Midnight's Kiss

Six

The thought made him recoil from her wrist. His chest moved, distracting him. Belatedly he realized he was breathing hard. Like all of his tangled emotions, it was an exercise in futility. Inwardly cursing, he made himself stop.

Melly lifted her head from his shoulder. Compulsively, he ran his gaze down her body. Her eyes were dazed, and her golden skin flushed with pleasure and arousal. He could just see a hint of the full curve of her breasts in the V-neck of her top, and his mouth watered as he thought of how he used to tongue her plump, erect nipples.

“Why did you stop? You didn’t take nearly enough.” She ran her tongue along her lower lip, moistening it¸ and he couldn’t help but track the movement.

Feeling more trapped than ever and wild to get away from her, he snapped, “I took enough to heal. Get off of me.”

Her eyes widened. Flushing darkly, she jerked away and put her back to him.

“I — I wasn’t aware of what I was doing,” she muttered. Raising her hand, she pushed her hair off her forehead.

Twin trickles of blood ran down her slender forearm, intersecting her scabbed-over wounds. He hadn’t taken the time with her that he should have to ensure she didn’t continue to bleed after his bite.

Remorse struck, and he didn’t welcome it. Reluctantly, he said, “I shouldn’t have pulled away like that. You’re still bleeding. Give me your wrist again, and I’ll make it stop.”

Now she was the one to recoil. “After your gracious attitude?” she snapped. “Not on your life.”

Increased noise penetrated his awareness. The Vampyres, down by the gate, were snarling.

“Don’t be stupid, Melly,” he growled. “Can’t you hear them? The ferals down by the gate can scent your fresh blood. It will make them even more focused on you as their prey.”

Shoulders slumping, she tilted her head back and looked up at the shadowed ceiling of his cell. Then she pivoted to fix him with a narrowed, glittering gaze.

“I swear to all the gods,” she said between her teeth. “If you say ‘don’t be stupid’ to me one more time, I’m going to start using you as a punching bag. Because I’ve had a really rotten couple of days, and if you think I’m going to feel bad that you’re chained up and can’t do anything to stop me, you’d better think again, soldier. So you’d better rein in your asshole tendencies, because I’m in the mood to say hello, opportunity. You’ve been a long time coming.”

Once he had liked it when she had called him “soldier.” Halfway through her speech, he realized he was still hard as a rock and aching to bury himself in her. It infuriated him beyond all reason.

“Let’s talk about stupid and those rotten days you’ve had,” he snapped. “What did Justine do, show up on your doorstep out of the blue, wearing a big, friendly smile? And what did you do, Melisande — greet her with open arms and invite her in for a little girl talk? Are you really that naive?”

She blinked rapidly several times, and he saw that he had hit a nerve. Raising her hand, palm up, she crooked a couple of her fingers at him in a beckoning gesture. “Or feel free to go ahead and keep those sarcastic comments coming. Because it makes so much sense to piss off the chick with the lock pick. And besides, look who’s talking about stupid — and look at where he’s standing right now.”

He had to focus on something besides her beautiful, angry face.

If it were possible for him to break free of his restraints, he would have done so already when the ferals had attacked him. Even so, because he couldn’t bear to stand still without trying to do something, he spread his legs as wide as he could and strained against the chains imprisoning his wrists overhead.

As he fought to break free, he said between his teeth, “If I hadn’t done what I did, she would have slit your throat and drained you dry while I watched.” Glaring at her, he snarled, “Not that I’ll get any thanks from you for doing it.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she glared back. “She was playing you like a master musician with a tiny violin. You don’t know that she would have slit my throat. She made it quite clear I’m a useful bargaining chip for more than one reason. Giving in to her demands wasn’t just stupid of you — it was downright suicidal.”

Instead of bothering to answer her, he heaved at the restraints again. While his joints popped audibly, the fastening in the ceiling never shifted. The restraints had been constructed with a Vampyre’s strength in mind.

After watching him for a moment, Melly strode toward him. “Stop that. Julian, stop. You’re tearing your wrists open for no good reason.”

He grunted, “It’s better than standing here and doing fuck all while you bitch at me.”

