Lore vs. The Summoning (30 page)

Aside from the vampire voodoo Aiden had used on the werewolf's sister, Aiden had been a model monster. I couldn't see him doing anything so uncouth as attacking a defenseless human. And that worried me.

I knew he was capable of it. The fact that I allowed myself to be blinded by the act he portrayed meant that the act had worked. I needed to leave as soon as possible before I was blinded by anything else.

"You haven't eaten a bite in several minutes," he noted in a voice edged in irritation. "You've merely been pushing it around on your plate."

"It was a lot of food." I shoved back from the table now that I'd been found out. I'd lifted the plate off the table with the intention of carrying it to the sink when Aiden stepped in front of me.

"Leave it. He will clean up," he said. A scowl crinkled the edges of his silver eyes.

It wasn't my place to argue, though I wanted to, badly. Instead of getting involved in their household squabble I set the plate back down, fixed the chair back in its place and then followed him out of the kitchen. He led me upstairs to the room with the television.

"I regret that I have a meeting," he said with the large remote control balanced between his long, golden fingers. "We have every channel available. Perhaps you'll find something to entertain you until I return. If not, feel free to purchase a movie or peruse my library." Aiden gestured to my right, "It's the next door over. The kitchen is at your disposal. Owen will be about if you require anything."

Aiden hesitated a moment before handing the device over to me. Awkwardly I stood while he merely looked at me. His eyes passed over my face as if memorizing it before he let out a heavy breath and then walked past me to the room's exit.

Maybe a night of mindless television was in order after the past few days I'd had. Hell, it was in order after the last few weeks.
 

I dropped down into the sectional sofa to spend several seconds studying the complicated remote control. Ten minutes later I'd settled on a comedy on one of the premium movie stations. Now if I could just relax a little in the strange house I might actually be able to enjoy it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The ringing of a phone woke me from a sound sleep. I rolled over, four times on the massive bed, to grab my cell phone off the bedside table. Blearily I slid my finger over the button to accept the call without opening my eyes.

"This had better be an emergency," I told whoever was calling.

"Lore," Grayson Dennison's voice spoke in an urgent tone. "I need help in a bad way. We got ambushed on the way back from our meet last night by a group of mixed witches. One of my shifters is about to die and my Healer was shot. Can you get here?"

I'd sat upright when he'd said someone was about to die. "Yes. Where?"

"My house. Do you remember...?"

I interrupted him, "You're still up in Revere, right?"

"Yup."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes," I said while pulling on the black velvet jeans I'd worn last night. My concern distracted me enough that I hung up without telling him good-bye.

It wasn't until I'd gotten downstairs to my car that I realized I had a problem. Aiden's Audi was parked in front of the garage that currently held my Mini Cooper. The sun was high in the sky because it was still midmorning. There was no chance the vampire would be moving his car any time soon.

I didn't have time for this shit. I stomped through the garage to try the handle on the Audi's driver's side door. Surprisingly it opened without emitting an alarm. A quick check above the visor merited me the keys. I knelt within the car for a full minute, attempting to understand what the hell the vampire was thinking leaving the keys to his hundred and twenty thousand dollar car above the visor in the unlocked vehicle in the middle of downtown Boston. But there wasn't time for this!

Five minutes later I had the R8 parked in the garage, the keys returned to the visor, and was running Indiana-Jones-style under the rapidly closing garage door. Now I had less than fifteen minutes to drive the ten miles to Revere in the middle of a Tuesday morning through downtown. If anyone could do it, it would be me.

I took the interstate so I could speed for half the trip. My lane weaving was double my usual craziness. Thankfully I avoided any speed traps and only had a few near misses. I pulled into Gray's driveway one minute late.

The Prime met me at the front door looking rested and surprisingly well-groomed considering what he'd said on the phone. I walked past him into the house with eyes scanning for the wounded. No one was on his sofa and the bed I could see peeking through the guest room door appeared to be likewise empty. There were no sounds in the house except for the television playing
Deadliest Catch
and the steady ticking of his wall clock. I whirled around on my heel to look at him in confusion.

