Indebted: The Premonition Series (7 page)

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I accuse him, running my hands over the solid muscles in his back.

“Yes,” he smiles, nuzzling my neck. “They’ll have to go through me if they ever hope to get to you and that is a very satisfying thought.”

“I’ll never be able to sleep with them here,” I mutter, thinking of all of the ways they could possibly come for Reed. There are so many of them; I can’t possibly protect him.

“Yes, you will. I will make sure you are sufficiently distracted so that there will be no time to dwell on them.” My mind immediately contemplates several effective distractions that I wouldn’t mind him employing. Reed’s eyes soften with affection. “Let’s go, I need to speak to Preben about your guards,” he says, pulling me forward again.

“Can you tell him I don’t need any guards? Those guys creep me out. They’re always looking at me like I’m the latest technology and they would like to take me apart to see how I work,” I say honestly, remembering how they acted toward me after the trial at Dominion’s chateau.

“They’ll get used to you,” he replies. “You’re very alluring. We may have to rotate them often so that they maintain objectivity.”

“What do you mean by that?” I ask in suspicion.

“You have a way of turning us to your favor. You wrap us around your little finger. It’s your special gift, but one that is not always an asset when it comes to your safety,” he replies.

“I would think that you would
want
them to listen to me,” I reply, picking some imaginary lint off of my sleeve with a pout.

“No, what I want is to protect you, and unfortunately, that means protecting you from yourself,” he says, watching me close.

“Protecting me from myself? That’s ridiculous! What am I going to do to me?” I ask rashly.

“Throw yourself in front of the enemy to protect everyone else,” he replies in an instant.

“I have more game than that,” I mumble, looking at him grudgingly. At Reed’s skeptical look, I drop the subject, walking away towards the pagoda. Reed’s arms snake around me, pulling me back to his chest.

“You are the most amazing eighteen-year-old I have ever encountered. You have the cognitive abilities of someone thousands of years old, but you have no thought for yourself. It is as if self-preservation is secondary,” he explains quickly.

“That’s not true at all, Reed. It’s just that I know what I cannot survive without so the risk of dying isn’t as grave as the risk of losing what I love,” I reply, turning in his arms to look at him.

“Then I will protect what you love so that you will survive,” he says and I know that he is thinking of Russell.

And I will protect you,
I tell myself, but I don’t say it out loud because he is always so adamant that he doesn’t need protection.

I want to argue with him about the bodyguards, but this isn’t the place to do that. We are out in the open where we can be overheard by just about everyone. Finally, I begin to relax a little as I weigh the benefits of having these angels around when Brennus arrives. “Evie, what are you thinking?” Reed asks.

“I was thinking that whoever you pick to guard me couldn’t be as sketchy as my last bodyguards. Although, I don’t really know if you can call them bodyguards because they were mostly there to prevent me from leaving. At least the angels won’t stink like Declan, Lachlan, Faolan and Eion,” I say, remembering the sweet, sticky scent of my Gancanagh entourage. Their smell was so potent to me before I was bitten that it burned my nose. The scary part was that, after I was bitten, their scent began to smell pleasant to me.
I wonder how they will smell to me when I see them again,
I think.

“Do you realize that this is the first you have spoken of your captivity with the Gancanagh since we’ve been here?” Reed asks in a gentle tone. He hugs me to him, pressing his lips against my temple when he sees the color drain from my face. He was careful not to say Brennus’ name, but I know what he meant.

“Really…huh?” I murmur, trying to act nonchalant, but I’m shaking so I’m probably not fooling him.

“Really,” he says, stroking my hair, making tears well up in my eyes. “You haven’t said any more about what you went through.”

“Well, I already told you what happened, so there is not a lot left to say,” I reply in a low tone because my throat feels tight, like someone is squeezing it.

“You didn’t tell me everything. You told me most of it, but there are details that you omitted…” he says, trailing off to see if I’ll say anything more about being Brennus’ favorite slave. “You gave me a general understanding of the events. You gave me the facts. You didn’t tell me the details or how you felt when certain things were happening to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” I reply, giving him a ghost of a smile, as my mind races with images of the piles of dead women stacked upon each other, waiting to be incinerated in the ornately carved fireplaces. “I don’t want to waste any of my time with you talking about him.”