When he glanced at her, she set the flashlight on the floor, angling the beam of light toward his right ankle, and knelt at his feet. “Well, you’d better not bring the whole thing down on my head. For God’s sake, hold still, will you?”

The sight of her kneeling at his feet brought other erotic memories to mind, her sexy lips and tongue working on him as he pumped into her, fists buried in her hair. She had loved it when he fucked her mouth.

He had loved it too, had loved watching her enjoy what they had done more than his own pleasure. Orgasming was too simple a term for how he had felt at the time, but making love felt transcendent.

Had she been acting for any of it? How much of her pleasure had been real?

The brutal fact was, he would never know for sure. She could not only talk up a bitch when she wanted, but she could lie about virtually anything like it was the Gospel truth.

It was one of her strongest talents, and one of the reasons why she was such a popular actress. Not only did the camera love everything about her, but she could also convince audiences all over the world that she really had cared about the gigantic ape that had kidnapped her and climbed the Empire State Building, and she could sell zombies like they were the only true apocalypse.

Once they had laughed about that together.

Angling his jaw out, he averted his gaze. “What’s taking you so long?”

Unable to resist, he glanced down at her again and saw that her shoulders had pinched together in an unhappy slump. He knew he was being a bastard, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He had a devil riding him, and the devil wore worn cowboy boots, smoked a cigar and answered to Julian’s name.

“I have pieces of two broken hairpins, not a magic bottle labeled ‘miracles,’ ” she said tightly. “The locks on these manacles are a lot smaller than the ones on the doors. I’m having trouble getting at the tumblers inside.” Angling her head up, she gave the chains over his head a grim look. “And not only are you taller than I am, but your wrists are locked above your head. God only knows how I’m going to get at those.”

“You’re going to climb up my body, that’s how,” he told her. “If you have to, you can kneel on my shoulders. Hurry up. Justine’s lackey isn’t going to be gone for that much longer.”

“I know that,” she snapped. “Leave me alone, so I can work.”

He bit back the retort that rose to his lips, and stood in clenched silence while she twisted to reach the lock of the manacle at the correct angle.

He muttered, “Your mom has called on a lot of help in searching for you, including Graydon from the Wyr demesne and Soren. I suppose if you could have called Soren by now, you would have.”

She paused only for a moment. “Soren and my mom go way back, but he’s her friend, not mine. I don’t have a connection to him, although right now I sure wish I did.”

How long had it been since Vampyre Guy had left? Like windowless casinos that deliberately masked all signs of time passing, it was impossible to calculate how long Julian had been in the heavy darkness of the caverns.

But it had been long enough for him to realize that Melly’s nearness was just as excruciating as he had always known it would be. Certainly it had been long enough for them to argue and snipe at each other the way they always did whenever they saw each other these days.

It had also been long enough for him to realize he wanted her as much as he ever had. Perhaps even more so, as the long years without her had only served to make his hunger for her that much more urgent.

The thought that had been circling at the back of his mind came to the forefront again — he could take her. He could get his hunger slaked, at least for a time.

The prospect wasn’t exactly a done deal. Apparently, to go by her angry responses to him, her emotions were just as complicated for him as his were for her, and the arousal he had sensed when he fed from her had no doubt been enhanced by the intoxicating properties in his bite.

But if he chose to go after her and set his mind to the task, and if he got her, maybe he could make the infernal noise in his head and his heart quiet down for a little damn while.

This time, instead of recoiling from the idea, he actually considered it as he watched her work. His sensitive hearing picked up the miniscule sounds of the ends of the hairpins scraping on the metal of the manacle. Her fingers jerked as the makeshift pick slipped, and she swore.

His gaze ran down the shapely curve of her hourglass back and lingered at her round, sweet ass.

Mine, he thought. He had lost so much of what had passed for a soul that not even he could tell if the thought was cold-blooded or heated.

You will be mine again. I’ll take you. I’ll make you want it.

I’ll make you want me again, at least for a while. Only this time I won’t wait for our different lifestyles to pull us apart, or for you to cheat again.

I’ll take you and make you mine, until I choose to walk away.

By sheer force of will, Melly forced her hands to remain steady as she tried again to pick the lock on the manacles.

