Dark Legend (17 page)

Her dark eyes flashed at him. "Maybe that's why I do it, too." There was far too much truth in his words for comfort, and she was annoyed at herself even more than at him. She wanted to cling to Brice because he could never hurt her the way Gabriel had. Her lifemate
had torn out her heart.
His voice, so calm, so truthful, was enough to make her writhe with mortification. She was a woman of power, not a child to be hiding behind a mortal; yet, in the end, that was what she was doing rather than face her lifemate.

"You do it because you are a natural born healer with a gift beyond comparison. You would never leave Skyler in a home with strangers after what she has been through. It would never occur to you. If you could not care for her yourself, you would always watch over her. That is who you are. The doctor would simply forget her."

"You aren't being entirely fair to him, Gabriel. After all, he didn't share her memories. He doesn't know what she's been through." Francesca found herself defending Brice almost automatically.

"He examined her extensively," Gabriel said. "He saw how withdrawn she was. That comes from trauma. He knew. He probably knows all of it, the physical part anyway, and he can guess at the mental and emotional trauma. It does not touch him once she is no longer his patient. That bothers you."

Francesca turned away from him and began to walk along the sidewalk. "Maybe you're right, Gabriel. I don't know. I'm very confused."
He had torn out her heart.
He would again when he left her to follow his twin, as he must. She could feel the touch of his mind gently reaching for hers. She hastily forced herself to think of Skyler, to focus on the teenager.

"I know you're confused, love, and it is no wonder that you are," Gabriel said softly, but he was watching her with his intent black gaze. "For now we should concentrate on how to bring Skyler home and provide a decent home for her. We will need to decide which memories to erase completely and which to minimize."

"I don't think we have the right to erase the things she's been through, but it wouldn't hurt to dull the memories so that she can deal with them. The most important thing is to help her feel safe, to trust us. I think she needs that more than anything else," Francesca said softly, worried. "Of course, she's missed most of her schooling, too."

Gabriel shrugged indifferently. "That is the least of our worries. We can impart knowledge should there be a need. At this point she needs stability and a decent home life. Once she has the things necessary to build her confidence back, school will come."

"Helping her will be a huge commitment, Gabriel. I do not ask that you share it with me."

"I felt her pain. She is a mere child. But she will soon be a woman. A woman who has psychic ability."

Francesca swung around to face him once again. "Are you certain? I thought she might, because the connection between us was so strong."

"I could not mistake such a gift. I am thinking she could not be in better hands than ours. We can see to her happiness, protect her, and safeguard her should the undead detect her presence. She is so young and has suffered so much already, we cannot allow her in harm's way. And when she is grown, she may be a lifemate for one of our people."

Francesca stiffened. "She will be free, Gabriel, to choose her own destiny. You will not call in the males of our race and hand her over. I mean it. She has suffered much at the hands of males, and our race is domineering and at times brutal. She has it in her mind to avoid all relationships of such a nature and we must respect her wishes. She may never fully recover from the damage done to her."

He laughed softly and curved his arm around her slender shoulders. "We males are never brutal to a lifemate. I believe we have a mama tiger on our hands. You are a very formidable lady. The kind I would choose to be the mother of my child."

She made a face at him. "I don't think you should bring that up just now. It could get you in trouble." She didn't sound as if it would. Her tone was mild, teasing even. Her dark eyes were smoldering but there was a softness about her mouth that belied her flare of temper.

"Skyler will be a well-loved young lady in our household. I will cherish her and offer her the protection I would give my own daughter. She will be happy, sweetheart, very happy. I would never allow someone to claim her ruthlessly without her consent as I have done to you. You forget she may not be compatible with any of our men. I believe in destiny. If she is to be claimed by one of our males, let him find and court her as he should. He will treasure her all the more.
As I do you."
He thought it and the words shimmered in the air between them.