“Why?” he asks me gently, “I want to know.”

“Well, I don’t want to tell you,” I reply, feeling hollow.

“Preben and the others are going to ask you questions about the Gancanagh,” he points out and I stiffen. “They will want to go over all of the facts again and they will want you to tell them everything—every conversation you had while you were there—every conversation that you overheard—how they operate—who is the second in command—who is next in line after him…”

“I can’t,” I whisper, feeling frozen and thinking of Finn. I never mentioned Brennus’ brother and second in command to anyone. Finn helped me when no one else would and I haven’t forgotten that.

“Why not?” he probes.

“I already told them everything they need to know,” I mumble, trying to avoid his eyes.

“Evie,” Reed says, making me look at him, “why can’t you talk to me about this?”

“What about Russell?” I say, not looking at him.

“We will have to tell them about Russell now,” he says. “He should be here soon so there will be no hiding him. But, that is not the reason you won’t talk about the Gancanagh to me.”

When I won’t look his way, he puts his fingers under my chin, turning my face towards him. He looks grave, like I’m hurting him by not talking to him about this. Pulling my chin from his hand I blurt out, “Because it’s disloyal.”

“Disloyal?” Reed repeats the word like he doesn’t know what it means.

“An act of betrayal,” I admit, biting my lip as I see confusion in his eyes.

“Whom will you be betraying?” he asks in a low tone.

I twist my hands. “The family…”

“They are not your family,” he counters.

“I know,” I reply lamely. “He thinks they are my family.”

“What do you think?” Reed asks, cocking his head to the side and reading every detail of my body language.

“I think I’m going to pay for my sedition when he gets me back,” I say the words like I can’t help myself, like I can’t keep them in even if I wanted to.

“Sedition?” he asks, “that means to rebel against a government…”

“Or a king,” I reply with a sad tone. “Brennus is the king.”

“Their king, but not yours,” Reed replies, “and he is not getting you back.”

“You’re right, he’s not getting me back,” I agree, swallowing my tears and squaring my shoulders, but my throat feels raw anyway, like I’ve been crying for hours.

I can see that Reed wants to interrogate me regarding all the secrets I’m still holding back from him. I want to tell him—need to—but I can’t. Guilt and shame won’t let me. He doesn’t know that a part of me, a very small part, loves Brennus and is grateful to him. Brennus destroyed Alfred for me. He had Alfred viciously torn apart like an animal on the floor of my prison. He made Alfred suffer—scream in agony, just like Alfred made my Uncle Jim scream in agony. I can still feel within me some of the darkness I felt after Brennus bit me, but I can’t tell Reed that either—too much honesty can be unkind.

“When you are ready to tell me everything that happened, I am ready to listen,” Reed says. “I know that he has gotten inside your head. He made you suffer, and then he gave you something very powerful. He avenged your Uncle Jim. That doesn’t excuse him for what he did to you—for torturing you.”

When I don’t speak Reed sighs and says, “We need to speak to Preben now. Are you up for it?”

I nod and take his hand, following him quietly into the central pagoda. We walk down a narrow hallway to a dining room that is equipped with several low, black wooden tables. Large mat-like cushions are arranged around the tables and several of the maps that Reed and Zephyr have been studying are draped over them, covering much of their long expanses. Zephyr is listening to Preben describe a few of the holdings in Houghton and Marquette owned by the Gancanagh. Preben has brought with him a few of his lieutenants, but the majority of the angels are not present.

Joining them at a table, I listen, discovering that Dominion uncovered some small apartments owned by several Gancanagh. The apartments are fronts so that the fellas could appear to be normal students attending the technical school. Their apartments didn’t lead to much. Dominion did manage to locate a cargo ship used to import the women that the Gancanagh fed upon.

Hearing this makes my stomach ache.
They have to be stopped, no matter what
, I tell myself, thinking of all the women they have harmed. Molly’s face enters my mind.
She’s one of them now. Will they kill her, too, along with the others?

“Can a Gancanagh be saved?” I ask abruptly, interrupting Preben’s intel.