On the one hand, this whole nightmare pretty much topped every other bad memory she’d ever had.

On the other hand, it was kind of a dream come true to have Julian hog-tied and at her mercy. She could get in his face and yell what the fuck until she got it all out of her system. Think of how cathartic that would be. Really, it could take her days.

The last occasion they had spent any significant time together was when he had broken up with her. She didn’t want to think about that right now, but her mind went there anyway.

He had been so icy and terse. The lover who had known her body and desires so intimately had vanished as if he had never existed, and the stranger who had taken his place had a face like a stone wall.

They had arranged to meet in Carmel, a charming coastal town in Monterey County. As she had spent the afternoon driving the scenic route through Big Sur, she had actually been daydreaming about leaving her life for him and living in that great, hulking pile of Machiavellian politics the Vampyres called Evenfall.

She had been amused by the idea, and optimistic, and not fifteen minutes later, he had accused her of cheating.

It had literally been a breathtaking experience. She had felt gut shot and utterly bereft. The confrontation devolved into a massive fight, while they hurled hurtful accusations at each other.

Funny. Looking back at it now, she couldn’t even remember most of what they had said to each other.

Blah blah stop lying to me, he had said. Blah blah, I can’t believe you won’t believe me! she had said.

Along with more stuff along those lines. Now whenever she recalled that night, her memory was blanketed in a haze of shock and pain, although shards of clarity still stabbed at her, like the memory of how he had looked at her as if he hated her, and the cold, clipped tone of his voice.

Months later, she approached Xavier. Her pain had turned to outraged fury, and she had long since decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with Julian. Anyone who could demonstrate such a lack of faith in her wasn’t anybody she wanted to be with. By that point, all she wanted were some answers.

How had Julian become so convinced she had cheated on him? Somebody had to have told him so. But if so, who — and why? Whoever it was, it had to be somebody Julian had trusted a hell of a lot more than he had trusted her…

If he had ever really trusted her.

Their liaison had only lasted a couple of months, but it had been unpopular to a lot of people. The Nightkind King together with the Light Fae heir heralded the possibility of a major shift in the balance in power in the North American Elder Races demesnes.

At the end of the day, what Melly really wanted was a name. She wanted to face her enemies, not have them in a position where they might be able to stab her in the back again.

But not even Xavier knew where Julian had gotten his information, and after that last terrible fight, she sure as hell wasn’t about to go to Julian and ask, because she deserved so much better than what he had thrown at her, so really, screw him.

Justine was right, Melly thought. Sadistic and crazy, but right. Julian’s dictatorial and arrogant, and inflexible doesn’t even begin to cover it. He’s the most infuriating son of a bitch I’ve ever known, and I don’t even know why I’m fighting so hard to free him.

At that, she caught herself up. It was one thing to be angry at him — and she was extremely angry at him. But it was another thing entirely to indulge in such vindictive thoughts, especially when she didn’t even believe them herself, anyway.

TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT ME TO DO, AND I’LL DO IT! he had roared.

He might still look and act like he hated her, but when Justine turned the screws on him, he hadn’t even hesitated.

More than anything, she wanted to sniffle and lean against his jeans-clad leg. She wanted a hug.

She really did want to haul off and clip him as hard as she could with her best right hook.

Gritting her teeth, she thought, I’ve got to hand it to you, soldier. There isn’t anybody else in the world who can tie me into such knots.

Meanwhile, her sense of urgency escalated. Justine might not be back for a day or two, and they had a long time to go until then, but Julian was right — it wouldn’t take Anthony long to hunt down some prey and to pick up food and water.

The pieces of her pick slipped again. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t get the damn pieces in the damn lock. Her core overheated, and she started to melt down.

“Julian,” she said very low as she fought back tears. “I — I don’t think I can get this. The lock is too small, and I can’t hold the pick at the right angle and still get the other piece inside to trip the tumbler. I need thinner pieces of metal, and I don’t have any.”

Silence spun out. When he spoke, he sounded entirely calm. “That’s all right. Melly, look at me.”

All the antagonism was gone. This was the Julian who had looked into the camera and told her she would be okay.

