A Forbidden Taking (22 page)

It took them nearly to sunrise to
figure out the plan. It would have taken considerably less time if he hadn’t
had to keep reminding the twit that he was in charge every five minutes. Closing
his eyes and pulling Sara to him Aaron wondered if Megan gave Beau this much
trouble and decided he hoped so. Why should he be the only one to enjoy so much
sarcasm and caustic wit? Aaron decided when this was all over he was going to
write a book. He was going to call it
The Rules of the MacManus Realm
. He
doubted that Megan would read it and, if she did, she would more than likely
argue with him about every page.

~~~

Samuel was pissed. He didn’t think
he’d ever been so mad in…the nerve of that man telling him to come back
tomorrow and then slamming the door in his face. He was going to make him pay.
Right along with his master, the great and powerful Aaron MacManus.

Samuel went to his dungeon as soon
as he returned to his home. He needed to hurt something, someone, and he knew
that in the cells beneath his chambers there were plenty of someones he could
hurt. He opened the door with his thoughts several feet before he got to the entrance.
He liked it when they cringed, loved it when they scrambled away from him. This
thing, a human, did both. Samuel wasted no time in playing, but picked the man
up and threw him against the stone wall. The satisfying sound of his head hitting
the wall made Samuel laugh. He tore from the room to go to the next.

Seven human deaths later, and he
was still unsatisfied. He prowled around in the chambers wanting a new reaction,
a new sound to come from them before he killed them, and it was always the
same. He threw back his head and screamed at the injustice of it all, the
unfairness of how the humans, even in death, could not do just one thing right.
He made his way to the upper levels to find a female or two, hoping that during
sex their deaths would bring him some happiness. But there was no one. Not one
person was in the house. He searched everywhere, even in his own bedchamber,
and found no one.

When he had searched every
chamber, every closet, every small space he could think of, he finally went to
his office. No one. There was no one in the house and he just knew that Aaron
and that Megan had something to do with it.

“They took them away. Took my
family, my kiss, away and have them hidden somewhere. When I have her power,
power she stole from me, I’ll kill that bastard and take them all back. I’ll be
the one that everyone runs to, the one that has the power.”

Samuel looked around the room and
wondered who had spoken. He got up and locked all the doors and closed all the
curtains in the room. Not that anything could see in or out, the shades were
down over these windows all the time. He never wanted to have even a small ray
of sunlight enter this room or the ones he slept in. Samuel searched the room
again. He was nearly through the room when he realized he had no idea what he
was looking for. Making his way to the door he couldn’t get it to open. Someone
had locked it. Locked him in his chamber and wasn’t letting him out.

It took him nearly an hour to
remember that he had a key of his own and let himself out. He found himself in
his labs before he remembered going there.

It was all set up. All the tests
they’d done. All the results. All failures for the most part. Samuel pulled out
another vial of the serum and tried to remember the last time he’d taken it. Was
it four hours or four days? Had he already taken it or was this one in his hand
the dose he was supposed to take? Samuel took the liquid into his mouth before
he worked too hard at trying to solve the when of his medication.

The drug hit his system
immediately. He calmed, his heart rate lowered, and he could feel his mind
begin to sort things out, make order and sense of what he was thinking. After a
few minutes Samuel could feel his skin fit his body again; the crawly feeling
all over him dissipated and he could breathe easier. Soon after that he was
himself again; reasonable, smart, and in control. Taking a deep breath Samuel
felt embarrassed by his actions.

Samuel had tried to get Michael to
tell him how the drugs worked. They weren’t supposed to affect a vampire,
nothing like that was. But he’d only smiled that smile of his and went on
explaining things in terms he could neither understand nor remember. He looked
around the room now and wondered what it all was. Beakers, test tubes, Bunsen burners
and tubing—all of it there and all of it still.

The more the beast had taken
control of Michael, the less was being done. Lately he’d begun working again,
but it had only been in small spurts and not anything viable, he’d told Samuel.
He wondered and got up to search again for notes that Michael had said he never
kept.

Samuel sat on the floor after a
few minutes of searching. He was exhausted from all the problems and the trials
of being a master. He rubbed the area around his heart. It was giving him pains
as if it wanted to hurt him too. He was sitting there when he saw the crooked stone
in the floor.

Crawling over to it he tried to
pry it loose. It was heavy and, before he realized he was going to need
something else to work it loose, he’d bloodied his fingers and tore off his
nails in the process. But he knew there was something there, just knew it. Getting
up, he prowled around the room and found a bucket. Filling it with anything he
could find to use as a tool he sat back down on the floor and began working.

Some of the things in the bucket
were useless. Samuel wasn’t sure why anyone would have given him such things to
work with. But he didn’t complain overly much, just tossed them away and
grabbed something else. The pencil he was using had just snapped in two when he
got up to get another vial of drugs.

“I don’t know why you made the
vials so small. I think next time you should…who’s there?” Samuel stilled and
looked around. “Michael? Creature? I don’t like this game. Come here.”

