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“So, we meet again, Lily Haven.” Then he smiled, an expression both charismatic and seductive. He even bowed as though carrying forward for effect the affectations of earlier centuries.
She drew closer to Adrien. It was one thing to have heard tales about the monster or even to have spoken with him in a revisiting vision. But right now, in this moment, the serpent slithered through the room.
* * *
Adrien stared at Daniel, now standing on the opposite side of the room. The monster who now ruled the Council and who held Adrien’s brothers in the Himalayan prison stood flanked by his two oldest sons, Quill and Lev. Daniel, of all vampires, didn’t deserve to have even one child, never mind the several he had sired.
All male vampires, brought into the world and raised during the first years of life by human mothers.
He’d hurt all his children.
And killed off their mothers.
Adrien stared at Daniel, and his two lackeys, the sight of him clamping around Adrien’s heart like a vise. “What are you doing here?”
Daniel looked at Adrien, still smiling. “Protecting my investment, of course.” He glanced around the room. “I never could find this place. All those decades of searching, but this one remained hidden to me. Naturally, I’d heard rumors. After all, it was my friend Charles who had run this laboratory illegally for at least a decade after the Council had shut everything down. Too bad he died when he did. Other rumors said he’d built a weapon and hidden it.”
“You’ve been following us.”
“I’ve kept tabs.” He levitated and started moving slowly, above the corpses but between tables and cupboards in a distant row. His minions trailed him, matching his flow. Dread seized Adrien’s heart, an old familiar sensation from childhood. How much pain would Daniel inflict this time?
He couldn’t breathe. Lily’s hand, normally comforting, felt like fire on his back.
Her voice pierced his chaotic thoughts. Daniel is more to you than just an evil in your world, isn’t he? I can feel through the chains that you fear him like no one else we’ve encountered. Who is he to you, Adrien? Who is he?
He turned to Lily but he couldn’t tell her, he couldn’t speak the words. “Stay close. No matter what happens, stay close to me. Do you understand?”
Her hazel eyes looked huge as she stared back at him, nodding once very slowly. He hurt you before, didn’t he? I can feel it now. A long time ago. Centuries ago.
Yes, Adrien responded slowly, remembered pain flashing through his body. He hurt all of us, me and my brothers, even the two with him right now. He hurt us all.
She blinked once. He watched her mind open to the truth, the one he hated to speak. “Oh, my God. Adrien, he’s your father, isn’t he? Daniel is your father?”
Adrien nodded. “The one who sired me, yes. Lucian helped us escape but others found us and protected us, Gabriel among them. But Daniel is my father. I carry his genes, and I’m never to be trusted.” He grabbed her arm and squeezed. He stared hard into her face. “Do you hear me, Lily? Never to be trusted.”
Again she nodded, in that way that seemed to almost draw time to a standstill.
Daniel still glided slowly, milking his approach, one of the few who could sustain altered flight in such a perfect, slow-drifting manner. All part of his performance, to remind Adrien how powerful he was.
At the top of the row and now hovering fifteen feet away from Adrien, he turned and surveyed the room, his gaze raking across the various counters and tables, the skeletons on the floor, silence in the space suddenly deafening.
Lily once more entered his head but very quietly, as though afraid Daniel could hear her telepathy. He’s looking for the weapon.
Of course he is. Adrien’s gaze never left Daniel. He knew how fast the bastard could move.
But Daniel’s gaze, after making a careful sweep of the large, vaulted space, finally landed on Lily. “The weapon isn’t here, is it?”
Adrien shifted so that he could look at her. She frowned, and he felt her focus her tracking abilities on the weapon once more. He felt the truth as she shook her head. “No, it was removed. This is the remnant, this laboratory and these corpses.”
Daniel began to move slowly once more, but this time Adrien saw that his father had focused his energy on Lily. “I created this,” he said, now ten feet away. He swept his hand to encompass Adrien and Lily. “I created this bond because I knew that with her tracking ability and your power, you’d form a formidable tracking pair, something I couldn’t do on my own, something I tried a hundred times to achieve. Every tracker I tried to bind myself to died immediately. My power was too immense for them. When I discovered Lily, one of the strongest trackers I’d found, I couldn’t risk losing her like all the others, so I brought in another vampire whose power isn’t as great as mine. Now I expect results, Lily. Kiernan must have told you that, must have told you carefully everything that was at stake, all that precious flesh and blood.”
“He did.”
“Lily, what’s he talking about?” Adrien felt dizzy suddenly, sick deep in his gut, as though his body knew exactly what Daniel had used to force Lily on this journey. He swallowed hard as Daniel closed the last few feet to stand a yard away from them.
He heard her breath hitch in her throat, but she said nothing.
“So you kept your word and you didn’t tell him?” Daniel chuckled and smiled, that broad, charismatic, beckoning smile of his.
“I told him nothing. I followed Kiernan’s instructions.”
Adrien felt panic rising in Lily, a wave of sensation that vibrated the double-chain at his neck.
Daniel shifted his gaze to Adrien. “And you didn’t tell her who I was. What an interesting pair you are. Well, I won’t give up Lily’s little secret, either; Kiernan wouldn’t like it.”
His cold light teal eyes shifted to Lily.
Adrien felt her trembling now, fear washing through her, then rage, then fear, then rage hot again, her skin flushing and burning Adrien. He held her pressed against his side, the relative position that tended to keep them both safe now.
But what would happen next, he couldn’t guess, except for one great truth: Pain would follow. When Daniel entered a room, pain always followed.
Try not to listen to him. Adrien needed Lily to be as strong as possible right now. He could sense what was coming and he needed her with him, aware and focused.
“You haven’t exactly fulfilled your promise to find the weapon, Lily, and I’m very disappointed. But use your power right now, the tracking ability you have, and focus on the weapon. Tell me where you sense it coming from. Do it now!”
