Born in Chains (Men in Chains)

  Rumy glanced at his armed guests. “And don’t try any of your altered flight shit. I’ve been assured these boys know how to use their weapons and you’ll be full of holes before you punch past even one of these walls.” The points of his fangs showed as he spoke, which almost gave him a lisp. He’d taken so much Double-V in recent years that he could never fully retract his fangs. He had permanent calluses on his lips from daily use. Nothing like a black-market vampire Viagra to change things up.

  His operations suite had been carved out of granite in an intricate maze of rooms, each with a curved polished ceiling, marred only by discreet black tubes carrying electrical and air-conditioning. This front room had a couple of large black leather chairs near the front door and a wide wooden desk opposite. All three armed, hooded men, as well as Rumy, stood in front of the desk.

  One of the back rooms of the office suite included a central command for his extensive security staff.

  New question: Where were Rumy’s men?

  Adrien had the beginnings of a plan, but he wanted Lily’s input, so he sent a telepathic stream. Lily, he doesn’t know that I have an increase in power and my gut tells me I could fly us both out of here, without injury, but we still need information and this is the best place.

  What do you suggest?

  That we ride this train to the next stop. Can you handle it?

  Hell, yeah. Take them all on.

  He held Rumy’s gaze. “As you can imagine, I’m not crazy about the idea of turning my woman over to your friends. Got any other ideas? I have a fortune I’d happily spend to change this scenario. Care to make a trade?”

  One of the fanatics started to protest, but Rumy held up his hand. “Not to worry, my fanatic friend. My course was set the moment you stepped into my office bearing your guns.”

  Inwardly, Adrien began to smile. Rumy, for all his shortness of stature and absurdly callused lips, didn’t allow anyone to bring firearms into his club, not without repercussions at some point. The fanatics with their religious bent couldn’t possibly understand the rules of an underground.

  To Adrien, Rumy offered a subtle jerk of his head toward the archway at the back corner of his office, which led to the security center.

  Adrien understood the signal. Rumy’s men waited in place for their boss to give the word.

  Good.

  As he assessed the hooded men, he didn’t know which he despised more, his father and the weak-willed Council of Ancestrals that he now owned, or these fanatics, who in the name of spirituality killed the innocent.

  Spit gathered in his mouth.

  But the faint pressure of Lily’s hand on his arm reminded him why he was here, that he wasn’t alone, and that these men were hopefully just a bump in the road to get where they needed to go.

  Funny how just her touch reined in his all-over-the-map emotions and drives.

  He covered her hand with his and gave a squeeze. He felt her try to reach him telepathically, but he blocked her, a strange event all on its own. He needed to figure this out, though, and do it quickly. The middle bastard was sweating and had his finger too close to the goddamn trigger.

  “Again, don’t even think about altered flight,” Rumy said. “You’re not fast enough.”

  Rumy was giving him a hint about how he wanted this to go down.

  He opened up his mind to Lily and said, I need you to stay right where you are and ignore what I’m about to do. Got it?

  Yep.

  “I wouldn’t think of altered flight,” Adrien said.

  Then he did.

  He moved fast—a little too fast, shooting past the first gunman. He adjusted, gripped his gun, took the next, and just as the third asshole would have fired, he took him out of the room, carrying him straight over the water and dropped him into Lake Como.

  When he flew back into the room, Rumy’s security staff had the two remaining assassins on the floor. One of them was using the butt of his gun to pound the vampires in turn, over and over, although purposely avoiding the head.

  The men screamed and balled themselves up.

  He returned to Lily’s side and tried to take her in his arms, knowing she shouldn’t be watching this, but she pushed him away. “Make them stop, Adrien.”

  At first he thought she was distressed by what she was seeing, but the chains told a different story and he felt her determination.

  “We need to know what they know,” she said. “Maybe they have information about the weapon.”

  At these words, both Adrien and Rumy yelled at the guard to stop hurting the robed reptiles, but he got one last hit in before he stepped back.

