Twice Bitten (31 page)

“We’ll need to find a new physical challenge for you in order to ensure that your training is sufficient to allow you to progress.”

Okay, maybe he really did want to talk about training. “Okay.”

“This is also a good time for us to keep communications open with Gabriel. If the Packs aren’t leaving, that means they’re here. We should think about rules of engagement in case any more of them aren’t happy with that decision.”

“That seems appropriate.”

He finally looked at me, his eyes clouded. “Enough of the game, Merit. Enough with ‘Yes, Liege’ and ‘No, Liege.’ Quit rubber-stamping everything I say. You were more valuable when you were arguing with me.”

For once, I hadn’t been playing at acquiescence; I really did think it was appropriate. But his tone begged a response, and I was finally fed up with his back-and-forth.

“I was more ‘valuable’? I’m not an antique. Nor am I a toy or a weapon for you to manipulate.”

“I’m not playing with you, Sentinel.”

I lifted my eyebrows. I was only Sentinel when he was pissed. “And I’m not playing with you, Sullivan.”

We glared at each other for a moment, the room thick with unspoken words—the conversations we’d been avoiding.

“Watch it.”

“No,” I said, and his eyes widened. Ethan Sullivan, I imagined, wasn’t used to his employees disobeying him.

“The only thing you ever want from me,” I told him, “is for me to be something I’m not. If I argue, you complain I’m not being obedient. If I’m polite, you complain I’m rubber-stamping what you say. I can’t keep playing this game with you, this constant back-and-forth.”

“You know it’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple, Ethan. Take me as I am or let me go.”

He shook his head. “I can’t have you.”

“Yes, you could have. You did. And then you changed your mind.” I thought of Lacey, of the photograph I’d seen, of his having had a relationship with her despite his strategic considerations. Maybe that was what bothered me the most—what made me different? What did I lack? Why her, but not me?

“Was I not tempting enough?” I asked him. “Not classy enough?”

I didn’t expect him to answer, but he did. And that was almost worse. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

He’d stood up and slipped his hands into his pockets. I met his gaze and saw the green fire in his eyes. “You’re perfect—beautiful, intelligent, intractable in a kind of . . . attractive way. Headstrong, but a good strategist. An amazing fighter.”

“But that’s not enough?”

“It’s too much. You think I haven’t thought about what it might be like to return to my rooms at the end of the night and find you there—to find you in my bed, to have your body and your laugh and your mind? To look across a room and know that you were mine—that
I’d
claimed you.
Me
.”

He drummed a finger against his chest. “
Me
. Ethan Sullivan. Not the head of Cadogan House, not the four-hundred-year-old vampire, not the child of Balthasar or the Novitiate of Peter Cadogan.
Me
. Just me. Just you and me.” He moistened his lips and shook his head. “I don’t have that luxury, Merit. I am the Master of this House. The Master of hundreds of vampires I’ve sworn to protect.”

“I’m one of your vampires,” I reminded him.

He sighed and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “You are my greatest strength. You are my biggest weakness.”

“You called Lacey here. She’s not a weakness?”

He seemed startled. “Lacey?”

“You two had—
have
—a relationship, right?”

His expression softened. “Merit, Lacey is here for an evaluation. We’ve been—in my limited free time—reviewing the financial status of her House. This trip was scheduled six months ago. I didn’t invite her here for a relationship.”

“Everyone thought—”

He gave me a sardonic look. “You should know better than to regard the rumors that swirl around this House as fact.”

I looked down, sufficiently reprimanded and silently thankful. But that didn’t change the bigger issue. “I told you that you had one chance, and you decided we were better off as colleagues. I can’t play the game of wondering—each and every day—where we stand. I’m your employee, your subordinate, and it’s time we acted like it. So I’m asking you not to bring it up again—not to bring us up again. Not to remind me with a word or a glance how conflicted you are.”

“I can’t help that I’m conflicted.”

