Nightbred: Lords of the Darkyn (16 page)

She looked up at him. “Someone else might find the jewels, and you’d miss the chance to rule Ireland. Isn’t that everything you want?”

“I know what I want tonight.” He caressed her cheek. “It is not Ireland.”

Her smile slipped. “I get it. You figured out that I didn’t tell you everything about Stryker.” She bumped her forehead into his shoulder three times. “Okay. He hired me to work at some of his parties. I didn’t have sex with anyone, at least, not . . .” She made a frustrated sound. “Look, everything I did, I did by myself, with people watching me. I’m not proud of it, but I was fifteen and alone and no one else would give me a job.”

“Was there no one to help you?” he asked. “Your family?”

“My family.” She made a bitter sound. “My father—the man I thought was my father—was a drunk and a beach bum. He didn’t like finding out I wasn’t his kid, so he left me and my mom. That drove my mother crazy, and she killed herself two years later. My grandparents blamed me for all of it and turned me over to the state. I don’t know who my biological father is, and everyone who knew his name is dead or won’t speak to me, so he’s out of the picture.” She made a dismissive gesture. “That pretty much covers my family.”

Now he understood so many things about her. “You cannot blame yourself for their actions.”

“Jamys, I’m the only reason my parents got married, my father left, my mother committed suicide, and my grandparents disowned me.” She blinked a few times. “I didn’t do it on purpose, but yeah, I destroyed my entire family.”

“Christian.”

“I’ve learned to live with it,” she assured him. “I didn’t ask to be born. I loved my dad and my mom. I tried to love my grandparents. I was a good kid—at least, I think I was—until I met Stryker.”

This was her secret shame? “Christian, you were a desperate child, alone in the world. You did what you had to in order to survive.”

She shook her head. “I was old enough to know better. I could have stayed in foster care after my mom died.” Her hand went to the cross hidden under her shirt.

“The cross you wear,” he said, startling her, “it belonged to your mother?”

She nodded. “She gave it to me the night before she killed herself. Took it off her neck and put it around mine, and said I’d have to carry it now. I thought she was just being crazy again.” She pulled the cross out from her shirt to look at it. “She never took it off, not even when she went swimming or showered. I don’t know why; she wasn’t religious.”

“Do you wear it to remember her?”

She shrugged. “I kept it to spite my grandmother; she wouldn’t let me take anything with me when she dumped me in foster care.” Her eyes met his. “I hate what my mom did, but I loved her, too. It’s all I have left of her. And it’s all I have to remind me not to be her.” She sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I know what it is to love someone you hate.” He thought of all the nights he had spent alone in his tower chambers and, before that, locked inside his silence. “I knew what my mother had done, and I didn’t tell my father. I let him think she had been tortured to death in Dublin.” He met her gaze. “It drove him mad, Christian. I let my father become an animal because I could not face what my mother had done to us. Because for all the horror she had brought upon us, I loved her still. So yes, I do understand.”

“I hope you still feel that way after we do this.” She climbed onto the deck and went below.

Jamys followed. “You know where Stryker is.”

“His operation is about a mile from here.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I need to shower and change, and then we’ll have to put together an outfit for you.”

Sensing she needed some time alone, Jamys went up on deck, and waited until she called his name.

As soon as Jamys entered the cabin, he saw a glittering dark column. It was Christian, standing with her back to him, her slender body wrapped in shimmering black ribbons. She had woven her hair into an intricate braid, and a spray of long, gold-tipped scarlet feathers hugged the right side of her head.

She turned, an altar goddess carved from jet and ivory, and the dusky allure of her darkened eyes dueled with the luscious red pout of her lips. Both won his soul.

“Say
something
.”

Speak? Jamys could barely think. He lifted his hand to touch an inch of silken skin bared by the bewitching material. Naked, in his bed, covered by nothing but moonlight and shadows, she would look like this. “Magic.”

“It’s the dress and the makeup.” Pleasure glowed briefly in her eyes before she turned away. “It should get us into the party.” She offered him a jacket made of gleaming black leather and too many zippers. “I found this in his trunk. It should fit.”

