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“Not necessary, but thank you.” Gavin stood and started walking back down the steps. “We should go to the freight elevator. The dead and wounded are being piled onto it so they can be sent down below. I’ll feed from the wounded as I go through memories. I’m not at all certain they’re here for you, Lauren. I’m certain someone put that information into certain minds for me to see, but there’s more to it than initial appearances.”
“I believe you have things under enough control Lauren can successfully defend herself if things go sideways again,” Mordecai said, looking down on Gavin as if he were a distasteful bug. “If she is further injured, I will pull your still beating heart from your chest with my bare hands.”
“For the record,” Lauren told Gavin when they’d reached the basement and were walking towards the dungeon area, “I’ve seen Nathan and Cora when they have to be brutal. I don’t want you to hold back because you’re worried about my reaction. You do whatever you have to do in order to keep you and your people safe.” It felt as if she should repeat the important part, so she did. “Don’t hold back because you’re worried about my reaction.”
Gavin stopped walking and turned to her, and Lauren did the same and looked up to meet his gaze before telling him, “I know what you’re capable of every time we touch skin-to-skin, and I still want to be in your life.”
“That isn’t a talent you want getting around.”
“I know, but we agreed to be honest with each other whenever possible.”
“I knew you picked up on certain truths. You felt wolf when you touched Cora, cat when you touched Nathan, and you saw Abbott’s other form when you touched him.”
“I saw the monster and didn’t understand enough about the input I was getting to comprehend more. Now, though I see a vampire’s true form sometimes when I touch them, I use my other senses to pick out how much of that form dominates their lives. How often they listen to it.”
“But my human side was made into a monster before I was turned, so it doesn’t matter whether I listen to the human or the vampire inside me.”
Lauren shook her head. “That isn’t what I get when I touch you.”
The air vibrated and buzzed around them, and Gavin started them walking again. “We need to have the rest of this conversation later. I was going to send you off with Ambrose once he arrives, but if you wish to stay once he’s here, let me know. I’d rather you didn’t see what I’m going to have to do, but if you wish to, I won’t send you away.”
Chapter 13
Gavin had things under his command enough he could have a conversation again, but he was going to need to feed soon.
Mordecai had left a few moments after Gavin was able to efficiently monitor their immediate surroundings — when enough of the invading force was either jailed or dead, so Gavin was no longer using the majority of his brainpower to control them. The old god had stuck around while he wasn’t certain Gavin could keep her safe.
There were no other minds in their immediate vicinity. Gavin could sense the ones riding the freight elevator down, and the single guard riding with them, and Gavin found a tiny bit of joy over the prospect of drinking every last iota of the remaining life force from a strong wolf shifter who’d been tasked with drugging Lauren so she could be easily transported away from the coterie house.
Lauren brought him joy. Torturing people was enjoyable, but not even in the same ballpark as the unmitigated joy he felt when Lauren was happy. Anything that threatened Lauren had to be ended in the most final way possible.
In truth, nothing was the same since Gavin’s time in Faerie — a waking nightmare that never ended.
Nothinghad given him joy when he’d first returned to this realm. Eventually, he’d found joy in pleasing Abbott, though Gavin knew Abbott had implanted that joy into his head as a security measure, until Gavin was thinking straight.
Torture was more job than joy now. Entertaining and fun, sure, but he didn’t derive the sheer pleasure from it he once did.
However, when he considered that these shifters intended to hurt Lauren, he knew he’d have to make a spectacular example of them.
His existence after returning from Faerie had been tedious. Monotonous. Dark. For centuries, he’d thrived in the dark, but it was hard to do so after his time with the Siabhra.
And then a very adult Lauren had walked into his life, and the nights he spent with her were full of sunshine and light.
“My human life started in what are now known as the Carpathian mountains. I find peace in the mountains, so perhaps there’s something to…” He sighed. “Kendric has found happiness and peace in Orlando, which has many similarities to Rome, where he lived in his human life. I mean, one’s a dick and the other a boot, but the general feel of the land is similar. For the first time, I have hopes of finding happiness and peace, and I find myself in the Ozarks, rather than the Carpathians, but the feel of the land is similar.”
“You can’t rest your happiness on me, Gavin. Happiness has to come from within your own heart.”
“I’m not certain my heart is capable of that, on its own.” The words came out before he meant to say them, but it was probably for the best that Lauren knew what she was getting into.
Gavin opened the door going into the dungeon portion of the underground, and the smell of entrails hit him like a shithouse on fire.
Death isn’t pretty, and his people had been brutal with the invading shapeshifters.
Lauren gagged behind him, but he didn’t tell her to leave if she couldn’t handle it.
He stopped and took in the various brainwaves around him, and aimed for one of the weaker ones. This man would die soon, and he wanted to know what was in his head before that happened. He went in a little gentler than he’d have preferred, but he was trying to keep the man alive long enough to give up his secrets.
As he’d suspected, the surface knowledge was that they were after Lauren, but memories had been rearranged, and what Gavin could pick up in the deeper layers hinted towards this being a coup — an attempt to get rid of the Master of the City so someone else could be brought in.