"Where...?" My voice stalled when I saw the expression on his face.
 

He was upset. No. It was more than that. He was
guilty
.

Something wasn't right. There hadn't been any other cars in the driveway. No one was dying.

"Gray," I drawled in a low voice dripping with suspicion. "What's going on?"

"We didn't want it to be this way. We really didn't." He was speaking in monotone, a sound completely unlike him.

My eyes went impossibly wide. "No. Not
you
. Anyone else but you!"

Gray's features scrunched up as if he were in pain just before his entire body shook. Whatever the tremor had been cleared quickly. A blank expression affixed to his face a second before he pounced on me.

I hadn't seen it coming.
 

I hadn't seen any of it coming. And even if I had known Gray had a syringe filled with something to knock me out, I probably wouldn't have done a damn thing about it. There were few people in the world I wouldn't hurt to save myself or someone else; Gray was one of them. It was the realization I'd come to when I woke up in a three-foot by three-foot cell in a new pound-for-women with a debilitating headache. I might have to reevaluate that now.

My wounded pride overrode any anger I had. I'd been so stupid. I'd run right to him as soon as he'd called for help. I hadn't told anyone where I was going, hadn't thought I needed to. How could I have been so wrong about Grayson Dennison?

It took me several minutes to get over the hurt of being betrayed enough to think clearly. I had to find a way out of the cage. I needed to find out who else was involved in this besides the Prime of Massachusetts. He'd said "we". Unless he'd recently taken up using the majestic plural there was at least one other person involved in this plot.

"Hello?" I called out in hopes of figuring out if I was alone.

"Shh, they shock us," a soft feminine voice whispered.

Déjà vu. Well, I knew I wasn't alone now.

"Gray!" I shouted furiously. "You coward! You asshole! How dare you do this to me!"

"Be quiet!" Another girl hissed.

But the shock of electricity I'd expected never came.

"Grayson, what would your father think? Would he approve of you kidnapping me? How could you?"

A door opened off to the side just barely out of my line of sight. Gray shuffled in with a miserable expression on his face. Bravely he stood a foot in front of my cage. The bars were plenty big for me to get my hands through. I could easily choke the hell out of him right before I sent him to Hades. By the morose sigh he let out I thought maybe he
wanted
me to.

But I didn't. Instead I pulled further back into the cage away from him, uncertain I could trust myself.

"Kill me, Laura," he said in a pleading whisper. "Please."

Horrified by the plea, I wrapped my arms around my knees, tightly pulling them to my chest to keep from reaching out for him. "Let me out," I said as calmly as I could manage despite the flipping of my stomach like a Russian gymnast at the Olympics.

Gray's voice sounded miserable and perhaps near to tears. "I can't."

"Why?"

"The order is to kill you if you get out."

"Who gave the order?"

He shook his head before repeating himself more urgently. "Kill me."

"Is something controlling you, Gray? Blink twice..." I knew he didn't need me to finish the explanation. He'd used that very tactic on me once long ago.

Gray didn't blink at all. We had a staring match until I had to press my eyelids shut to clear away the water that had developed from forcing them open for too long. He finally closed his eyes with a glance to the right.

"Join us, Black Death," he said in a hollow voice. His use of my alter ego's name didn't surprise me. Gray had known about my powers for nearly a decade. "With all of the factions working together we can bring about a new era in Boston."

"All of the factions working together under whom?"
 

He continued as if I hadn't said anything. "Cooperation for the greater good. You will see our way is the only way."

"If kidnapping women is part of the greater good then spank me and call me a bad monkey," I replied snarkily.

"But if you refuse to see, we will kill you," Gray finished with his attention still focused on something off to the right.
 

He remained where I could get to him for two minutes in silence. I supposed I probably should have done something to him considering he had just threatened my life. But I couldn't bring myself to. My conscience couldn't handle hurting Grayson Dennison.

