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Marius related Shayna’s most recent discovery, of a hawk emblem on Daniel’s shirt and those of his security team, as well as the symbols above the hawk’s head.
Once he was done, everyone at the table fell silent as the tension in the room rose a notch.
“Is there anything else?” Gabriel asked, a tight frown between his brows. He scrubbed the side of his head, just below the spikes.
Rumy jumped in. “Marius, remember what Shayna learned at the refugee center. Tell them what she said about the IQ tests.”
“IQ tests? What the fuck?” Adrien had never looked more surprised.
Marius shared what Shayna had learned from the most recent group of refugees out of the Dark Cave system. He especially emphasized the amount of time the women believed that Daniel and his other sons spent away from their massive sex-slave operation.
A new heavy silence fell on the room as all eyes turned to Gabriel. Marius’s surrogate father had always been the unacknowledged leader of the vampire world, at least the portion who wanted better things for their world, like civil law and the ability to enforce that law through a decent court system.
But Gabriel turned to Marius. “You’re the one he’s after, the one he’s wanted more than any of his sons.”
Marius wasn’t sure he’d heard right, even though Shayna had once said something similar. “That makes no sense to me, none at all.”
“Then tell me this, where’s Shayna right now?”
“You know where she is. I left her in the guest room with the tablets.”
Gabriel angled his head and narrowed hi
s eyes. “And how far away is that in terms of yards or even miles?”
Most vampires could tell distance by an innate homing ability. “The guest room is two point three miles from here.”
“And is that a single blood-chain around your neck or a double?”
He felt agitated by the question, especially since the answer was so obvious. “You know it’s a single.” He touched the links anyway.
“I rest my case.”
Marius held his gaze. At the edges of his mind, he knew where Gabriel was headed, but Marius couldn’t bring himself to say it. “What’s your point?”
Gabriel’s gaze lowered to the single-chain around Marius’s neck. “That you’re wearing a single blood-chain and you haven’t risen to Ancestral status, but your woman is two point three miles distant. How is that possible?”
“Shit,” Adrien murmured.
“Holy fuck.” Lucian leaned forward. “Even after I rose to Ancestral status, Claire and I couldn’t be more than sixty yards apart.” He gestured with a swing of his hand toward Gabriel. “I needed a lot of practice to broaden that distance to encompass a couple of miles.”
“Same here.”
Lucian pushed his hand through his short black hair. “How much fucking power do you have?”
Both of Marius’s brothers wore the double blood-chains that had helped each to achieve Ancestral status.
Marius rose to his feet and addressed Gabriel. “There has to be some mistake or some bizarre explanation. I mean, both Adrien and Lucian outperform me in every possible way.”
Gabriel lowered his chin, his eyes holding Marius’s gaze fast. “Because you’ve kept it that way. For reasons I’ve never understood, you’ve held back. You always have.”
Marius recalled Shayna saying something similar, if not about holding back, then about insisting he might be special, might have something more to offer—and that Daniel was after him.
Gabriel continued. “You told me about what happened at the Dark Cave system. But the bottom line is that Daniel had intended to kill Lucian, and he would have but Claire helped him escape. He’s never made a serious attempt on your life that I know of. And he could have taken you out any number of times over the past two days. Admit it.”
Marius left the table but he began to pace. He rubbed his forehead. He felt dizzy and sick at heart. Maybe he had held back, but he knew why.
Was Shayna right? Did he need to confess the truth even though he felt ill just thinking about it? Was it possible he had the kind of power Gabriel believed he had, that he might be special?
