“Not so much.”Not as much as my heart.Her eyes filled with tears again, and she couldn’t look at him.
“Do not worry, we will get her back.”
He thinks I’m crying for Eve.But she was, in part. “Won’t they use her as a hostage?”
“It’s been barely an hour since you left, and they will expect you to still be on the road. It will swiftly be clear to them that it is vampires that they fight, and having taken Nico, they will assume it is him we want.” He bared his fangs. “It will be Nico they protect, and we will have taken Eve before they realize their error.”
Cally nodded jerkily. It sounded plausible. It sounded high-risk, too. If anything happened to Eve, she’d never forgive herself. “What of Nico?”
“I will kill him if the opportunity presents itself, but from what you have told me, he’s not escaping easily. I don’t much care what happens to him.” He said it lightly; the tightening in his eyes showed a different story. He was foregoing his vengeance for Eve’s safety, but he was doing it because of her.
Had she told him to? Was the bond already at work, compelling him subtly and insidiously?
She retraced everything she’d said. The soldiers. The raid on Nico’s house. Waking in the bed. The interrogation and Darian’s demands. She’d only answered questions, right? No preferences, no imperatives.
Damn it. From now on, I have to second-guess every single thing I say to him.
Unless…
“I… don’t want you to do what I tell you. Ever.” Would that work?
His eyes flicked lilac and back to his usual blue, and he turned in his seat, facing away again. “We will discuss it later.”
Cally cringed at his tone, slumping in her seat.He knows. He knows about the bond.But how? Had he always known?
Belle pulled onto a narrow country road. “We are close,mon amour.”
“Good.”
“I think I will lead. It is my prerogative as your sire.”
He glanced across with amusement. “Is that you being honorable, or greedy? I can’t tell anymore.”
“When you take a lady out for a treat, do you not wish her to enjoy it?”
“Not even you can survive many hits of direct automatic fire.”
“Pah! These are not even thralls. What on Earth makes you think they will ever hit me?”
“They are professional soldiers,” Cally said. “Not amateurs.” She’d told them already; why didn’t they care?
“We know,” Antoine said quietly.
Cally hushed herself, looking down at her lap.
“This is the place,” Belle said, as she turned off the road. Ahead lay a large house with a high wall around it, the gate shut and sturdy. “I can’t smash through that without destroying the car.”
“Wait until we’ve opened the gate, and count to thirty,” Antoine said to Cally. “Then drive on in.”
“Yes, Antoine.”
He seemed to pause at her tone, but Belle had already opened her door, and a second later both vampires were gone. Cally got out and climbed into the driver’s seat in time for the gate to blast open, wood splinters raining down.
Antoine always likes to make an entrance.
She waited thirty seconds, then drove through the remains of the gate, following a long drive up to a stone manor that loomed between the trees, its slate roof catching the moonlight. Dark, lifeless figures sprawled across the gravel courtyard, and she pulled up in time to see Belle walking away from two more crumpled bodies. Cally got out as another Order guard plummeted from above, hitting the ground with a sickening crack. Antoine leaped down from a high balcony, landing beside the corpse.
“Give me a moment to clear the house,” he said, then took off at speed for the main door, putting his shoulder to it and bursting straight through.
