Born in Chains (Men in Chains)

  Opening her eyes, she said, “I can feel this ability at work in me, but I can’t seem to locate the weapon.”

  Giselle glanced at Adrien. “Perhaps there isn’t enough power yet for that to happen.” Shifting her gaze back to Lily, she asked. “Did you agree to your mission because of money?”

  She shook her head. Panic set in. By now, she knew that Giselle had some kind of power over her, but she couldn’t reveal the whole truth. She couldn’t. Trembling set in. “Not … money.”

  “Then what? Why do you do this thing? Are you afraid of Daniel?”

  “Yes, that he’ll kill me. Kiernan as well.” She bit back the rest of the truth, but she broke out in a sweat.

  “And what else?”

  The woman’s voice cajoled and coaxed Lily, the powerful vampire waves beating at her mind, compelling her.

  Lily glanced up at Adrien. Help me. I can’t tell her. Please. Make her stop.

  But Adrien’s gaze was hard as he responded, mind-to-mind, We have a right to know why you’re set on destroying our kind.

  I can’t tell you or anyone.

  But Adrien pressed her. You’re after the weapon, acquiring it on behalf of one greedy human and one maniacal vampire. We must know what’s going on.

  Please, Adrien. I’m begging you. I can’t give the reason. Too much is at stake.

  “Lily,” Giselle called out, more waves pounding on her this time.

  Lily turned slowly in her direction, under the strange spell all over again. “Tell me why you must find the weapon, if not for money?”

  Lily’s trembling increased. Her lips formed the words. She would try to say them, but her heart forced them back. Sweat poured from her now, streaming down her face, her back. She shook hard, resisting Giselle’s power.

  She couldn’t betray her son. One of the terms of her arrangement was that she keep the terms confidential. If she revealed the truth, Kiernan would kill Josh.

  Suddenly a new power flowed toward her, but this time possessing and strengthening her as the blood-chain vibrated heavily. Though Giselle continued to pummel her, Lily now siphoned Adrien’s power. She could resist Giselle.

  “Enough,” Alfonse said. “Giselle, stop.”

  Giselle ceased suddenly and Lily weaved in her seat, but caught hold of the arm of the chair with her free hand to steady herself. That Adrien’s power still flowed through her made her feel dizzy. She met his gaze once more. Thank you.

  She set her goblet down on the table next to her then wiped the sleeve of her shirt over her face. She leaned forward and put her head in her hands.

  She didn’t understand why Adrien had stepped in to support her. She looked up at him once more. Why did you do it? I think she could have broken me.

  I disagreed with the effort on principle. But I wish you would tell us, or at least tell me.

  I can’t.

  He looked as though he wanted to say more, but a young voice called out, “Uncle Adrien. I thought that was you.”

  “Ah, my grandson,” Giselle murmured, pride in her voice.

  But what happened next stunned Lily: The warm smile that broke over Adrien’s face transformed him completely as he turned to hold out his arms to a boy of maybe six or seven.

  The lad half leaped, half flew into Adrien’s arms. He swung him in a circle, hugging him, even levitating and whirling faster so that the child laughed, the sound bouncing around the domed, carved ceiling of the large cavern.

  Because of the chain, she sensed Adrien’s love for the boy. Even without the chain, though, she could see the affection on his face.

  All that love. From a vampire. From Adrien.

  The dizziness Lily had experienced earlier returned, but for a completely different reason.

  The boy put his arms around Adrien’s neck. “I’ve missed you. We all have.”

  “I’ve been away for a year, but now I’m back.”

  “The alarm sounded,” the boy said, his eyes wide. “All my friends had to go into their hidden homes, did you know that?”

  Adrien glanced at Alfonse. “No, I didn’t.”

  The boy glanced at Lily, then his eyes widened further. “You’re a human.”

  Lily nodded. “I am.”

  He frowned. “But you’re just a girl. Why would the alarms sound because a female human came into Trevayne?” He glanced from Adrien to Lily then to his grandparents.

