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"In the other room, watching television."
He turned his face toward the hallway wall, and Savannah guessed he was searching for Amelie through the extrasensory ability he possessed. "I can't see her. My talent...it's not working. It's gone."
Savannah could feel his agitation. His pulse spiked with it. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes. "So bright in here."
She glanced to the window blinds, which were drawn down and blotted out all but the most scant illumination from the afternoon sunlight outside. "I'm sorry. I thought it would be dim enough for you."
She walked over to the dresser and brought back a pair of bug-eye sunglasses. "Here," she said, carefully slipping them on his face. "Try these."
He opened his eyes and gave a mild nod of approval. "Better. Probably not my best look, though."
"You look pretty good to me." She smiled and sat down next to him on the mattress. "I wasn't sure you would wake up again. I wasn't sure it would work."
At his frown, she went on. "That night when you came back in such terrible shape from Keaton's place, your friend from the Order said you needed blood. And Amelie told me what you did for me last night, after I was shot. You saved me with your blood, Gideon. So, I had to try to save you with mine."
He blew out an oath. "The blood bond, Savannah...it's permanent. Unbreakable. It's a sacred thing." His frown deepened. "This isn't the way it's supposed to be."
She sat back, feeling hurt. Feeling she'd done something wrong and he was disappointed. "I'm sorry if it wasn't what you wanted."
Gideon pushed himself up off the bed, and groaned in pain.
"Be careful," she said, trying to ease him back down. "You shouldn't be moving around, and I shouldn't be saying things that upset you. You were shot last night too. The one that hit me passed cleanly through my lung and ribs, but the one inside you..."
"Still in my head," he guessed grimly. "In my brain."
Savannah gave him a sober nod. "Amelie wanted to take you to the hospital--"
"No." He said it firmly, the same way he'd insisted the other night in Boston when she wanted to get him medical help for his injuries then. "Human doctors can't help me, Savannah."
"I know," she said. "So, I did the only thing I could think of."
He reached out, took her hand in his. "You saved my life." He swore again, more roundly this time. "When I realized you'd left...when I knew Keaton's Master was still out there somewhere, I couldn't get to you fast enough, Savannah."
She heard the rage in his voice for the enemy he'd wanted so badly to root out and destroy, and she nodded sadly. "I'm glad he's dead. For what he did to Rachel and your brothers, even to Professor Keaton. For what he did to you, Gideon, I'm glad Smithson is dead. I'm glad you got what you came here for."
He scowled. "I came for you, Savannah. I love you. I should've said it before. I should say it a thousand times now, so you'll know what you mean to me.">Gideon relaxed his hold on the pistol, then stooped to set it down.
"All of them. Slowly."
He took off his weapons belt and put it on the ground at his feet. The bandaged gash on his thigh was bleeding again, seeping through his pant leg.
The other vampire sniffed the air dramatically, lips peeling back in an amused smirk. "Not so untouchable, after all."
Gideon watched the Breed male turn Faulkner's sword on its tip in the moist earth of Amelie Dupree's front yard. "Do I know you?"
The vampire chuckled. "No one did. Not back then."
Gideon tried to place him, tried to figure out if, or when, their paths might have crossed.
"You wouldn't have noticed me. He hardly did, either." There was an acid resentment in the tone, but something else too. An old, bitter hurt. "His unacknowledged bastard. The only kin he had."
Gideon narrowed his gaze on the other male. "Hugh Faulkner had a son?"
A thin, hate-filled smile stretched the polished facade of his face into an ugly sneer. "A teenage son who watched him die at your hand, slaughtered in the open with less regard than might be shown common swine. A son who vowed to avenge him, even thought he had no use for me in life." Hugh Faulkner's bastard smiled a true smile now. "A son who decided to take from my father's killer the only family he had left too."
Gideon bristled, fury spiking in his veins. "My brothers were innocent children. You arranged for those three Rogues to go in and murder them?"
"I thought it would be enough," he replied evenly. "I thought it would settle the score. And it did, for a long time. Even after I came to America to begin a new life under a new name. A name I built into something prestigious, something respectable: Cyril Smithson."
