“Why the hell not? Is he hurt?”
“Not exactly, well, sorta.”
“Not exactly, well sorta?” she repeated. Damn, her chest was feeling tight; didn’t stop her from raising her voice though. “What the hell does that mean?”
“His mate died last week.”
“Last week,” she repeated him again, as if she were having trouble with the words penetrating her obtuse skull.
“Ten days ago to be exact.”
Gabby’s blood went cold. Ten days. That would be right after Annie and the boys had broken into Haven. Gabby had been pissed over the girl going behind everyone’s back to deliver her message, but secretly she was also glad. Logan had always been nice to her. He’d also been the only one to stand beside her father when he’d been expelled from the Paladin order. Logan didn’t deserve to be punished with the loss of his mate. Yeah, life in general sucked. Nothing was fair, but this? Logan had been nothing but faithful in his belief in the Paladin mission of eradicating evil, further proving his honor by his loyalty to his friends.
And look where it got him.
Gabby shook her head, swallowing back the lump in her throat. Better to take what you want. Even if, for her, all she wanted was revenge. For her. For her daddy. For all the stupid naïve humans affected by this war. And now for Logan too.
“Excuse me,” she said, easing her hand from Valin’s grip. “I need to be alone.” And for once, Valin didn’t follow her, though damn it, wouldn’t you know that this one time she wished he would.
The doors banged open. Ganelon looked up from his perch on the chaise lounge chair at the back of the covens’ entry hall in time to see Christos stride in, his pretty new face a thundercloud as he shouted orders left and right.
“I want a meeting in the dining hall now! And I want that worthless excuse for my second laid out on the table before me. And why is it so fucking cold in here? You couldn’t light a goddamn fire?”
His orders weren’t met with the immediate obedience he probably expected, but rather a collective response of hisses and curses as the daylight speared into the dark, and yes, rather chilly interior. A few moments of chaos ensued as any vampire in the area scrambled to get out of range of the deadly rays. Ganelon sat unmoving, admittedly thankful for the warmth of the sun—even if it did make him have something in common with the idiot fuming his way across the grand entry hall.
“Stupid weaklings.” Christos shook his head as he stomped his way across the black marble tiles. It wasn’t until he had practically passed by that he caught sight of Ganelon and drew up short. “What the fuck? Who let him in?”
When no one answered—probably because no one was there to answer—Christos planted his hands on his hips and glared down at Ganelon. “Well?”
“Tired of being back in charge already?” Ganelon asked Christos, nodding pointedly at the doors that he’d left open during his rampage.
Christos grunted. A moment later a human lamb rushed in and slammed the door closed, cutting off Ganelon’s sun. Too bad.
“What are you doing here?” Christos directed the question at Ganelon this time.
Ganelon inspected his nails in the flickering gaslight, digging out some dried blood from his recent…persuasion…session. Christos huffed and Ganelon had to suppress a grin, secretly enjoying the waves of irritation coming off the vampire king. He drew the pause out as long as he deemed necessary to reestablish his superiority, but not so long that he’d drastically increase the amount of time he’d have to suffer being here. Though frankly, anything over nothing was too long.
Ganelon ground his teeth, chafing at the orders that had made his presence here necessary. How was it that Lucifer actually believed this idiot would be instrumental in bringing about the Paladins’ demise? Christos was not suited for the subtleness the task required. Besides, a one-line prophecy made years ago about some child conceived of light and born in darkness being the key to breaching the worlds did not necessarily mean the destruction of His warriors, Lucifer’s sworn enemies.
“The liege lord sent me,” Ganelon said, flicking the loosened blood from his nails onto the floor. “He wanted me to make sure you didn’t need anything.”
Christos scowled, not appreciating Lucifer’s lack of confidence. At that moment, the lamb who’d closed the door made to scurry by them but stopped short when Christos turned his gaze on it, making it shiver in its shredded clothes. “Wine for me and my brother. You may tell Stephan that he’s been granted a reprieve.”
The lamb nodded and bolted by. Doubtlessly glad the request was wine and not blood.
“Trouble on the home front?” Ganelon asked.
“My second is an incompetent fool. One task he set out to accomplish in the last four months while I’ve been gone and even that he screws up! How could he have not known about the girl?” He frowned, the skin around his eyes and nose pinching in anger. “At least he better not know about the girl.”
“Must be some girl. Where did you see her?” Ganelon asked, taking the glass of wine that the lamb had returned with. As soon as he’d clasped the cup, the lamb went rushing out again.
Christos sneered at the creature’s fleeing back and then grunted, flopping down in a wing chair that flanked the chaise and propping his feet up on the end table. “In Brooklyn. By that Martyr’s Ship Monument or something,” he added, waving his hand.
Ganelon blinked. “You were in a park? In Brooklyn?”
“I’ve been visiting the other covens in the surrounding areas. Putting to rest the rumors of my…demise.”
“But the park?”
“Antoine has a flair for the gothic. He found it amusing to convert a few key humans in order to build a hidden set of chambers while the crypts beneath the monument were being constructed.”
“How cliché.”
“Isn’t it?” Christos shook his head, then sighed pensively. “She was walking with a fucking Paladin.”
“A Paladin?” Ganelon prompted, realizing they were back on the topic of the girl.
“At least I’m pretty sure he was. He was older, but he looked an awful lot like the adolescent brat that escaped the Oxford cleansing.”
Ganelon nodded, well aware of the incident Christos spoke of. It was one of those events that Lucifer had raved on and on about. How Christos, Lilith’s son, had captured, tortured, and killed a half-dozen full-blooded Paladin and their part-blooded children. After Lilith’s death, Christos had taken on her position as the vampire leader. He’d left a few of his mother’s best men with a handful of vampires to hold Europe and Asia, but he’d taken the bulk of his coven here to America. That had been back in the 1800s, so the adolescent Paladin would be full grown by now. Still, Ganelon thought Christos should be able to tell for sure if it was the same man, unless, of course, Lucifer had been wrong in his belief that he’d managed to infuse Christos’s new body with some of the sacrificed souls’ gifts and talents.
“You could not tell for sure?” he asked, calmly sipping the wine. It would be poisoned, of course—Christos was ever the opportunist. But it didn’t matter. First, his lovely genetics made him resistant to things that would kill a normal man, and second, he’d made a point of increasing his resistance further by building an immunity to such things.
He shook his head, a growl rumbling in his chest. “The damn girl. She must have been a null. I could sense nothing from her!” He pounded the table. “I couldn’t even sense that half-wit Paladin and I was practically on top of them both before I noticed them.”
Ganelon tapped the table, his heart racing in concert as he thought about the possibilities…assuming Christos was actually correct, which was a big assumption, given the vampire’s track record. “Being able to nullify the magic in one’s surroundings is a pretty powerful gift. Something more than I thought a mixed-blood human could achieve.”