Let the Night Begin (20 page)

They also saw Dashbrooke in his bed, bandaged and bruised and looking as foul-tempered as a whore trying to work a poorhouse. It gave Olivia more pleasure than it ought to see Dashbrooke that way, knowing that she had caused it.

She stole one more glimpse of James through that downstairs window before they departed. He was still there with his friends, acting as though he hadn't a care in the world, looking like a boy his age should.

He never looked that happy when he was with her.

Olivia and Reign flew back to Edinburgh in silence and entered the town house the same way they left. When they entered the study, however, they were surprised to discover that Watson and Clarke had company.

Reggie Dashbrooke—the one boy they hadn't seen while in Haddington—looking much older than his years, his reddish hair mussed and his eyes tired, rose from the sofa as they entered. The sight of him brought a low growl to Olivia's throat. She advanced toward the boy, but Reign stopped her with a gentle hand. She shook off the restraint, but she didn't move.

Reggie's gaze was locked on her, and there was no fear in it, even though she detected a faint whiff of the emotion on his skin, heard the racing of his
heart that tugged at her fangs and tempted the demon inside her.

“Don't kill me,” he said softly, but firmly. “I'm on your side.”

 

“Why in the hell should we trust you?” Reign asked the younger Dashbrooke as he shoved a glass of bourbon into the boy's hand.

Reggie took a deep swallow of the liquor. So far the young one had held his composure, a fact that earned him a degree of Reign's respect. The boy knew he had no friends in that room, and yet there he was.

“I have no way to prove myself to you except by the sheer fact that I am here.”

Across the room—Reign had thought it wise to put as much distance as possible between Reggie and his wife—Olivia snorted. “Your father could have sent you.”

The young man didn't try to deny it. “True, but he didn't. In fact, I think he'd kill me if he knew I came to you.”

Reign's brow puckered at Reggie's choice of words. They didn't sound like youthful exaggeration at all. In fact, young Mr. Dashbrooke sounded painfully honest.

“Why are you here, Mr. Dashbrooke?” Reign asked, leaning his hip against the edge of his desk.

Reggie chuckled bitterly. “An attack of conscience? Or a moment of weakness, as my
father would put it. I've come to offer myself as leverage.”

“Leverage?” Clarke frowned. “You want to align yourself with us as a bargaining tool against your father?”

The young man shook his head, his blue gaze never leaving Reign's. For some reason, he had made Reign his focal point in all of this. It was as though he thought Reign the most likely to be sympathetic, which was so absurd Reign might have laughed if the foolish little bastard didn't appeal to some softer side of his nature.

“My father won't exchange James for me. He'll say he will, but he won't.”

The resignation in the boy's tone irritated a rawness deep inside Reign. A rawness that had no business still existing after hundreds of years. “You have a very low opinion of your father.”

“He has a very low opinion of me,” Reggie countered with a shrug. “But that doesn't matter, he'll place what the Order wants above his son, and it won't be a difficult choice for him.” He glanced at Olivia. “Not like I imagine it was for you.”

Olivia paled at his choice of words and Reign was annoyed with Reggie for being so crass. At least Olivia knew that Dashbrooke wouldn't be quick to kill James, not while the boy was still useful.

“What do you know of the Order, Reggie?” he asked.

“The Order of the Silver Palm. They're like the Friends of the Glorious Unseen, only worse. They don't want to merely venerate vampires. They have agendas and they see vampires as a way to achieve those goals.”

Clarke scoffed. “Idiots. Do they really think they stand a chance against a vampire as old as Reign?”

Reggie stared at him for a moment, looking the older of the two, before returning his attention to Reign. “I've heard Father discussing one called Temple with his friends. The Order claims to have captured him.”

Icy heat blossomed in the pit of Reign's stomach, rushing outward to his extremities.
Temple captured?
It was impossible. Temple was the best of them all, the strongest and the fastest, certainly the fiercest. How could mere men ever take him?

Reign couldn't even conceive it. But after this was over, he would look into it, and find his old friend just to be sure. In the meantime, he had to listen to the same advice he had given Olivia earlier and keep his mind focused on the here and now.

“If your father won't bargain, what good are you to us?”

Reggie easily accepted the change of subject. “Because the lads will want to make the exchange, and when my father refuses, they'll begin to realize what he has planned, and maybe they'll forgive me for ever going along with him.”

Olivia sat down beside him and patted the boy on the shoulder. Such a mother hen. “What does your father have planned, Reggie?”