  Giselle rose from her seat and took charge of him. “Come, Jean-Luc. You should have been in bed an hour ago.” The boy stared over his shoulder at Lily as he walked away, half dragged by his grandmother who promised more information about the human once he was in bed.

  Jean-Luc waved and smiled at Lily, the tips of his fangs showing.

  Lily waved in return, knowing that what had happened in the past few minutes had overturned her world.

  Adrien spoke quietly to Alfonse, which gave her a moment to gather her thoughts once more and to look at the vampire who had killed others of his kind in front of her, whose dark nature both made her afraid and excited her, and who had just shown a very human response to a vampire child.

  She looked away from Adrien, feeling more confused than ever about this world she’d just entered. She’d had a strong opinion about vampires, which kept being confirmed over and over again. But other situations, like this one, had arisen to obliterate at least some of those preconceptions.

  The one thing she knew for certain, however, was that Adrien couldn’t have faked his obvious love for Jean-Luc. But even beyond this, he had interfered with Giselle’s enthrallment skills, allowing Lily to keep secret the one piece of information that could keep her son alive.

  Adrien called to her, “Come, Lily. Alfonse is going to take us to the vault now.”

  She rose, nodding, but as she met his gaze, the shift in her emotions traveled through the chain’s constant stream of communication between them. Desire for Adrien, ever-present anyway, sharpened suddenly.

  He narrowed his gaze. What is it?

  She shook her head and felt another wave of heat rise up her cheeks. Damn the chains. She could hardly keep her shift in emotions secret from Adrien. Nothing. Let’s go to the vault.

  When he opened his arm, she shivered as she stepped onto his foot and slung an arm around his neck.

  His gaze narrowed. This isn’t nothing. I can feel your desire.

  But she placed her free hand on his chest. Please, Adrien, don’t push me. I’m barely holding myself together.

  She half expected him to say something sarcastic. Instead, he murmured against her cheek. “No worries, Lily. Let’s see what the vault says, then we’ll head back to Paris to get some sleep. I can feel your fatigue, and you’ve been through hell tonight. We both have.”

  His sudden concern didn’t help her response to him. Her heart swelled, tightening her chest.

  Then Alfonse suddenly passed through the stone wall to her left and Adrien put them in motion. Her stomach turned once more since Adrien had to go faster than usual in order to keep up.

  Lily had thought the trip would be short, but Adrien informed her that some of the cavern systems were over a hundred miles long. She was aware suddenly of just how little Kiernan had really told her about this world.

  Though her head ached, and her stomach boiled, she asked, How many vampires live in this one system? She thought a few hundred maybe.

  Over twenty-five thousand.

  Lily held on tight, afraid that this new, inconceivable piece of information had also just changed her perception of the vampire world. But she wanted to know more. And how many children?

  Not many, because we’re long-lived. Only three hundred.

  Three hundred vampire children, all of them loved in the same way that humans loved their children. But a new truth dawned, one closer to Adrien—that some vampire children weren’t loved, but had endured hell growing up. She knew in her bones that Adrien had suffered terribly in his childhood.

  She fell silent after that, struggling agai
nst the pain beating within her head, and the nausea that threatened her.

  Finally Adrien began to slow, and as he passed through one last tunnel that ended in a large cavern, the pain eased. With her feet at last on solid ground, she clung to Adrien. He didn’t let her go but continued to support her with his arm around her waist until the nausea subsided.

  At last she opened her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Lily,” Alfonse said. “Adrien tried to tell me to slow down, but I couldn’t, not without giving away our location.”

  “Understood. It’s okay. I wish I could say I’m getting used to altered flight, but it’s rugged.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Adrien let Lily go, but didn’t want to. Something had changed between them, though he couldn’t say what exactly. Lily’s emotions came at him, her sudden strengthened desire for him that only fueled his own incomprehensible and powerful need for her. But more than that, he could feel her bewilderment, her confusion probably because of what she’d just witnessed, given her low opinion of vampires.