Damn it, the bastard Julian didn’t bring her to tears anymore, but the nice Julian did. Blinking the wetness out of her eyes, she sat back on her heels and looked up at him.

He regarded her with an expression that was every bit as calm as he sounded, that wolflike gaze of his trained on her face. He even gave her a small smile. “It’s all right,” he repeated. We’re going to go to plan B.”

“I didn’t know we had a plan B,” she said raggedly as she swiped at her nose with the back of one hand.

“We’re going to make one up right now,” he told her. “Along with a plan C if we have to.”

Rising to her feet, she frowned. “What do you have in mind?”

“You need to get out of here,” he said. “And Vampyre Guy is the way to do that.”

“No.” She started shaking her head and decided not to stop for a while. “I’m not leaving you.”

“You have to. He knows the way out, and when he shows up here again, he’ll have brought in enough prey to keep the ferals satisfied until he can get out again. Meanwhile, Justine is busy doing other things. We don’t know if we’ll ever get another chance like this again.”

“I couldn’t convince him to make one lousy phone call,” she pointed out.

“You almost did,” he told her. “You have him half-seduced already, and you didn’t even put the full weight of those gorgeous green eyes of yours into the effort. If he walks away, he’ll have time to talk himself out of calling Tatiana, but if you talk him into taking you with him, you can make the phone call yourself.”

A small, feminine part of her perked up. He still thought her eyes were gorgeous?

Well, now she was just being pathetic.

Ducking her head to hide her expression, she rubbed the back of her neck. After a moment, she muttered, “I don’t know; it sounds really risky.”

“Can you take him, if you had to?”

The question brought her gaze back to his face. His expression remained calm and steady. This was the man who had become a Roman emperor’s most successful and celebrated general, and he was assessing her, not judging, maybe for the first time in twenty years.

Just the simple connection of his eyes meeting hers without antagonism shouldn’t feel so exhilarating, but it did. Resisting the emotional pull of it, she fought to become as analytical as he had.

“I think so,” she told him. “I’ve had a lot more training than most people realize. And he’s not only a young Vampyre, but he’s also taking a lot of his cues from Justine’s behavior, even if he’s doing so subconsciously. He doesn’t see me as a threat.”

“You think so, but you’re not sure,” Julian said. “Is that what feels so risky?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure how much training he’s had, and I’m not one to make that kind of mistake about somebody else,” she pointed out. “But no, that actually wasn’t what I meant. If Justine decides to come back before help arrives, and she finds me gone, you realize she’ll kill you. If she can’t torture you, you’ll have lost all value to her.”

“You can’t think about that.” He shook his head.

He sounded remarkably calm about the prospect of being murdered. Even as one part of her took note, she snorted. “You can’t tell me what to think, or not to think.”

His expression turned impatient. “The risk to me only means you’ll have to hurry.” He paused. “I’m pretty sure we’re underneath San Francisco.”

“Yeah, I figured that out already.”

“That means help is a lot closer than you realize,” he told her. “When you get out, you shouldn’t just call your mom. You need to call Xavier too — he’ll be able to get trustworthy people to you much faster than Tatiana could.”

She cast a leery glance over her shoulder at the empty cells. “Do you have any idea where we are in the tunnel system?”

“Nowhere I recognize.” He angled his face up toward the chains overhead and braced his body to pull on them again. “If I had ever seen these cells or heard of them, I would have had them filled in with cement a long time ago.”

As he strained to break free of his bindings, her gaze pulled back to him.

She didn’t want to look. She didn’t. But she also couldn’t help herself.

Nothing about Julian was smooth or civilized. His powerful, heavily muscled body still retained a deep, burnished tan from when he had been human, and he still carried all the scars he had acquired throughout his years of waging war. The rough life he had lived showed on his hard face — while he had been turned in his midthirties, he looked more like a man who was in his midforties.

His looks might be rugged, but he didn’t carry an ounce of extra fat anywhere on him. While certain parts of Roman society had been famous for its excesses, it was clear that Julian had not taken any part of it. His tastes ran to the simple, even Spartan.

That had been another thing that had attracted her to him. Given the many opportunities to indulge in excess that he must have encountered throughout the centuries, he still maintained an aura of mature, settled discipline.

