Digging my heels into the frozen ground, I gritted my teeth against the pain in my arm and refused to be budged.
Jomar growled and the vamps surrounding Nathanial looked at him.
“We will go. Willingly.” Nathanial looked at me with the last word. “Bring her coat.”
Ronco, my coat still wrapped in his fist, stepped forward and tossed the coat haphazardly over the front of my shoulders. Nathanial nodded and placidly followed his captors.
Well, it looked like I didn’t have any choice but to go along with this. Without a word, I clung to my coat and let Jomar march me across the snow.
Nathanial slipped inside a dark limo as I rounded the gate.
Jomar pushed me in after him, intentionally knocking my head against the car as he shoved me though the door. He dumped me in the seat beside Nathanial, directly across from the Collector. Elizabeth sat beside the Collector, the conjoined twins catty-corner beside her. The Traveler was nowhere in sight.
As Jomar slid into the seat beside me, the Collector waved her hand in a shooing motion. “Thank you, Jomar. That will be all.”
Jomar’s grip on my arm tightened. “She’s a lively one, Mistress. Shouldn’t I—”
“I dismissed you.”
He bowed as well as he could while already crouched in a car. Then he dropped my arm. My shoulder ached with relief, and I pulled my arm around me, hugging it to my chest. Pain radiated down my hand as feeling rushed back. The skin on my ring finger was red and swollen around Avin’s silver ring. I ripped the ring off and dropped it in the coat pocket as the beefier guard leaned down, sticking his head in the open door. He didn’t ask anything, just looked at the Collector. She gave him a sharp nod, and he squeezed his bulk onto the seat beside me. Outside the car, Jomar’s squinty eyes glared.
Someone’s fallen out of favor.
Jomar slammed the door, and the car engine roared to life.
My already tense muscles locked in response. I
hated
cars.
Nathanial slid closer, his hand reaching for mine as the car jutted forward.
Seat belt, seat belt. Where is that damn—
I caught sight of the canvas strap sticking out from under the bulky guard beside me. I jerked at the belt, and the large vampire blinked at me in surprise. When I tugged harder, he shifted his legs until the belt slid free. The car took a turn and I yelped, every muscle in my body locking tighter, making my sore shoulder throb. My hands shook as I grabbed the metallic end of the belt, and I fumbled with the buckle until Nathanial took it away and snapped it for me.
“I apologize if my men were rough. They tend to get carried away,” the Collector said as the city blocks slid by the window. “But, no matter how little your companion was wearing, them stripping her was most uncalled for. I shall have words with them.”
My face burned at her double-edged apology. The coat had fallen to the floorboards as I fought with the seat belt, and I was showing a lot of thigh under the thin white under shirt—a whole lot of thigh. But it wasn’t like I was
naked.
Nathanial leaned down, scooping my coat from the floorboard. He handed it to me, and I hesitated a moment before draping it over my lap.
Hesitated because I was trying to decide if I should acknowledge the Collector’s jibe by covering myself. After all, what she hadn’t apologized for was pulling us off the street.
Which she sure as hell had no right to do. What do I care how
about her opinion of how I’m dressed?
In the end I relented only because I knew Nathanial was the one navigating these political waters, and I didn’t want to make things any harder on him.
As I smoothed the coat over my lap, Nathanial’s fingers slipped around mine. He squeezed lightly, which I interpreted as a silent ‘thank you’. I sank lower in my seat. Surely I wasn’t so difficult that such a little thing got a thanks. Was I?
“You have gone through a lot of trouble for this conversation,” Nathanial said, not acknowledging the lackluster quality of the Collector’s apology. “Tatius was informed you had already left Haven.”
“Clearly he was misinformed. Have you considered my offer?” Her eyes bled to black as she watched him. “Tell me your thoughts, Hermit,” she paused, “or Illusionist, as you should be called.”
“I am fine with my title.” Nathanial’s voice held no emotion, but his hand tightened around mine. “You should be informed that Kita, my companion, lost the ability to do the things the Traveler’s companion saw. Those abilities did not survive her turn. She can no longer shift.”
