Be Mine Tonight (15 page)

S
he was not alone.

It was still dark when Pru woke, and even though she was groggy with too little sleep, she knew there was someone in the room with her.

The realization had barely registered when she was grabbed by a rough pair of hands and hauled from her bed. She fought against them, kicking, thrashing and screaming, but they held fast to her. A fist struck her jaw and she fell, shocked into silence, the entire left side of her head throbbing from the blow.

She did not try to struggle again. They might knock her unconscious next time, and then she wouldn’t be able to do anything to defend herself against them.

They dragged her downstairs to the drawing
room. Two other men were there, pointing guns at Matilda and Frederick, her husband. Matilda looked terrified. Pru tried to go to her, but the man behind her stopped her with a tight grip on her arm.

She shot a reassuring look at Matilda, trying to calm her sister’s fears. The rest of her family, including her father, was brought in by armed men. Corralled and cornered like sheep, they all stood there in their nightclothes, trembling and confused.

“What do you want from us?” her father asked.

One of the men who had grabbed her—Pru assumed he was the leader, given his air of authority—looked at her before replying, “Your daughter has involved herself in matters which she should have left alone. We cannot allow any of you or the information you might have to exist.”

Matters? Information? What were they talking about? Surely they didn’t mean her quest for the Grail?

Oh, God, they did. The man in the cellar, he had been dressed like these men. He had been one of their number. They knew about the cellar. They had been there before she was. Whatever had been in there was now in their possession.

The men were going to kill them all. It wasn’t enough to take what was left of her life, but they were going to let her die knowing that she was responsible for the deaths of the rest of her family as well. Were it not for her foolish ambitions to cheat death, none of this would be happening.

She met Matilda’s terrified gaze. “I’m so sorry,”
she whispered, her voice choking on the same tears that filled her eyes.

The man in the front leveled his pistol at her father. Oh, God, he was going to shoot her father first.

Her father closed his eyes, so calm and strong. Pru could never be that strong, never just accept death for the end that it was.

Unbelievably, the man was stopped by one of his companions. “Not yet. They’re not all here.”

As though summoned by his words, the door opened, revealing more black-clad men. They shoved Molyneux and Marcus into the room. Another man they led into the room in shackles. Pru knew who it was without seeing his face. She knew from the golden silk of his hair, the strength in his posture. Molyneux and Marcus were clad in dressing gowns like her brothers-in-law, but Chapel was clad in nothing but a pair of black trousers. On his back, high on his right shoulder, was a scar in the shape of a cross.

Despite the danger they were all in, Pru couldn’t help but stare at the magnificence that was Chapel’s naked torso. Golden, rippled muscle lightly dusted with darker hair. His biceps were hard and smooth and the muscles in his shoulders shifted with every movement, as though he were waiting for the right moment to attack.

God, was she to watch him die as well? Were they all going to meet their Maker together?

“Why are you doing this?” The sound of her own voice surprised her.

One of the men looked at her. There was nothing but coldness in his pale gray eyes. He shoved Marcus toward her. “Ask him.”

The look on Marcus’s face was one she had never seen before. Where was her boyish friend? When had he been replaced by a man who looked as though he would like to spill some blood himself? And why was there blood on the sleeve of his robe? Had one of their captors wounded him?

“Marcus?”

He met her gaze. “I’m sorry, Pru. This is all my fault.”

What? “How?”

Before Marcus could answer, one of their captors stepped forward. “Enough talking. Open the drapes. It will be dawn soon and we don’t want any surprises from our friend here.”

Prickling cold trailed down Pru’s cheeks and arms to pool at her feet. He had gestured toward Chapel, whom they had placed in the darkest corner of the room, when he had said that. How could he know about Chapel’s condition? More importantly, what kind of monster was he, to sentence Chapel to such a painful death?

“Bastard,” she snarled.

The man turned on her, leveling a pistol at her chest. “Hmm. Since you are the only one who objects, I think you should be the one to open the drapes.”

“No.”

He pulled the hammer back on his pistol. “Do it.”

For the first time since this whole nightmare
began, Pru actually felt as though she had some power. “Or what, you will shoot me? I’m already dying, you cretin. Nothing I can do will change that, so if you want to shoot me, go ahead. You will be sparing me a lot of pain. But if you want those drapes open, you are going to have to do it yourself.”

Her gaze flickered to Chapel. Was that admiration she saw in his eyes? Or was it something more? Whatever it was, it made her feel very warm inside. For the first time in a long time, she felt strong and in control of her fate.

Elation and empowerment was short-lived as the man shifted his pistol to target Georgiana. “Then open the drapes or I’ll shoot
her
instead.”

Dread, sick and vile, rolled in Pru’s stomach. This was what true helplessness felt like. Once more she looked at Chapel. Would he forgive her for causing him pain in exchange for an extension on her sister’s life?

He nodded at her. He understood, but that did little to make her feel better as she went to the closest window and pulled open the drapes.

For a moment she simply stared at the glass. It should be getting light, but it was just as black as the deepest night outside.

It looked like paint. The windows had been painted black. Had the three of them been expecting something like this?

This time, when she looked at him, there was no mistaking the expression on Chapel’s face. It was one of satisfaction, and bloodlust. It frightened her. It excited her. It gave her hope.

There was also no mistaking the flicker of dismay on the faces of the men holding them.

The rest happened so fast it was hard to make sense of it all. The men turned on Chapel, firing their pistols in rapid succession. Even as her family members dove for safety, Pru cried out for the man who had come to mean so much to her.

