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"Bound to two, actually. Anwyn and Daegan." Brian glanced toward Daegan and the female bending over Gideon. He'd been coaxed or compelled to stretch out on the floor. Cai noticed Anwyn had opened her wrist and put it to his mouth. Her other hand was on his face, and her profile was worried. Angry.
"He's pretty much the most notorious vampire killer there is from the human race, and he's just part of the gang now?"
"It is a complicated story, and not mine to tell," Brian said firmly. "But it's why he and his lord are here. They have a vast repository of knowledge about confronting vampires in less than ideal circumstances. After you get blood, I suggest you talk to them."
"I won't be talking to Gideon Green, ever," Cai said bluntly. Lord Daegan, sitting on his heels, cocked his head and looked his way. Yeah, with vampire hearing, nothing of this conversation was going unnoted. Fuck, he was a creepy-looking bastard. Those dark eyes that had seemed almost too dark to be real now had crimson sparks in them and way too little whites.
Cai blinked, and they were simply dark eyes again, steady and cold upon him. Yeah, he'd resume his slice and dice routine if Cai kept shooting his mouth off. Which changed nothing. "He killed the only friend I ever had. If he comes near me again, I'll finish the job."
"Good luck with that. Bigger dicks than you have tried."
With those words and a rasping cough, Gideon struggled to a sitting position, no matter Anwyn's sharp word to him. The painfilled, midnight dark blue eyes were deep set in a strong face...and familiar. Which was odd, because Cai knew the male by scent more than sight. He'd only ever seen him at a distance, never close enough to recognize eye color.
The male had dark hair, a lot of muscle and concentrated energy, a honed hunter, thanks to the additional powers being a servant gave him. A servant marked by two vampires, one of them being centuries old.
"Without your Master, you'd be dead," Cai sneered at him.
"I'm alive because you announced yourself with that buffalo charge of yours. You would have done better to get a little closer, give me a friendly handshake instead of going berserker." Gideon's gaze locked with his. "Which I expect is the type of thing Brian wanted us to go over with you. Subtlety when strength isn't enough."
Cai laughed. He didn't care that it hurt, or that it sounded like the bark of a wounded moose. There were things in his gut that hurt worse. With a grunt, he started to get to his feet. Goddamn it, he was going to stand.
Though Rand had to help, he managed it, and pushed a pace away so he could stand on his own. Rand stayed close enough to be a prop, if Cai needed it. He didn't. Not for this.
"I lived a hundred years among Trads, vampire hunter," he told Gideon. "Every fucking day I spent with them as a human, I had to convince them why they shouldn't gut me, drain me. I spent my first couple decades being tortured in ways you wouldn't have survived, as a mortal or a servant. I know, because I saw the humans they brought to the camp die, while I continued to survive. Do you really think there's anything you can tell me about that environment I don't already know?"
He was aware a silence had fallen on the room, but he kept going, didn't look anywhere but in that male's face. If he couldn't kill this asshole, he'd see if there was a scrap of conscience in him that Cai could shred.
"And when I reached the end of what I could bear, there was only one thing that kept me going. Lodell. He patched me up, taught me how to survive. Eventually, he turned me. I hated him for it, hated his guts for the longest time."
He'd accused Lodell of figuring out the worst way yet to torture him. Making him more indestructible only gave Goddard and his crew a bigger range of ways to hurt him. Lodell had told him, "I've given you the way to survive, and win. You've proven you're too goddamn stubborn and mean to die. You were meant to be a vampire. We're both going to win this fight, boy."
"He left the Trads before I did. When I was finally free, I saw him a few times. We had our different paths. But then, not too long ago, I went looking for him again. I was told he'd been decapitated in an alley. He died next to a Dumpster, thanks to you. Sunlight made his ash part of the garbage."
Cai paused, his jaw flexing. "I tracked you, got almost close enough to take you. But then you disappeared. Otherwise, you would have been dead. I never thought to look for you here."
Gideon was another, like Graham, on his list to kill. Cai's voice was hoarse, his body shaking. He really needed to time his dramatic monologues better. "He was...a friend, in a place where no one offered friendship, because it would expose you to weakness. But he did. He cared for me. And you killed him like he was an enemy."
