Love Beyond Loyalty (19 page)

"Hi, this is Loraine. Are you looking for Gabriel?" She assumed he was. She spoke, after all, on his phone. But it was one of those awkward situations where she just wasn't sure what to say.

"Well, Gabriel, yes, but they also gave me your name."

They gave her his name
?
Who
? She opened her mouth to ask, but he continued speaking.

"I'm afraid there is a bit of a situation. I'm supposed to tell you to go to Sebastian's house. Your friends are there. You understand? He has them. The bad man, whatever he is. I couldn't tell from where I was hidden. He had her chained in the basement, and I'm not certain what happened to the two men."

He spoke very fast, and his accent got in the way just about every other word but she could understand the gist of what he said. Somehow, this man, who still hadn't told her his name reported on the others who were trapped with the demon.

"What is your name?"

"I'm sorry. My name is Dr. Christophe Roux."

"Okay, Christophe." Her head hurt. She jumped out of the bed, unconcerned with her nakedness and made haste to the kitchen. "I'm confused. Can you explain to me…"

He interrupted her. "I'm afraid I can't. Look, I need to go. It's complicated. Please, your friends are in trouble. I would help but I don't know how. I'm… different."

Loraine sighed. "We're all
different
." But Dr. Christopher Roux had already hung up.

She ran into the kitchen. Gabriel stood over the stove. He looked like he was cooking pasta.

He turned as she entered. "Well, hello, naked gloriousness." His grin would have undone her if she hadn't been so worked up.

"That was someone named Christophe. He had your number. He said maybe Isabelle, Leonardo, and Kal are in trouble, if I understood him correctly, that they're locked in a basement. He claimed we had to go to Sebastian's house."

Gabriel turned off the burners. She felt panicked, but he looked remarkably calm. "Give me the phone, please."

She handed it to him, noting that her hand shook. Anything to do with the demon made her as anxious as anything. When she'd been in her wolf form, she hadn't been afraid. Stuck as a human, however, she'd been terrified so badly she hadn't been able to move even her legs to run away from him. And then he'd hit her with that heat. The scorching, blood boiling pain…

"Snap out of it. He's not going to hurt you."

Gabriel's voice in her head made her smile. At the moment, at least, she was safe. Just then she became acutely aware of her nakedness. Her cheeks got hot as she ran to the bedroom to reclaim her clothes from where they'd taken up residence on the floor.

She covered herself up one piece at a time. First, her underpants followed immediately by her pants and then finally her shirt. She'd just gotten the last button done when Gabriel stalked into the room.

He grabbed his boxers and threw them on. "I'd hoped we'd have time to shower together. However, it looks like we're needed to perform a miracle."

"So, you think it's legit."

"I can't reach Leonardo or Kal." He paused as he pulled his shirt over his head. "No one is picking up at the number where the person calling himself Christophe phoned from. I think we've got no choice but to check this out."

Loraine felt two very conflicting ways about what he just said. First off, she was happy that he thought enough of her to have included her in whatever plans he made. On the other hand, if he'd pulled one of his 'you will not come, you will not be put in danger' moments, she
might
not have objected.

God, she was such a scaredy-cat.

Gabriel slipped on his shoes, and she did the same. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her onto his lap. She rested on his legs, and he kissed her cheeks, one and then the other.

"There's nothing wrong with being afraid of a demon."

She laughed, closing her eyes and letting herself breathe in Gabriel's spicy, male scent. "Am I that obvious?"

"To me. Listen, I don't want you anywhere near this anymore than you want to be, but it's clear I can't do this alone."

Opening her eyes, she hugged him tightly. "I don't want you to do this alone. I'm your partner, remember?"

"I know that, which is why I'm bringing you with me even though it's killing me to do so. But here's the thing, I think if you weren't afraid then you wouldn't be as smart as you are. Only someone really, really dumb could have gone through what you went through on the street with Sebastian and not be terrified to go back. As for me, I guess I'm just what Leonardo would call a warrior, a
dumb
warrior."

