Sucker Bet (28 page)

But she thought she'd scream if the silence continued so she opened the door to her suite and said, "I want to tell you about the link I found between one of the loop members and a well-known hired assassin. Well, well-known in my circles, unfortunately. I think someone hired him to do these murders. Was Gregor killed in the same way?"

Nate nodded, looking wary, sticking his hands in the back pockets of his jeans. "Why do you know about assassins?"

"Between Ethan and Roberto, I know just about everyone that matters in our world, straight or not."

He gave a brief nod, than held up his finger. "Let's get to that in a minute. First, I want to discuss something else with you."

"What's that?" And did she really want to know? He looked downright furious.

"Come here." Nate gestured her to him, where he was standing by her console table. She kept fresh flowers and a stack of books there under a mirror that had come with the standard decor.

Not sure what he wanted, she did it automatically, eager to make whatever was going on right. Wanting Nate to be Nate again, looking at her with tenderness and respect. This attitude she didn't understand, didn't like.

He shoved the vase of flowers in her hand and spun her around. "Explain that to me."

She could see out of her peripheral vision that he was pointing to the mirror, but of course, she couldn't see his finger reflected in the glass. She couldn't see any part of either of them, just the flowers stable and steady even as they appeared to float in the air, nothing obvious maintaining them in place.

He knew.

"You have to keep an open mind as I tell you this." Carefully, she set the flowers down and turned to him, no idea how to proceed. "You know how you asked if I believe in vampires? Well, the answer is yes because I actually
am
a vampire."

His jaw twitched and he stared over her shoulder before locking eyes with her. "I'm one, too, aren't I? You made me a fucking vampire, didn't you? Why would you do that?"

Gwenna reached for his hand, but he didn't grip her back. "Nate, you have to understand… you were dead. That bullet went through your heart and you were dead almost instantly. And that was my fault. I was just trying to give you another chance… a choice. I'm so sorry that Roberto had you shot. I never dreamt he would do something so completely vicious."

"You should have told me you were a vampire. I thought you had some kind of eating disorder." He gave a laugh of disbelief and ran his hands through his hair. "God! This is insane. Vampires. They're not real, they're fuckin' bogeymen, made-up shit. Yet I can't see myself in the mirror and I crave blood. I drank it and it tasted so good, and now I want more. And I can feel what I think are fangs… they pop out whenever I think about blood, which has been about every second since I realized what I was drinking."

"I'm sorry." Gwenna gestured to the sofa. "Let's sit down, let's work through this. Ask me whatever you need to, and we'll get everything squared away. You'll get used to it… and I think, I hope, that being a vampire is more desirable than being dead. And there was no way I could tell you what I was initially. You would have had me committed."

Gwenna sat down but Nate made no move to. "Yeah, but why the hell did you turn me and then just leave me? I had to find out from Donatelli, your ex-husband, what exactly I am now."

Oh, no. Gwenna felt her cheeks get hot. "Roberto told you?"

"Yes. I think he totally got off on it, too. He's not happy you turned me, because you know his plan was to whack me to get me out of your life, but he did really enjoy being the one to explain to me why I was having trouble standing. Lack of blood."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for you to find out like that. I thought you'd sleep through the night so I wanted to come back here for some blood bags to feed you, and I needed to check on Kelsey. When I realized that her husband potentially was on the slayers' loop and could be responsible for the deaths, I wanted to see if she was okay and warn her." Gwenna paused, realizing her words were just tumbling out. She needed to get a grip on her emotions, slow down, not panic. Nate would understand. She just needed to be calm, not defensive. She was no longer timid Gwenna, and damn it, she had reasons for why she'd done what she had. There was justification there. And she had to remember and trust and believe that Roberto's actions were not her fault. He had killed Nate, not her.

"Show me your fangs," Nate demanded, still standing in front of her.

Gwenna looked up at him from the sofa. "You don't want me to do that."

"Yes, I do. I need to see."

"Nate." She tucked her hair back, miserable, wishing she had been bolder and bit him sooner, shown him her true nature during pleasure, not like this.