“And I can’t help you with
being
conflicted. You made your choice, Ethan, and we can’t keep having this conversation over and over and over again. Do we or don’t we? Do we or don’t we? How are we supposed to work together like that?”

He asked the better question. “How are we
not
supposed to work together?”

We stood there quietly for a moment. “If that’s all you wanted,” I said, “I’m going back outside.” I walked toward the door, but he finally stopped me in a word.

“Caroline.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my hands into fists. I was eager to resist him, but he was my Master, and he’d called my name, and that alone was enough to halt my march to the door.

“Unfair,” I told him. “Unfair and too late.”

“Maybe if I had more time.”

“Ethan, I don’t think there’s enough time in the world.”

“What did I tell you about the Breckenridges, Merit?”

“Never burn bridges,” I recited back to him, and turned around, knowing where he was going. “Before you accuse me of that, Ethan, recall that you’re the one who walked away. I’m only complying with your request. We’ll forget it happened, we’ll work together, and we will do everything in our power to protect the House, and that will be the extent of it.”

I stopped before walking into the hallway, unable to take that final step without glancing back at him. When I looked back, there was an ache in his expression. But I’d given him my best shot, and I wasn’t up for sympathizing with a man who refused to reach for what he wanted.

“If that’s all?” I asked.

He finally dropped his gaze. “Good night, Sentinel.”

I nodded and left.

I walked through the first floor of the House, and I didn’t stop at the front door. I took the sidewalk to the gate and nodded to the guards, then scanned the street to the left and right, checking the road for paparazzi. They were obediently clustered at their designated cordon at the corner to the right.

An easy call—I headed left.

I crossed my arms over my chest, head down as I walked. I knew Ethan would do this. It was the way he operated—one step forward, two steps back. Rinse and repeat. He’d make a move toward intimacy, then pull back. Then he would regret pulling back, and the cycle would start again. It’s not that he didn’t want me; he’d made that clear. But each time he let himself be human, the strategy chunk of his brain powered on and he retreated back to coldness. He had his reasons, and I could respect him enough not to imagine they didn’t matter. But that didn’t mean I agreed with him or that I thought his reasons—his excuses—were good ones.

I frowned at the sidewalk, feet moving beneath me, even though I’d hardly paid attention to the motion. We were going to have to work together; that much was clear. I had to adapt. I’d adapted to being a vampire, and I was going to have to adapt to Ethan.

I looked up as a limo pulled up to the street.

It was long. Black. Curvy. Sleek. Undoubtedly expensive.

The back passenger side window rolled down. Adam Keene looked back at me from the backseat, boredom in his expression.

“Adam?”

“Gabe wants to meet with you at the bar.”

I blinked, confused. “Gabe? He wants to meet with me?”

Adam rolled his eyes sympathetically. “You know how he is. Give me what I want, when I want it. Which usually means immediately. Probably not unlike a Master vampire?”

“Why me? Why not Ethan?”

Adam made a little snort, then looked down at the phone in his hand. “Mine is not to question why . . . ,” he muttered, then flipped the phone’s screen toward me.

“GET KITTEN,” read a text message from Gabriel. Okay, so the request was legit. But that didn’t mean getting into a limo with Adam was the right move.

I hesitated, glancing back at the gate, light from the House spilling onto the sidewalk. If I went, I figured I’d get a lecture from Ethan about leaving the House to talk to Gabe without permission . . . and without his oversight.

On the other hand, if I didn’t go, I probably had a lecture in store about not being a team player and jumping when an Apex asked me to jump. And then I’d still have to hightail it to the bar, and not in the back of a swank limousine.

Besides, I had my dagger and my beeper. Ethan could find me if he needed to.

“Move over,” I growled, then opened the door and climbed inside, pulling the door shut behind me. “Start me off with a Shirley Temple,” I told him, nodding toward the bar on one side of the limo, “and we’ll see how far we get.”