Francesca blushed a vivid scarlet, her long lashes sweeping down to hide her pleased expression. There was such a sincerity about Gabriel. She loved his Old World accent and his intense smoldering passion barely hidden beneath the thin veneer of civility. His emotions were stark and devastating, raw and real. He looked at her with such need, such hunger, he took her breath away.

Francesca kept her eyes focused straight ahead. Gabriel could so easily overwhelm her, swamp her with his hungry passion. No one had ever needed her before, the way he seemed to do. She had always thought of him as being entirely self-sufficient, yet now she saw he was utterly alone. A warrior endlessly walking the earth in search of the enemy. She didn't want to sympathize with his loneliness, to admire his honor.

"You are smiling again. That faint mysterious smile that makes me want to pull you into my arms and kiss you. I promised myself I would behave in your presence, Francesca, but you are making it extremely difficult." He said the words softly, his voice a smooth black velvet whisper of seduction.

She was suddenly terrified of reaching her home, yet at the same time, she wished desperately that they were already there. "You can't kiss me Gabriel. You're already driving me crazy. I don't know what to do with you. I had a nice comfortable life with a nice comfortable future all planned out and now you've come and turned my world upside down."

He grinned at her, a quick, almost boyish, mischievous flash of immaculate white teeth. "I cannot help myself, sweetheart. You are so beautiful, you take my breath away. What man would not have such thoughts walking in the night beside you, with the stars overhead and the breeze teasing him with your scent?"

"Do be quiet, Gabriel." Francesca tried not to let any pleasure sound in her voice. He certainly didn't need any encouragement. "For a man who claims little knowledge of women, you certainly know all the right things to say."

"It must be inspiration," he replied.

Francesca burst out laughing; she couldn't help herself. He was becoming more outrageous by the minute. "The dawn is creeping up on us and I'm tired. Let's go home."

He liked the sound of that. Home. He had never had one. Gabriel could acknowledge to himself that he had been lucky in the unique relationship he shared with Lucian. He had been lonely, but never truly alone like the other males of his species. Even after Lucian had turned, they merged often. A two-thousand-year habit could not be broken so easily. It was automatic.

It bothered Gabriel that he had not found Lucian's first kill in the city. Any kill. Lucian had risen starving from their long imprisonment beneath the earth. He would have gorged himself on the first human he had come across, yet Gabriel had scoured the city for evidence and had found nothing. He knew there was more than one vampire in the area. He read the papers for news of strange murders, but none of those murdered had been killed by Lucian. Lucian was an artist with a very distinctive style. There was nothing sloppy about Lucian. Each kill held his personal signature, as though he were taunting his brother to come after him. Sometimes Gabriel thought it was all a game to Lucian.

"You've gone away from me again," Francesca said softly. "Where do you go, Gabriel? Is he talking to you?"

Gabriel didn't pretend not to know whom she was talking about. "Sometimes we merge inadvertently. At those times you are in great danger."

"You love him very much, don't you?" Francesca curled her fingers around his wrist, brushed her body close to his to offer comfort.

At once he felt her soothing presence, and peace stole into him as it always did when she was touching him. He wondered, just for one moment, if she could have healed Lucian before he turned. Could she have imparted the same peace to his soul as she did to his twin?

They turned up the road leading to her house. He liked the look of it, the way it seemed to reach out and beckon to them. Home. This was home. Was there any possibility of a family for him? Could they actually live here together? Raise their baby? Care for Skyler? Would Francesca ever be able to love him? She wanted him, her body craved his, but would she love him? Forgive him?

"You go very quiet when you think about him," Francesca murmured softly. "I can feel the pain it causes you. Yet if I touch your mind, you have only good thoughts of him. He must have been quite a man."

"There has never been another like him. He was a master at battle. At anything. I never had to look to see if he was there, I always just
knew
it. Lucian was a legend. He saved so many lives down through the ages, human as well as Carpathian, it would be impossible to count them. He never faltered in his duty. Not at all. We were close, Francesca," he admitted softly. "Very close."