Some distant part of him understood all the conflicts and hypocrisy in his little speech. He himself hated Trads; would kill them all for what a small group of them had done to him. He didn't feel much more warmly toward the type of vampires in this room, for the reasons he'd told Lyssa. If he'd somehow found a way to be human again, he might have joined the ranks of those like Gideon Green, to destroy as many of them as he could.
But he'd met Lodell. And Lodell had showed him that not all vampires, not all Trads, were the same.
Gideon's expression had turned to stone. Not in rejection of Cai's words, but as if he'd needed to hold himself still to absorb the impact of the words. "I'm sorry about your friend," he said at last in a rough voice. "I became a hunter, because a vampire killed my high school sweetheart right in front of me. I got over it and figured out one vampire didn't make all of them bad. But it took me years to get there, and I didn't get over it until I met her. And him."
He glanced toward Anwyn and Daegan. Anwyn might have appreciated the sentiment, but she was occupied, leveling a murderous glare at Cai. If he twitched wrong, he was pretty sure she'd do her best to disembowel him. Daegan looked a little less murderous. He was far more capable of killing Cai, but vampires who'd been around a long time tended to get past shit like this faster. Probably because they had a lot of the same experiences to weigh them against.
Cai wasn't there yet. He still felt as homicidal as Anwyn looked.
"Perhaps I should have stated that not killing other guests is a house rule."
Lyssa stood in the doorway with Jacob. The displeasure in her tone was obvious. Jacob touched his lady's arm and moved past her to drop to Gideon's side. As he did, Cai realized why Gideon's eyes had seemed so familiar.
"Fuck, they're related," Cai muttered. "Great."
Jacob glanced toward him, but brought his attention back to Gideon. "Here I was, thinking you'd make it a whole week without someone trying to kill you, brother," he said lightly.
Gideon grunted. Jacob put his hand on his shoulder, his other moving to cover Anwyn's on Gideon's chest, a gesture obviously intended to reassure the female vampire.
"He's taken some of my blood," Anwyn said. "But he needs to lie down awhile and have some of Daegan's. His is more potent."
"Don't be making him fuller of himself than he already is," Gideon advised, looking toward the impassive Daegan. Then he looked back up at her, a faint teasing expression on his face. "See? This is why I told you I always conceal-carry wooden stakes."
Anwyn shook her head. "Which you didn't have time or opportunity to use."
"I had time and opportunity," Gideon rejoined. "I showed self-restraint, something you never give me credit for doing. Daegan had a dagger strapped to his calf, but did he use that? No, he whipped out the big-ass sword. He sleeps with that thing more often than with us. He's going to slice off his dick one night."
Gideon's words were laced with tiredness, though. He was no vampire and Cai had done him some damage. But when Daegan's eerily empty gaze remained on Cai, an unspoken but undeniable threat, Gideon put his hand on Daegan's arm and squeezed, drawing the male's attention. "If someone had killed one of my friends, I'd feel the same way," Gideon said.
The sardonic humor dropped, his tone weighted with the kind of memory Cai knew too well. "I did, right? For a long time. And every vampire I've killed was probably someone's fri
end or family member. It is what it is. Take it as another check on my long list of karma debts."
Daegan's jaw flexed. Cai suspected he was still debating whether to sever him into three pieces. But at last his attention shifted back to his servant. "I think you will need the nine lives of a cat to survive that list."
"Good thing I'm so indestructible."
"Not indestructible enough," his Master replied. Then he and Jacob were helping Gideon up, supporting his considerable bulk.
Rand closed the gap between him and Cai, and this time Cai had to accept the prop or let his knees buckle. Cai was impressed he didn't whimper like one of the wolf's pups. Fuck, that sword had hurt. Worse, it had messed up the expensive shirt he'd been given to wear. That sucked.
Anwyn stepped forward, meeting Cai's gaze with her own hostile one, drawing his mind from fashion regrets.
"You will not touch him again." Despite her youth, the steel in her countenance was impressively intimidating. "He's ours. You have a problem with him, you bring it to us. That's what a vampire does."
He was going to say something unwise like "oh, so I can ask you to kill him for me?" But the pressure of Rand's hand on his arm kept the snappy and stupid retort between his lips.