“It’s not me he wanted to see,” he said, dimples at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll have Mr. Brown here circle the block a couple of times and give you two a minute, then join you when I’m done.” He held up the phone in explanation. “I need to finish this.”

“Your pitch,” I said, then maneuvered out the door.

“Hey, Kitten,” he said before I closed the door behind me.

I glanced back.

“Have fun in there.”

The window lifted again and the limousine pulled back onto the street, then took the first right around the block. I walked toward the door.

I walked to the bar, where the scent of blood was stronger, and gingerly touched my fingertips to a spot on the wood. I pulled back fingers, wet with blood.

“Oh, this is not good,” I murmured, wiping my hands on my pants and scanning the room for signs of the struggle that put it there.

A low moan suddenly echoed from the back room. It was a sound of pain, maybe with some despair thrown in. The hair on my neck stood on end.

Blood on the bar and moaning in the back room—something was very, very wrong. I glanced back at the door, wishing I’d asked Adam to stay and escort me back into the bar.

What the hell had happened while he’d been on the way to pick me up?

And so much for Gabriel’s theory that ConPack put an end to shifter drama.

I let out a curse and thought about my options. Option one: I could wait for Adam to return, but that left me in the bar, with God only knew what on the other side of the door.

Option two: I could make a move of my own. That, of course, risked injury and Ethan’s wrath, but someone was injured in there. I couldn’t very well just stand by and wait for them to die.

I lifted the hem of my pants, pulled the dagger from my boot, and adjusted it in my palm until the grip was perfect. I stood beside the bar for a few more seconds until I’d gathered up the courage to take a step. When I was ready, I blew out a breath and crept, weapon in hand, toward the door. When I reached the red leather, I put my hand on the door and pushed.

The room was black, light spilling around me as I stood in the doorway, one hand still on the leather. The smell of blood was strongest in here, along with something else . . . a tingle of emotion, of fear. Pack magic.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, a shape emerged—a man on the floor, propped against the wall, face bloodied and bruised, one knee up, the other leg extended. His T-shirt was torn, his jeans shredded at the knees.

Even though the tingle had felt familiar, it took my brain a moment to realize what I was seeing.

Whom I was seeing.

It was
Nick
.

“Oh, my God.” I ran to him, ignoring the pain as my knees hit the tile floor. I dropped the dagger and began scoping out cuts and bruises. “Are you okay?”

He groaned in response.

“What happened to you?” I asked. And, more important,
how
? Nick was a shifter. He may not have been an Apex, but I’d felt the wake of his magic, knew he had power of his own. Who had the power to hurt Nick?

“Gabriel,” Nick muttered, then coughed hoarsely. “It was Gabriel.”

I blinked back confusion. “Gabriel?”

“He thinks I—,” Nick began, but before he could finish, my dagger skittered to the other end of the room. Shocked, I froze, one hand at Nick’s temple, my heart suddenly pounding in my chest, as I watched it spin in the far corner.

“Too late,” Nick muttered.

Swallowing down a thick rise of fear, I glanced beside me at the booted foot that had kicked my dagger into the corner, and the shape-shifter it belonged to. Golden eyes glowed.

Gabriel.

My heart began to thud. Improved sparring skills or not, I felt as puny and weak as ever, huddled on the ground before a man who was piqued enough to make the air prickly with his magic.

“It was me,” he confirmed.

He’d done this? To Nick? One of his own Pack members? I tried to play catch-up but couldn’t make sense of it. What could Nick have done that would prompt Gabriel to this kind of violence?

Without words, Gabriel walked to the door and flipped on the overhead fixture with a loud
click
, flooding the room with light. I blinked back white spots, then stood up and looked him over. His knuckles were raw, and a bruise bloomed over his right cheekbone. Nick had gotten in a hit, then, but had ultimately been bested by the alpha in the room.

And here I was in a room with him, my colleagues miles away, my dagger on the other side of the room. It was time to use the only weapon I had left—a good, old-fashioned vampire bluff.