They were walking along the property toward the front entrance. "Tell me about him. It might help to share your memories. I feel your reluctance to speak of him; you think it is disloyal to him. But I would never presume to judge him. You loved him and admired him and I can only do the same."

Gabriel pushed open the front door, stepped back to allow her to precede him. He was continually scanning the area around them, a habit long since drilled into him by his lost brother. Sorrow welled up out of nowhere. "I sometimes think I could have destroyed him by now if it weren't for the fact that I can't bear to be in the world without him. I gave my word of honor to him long ago that I would be the one to destroy him should he lose his soul. We both did. If one turned, the other would hunt and destroy, yet I have been unable to fulfill my promise to him. Is it deliberate, Francesca? Is it?" He sounded lost and very alone.

She closed the door firmly against the light beginning to streak through the early morning sky. "No, Gabriel, you would have honored your promise if you were able to do so. And I believe that you will. You honor him."

"Lucian lost feeling while he was a mere fledgling, long before our males normally do, yet he endured for two thousand years. I had emotion far longer than he did, so I shared what I felt with him. I still cannot believe he turned. I have seen the evidence of his kills. I have even come on him when he was making a kill. But something in me will not believe it. I cannot comprehend that so strong a man, such a leader, a defender of our people, would have, chosen to give up his soul to the darkness for all eternity."

"You love him, Gabriel. It is only natural that you would want him to remain in your heart the way you have always known him," Francesca said softly. She tugged at his hand and moved through the house, taking him with her. "I need to call my attorney and ask him to draw up the appropriate papers making me Skyler's guardian. Before we retire to our chamber, we must send inquiries to ask if any of our people have human families they would trust to aid us in caring for Skyler during the day while we sleep."

He followed her to the study, watched as she spoke quickly and firmly to the lawyer. She gave him no real chance to argue with her; there was compulsion in her voice, and Gabriel automatically aided her, adding the weight of his power to hers. Her attorney would have everything in order for them by evening. No one would protest. Who would want Skyler Rose Thompson? She was an orphan with no relatives. Francesca had money and influence. Any judge would gladly grant her wishes.

Gabriel watched carefully as she turned on her computer and began typing at a rapid rate. It amazed him, the capabilities of the new technology. Her fingers flew on the keyboard with total confidence. She had watched this technology as it had grown. She had experienced the things he could only read about. He could read about them, but he could not go back and watch them as time unfolded. Francesca was comfortable with speeding cars and airplanes that blasted across the sky. With spaceships and satellites. With the Internet and computers.

"I've got a hit, Gabriel," Francesca said. "Savage, Aidan Savage in the States. I've made several lovely pieces for his house. I am certain I heard his lifemate was once a human psychic. Aidan has a twin brother, Julian."

A slow smile spread across Gabriel's face. "Julian, I remember him. He was just a boy with wild blond hair, very unusual for our species. He was eavesdropping on a conversation Lucian and I were having with Mikhail and Gregori. He was quite a handful even as a boy. I sensed a darkness in him, but there was no time to examine him closely." His white teeth flashed. "Gregori was very protective of him, and I did not wish to challenge my own kin. We were hundreds of years apart, but our blood is the same. I would like to know what happened to both of them."

"Well, I do not know much of Julian's fate—I am careful not to rouse curiosity with my inquiries—but I have done business with Aidan on more than one occasion. He does not know me, only my fictional Carpathian male, the artist who owns my company. I'll e-mail Aidan and see what he can tell us of his human family and how it works. I can include a question about Julian. As far as Gregori, it is well known his lifemate is the daughter of our Prince."

"Please do ask about Julian. It is interesting that you can talk so quickly to someone halfway around the world. One of our own people. You must be very careful about the way you talk to our people. Anyone might be able to intercept your mail," he cautioned.

"Trust me, Gabriel, I am very careful. I've always had to be careful." She turned off the computer and took his hand once more to lead him to the chamber beneath the earth. Her heart was beating so loudly she knew he could hear it. They walked through the halls at a leisurely pace, through the large kitchen passageway leading to the sleeping chamber.