He ran across the room toward what
he thought was a person and his head exploded in pain. He dropped to the floor
and closed his eyes. Someone had hit him, he was sure.

Samuel found himself in the corner
with two empty vials of the drug in his lap when he opened his eyes. He was
alone, was the first thing he noticed, and he wondered where Michael had gone. He
started to rise, but he was dizzy and his body felt…weird, he supposed was a
good term. It took him several tries until he was finally able to leave the
room. He decided to go to his chamber and rest. He wanted a woman, any woman,
but couldn’t remember where he’d put them. Sleep claimed him before he put too
much effort into the search again.

~Chapter 25~

The plan was simple, they told her.
Kill the master, take his power, and become the master of the realm. Too simple,
Megan thought. So many things could and probably would go wrong. They had to
sneak up on a man reputed to be over a thousand years old and then kill him
without getting killed themselves. Megan looked at the men sitting at the table
with her.

“You do know that this is not
going to work. It’s been my experience that—”

Aaron huffed at her. “And in your
experience…how many years is that now? Fifty? Sixty? No, damn it, it’s two. And
not even that. Could you, I don’t know, be a little less encouraging?”

She glared at him and Beau. She
didn’t like that he continued to laugh at her either. Oh he’d tried to cover it
up with a cough or a sneeze, but after the first four times he’d done it she’d
figured it out. Aaron just opened his mouth and she wanted to stake him. She
eyed the wooden stake on the table and wondered.

“You touch that and I’ll use it on
you,” Sara said from her right. “They are just men, you know. Simple is better
for them. Less things to fuck up when it comes to crunch time.”

Megan grinned. They’d been yelling
at Sara too, Megan remembered. She wondered if Sara and she could come up with
a plan that actually made sense, but dismissed the idea. Mel had already told
them that they couldn’t use hers or Sara’s magic to kill the master. The
Council wouldn’t approve of it.

Megan snorted. Sure, let the man
kill her and whoever else went up against him, but hey, don’t use the magic you
have to save your ass! Stupid bureaucrats.

When they finally adjourned Megan
looked at the map they had gotten. It showed the house that this Samuel person
lived in. She hadn’t understood the squiggly lines and the curly round things. Beau
had told her they were bushes or trees. The place was huge. She could also see
that there were all sorts of places for him to hide out men just to trap someone
if he wanted to. She picked it up and looked at the area that had been marked
“laboratory.”

This area was bigger than her
whole apartment when she’d had it. There were all kinds of areas in this that
were marked with electrical outlets, stationary tables, and other things that
she knew went into a lab. She kept studying it because she knew there was
something there. Something they were all missing. Michael had given her his memories;
wouldn’t this include this room too? She was putting it down when she saw it. There
in the corner of the room, one of those funny markings.

“Hey. Dingdong, come here and tell
me what this thingy is. I think it might be a door or something.”

Aaron came at her with his hands
outstretched like he was ready to strangle her. She had pretty much ignored him
because she knew that, while frustrated at her calling him that, she thought he
kinda liked them sparring back and forth. She wouldn’t admit it to him, but she
did too.

“Megan, I swear to you that I will
beat you myself when this is over. There are no doors in that ro…”

She leaned back when he got closer
to the blueprint. He was moving his finger along the area where she had showed
him then flipped the next sheet over to study it. That was another thing about
this map. In order to read it, you had to go through seven hundred pages to get
the “dynamics” of the room. A man invented this, she just knew it.

“I don’t suppose you know what
this could lead to, do you?”

She closed her eyes. They had been
asking her to search her memories, or Michael’s memories, for different parts
of the whole for hours. “It’s an opening to the outside. Some sort of hydraulic
door, I think. It makes a noise, one that hurts his ears when it’s opened. It’s
wide and…metal, steel. There is a tiny room to the right of it. It’s reinforced
rebar concrete and the beast can’t…his claws only scrape it, but can’t get much
purchase when he tries to get at the man.” Megan opened her eyes. “It’s Samuel.
He is…was afraid of the beast.”

Aaron looked at her. He started to
smile then it grew bigger until Megan was afraid of him. This was not a
friendly smile, more of an “I’m going to eat you alive and enjoy it” smile. “Megan…do
you know how to get into the building from here?” His voice was soft, but it
made her shiver. She could only nod. Then it took her several tries before she
could speak to him.

“There’s a key pad on the outside.
He’d, Samuel, had shown it to Michael once when they had been locked out. It’s…it’s…
are you going to kill me?”

His fangs had dropped and his eyes
had changed. Megan could feel Beau behind her, his hands resting on her
shoulders. Low, menacing growls came from his mouth. His fingers were biting
into her skin and for some reason she drew comfort from that. But it was the
vampire in front of her that had her scared.

“No.” She watched as he slowly
regained control of…whatever he’d lost. “I’m sorry. I owe you an apology. I
didn’t mean to…I could see your memories. Or those of Michael about the room.
Samuel needs to die. He cannot continue to kill our kind like he has.”

Again, Megan nodded. She had them
too, the memories, but she was trying to keep them in the back of her mind. It
would do her no good to freak out because of what Samuel Rome had done to
vampires. She needed to focus on the now.

