He inclined his head. “While I am no longer blind or helpless.”
“Yep.” She pretended to shake a pair of pom-poms. “Yay for both of us.”
“Is it the end of our story?” Gabriel asked softly.
Nick got out of the car and stalked up to the front door of the safe house. She could smell Korvel all around her, and while she knew he wasn’t inside she could track him from here. She needed to get started, to find him, but her legs wouldn’t move and her arms wouldn’t work. She was going to spend the rest of eternity waiting at this fucking door like a stubborn Girl Scout with a wagonload of cookies to sell.
Gabriel reached past her, using the key Benetta had given them to unlock the door before he ushered her inside. He breathed in deeply, frowning as he sorted out the scents. “Korvel was here. So was one of the mortal females from the convent.”
Nick took in the empty rooms. “No blood or bodies.” She started up the stairs, and on the second-floor landing input the code to open the door.
What Korvel and his female companion had left behind in the apartment told Nick little about why they had been there, or where they had gone. At least until she found the pile of clothes the woman had left in the bath.
“Uh-oh. He’s using the nun for sex.” She handed the pullover to Gabriel. “Good thing he’s immortal. I’m pretty sure you go straight to hell for that.”
“Korvel would not…” He paused as he breathed in the mingled scents from the garment. “Perhaps she is not a nun.”
Nick sorted through a traveling case and pulled out a gray head veil and habit to show him. “Think again, pal.” She dropped the clothes and followed Korvel’s and the nun’s scents to the window left open in the bedroom. “They both went out this way.” She leaned out to study the footprints left on the ground below, where a wider man’s tread overlay the smaller, narrow impressions. “Looks like she left first.” Gabriel came to stand beside her, but he seemed more interested in her face. “Problem?”
“You’re thinking of leaving me,” he said, stunning her. “You have been for months.”
Nick prided herself on being a practiced, accomplished liar. She had conned the world into believing she was still human for ten years. Not even Gabriel had known the truth, at least not until Elizabeth’s pet serial killer had attacked her. She could deal with this. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“Not now,” he agreed. “You’re waiting until Richard gives me Ireland and I assemble my household. Once I’m settled, once I’m safe, then you’ll go.”
So he knew. Maybe it was for the best. “I’m not doing the jardin thing. I love you, and I know how important this is to you, but…no.”
He nodded. “I will tell Richard that he must choose someone else.”
“Don’t do that.” Nick lifted her hands to her head and then dropped them. “Don’t placate me. My issues are not yours, and they never were.”
“I cannot agree,” he said gravely. “You are my sygkenis.”
“Yeah, the bond thing, I know. I’m going to talk to Alex.” She started to pace around the room. “She’s a doctor, and she’s already been through it herself. She’ll know what to do for you. I mean, she figured out how to tranquilize the Kyn. I’m sure she can come up with another miracle drug to treat you for bond withdrawal. Like some kind of antipsychotic. It’s not that different from a human having a nervous breakdown, is it?”
“I do not believe that when mortals have a breakdown they lose control of their abilities, descend into insanity, or try to kill anything that moves. But the doctor was able to help the high lord from succumbing to changeling madness; perhaps she can save me as well.” He sat down on the bed. “While Alexandra attends to me, what happens to you, Nicola?”
“Nothing. Nothing happens to me. I go back to my old life, stealing and hoarding medieval shit, and messing with the holy freaks, and rescuing the occasional crucified vamp, and you’re not buying this at all, are you?” When he shook his head, she sighed and dropped down beside him. “Okay. When it gets bad for me, I’ll come and visit. We’ll spend the weekend in bed.”
“I fear the occasional booty call will not be adequate.” He regarded her solemnly. “The only reason Alexandra survived being separated from Michael during her captivity in Ireland is because Korvel bonded her to him.”
Nick almost fell off the bed. “He what?”
“It was not intentional,” Gabriel said. “For a time after her reunion with Michael, Alex was torn between the two bonds. Eventually she freed herself of Korvel’s influence, but the captain has never been the same.” He picked up the nun’s pullover. “That is why I find this so odd. Richard has said that Korvel has not touched a woman since Alexandra left Ireland.”
Nick chuffed out some air. “The vampire king keeps tabs on who his captain is boinking?”
