Taken (Ava Delaney #4) (8 page)

I wanted to
talk to Gabe, but he seemed busy, so I left early.

Peter followed
me outside. “Wait.” He grabbed my hand. We walked together for a
few minutes in silence. “Thanks,” he said at last. “For showing up
here.”

“You didn’t
give us much choice.”

“Everyone has a
choice.” As if to illustrate his point, he pushed me against the
closest wall and gripped my chin between his finger and thumb. “You
could kill me if you wanted to. I could kill you, too. But we
don’t. Even if we should.”

His mouth fell
on mine hungrily, but I pushed him away. “What are you doing with
me then?”

“You ask me
like I ever know what the fuck I’m doing,” he said, leaning in to
whisper in my ear. “Maybe you’re the ultimate forbidden fruit.” His
lips grazed my jaw, and he reached for my mouth again, forcing my
bottom lip down with his thumb. “Maybe I like getting close to the
mouth of danger.”

I jerked my
knee upward, pulling the blow just in time, but he caught his
breath all the same.

He laughed
softly. “Maybe I like the unpredictability.”

“Maybe, maybe,
maybe.”

The laughter
fell from his face, and his eyes turned earnest. “Want some
truth?”

I frowned.
“Always.”

“Truth is, I
like to be around you because I don’t have to worry about you. No
matter what happens, you defend yourself. Nobody is going to come
in the night and take you away. And even if they did, I wouldn’t
ever let myself feel enough for that to make a huge difference to
me.”

“Wow. You’re so
romantic.”

He laughed, but
there was no humour there. In fact, he looked unbelievably sad.
“Everything about you is almost ordinary, but all together, it
makes up something… interesting. You’ve brought something out of me
that I lost a long time ago. But I can’t offer you anything. I have
nothing to give you. You have to understand that I don’t have
anything left.”

“I’m not asking
you for anything. I’ve never asked you for anything, Peter.”

“I know.” He
leaned his forehead against mine, and I laid my hand on his chest
to feel his heartbeat. He gave a little moan. “I should keep away
from you,” he said, his expression hollow. “But I’m not that good a
person.”

His words were
a cold sword through my stomach. Out of everything he said, I knew
that last bit would stick.

The moment
ended. Peter made some excuse to go home alone, but I only felt
relief.

On the way
home, all I kept thinking about were the numerous ways things could
end badly with Peter. And after I finally fell asleep that night, I
awoke with pain searing my arms.

I turned on the
light reluctantly and checked out the damage. More brands. Straight
lines ran from my wrists up to my inner elbows, ugly, sore scars
that I would never be able to forget. I didn’t need the reminders;
I couldn’t forget the twins if I wanted. My dreams were full of
them getting hurt and attacked because I didn’t get there in
time.

That awful
sensation of time running out weighed on me, and I sought comfort
in my home. It was the one place I felt safe, even though nowhere
was safe from the deal I had made with the twins. Nowhere kept me
safe from the brands that would keep coming. The twins didn’t scare
me, but a lot of other beings certainly did, and my home was the
only place I felt even the slightest bit secure.

I still kept my
windows open, still fearing Dita’s father would return and hurt
them both. I needed to speak to Anka again at some stage and find
out more of whatever information she had on the slave markets.
There were so many lost people in the world, displaced because of
things out of their control. I was starting to see what Mrs. Yaga
meant about lost souls finding their way to her. After all, I was
still a lost soul myself.

I spent the
next day in front of a computer screen. First, I had to keep an eye
on my phoenix of a business. It had been dragged through the dirt,
but was beginning to sprout again. Also, I still had to find out
about the Féinics and the rebels, if they even existed.

But Lucia, the
half-fae twin with somewhat psychic powers, had been certain she
and her brother Lorcan were meant to find the Féinics, and as I
owed her my humanity, and likely my life, I trusted every one of
her visions. The silence surrounding the slave markets was strange,
and even weirder, I could find nothing beyond allusions to the
supposed rebellion. The myth was beginning to sound like wishful
thinking, and that got me pondering. Who would have the most to win
and lose from a full-on rebellion?