~~~

Beau watched Megan wield the
sword, practice with it she’d said. They were going out at just before dusk. Megan
would be with him and the others were going to be close behind. They had tested
several theories about her ability to withstand the sunlight, but Beau was
still afraid for her. He wanted her to remain behind, but she wouldn’t.
Stubborn girl. And his attempts to put her into a deep sleep had only succeeded
in pissing her off.

“
Mon amour
, could you not—”

“I swear, Beau, if you tell me you
want me to stay once more I may use this thing on you. Removing your head might
be a way to shut you up. I. Am. Going. End of conversation.”

He wanted to growl, but the last
time he’d done that to her she had growled back. It was a little terrifying to
hear it come from her mouth, one that had only hours before had him deep inside
of her. He shifted in the chair again as he thought of them in the lair.

She had told him she needed to
rest. And he simply went with her to make sure she was alright. He’d stayed
just long enough in the room to tell Aaron that he would be back soon. But he didn’t
make it back for several hours.

When he’d opened the door to their
room she’d been naked. Naked and lying on the bed. His cock leapt to attention
when she beckoned him to her. He moved like a man in a trance and then stopped
when she stood up.

“I want to play, Beau. Would you
be my willing playmate for a little while? I’ll certainly make it worth your
while.” She ran her finger down his shirt and over the buttons. They scattered
like the wind.

Taking his hand, she led him to
the bed and pressed him down to it. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He
wasn’t even aware of anything until she was straddled over his legs. When he
reached for her he realized that he was tied to the bed.