She had tried before to imagine him as a young Gladiator in the arena. Back then he must have been as dangerous as a lean, half-starved alley cat. Now, the alley cat had long since vanished. What stood in his stead was a scarred and even more deadly lion who carried the weight of having lived for many years in his prime.

The muscles in his biceps, chest and flat abdomen bulged as he heaved again at the chains. He was an old Vampyre, on a par with Justine in terms of sheer age, and given the years of the blood oaths he had taken, Melly thought she had some kind of inkling just how Powerful he really was. Yet there wasn’t an inch of give in his restraints.

Disquieted, she swallowed hard. “Justine built this place too well.”

Spearing her with a sidelong glance, he said, “Yes, and none of it is new construction. She must have been using these cells for years.”

Rubbing her arms against the chill, she looked around. “You never could fully eradicate the feral Vampyre problem.”

“No, I couldn’t. No matter how many times I burned out the tunnels, eventually they always came back. Whether it was fair or not for them to judge me on that, it’s always been a black mark against me in the Nightkind council.” He wiped his face on one bare arm. “This has got to be a completely separate tunnel system, or I would have found it before now.”

Her body wasn’t doing very well at warding off the deep underground chill any longer. Shivers ran through her muscles, and she felt too hollow, almost lightheaded. She forced herself to concentrate. “What happened to turn Justine rogue? Do you know?”

His attention focused on her. “That’s right, you don’t know any of the events from the last two days. She tried to have Xavier assassinated.”

“What?!” She hadn’t thought she had any room in her to be shocked at anything else, but she was wrong. “Please tell me he’s all right.”

He gave her a grim smile. “Luckily, Xavier is one tough son of a bitch to kill. He needs some recovery time, but he’ll be fine.” Telling the story in a few concise sentences, he filled her in on what had happened in the Nightkind demesne over the last forty-eight hours.

She grew more dazed as she listened. When he reached the part of exploring Justine’s property, tears sprang into her eyes. “All of them,” she echoed. “She murdered all ninety-two of them.”

“Yes.”

Some crimes were unfathomable. Dashing a hand over her eyes, she fought to steady her voice. “I knew some of those people. Not well, but still, I knew them. Sofia. Her majordomo, Peter. He was always so charming.”

Julian’s hard expression, normally so cold whenever he looked at her, seemed to soften. “I know.” After a few moments, he said quietly, “Melly, I think you might be going in shock.”

“I’m all right.” Her voice sounded flat and dull, and she couldn’t muster the energy to put any strength into the words.

“I don’t think you are.” He spoke the words carefully. The thin beam of the flashlight caught in his eyes and made them glow.

Ha. If Julian was taking care with her, then she really must be looking rough.

Her shivering had grown more pronounced. Much as she didn’t want to, she was going to have to eat the last of her stash. She couldn’t afford to be shaky and uncertain when Anthony returned.

“I need to get back to my cell while I still can,” she muttered.

Keeping her head down, she left his cell. She had to fumble three times before she could get the door locked again, and then she had to do it all over again with her own cell door.

The beam of light that had been her lifeline flickered and was growing dim. The batteries in the flashlight were running low. She should probably turn it off to conserve the energy. After all, she didn’t know for sure that Anthony was coming back.

At that thought, a flicker of rebellion stirred. There was thriftiness and being smart, and then there was needless paranoia. Justine had ordered him to come back with supplies, which meant he had to return. Leaving the light on, she wrapped herself in her rough blanket and sat in the corner, in the triangle of her little nest.

After that, her mind shut down, and she focused only on immediate necessities. While she tried not to eat her remaining supplies too quickly, once she had made the decision, she couldn’t stop herself and practically inhaled the last of the nuts and the chocolate.

Afterward, she drank the last of her water, sparing only a little at the end to wash away the dried trickle of blood from the cut on her neck and the bite on her forearm. As she checked her wrist, she saw that the tiny puncture wounds had already scabbed over.

The food and water weren’t enough. Her hollowed-out body clamored for more hydration and nutrition. In an effort to stop the discomfort, she pressed a fist into her abdomen, just under her rib cage, and huddled into a ball, but the pressure didn’t help much.

