CHAPTER 10
G
abriel was right about that. He had warned me this would happen, and I wasn't going to lie to him. It did change things. But when he'd told me that, I'd been imagining having to deal with a life that involved the Russian mob or drug dealers or prison. Not vampires.
“Yes, I can see how you might think that,” Gabriel conceded after hearing my theories.
The muscle in his jaw tightened. I told myself it was more amusement than dismay over the foolishness of my assumptions. And I'd be lying if I didn't say a part of me wished Gabriel was involved with a gang. No matter the brutality that was customary with such a lifestyle, it remained a reality of my world. Not the supernatural. And thinking about it suddenly brought something else to mind.
“Let me see your back,” I asked.
Without saying a word, he gripped the bottom of his T-shirt and pulled it slowly over his head. Any other time I would have been reduced to a pool of wantonness, and although I was impatient for him to strip, my reason now had nothing to do with lust. I did my best to ignore the vaguely insolent smile on his face as he balled up the garment and tossed it on the end of my bed.
Turning around, he pulled his hair to one side and gave me an unrestricted view. It was difficult not to be distracted by the show of heavy muscle moving beneath his skin as he raised his arms. I stared. It hadn't been my imaginationâhe was both tattooed and scarred.
A bizarre, yet oddly familiar, series of glyphs ran down the length of his spine. Their beauty was strangely enhanced by the thick twist of scar tissue defacing both of his shoulder blades. I could feel my eyebrows pull together as I stared at them. The tattooing I could understand, but what type of mutilation would leave such a cruel disfigurement? My hands began to tremble.
“How could I not have known about that?” I asked him. “How could I not have felt your scars?”
“You thought me perfect. I did not want to disillusion you.”
“Yeah, but . . .
how
?”
Turning back to face me, Gabriel folded his arms. My heart did its usual dance at seeing his biceps flex. He made no effort to retrieve his T-shirt, and I'm not ashamed to admit redressing him wasn't my number-one priority. “It was a simple matter of letting you see only what you wanted to.”
“Were you messing with my head? Some sort of auto-suggestion thing?”
“No. The manipulation was only over my own body.” He turned back around and as I stared, open-mouthed, both the tattooing and the scars disappeared, leaving his back smooth and, well . . . perfect. He faced me again. “But now that you know the truth, I cannot maintain the illusion for very long.”
“That's okay, I can deal with it.” I wasn't going to admit that the perfection of his body had actually been a little intimidating. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask what else he was hiding from me, but common sense said I might be better off not knowing. Not until I absolutely had to. However, there was something I wasn't going to ignore. “But why did you lie about my tattoo? Why wouldn't you tell me what it meant? That it matched yours?”
“Rowanâyou had just given me your virginity! Do you really think that was the appropriate time to explain you had my name tattooed on your ass? Besides,” he continued, “I thought you were the one who was being deceptive until I realized you thought it was nothing more than a pretty design.”
His argument had merit, and in all honesty, I probably would have done the same thing in his place. Blowing out an impatient breath, I jabbed the air with my finger, indicating his own inking. “So what does it all mean?”
“It tells how I came to be.”
Great, now he was being cryptic. “And how was that?”
He gave me an odd look. “It is a story for another time.”
“And the scars? Are they also for another time?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “It is the same story.”
Well, that sucked. If I'd thought that everything I'd been through those past twenty-four hours now qualified me for an all-access pass to the world of vampires, I'd figured wrong. There were still some pretty big areas of uncharted territory. There was, however, one subject that had to be discussed, and if Gabriel thought it was off-limits, tough shit. I was prepared to go all pit bull on him.
I looked at him; wanting to be sure I had his full attention before asking, “Why did you kill that woman? Please don't tell me it was an accident,” I said, keeping my voice as level as I could. “I saw your face. You meant to take her life.”
“Yes, I did.” Matching my tone for evenness, he apologized, “And you will never know how much I wished you'd been spared having to see that.”
Any remorse he felt had nothing to do with the woman or even his own participation in such a violent act. It was all focused on me. I had witnessed a side of him I wasn't meant to see, and he regretted that. I wasn't sure whether to be comforted or appalled by his concern, but if Gabriel showed no repentance for having taken a life, then he showed no pleasure in it either. And I knew exactly how I felt about this. Reassured.
“Was she a vampire too?” I asked him.
“No, she was human.”
Somehow I'd suspected as much. “So why did you kill her?”
“It was necessary.”
The brevity of his explanation shocked me almost as much as its cold delivery. I waited for him to expound on his answer, but he remained silent, indifferent almost.
“You ripped her throat out!” I didn't yell, but it was close.
His eyes glittered with an inhuman light that sent skeletal fingers skittering down my spine. It crossed my mind that Gabriel was not in the habit of being asked to explain his actions. If I was determined to pursue this, I had best tread carefully.
“You're exaggerating, Rowan,” he said, his tone still cold. “A wild animal rips out throats. What I did was use my skill to guarantee a quick death.”
“It was brutalâ”
“It was better than she deserved!” The icy demeanor was quickly replaced by hot temper. I watched as he drew in a deep breath, his massive chest rising and falling with the effort to cool his rage. “This was not a random murder, Rowan. It was an executionâand it was
necessary
.”
There was that word again. He said it like it was an answer in itself, and I shouldn't need to ask anything else. But what gave Gabriel the right to be anyone's judge, jury, and executioner?
“What did she do?”
At first I didn't think he was going to answer me, but he must have sensed that if there was any chance of our going forward together, then I needed to know. No matter how awful the truth might be, if he didn't tell me all of it, it would stand between us. Always.
