A Cat's Chance in Hell (26 page)

“
Harmed?” she exclaimed, shocked. “We’d never hurt somebody for being an informant. They would probably be dismissed, unless there were extreme extenuating circumstances; perhaps told to leave the City, have their memories erased, but never harmed.” She was slightly offended at the thought. “Anyway, I don’t have the power to make that decision; it would be in the Council’s hands.”

Julius moved to the bar counter, swept up the bottle of wine and returned, quickly filling Gabi’s glass before his own, and going back to his position against the pool table. It was obviously a delay tactic while he mulled the question over.

“
First, answer a question of mine,” he said finally.

“
Why not answer mine first?”

“
I’m afraid we’ll get sidetracked once I answer yours, and my question is weighing heavily on my mind.”

Gabi sighed and rolled her eyes, annoyance getting the better of her self-control. “Well then, by all means, get it off your chest, Jules!” She had a feeling she knew what was coming.

“
Why didn’t you tell me the truth about what the Wraith did to you?”

“
You never actually asked me what it did to me,” she replied calmly, but even she could hear the slight defensiveness in her tone.

“
That’s because you conveniently forgot to tell me that you actually engaged it during a fight,” he said, a muscle in his jaw twitching.

“
Well, no one knew what the damn thing was capable of; it just seemed like another form of Demon. I figured Nex would do some kind of damage.” She was outright defensive now.

“
And what happened when you attacked it?” he asked brusquely.

Gabi chewed on her bottom lip, trying to think of a way to put it that it didn’t sound as bad as it had seemed at the time. She noticed Kyle close his eyes, apparently reliving the memory, and he gave a quick shudder.

“
It threw her thirty feet across the ground without so much as lifting an arm,” Kyle recalled sombrely. “She was aiming for its eyes, and all it did was flick its head at her.”

Gabi glared at him, warning him to shut it. Julius hadn’t taken those deep blue eyes off her even though Kyle was speaking. She shifted uncomfortably under the dark accusation. “It didn’t really ‘do’ anything to me; it was just like I’d touched an electric current, or a force field of some kind. It threw me backwards and,” she paused, looking down, pulling at a thread on her sleeve and then continued in a rush. “When I managed to catch my breath from the fall, I realised I couldn’t see anything, like I was in thick fog in the pitch dark.”

The twitching of the muscle in Julius’s jaw grew more pronounced.

“
And that was it,” she protested. “The Magi banished it, and my sight was back the following day.”

“
And you didn’t think this was relevant to bring up after the Wraith’s appearance at the train station last night?”

“
Well, you were already freaking out about your ‘vision’, you didn’t need any more reasons to try and keep me away from the fight.” She was back to sounding annoyed. Annoyed was good, better than defensive, she thought.

“
How many days ago was this?” he asked.

“
Uh, I think I’ve lost track.” She frowned, drawing her eyebrows together in concentration. “Oh yes, now I remember. It was the night before you kidnapped me,” she recalled dryly.

“
So your sight was back to normal in the morning?”

“
More or less,” she replied warily, a slight edge in her voice.

“
I’m sorry,” he said, surprising her completely. “I wouldn’t have blind-folded you if I’d known.” There was genuine regret in his tone, and she remembered the brief flash of fear she’d felt at being blindfolded in his office, but he went on quickly. “The Wraith also said that you had thwarted Danté’s attempted assassination, but it obviously wasn’t classing its own attack on you as deadly. So what other attempt has been made on your life?”

Gabi cocked her head and stared at him, her eyes narrowed in confusion. She hadn’t actually given that part of the Wraith’s diatribe much thought with everything else that was going on. She shook her head, mystified. “I can’t think of anything that would qualify as an assassination attempt,” she said slowly, trying to remember the exact words the Wraith had used.

“
And you, Wolf?” Julius turned his attention to Kyle. “Can you think of anything?”

Kyle’s expression had also turned thoughtful, and he seemed to be chewing the inside of his cheek. “Well, I honestly have no recall of the conversation you guys had with the Wraith, are you sure it wasn’t talking about time it sent Gabi flying?”

“
Hmmm. I had forgotten you were suffering a concussion at the time,” Julius said. “No, the Wraith said that it was ‘under different orders’ when it encountered Gabi at the previous battle.”

“
Yes,” Alexander interjected now, “it also said something about its Master’s other pets as though they were the ones who had failed. It had implied earlier that it had been toying with the two of you instead of trying to kill you, but that Danté would fix that situation soon. It spoke of a Dark One, who I’m going to guess is the Dark Magus, who seemed to have some arcane knowledge of your and Gabi’s involvement in all this.”

“
Oh,” replied Kyle, even he seemed shaken for once. “Well…” he trailed off, obviously trying to put some perspective on the news.

Gabi snorted. “Yeah, it was all doom and gloom and prophesies, reminded me scarily of Athena,” she said with a slight rolling of her eyes at the name. “We even had special names. I was the Human who is not a human, and apparently you were the Wolf who is not a Wolf,” she said dramatically, emphasising the names with a deep rasp, trying to imitate the Wraith, then she chuckled darkly, “very original.”

Her eyes snapped to Julius. “That reminds me, why did the Wraith call you The Baron?” she asked, putting little air quotations around the title and popping a pastry into her mouth.

Julius sighed. “Because,” he ground out between his teeth, “that was my title when I was human. Now, we were trying to work out what assassination attempt had been made on Gabi’s life, ideas anyone?” he continued, bringing the previous topic to an abrupt end.

Gabi filed the little snippet of information away for future questioning.

“
Have there been any close calls in the past few weeks? Anything, it could be work related or during personal time, any odd occurrences.”

Gabi still looked baffled, and looked over at Kyle. “I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary, can you?”