I adopted the haughtiest tone I could muster. “What did you do to him?”

Gabriel arched an eyebrow, as if surprised I’d challenge his authority, his right to deal with a member of his Pack as he saw fit. After a moment of staring at me, he turned and slid a chair out from the table, then sat down. His posture was negligent—slouchy, legs sprawled, one elbow propped on the table. I wasn’t sure if he was really that unconcerned that a vampire had just walked into . . . well,
something
, or if it was some kind of ploy.

“You lied to me, Merit.”

“Excuse me?”

Gabriel crossed his legs at the ankles, then traced a circle on the tabletop with a fingertip. My skin began to itch with the pins-and-needles effect of his magic. I fought to hold back my fangs and the silvering of my eyes even as my genetics screamed out,
Run, or prepare to fight. Now
.

“You told me you learned about the contract on my life because you’d received an anonymous phone call.” He looked up at me, the color in his irises swirling with obvious fury. “That was a lie.”

I met his penetrating gaze with a neutral expression.

Gabriel bobbed his head toward Nick. “In fact, I’ve learned Mr. Breckenridge here was your not-so-anonymous source. A man with whom you’ve had a lengthy personal relationship.”

I frowned at Gabriel. Nick had given me the information because he’d gotten an anonymous phone call. And, yes, I’d had a personal relationship with Nick . . . but in
high school
.

Confused, I glanced at Nick, who shook his head. “He thinks I did it. Thinks I planned it—the hits. The attempts on his life.”

“You did have the knowledge,” Gabriel said dryly.

Nick barked out a strangled laugh. “With all due respect,
Apex
, I’m a goddamned reporter. I get tips. It’s my job.”

“He was trying to help you,” I added. “He told me so I could pass along the warning, so you’d know there was a risk of a hit at the conference. That’s why we told you. That’s why we were prepared when the chaos started.”

“I’m now regretting that I called the convocation, that I didn’t just pull the shifters back to Aurora. One shifter—a leader—is dead, and there’s now a division between the rest of them. Do you have any idea how frustrated that makes me? When I trusted you?”

Given the angry magic in the air—and the sulfurous smell of it—I had a pretty good sense of it.

“Nick didn’t do this. He couldn’t have done this. You know he does everything possible to protect you, to protect the Pack. Do you recall a few weeks ago when he tried to bring down our House because he had just a
suspicion
that we might harm shifters? And you have no right to question my or Ethan’s motivations after what we’ve done this week.”

“We know what you call us,” Gabriel said. “Pretenders.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “I don’t call you that. Ethan doesn’t call you that. And even if there are vampires who use that term, we certainly don’t have a monopoly on prejudice. There are plenty of shifters with some grade-A hatred of vampires.” Nick used to be one of those shifters. And here I was protecting him.

“You lied to me. I do not take kindly to treachery, Merit. I do not take kindly to being set up. Why should I let you escape that with impunity?”

Screw this, I thought, and darted for the dagger. Gabe let me get it; he didn’t lift toe one from the floor as I came back and stood in front of Nicholas, weapon in hand.

I moved around, keeping my body and blade between Gabriel and Nick. It’s not that I had a lot of lost love for Nick, but Gabriel was higher up on my shit list at this point. I was going to have to figure out what was going on, but I was damned sure going to do it with steel in my hand.

“Don’t come any closer,” I warned him, my dagger tipped out toward his chest. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

He grinned at me, wolfishly. “I’m amused you think you could hurt me, Merit. You’ve fought some shifters, sure. But they weren’t alphas.” As if to prove his point, he stood up and threw out a hand. I think he meant to casually disarm me, to push the dagger from my hand, but he underestimated my speed.

I slashed at him and made contact, a crimson line appearing across his forearm. His eyes instantaneously widened, and he looked down, surprised that I’d done it, but still not intimidated.

I, on the other hand, was feeling pretty damned intimidated.