"Show me, Gwenna. I have to see." He looked so agitated, she realized she had to do it.

"Fine." Opening her mouth, she gave a quick flash of her fangs, not even allowing them time to fully descend.

"Have you ever bitten me?"

"No!" Gwenna was offended, until she remembered the little love bite she'd taken. "Just once. And not to feed. It was while we were… I just wanted to taste you, feel you completely."

"Who are you?" Nate asked, looking at her with such profound hurt that she wanted to weep. "I don't know anything about you at all."

"Yes, you do. You don't know details, but you know me, Nate. I'm the same Gwenna you understood me to be this afternoon. The woman you said you were falling in love with." Bringing up that little confession right at the moment might be horrific timing, but Gwenna didn't want to lose the opportunity to remind him of what he felt. She did not want to lose him, period.

"But you're a vampire, with a very long past. How long?"

"I was born in England in the eleventh century. Ethan is my half-brother, and he turned me to vampire when I almost bled to death in childbirth."

Nate stared at her, cop face on. It was disconcerting the way he could completely shutter his emotions. She didn't really have any true gauge of his feelings.

"So your daughter, the one who accidentally fell on a sword, was born hundreds of years ago?"

"Yes. And she didn't accidentally fall on a sword. She lived to the age of twenty-five, then she killed herself with a sword so Ethan or I wouldn't change her to vampire." Saying the words out loud was painful, but Gwenna wanted Nate to understand she had kept the truth from him because there had no way to be honest without him declaring her insane. It had never been from malice or plain old dishonesty, but out of necessity. "It was a different time period then. She thought Ethan and I were an aberration, that we were evil."

That cracked Nate's mask. "I'm sorry, Gwenna."

She gave him a brief smile. "Yeah, me, too. I've lived a lot of years wishing I could alter the past, wishing that my daughter was still with me, wishing that she hadn't shown fear of me in the end, but I've learned to deal with it. I wouldn't say I'm entirely at peace but I'm getting there. And I'm learning to be more independent, to spend less time alone."

Nate sighed. "I want to be angry with you. I want to be furious. But I look at you… I see that look in your eyes and I can't do it. I can't stay angry, even when you lied to me because I know that you only do what you think is right. You're a good woman, and you'd never hurt me intentionally."

Hope swelled in her. "No, I absolutely wouldn't. I… I love you, Nate. And I haven't told a single man those words since my divorce, which was three hundred years ago."

Nate's head was pounding, brain struggling to keep up and process all he was uncovering. While he heard Gwenna's declaration of love, it was her latter words that made him give a laugh of disbelief. "Three hundred years since your divorce? God, that's insane. And the asshole is still giving you crap. That's just not right."

It wasn't right. And Nate was a vampire. That wasn't right either. The very thought messed with his head. Though he knew it was true. He could feel the changes in himself, see the sharpness and clarity of objects around him, hear with a focus and subtlety that were new. He could smell every nuance of people and the world around him. Feel his fangs. Crave blood.

Scary as hell, that's what it was. But at the same time, he knew he wouldn't have wanted to die. He was more selfish and controlling than Kyra. His sister had accepted her fate with grace and dignity and Nate had admired her, had been in awe of her. He knew that he could never have just accepted death without wanting to fight, that he had the sense that he hadn't finished what he needed to accomplish in his life.

So he would accept his vampire fate. Eventually he would probably have to thank Gwenna for it. But at the moment he was too busy processing information and sensory input to appreciate that he should reassure her, tell her how he felt in return. Because he still cared about Gwenna, wanted to be with her. Even more now that he understood just how long she had been battling her ex-husband and her grief for her daughter.

But Gwenna just shrugged. "Roberto is Roberto. Though tonight I think he and I finally reached an understanding. He just may be sufficiently angry to stop speaking to me indefinitely." She stood up and came over to him. Her hand slipped into his. "I'm just sorry that it took me so long to stand up to him, to be honest with him. Because if I had done so sooner, you would still be mortal."

