Blood Entangled (29 page)

Bel and Pedro slid into the room together. Kos hoped he hadn’t heard the message from his estranged aunt. With any luck, Bel would be back in Los Angeles before she arrived. Perhaps he could avoid dredging up the past—

“Did you say Uta?” Bel barked. “What does she want?”

Damn it, Kos had no luck whatsoever.

“Who’s the halfling?” Zoey asked, all unknowing curiosity.

“Did she call me that? Bitch!” Bel snatched the card out of Andre’s hand.

Kos held the paper Uta had enfolded in the card. Opening it, he was stunned by what he saw and took a moment to speak. “
Krist
,” he finally rasped, before passing the paper to Andre, whose eyes widened.

“What is it?” Pedro and Zoey asked at the same time.

Kos ran his palm over his scalp, searching for the words. “It’s a color photo of an ancient Greek text, with illustrations.”

“Saying?” Zoey didn’t keep the irritation from her voice.

“I don’t know, my Greek is rusty. It’s the illustration that’s got my attention.”

Andre flipped the paper to show them the odd, vibrant image of a battle scene. Warriors fought with heavy swords, and both armies of soldiers had yellow-gold eyes. Half also had fangs, exaggerated in length by the rudimentary style of artwork. It was a battle between Hunters and vampires, both with golden eyes. Pedro, Zoey, and Bel huddled around the sheet of copy paper, trying to get a good look.

When it was clear they couldn’t all see at once, Pedro gave up his spot to step next to Andre. “This gets us closer to learning why they hate us.”

“Not really. All it tells us is hostility erupted in a battle long ago.”

Pedro frowned. “Not quite. It also tells us I’m not the first vampire with Hunter eyes.”

“
Davo.
I didn’t catch that. Double
Davo.
” Andre looked from Pedro’s eyes to the paper.

“You’re all missing the most important thing.” Zoey annunciated each word as if speaking to school children.

Kos hadn’t missed it—he just didn’t know what the hell to say.

She let go of the paper so Bel could have it to himself and continued to explain. “They’re in the sunlight, all of them. The battle takes place in the middle of the day.”

Bel still hadn’t peeled his eyes off the paper, but he was the first one to pipe up with a theory. “Pedro, my man, maybe you can tolerate the sun.”

Kos had thought the same thing the moment he saw the illustration. And if he fed from Lucas, or perhaps a prettier Hunter, maybe he could walk under the sun too. He didn’t even know he craved daylight until the possibility occurred to him. In a place inside him already full of longing for another radiant body, his desire for the sun also bloomed.

Everyone was silent. A grandfather clock ticked in the dining room.

“How on earth could you test that?” Zoey finally asked.

Bel dropped into the high-backed chair by the door. “Maybe a tiny laser beam of light with the same radiation composition as sunlight—some ultraviolet and infrared in addition to the visible light. But even that much of the solar spectrum might turn a vampire into bacon.”

“Don’t you mean Vacon?” Pedro’s laugh sounded forced.

Bel cringed. “Dude. You wouldn’t laugh if you’d ever smelled it. Not good.”

He was right, a vampire turned to ash was a nasty, smelly, horrible thing. Kos was not about to volunteer to be a guinea pig in that experiment.

He rose his voice to steer them back. “I’d like to keep thinking about sunlight, but there are more important questions. Where is this picture from? Why does Auntie Uta have it? And how did she know to send it to us?”

“She sent it because of the Blood Vine,” Andre said, his tone certain. “She must know there is a connection between the wine and Hunter blood. She knows something of the history and the little witch did not share it with me for the two thousand years we were neighbors.”

“No surprise she never told you,” Bel said. “She’s a selfish bitch.”

“Ah,” Zoey said. “I’m getting the frenemy thing now.”

Andre folded up the paper. “Pedro,” he commanded, “go to your Lucas and see if he knows anything.”

Pedro paled. “How could he possibly know anything?”

“Relax,” Kos whispered. “Just go ask.”

Pedro put his hands in pockets and strode from the room.

Just as the young vampire cleared the door, Bel spoke up. “May I be dismissed? I couldn’t stop thinking about Hunters even before this picture arrived.”

Andre nodded, and Bel followed Pedro.

His father pressed the paper into Kos’s palm. “Put this somewhere safe and we’ll deal with it after the party.”

Kos unfolded it and smoothed out the creases before carrying the photocopy to his office as if it were the ancient page itself. Only a game changer of this magnitude could distract him from Lena enough to move on. He almost felt grateful to his Aunt Uta. Almost.

When Ethan stepped into his apartment, Gwen called out. “Dinner?”

“I want to see the translation.” He strode to the desk where she had been working.

“I’m not ready to show it to you.”

His head jerked back to her, and her eyes gleamed in hungry defiance. She was looking for a fight.

He dragged her to his room and tied her to the bed. Her eyes shone even brighter with anticipation. But once she was secured, he gagged her and went to look for her notebook. The sound of her frustrated grunts faded as he walked down the hall. The translation wasn’t on the desk, or in any of the drawers. He searched her bags, pried open her locked briefcase—nothing.