"Gray," I whispered. "Please. What is going on?"

His answer was to walk away without looking at me. I smacked my hands against the metal bars four times in increasing fury after the door closed him away from me. Something was manipulating him. It was the only way I could believe he'd turn on me like this. But what was powerful enough to manipulate the Prime of Massachusetts?

A vampire.

My thoughts stretched back to the warning Kastio had given me at the very beginning.
The vampire is holding something back.
Aiden had known back then that a leech was involved. Why the hell hadn't he told me?

I smacked against the bars several times more with an outraged scream. How many more people had betrayed me during this investigation? I was usually so careful not to trust anyone but I'd really dropped the ball this time. Maybe Morrígan was the brains behind everything and now that her seduction had failed to capture me, she'd resorted to violence. And what about Dominick? I'd trusted him. What was his part in all of this?

My head dropped back against the metal wall behind me in defeat. I'd already lost. I couldn't kill my captor to free myself because I loved him in some fashion, be it as a friend or something else. Whoever had me must have known that.
 

I had lost.

And because of it, all of Boston would pay.

It wasn't until hours later that we received another visit from our jailer. Gray flipped on the light in the new pound-for-women blinding us temporarily. I watched him shuffle over the generic industrial linoleum floor to unlatch the cage for one of my fellow prisoners.

The brunette cried against his shoulder as he lifted her out. Her blubbering was incoherent but we all knew what she wanted: freedom. He grit out sharp commands to stand up, shut up, and walk that sounded nothing like the Gray I knew. A handful of minutes passed before the girl was returned, stuffed into her cage again and then given rations. They consisted of a small bag of beef jerky, a piece of bread and a bottle of water.

When it came time for me to be brought out, I grabbed his face in my hands as soon as my feet hit the ground. I tried to force him to look at me but his eyes automatically dropped to the floor.

"Gray," I said quietly because I knew we were being monitored. "You can't do this. You know that. You know it's wrong. You have to do something to stop it. This isn't the greater good."

His fingers dug into my wrists to tear them from him. I was whirled around and shoved forward out the door into darkened hallway. He pushed me through an entrance to a small room with a single toilet, a sink and a small trash bin that could have been in any roadside gas station.

I stared at the commode contemplating how badly I'd need to use it versus how much I valued my privacy for this particular act. The pressure on my arm toward the toilet made it virtually impossible to do anything but what he wanted. My cheeks flushed red as I pulled my pants down to do my business with a man's hand squeezing the life out of my forearm. It didn't matter that his eyes were screwed shut so tightly that it probably hurt. He was in the room with me. This was one of the most mortifying things I'd ever had to do. I suppose I should be thankful for that. There were far worse acts I could have been forced to do.

He let me wash my hands when I'd finished, a small pleasure I'd been certain would be taken from me. But my fury over the situation had me punching him any place I could find as he shoved me out into the corridor. When he didn't so much as blink, I kicked him in the groin simply to get a reaction out of him.

Gray let out a grunt just before pushing me hard into the wall of cages. I managed to note that there were only two other women before my body slammed into it. My captor unceremoniously dumped me into the cage, shut the bars half on my hand and then stomped away.

I cried against the wall as soon as he was out of earshot. I hated that I was exhibiting sorrow in front of others but I couldn't help myself. It took me several minutes to understand all of the reasons why I was upset.
 

Beyond the betrayal and mortification, I knew I was going to have to hurt Gray.

Two things were my yardsticks for time's passing during my incarceration: Gray's visits to take us to the bathroom and the addition of three other women. If my count was correct then it was Friday night. A lanky blonde we'd never seen had just been stuffed into the cage beside me. I knew she'd be in pain from the cramped quarters when she woke from her drugged stupor.

The only captor I'd seen in three days' time was Grayson. He visited us twice a day to give us our grizzled rations and water and to conduct the humiliating visit to the bathroom.