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I stared after Reaper.
Who was she, really? And why would a woman who’d helped kidnap me bring me food and blood-wine?
For a few seconds there while I was eating, I’d amped up my magic, trying to sense her emotions. I got…nothing. Either she wasn’t human, or she had a natural immunity to vampire magic.
And with the way she moved and fought, my bet was on dhampir.
But a dhampir who was able to suppress her vampire half, because I couldn’t smell the vampire in her. And she didn’t have the glow to her skin that most supernaturals had, the unearthly beauty that made us irresistible to humans when we willed it.
Not that she wasn’t beautiful. She was, in a sexy-fairy way.
And she smelled amazing.
She just didn’t have that inhuman look to her.
The cell’s lights shut off, leaving me in the darkness. Even a dhampir needed a small amount of light to see. The utter blackness was disturbing. I wasn’t used to being able to see nothing at all.
Another way the vampires in this lair were messing with my head.
At least I’d eaten. Funny what some food in your belly could do for your attitude. Things no longer seemed black as they had an hour ago when Étan had finished with me.
My jaw tightened. The bite marks on my throat throbbed. They’d stopped bleeding, but they hurt like the time I’d been bitten by the mangy dog I’d found in the woods on my family’s property in Maryland and taken home to doctor.
I flexed my fingers, wanting to rub the wound, but I couldn’t move my hands.
Don’t think about it. Stay strong.
I had to remain calm and in control. I would not let these bastards break me.
Father would come for me any night now, and then, Étan was toast. Literally.
I smiled. A cold Syndicate Prince smile that would’ve shocked my coworkers in Syria who’d thought of me as a go-to guy, the “nice” Kral.
I deliberately turned my thoughts to Reaper. She’d seemed bothered by how I was being treated. Or was that just my imagination? She’d been all-in back at the airport when they’d first taken me.
But she didn’t have to bargain with me to get those photos. We both knew she could’ve taken them without my cooperation.
It was like she’d wanted an excuse to feed me.
Could she be a weak link—one I could exploit?
“Yeah,” I said aloud because I needed to hear a voice—any voice, even my own—in the cell’s deep silence. “Keep working on her. If Father can’t find you, she’s your backup plan.”
But he’d find me. When Karoly Kral set out to do something, it happened.
They’d have sent the photos to him in New York by now. He’d be making plans to come to Paris to rescue me, or maybe he’d send my brothers, Gabriel and Rafe.
Yeah. I pictured Gabriel and Rafe. It made me feel a little warmer, made my bruised insides ache a little less.
I hadn’t seen them since the night before I’d left for Syria. The three of us had gotten together in New York at the Ruby Speakeasy and picked the three most beautiful thralls to drink from. Gabriel was the serious one, and Rafe the charmer. I was happy to lay back and be their wingman. I got plenty of ladies anyway—they all wanted a piece of the Kral Dark Angels.
I smiled; that had been a good night. Although as I recalled, Gabriel hadn’t taken his thrall to a back room like Rafe and I had. Rafe said Gabriel still hadn’t gotten over Camila Vittore, and maybe that was true. My older brother had fallen hard for his human girlfriend, even though he knew they could never be together in a permanent way.
Maybe when I got home, Gabriel and Rafe would laugh about my predicament. The time Zaq got duped by a slayer.
My mouth twisted. Or maybe not.
I sank back into a semi-conscious state. A little before sunrise, a big vampire arrived. He had cropped dark hair, a boxer’s fists and a bronze Paris Syndicate griffin embroidered on his black uniform. A soldier, was my guess. Big Guy with the Fists released me from the cuffs and allowed me to use the bathroom.