On the bed, Gwen’s wrists and ankles were red from straining against the ropes.

“Where is it?” He kept her gagged and searched her eyes for an answer. They still showed defiance. He hit her hard with the back of his hand. “Where?”

She grunted from the impact of his slap, then attempted to speak behind the gag. He untied it.

“Fuck me.”

He hit her face again, and her grunt was louder without the gag.

“You must be confused, Gwen. I fuck you when I want to, on my terms.”

Her chest heaved, and her skin flushed—her game had worked. Astonished, he realized he’d given her exactly what she wanted. No harm in that—it was what he wanted too. The translation could wait. He raised his hand again to strike.

“Not my face.”

She’d said the same thing before they’d boarded their plane. And it was a good point. If they were going to approach Kearney, it wouldn’t do for her to be black and blue.

Or would it?

“Let’s show Mason Kearney that you belong to me now.” The first punch landed on her jaw. The second would leave a nice black eye.

Then he punched her in the rib cage, under her left breast. She didn’t make a sound. No protest, no begging. But her eyes gleamed with the most intoxicating blend of fear and submission.

He wanted her naked, but didn’t want to untie her, so he rushed to the kitchen to find a pair of shears.

Later, when he collapsed on top of her, she said, “My notebook is under the mattress.”

He actually laughed, aloud, deep from his belly. She’d played him like a fiddle, anticipating his every move. Not that he liked the idea of being predictable. He would be certain to surprise her later, with a punishment to match her manipulation. His cock was already stirring again at the notion. Her submission was becoming addictive. She saw into him and craved precisely what he wanted to give her. A match made in…well, somewhere unholy for certain.

He unbound her, and found her notebook under the mattress, remembering the way teenaged Lucas used to hide pages he’d torn from the Sears Catalog men’s underwear section in the same place.

Gwen sat cross-legged, with the sheet pulled over her breasts, annotating her translation. “Here it says:
The Night Walkers had the Sun in their eyes. Dela-Malkh did not know who was of the Day and who was of the Night.
Accompanied by the picture, I’d assume that means the vampires’ eyes turned golden when they fed from the Hunters.”

“Or were they Hunters who had been turned into vampires?”

“Oh. I see. I don’t know. Here, it says:
Many Children loved the Night instead of the Day. Dela-Malkh was angry. The Day Walkers were angry. No Children loved the Sun anymore.
It sounds like some sort of generational conflict, the younger children abandoned devotion to the sun god, and began to worship the night god, or perhaps the vampire way of life.”

“Yes. That makes sense. The younger generation was possibly seduced by the vampires.”

“It’s always something. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Vampires.” Her playful lilt made him chuckle, but then her tone grew serious. “Except this doesn’t always happen:
Dela-Malkh told the Day Walkers to kill everyone of the Night. Dela-Malkh commanded the Day Walkers to kill their Children.”
Her head swiveled to face him. “Ethan, they killed their children.”

He gripped her chin, and forced her to look at them. “Do you think they were wrong to do it?”

She shrunk back, but he held her face tight. Her eyes widened for a flash of a second. “I…I don’t know. I was seduced too.”

Ah. One day, he would ask her about that.

“Gwen, I don’t blame you.”

“Would the other Hunters, though?”

She was a perceptive little thing—smart—and attuned to power, and its uses.

“You belong to me. Not Mason Kearny, and not them. No one will hurt you.” As an afterthought, he added, “Besides me.”

She shivered and leaned her face into his palm like a puppy. “Ethan, what will happen to the girl when you rescue her from Kearney?”

“I will use her as bait to get to Marasović.”

“But will you give her to the vampires?”

“No, I won’t.”

His men would demand the woman’s death, on account of her being a vampire slave. And probably not before they’d had their own fun with her. But there was no cause to tell Gwen that. She seemed the type to fret over the ethics of the situation. As far as he was concerned, there were none besides his victory. But, to her, he was the good guy—a sadistic good guy to be sure—and one she trusted.

Gwen sighed and choked once on her words before they flowed freely. “I worry for her. I was different before, and I don’t want her to end up—”

“Yes. Of course you worry. But we cannot rescue her yet. A few more dominoes need to fall into place.”

The last illustration Lucas had unearthed from his memory was a battle, and he was almost finished tinting it. Golden-eyed vampires fought golden-eyed Hunters to the death under a bright yellow sun. Corpses of each were piled on both sides of the drawing, like tallies. The dead vampires lay headless, and the outcome of the battle was unclear. Lucas suspected the vampires had retreated. Did they take their Hunter mates?

The drawings answered some of his questions, but didn’t illuminate a path ahead. Should he show them to Pedro or escape before every vampire in the house wanted to sink their teeth into him?

He’d earned a modicum of trust at Kaštel, but he wasn’t invited to join the launch party. He would put the drawings away, make a vodka tonic, watch television, and ponder his dilemma. He’d found some very melodramatic soaps over the last week, and he could enjoy the eye candy while he decided his next steps.