Her chains clanked as she pulled herself up so she could rest her cheek on the back of the sofa, next to her manacled hand. Ragged tendrils of her hair caressed her cheek, and he was struck anew by the beauty of her eyes, no matter what she was going through. He was glad his appreciation was so obvious, because she noticed, and it made some of the tension in her face lessen. The vanity of a woman had its own healing balm. It almost made him smile a little, for real this time. “I don’t know if I should tell you more about Daegan,” she said, seeing it. “You are a vampire hunter, after all. You might stake him. Why don’t you tell me
your
impression of him?”
She barely had enough slack to touch his hair, but she reached out to stroke the short lengths between her knuckles. It felt good for her to initiate touch, good for them both, he suspected. He stayed motionless, watching the curve of her cheek, the tender underside of her forearm. The tenuous grasp of the towel over the swell of her breasts. “He’s faster than any vampire I’ve seen. There’s something different about him, but I can’t figure out what. He’s like the difference between an Army Ranger and a guy who pumps iron to look like a badass. I don’t think I could touch him, unless you’re going to help me knock him unconscious.”
“Hmm. He sleeps very, very lightly.” She grazed his scalp, pressed down. “There’s a scar here.”
“Yeah. Vamp’s servant got me pretty good with the sharp end of a shovel. It’s the servants that are the trickiest. A hunter has to focus on the vamps, because they can outmaneuver you so fast. That means you sometimes lose sight of the servant, what he can do, if you’re not paying attention.”
“But when you kill his Master, you kill him. Two birds with one stone.”
Gideon shifted, uncomfortable. “Vampire rules, such that they are, say the servant has to enter a vamp’s service willingly. It does happen by force sometimes, but in those cases, the servant would beg for death, so it’s a mercy. Otherwise . . .”
“Guilt by association.” Cocking her head, she swept her gaze over him. She’d gotten blood and vomit on him, of course, so he’d stripped his shirt off a few seizures back. Her gaze coursed over his upper body, lingering on the flogging scars, and the pain he saw fill her eyes humbled and dismayed him. “Why doesn’t your well-developed intuition keep you out of that kind of trouble?”
“It does. I’m alive.” He tugged her hair.
“Did it bring you to our door?”
Gideon grunted, as always irritable trying to explain the inexplicable, even to this woman who needed his distraction. “I don’t know. I just tend to follow my gut and things work out. That’s the truth. My brother and I, we share that ability. Sometimes we’re led by it. Of course, sometimes it takes us in stupid directions, but we don’t seem capable of ignoring it. Hence, here I am and he’s with a vampire queen.”
Her brows lifted. “Your brother is a
servant
? While you’re a vampire hunter?”
“I would have expected Daegan to tell you that. My brother’s a vampire, as well as a servant. It’s a long story.” At her ironic expression, he grimaced. “Yeah, I know, we have time. But when you’re ready to explain your relationship with Daegan, I’ll give you the write-up on that one.”
She gave him a saccharine look. “We’re friends. Friends with benefits.”
Gideon whistled. “Wow. You’ve got a pretty good poker face, but I can call that one a lie from a hundred feet.”
“Do you really want to get into the lies we tell ourselves?” Before he could rally to that, she shook her head. “Never mind. I’ll let you get away with that one, not because you’re threatening me with quid pro quo, but seeing as you’re trying to overcome your antisocial skills and talk to me.”
“You’re a generous Mistress, Mistress.”
“Did you find the answers you were seeking, our night together?”
“Not sure.” He gave her a wry smile. “We seem to have gotten derailed.”
The glance she gave him this time passed over the lean muscle and scarring of his upper body, then followed the stretch of denim over his splayed thighs where they straddled the chair. “Delayed, not derailed,” she said.
“Hmm.” He told himself under no circumstances should he imagine that scenario between them again. No way in hell would he ever willingly allow a vampire to chain him up, even if he’d known her before. However, each time her eyes focused on him this way, or that tone crept into her voice, he sensed, remarkably, that current circumstances were only solidifying what had started the second he decided to cross the threshold of Atlantis. The answers were here, with this woman. It was just a hell of a situation, because she was no longer human.