“
Nope, aside from the previous two fights, which the Wraith is apparently not referring to, things have seemed relatively normal,” he mused thoughtfully. “The only other odd occurrence is you being attacked by…” he trailed off, glancing quickly at Julius then back at her. “You know. The bunch who were supposed to take you to Julius.”

Understanding dawned on her face.

Julius and Alexander both went rigid.

“
No offence, I wasn’t implying anything,” Kyle said quickly, seeing their intense reactions. “It was just an observation.”

The two Vampires looked hard at each other, as though conversing without words. Julius’s eyes were burning with anger and trepidation.

Alexander recovered first. “It’s possible,” he almost whispered, his jaw clenched but his face carefully blank. “We spoke about it, things didn’t add up at the time, but it just seemed like one of Genevieve’s bizarre moods. She was too old for the Red Rage, volatile yes, but to attack over one small insult, it was extreme even for Genevieve.”

Julius shook his head, not in denial but rather in disbelief.

“
Do you think…..both of them?” Julius asked in a voice tight with rage.

Alexander looked off out into the garden, his eyes distant, not seeing what was in front of him. Eventually, he nodded, a single quick bob of his head. “Yes, I don’t see Genevieve keeping something like that from him, and you know he was the one who was so adamant they both went on the mission. It all seems to fit. Is there any way we can be sure, though?”

“
We must investigate this further. If it’s true, there may be others.” Julius looked as though someone had just punched him in the gut, as though his world had just been upended.

Gabi looked across at Kyle to see if he was making any sense out of the conversation, but he looked as confused as she felt.

“
Yes,” Alexander responded shortly. “Do you think Sebastian can help? He might be able to trace their movements, their correspondence, any outside contacts.”

“
Can he be trusted, do you think?” Julius sounded uncertain for the first time since Gabi had encountered him.

“
Maybe this will be a good test. If you order him to find the information, he will have no choice but to obey. His findings could be very telling.” Alexander had settled into a cold, hard rage.

“
Call him, tell him to meet us in my office in half an hour,” Julius ordered brusquely.

Alexander got up to retrieve his phone from his jacket in the hall. They could hear him talking a few seconds later.

Gabi’s head was spinning. A few moments ago, she was about to find out who had been leaking information to Julius about the MV, and now the two Vampires had gone off on a tangent about the assassination attempt on her life, which she hadn’t even known about until Julius brought up the Wraith’s words. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that little fact either; grateful to be alive? Annoyed at the attempt? That the Vampires were blowing it out of proportion? She needed to slow everything down and let her brain catch up. What did Alexander and Jules mean about Genevieve, and who was Sebastian? Too many questions and not enough answers.

“
Jules,” Gabi said cautiously, “are you going to tell us what’s going on or am I going to have to beat it out of somebody?”

Julius raised an eyebrow, a smile almost cracking through the mask of anger.

“
Well, we can’t be positive at this stage, but we think perhaps we have traitors in our ranks,” he said calmly and clearly, but the clipped tone he used spoke volumes about his feelings on the subject. “The way that attacked you on Friday has not sat well with me, it never made any sense. Genevieve has never had the most even temper, but for her to attack you like that, completely against orders, was not normal, not even by volatile Vampire standards. Alexander and I had discussed the subject before and wondered if there was more to it than simple temper. It was only once the issue of the assassination attempt came up and Kyle mentioned her attack on you in the same conversation that the link became clear to us.” He paused for a moment as though he needed to steel himself for his next words. “We’re wondering if they had been working for Danté, and if they were, are there others in my Clan doing the same thing.”

Alexander walked back into the room and went straight to the bar to re-fill his glass, in the silence Gabi could hear the clink of the ice falling into the crystal tumbler and the splash of alcohol over it. Her thoughts raced through what Julius had just told them. It was Kyle who broke the ensuing silence.

“
But why would Danté want Gabi taken out of the picture? How does he even know of her existence?” he demanded. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

The other three looked at each other, Gabi gnawing on the inside of her lip again. Kyle had obviously been so badly concussed that he couldn’t remember the Wraith waxing lyrical about the prophesies made by the Dark Mage. He didn’t know that Mariska had foreseen Gabi and himself as pivotal players in the upcoming war; players that Danté needed to control or eliminate if he wanted the upper hand. Alexander walked over with another beer for Kyle and explained in short clipped sentences what the Wraith had said while Gabi and Julius stared at one another; pensive frustration on both their faces.

Minutes later, Julius led them out of the entertainment area, up a sweeping flight of stairs to the first story and along a short corridor to his office. As the door opened, Gabi remembered her first visit to the room. It was as large and comfortable as she remembered it. The computer still hummed quietly on one side of his desk, and she again felt the strange sensation of trying to meld her idea of a Vampire lair with this office, which so obviously belonged to a business man who made full use of all available technology and gadgetry. She noticed so much more as she stepped through the door this time. Walking in with full control of her own faculties, and not feeling threatened or unsure of her immediate future, she took time to admire the smaller details.

There were some beautiful watercolours on the walls, a few Greek and Roman artefacts, and a shelf on the massive bookshelf behind the desk dedicated to old books, which would probably prove to be first editions. There was a shadowed alcove in a back corner of the room which she was sure had been vacant the last time she was in here. It was taken up now by a large, strategically lit display case full of ancient weapons. Gabi was mesmerised, weapons were one of her favourite things in the world. Aside from Nex, she had started a collection of her own, but nothing to rival this exhibit. She knew why the case hadn’t been in here the last time she was a guest in this office, she would definitely have found a way to get her hands on a few of them. Julius was a smart Vampire. She glanced away from the display to see him watching her with a little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He was obviously thinking the same thing she was.