"You're built for it." She kissed his soft lips. "And, you're not
dumb
. I don't like that word, and I especially don't like hearing it in relation to you."

His grin made her heart leap. "All right, look, I'm going to try to keep you the fuck away from him. The first signs of things going badly, I want you to become a bird and fly away."

"I'm not going to abandon you. I don't care how frightened I am."

Anger at the thought surged through her blood. The very idea that he thought she would leave him made her want to smack him over the head with a pillow.

"Either you leave or I'll send you away like I did earlier in the parking lot."

She narrowed her eyes. "That's playing dirty, Gabriel."

"Where your life is concerned, I don't fool around."

Standing, she moved off his lap to cross the room. "And how do you think I would feel if something happened to you? You think I'd just be fine to move on?"

"I land on my feet, Loraine. One way or the other, I will get to you, eventually."

She shook her head. "Not good enough."

"It's going to have to be." He stood and extended his hand. "Come on, I guess I'm going to get to show you where I lived as a teenager."

She took his hand, and he pulled her against him before picking her up into his arms. Carrying her outside, he took two running steps, which jolted her around a little bit, before taking off into the sky.

"Do you ever worry about getting spotted doing this?" she shouted to be heard over the wind in her ears.

"No. I never have been. People only see what they want to see, and Leonardo tells me that most of what we do seems to be protected by the magic that we do it with."

"In other words, I could shift into a wolf on a crowded street and no one would notice."

He was silent for a moment, and she wondered if he'd heard her. "They might not notice the shift; they would probably notice the wolf running around."

That made an odd sort of sense. She still needed to adjust her thinking to the idea that she was involved in magic of any sort. Maybe she'd been engaging in a lot of cognitive dissonance, but she'd never considered her ability to speak to animals to be anything other than odd. Everything about her life had to shift in her mind if she was going to make order out of any of this.

She had so many questions. Which ones to ask? "How did Sebastian make those people do what he wanted in the parking lot?"

"I don't know. Truth is, even though I've spoken to Leonardo every day since I last saw them, I asked him very little about the Outsiders. I was a little consumed with spying on Sebastian and trying to convince Alexa to leave him."

"She was your priority. You're loyal to her."

The wind made Gabriel's hair fly all over the place. Her own hair flapped in the wind and occasionally hit her in the face. She suspected she didn't look as cool as Gabriel did, and if anyone could see them, they probably saw a blur of orange flying here, there, and everywhere. Fortunately, it was night.

"I am loyal to her. Having said that, I think it might be time to ask her to choose."

"You or Sebastian?"

He squeezed her arm. "Yes."

She hated to ask him what she knew she needed to say. "And if she chooses him?"

"Then I've lost a friend I've had since birth and…" His voice tapered off.

"And what?"

"God help us all, because as powerful as Leonardo is, Alexa puts him to shame."

With those words still ringing in her ears, they landed on the ground with ease. She'd flown with Gabriel a few times now, and each time she was amazed by the ease with which he did it. Asking him how he did it would be fruitless; she couldn't explain to him how she became an animal. She just
did
it.

Loraine stared up at the house they landed in front of. It looked kind of normal. The street was beautiful, but then she found all the architecture she looked at in New Orleans to be stunning. Gabriel had called it 'Uptown', which meant they weren't in the French Quarter but in the part of the city near the universities that displayed traditional old southern wealth.

Up and down the street, the houses had wrap-around porches and lit lanterns reminiscent of a time long since passed. In the distance, she heard the sound of a streetcar rumbling a few blocks away.

"This is where you lived?"

He nodded. "It is."

She looked left and right before whispering. "Should we be keeping our voices down?"

"No. Unless he's hugely distracted, Sebastian knows we're here."

"Are you going to ring the bell?"

"It's my house. I'm going to walk through the front door."

She gulped but followed in his footsteps as he walked forward.

