Born in Chains

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.”