“She was guilty of a great many things.” His voice changed again. It now became curiously resigned. “All of them forbidden by your legal system, but the offense I held her accountable for was the selling of children.”
“A-are you s-sure?” I stammered.
His eyes became hard, the bright blue turning a shade of gray I'd never seen before. It was how I imagined the sea would look during a violent winter storm.
“I am always sure. Trust me, Rowan, she wasn't trying to help troubled teens get their high school diplomas. She enjoyed the reputation of being able to procure any child for any purposeâa reputation she worked hard to maintain.” He sighed and ran his fingers through the thick white waterfall of hair that cascaded over his shoulders. It shimmered brightly, even in the pale glow from my bedside lamp. “In your talk with Aleksei, did he discuss our laws with you?”
I recalled some remark about the superiority of all things vampire, including a form of checks and balances. “Yes,” I answered, “but he didn't go into specifics.” And at the time I'd been too pissed by his condescending attitude to want to know.
“Well, we don't have many,” Gabriel allowed, “but the most important is the protection of those who are truly innocent. Children. If a vampire harms a child in any way, the punishment is death.” He gave me a hard look. “And you should know there are never any
mitigating circumstances
. Our law is absolute. To harm a child is forbidden.”
“But you said she wasn't a vampire,” I countered.
“She wasn't. As a species, you prey viciously on your own kind, especially those most in need of protection. As a result, it was decided centuries ago to extend our law to include human offenders, and thereby protect those who are unable to protect themselves.”
“And she was selling children?”
He nodded and my stomach rolled, sending a wave of nausea washing through me. This changed everything, as I'm sure Gabriel knew it would. My hands began shaking again, only this time it was as if I was afflicted with some type of debilitating tremor. I didn't doubt his words, but it was difficult for me to imagine the woman with the moonlight hair committing such despicable acts.
“But couldn't you have turned her over to the police?”
The faintly mocking smile that curled Gabriel's mouth said he found my faith in human law enforcement, and the judicial system, naïve. “I usually do,” he told me, “once I am assured the evidence is strong enough to guarantee a lengthy incarceration. Unfortunately, her lawyer was able to get my evidence thrown out. On a
technicality
.”
I didn't know it was possible to articulate a single word with such contempt.
“So you took matters into your own hands because her lawyer found a loophole?”
“It was the only course left open to me. Sadly, your legal system continually proves itself incompetent to punish the truly guilty.”
I wish I could have said I was outraged by his words, but I wasn't. I'm not as naïve about our legal system as Gabriel might have thought. Seriously flawed, the process is, in my mind, most definitely not equitable. Whoever can afford the better attorney will, more often than not, win the day. So hearing that critical evidence was not admitted due to a technicality did not surprise me. I just wondered how much the woman's attorney had charged her for that. I was beginning to understand Gabriel's brand of vampire justice. The countless young lives he'd saved from future misery weighed heavily in the balance.
“What else is troubling you?” he said quietly from the doorway. I flashed him a look, and he lifted his shoulders slightly. “I know you well enough to tell when you are distraught.”
He was right. I was distraught, only this was something a little more personal. Heat rushed up from below the neckline of my T-shirt and slapped me in the face. “I understand your reasons for doing what you did, but couldn't you have just offed her while she still had her clothes on?”
“Offed her?”
Now I knew he was struggling not to laugh. “Yes, I suppose I could have, but then the message I wanted to send might not have been as effective.”
“Message? What message?”
He sighed and went back to being serious. I think it was at this moment that I realized just how big a deal explaining himself to me was. “There's a certain degree of trust that comes with being naked. Even if you're not consciously aware of it, you need to feel safe before undressing, but sometimes safety is nothing but an illusion.” Gabriel paused, and I picked up the pillow in my lap, hugging it to my chest. “Executing her in such an intimate setting also served as a warning.”
“To whom?”
“Whoever takes her place.”
“And what was the warning?”
“That I will always exact payment in full.”
A number of random questions began bouncing around inside my head. “What did you do with the . . . um . . .”
“Body?” I nodded and Gabriel shrugged. “Nothing. I am sure by now it has been discovered by the authorities.”
“So that wasn't your house then?” I don't know if his appalled expression was because I had thought he lived in such an architectural nightmare, or because I assumed he would have no problem committing murder under his roof. I decided to move on. “But the police will know how she died, right?”
All the episodes of CSI I'd watched on TV came back to haunt me. How would the wounds in her neck not be thought suspicious?
“Forensics will show her throat was cut, nothing more.” He gave me a look that said he appreciated my concern, even if that wasn't my intent. “Manipulating evidence isn't so difficult.”
“I'll keep that in mind,” I murmured.
Understanding the bigger picture helped . . . and it didn't. I was still unhappy about the woman being naked, mostly because I didn't know what had happened before my untimely entry into the room. Had Gabriel already slept with her? I didn't need to ask him; my complete lack of a poker face relayed my insecurities.
“I didn't have sex with her, if that's what you're thinking,” Gabriel continued. “I told you I would have no other but you. Making her think it would happen was simply a way of increasing her heart rate. Nothing else.”
Now why hadn't that occurred to me? Increased heart rate equaled increased blood flow, and I could certainly vouch for the effectiveness of such a strategy. My heart went into a full gallop whenever Gabriel aroused me. I opened my mouth to ask another question, and then snapped it shut decisively. The look on Gabriel's face said I had pushed him about as far as he was willing to go on this particular subject.
So I asked a different question.
“Do you really believe I'm promised to you in some way?”
“Of course.” He frowned and looked troubled. “Do you truly not feel the connection between us?”