“Let’s go get you a new glass of wine, shall we?”
Anna smiled. “Thank you.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
He took her hand and led her toward the bar. Anna happily followed him, suddenly aware only of the tall man in front of her, of the feel of his large hand covering hers, of the scent of his woodsy cologne. She tuned out the other people pushing in around them and the loud music blaring through the space.
When they reached the bar, Aether quickly made his order, then placed a fresh glass of wine into Anna’s free hand. Tingles spread from the hand Aether held and travelled up her arm. A current of delicious, sensual heat followed.
Aether sucked in his breath and glanced down at their joined hands. Then he smiled at her, flashing straight white teeth and a set of dimples she hadn’t noticed during their nocturnal meetings.
“Let’s go sit outside where we can talk. It’s too noisy in here.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “Let’s.”
They wound their way to the exit. The tables scattered around the outside eating area of the restaurant-turned-nightclub were full. Anna’s heart sank. Then a couple to their right vacated their table, and Anna and Aether quickly snatched it up.
Once they were seated, Anna expected Aether to release her hand but he did not. Instead, he turned his hand palm up and traced a lazy pattern over her fingers. His gaze sparkled with mischief.
“Anna, I’m almost positive we’ve met before.”
She smiled a mysterious smile. “Perhaps.”
He chuckled. “Well, I want you tell me everything about yourself. I want to know all there is to know about you, Mystery Lady.”
Anna’s brows rose. “That could take awhile.”
Aether pressed a soft kiss on her hand. A jolt of desire shot through her.
“I’ve got a lifetime.”
Karen Chance
The Gauntlet
The sound of a key turning in the rusty old lock had everyone scurrying forward with hands outstretched, begging for food, for water, for life. Gillian didn’t go with them. Trussed up as she was, she could barely move. And there was no life that way.
The burly jailer came in carrying a lantern, with two more dark shapes behind him. To her surprise, he didn’t immediately kick the women aside with brutal indifference. Instead he let them crowd around, even the ones who had been there a while, whose skeletal hands silently begged with the others.
“This is the lot, my lord,” he said. “And a sorry one it is, too.”
“Why are some of them gagged?” The low, pleasant tenor came from one of the shapes she had assumed to be a guard. The speaker came forwards, but she couldn’t see much of him. The hood on his cape was pulled down and a gloved hand covered his face, probably in an attempt to block the stench.
She smiled grimly and let her head fall back into her arms. It wouldn’t work. Even after two days, she hadn’t become inured to it: the thick, sickly-sweet odour of flesh, unwashed and unhealed.
“Some are strong enough to curse a man to hell otherwise,” the jailer informed him, spitting on the ground.
“Show me the strongest,” the stranger said, and Gillian’s head jerked back up.
The jailor grumbled, but he ordered his men to drag the bound bodies that had been shoved to the back of the room to the forefront. The stranger bent over each one, pushing matted, filthy hair out of their eyes, as if looking for someone. Gillian didn’t watch. She concentrated everything she had on biting through the remaining mass of cloth in her mouth, her eyes on the open door behind men.
The guards came only once a day, doling out water and a thin gruel, and she didn’t know what kind of shape she would be in by tomorrow. Even worse, she didn’t know how Elinor would be. She glanced over at the child’s huddled form, but she hadn’t moved. Not for hours now, a fact that had Gillian’s heart clenching, part in fear, part in black rage.
If those whoresons let her daughter die in here, she’d rip this place apart stone by stone. Her arms jerked convulsively against the shackles, but they were iron, not rope. If she couldn’t speak, she had no chance of breaking them.
It didn’t help that she hadn’t had water in more than a day. The guard assigned to that detail last night had been one of those she’d attacked on arrival, in an aborted escape attempt. He’d kicked her in the ribs as he passed and waved the ladle under her nose, but not allowed her so much as a drop. If he’d followed orders, he might have noticed what she was doing, might have replaced the worn woollen gag with something sturdier.
But he hadn’t.
“That one’s dead,” the jailor said, kicking a limp body aside. He quickly checked the others, pulling out one more before lining up the remaining women at the stranger’s feet. Most were silent, watching with hollow, desperate eyes above their gags. A few struggled weakly, either smart enough to realize that this might be a way out, or too far gone to understand what was happening.
“What about this one?” A hand with a square cut ruby ring caught Gillian’s chin, turning her face up to the light.
“You don’t want her!” the jailer said, aiming another kick at her abused ribs.
“The agreement was, ‘in good condition’,” the stranger said, blocking the booted foot with his own.
Gillian barely noticed. Up close, it was obvious that she was in even more trouble than she’d thought. The fact that the stranger was dead wasn’t a good sign. That he was still walking around was worse.
Vampire.
They stared at each other and he smiled slightly at her start of recognition. He had a nice face — young, as if that meant anything — with clear, unmarked skin, a head of dark brown curls and a small goatee. The last would have been amusing under other circumstances, as if he was trying to make his pleasant face appear more sinister.
She wondered why he didn’t just bare his fangs.
“I don’t see as it makes a difference, if you’re aiming to feed off her,” the guard said, angry, but smart enough not to show it.
Those liquid dark eyes swept over her. “What I do with the woman is my affair.”
“Ahh. Some sport beforehand, then. I’d not risk it, meself. One of my men tried the night she was brought in and the bitch cursed him. He’s in a bad way, still.”
“How tragic,” the vampire sounded amused.
The guard must have thought so, too, because his already florid features flushed even darker. “See if you’re laughing with a pillicock the size of a pin!” he spat.
The vampire ignored him and put a hand beneath Gillian’s arm, helping her to stand. “I’d let you out of those, but I’m afraid you’d hex me,” he said cheerfully, nodding at her cuffs. “And I like my privities the way they are.” He glanced at the guard. “Tell me about her.”
“One of them that’s been operating out of the thicket,” the man said resentfully, referring to Maidenhead thicket on the road between London and Bristol, where Gillian’s group had had some success relieving travellers of their excess wealth.
“Ah, yes. I met a robber there myself, not long ago.” The vampire smiled at her. “He was delicious.”
Gillian just stared. Did he always talk to his food this much before eating it?
“But I must say,” he commented, his eyes on her worn gown, greasy red hair and dirty face. “For a member of one of the most notorious gangs of thieves in England, you do not look very prosperous.”
Maybe I would, she thought furiously, if I didn’t have to spend most of my time avoiding people like you.
Once, she’d had protection from his kind. She’d been a member of one of the Druid covens that had ruled the supernatural part of the British Isles for time out of mind. But that had been before the arrival of the so-called “Silver Circle”, an ancient society of light magic users who had brought nothing but darkness to England.