  He didn’t know exactly why he’d intervened, preventing Giselle from reaching into Lily’s mind and extracting the truth from her, the real reason why she was on this mission. But some part of him wanted her to trust him enough to tell him, wanted her to feel good enough about his character that she could reveal the truth that frightened her.

  “Is this the vault?” Lily joined Alfonse by a stone pillar in the center of the space. Stalagmites and their companion stalactites marred the area, a sure sign that no one had been here in a long time to do cleanup and repairs.

  Alfonse put one hand on the stone and with the other shaded his eyes. Adrien sensed his concern about the contents—that he even debated turning anything over to Adrien.

  He straightened his shoulders suddenly and met Adrien’s gaze. “Except for Sebastien’s orders, I wouldn’t do this, not for you, not for anyone.”

  “I understand.”

  Alfonse drew in a deep breath. “Adrien, you’ve got to find a safe place to hide Lily. Giselle and I debated saying anything to you, but the underground rumors are that Silas has seen Lily in a vision destroying the vampire race, or at least that’s what he’s telling everyone. Which means that his followers will be after her, to kill her.”

  “Do you actually believe what’s being said?”

  “The fanatics believe Silas, just as they believe these documents are a threat to our way of life. But Sebastien and I and many others have greater faith in our ability to survive Daniel’s current plan to acquire the weapon, which is why we’re entrusting you with the documents.”

  “Why do these even exist?” Lily asked. “Why weren’t they destroyed?”

  Alfonse shifted in her direction, his gaze falling to Adrien’s hand, the one around her waist, the one that held her and supported her. “If the weapon truly does exist, there’s a good chance more than this set of designs is out there as well, maybe even more than one weapon. We need as much information on the side of good as the other side might have.” He lowered his chin, once more holding Adrien’s gaze. “We get that the end point for you involves Daniel, that he’s behind your having been hauled into Lily’s mission, that he’s made use of your abilities to create a tracking pair.

  “But we also believe an opportunity exists as well, something you’ll be able to do to change the course of our history once you reach the end of this mission.” Suddenly he switched to telepathy: And Adrien, Sebastien is right about your connection to Lily. Something astounding is happening between you. I know how you hate humans, but even I’ve felt it—certainly Giselle has—that Lily has something extraordinary to give you, if you’ll open yourself up to her. But you can’t hold back. It might even become a matter of life and death for you to establish a deeper connection with this human, deeper than you’ve ever had with anyone.

  Adrien grew very still. The last thing he’d expected was Alfonse encouraging him to explore a true bonding with Lily, the kind that for Alfonse had led to marriage to Giselle. He shook his head. What you’re suggesting can’t be. You know what I am.

  At that, Alfonse’s lips quirked. Yes, I know what you are. But do you?

  Lily glanced up at Adrien. “Is there something I should know?” she asked, looking from one to the other.

  “No,” Adrien said.

  Alfonse struck the pillar with a single sideways motion of his fist, which depressed a stone lever. In turn, another part of the broad base of the pillar slid open.

  Alfonse squatted and pulled out a black metal box. He set it on the floor then slid it across a flat stretch of ground that Adrien realized comprised pavers of some kind, very old. Even this deep into the Trevayne system, though perhaps millennia ago, vampires had worked the cavern.

  Adrien released Lily then dropped to his knees. He opened the lid. Inside were a dozen documents or so. He flipped through them and found several engineering schematics, but unlike anything he’d seen before, as though designed with some kind of code.

  He glanced up at Alfonse. “Have you looked at these before?”

  “No. I never wanted to. I agreed to house them here, at Sebastien’s request, over fifty years ago. I asked him why he didn’t just destroy them but he said he feared that one day our world would have need of them. I guess that day’s come. Just tell me that you’ll do right by them.”

  “You know I will.”

  Adrien glanced at each document, written in French but also translated into English. When he finished scanning one, he’d hand it to Lily, who dropped to sit beside him on the stone floor.