“Korvel’s ability makes any mortal female desire him,” Gabriel told her. “His prowess with women is the stuff of legends. Believe me, everyone has noticed.”
“But that means two Kyn breaking up isn’t automatically instant madness and destruction and death.” She felt a little better. “Good to know.”
“Korvel and Alex never consummated their bond.” He picked up her hand. “You and I, however, have been lovers from the first time we met.” He traced the spaces between her fingers. “Perhaps that was when we bonded as well.”
“You didn’t know I had fangs, and by the time you did it was already a done deal.” A surge of shame made her add, “Back then I knew what was happening between us. I mean, I didn’t get a Kyn instruction manual with my fangs, so I didn’t know how serious it was, but I could feel it. It’s why I tried to dump you in London.”
“You came back for me,” he reminded her. “Do you know, you are the only soul in the world who has never abandoned me?” He brought her fist to his lips. “That is why you are first in my life. I love you. Richard can go hang himself.”
He was going to turn her into a big puddle of goo. “Gabriel.”
“Now come.” He kissed her lips. “We will track Korvel together.”
Simone tried not to look at Korvel, but even in the murky light she could see the contact burns on his face, and the bloody lacerations he’d received from trying to tear his way out of the net. “You agreed to meet with me, Lechance, and on your word I came here unarmed. Is this how you intend to repay your debt to my father?”
“I would certainly never do this to your father, but he is still traveling abroad, isn’t he? Or perhaps not.” Rellen Lechance went over to the net and crouched down to peer at Korvel. “Incredible. I had been told several tales of how dangerous copper is to these creatures, but I thought them somewhat exaggerated. Yet here is proof that it was all true. Does it actually burn you, vampire?”
“You have made a mistake,” Korvel said, rising to his feet and flooding the air with his scent. “Release me and the girl. At once.”
“Now I’ll wager that you are giving off that pretty scent you bastards use to turn humans into mindless slaves.” The guild master tapped the clear nose plug he and all the men were wearing. “Won’t work here, I’m afraid. Can you do anything else? If we toss you off the roof, will you sprout wings and fly?”
“Oh, yes. All vampires can.” Korvel bared his dents acérées. “Remove the net and I’ll give you a ride on my back.”
Lechance chuckled. “I like you. Captain, is it? Simone, please introduce me to your new friend.”
She gritted her teeth. “This is Monsieur Rellen Lechance, Master of the Assassin’s Guild.”
Korvel’s eyes became slits. “Brethren?”
“Ex-Mafia, as it happens,” Lechance told him before she could answer. “Once our employers packed up their operations here in Marseilles and moved down the coast, many of us decided we should form an organization of our own. Contract killings, for the most part, but we occasionally pick up a political assassination or a divorce-case settlement. I find it astonishing how many extremely wealthy men neglect to secure a proper prenuptial agreement before they wed themselves to cocktail waitresses and strippers.”
“You said you didn’t want him,” Simone said, trying to fight back against the panic. “You have me, and you know what I am worth.”
“True, but these creatures are quite valuable, too,” the guild master said. “The Italians who pose as priests have kept a massive bounty on them for years. A scientist from the States has offered to pay a million American dollars for a specimen, as will several unsavory governments. For the scientist, we do not even have to deliver him breathing.”
Simone saw the way he was looking at her. “What do you want, Guild Master?”
Lechance removed two fighting blades, walking them over his knuckles before he threw them at her. They struck the dirt by her feet, their hilts bobbing. “Fight for him, win, and I will free you both.”
She did not move. “I am not my father.”
He shrugged. “Then die for him.”
Ten of the guildsmen came toward her, each taking a position in an unseen circle. The black cloth covering their heads from crown to neck prevented Simone from seeing their faces, and from their formation she had no doubt the guild master had taught them to strike as one. Their movements, however, shouted who they had once been: soldiers, martial artists, street fighters.
Training begins in childhood, so that you may learn, her father told each boy brought to the château. An adult cannot be trained; what they bring to the circle can never be unlearned.
Simone saw the guildsmen in her head as she looked down at the blades by her feet. The three soldiers would be first to attack, then the street fighters, and finally the martial artists. She felt the tension of their muscles as they gathered themselves; she heard the soft movements of their gloves as they exchanged subtle hand signals. Four of them had begun to sweat; one licked it from his lips.