She looked so sad, so worried, that Nate touched her cheek. He couldn't stand a woman in tears, and she looked damn close to losing it. The last thing he wanted was for Gwenna to take this on and own it. "This isn't your fault. Don't ever say that. You didn't have me shot. Donatelli did."

"I got you involved."

"No, I got involved because there was a murderer running around killing people. You're not responsible for those deaths on the slayers' loop either. You haven't done anything wrong. You and I chose to be together, chose to hook up because we both wanted to. End of story."

Her blue eyes stared up at him, her long eyelashes wet with her unshed tears. "Is that the end of the story? We hooked up, and that's it?"

A tear squeezed out and slid down her cheek. A red tear. Blood. Nate felt his throat close. He loved her. He did. That had to be what this was, even as he doubted it, a nasty little fear that he was wrong, that he was wanting her to be something she wasn't, wanting what was between them to be real when it wasn't. He wasn't one hundred percent sure of her, him, or what the hell love really was, but there was one thing he'd never question. He wanted Gwenna safe and he would protect her from anything, anyone. Even himself. But right now, he just wanted to hold her, to feel her against him. "No, that's not it."

Gathering her in his arms, Nate pulled her close and kissed her forehead, her temple, her cheek. "Blood tears. Do we all do that?"

"No." She shook her head against his chest, her body still stiff and unsure. "Only a few of us. Kelsey and I can do it, but no one else in Vegas that I know of."

"So you're special."

"Not so much."

Nate tipped her chin up. "You're special to me. I want to be with you, Gwenna. I want to love you."

He kissed her tenderly, enjoying the way her soft lips parted for him. His tongue was more sensitive, more attune to her unique taste. She was delicious. His. Just as he felt the urge to bite her, she pulled back.

"Good. Because I was determined to convince you we need to be together, but the truth of the matter is I don't really have time to do that right now. We have a problem."

Nate almost laughed, but she looked so serious, he didn't. "This is about the murders, isn't it? Tell me everything you know. Absolutely everything this time."

An hour later, he had requested a pad of paper and pen from Gwenna and was trying to sort out everything they knew. "The vampire world is very small, isn't it? We have the same players turning up over and over again."

"That's true." Gwenna was sitting next to him on the couch, her laptop computer balancing on her knees.

"So here's what I have. Ringo—hired assassin, worked in the past for Donatelli. Drug user. Ethan—your brother, president of vampires." That sort of blew Nate's mind. He had never considered that vampires could be real, let alone organized. Though truthfully, everything was blowing his mind. He was almost grateful for the murders to concentrate on. Homicide he understood.

Going down his list, he said, "Ethan is enemies with Donatelli, who is now VP because it was the only way for Ethan to win the election against Gregor Chechikov. Gregor, who is now dead and being hauled to the morgue as we speak." Nate made a notation on his paper next to Gregor's name. Dead. "How does a vampire die?"

"Decapitation. Wood stake to the heart. Complete burning. That's it. And technically a full draining of blood without replenishing it but I'm not sure how one vampire would overpower another long enough to do that without using one of these other methods first."

"Well, someone did it to Gregor, because the dead was definitely dead. I saw him. Smelled him."

Gwenna stopped clicking her mouse—she had said she was going to check the slayers' loop—and glanced at him. "The thing is that Gregor had been a vampire for a long time, but he was turned back to mortal recently. It would have been easy enough to kill him, if you knew he was mortal, which almost no one did, because he's been in hiding. As vampires we know immediately who is mortal and who is vamp, so Gregor had been staying far away from the public eye."

"Yet you knew he was mortal?" And how the hell did a vampire just become mortal again?

"Yes, because his mortality was returned to him by Corbin Atelier, Brittany's husband, against Gregor's will. It was his punishment for kidnapping Brittany when she was pregnant and plotting to steal her child. Corbin thought giving him weakness as a punishment was fitting for a man who would do such an appalling thing to a woman."

"That is appalling. And obviously someone wanted him dead." Nate glanced at Gwenna's screen. She had a message clicked and opened to read. "But how does a vampire become mortal?"

"Corbin created a vaccine. But it's a secret not meant for the vampire population at large. It could precipitate mass panic and protests."