He didn’t want any other eyes on her but his. “Forget this Stryker. We can be in Paradise in an hour. Let me take you there.”

“I want to.” And she did, he could hear it in her voice. “I think if it was just you and me, I would. But we have to find these emeralds. Not for Tremayne, and not for the council. We’ve got to do it for the right reasons. To keep everyone safe.”

“Very well. We will talk to Stryker together. If what he knows leads us to the gems, we will decide then what to do with them.” He stepped closer. “But when this quest is finished, Christian, I am taking you away with me.”

“You don’t take a
tresora
away with you,” Chris said slowly. “I know, because I’ve memorized all the rules. You do something like that with a girlfriend, or a lover, or a
sygkenis
.”

“I am not your master, and you are not my servant,” Jamys said quietly. “We were friends, and we always will be, but now I want more. I want you as my woman, and my lover. I want to give you my heart, Christian. I want yours to be mine.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.” Her mouth tightened. “It’ll change everything between us.”

“Will it?” He touched her cheek. “We have slept in the same bed. We have kissed, and touched, and given pleasure to each other. Are we not lovers now?”

“Don’t play with me, Jamys,” she whispered. “This isn’t my job we’re talking about. I’ve only got one heart, and it’s already been broken a bunch of times.”

“I will never hurt you.” He folded her into his arms. “You can trust me.”

She trembled, her face hot against his neck, and then she nodded. “All right.”

* * *

Tall, wide gates protected the entrance to Sundown Estates, but as Jamys reached for the door handle to get out and open them, Christian retracted the window and pressed some numbers on a small keypad.

“I got the code from an old friend,” she said as the gate swung inward and she drove through to a small shack. “I might need your help with this guy.”

The uniformed guard had a gun on his belt and a clipboard in his hand, and bent over to give them an unfriendly look. “Help you, ma’am?”

“We’re here to have anonymous sex with a lot of people,” Christian told him. “Can you point us in the direction to the latest orgy?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you have the wrong place.” The guard straightened as Jamys got out of the car, and looked over the roof at him. “Sir, I have to ask you to get back in the vehicle.”

“Yes, of course.” He walked around the car. “I merely wish to change places with my lady friend. She is a terrible driver.” He held out his hand. “Enjoy the remainder of your evening.”

The guard hesitated before taking his hand. The moment he did he went still.

“You wish to tell me where Stryker is,” Jamys said.

“Seven-five-one Albatross Avenue.” The guard smiled at Christian. “Your lady sure is pretty.”

“She is beautiful,” Jamys corrected. “You want to return to your station and forget about this conversation.” So that Christian couldn’t hear, he added one last mental command.
When you see our car drive out of the complex, you will telephone the police and report to them Stryker and his activities here.

“Sure.” The guard wandered back into his shack.

Expensive cars had been packed into a vacant lot beside the mock-plantation home at the end of Albatross Avenue. A bored-looking man dressed in formal wear didn’t remove the white buds blocking his ear canals as he gestured at a spot by the curb.

Christian turned off the motor and looked at the draped windows of the house. “Did they have orgies back in the Dark Ages?”

“They have them in every age,” he assured her. “I have seen mortals engage in such acts, but I have never taken part myself. The Kyn prefer privacy.”

“One more reason to love you guys.” She got out of the car.

The man who answered the doorbell wore a black spandex bodysuit and a red-lined black cape, and flashed pointed canine veneers at Chris. “Welcome to the Dark Side. May I see your invitations?”

“We’re just here for the cookies.” Chris pushed past him.

When the doorman started after her, Jamys clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You wish to be silent, go home, and never again dress like this or work for Stryker.”

The man’s mouth clamped shut as he nodded and walked out.

Jamys joined Chris, who was looking around the room. The home’s furnishings were being used by several dozen mortals in various stages of dress and gathered in loose groups. A third were engaged in physical intercourse; the remainder were watching the couplings, drinking, talking, and laughing. Waiters, nude but for small black aprons tied around their waists, circulated with trays of champagne, liquor, appetizers, and baskets filled with small shiny packets. Nude females and males in the center of each group were in the process of climbing down from black-painted platforms.