“George, Fitz, and James, they think you'll make them vampires. My father has convinced them that we'll all become immortal, but he wants the two of you as his prisoners. The Order wants you. I don't know why, but I know that my friends are expendable to my father, and even if they do manage to become vampires, he's going to do to them the same as he does to you.”

“How do you know we don't deserve whatever the Order has in mind?” Reign asked. “What makes you so sure betraying your father is the right thing to do?”

Reggie didn't look at him, he was gazing at Olivia with adoringly large blue eyes. And she was staring back at him with a mixture of surprise and anger. “I've always thought that James was fortunate to have you. He can be an arse sometimes, but he's always been good to me—and that's because of how you raised him. Vampire or not, I'd rather have your respect than my father's any day.” He turned his gaze to Reign. “Both of you.”

Damn if Reign didn't feel for the boy. He knew what it was like to yearn for a father's respect and never quite achieve it.

But Reggie wasn't acting merely out of spite, Reign believed that the boy was truly doing what he believed to be the right thing.

“I don't want to see my friends get hurt,” Reggie added. “They've given him blind trust and he's going to repay them with deceit.”

Reign glanced at Olivia, who answered with a look that told him the boy had succeeded in winning her over, if only a little. He could also tell that she was thinking about her nephew and wondering just what Dashbrooke had promised James, what lies he had told to win the boy over. He had to admit, it was good to think of the boy as a victim—even a stupid one—rather than the enemy.

“What do you hope to get in return for aiding us, Reggie? Surely your father will never understand your betrayal.” Or maybe he would. God knew Reign understood why Olivia had set out to do him as she had.

“No,” the boy agreed, “he won't. But at least I can live the rest of my life knowing that I'm nothing like him.”

Fair enough.

Reign smiled grimly. “Then Reggie, my boy, consider yourself our prisoner.”

T
hey sent the “ransom” note to George Haversham at Reggie's suggestion. It was necessary to send it to one of the younger men so that the others would find out as well.

“My father won't tell them,” he'd explained to Olivia and Reign. “I don't want them to think I've abandoned them and fall deeper under Father's sway.”

Olivia found it sad, the way Reggie accepted his insignificance in his father's life.

“Perhaps you're wrong about him,” she suggested. They were sitting at a small table in the front parlor just before dawn. “He planned to bring you into the Order, didn't he?” And she had seen the ring.

Reggie looked at her with a slow blink, as though he couldn't quite believe his ears. Olivia couldn't quite believe she had actually tried to make Dashbrooke sympathetic either.

“Only if I prove myself,” he replied. “Which I haven't. And do you really believe I could be wrong
about a man who could have a priest killed without an ounce of regret?”

“You know about the priest?” Perhaps Reggie wasn't as innocent in all of this as she thought.

The boy looked away. “I overheard one of his friends inform him about it. He shrugged and said that sometimes loss of human life was necessary to benefit the greater good.”

“Lovely piece of work, your father,” Reign remarked from where he sat across the room. He and Olivia were sitting with Reggie for a few hours while Watson and Clarke slept.

Reggie actually smiled, although slightly. “Did you like your father?”

Olivia watched Reign closely. His only reaction to the question had been a slight tightening of his lips. She waited for his response as eagerly, if not more so, than Reggie.

“My father was a prick,” Reign answered, his tone brisk with conviction. “The only thing I ever did that came close to pleasing him was become a vampire.”

Reggie straightened, grasping the chance to talk to someone who understood. “You told him?”

Reign shrugged, a movement that spoke volumes to Olivia. After six hundred years, it bothered him to speak of his father. That was too much power for a dead man to have.

“I felt it was the right thing to do. If he couldn't respect me, maybe he might fear me instead.”

She'd hug him if Reggie wasn't there. Her poor Reign.

“Was he afraid of you?” Reggie's questions weren't insistent or callous, but held a bittersweet curiosity that obviously loosened Reign's tongue.

“No.”

The two men, one impossibly ancient, the other heartbreakingly young, shared a smile.

“Your father sounds like mine,” Reggie remarked, taking a sip of the tea Olivia had brewed for him.

“They had much in common,” Reign informed him. “They belonged to the same Order.” He watched the boy carefully as he spoke.

Olivia turned her attention in the same direction, waiting for Reggie's reaction. Blue eyes widened as his smooth, boyish jaw gaped. “Your father belonged to the Silver Palm?”

Reign nodded, his lips taking a faint, sardonic curve. “Ironic, isn't it?”

Disbelief rang in the young man's laughter. It wasn't a malicious sound, and Olivia found herself smiling at it. “A little, yes. Did your father ever talk about bringing you into the Order?”