I had been
hearing rumours about conflicts in the rest of Europe: vampires
fighting against their imposed quotas, groups of beings refusing to
toe the line. It seemed unlikely, and distant enough to be someone
else’s problem, but then there was the UK. I had met the leader of
the BVA, and I was sure Winston and the rest of his vampires were
more than willing to start something huge to get whatever it was
they wanted. I knew they wanted power, a higher place in the pack,
but what if they had alliances with bigger, badder beings?

My head was a
mess of speculation, but the theories were a distraction from what
I was really supposed to be doing that day, like finding witnesses
from the rather substantial amount of murders and kidnappings that
had occurred in a similar fashion to Peter’s family’s tragic
ending.

I had a list of
incidents, and they all seemed to have gone down in eerily similar
ways. They started with silent break-ins, usually with no outward
sign of disturbance. Adults would either be found with their
throats slit or their necks broken. All of the families had one
child. The body of the child would never be found.

I chewed the
top of my pen as I prepared to mark out yet another family on the
list. No survivors. Not a one. Why had they left Peter alive? Not
enough time? Did someone disturb them? Did someone save Peter? It
didn’t make sense. The one person prepared to die for his vengeance
had survived when it seemed as though nobody else had.

The incidents
themselves were scattered throughout the country and appeared to
run on a random timeline. The same county was never hit twice in a
row, perhaps to avoid suspicion. The major newspapers never picked
up the stories. All of the information came from local newspapers,
which rarely mentioned similar occurrences in the rest of the
country.

The Gardaí
hadn’t seemed to connect most of the murders either, but that might
have been down to a supernatural influence. Ireland was a
relatively small island. How many incidents were elsewhere? We
might not find Illeana’s witness, but maybe we could come across
another.

For the next
couple of hours, I scoured the internet for articles depicting
similar incidents in the UK. Before long, I had more than I needed.
But again, case after case, there were no witnesses and no major
media coverage. How many people had died because some creature
wanted their child?

I almost wished
Daimhín was around so I could question her child vampire. Eloise
had been taken from her home because she was a psychic. She might
have some answers, some insight into where I should look. Not that
Daimhín would willingly allow her to speak to me about it.

Before I could
get to the end of my new list, Esther arrived. She jumped from one
foot to the other, her eyes bright with excitement.

“Come in for a
minute,” I said, and she frowned. “Steady on, Esther. We’re only
going to see Callista.”

“I just feel
like we might be getting somewhere.” But she followed me into the
living room.

“Speaking of
getting somewhere, I haven’t. At least, not yet. I’ve moved my
search to the UK. Thank everything for the internet. There’s a
chance we’ll never find Illeana’s witness, but we might come across
another survivor somewhere else.”

She shrugged.
“Maybe. The odds are probably against us. But if you could find
someone in England, I could make an extra stop on my way to check
on the BVA.”

“I don’t like
that you’re going over there. People keep talking about bad stuff
happening. You getting in the middle of it doesn’t give me sweet
dreams.”

“I have no
choice. Guardians go wherever they’re sent.”

I gave her a
wry look. “Number one, you chose this mission. Two, your brother
would absolutely make sure you didn’t get sent over there if you
let him.”

She flashed a
grin. “I have to be a good influence on the new recruits. Besides,
you need me to check on your new friends. Although, I think you
might be suicidal the way you’re handing out life favours.”

I slipped on a
light jacket. “We can’t stand around when bad things happen, right?
So I don’t. And I’ve decided I’ll do whatever it takes to survive
the night, because there’s always revenge.” I grinned when she
raised her eyebrows. “Besides, I think the vampires have bigger
fish to fry right now. They didn’t exactly get good use out of the
twins.”

Esther
shivered. “Do you think all of the children are half-breeds?”

“Eloise
wasn’t,” I reminded. “I think us mongrels are just a safer
bet.”