Preben doesn’t look irritated by my interruption. He has been watching me since I entered the room, as if he is speaking to me instead of to Zephyr and Reed. He pauses, his silvery-blond eyebrows drawing together in question. “Do you mean, can they ever be restored to their previous state, before they were changed?” Preben asks. When I nod, he answers, “No.”

“What if they changed their behavior? Would that make them less objectionable?” I probe again, not looking at anyone in particular.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” Preben replies.

“I was just wondering, what if a Gancanagh chose not to feed on humans, but got her blood from a different source, animal blood or donated human blood—like from a blood bank or something?” I ask. “If she changed her nature, would you still hunt her?”

“Yes,” Preben replies without taking a breath.

I close my eyes. “Why?”

“Because they are evil,” Preben answers without hesitation.

My nose wrinkles. “I’m sketchy on the whole good evil thing, Preben. I thought that deeds are good or evil, but that beings have the ability to choose their own paths, so they have the ability to be good as well as evil,” I say, feeling hostile.

“There is inherent evil, Seraph,” Preben replies. “Evil by its very nature. They have no use for anything they can’t abuse. They destroy all that they touch.”

“That sounds very black and white to me, Power,” I reply. “It must be nice to have been created to the right ascendancy.”

“It is,” he states, “very nice, wouldn’t you agree? You are Seraphim and you have a soul. I would say your ascendancy is nearly absolute.”

“If I am so powerful, then why do I need bodyguards from Dominion?” I counter.

“Your existence has its drawbacks,” he replies and he has the audacity to smile at me. “You are at a serious disadvantage right now. You don’t possess our strength yet. You have no knowledge of Paradise except for human hearsay. You cannot speak our language. I can say anything I want to right in front of you and you won’t know if I’m ordering dinner or plotting your death. When you speak of evil, I can see that you don’t really know what you are talking about. Don’t get me wrong, I know you have seen evil deeds, murder, mayhem, but true evil like what dwells in Sheol? I don’t think so or you wouldn’t be debating the Gancanagh with me. You would be focusing on how we can eradicate them.”

“Did you just call me weak and ignorant?” I ask Preben in a calm voice, feeling a blush creeping into my cheeks.

“No, not weak and I would never call you ignorant. I called you young and half human with a pure heart. You came to us. Remember? You asked for our help,” he says.

“You had something I wanted,” I reply, looking at Reed.

“Yes, but something has changed. You were willing to tell us about the Gancanagh before, but now you ask if they can be saved,” he probes.

“They’ve taken a friend of mine—a human friend. They changed her. I want to know what can be done to save her,” I say, dropping my animosity in order to gain the information I need to save Molly.

“If your friend gave up her soul, we cannot save her,” he replies without even pausing, like she asked for what happened to her.

“No, she didn’t give up her soul, they took it. She was drugged by their touch, unable to make a fair decision,” I retort.

“Did you just say ‘fair?’” he asks, raising his eyebrows. “You don’t expect the Gancanagh to be fair, do you? They are evil killers who never do anything without it being entirely to their advantage. There is no fairness in them. I would have thought you would have learned that during your time with them. Did they ask you if you wanted to be Gancanagh?” he asks me pointedly. I look down, shaking my head. “No, they tried to force you into becoming one of them. The fact that you aren’t one of them speaks volumes for you—it is probably why you are alive now. No one could successfully argue that you are evil after seeing what you endured at their hands and still managed to hold on to your soul. Your friend was given a choice…”

“You mean she could have chosen death, that was her only other option,” I say quietly.

“Yes, but in death, she would have been given Paradise. We cannot understand why she would not choose it,” Preben replies.

“No, you can’t, can you?” I say in a bitter tone. “You have no idea what it is to be human—to doubt—to not have seen all that you have seen. It’s easy to judge us from your lofty heights, angel. It’s a little harder to see through the bolt hole.”

“Right, love, I think you should go see what Buns is up to,” Reed says, stepping in front of me quickly. “I will fill Preben in on what we know.” I look into Reed’s eyes to see concern in their green depths. He is worried about me. He wants to protect me from all of this, but that is impossible since I’m at the center of it.