Jess Haines - Enslaved By the Others

“Stuff your sorry!” he croaked.

“I’m sorry! Cripes. I can’t see shit in the dark.”

“Fuck,” he whispered. “I’m dying. First my blood, now my balls. What the fuck is next?”

I huffed, sitting back on my heels and feeling around for a more neutral body part of his to grip. “Shush. If you can complain about it that much, you’re not dying. I said I was sorry. Can you cast a light or something?”

He snorted. “Not that kind of mage, remember? I see fine. I guess I can direct you.”

“Doesn’t hurt to ask. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Gideon grumbled a bit under his breath, but he gripped my hand when he felt me fumbling for his arm, and accepted my help getting him to his feet. Once he was up, he lurched against me so hard we both almost toppled back to the ground. Good God, for such a beanstalk, the guy weighed a ton.

Oh, ugh. He was still bleeding from the bite, too. It was getting all over my cheek from where half my face was mashed against his chest near his armpit due to the disparity in our heights. Worse, aside from a liberal splash of Eau de Zombie and formaldehyde giving him a formidable stench this close up, I was pretty sure the guy had never heard of deodorant.

“You stink,” I grumbled, half dragging, half carrying the necromancer back the way we had come. Up ahead, I thought I could see the outline of the door leading to a hallway we had passed through earlier, but it was hard to tell in the dark.

Gideon didn’t seem very grateful for my help. Or my observation. “Yeah, well, you don’t smell so good yourself, Copper-top. Did you have to bathe in the blood? You reek of butcher leftovers and putrid produce.”

“At least I don’t smell like a rotting body in a boys’ locker room. Freak.”

“Blood bag.”

“Turd burgler.”

“Twat-waffle.”

“Douchenozzle.”

We both fell into a fit of entirely inappropriate giggles. Once the last of his snorts tapered off, he tightened his grip around my shoulder in what might have passed for a hug.

“We’re still not friends, you know,” I told him, putting a cap on my own laughter with a bit of difficulty.

“No, maybe not. But you better get used to having me around. Even if I could go back to San Francisco, I doubt your partner or her boyfriend would want to come with me.”

I stopped so abruptly that he lost his grip on me and fell forward with a cry. Cursing under my breath, I felt around until I found his arm and shoulder again, helping him sit up. He pushed me off him, breathing heavily and fabric rustling in a way that made me think he was checking for new bruises or something.

This wasn’t in the plans. He hadn’t said a damned thing about coming back to New York with us, and only then did I realize why Iana had said he was lying. It wasn’t about hurting us—not in the literal sense. It was about his actions having anything to do with his ties to Fabian. He must have been planning this from the start.

Even though I knew he was serious, the words still exploded out of me. “You’ve got to be kidding! You’re supposed to let Sara go and leave us all the fuck alone.”

“Yes, and everyone is supposed to live happy ever after with a pony, their very own Prince Charming, and a winning lotto ticket under every pillow. Sorry to break it to you, snookums, but we don’t always get what we want.”

I punched in the general direction of his shoulder. I may not have had Other blood to fuel it, but I still landed a satisfying hit somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder.

“Ow! The hell was that for?”

“For being a lying asshole! For scaring the piss out of me! For betraying me, betraying Sara, for thinking you have any right— ”

“Shut the fuck up, you stupid little angst factory!” His vehemence, more than his words, did surprise me into silence. He continued in a tirade, so obviously frustrated and hurt and frightened that any lingering desire I had to continue to berate him faded into an unexpected and unwelcome sense of pity.

“You have no fucking idea what coming out in the open has cost me. You have no clue what it means to be a necromancer, what the Other community wants to do to me. I can’t go back.”

“Why not? That doesn’t make any sense. I thought you loved Fabian?”

“Ha! Fabian desires the power I wield, not me. Now that his sire is dead, he’ll know I had a hand in it and that he hasn’t got a prayer of controlling me. He’ll do his best to kill me if I ever return to the West Coast. I can’t stay here—it’ll be the first place he’ll send assassins to find me.”

I considered that, wrapping my arms around myself for warmth. Even with all the layers of my clothing, I was cold. Gideon had murdered people. Innocent people. A group of White Hats had committed the grievous crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting in Gideon and Fabian’s way when the dastardly duo stole into Los Angeles to wrest control of the city away from Clyde Seabreeze. The hunters paid for it with their lives.

Gideon was not a nice guy. He’d proven that time and again. So why did I feel so bad for him?

“I don’t get you. You’ve lied your ass off, participated in a hostile invasion, killed people, nearly killed Clyde, and now you’re telling me you won’t let Sara go. Not to mention helping Fabian kidnap Devon. I’m having a really hard time figuring out why the hell you think I owe you anything except helping you get out of here in one piece so Sara doesn’t get hurt in the crossfire.”

A twin set of glowing green orbs flared in the darkness. Must have hit a sore spot. I scooted back, putting some distance between us.

“Devon lived and escaped because of me, and thanks for asking about my motivations before leaping to conclusions. As for Sara, if I let her go, do you know what her lover and his coven will do to me? They’ll make me into a fucking magical eunuch, that’s what. I’ll never be able to cast so much as a simple fucking corpse location spell, let alone call up a guardian to protect me. I can’t have that.”

“Maybe you should,” I countered. My relief to hear Devon was alive and free was short-lived after hearing how selfish Gideon was being, keeping Sara trapped to save himself. “Like it or not, you’re dangerous. If the magi don’t stop you, then you can bet your ass Royce and the other vampires will.”

Probably in a much more permanent fashion, though I didn’t say that part out loud.

“Your concern is touching,” he replied, laying on the sarcasm, “but I’ll take the risk. Do you know why I wanted Max dead? He was hunting me. He thought I didn’t know that he had broken the accord between our kind and enslaved or killed every other necromancer in the country. I am the last one, Copper-top. If I hadn’t helped Fabian, I never would have had the chance to make it look like I was trying to get into Max’s good graces. The deaths and pain I caused were regrettable, but everything I’ve done has been in the name of survival, to get close enough to destroy him before he could make me into another collared curiosity for his collection.”

I stared at the vague shape slumped a few feet away, somewhat visible now that my eyes were adjusting to the darkness. There wasn’t much I could say to that. I may not have had Iana’s ability to taste his lies, but I had the feeling he meant every word this time. There wasn’t even a hint of slyness or duplicity to his voice that I could detect.

This changed everything. He was dangerous and awful and I hated myself for feeling sorry for him—but I didn’t want him or anyone else to die. Enough people had already suffered. There had to be some way of getting Sara out of this mess without putting Gideon at risk. He wouldn’t let her go without some kind of reassurance from The Circle and the vampires in New York guaranteeing his safety, and I didn’t have a clue how to manage that.