Reign shook his head. “No.” He didn't have to say anything else for Olivia to know that he believed his father was too embarrassed of him to suggest it.

“You're right,” Reggie said. “Your father was a prick.”

The three of them shared a chuckle before the conversation turned dark once more.

“Is that why they want you?” Reggie asked. “Because your father was part of the Order?”

“I don't think so.” Reign lifted a glass of bourbon from the low table beside his chair and took a long swallow. “Their interest isn't limited to me if what you say about Temple is true.”

Reggie's gaze narrowed shrewdly. “He's a friend of yours?”

“He was.” The now empty glass thudded gently on the tabletop. “Now he's more like family.”

“If you're so close, how come you don't know what's happened to him?”

“I said that he was family, not that we were close.”

The men shared another grin and Olivia shook her head in mock disgust. “Ugh. If the two of you continue on like this much longer you're going to need matching outfits.”

Reggie blushed, but Reign shot her an amused glance. He didn't mind her poking fun at him, but then he never had seemed to take himself as seriously as other men she'd known. She supposed six centuries could give a man a good sense of self-awareness.

She smiled at him.
I love you
. The words sprang to her tongue, but she managed to keep them silent, their echo ringing only in her head. That was not something she wanted young Reggie to witness.

Interest flickered in Reign's gray eyes. He had seen the change in her expression but didn't know what it meant. Thank God.

Reggie checked his watch. “It's almost dawn. Shouldn't the two of you…I don't know, hide for the day?”

Olivia plucked a biscuit from the plate in the center of the table. Reggie hadn't touched them and it would be a sin to let them go to waste. “We're fine.” She didn't mention that as long as the sunlight didn't touch them they were safe. Reggie might be on their side against his father, but that didn't mean she trusted him with her life.

“Do you want to sleep?” Reign asked him. “I can show you to a guest room.”

The young man shook his head, his coppery hair falling over his pale brow. “No, thank you. I want to be awake when my father sends his reply.”

Olivia understood, and apparently so did Reign, though he didn't give voice to his opinion. Instead, he engaged Reggie in small talk, keeping him occupied until finally, just a few minutes after Clarke joined them, a knock sounded at the door.

Thankfully, neither Reign nor Olivia had to brave the breaking dawn to answer it.

“It's from Dashbrooke,” Clarke informed them, handing the envelope to Reign as he rejoined them. In his anticipation he forgot to glare at her, a fact Olivia wasn't about to point out to him.

Poor Reggie sat up so straight he was poised on the edge of his chair. “What does it say?”

The seal of the letter tore as Reign whipped his finger through it. He withdrew a small piece of stationery that he opened and read aloud. “My dear Mr. and Mrs. Gavin, you win. I will do whatever you wish provided you return my dear son to me safe and unharmed. Bring him to me this evening and I will hand Mr. Burnley over into your custody. Sincerely, William Dashbrooke, Esquire.”

Anger made Reggie's face even more pale and his cheeks flushed. He turned to Olivia, his expression stiff as he tried hard to hide his pain. “It's a trap.”

Olivia nodded, her heart breaking for him. “I know.”

“Because he called me his ‘dear son'?”

Reaching across the table, she covered his tightly clenched fist with her hand and gave him a soft pat. “Because he said he'd give us James in return.” Dashbrooke wasn't stupid enough to hand over the one person keeping him alive.

“What are you going to do?” For the first time since coming to them, real fear—real uncertainty—shone in his eyes. It made him look younger than he was.

“We're going to give your father what he wants,” Reign informed him as he stood.

“Me?”

“No, you silly boy.” He flashed Reggie a roguish smile. “Us. Now go the hell to bed. You need your rest for tonight. Clarke, show Reggie upstairs will you? Give him the room at the end of the hall.”

Olivia could practically taste Reggie's relief. What had he thought they'd do to him, eat him? Still, it was obvious that Reign wasn't taking any chances either. He was putting Reggie far enough away from them that they'd hear him coming if he tried to attack them, but close enough that they'd hear if he tried to sneak out.

Reggie bid them a good morning and followed after Clarke. Olivia waited until they were both gone before turning to Reign.

“Do you think it's wise, doing what Dashbrooke asks?” She was thinking not only of James's safety, but Reign's and Reggie's as well.

He crossed the room to her, took her hand and pulled her to her feet so that he could slip his arm around her shoulders. “I think letting Dashbrooke think he's in control is the best way to throw the bastard off his guard.”

She leaned into him as they walked toward the door. “We can't let him hurt any of those boys.”

