his business partner Vane to sell ichor internationally as the new wonder drug that would revolutionize medicine. Never mind that the poor saps using it didn’t have a clue that overusing it would turn them into vampires. Or that eventually being drained of their ichor would kill the vampire host.

The sight of Edgar, Onslo, Victor and Palo, Nick’s four horsemen of the apocalypse, made her take an involuntary step back, causing her shoulder blades to dig into the plaster wall behind her. A firm hand settled at the base of her spine and she gasped when she fluxed back to invisible, as Gabe channeled his powers through her.

Being invisible wouldn’t stop the four horsemen. Nick kept them on a steady diet of ichor, not enough to transform them into true vampires so they could still be his loyal
Shyelds
, but enough to give them amplified awareness of the vampires around them and hunt them down.

The instant she vanished, they started across the street, snaking between traffic.

“Looks like we’ve got trouble.”

“You have no idea,” Marina muttered in reply.

Gabe chuckled. “You forget. This time I’m the vampire and I know all the tricks to being a
Shyeld
.”

She glanced in his direction but saw nothing. He squeezed her hand twice and it went all the way to her heart.

“Trust me.”

It wasn’t trusting him that was the problem; it was being able to trust herself. She’d been wrong so many times she’d lost count. Being wrong once more would just about break her.

“What are you going to do?”

“Transport us where they can’t follow.”

She sucked in a breath, starting to shake as she weighed her options. If she didn’t tell Gabe the truth, he wouldn’t understand how deep the shit was about to get, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her. Then again, once she told him, would he still want to?

“Gabe, I’ve gotta tell you something.”

“Not now.”

The familiar sucking and pulling sensation of a transport began to loop about her middle. She clung to his hand, not knowing where he was taking her, but too afraid to let go. Inside, something screamed at her to tell him and tell him now.

Her words faded into nothingness as the transport took her. “Nick’s not really dead.”

Chapter Three

The scent of salt and brine and the whisper of waves filled the air as they materialized in the cool, star-studded darkness half a world away. Over the water the distant snowcapped peaks of a tall mountain range glittered like icing-topped cakes under the moonlight.

Standing at the water’s edge on a wooden wharf formed from wide planks, Marina shivered at the sudden drop of temperature and glanced back at the city, tracking the skyline for something familiar to figure out where she was. The saucer-like disk and spire of Seattle’s famed Space Needle glowed white against the inky dark night sky.

“Seattle?” Rubbing her arms for warmth, she glanced up at Gabriel. “Why here?” Not that she wasn’t grateful to be away from Italy and Nick’s goons, but a world away seemed a little extreme.

Gabe’s face was hard, his eyes so dark they looked nearly black in the glow of the moon. The smell of pepper in the air— hot and fiery—indicated he was pissed. He grabbed her upper arm in a steely grip. It didn’t hurt, but his hold was implacable.

“What do you mean Nick’s not really dead?” he said dangerously, ignoring her question for one of his own. “He was
beheaded
. That’s about as dead as a vampire gets. I was at his damn funeral.”

She’d been angry when she’d found out too. But anger wasn’t going to save them from the four horsemen. Marina tried to pull her arm from his firm grasp, but found she couldn’t. As a vampire Gabe was far stronger than the
Shyeld
she remembered and she stopped trying to free herself. “That wasn’t Nick.”

Gabe’s mouth tightened. “Why the funeral?”

“It was all part of Nick’s plan.” A familiar ache began to well up in Marina’s chest. Betrayal. Anger. Fear. Her relationship with Nick had been no picnic. The wind off the water laced with salt whipped stinging strands of hair across her face.

“I thought you didn’t know Nick’s plans.” He dropped his hold on her as if the contact burned.

The accusation she heard in Gabe’s voice only made the ache worse. She tucked the loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Not all of them, no. I only found out later that Nick hadn’t really been beheaded. At first I thought I was seeing a ghost, but…”

“But seeing the ghost of a vampire would be impossible.”

“Exactly.”

“I couldn’t see any other option. Either he was still alive or I was going insane.”

Gabe crossed his arms, distrust still enclosed around him like invisible armor. “And the vampire hunters?”

“They just proved I wasn’t insane. I was a liability. Nick wanted to keep me from talking to the High Council, but he didn’t want me dead. It would have drawn too much attention to him and his plans.”

“Why would he bother with vampire hunters? He’s a royal. He could have gotten rid of you as his consort easily enough. He didn’t have to hand you over to them to drug you and drain you slowly.” The gruff edge to his voice betrayed his discomfort with the knowledge of what they’d done to her.

Interesting. Maybe there was something more to Gabe’s rescue mission than just his allegiance to the High Council. Marina shook her head. She didn’t want to think about what could or might be. Right now the only thing she could see in her immediate future was being on the run.

“That’s what I couldn’t figure out. Not until I realized that having two of us die in such a short amount of time would look suspicious to the High Council. Nick had become fairly tight with Vane,a blond, spiky-haired vamp who dressed like a heavy-metal rock star. They’d sit and talk business for hours, and one night when I was curious enough to see why Nick kept finding convenient reasons for me not to be part of the conversation, I listened in. Turns out Vane isn’t part of any legitimate clan or kingdom in the vampire realm. He’s a reiver from the States, one who preys upon others of his kind and mortals alike to survive.”

Gabe’s crossed arms flexed. “That can’t be good.”

Marina took in a breath she didn’t need through her nose to steady her nerves, the fishy smell in the air strong enough to make it sting. Gabe didn’t know the half of it. If Nick and his associates had their way, the entire civilization that had sustained her kind would vanish, their secrecy shattered. “They’re going to reveal vampires to the mortals.”

Gabe’s mouth dropped. He cupped the back of his skull with his large hand and began to pace. “Dear gods, to what purpose? History has already proven that mortals don’t want to know about us. And anytime they find out all hell breaks loose.”

“I tried to piece together what I’d overheard. From what I gather, the group is going to extract and sell ichor to humans for medical use. They want to corner the market, make a damn empire out of it.”

“Ah. So it isn’t about notoriety, or a power play with the High Council, it’s about cold hard cash. Suddenly it all makes more sense. Nick was never interested in the responsibilities of being a royal, he just wanted the perks, and those come pretty few and far between when you get on the bad side of the High Council.”

The wind sheared through her thin dirty shirt, making Marina shiver. While her temperature was lower than that of a human, it certainly was above freezing and the wind was artic cold and smelled sharply of seaweed. Her instinct was to cuddle up to Gabe’s side, to block the wind and get warm, but her distrust of her feelings toward him held her feet still. Marina narrowed her gaze, her suspicions digging in with sharp little claws. “I thought you and Nick were friends.”