All Hell Breaks Loose (34 page)

“Gabrielle?  Gabrielle?” Julius’s voice roared.

Wow, somehow she’d managed to keep her grip on the phone.  She groaned, lifting it back to her ear, fighting to draw a breath back into her lungs.

“Thank the Lord and Lady for soft tops,” she gasped and used her other hand to protect her face as shredded bits of door rained down from above.  “This guy is seriously starting to piss.  Me.  Off.”

“Lea, are you hurt?  Tell me what’s going on.”

Gabi could hear an edge of panic in Julius’s voice.  “I’m fine,” she wheezed, doing a quick physical assessment before daring to move.  Car and house alarms were going off all around her, and people were rushing outdoors, some with phones already to their ears.  “The bastards rigged Kyle’s front door to blow,” she explained, trying to untangle
herself
from the remains of a black coupe soft top.  It didn’t feel like she’d broken anything new.  “The blast wasn’t anywhere near as bad as last night’s—just meant to make a point, I think.  Goddamn, I owe somebody a new Mini Coupe.  My insurance company is going to blacklist me after this week.”

A man rushed over to her, looking very concerned as she half-tumbled off the car roof.

“Are you all right?” he asked.  “Don’t try to move.  There’s an ambulance on the way.”

She brushed past the man and started up the stairs towards Kyle’s apartment again.

“Lady, I really don’t think you should be going in there,” the man called urgently.

She ignored him.

“Gabi, what are you doing?” Julius demanded.  “Get out of there, and come back to the Estate.”

“I came here for something of Kyle’s, for the Magi to track him.  It’ll only take me a second to find something.”  She tucked the lower part of her face and nose inside the collar of her shirt and carefully picked her way inside the damaged apartment.  “Damn, damn and double-fucking damn,” she cursed.  “This was a carefully executed attack,” she told Julius.  “There is almost no structural damage in here, but everything inside has been blown to bits.  Even if I gathered a few scraps of something, I don’t think it’d be enough for a Magus to track him. 
Arghh
, this is madness.  We’re going to have to crack the Doppelganger.  I’ll take off each of her fingers one at a time if I have to.”  A red wall of rage suddenly swamped her.

“Gabrielle, focus,” Julius ordered, his voice loaded with authority.  “Get out of there, get your curvaceous butt back to the Estate, and we can come up with a plan of action together.  While you do that, I’m going to call Byron and get him to move the Doppelganger to a secure facility at one of my other properties.  One that Jason King will find it very hard to track down, let alone infiltrate.  We can join him there at sunset.  If they haven’t cracked the woman by then, I’ll let Fergus at her.  There aren’t many human minds he can’t break into.” His voice had also gone hard, but brooked no disagreement from her.

She breathed through the anger, forcing composure as she picked her way back out of the debris littering the inside of Kyle’s home.  Once outside, she ducked to the side of the door and slipped along the corridor to take the fire escape back to the ground, hoping to avoid any would-be rescuers.  She considered demanding the address Julius was sending Byron and the Doppelganger to so she could drive straight there, but just then a potent, rhythmic pounding started up in her head, and a few sparkles began an erratic dance in front of her eyes.  Ah yes, she had something she needed to see Julius about first.

“Fine, I’m on my way,” she conceded.  “You’d better send someone to triple-check Kyle’s van.  Derek and Trish travelled back to the Estate in it, and I wouldn’t put it past these bastards to have rigged it as well.  I’ll check to see if Kyle left anything in it that a Tracker could use when I get there.”  She cut the call and snuck into the Audi, reversing and making it onto the main road just as the first fire engine arrived.

There were three
Werewolf
guards at the gate instead of the usual two when Gabi pulled up.  They waved her through the gate but asked her to stop once she was inside.  One stood near the guard house with a phone in his hand, and the other two slowly circled the car, nostrils flaring.  After a full circle by both of the wolves, they prostrated themselves on the ground either side of the car and checked the undercarriage just as thoroughly.  They hopped up and gave a nod signalling all clear.

Julius was in Rowan cottage, pacing the floor.  Gabi had only just remembered to give a knock of warning before she opened the door.  It wasn’t normal to think of Julius as vulnerable.  He was standing well back from the front
door,
the cottage was lit with artificial lighting, every window securely screened by sun-impenetrable blinds.  She turned to close the door, and by the time she
turned back to the room, he was right there.  A frown creased his forehead as he inspected her.  He didn’t say a word as his nimble fingers reached into her hair and began extracting paint chips and tiny splinters of wood.

“Thanks,” she said, realising she probably looked like an unwashed, unkempt, mad cat lady.  His fingers brushed lightly over one of the gashes, and she winced.  “Okay, enough.  Time to get to work,” she insisted, catching his hands and going up on her toes to place a quick kiss on his lips.

He caught her around the waist and deepened the kiss.  A scuff behind him made Gabi aware that they were not alone in the cottage.  She broke the kiss and peeked over his shoulder to find Patrick and Derek standing
against one wall
.  Trish was crouched on the floor behind a trestle table filled with electronic equipment and monitors.  She was connecting wires and inserting plugs into an electrical extension.  She glanced up at Gabi with a slightly stressed smile.

“Seeing as the rest of these oafs won’t say it, I’m glad to see you still in one piece,” she said, jiggling one more cable into place before standing up and brushing
herself
off.

Gabi licked her lips self-consciously and pried her body away from Julius.  Derek was looking sullen.  Patrick was looking anywhere but at her and Julius.

“What’s going on?” she asked, walking further into the cottage.

“The Doppelganger will be secure in our underground bunker soon.  Byron, Athena and a contingent of
Werewolves
, including Matt and Alistair, are taking her there now,” Julius explained, coming up behind her.  “We’re setting up a video feed from the bunker to here so we can see and hear exactly what the Shifter has to say.”