  Rumy glared at the men on the floor. “Nothing I hate worse than fanatics. I don’t even despise a rat in my organization as much as these assholes who use religion to persecute those who can’t protect themselves. Fucking bastards.”

  Adrien chuckled. “Rumy, I knew there was something about you I liked.”

  “Aw, can the flattery. Just tell me how the fuck you did that altered flight shit. Usually, you glide out of here. This time you vanished. Whoa. Hold the fucking phone.” He looked him over, his gaze landing on the chain at Adrien’s neck. “You’ve bumped up your power level with a double blood-chain, and there’s only one way you can do that. Well damn my ass, you finally made the leap. You’re on the Ancestral path.” He glanced at the chain Lily wore. “And you’re all bound up with a human and now you’ve got more power. A lot of it, too.” For half a second, panic hit Rumy’s eye.

  Adrien held up a hand. “Not to worry. I have no takeover plans for you or your business. Trust me, I’m not that man.”

  “Good. That’s good.” He plucked at a couple of curls above his ears then patted them flat.

  The assassins had grown quiet, which meant both had dipped into vampire-healing mode and would be back at full strength in a couple of hours.

  Adrien thought about killing them, and in any other circumstances that’s just what he would have done. He and his brothers dealt swiftly with fanatics who murdered the innocent. So long as there was irrefutable evidence of the crime, they held a brief trial, took off the head, and burned the bastards to ashes just to make sure they couldn’t come back to do more damage.

  Their leader, Silas, knew what Adrien and his brothers did to fanatics proven to kill the innocent, who laid waste to some of the outlying cavern systems when average vampires refused to agree to Silas’s decrees. The man and his followers were spiritual tyrants, and Adrien and his brothers had sworn to battle them to the death, if need be.

  Rumy sat down on the side of his desk, one leg swinging free. “I take it the trip north didn’t help much for what you’re lookin’ for.”

  “Not much, which is why we’re here.”

  “I kind of figured.”

  Lily ventured, “So, what exactly do you know about the extinction weapon?”

  A hush fell over the room. All the vampires stilled, which made the space a room full of statues for at least ten long seconds.

  When the breathing resumed, Rumy shook his head. “I haven’t got a clue. I mean, there’s not been a peep about the weapon in decades, not since the nineteen fifties when everybody and their uncle was doing experiments in hidden caves all over the world. Jesus-Buddha-and-Confucius all wrapped up in a fishnet, I hate even thinking about something so powerful that it could wipe us off the face of the earth.”

  He huffed a sigh, his gaze fixed to Lily. “I don’t know what Adrien here has told you, but our kind doesn’t have big numbers—less than a million against your virus-like billions.

  “Our people are spread out over every country in the world. Most of us never procreate. We’re so damn long-lived that our genetics decided early on we’d better not be a fertile race. So why are you after the extinction weapon anyway?” Rumy stared hard at Lily.

  Adrien nodded to her and watched her take a deep breath.

  “I’ve been contracted to get the weapon … for a price.”

  A single oily
brow rose. “That’s a language I can understand. So you’ll turn it over and get paid for your troubles.”

  Lily nodded. Adrien watched her closely. The new chain had enhanced what passed between them but in this case what he felt from her remained the same, just a powerful level of determination.

  One of the vampires on the floor moved and Adrien felt his quick sudden distress. He shifted his gaze from Lily, then shoved at the man’s arm with the toe of his boot. “What do you know? And don’t tell me nothing, or I’ll let Rumy’s guards start pounding on you again.”

  His eyes lit up suddenly, the fervent light of the devoted. “The human, Lily, is destined to destroy all vampire-kind. You must listen to me. The great one, Master Silas, whose visions always prove true, has seen her coming, has been able to predict where she would be with tremendous accuracy, like this moment. He said this would happen. And I’ve heard you say you’re looking for the extinction weapon. Don’t listen to her. She means harm to our race. She intends to destroy us all.”