"When we get inside I want you to go immediately to the room that is all the way at the end of the hallway on the left."

She tried to compute what he said. Directions weren't her strong suit, but she thought she could handle that much.

Down the hall, to the left
.

"What am I looking for in that room?"

"The books that we came here to get." Gabriel had his hand on the door handle. "If I'm not with you when you collect them, run out of the house."

"We discussed this. I'm not leaving you in there."

"Honey, we need those books. This entire thing will be in vain if we have to get out of New Orleans without them."

"I'll get the books out of the house. I'm not promising to not come back in after you."

Loraine suspected he gritted his teeth due to the way she could see his jaw muscles clenching. "Fine. You are being so stubborn."

She grinned despite the terror she felt forming in her stomach. If they got through this, she might never eat again.

"You'll get used to it."

Gabriel swung the door open. She followed close on his heels and entered the house.

The front hall opened up to the living room. A large room with fine looking furniture, all Loraine could see was Sebastian lounging on an ottoman. He glanced up and smiled at them as they came into the house.

"I knew you'd come, Gabriel. I knew you wouldn't be able to stay away."

Gabriel shrugged. "Well, you know me, Sebastian. I love to live up to expectations."

Without another word, Gabriel raised his hand and threw Sebastian into the air until he fell back breaking the window. Loraine heard a scream that could best be called blood curdling.

One second later, Gabriel swung around and turned her body to the left with his hands. "Go, Loraine, go."

She ran, still not sure where she was going but trying to keep Gabriel's instructions in her mind.

Get to the office. Get the books. Get the books out of the house.

A roar sounded the air behind her, and she knew Sebastian was back in the house. From the rage she heard, she guessed this time Gabriel hadn't lived up to Sebastian's expectations and had managed to hurt the demon.

The least she could do was to do the same. She'd get the books but she wasn't going anywhere without him whether he liked it or not.

Chapter Fifteen

"Is he conscious?"

Isabelle looked up and sighed more than spoke her response. No, Kal wasn't even a little bit conscious. He'd been out cold since the demon had dragged him down the stairs and strung him up by his wrists from the ceiling. Moments later, he'd done the same to a then knocked out Leonardo.

Both men were blindfolded. Isabelle could honestly say that with the exception of two other times—once when she'd witnessed her parents' murder while she'd been stuck in a time bubble, and once when Sebastian had kidnapped Kal—she'd never been so terrified in her life. Kal hung from his restraints like a slab of meat in a cold locker.

"What did he do to you guys?"

Leonardo groaned. "He hit us with some sort of surge. Really knocked me for a loop."

She laughed even though she didn't find it funny. Leonardo occasionally had a way of stating the obvious that tickled her funny bone. Now she laughed because she didn't know what else to do. "Obviously."

"Can you tell me where we are?"

"In the basement."

Leonardo was silent for a second. "Is it some kind of dungeon?"

"No, it's just a basement. There's a couch in the corner, a television and a whole bunch of torture devices. Probably the standard fare for your average demon in the new millennium."

"Isabelle," Leonardo sounded tired when he spoke. "You're pretty terrified aren't you? This level of sarcasm is not you, it's Kal."

"Don't lecture me Leonardo. I can be sarcastic if I want to be."

"All right, I'm just not going to talk to you right now."

Always true to his word, Leonardo stayed silent hanging from the ceiling. The longer he did it, the more she wanted to cry. It was all so incredibly frustrating. She couldn't reach Kal, not even telepathically, which meant he was really, really out of it. That scared her probably more than it should have.

"Okay, I apologize." She sighed and waited for his response. "Oh, you're going to ignore me now?" The tears that threatened to spill finally toppled out of her eyes. They weren't just quiet, dainty tears. No, big, fat, tears tore through her body until she shook from the impact of her sobs.

"Hell, Isabelle, get a grip."

She gasped for air in between cries. "Now you've decided to speak to me?"