Christos shook his head. “If there is one thing my second did right in my absence it was hunting down the part-breeds. There is a whole crowd of them with some pretty impressive gifts. He suspects they’ve even started their own recruitment methods and are creating a little army of gifted soldiers.”
“And you think you saw one of them today with a Paladin.”
“I know I saw one. You don’t create that sort of energy vacuum around yourself without being a null.”
Ganelon rubbed his chin. “So it’s possible they’ve joined with the Paladin, then. If this…man…is who you think he is.”
“I would bet my second’s head on it.”
“But not your own?”
Christos shrugged, a sly smile twisting his lips. “I’m a big believer in delegation.”
“Hmmm.” Ganelon used to think that way too. He was learning lately that allowing minions to do the important work wasn’t always a good idea. At least not without a heavy hand leading them. He was still pissed over the failure in his last endeavor. He hadn’t gotten the key that would allow him to infiltrate Haven. What’s more, Logan was being stubbornly stoic in his grief and that stubbornness seemed to be his anchor for his sanity. Calhoun Junior hadn’t fallen yet. Ganelon was really kind of pissed at that. He’d expected the Paladin to go on a rampage within hours, if not days, of his mate’s demise. But it had been almost ten now and all the big bastard was doing was sulking.
Should have killed him. That would have been the best way to stick it to the Calhouns.
Luckily he had someone to take his frustrations out on. His wayward son Damon was proving to be a willful bastard and Ganelon was enjoying reminding him of what proper deference meant. When Ganelon finished with him he figured his son would either have regained his place as dutiful minion or not. And if not? Well, the liege lord always had souls that he was hoping to resurrect.
“They headed for the subway, but I got the impression that was a change in plans. It’s likely that their base is there near that park,” Christos said, though he appeared to be mulling things over rather than speaking to Ganelon. Still, Ganelon didn’t want to appear unhelpful, not when Christos would probably go and whine to Lucifer about his lack of assistance.
“Do you need my services to help you locate it?”
Christos curled back his lip, flashing fang. “I am perfectly capable of handling a bunch of wannabes.”
“All right then. You know how to reach me if you change your mind.” Ganelon stood, smiling as he offered his hand to Christos. Christos glanced down at it in disgust but ended up taking it. “Take care, brother. May your hunting meet with great success.”
“No worries…brother.” Christos’s pupils flashed fire as he met Ganelon’s gaze. “I’m quite sure it will.”
Ganelon nodded, taking his hand back and rubbing it on his pants before he made his way out of the room. A lamb rushed ahead of him to open the great wooden doors, just enough for him to slip through. The warm sun greeted him with enthusiasm, and damn if it didn’t feel brighter today than normal.
Turned out his visit with Christos had been the pick-me-up he needed. He would, of course, send his own scouts in, but in the end he’d let Christos call the shots on this. It wasn’t like Lucifer could find fault with what Ganelon was doing either. The liege lord had made it perfectly clear to Ganelon that he was to treat Christos as an equal, and so Ganelon had. He’d reached out and welcomed his brother back, even offered his aid, and Christos had refused, which suited Ganelon just fine. Let Christos soil his own bed with another screwup. It was just the sort of thing Ganelon needed to shore up the foundations of his status with the liege lord. And then, after, he’d be there to collect the bounty. Oh, yes, that null was going to be very useful indeed.
Chapter 7
Should have followed her. The assumption that Gabby wouldn’t try to slip out until the sun went down had been a stupid one on his part. When she’d headed back into the base after claiming she wanted to be alone, Valin had thought to allow her a moment and take care of some other business while she was safe—and most likely sleeping—in her room. That’s what vampires did, after alclass="underline" sleep during the day. But Gabby wasn’t beholden to such necessities anymore. And though she’d spent most of yesterday doing just that, he shouldn’t have assumed she’d do so again.
With his options dwindled to trying to hunt her down again or trusting that she’d return, he’d decided to show some faith and spent the day making plans. Plans that started with buttering up the other recruits in the base and making nice with some of the more established soldiers in hopes of learning what sort of strategy might get him in Jacob’s good graces. Not that he really gave a crap what the tight-ass thought of him, but he figured he should make the effort. Gabby might not want his blood—or anything else to do with him, for that matter—but if he were to become a standard fixture in her life she might just start to relax around him, at least long enough for him to infiltrate her defenses.
And that was working out so well too. Hard to become a standard fixture when she wasn’t there.
Valin took a deep breath, concentrating on stretching his awareness on another sweep of the area around them. Nothing. Not a hint of an evil presence in a ten-block area. Which meant there wasn’t a hint of Gabby either. Not that he’d expected her to be nearby, but when the day had worn down and he’d agreed to Jacob’s suggestion of a little patrol to get a feel of his and Bennett’s skills, Valin supposed he’d been harboring some sort of hope he might find her.
He frowned, thinking of the dark stain on Gabby’s soul and his little foot-in-mouth routine that morning. He’d called her a merker. And though he hadn’t really put much thought behind her heritage, he realized that he had, in fact, assumed she was at least partially one. From the little he’d gathered from Roland and Logan, Gabby’s mother had been a highly ambitious sort when it came to rising up the ranks of Lucifer’s army. Valin had just assumed that someone who was willing to trade her daughter’s life to gain the good graces of the vampire’s leader would have been more than happy to spread her legs for one of the more powerful merkers out there, if not Ganelon himself. But thinking of his current batting average, Valin now realized that might have been yet another bad assumption.
He hadn’t met a merker yet that didn’t have a stain of evil. And before Gabby had pulled her disappearing act in that mine, her soul had been about as pure as new-fallen snow. Okay, maybe not quite—there had been some real roughness about the edges—but where it counted there had not been anything intrinsically evil to it. Was his guess on her heritage really that off? Valin wouldn’t care either way. The only thing that he actually cared about was how that stain had gotten there—and how to get rid of it.
Merker blood or not, she certainly wasn’t tapping into her succubus heritage. Granted, he hadn’t gotten that much time to observe her, but it was enough to see she made a point to suppress her natural seductive powers. Not that it seemed to put a dent in Aaron’s little puppy dog interest. He was still trying to worm his way into her presence at every opportunity, and the drop-dead glances he reserved for Valin were becoming hard for even Valin—who didn’t give a shit—to ignore. Only reason Valin hadn’t bloodied him up yet was that Gabby hadn’t reacted at all to his less-than-stellar advances. He better fucking watch it, though.