  Rumy glanced at Lily. “Do you intend to destroy our race?”

  Lily shook her head. “No. I’m only here for the weapon.”

  Rumy turned back to the fanatic and brought the butt down hard on his head. “Asshole.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Lily didn’t know which was worse, that she’d actually heard the man’s skull crack or that she just didn’t care. Of course, it was hard to be compassionate toward a person who wanted her in the ground, or maybe burned at the stake. Still, it bothered her that she wasn’t more upset.

  She might even have voiced the thought, just to get it out in the open and have a look, but at that moment the part of her born from the chain around her neck activated her revisiting power.

  By now she had some command over it and knew she had a choice whether to allow the vision to come or not.

  “What’s going on, Lily?”

  She glanced at Adrien, but switched to telepathy. A vision, but I’m not sure what to do. I don’t want to waste our time with something from the past. She glanced at the two fanatics on the floor, then her gaze flitted to Rumy and his bodyguards.

  Adrien narrowed his gaze. A lot has happened over the years in this room, and you just heard the fanatic say that you’ve been seen here by Silas. I think you should give it a shot.

  Thoughts about her son, always roaming the edges of her mind anyway, flowed to the forefront. She’d do anything to get Josh back, including allowing a vision in a place like this, with two beat-up vampires on the floor and more weapons than she’d seen in the whole course of her life.

  She opened herself up and the edges of the room began to spin, only faster this time than before, something she attributed to Adrien’s new set of chains and increased power.

  She held her arms wide and the scene emerged, like watching a movie, of a vampire in a fine black suit, a pure white silk shirt, and a gold tie.

  The man towered over Rumy, the way Adrien towered over other men. His hair was dark and slicked back and he had a tightly trimmed black goatee. He was achingly handsome and something about him seemed familiar, even though she was sure she’d never seen him before.

  In the vision, the vampire leaned down close to Rumy’s cheek. “So, little man, have you found the right woman for me yet? I’ve grown impatient. You know my needs.”

  Rumy shook in his fine leather shoes. “I … I have a lead from Nairobi. Perfect dark skin, white teeth, and thin sharp fangs.”

  “Tell me of her breasts.”

  “I don’t know anything yet, just that she’s a beauty.”

  He held his hand open, palm up. “But you know what I like: very full, voluptuous, more than my hand or my mouth can hold. Don’t fail me, Rumy, or my appetites may extend to this club and I’ll take the whole thing over before you can even blink.”

  Lily felt Rumy’s fear, then her own. This man, so elegant, so beautiful even in profile, defined malevolence—something so evil that his dark presence, even in a revisiting vision, had the power to reach her, to frighten her.

  At that moment he leaned back, closed his eyes, and turned slowly toward her. When he opened his eyes, he looked right at her, stepping in her direction until he was only a few feet away. The vampire could see her—all the way from the past, he could see her.

  He met and held her gaze, then looked her up and down. She trembled and could feel that Adrien had slipped his arm around her waist, that he held her close to his side in the present, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from what she knew to be a monster from the past.

  His eyes were a strange yet beautiful color, almost a teal like Adrien’s, but lighter and flecked with hints of green and gold.

  His nostrils flared. “I smell a human female. Yes, definitely human. But tell me, lovely one, why are you here at The Erotic Passage?”

  She felt very strange, the way she had felt with Giselle. She understood then that even from the past the vampire had enough power to enthrall her. “I’m here looking for the extinction weapon.”

  “How intriguing.” The man smiled, showing large, even teeth. “What is your name, lovely one?”

  “Lily. Lily Haven.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Arizona, near Phoenix. Deer Valley. But I have a place in Manhattan as well.”

  His smile broadened. “So you’re a woman of wealth?”

  “Some wealth, yes.”

  She began to weave on her feet, back and forth, rocking harder and harder. Her name came to her from a great distance, and suddenly the vision disappeared and Adrien was shouting at her and shaking her.