Glassy black eyes studied him, probably seeking a lie, and the ice queen demeanor the Collector had displayed in Tatius’s court surfaced in her features. Her hands folded in her lap, her fingers forming a steeple before her chest.
“Akane had a twin sister. I commanded one of my servants to turn her. The conditions were perfect, but she died during the turn in an agony I have never seen matched. These others,” she made a vague hand gesture to include me, “are perhaps resilient to turning. More so than humans. Still, abilities surviving or not, your companion interests me.”
Nathanial said nothing. The sound of the tires on the pavement and the low rumble of the engine filled the car in the absence of conversation. The car made a turn, picking up speed. Then it merged onto the freeway, the ride became smoother. Still, no one spoke.
The silence grated on me. My stomach lurched with every move of the vehicle, but the weight of the silence was worse than even my fear of being in the moving limo.
“What do you want?” I asked, unable to take the silence a moment longer.
The Collector regarded me with a look most people reserved for bothersome flies. That was as much of her attention she spared before her gaze returned to Nathanial.
He freed his hand from mine and slid his arm around my shoulders. It was a casual pose, but his fingers pressed against my skin, and I wasn’t sure if he was silencing me or if his nerves were showing.
“Tatius is unlikely to be pleased with our abduction.” He made the statement sound off-handed, unimportant.
It wasn’t.
“Abduction?” The Collector’s smile widened. “You and your companion are my honored guests. I intend only to show you what you will be gaining when you accept my offer. You have not left Tatius’s little tract of land in centuries; since a time when tribes of savages were your only meal choice. The world has grown and changed, and while Haven is an impressive city, it is hardly a culture capital. I think you will enjoy the finer arts my cities can offer.”
The Collector nodded at Elizabeth, and the small doll of a vampire reached under her seat. She pulled out a large, manila envelope and handed it to Nathanial.
He accepted it, opening the envelope slowly, as if cautious of what might be inside. Considering the last two packages vampires had received, I didn’t blame him. But I didn’t smell any blood, and when he reached inside, all he pulled out were colorful booklets. I frowned.
Travel guides?
“My council members are each a master of a city. Please, pay attention to the earmarked attractions.” The Collector waved her hand to indicate the guides. “Surely there is somewhere you’ve always longed to travel.”
Nathanial shuffled through roughly a dozen books.
How big
is her council?
Tatius had been afraid of any war or grudge she brought to his territory. I could understand why. With so many allies at the Collector’s call, the Haven vampires would be more than just outnumbered.
I recognized some of the city names, but one guide in particular caught my attention.
A guide to the nightlife in
Demur?
I snatched the guide from Nathanial’s hand.
“You have connections in Demur?” I asked, flipping the guide over, looking for a map. There was probably more than one city in the country named Demur, but… The rogue I’d tagged had come from Demur. If I wanted to make sure there were no other men I’d accidentally tagged—or that Tyler had tagged during his deranged period as a shifter—Demur was where I needed to go.
The Collector ignored me. I was supposed to be seen and not heard.
Nathanial lifted the guide from my fingers. “As guests, I imagine we are guaranteed certain courtesies?”
“Of course. I am a hospitable hostess. All of your needs will be seen to.”
“And our blood?” he asked.
“Off-limits. As long as you are guests.”
Nathanial nodded. “In that case, Demur would be my preference.”
Chapter Nineteen
Several hours, a private jet—which was a brand new type of hell—and another limo ride later, we were ushered through the front door of a Victorian mansion. During the period I’d survived by posing as a stray cat, I’d been taken home by many kinds of people and thus ended up in many interesting houses.
But I’d never ended up in a house that included tall, towerlike turrets, large, sweeping staircases, or crystal chandlers that hung fifty feet over my head. I tugged the coat closed tighter around me and stared at my bare feet on the polished marble entry.
“The Mistress is in the drawing room,” the man who’d answered the door said as he bowed to the Collector.
She swept by him without a word, Elizabeth and the twins following. The man didn’t straighten from his bow, but he looked up, and his lips curled in a sneer as he watched their retreating backs. Okay, apparently the Collector wasn’t all that welcomed of a guest, even in cities she considered her own. That or the vamp didn’t appreciate the lack of acknowledgement. Hard to tell. Not that I had time to puzzle over it. Nathanial was already walking down the hall, following the Collector. I trudged behind him.