His arm, strong and warm slid around her. “I think you'd better worry about what those boys will do to Dashbrooke once they figure out that he meant to double cross them. Young Haversham's not going to like being denied his immortality.”

“It's not his immortality I'm worried about,”
Olivia responded as they started up the stairs toward their room. “It's yours. Mine too.”

Reign squeezed her shoulders. “Dashbrooke's no match for you or me. Don't you worry.”

But Olivia was worried, and she could tell from the tenseness around his mouth that Reign was as well. Did he doubt her?

“You trust me, don't you?” she asked, stopping in the middle of the stairs so she could twist her body to look up at him. “You don't think I'm going to betray you, do you?”

He smiled tenderly at her. “No. I trust you. You haven't let me down yet, have you? Now, come. You need to rest.”

Olivia allowed him to guide her the rest of the way up the stairs in silence. After all she had done, he didn't think she had let him down? Good lord, what would she have to do to actually disappoint him? Whatever it was, she hoped she never did it.

Especially not tonight.

 

Many hours later, after a long nap and dinner, Olivia walked into Reign's bedroom—or rather
their
bedroom—to talk to her husband before the assault on Dashbrooke's house to find the room shrouded in darkness, save for a single candle on the bedside table.

And Reign lying naked on the bed, his beautiful body, more than six feet of glorious shadows and light.

“You're a little underdressed,” she joked, her mouth dry at the sight of him.

He sat up in one swift motion, swinging his long legs over the side of the bed. He stood, and walked toward her, not the least bit self-conscious of his nudity, but with the determined stride of a man well aware of how little he was wearing—and just what he intended to do about it.

Who was she to fight him? “Do we have time?” They had to leave soon, didn't they?

“We're going to make time,” he informed her, pulling her into the warm circle of his arms. One hand pressed against her back as the other tilted her head to the side.

Olivia heard what he left unsaid. They were about to walk into a volatile and decidedly dangerous situation. There would be nothing left undone or unsaid between them before they went—just in case.

Reign kissed her neck, the warm hollow of her throat where her pulse fluttered helplessly. His teeth grazed her skin, sending a shiver down her spine. She wasn't going to think about what might happen that night. There were too many awful things—too many wonderful things—that could transpire that there was no use in entertaining any of them.

There was nothing she needed to think about other than the man with her now.

Her hands caressed the smooth flesh of his back
and shoulders, feeling the satiny swells and contours of his muscles beneath her fingers. The only thing that marred the perfection that was Reign was a scar on his right shoulder. She had seen it the first night they had spent together—a cross branded into his back. He had told her some story as to how he came to have it, now she knew that had to be a lie.

“Where did this come from?”

He raised his head only enough to speak, his breath a gentle whisper against her throat. “Zealots who thought they could drive the devil out of me.”

“Thank God they didn't succeed,” Olivia murmured as his fangs nipped at her, flooding her with heat and buckling her knees.

He chuckled, tormenting her sensitive flesh once more. “You are so damn perfect.”

The words struck her and for one brief moment Olivia feared she might cry, but then his fangs pierced her neck and she shuddered with pleasure, clinging to his shoulders like a vine latched onto a wall.

He drank briefly—enough to have her throbbing in places she didn't know she could throb. Enough that she was dizzy with longing and sensual pleasure, and eager to touch him, taste him.

When his tongue had closed the punctures in her skin, and her legs had regained some of their strength, Olivia sank to her knees on the carpet,
trailing her hands down Reign's back and buttocks. His hips were level with her face as she caressed the hair-dusted, ropey expanse of his abdomen. She opened her mouth and ran the flat of her tongue over the silky head of his erection.

“Jesus.” His hands cupped her head—not pushing, but holding her so she couldn't move just yet. She didn't want to move.

She licked him, kissed him, opened her mouth and took him inside, savoring the feel, the musky salt of his skin. His fingers tightened, digging into her skull as she laved him with her tongue, caressed him with her lips. Her hands clutched at his flanks, as she engulfed the heavy length of him.

Reign's low groans and sighs were the only sound in the room and Olivia responded to them on so many levels. Her body thrummed with sexual power, delighting in knowing she could make him shiver. Her heart swelled with gratefulness that she had been given the gift of his body, ached with love for him.

Tension built in his thighs. She could feel him tremble with it. His hips moved, thrusting as he held her still. Olivia gazed up at him, met the silvered brightness of his gaze as release struck him. He tossed back his head, a deep moan tearing from his throat. She clung to him, unwilling to let him go until the last tremor shook him.