The light had dimmed so that it only illuminated the area of her nest. She could sense Julian in the darkness, silently watching her, but instead of it bothering her, she almost found comfort in his regard.

She didn’t care what he thought of her, and she was glad he remained silent, since usually when he opened his mouth it meant that sooner or later she would get infuriated with him, and she didn’t have the energy for it right now. As long as he could watch her, it meant she wasn’t alone in this horrible place.

Her gaze ran along the edge of the blanket, across the floor and followed the lines of the upended cot. Down, along and over. When she completed a circuit, she began all over again.

Julian’s news had shaken her more than she liked to acknowledge. While she had known, of course, that Justine had jumped the rails, she hadn’t realized just how far the Vampyre had gone.

There was no way that the details of such a significant massacre could be suppressed for long. How many people already knew about it?

Julian, of course, and the team he had taken to Justine’s property, which must have been around ten or fifteen people. Then there was the human forensics team that Julian had sent in to investigate at daybreak. Xavier knew, along with whoever worked for him that he might have told. And probably a few more key people in Evenfall, like Dominic, knew what had happened.

That was too many to keep a secret. So the news of the massacre either had — or would — get out, and then what?

All the other members of the Nightkind council would have to decry what had happened, however they might feel about it in private.

In truth, some of the council members would be frankly indifferent. To them, attendants were inferior creatures, like pets, and no doubt they would view the killings as merely unfortunate, while others, Melly believed, were genuinely decent people, and she didn’t think she was being naive.

But in public, none of them could afford any appearance of acceptance or indifference and hope to retain their seats, or maintain the successes of their businesses and the comfort of their lifestyles. The news of the massacre itself could ruin all of them, not only with the human population, but with the rest of the Elder demesnes as well.

And then what?

Melly’s gaze completed another circuit. She started again.

Justine would be trying to do damage control. Maybe she could put the blame for the massacre on the one person who had gone missing — Julian. But wait, that couldn’t hold, because Julian had been in the public eye virtually the entire time when the murders had occurred.

So Justine might not be able to pin it on him personally, but she might try to pin it on his soldiers, who would have been in the position to carry out such orders.

No, the timing of that wouldn’t sit right. Melly didn’t see how it could. And Justine couldn’t spin the killings as retaliation for what she had tried to do to Xavier, because that would mean she would have to admit to trying to murder a member of the Nightkind government.

She had to be on thin ice with her allies right now. They would not thank her for the increased precariousness of their own positions.

And none of them would consider backing a bid for power from her. Not in the light of current events.

That meant Justine had miscalculated badly. If the Vampyre hadn’t realized that yet, then she would very soon. By her own actions, she would have alienated herself from her allies, and martial law was still in effect throughout the demesne.

She was losing her power base, and she was isolated. That meant she had no anchor, no way to achieve any of her goals, and no reason to hold back from any of her excesses.

It also meant that Melly and Julian were in an even more precarious position than she had at first realized.

Or were they? She chewed a thumbnail.

What it really meant was that the value of Melly’s life had increased, while the value of Julian’s life had gone down. Right now, Julian had value to Justine only if she had the time and the interest to torture him, and Melly was willing to bet that Justine was rapidly running out of both time and interest.

And Julian knew it. That canny wartime general had already parsed the value of his life against the value of Melly’s. He had been so calm earlier when he had argued for Melly to use Anthony to get out, because he already believed he was going to die.

Her gaze snagged on something and stopped running the circuit. She focused on the underside of the cot.

And cocked her head.

Maybe she did have a magic bottle labeled miracles after all.

The thin mattress was meant to rest on a piece of canvas stretched to the rectangular frame and held in place by metal springs that were roughly three-quarters of the length of her little finger.

The width of the metal springs looked like it might be thinner than her broken pieces of hairpin.

Snatching a hairpin piece out of her pocket, she held it to the cot to compare. The springs were thinner. Not by much, but she didn’t need much.

Halle-fucking-lujah.

If she could flatten two of the springs out on one end, she might be able to get the ends into the locks of Julian’s manacles.

Screw plan B.

It was time she came up with her own plan.