Tes Hilaire - Prince of Shadows

It didn’t take them long to reach Shae’s domain; the old nurse’s office was just a short jog off the main hall. Aaron pushed the door open, chivalrously holding it for her. She stepped in and frowned. No Shae. Just the sparse room with its neatly organized counters and cabinets.

“Huh…maybe on the training floor,” he said, even as he scanned the room again, like Shae might be hiding in a cabinet or something and jump out at any moment. “Why don’t you settle in and I’ll go find her, okay?”

“Sounds good.” Gabby plunked her butt down in the pint-sized chair that hadn’t been replaced yet. “I’ll just sit right here.”

He gave her a narrow-eyed look, but when all she did was blink up at him innocently, he nodded and left the room.

She gave it a full ten seconds before she hefted herself out of the low seat and made her way to the cabinet. Wipes, gauze, tape. Check, check, check. At the door she took a moment to listen in case he’d been waiting to see if she stayed. No sounds nearby, no smells—well, other than the general combination of dust, dirt, mildew, and fresh, hard-earned sweat that permeated the air of the school.

Feeling like a convict making an escape, she slipped through the door and started back for the main hall. Her own slice of home was one of the old conference rooms back behind the main office. Most of the others who crashed here had taken the larger rooms: the old classrooms, the principal, vice principal, and guidance office, the teachers’ lounge. The small conference room had been overlooked due to its distinct lack of windows. Gabby was okay with not having a window. In fact, she was more comfortable that way. Though she’d come to love the sun, there was something about waking with its rays beating down on her that still sent a wave of terror through her blood.

She made it to her room with only one other run-in, and that wasn’t really a run-in, more a quick head nod as one of the women soldiers zipped by, obviously not at all inclined to stop and chat. There were still some people here who weren’t comfortable around a vampire—even if that vampire fought on the “good guys’” side and could walk in the light now due to Karissa’s blood running through her veins. However, when Gabby pushed open the door to her room, she found the one woman here who was most definitely not afraid of her, to Gabby’s never-ending frustration: Annie. The tall redhead might not hover like Aaron did, but she was just as annoying. At least as of recently, though Gabby supposed she would’ve been too had she been in the same situation.

If Gabby played an escaped convict, then Annie was an actual inmate. A week before, after overhearing a conversation between Gabby and Jacob about the vampires’ latest plans, Annie had enlisted some of the younger recruits to take their own countermeasures. Together they made their way into Haven’s sacred halls in an attempt to deliver the intel. Somehow Annie had taken an offhand comment from Gabby to Jacob of “if you see Logan tell him…” to “find Logan by breaking into the Paladin sanctuary and tell him…” Needless to say, Annie hadn’t exactly gotten a warm reception at Haven. The Paladin leader, Logan Calhoun’s father, had pretty much tried to take them prisoner.

Jacob, upon hearing about the near kidnapping, had decided the Paladin leader actually had a damn good idea and forbade his headstrong daughter from ever leaving the base again without permission. Which, if Gabby had to guess, would be when Annie was fifty maybe?

“Have fun tonight?” Annie asked from where she sat with arms folded on the bed.

“No, actually. Your uncle is a royal pain in the neck.”

“Ah…” She leaned forward, cocking her head as she looked Gabby over. “He give you that nice hickey then?” She pointed to Gabby’s bloody neck.

“Ha-ha.”

Annie smiled, leaning back against the wall. “He get in the way?”

Gabby grunted a noncommittal answer as she unbuckled her belt and dropped it, the knife and her axe on the floor to be cleaned later. Despite the fact that Aaron had put a nix on her feeding plans, he’d also probably saved her ass. Six vamps to one might’ve been slightly heavy odds even for her, especially in her current depleted state.

“Huh. If I’d been there I bet we could have kicked some major ass.”

“Maybe.” Gabby glanced over her shoulder at Annie, wincing a little at the pull on her wound. “But we also ran into two Paladin. And they probably would have kicked ours, staked me, then dragged you back by your hair to their cave.”

Annie curled her lip back in disgust. “Doubt that. We could have run if need be, and then they wouldn’t have been able to find us.”

“You think so?” Gabby unzipped the hoodie, frowned as she pulled one of the disinfecting swabs from her pants, tore it open, and dabbed at the wound. And hell’s fire that hurt. Grimacing, she went on. “Then how is it that I can find you? How is it that I can always track you down, no matter where you are?”

“I don’t know,” Annie replied a bit uncertainly. “Do I have some sort of scent that you can smell because of…well…”

“My senses are good, but not that good. Smelling you only works if you’re nearby and there aren’t a lot of other masking scents.” She tossed down the bloody swab—three of those weren’t enough anyway—and turned to Annie. “But I know you’re there from almost a full mile away.”

“Fine.” Annie folded her arms, taking on a distinctive pout. “I don’t know then. You going to tell me how?”

Gabby tapped her head. “You’re not on my radar. And neither is anyone around you. All I have to do is look for the black hole and I know where you are. Do you think I’m the only one who might notice that?”

Annie frowned, her brow drawing into a vee above her nose. Gabby watched as the new worry and concern warred with her frustration of being contained, her mouth finally thinning into a stubborn line. “Fine. I just won’t pull at all.”

Gabby gnawed the inside of her lip. Not “pulling,” as Annie called it, was much easier said than done. A null, which is what Annie was, tended to naturally eliminate the magic energy around them no matter where they were or what they were doing. Even now, when she was obviously making a concentrated effort to choke it back, she couldn’t fully tamp the instinct. To completely stop took extreme willpower. And besides, to not use her gift meant that any baddy who happened to clue into her little oddity would be at their full power, leaving Annie to fight with wits and weapons alone unless she pulled, which again might draw more enemies. Definitely a catch-22. “That would probably be better, but maybe you should talk to Jacob. He might have another solution.”

Annie huffed, flopping across the cot. “Yeah, wrap me up in foam and assign people to stand behind me with catcher’s mitts just in case I fall.”

Despite herself, Gabby found her lips trying to creep up. Jacob was essentially doing that with his daughter. “Your dad cares about you, Annie. That’s not a bad thing.”

“If this is caring, I’d hate to see what happens when he doesn’t,” she said sullenly, waving her hand dramatically at the building around her.

Gabby’s lips thinned as memories assailed her. If Annie wanted to compare notes on the unfairness of her life, then Gabby was almost willing to do so. Only Gabby had never been very good at all the sharing crap.

“Annie, I genuinely hope you never have to find out.”