  As she read them, he felt her excitement as she sought the weapon’s location. But as his stack grew smaller, and nothing emerged except scientific notations, experiments, and the like, that excited jolt diminished until she read the last one and examined the final schematic.

  “There are references to at least two dozen countries where experiments were held,” Lily said, “but nothing else, nothing of real use.”

  “But working from a list of twenty-four countries instead of two hundred narrows the field.” Alphonse closed the metal box and put it back in the vault. Another fist on stone and the apparatus sealed up again.

  Adrien gathered up all documents into a single tight stack, tucked them into his waistband, then zipped up his jacket to keep them pressed against his chest.

  Lily had grown very quiet. He felt her disappointment that the discovery hadn’t yielded immediately usable details. He also sensed her fatigue and that her head still ached.

  He shook hands with Alfonse once more and was about to depart when Alfonse said, “Take off to the north. If you’ve been followed, they’ll be waiting to the south. You’ve got a couple of hours until dawn, so you have time to take a different route back. I’d head west to the coast, if I were you, and not return to Paris until you can enter from the east.”

  “That’s sound advice.” He held his arm out to Lily. She stepped onto his foot, but as he slid his arm around her waist and drew her close, she slumped against him. She was human, unused to altered flight travel, and the hours were all wrong for her usual sleep patterns. In her world she would have been in bed a long time before now.

  He needed to get her home, back to Paris, back in his bed.

  But the thought of having her there, beside him, her warm body and soft curves, sent sudden desire streaking through him all over again. He took a couple of deep breaths.

  Adrien, I can feel your desire. Will you need blood again? Even telepathically her words sounded exhausted.

  Just ignore that. Let’s get you home. Ready?

  Yes. Just … please try not to go too fast.

  I won’t.

  He nodded to Alfonse then shifted to altered flight.

  As he took off and passed through solid rock, aiming in a skyward direction, she asked, What difference does it make which way we go? Why go all the way to the coast?

  Couple of reasons. This kind of slow travel leaves behind a trail. If fanatics are trying
to locate us, then they probably would have found the trail to Sebastien’s by now.

  Which means the trail would also have led to the Trevayne cavern system.

  Yes.

  When nothing more returned to him, he realized Lily had fallen asleep. Just as well. He sustained his slow speed heading west to the coast of France.

  * * *

  Lily awoke as Adrien dropped them into his bedroom. She was surprised she’d slept but grateful even though her head throbbed.

  She released Adrien, and took a moment to steady herself before crossing to the window. She could see the Eiffel Tower, lit up and misty through the rain. She was exhausted and confused about all that had happened, especially with Adrien. She put her hands on the cold glass, trailing her fingers down the rivulets.

  Adrien had caught the boy up in his arms, a sign of affection, yet he was a vampire. And the system had three hundred more children, which meant families, something so human in design that she still had difficulty processing this new reality.

  She felt Adrien behind her, very still and waiting. The chain at her neck didn’t even vibrate, but lay inert. She needed to sleep, but sleeping through the flight had keyed her up.

  “How’s your head?” His deep resonant voice soothed her, but why should anything about Adrien soothe her?

  “Much better.” She glanced over her shoulder, needing to say more. He took his coat off, laying it over the bench at the foot of the bed, and set the documents on the dresser. “Thanks. I’m not even nauseated.”

  “Good. And I know you need your sleep. Dawn will arrive soon and I’ll need to rest as well. But I’ll sleep on the floor if you want.”

  At that she turned to face him. “Why are you being so kind to me?”

  He scowled. “Am I being kind? Am I, in your opinion, even capable of that?”

  She put two fingers against her forehead and rubbed. “I’ve always believed that you know someone by what they do, not by their past, their family, or, in this case, their species. When I learned that vampires had killed my family, I had believed that you were all made like sharks, restless killing machines that devoured anything in their path. You’ve proven so much to me this night and I owe you an apology.”