Avow (3 page)

So sad.

She pressed her lips together as she watched Gabriel’s eyes dart around the room. “Any awesome escape plans yet?”

“The only plan I had was the wrestling out of the ropes thing. So no.”

Drat.

More silence.

Heather licked her lips. “You know what would be really nice right now? Coffee. I could really go for some coffee.”

Just the idea made her salivate.

He scowled. “How can you even think about coffee right now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe caffeine is how I cope.” She thought for a moment. “Although usually I’m a crier. Are you a crier?”

“No.”

“Not even at sad movies or weddings?“

“No.”

“What about commercials with little puppies that need a home?”

He blinked. “Please stop talking.”

“Hmm,” she said slowly. “Maybe
talking
is how I cope.”
Her hands started falling asleep. “You know what else would be really nice right now?”

“An off button?”

“Super powers,” she said. “It would be really helpful if your
immortalness
came with super powers. Like maybe super strength or the ability to burn rope with your eyeballs.”

“Yes, well, I’ll be sure to ask for the upgraded package next time.” He stretched his neck and Heather noticed a red mark next to his Adam’s apple.

“What happened to your throat?”

“Raven shot me with some kind of dart.”

“They were
tranq
darts.” Raven’s high heels echoed through the large room as she entered and came to a stop between the two pillars. She looked at Gabriel. “I had to use a few of them, actually, because you heal so quickly. Very inconvenient.” She sighed. “But it worked and you looked so peaceful, all passed out and vulnerable on the way here. It made me miss the old days. Watching you sleep beside me.”

Heather wrinkled her nose.

Gag me.

Wait no. I’ve already been gagged tonight and it’s not pleasant.

Sometimes Gabriel’s eyebrows were happy. Other times, they were concerned or annoyed. But right now, poised above his brown eyes like batwings, Gabriel’s eyebrows were mad. Mad eyebrows.

“What do you want, Raven?” His voice was lower than usual. Meaner.

“You haven’t seen me for half a millennium and that’s your opening question?” Raven put a hand on her hip. “Aren’t you curious as to what I’ve been up to? Don’t you want to know where I’ve lived and all I’ve seen?”

“I want to know how you’re alive. Especially since I killed you.”

Heather blinked.

Gabriel had killed Raven?

Well,
that
certainly had never come up at the lunch table before.

A little heads up would have been nice.

Hey Heather, since we’re history partners and all I figured I should tell you I’m a murderer. But I’m hot, so it’s okay.

From now on, Heather was going to do background checks on all her buddies.

“You
tried
to kill me,” Raven corrected. “But since I had fountain water in my veins when you broke my neck—real classy, by the way—I managed to survive.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Where did you get fountain water?”

She gave him a secretive smile. “In the wall of my family’s house.”

“You stole the vial?”

“Is it really stealing if the vial belonged to my family? I think not.”

Gabriel stared at her. “How have you survived this long on a single
vial
of fountain water?”

She shrugged. “Magic.” She pulled a syringe of something blue from her bosom—apparently her bra also doubled as a purse—and held it up. “I thinned out the fountain water and multiplied it with spells. And now I’m down to my last dose.” She looked at the syringe with hunger in her eyes.

Like it was heroin, Raven set the needle tip to the inside of her elbow and injected herself with the blue water. Her eyes rolled back into her head for a moment before she blinked her way out of the bliss and tossed the empty syringe on the table.

She turned back to Gabriel. “It must be so depressing to see me alive after all these years. You were so
angry
the night you broke my neck.”

He had his evil eyebrows back on. “Yes. Because you killed my father.”

“Well, he was awful.”

“And you shot Tristan.”

“Complete accident.”

“And then you cursed me and killed Scarlet.”

She shrugged. “Those last two may have been a bit rash of me.”

“Rash?
Rash
? I haven’t been able to fall in love for five hundred years.”

“You could have loved me.” She spread her palm against his bloody shirt and five purple-painted nails crawled their way up his chest to his face.

He thrust his face away and smacked his head into the pillar.

Raven pouted her lips. “Poor thing. You’re not nearly as magnificent when you’re all tied up.” She winked. “Not like this anyway.”

Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Heather was judging Gabriel on so many levels tonight.

Pulling her hand back from Gabriel’s chest, Raven made a face at the blood that now stained her fingertips. She wiped her hand on his jeans until the blood was all gone.

Gabriel watched her with narrowed eyes and slowly said, “You look
old
.”

Heather’s mouth fell open.

Good God. Don’t anger the crazy lady.

Raven slapped him, hard. “That’s what happens when your supply of fountain water starts to run out and you have to dilute it. You
age
. Magic can only do so much.”

“Sucks to be you,” Gabriel said.

Clearly, he did not value his life.

Raven looked Gabriel up and down for a moment, then walked to the table behind his pillar and retrieved the shiny, silver object Heather had spied earlier.

Scissors. Not a torture device.

Not
yet
anyway. Gabriel was doing a pretty good job of provoking the witch, so there was a good chance she was about to cut him into bite-sized pieces of immortal deliciousness and feed him to the myriad of black cats she no doubt had stashed in the back alongside her broomstick and bubbling caldron
.

Raven walked back up to Gabriel and started cutting off his shirt.

WTF?

If things got kinky, Heather was totally going to vomit.

Gabriel’s eyes followed Raven’s hands as she peeled the shirt off his bloodied body. Some of the matted fabric caught in his chest wound and Raven ripped it out.