“Nobody to care
about us,” she said wistfully. “It just makes me wonder what could
have happened to you and me. Or rather,
why
it never
happened to us. I mean, my father didn’t have a clue what my mother
was. The whole shape-shifting thing shocked him enough to get rid
of us. Yet nobody came for us.”

“Your mother
must have known,” I said. “She might have been protecting you by
keeping it a secret when you were young. Who knows? As for me,
Nancy kept me well hidden.”

“She didn’t do
such a great job of it, though. That woman at the trial, the one
the vampires made talk for them against you, she managed to find
you. And she smelled human to me.”

I felt a pang
at the memory of Helena. “When I was leaving England, Lucia sent me
an image. Probably accidentally, but it was Helena. She’s been on
my mind ever since. Ever feel like there’s something a lot bigger
going on around us, Esther? Like someone else is pressing all the
buttons, and we’re just running around doing whatever is expected
of us.”

“That’s
basically my job description,” she said with a grin. “Come on, we
should get a move on. I promised Aiden I would be home for dinner
tonight.”

“Wouldn’t want
to give the big, bad alpha a reason to hate me. Whoops, too
late.”

“Shut up.” She
jostled me as we headed to her car. The vehicle wasn’t exactly
discreet, being practically miniature and the colour of purple
Smarties.

Dita and Anka
were returning to their home, loaded with shopping bags. Looking
strained at the sight of a Guardian, Anka nodded at me, while Dita
stared at Esther’s car with longing.

“They the
ones?” Esther asked when we got into her car.

“Yep. Any idea
what happened to him?”

She shook her
head. “He wasn’t taken by us. Old Mrs. Yaga is a bit mysterious,
but from what I hear, you’re okay as long as you’re in one of her
houses. She protects her properties, and everyone inside them. I
don’t know what kind of deals she’s made, but she’s untouchable, as
far as us Guardians are concerned. Either way, we couldn’t have
helped your neighbour, of course, what with her big bad being a
human. We don’t deal with humans.”

I wanted to ask
why not, but I knew the answer. Humans were even further down the
food chain than us ‘mongrels.’

“I feel bad for
the kid,” I said after a few minutes, although my mind was still on
Mrs. Yaga. I had been afraid to look too deeply into what she did,
and I kept finding myself wondering if Dita had actually seen her
father since that night.

Esther drove
away too fast. The sun was still warm, but a sharp breeze came
through the car window. I had to keep it open because being in
Esther’s car felt a little claustrophobic.

“Kids are
resilient.”

“Oh, I forgot.
You
are
resilient, aren’t you?”

She stuck her
tongue out without looking at me. “Hilarious. Every single time you
lot say it.” She pressed the horn as a teenage boy strolled across
the road in front of the car. “Idiot. I think some of them actually
want me to hit them.”

“They think
they can sue,” I said, smiling as she revved the engine to scare
the boy.

“They can try.
What were we saying? Oh, yeah, the kid. She’ll forget about it.
She’ll probably grow up determined to never allow a man to lay a
hand on her. No need to think the worst.”

“The mother
insisted Dita is better off with her father, even though he’s a
crap person.”

“That’s a bit…
off. I couldn’t imagine being around my own father would be good
for my self-esteem.” She glanced at me. “Maybe you’re letting
yourself get too involved.”

“Maybe.” I knew
why I tended to get overly involved with everything going on around
me. It was because I had distanced myself from the real world for
so long, and I had that weird hole inside of me, empty because of
loss, of unanswered questions. My parents couldn’t have put me
through worse than my grandmother, but even if they had, part of me
was still curious to know what they were like.

Traffic ran
smoother than usual, so it didn’t take long to get to Callista’s
home in an affluent part of Dublin city. The house was a large
building contained by a gated entrance. Private enough, but no
magic surrounding it. No windows were open, and no curtains covered
them—nothing that said it was lived in.

“Esther, I
don’t think she’s here.”

Esther frowned
but pulled in anyway. The gate opened easily when we tried, and we
both walked up to the front door together.