“The silence is driving me crazy. Will you play some music for me?” Her fingers bit into his scalp, an urgent, unsteady note to her voice, though he didn’t yet sense another attack. “Over in that cabinet. It’s wired into the music system in the main room.”
“Sure.” He left her with a reassuring squeeze of her wrist and strode to the player. “Any preferences?”
“There should be something already keyed up.”
As he depressed the play button, the room filled with a soothing mix of woodwinds and piano, a nature-oriented New Age sound.
She was watching him. “Do you like it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, actually, I do.” It was calming and something else, something . . . He hesitated to use the word
hopeful
, because it wasn’t his nature, but she filled in the blanks.
“It transports you to a different place. When I close my eyes, I’m in deep woods, an enchanted forest. There are fairies and unicorns, all a young girl’s dreams.”
“Like that old movie,
Legend
.”
“Yes. Without Tom Cruise.” She’d lain down on the couch again, her chains gathered against her, legs drawn up. Her lips curved in a mysterious, sad way. “I prefer my men less pretty.”
“I’m your man, then, because pretty I’m definitely not.”
“You’re mine . . .” Her eyes narrowed to blue-green slits so the color was all he could see. Mesmerizing, like a Fey princess peering through the leaves. “I like the sound of that.”
He cleared his throat. “Daegan would be crushed if he knew your opinion. He’s been hosed down with pretty all over.”
“Shhh . . .” Her eyes closed, as she obviously let the music relax her. Gideon watched her for several moments; then his grip tightened on the chair next to the player.
Shit.
Another fucking one coming. It had been barely minutes since the last one, it seemed. But as she spoke again, he was loath to interrupt her, the drifting lilt of her honey-spun words.
“Listen to those notes. It’s a magical place. You can see all of it, laid out inside your heart, in the place where this world hasn’t intruded. If a hero is brave and strong enough, then all will be right again. Light will forever reign. And his heroine will love and be with him always. True to him forever.”
“I like the sound of that,” he said. “Anwyn, I need to take you back to the wall. Okay?”
Her brow creased, her lids squeezing tighter. “No,” she said softly.
“I don’t want the chains to drag you, honey. Just get up and walk over there—”
Her fingers dug into the couch; then the first shudders began.
Damn it.
He moved swiftly to the controls, only this time he had to close his eyes when he depressed the dial. It was bad enough to hear her cry of protest; he couldn’t bear to see her pulled off the couch while she tried to hold on to it, then was dragged step by resisting step to the wall. If she fought it with a vampire’s berserk rage, he could take it, but she was fighting it with the panic of a strong woman who couldn’t handle being made helpless.
“Can’t breathe . . .” her voice rasped. Though he knew she no longer needed to breathe, the sense of suffocation was still no less real to her. He steeled himself against it, kept the chains retracting. Then the thud, the click of the control turning off, told him she was back against the wall.
When he opened his gaze, he saw one last second of that panicked anguish on her face an instant before red flooded her eyes like an injection of ink, spreading out and overflowing into bloody tears. Her mouth opened, the fangs glistening and frighteningly long. She uttered a hiss a dragon might have made in her magical world, before it opened its jaws and snapped up the hero in one less-than-heroic bite.
Beneath all that, Anwyn was fighting a battle for her mind and soul, far beyond where a hero, or even he or Daegan, could come to her aid.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Gideon kicked a spanking bench, hit the bars with his fists and cursed profusely. If she was going to be taken from him by a fit of mindless rage, he was going to use some of the time to vent.
Concrete dust plumed from the wall around her left manacle, snapping him out of the moment. Shit, the anchor was loosening. He snatched up more chain that Daegan had left, just in case, and ran into the cell.
She was thrashing and struggling, her mouth wide-open, fangs spearing her, creating a fountain of blood over her full bottom lip. Shaking out the chain, he looped it around her arm, wrapping it snug around the limb and the solid arm of the St. Andrew’s cross, glad there was some space between the wall and the beam. He bound the arm from wrist to armpit before she could put more pressure behind the loosened bolt. He stayed clear of the thrashing head except when he got close to her shoulder. Then she nailed him.
