Stay the Night (18 page)

Robin wanted to take her to bed, lie with her, and hold her until she awoke, but he had to strike a new bargain with the contessa. “Put her in my bedchamber,” he told Will as he stood. “And bolt the door.”

Chapter 9

R
obin didn't waste another moment on impossible schemes, but called the contact number the contessa had given him at the gallery. She greeted him as if the events of the night had never happened, and listened without comment as he related what Will had discovered.

“Nottingham will be landing in Italy in a few hours,” Robin said. “He is beyond my reach now. I cannot retrieve the manuscript for you.”

Salva made an amused sound. “But of course you can, my lord. I am not an unreasonable woman, and it is perhaps better that we finish this where it began. I shall allow you more time for your journey.”

“My journey.”

“You will travel to Rome at once,” she said smoothly. “Nottingham will think he has succeeded, so he should not be difficult for you to find. You and I will meet at my palazzo outside the city in forty-eight hours. You will deliver the manuscript to me, or I shall give the order for my men to execute all the hostages.”

Images of defiant men being forced to their knees in front of a hooded executioner filled Robin's head. “Permit me to contact the high lord. He has people—”

“You will tell no one, my lord,” Salva said, her voice sharp and cold. “Not if you wish your people to survive the night. When you journey to Rome, you will also take that mortal female, the FBI agent, with you.”

Why would she wish him to take Chris to Italy? “We need not involve humans in our business.”

“She is already involved,” she replied. “Permit her to escape you and all she will do is alert the authorities here or in Italy. No one is to know about the manuscript or Nottingham. You will take very good care to keep her at your side.”

“She will be a hindrance to me.” Robin looked at Will. “I shall leave her here with my seneschal. He will keep her sequestered until my return.”

“You do not think I shall act on my promises, my lord?” There was a pause, and then the contessa said, “Watch the screen on your phone.”

The video she sent began to play on the view screen. It showed two of the contessa's warriors holding a large, wounded black man between them, and a third Kyn beating him. Blood dripped from the human's nose and mouth as he reeled under the blows.

“I've seen enough,” Robin said. “Stop before you kill him.”

The contessa's beautiful face appeared. “I shall see you and your human lover in Rome in two days. Be sure you have the manuscript, my lord. If you do not, her partner dies, and you will revisit every one of the happy memories you have of the
jardin
war trials.”

The screen on the phone went blank.

“She would do not this thing unless she felt sure she could get away with it,” Will said slowly. “Once she has the manuscript, she will kill you and Agent Renshaw. Then she can blame your deaths on Nottingham, or make up any story she likes.”

Robin opened the weapons cabinet and took out his bow case. “Contact Jayr and Lucan, and tell them only that I am in Europe, and in my absence refugee Kyn have captured my stronghold. Ask them to send as many warriors as they can spare. Surround the keep, but do nothing for two days. If I do not call you by the end of the second, you must lead them in and save as many as you can.”

Will's pale eyes narrowed. “While you die alone in Rome.”

“I have lived more than seven lifetimes, old friend, and I am certain that death is ready for me. My task is to do whatever I must to protect Chris.” Robin put a hand on his seneschal's shoulder. “You helped me build the stronghold; no one knows it as well as you. That gives you an advantage over the contessa's men. Use it. Remember how we routed the king's men in Sherwood. I know you will prevail.”

“I shall earn your faith in me,” Will promised. “But that bitch will not get away with this. As soon as our people are secure, I shall call the high lord and make him aware of her treachery. Then I shall hunt her down and take her head.”

“You will be too busy for that.” Robin checked his bow and adjusted the protective pads around it. “If I am slain, you are to take my place as suzerain.”

He scoffed. “That is as likely as my assuming the throne of England.”

“I have already advised Cyprien,” Robin said as he closed the case. “He agreed with my choice. There will be no opposition.”

“You are not jesting.” Will's jaw sagged, and then he closed it with a snap. “My lord, if you have forgotten, my father was a smith and my mother a laundress. The only noble blood in my veins came from the mortal gentry I fed on whenever I could lure one of them into the woods. If not for you, I should have ended dangling from a rope at a cross-roads. Pledging myself to you, taking vows, fighting in the Holy Land, surviving death, being made Kyn—it surely saved me, but it did not make me another man. I was an outlaw. A thief.”

“So was I.” Robin handed him the case. “I am not dead yet, Will. There is still hope.” He heard the door to his bedchamber rattle. “It seems my special agent has awoken. Call the airport and have a plane standing by.”

 

Chris was looking for something she could use to pick the dead-bolt lock when Robin walked in.

“We are leaving now. We must go to Rome.”

He was a raving lunatic, or a real live vampire. Which made him a raving lunatic, because Chris would commit herself to a mental hospital before she believed the latter.

Right now she had to get as far away from him as she could. “We're going after Paul Sherwood?”

“Nottingham.” He said the name as if it were an incurable venereal disease. “I convinced the contessa to give us more time. We have two days to find him and retrieve the book before she executes the hostages.”

He sounded rational, and Chris hadn't tried reasoning with him. He might be in a better emotional state to listen to her now.

“What if the contessa doesn't actually have any hostages?” she asked carefully. “Maybe she only told you that because she knew you'd believe her. Sometimes if you spend a lot of time playing fantasy games, they can seem very real.”

He gave her an impatient look. “What must I do to convince you?”

“Robin, real crimes have been committed,” she assured him. “Someone stole the manuscript. You're incredibly strong, and fast, and you can somehow control people. I saw the cut on your neck heal in a few seconds. Or maybe you made me think I did; I don't know.”

“I cannot influence you,” he said very calmly. “If I could, you would not be wasting my time arguing with me.”