“As you’ll no doubt recall, I got shot yesterday. This is only a scratch. I’ll just have Berna bring in a Band-Aid.
Berna
,” he called out, his head half tilted back toward the door.

There was no answer.

“She’s not out there,” I told him. “The bar’s empty.”

“The bar’s not empty,” he said. “They’re still working out there.
Berna
,” Gabriel yelled again, but his call was met with silence.

He looked back at me, bewilderment in his expression.

The pieces fell together. “Adam,” I whispered.

Gabriel’s voice wavered. “What about Adam?”

“He picked me up at the House in a limousine and drove me here. He said you wanted to talk to me. He showed me a text message you sent. He dropped me off and said he was going to circle the block to give us a few minutes to talk.”

“I didn’t send a text message.”

“I get that now. I think he set us up.” I looked at Gabriel. “Did he tell you that Nick and I set you up?”

There was a flash of alarm in Gabriel’s golden eyes, at least until he closed them again, his expression haggard. “He said you two were working together to create problems for me in Chicago.” He glanced at Nick. “He said he had proof you were going to use your family’s money to put yourself in charge of the Pack.”

Nicholas scoffed and looked away. “I would never.
Never
.”

“He is my
brother
,” Gabriel added quietly, frustration in his voice, as if willing Nick to understand why he’d trusted Adam, even if the story was a little too soap-operatic to be entirely believable.

“I assume he was trying to get you pissed at me and Nick,” I said. “Maybe so you’d incapacitate us or just take us out altogether. And then what?”

“And then he tries to take me out while you’re here—”

“And they’ll think I did it,” I finished for him. “Adam will take me out and claim he caught me in the act of killing you. And that’s the first shot in the war between shifters and vampires.” I softened my voice. “Gabriel, if you didn’t call me here, why else would he have arranged for me to come?”

While Gabriel considered my question, I considered the fortuity that had put me outside the House. What if I hadn’t been there? Would he have come into the House looking for Ethan? Would Ethan have been drawn into the trap?

“Did he tell you Ethan was in on it?” I asked.

Gabriel nodded. And then, as if the weight of his brother’s betrayal had suddenly hit him, his eyelids fell shut. “Dear God,” he said, shaking his head, as he puzzled it out. “You’re right—why else would he have arranged for you to come?”

“Could he have been behind all of it?” I asked. “Tony’s death? The attack on the bar? The convocation? The hit? I mean, he’s your brother.”

“I would assume that’s the motivation. He’s family. He’s in line for the position of alpha—but last in line. He must want the position, and I’m the current obstacle to that plan. Not the only obstacle, since Fallon and the rest of them fall in line before Adam, but a current obstacle.” He swore out a string of insults that reddened my ears and made Nick whimper from his spot on the floor.

“He killed an Apex, for Christ’s sake.” Gabriel crossed himself, two fingertips moving from head to heart, then across his chest, as if protecting himself from the karmic backlash that Adam’s mortal wound would have incited . . . or perhaps apologizing to the universe for it.

“He’s good,” I said quietly. “He never directly implicated Tony, but he pointed us in the right direction so that we implicated him ourselves.”

“Which made the idea that much more believable.”

I nodded, then glanced around. If Adam was still circling the block, waiting for Gabriel to take me out, we were going to need a plan, and
fast
. “Is there another way out of here?”

He shook his head. “There’s a fire exit, but it’s through the door on the other end of the bar.”

I blew out a breath, squeezing and resqueezing the dagger’s handle. We’d been set up, and some really, really bad shit was about to go down in this bar in Ukrainian Village.

Better yet, no one knew I was here, and I didn’t have a phone on me. Adam had a phone, the little shit, but a fat lot of good that was going to do me now.

I tried to slow the hammering of my heart and hold back the silvering of my eyes. I did not want to be stuck in the back of a bar with no exit. I felt like the stupid heroine in a horror movie, willingly walking into the lion’s den without phone or sword, now stuck in a family squabble between an Apex and his Cain-like brother.