I was the last to file into the drawing room. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too late to miss the show. A blonde woman, wearing a dress gauzy enough to be seen through, sat in the center of a plush, red-velvet couch. A tanned man wearing only silk shorts and oil swayed on his knees in front of her, his body tilted forward, his head craned to expose one side of his throat, his eyes squeezed shut, and his hands moving over the lump in his black shorts. A thin trail of blood escaped around her brightly painted lips where they were locked on his throat. Another man, dressed identically to the first, lay sprawled across her lap, his eyes dazed.
She took her time amidst the tangle of male bodies, letting us watch from the doorway as her dinner began to tremble. I shuffled my feet, moving closer to Nathanial. He scowled at the scene, but his pupils were more dilated than the brightly lit room required. I’d taken a lot of blood from him the night before. Had he had time to hunt since then? I wasn’t sure I liked how he watched the stream of blood trailing down the man’s neck, but at least watching Nathanial’s reaction helped me ignore my own rising hunger.
The man cried out, drawing my attention again. His hands stilled and the woman pulled back. She let him sag to the floor as she stood. The limp man on her lap slid to the floor as well. Then she stepped over their prone figures.
She touched a manicured finger to the side of her mouth and sauntered forward. “Collector, you honor my city with your presence. I trust your trip was a pleasant one?”
Her
city?
This
was the Master of Demur.
Well, crap.
Weren’t there
normal
vampires anywhere in the country?
The Collector frowned at the woman. “Actually, the last few nights have been trying. Has Aaric arrived yet?”
“Shortly before you did,” a booming voice said from the doorway, and I jumped.
The Traveler ducked under the threshold, his long stride setting a path toward the Collector. I stiffened as he stepped around me. Unlike when I’d seen him in Haven, he had a scent now. He smelled of spongy wood, old cotton, and tanned leather.
Not a vamp-powered projection this time.
Elizabeth rushed forward to greet him, but his attention was focused on the Collector as he bowed.
The Collector nodded at her second-in-command. Then she turned back to the Master of Demur. “Have my guests shown to a room,” she said before walking out with the Traveler. At the door she paused, turning to lift a finger at me. “And find some appropriate clothes for that one.”
Of all the—
I gritted my teeth to block the string of words threatening to pour out of my mouth.
I’m sure as hell wearing
more clothing than the Master of Demur and her two snacks.
Not that I wanted to be compared to them. Shoving my hands in my pockets, I stared after the Collector’s retinue as they filed out of the room. Nathanial didn’t move to follow, so apparently we were waiting on the hospitality of our hostess.
The blonde woman stared at the doorway. No color lifted to her cheeks, but it might as well have—the anger coalescing in the air was all but palpable. I shifted my weight from one foot to another. Once the Collector vanished deeper into the house, the blonde turned back to Nathanial and me, her eyes assessing.
“And you would be who?” she asked, crossing her arms and tapping her long, red lacquered fingernails on her elbows.
Nathanial gave her a small bow from the waist. “I am known as the Hermit.”
Her full lips puckered as her eyes roved over him, but it wasn’t a hungry look and certainly not sexual. No, this vampire’s gaze held measuring scales.
Nathanial smiled at her. It was a dazzling smile that softened the sharp angles of his face. It was also fake. He held out his hand. “And you must be the radiant Aphrodite, Master of Demur. The reputation of your beauty has reached me even in my seclusion.”
Whatever scales she’d been measuring him by shifted, the balance weighing in his favor. She dropped her crossed arms, one hand moving to her hip, which she jutted out, exaggerating her hourglass shape. The other hand she slipped into Nathanial’s. He kissed her knuckles lightly.
“You’re not as old as your power feels,” she said, and it was a statement, not a question. “Yes, I am Aphrodite. You and your companion are welcome in my city, Hermit.” She turned, gesturing to one of the young men sprawled on the floor. He lifted his head groggily. “Daniel, show them to a guest room.”