“Right.” She didn't want to piss him off again. “Whoever you are, whatever you're involved in with these other people, I can't be a part of it. I'm a federal agent. My job is to arrest you. I don't think I can, not by myself, but it's my duty to try—and to keep trying. I can't help you commit more crimes. I can't go to Rome with you.”

“I would leave you here if I could,” he said, walking toward her. He stopped when she backed away. In a harsher voice, he added, “The contessa will have your partner killed if you do not accompany me to Rome.”

“You're just saying that to make me come with you.” When he said nothing, she threw up her hands. “Hutch is probably downtown right now, wondering where the hell I am. Robin, I can't just disappear in the middle of an operation like this. When I don't report in, they're going to assume that I've been abducted or killed. If the news gets wind of it, which they usually do, my face will be all over the television.”

He took a mobile phone out of his pocket and tossed it on the bed. “I received a video from the contessa fifteen minutes ago. Watch it.”

Chris didn't want to pander to his delusions, but she reached for the phone, flipped it open, and replayed the video sent with the last call. Bile surged in her throat as she watched her partner being beaten, and then the recording of the contessa's final message.

“Be sure you have the manuscript, my lord. If you do not, her partner dies . . . .”

She closed the phone. “He has a wife and two kids. Does she know that?”

“She cares for nothing but the book,” he told her. “Chris—”

“It's all right.” She slowly placed the phone back on the bed. “I'll go with you.”

“We will see to it that Agent Hutchins is returned to his family,” Robin said. “You have my word.”

“I'll do whatever you want,” she said. “But when this is over and Ray is safe, I'll see to it that you and the contessa go to jail for the rest of your lives.”

He gave her an odd look. “You cannot imprison a prisoner, love.”

Robin escorted her downstairs, where Will was waiting with the car. He refused to let her use the car phone to call her parents or anyone else. Although Chris had no intention of endangering Hutch's life by doing something stupid, she thought she might try to somehow tip off the bureau as to their situation. There were important protocols that were followed whenever agents were taken hostage, and while there were no guarantees, Chris knew their best chance of survival was with the bureau's hostage negotiators handling the contessa.

Robin never let her out of his sight, however, holding her hand as they walked into the airport and putting his arm around her when they checked in at the gate. It wasn't until he whisked her onto the private jet that she realized she wasn't going to be able to pass a message to another passenger.

There
were
no other passengers.

“I don't have a passport,” she said, feeling a little desperate as he guided her down the aisle and to a pair of seats in the center of the jet. “They won't let me through customs without it.”

“We don't need passports, love.” As the jet taxied down the runway, he buckled her seat belt over her. “You look exhausted. You should try to sleep. We will need to move quickly once we reach Rome.”

Once the jet was airborne, a man dressed in a flight attendant's uniform came back, and Robin left her and went to speak with him for a few moments.

She stared through the window, watching the lights of Atlanta shrink, thousands of embers dying in the darkness. She was really doing this, really leaving the country with a man who thought he was a vampire. Or something like a vampire.

What did he call himself?
Vrykolakas
. Darkyn. She had never heard of an RPG by either name, but new ones were always coming onto the market. She wondered what her department chief would have to say when she finally filed her report. That full-grown adults could delude themselves into playing a real-life version of some game seemed far-fetched to her, and she was now being made to play her own part in it.

When Robin came and sat down beside her, she asked, “Do you own this plane, or did you charter it?”

“I own this and two others.”

If he had that much money, they probably didn't need passports, Chris thought, her heart sinking. “I need my purse and my badge, just in case we don't make it past customs.”

He put his hand over hers. “We will, love.”

Chris watched his fingers rest against the spaces between hers. She wanted to slap him; she wanted to hang onto him and never let go. Whoever he was—whatever he was—he made her feel too much. Somehow she had to get him out of her head and her heart before he took them over completely.

He can't make me do what he wants. Whatever he's using on other people, it doesn't work on me. If it did, I would do whatever he wants, just like them
. But if Rob couldn't affect her, then why couldn't she move her hand out from under his?

The male attendant returned with a tray of drinks. Robin took the glass of dark red wine from the tray and tried to hand her the one filled with amber soda.

Chris shook her head. “I don't want anything, thank you.”

“It is only ginger ale.” When she still wouldn't take it from him, he drank a sip, grimacing a little. “You see? No poison.”

Although she didn't want anything from him or his people, she
was
thirsty, and letting herself get dehydrated on top of everything else would be idiotic. Reluctantly she took the glass and drank. The cold soft drink felt good going down her dry throat, and gave her something to do besides avoiding his beautiful eyes. It wasn't until she'd finished the soda that she felt her eyelids grow heavy and her hands go numb.

She turned her head and saw him watching her.

He took the glass from her limp grip. “Sweet dreams, my lady.”

 

Alex finished the last of the sutures and sponged the blood from what had been a gaping abdominal wound riddled with copper fragments. She waited to see the edges begin to pull together—too slowly, but better than not at all—before she draped the Kyn warrior's lower body.

“Before you take him into recovery, swap out that unit of blood for plasma,” she told Geoffrey's stable master, whom she had drafted yesterday to assist her in surgery. “And I want him kept on plasma drip only for the next forty-eight hours.”

The big man frowned. “My lady, he needs blood.”

“Oh, he had blood. Someone”—she gave him a pointed look—“already gave him four units of it this morning without checking his chart or asking me.”

“ 'Twas to make him stronger for the surgery,” he insisted.

“Well, it didn't, not with all the crap lodged in the wound. It just saturated his tissues, diluted the toxins, spread them around, made him weaker, and made my job a lot harder.” Alex pulled down her mask. “He's pumped full of euphoriant now, so he won't need another tranq shot.”