  She felt herself falling backward, falling and falling, yet she never hit the floor.

  Sometime later, she opened her eyes, expecting to be on the floor. Instead, Adrien held her in his arms, his brow furrowed.

  As she blinked, her brain finally righted itself. “How long was I out?”

  “Just a couple of minutes. Are you all right? What happened?”

  “A man spoke to me.”

  Adrien’s brows rose. “From a revisiting vision? A man spoke to you from inside a vision?” He seemed incredulous.

  Lily nodded.

  “What did he look like?”

  Lily described him. “He scared me, Adrien.”

  “And his eyes were similar to mine, but lighter?”

  “Yes, goldish flecks.”

  Adrien turned around and dropped into the large leather chair by the door. “Fuck.” His scowl formed a deep furrow between his brows.

  Lily had a sinking sensation in her gut. “Who was he?”

  He met her gaze. “You probably already know.”

  But it was Rumy who enlightened her. “I guess you’re screwed, because you just met our equivalent of the Prince of Darkness, Daniel the A-hole. He gives vampires a bad name, and that was long before I opened The Erotic Passage, long before an underworld, long before anything of importance, really. Some say he built the black market himself, that he keeps as many rogue vampires drugged out and in service to him as he can, and he has more sex-slave rackets going than hills have ants.”

  “Daniel,” Adrien murmured in a low voice. He shaded his eyes with his hand.

  “Okay,” Lily said, moving carefully through what felt like an emotional minefield. “I’ve just met the evil one.”

  He grabbed the chain at his neck and shook it, his rage flowing in waves. Daniel is the most powerful vampire on the planet, and has been living at this power level for over two thousand years, maybe longer. But Daniel—His thoughts ceased like a wall falling down between them, as though the memories were too painful to continue.

  He took a deep breath. “These problems with our world won’t be solved in a day or a week. Maybe not even in a millennium. What disturbs me right now is that you told him your name and where you live.”

  “Yes, I did. He had control of me in that moment, the way Giselle did earlier. I can’t even fathom that level of power—that he could speak to me and reach me fr
om the past.”

  She staggered on her feet, and Adrien suddenly rose up and caught her as she listed. “Oh, God, Adrien, please don’t tell me that in this moment Daniel discovered who I am and because of it he hunted for me until he found me and two years ago destroyed my family. Please, don’t tell me it’s true. Please don’t tell me that I was the cause of my family’s destruction?”

  He drew her hard against him, holding her tight in his arms. She buried her face in his shoulder. She didn’t need him to answer these questions; she felt them to be true. Somehow Daniel had reached into the future and seen this day, using it to exploit her.

  He tilted his head, and compassion filled his eyes. He drew her into an embrace, holding her fast. She forced air in and out of her lungs, and choked back the tears that wanted to escape.

  Lily, what happened to your family isn’t your fault, because you can’t protect against crazy. It’s not possible. Do you hear me?

  Lily nodded against his shoulder. On the deepest level, she knew he was right. She’d thought the same thing every time some madman went on a killing spree. All the details would come out in the news, and everyone would try to figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

  But when people were out of their minds, they were still going to run the red light.

  I’m so sorry, Lily.

  And Daniel is insane, isn’t he?

  The worst kind of insanity.

  As the seconds passed, however, something new entered her mind, her thinking, a kind of cold hatred that found in Daniel a single pertinent object.

  She drew back from Adrien slowly, crossing her hand over his chest to flow down his opposite arm until she had his hand in a tight grip, right palm to right palm.

  He seemed to know, to understand her meaning and her intention. They’d each been wounded by Daniel, as had the entire vampire world. “He needs to be taken from the face of the earth.”

  Adrien nodded. “Yes, he does.”

  “I’ll help you. I swear it, Adrien, by all that I hold dear, I swear that I’ll help you.”

  Rumy called out, “I’m glad you two lovebirds have gotten everything settled between you, but what do you want me to do with these assholes?” He inclined his head toward the floor.