He winced. “What are you doing?”

She
tossed the stained shirt to the floor. “I need to make sure your cuts aren’t deep enough to kill you.”

“How very thoughtful of you,” Gabriel said between his teeth as she prodded the cut on his shoulder.

With a satisfied nod, she went back to the table and grabbed a needle, some tubing, and a baggie before heading back to Gabriel.

Was she going to play doctor now?

Sweet mercy.

Worst hostage situation ever.

Raven shoved Gabriel’s head to the side and sank the needle into his jugular, hitching the tubing to it so blood could pump from his body to the plastic baggie at the end of the tube.

Okay weird.

Gabriel stared out the corner of his eye at where blood flowed from his neck, wisely keeping his mouth shut as the crazy witch took his blood. When Raven decided she had enough, she withdrew the needle and unhooked the tubes.

Sealing Gabriel’s blood into the bag, she placed it in the bin on table and turned to leave.

“Oh. One last thing.” Raven stopped in her tracks and walked back to Gabriel. Reaching for his head, she broke his neck in one swift twist
.

Heather blinked in shock as Gabriel’s body went limp against the pillar and his head lopped to the side in an unnatural way. A small trickle of blood oozed from his neck where the needle had just been as Raven’s heels tapped their way out of the room.

Heather knew a broken neck wouldn’t kill an immortal, but she couldn’t seem to keep her body from shaking as she stared at his lifeless form. If Raven had no problem hurting Gabriel, how much more callous would she be with Heather?

Ponies, ponies, ponies.

CHAPTER 3

Gabriel was not at the Millhouse. Or the fair. Or anywhere else that made sense, and Tristan’s fear was mounting by the minute. Walking along the perimeter of the coffee shop, he followed the sidewalk and tried to retrace his brother’s steps.

A small patch of ash caught his eye and he followed it around a corner to find an alley dotted with more piles of ash.

But no sign of Gabriel.

Nate came up behind him with Scarlet. “Where do you think he went?”

Scarlet said, “Maybe he went to find us.”

Tristan spied Gabriel’s knife discarded on the ground and his gut churned as he picked it up. “He wouldn’t have left unarmed.”

Nate caught sight of something else on the ground and bent to retrieve the small object
.

“What’s that?” Scarlet stepped closer.

“I think it’s a tranquilizer dart.” Nate turned it over in his hand.

More churning
.

“Do you think someone drugged Gabriel?”

“Maybe Raven wanted to take him hostage,” Nate said slowly. “Like Heather. The
tranq
dart is a good sign, though. It means she doesn’t want to kill him.”

Tristan fisted his hands and Nate eyed his white knuckles. “Don’t stress, man. We’ll find
him
.”

“How?” Tristan snapped, his chest hot with fear. “How are we going to find him, Nate? With our Gabriel tracking device?”

“Ooh! A tracking device would have been a good idea.” Nate nodded. “Next time.”

Tristan started pacing. Why would Raven take Gabriel?
Where
would she take him? And why the hell wasn’t she dead?

From the corner of his eye, he saw Scarlet run a shaky hand through her hair. He stopped pacing and tried to feel her, forgetting the curse had shifted and he was no longer privy to her feelings.

Funny how he used to think of his connection to her as punishment, taunting him with what he could never have. But now, without her emotions running through him, he felt empty and lost.

Her eyes moved to his and their gazes locked for a brief moment. A flicker of unease crossed her face and she turned away.

Tristan’s chest tightened.

She was hiding something. Something big.

“Raven probably has Heather and Gabriel in the same place,” Nate said, “so we just need to narrow down possible hiding spots. I say we do a background check on ‘Clare’ and see if she owns any dungeons or other bad guy haunts. Avalon’s not that big. We’ll find Gabriel and Heather in two, three days tops.”

Tristan pulled his eyes away from Scarlet and stared at Nate. “Two or three days in captivity with a psychotic witch might kill them. We need to find them now.” He exited the alley and headed for his car.

“And your plan is what?” Nate said as he and Scarlet followed after him. “You’re just going to drive around until you see a sign that says
Raven’s Secret Hostage Lair
?”

Tristan wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but hanging out in an alley all night certainly wasn’t going to bring Gabriel back any faster. “What’s the alternative? Go back home, eat some Lucky Charms, and get some sleep? I don’t think so.”

“Why are you hating on my cereal?”

“I think Nate’s right,” Scarlet said as they reached the car. “We can’t just drive around aimlessly. We need a plan. At least we know from the
tranq
dart that Raven doesn’t want to kill them, so that buys us some time to find them.”

“Yes.” Nate nodded. “Let’s go back to the cabin and
plan
.”

Tristan didn’t like this idea. Not at all.

But he also didn’t know where to look for Gabriel, so any argument he hoped to have on behalf of his driving around aimlessly plan fell dead.

“Fine,” he muttered, climbing into the driver’s seat.

Nate jumped into the backseat while Scarlet slid into the passenger’s seat and tried to buckle her seatbelt. It wouldn’t latch. The passenger’s seatbelt had taken a beating when Tristan had remodeled the shack and now the latch only worked if you jiggled it the right way.

Scarlet wasn’t jiggling it the right way.

Tristan reached over to help her and she swatted at his hand. “I can put on my own seatbelt.”

He pulled his hand back and rested an arm on the steering wheel as he watched her struggle with the clasp.