Neither he nor Daegan had wanted to bind her head, since the arms, legs and torso were almost more than she could handle. But he had second thoughts about that when her fangs sank into his forearm, a snarl emitting from her throat. Fortunately, she couldn’t get a good grip, his blood sending her into a renewed seizure. He jerked out of range as her eyes rolled back in her head. She let out a sound that he’d never imagined could pass human lips.
Gideon used another titanium carbonari clip to secure the chain and then did the other arm the same way, not wanting to take any chances. Now she wouldn’t be able to leave the cross at all. When she surfaced from this seizure, she’d likely freak as a result. Pushing that out of his mind, he went for more refrigerated blood, wrapping a dish towel around his bleeding arm.
Jesus, where the hell is Daegan?
They needed the sire’s blood. This stuff wasn’t doing the trick anymore. Not only did she resist it more fiercely each time, but when he got some into her, she jerked like an animal in its death throes. The cries coming from her now, the wide, prickly fear in her eyes, beyond coherence, told him she was in excruciating pain when she was ingesting it.
“It’s all right, baby. We’re here. We’re here. Hang in there. You can do this.” He dashed away shameful, unmanly tears at her keening, glad she wouldn’t remember them. He could get through it; she would get through it.
Never give yourself a choice, because if you gave yourself a choice
. . . Well, she’d said it herself. You’d regret it all your life. Best to react and pretend there were
no
choices.
He suspected there was more to that comment, something else in her past involving choices. Something that might haunt her even more than what happened in the alley. Another mystery to his beautiful Mistress.
It seemed to go on forever, but in hindsight, he suspected it was little longer than any of the previous ones, just more virulent. When she fell into lethargy again, hanging semiconscious in the chains, he collapsed onto the sofa, putting the blood container on the floor and his head in his hands, giving himself a second to regroup.
Vaguely, he realized he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything. While nothing appealed to him, he guessed he should think about forcing something down, if he didn’t want to pass out on her. And hell, she wasn’t going to be finishing the food she had in her refrigerator. Jesus, even his hair hurt.
The music was still playing. It was good music. He gave a rueful snort at the thought, but noticed that she was registering it again as well, her weary head moving in a sway to the gentle beat of the woodwinds, mumbling as if she was humming along. It made it sound like a lullaby.
In between those tranquil notes, though, she murmured to herself, things he couldn’t understand and probably didn’t want to. As he cleaned her and the floor once more, he blessed the foresight that had put a drain in the stone floor, though he was sure he didn’t want to think about all the uses for that in a BDSM dungeon. He tucked the last clean towel around her, wondering about his options after she destroyed that one. There had to be a washer or dryer down here, right? He’d just find one, or he’d cut Daegan’s sheets into quarters. He was a vampire, after all. He could sleep hanging from the rafters.
When he snorted at that bit of vampire lore, she stirred. He was sitting on a chair in front of her again and put a hand on her leg, right below the hem of the towel. It was a calming signal he’d fallen into using when she surfaced, letting her know he was there still. Particularly since this time something had changed for the worse, her restraints considerably increased.
She focused on him from a far-distant place, but her gaze remained so intent on him it was as though she was trying not to notice or think of anything else. But then she winced.
“My tongue hurts.”
“Yeah, you bit it pretty bad that time. I thought about getting one of the ball gags, but I didn’t want to upset you more.”
He saw a dark well of panic open in her eyes before she slammed a cover on it. Pretending he’d seen nothing amiss, he tugged the towel gently. “I wouldn’t do it without your okay. You know that. It’s already looking better. I think your refrigerated blood helped some, being directly on your tongue like that. Anwyn . . . I had to add the chains. You were pulling the one side loose.”
She nodded after a moment, a more subdued response than he expected. Then he took a closer look. Though he’d never seen anyone who looked more exhausted than she did right now, in addition to that intent gaze that could bore holes into him, her pulse was rabbiting up and down. As if she was managing a silent panic attack. Her phobia about the restraints was getting worse, not better, and he’d had to increase them.
Goddamn it
. Her urgent request for music now made more sense.