Trish was tweaking things at the front of the table now, pushing buttons and checking coloured lights as the monitors flickered to life.  She grabbed a nearby chair and dragged it closer as Gabi came to stand behind her.  Her fingers flew over a keyboard and several programmes began loading, several lines of code and a little cursing later, two of the monitors switched to a view of a large, brightly lit room.  The room was painted white, had a plain, concrete floor, and was furnished only with a small, sturdy table and four chairs.  One of the chairs was a little different from the rest.  It stood ready with open metal cuffs on the chair arms and legs, and another metal contrivance across where a person’s chest and upper thighs would rest.

Gabi’s eyebrows shot up.  “You never told me you have an interrogation room, Jules,” she drawled.

He came to stand alongside her, also gazing at the empty room.  “The facility is mostly an emergency bunker for the Clan, but we do also take care of…business…down there at times,” he explained calmly but didn’t elaborate further.

Gabi turned to him.  “I need to talk to you,” she said quietly, “in private.”

Chapter
18

Gabi headed for the bedroom, away from the others, her steps slower than usual as sheer exhaustion set in.  Julius followed, closing the door behind him, though they both knew the
Werewolves
would probably hear them anyway.

“Sit before you fall,” he growled.

Her instincts demanded that she pace, but her body just couldn’t comply.  She sank onto the bed, rubbing at her temples.  The mattress gave way next to her as he joined her.

“Those injuries are not minor, Lea,” he noted.  “You need to rest.”

“No,” she said, short and sharp.  “I can’t rest, not until we have Kyle back.  You know what happens when I’ve been injured.  I’ve explained it, haven’t I?” She didn’t really know how to ask for what she wanted from him, not without sounding desperate.  It wasn’t every day you had to ask someone to let you suck their blood.  She clamped down on the automatic shudder of revulsion.

“You lose your normal physical edge, your preternatural speed and strength,” he said, adlibbing what she’d told him several weeks ago.

She had a sneaky suspicion that he was going to force her to ask him, and then probably argue with her because of the possibility of Turning.

“There is another option, as you’ve pointed out to me several times in the recent past,” she hinted, not looking at him, but instead focussing on a poignant black-and-white photo of a woman hanging on the wall.  She was standing in a graveyard surrounded by crumbling headstones.

“You know why I haven’t offered my blood, Lea,” he murmured.  He picked up her hand to inspect the bruising on her middle finger, laying a kiss on the stiff, swollen digit.

“Well, now I’m asking.”  She finally looked at him.  “I need to help find Kyle, and I’m not going to be much use like this.  I can’t sit on the sidelines while the rest of you try to save my best friend.”  She could hear the desperation in her own voice, but couldn’t hold back the emotion.  “I don’t have any other talent that will help, I can’t hack computers, or orchestrate an attack, or patch up the wounded.  The only thing I’m good at is bringing down the bad guys, fighting the evil, eliminating monsters.  I have to be able to help in this.  Please, Julius.”  She hated the note of pleading that had entered her voice.

Julius stared into her eyes for long moments before replying.

“You are good at far more than just bringing down the bad guys, but that discussion is for another day.  The truth is that we have probably been overcautious.  I think that the risk is minimal.  But minimal is not non-existent, and I need you to understand the possible consequences.  They are consequences you may live to regret, for more years than you can imagine.”  His gaze trapped hers, demanding complete comprehension on her side,
acknowledgement
of the potential cost.

She drew in a deep breath, expelling it slowly as she took the responsibility on herself for whatever happened now.  The thought struck her that it was possible Julius wouldn’t want her around forever, and that if he
Turned
her, their relationship could become awkward and inconvenient for him.  She swallowed, not liking the thought, but then she thought of Kyle, and she nodded.

“I understand, and I
heed
your warning.  I won’t hold anything against you or expect anything from you.  I swear it, Julius,” she vowed.

“That is not what I’m worried about, Lea,” he said as he took her face in his hands.  He leant in and kissed her, gently for once, not with his usual barely-leashed demand.  As his fangs lengthened, he withdrew his lips from hers, and he ran his right thumb across
a sharpened edge
, hard.  As the blood welled, he slid the thumb to her lips.  Her tongue flicked out, wrapping around and drawing it into her mouth, suckling lightly.  She groaned as the taste
marauded
across her
tastebuds
and blanketed her senses, blocking out sight, sound, scent and thought.  A tiny part of
her brain reminded her that this was what she was most afraid of.  The potential to become dependent on this taste was enormous.  She didn’t fancy becoming a Vampire-blood junkie.  That thought kept her from slipping into the vortex itself.  Instead, she balanced unsteadily on the edge, fear and willpower keeping her from drowning.  When the cut began to close, she didn’t bite down or scream for more, but it was a close thing.  She heard the unhappy moan come from her lips as Julius withdrew his thumb.  She made her teeth clamp together and folded her arms protectively over her chest as she fought for control.

“I know, Lea,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms.

A moment later the pain in her head flared badly enough that all thoughts of addiction were obliterated.  The ache in her finger became a searing bite, and a thousand other smaller injuries radiated into painful wakefulness.  Julius held her as she hissed in a breath and held it, waiting for the pains to subside.

“Give it a few minutes,” Julius said.  “It’ll pass.”

Gabi hadn’t really been conscious enough to feel the effects of Julius’s blood after she’d been staked, and now she counted that as a good thing.  As nerve and cell repair went into overdrive, the pain was exquisite.

“You must tell me if you feel any pain or discomfort that isn’t related to an existing injury, or if you begin to feel unusual in any way,” Julius told her firmly.

“Sire,” Patrick’s voice resonated through the door.  “Mr Reeves and the captive have arrived.”