“He’s over there.” Chris nodded to a well-dressed, indolent-looking male being attended to by a group of adoring young women.

He caught her arm. “I will speak to him.”

“I need to do this, for me. Please?” When he nodded, she squared her shoulders, gripped his hand, and started toward Stryker.

The man seemed wholly preoccupied with the girls competing to use their mouths on his genitals, but as soon as he glanced up at Chris, he smiled and began pushing their heads away.

“Patience, my darlings,” he chided when they began to plead with him. “It seems for me Christmas has come early this year. You are looking exquisite, Tian.”

Christian inspected the pouting faces around him. “You’re looking at about twenty years for statutory rape.”

“I’ll have to advise the district attorney. Perhaps I’ll wait until he’s finished sodomizing the circuit court judge over there.” Stryker’s eyes shifted, and he fastened the front of his trousers. “Who is your delicious-looking friend, and does he have an open mind?”

“Don’t even go there.” Christian eyed the girl closest to her. “Where did you get this bunch? The beaches, or the bus station?”

“These are courtesy of a local church.” He picked up a martini glass from a side table and sipped from it.

Jamys frowned. “You take these children from a place of worship?”

“No, dear boy. Every Saturday the church feeds the homeless in a park not far from here.” Stryker plucked the olive from his glass and fed it to one of the girls. “I find the selection often overwhelming.”

“Stryker likes to hire runaways,” Chris said, her voice flat. “He knows how desperate they are. The younger the better.”

The mortal raised his martini glass. “You told me you were twenty-one, my darling. How was I to know you were such an accomplished underage liar?”

Chris faced Jamys. “I was wrong. We need to get out of here before I jump across that table and yank his tonsils out through his nostrils.”

Jamys glanced back at the smirking mortal before he drew her out of Stryker’s hearing range. “I will not permit him to speak to you like this and live. But if I kill him, the information he has dies with him. I will have to get closer to him and use
l’attrait
to compel him to talk.”

“Then I’d have to spend the rest of the night spraying you down with Lysol.” She took a deep breath. “Look, I know the jerk, and I can handle him. Trust me.” She turned around and went back to the table. “Stryker, we’re here about the old journals you sold to Professor Charles Gifford.”

“Did I? Let me recall.” Stryker sat back and slowly fondled the girl beside him as he pretended to think. “You mean Father Bartley’s earnest but largely boring chronicles of life among the wild native islanders?”

“Yes. We want to know who sold them to you,” Chris said.

“A lovely, rather dangerous man who collects precious things,” Stryker said. “He had the oddest obsession with emeralds, and had amassed a collection of them that was simply breathtaking. I recall three in particular that he had in his safe. He claimed they were cursed and had to keep them locked up.”

Jamys exchanged a look with Chris. “When did you see this?”

“I can’t remember the exact date. Some years ago.” Stryker eyed Christian. “You know, I think it was just after you left me, my darling.”

“Give us his name and we will leave.”

“But you’ve only just arrived.” Stryker rose, displacing his adoring acolytes as he approached Chris. When Jamys stepped in front of her, he halted. “Your boy plays bodyguard. How charming.” He inspected Jamys from head to toe and back again. “How does he look without the clothes?”

“Sorry,” Chris told him. “You’ll just have to dream.”

Jamys’s attention strayed to two men in dark suits who had entered the house and were moving quickly in their direction. Both fit the description of the men who had pursued Christian from the blood bank in Miami. “
Tresori.
We should go.”

She followed the direction of his gaze. “Damn it.”

“Not to worry, my darlings.” Stryker made a deceptively lazy gesture, and four men converged on the pair, discreetly disarming them before escorting them over to Stryker.

“We are Interpol agents,” one of the
tresori
said with convincing authority. “This man and woman are wanted for murder. You will put them in our custody.”

Stryker smiled. “Dear man, Interpol agents do not personally arrest suspects. They investigate, they coordinate, and then they issue warrants and arrange for local authorities to do the dirty work for them. I suggest the next time you decide to impersonate a law enforcement agent that you first read up on their procedural methods.”