But Chapel didn’t fall to the floor as her breaking heart had expected. He didn’t fall. He charged.

Marcus knocked her to the floor, shoving her behind the sofa for protection. Pru crawled forward, peeking around the side. She had to see what had become of Chapel; her heart demanded it.

And her heart gave a mighty slam against her ribs as she saw him still standing. His chest was dotted with wounds, blood running down his tanned flesh in tiny rivulets. He moved with a speed and grace that was almost hypnotic and a lethal precision that took her breath away.

He wrapped the chain of his shackles around one man’s neck. A quick twist was all it took to drop the man dead to the ground. He’d barely struck the carpet when Chapel launched himself at another man. He killed this one with the same efficiency. He moved so fast, he was almost a blur.

A part of Pru realized she should be horrified, but she wasn’t. She was too giddy with relief. Good God, was it possible that they were going to be all right?

And what about Chapel? He should be dead. That many shots should have killed him instantly. Why was he still alive? How had he managed to
free his legs of the shackles that had bound them when he entered the room? And what had he done to snap the chain that connected the bands around his wrists? When had he snapped it? It had been whole just a moment ago….

She watched him as he mowed the men down one by one. Then a man attacked him with a dagger, driving the blade deep into his chest. Pru gasped.

This was it. This was when she would see him die.
Oh, God.

But he didn’t die. He pulled the dagger from his chest and tossed it casually to his right. It hit one of their captors in the throat. He fell to the floor twitching.

Pru’s mouth dropped open.

Marcus tried to draw her back behind the sofa. “Don’t watch. You shouldn’t see this.”

She turned to him, disbelief numbing her limbs. “What am I seeing, Marcus?”

His smile was grim as he shrugged out of his dressing gown. He was dressed in trousers and a shirt. A crimson-stained bandage adorned his left arm. Apparently the dressing gown had been used to make their attackers believe they hadn’t been expected.

He pulled a pistol from the waistband of his trousers. “You are watching Severian de Foncé save all of us from certain death.”

“Severian de Foncé?” But that was the knight in Chapel’s story. Chapel couldn’t be Severian, not if the story was as old as he claimed.

Could he?

She peeked around the sofa once more as Marcus leapt to his feet and began shooting. Around her, her family huddled beneath the protection of furniture while Marcus and Chapel—and even Father Molyneux—waged war.

Chapel’s eyes seemed to glow from within, lit with a preternatural force Pru couldn’t explain. He smiled at a man who threw himself at him. Were those
fangs
in his mouth?

She ducked back behind the sofa, leaning up against it for support. Was she losing her mind? Was fear driving her insane?

And then the room fell silent. There were no more shots, no more cries or crashes.

Cautiously, Pru peered out from her hiding spot.

“Ahh!” she squealed when a man suddenly appeared before her. Not just any man, but Chapel, who now looked surprisingly normal for a man whose chest had been shot full of holes. Oh, yes, and he had been stabbed as well.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

She could only stare at the blood splatters on his face, at the wounds on his chest. “I should be asking you that question.”

“I’m fine.”

She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. “Oh, Chapel, no, you’re not.” No one could be fine after all that. No one.

The surface of his chest changed. Pru blinked. Eyes narrow, she leaned closer, not caring that it
was a man’s naked chest she was examining. Either she was hallucinating or…

Well, she just had to be hallucinating, because there was no way the wounds in Chapel’s flesh could be healing.

Yet they were. She watched as the gash where the man had plunged the dagger began to close and shrink. It was healing before her very eyes!

Her stunned gaze lifted to Chapel’s. “What are you?”

He tried to smile, but it just made him look sad. “I’m a vampire.”

And then Pru—who had always prided herself on being anything
but
a weak, vacuous female—fainted.

Chapel caught Pru as she went limp. His blood stained the virginal white of her wrapper, twisting his stomach as he realized it could have easily been her own blood ruining the delicate cotton. Thank God she hadn’t been hurt.

He rose to his feet, cradling her against him. Slowly, he lowered her onto the sofa, reluctant to attempt to wake her. When he straightened, he found her family clustered together like a basket of kittens, watching him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told them. Any minute now, they’d be running for their torches and pitchforks.

“I think if that was your intention you would have done it before this,” Thomas said.

Matilda looked at him as though he were
mad, but the other women—and their husbands—regarded him like children watching a tiger. They looked as though they wanted to embrace him, but were afraid to.

“Who were those men?” It was Pru who asked. Turning, Chapel saw that Molyneux had helped revive her. The priest held her hand as she spoke.

It was surprisingly easy to meet her gaze. There was no hate in her eyes, only disbelief. No doubt the fear and hate would come soon, once the shock had worn off. “They belong to a group called the Order of the Silver Palm.”

It was obvious from the blankness of her expression that the name meant nothing to her. However, she seemed to grasp what they were doing there. “They were going to kill us because of my search for the Grail.”

The pain and conviction in her tone tore at Chapel’s heart. “Not because of you, Pru. Never because of you.”

Either no one noticed that he had used a pet name for her, or no one cared. At this point it was hard to tell. They were still watching him as if he were some kind of mix between wild animal and god.

All except for Pru, of course. She was too busy looking guilty and hurt to gaze upon him as a god. It surprised him just how much he would have liked to see adoration instead. Despite his own guilt and disgust at what he was, he would like her to see him as something special.

He wanted to be special, not a monster.

“It wasn’t the Holy Grail they were after,” Chapel
told her. He wasn’t about to make Marcus Grey’s explanations for him, but he couldn’t let her blame herself for this bloodshed. “They were after something much older called the Blood Grail. It had been under the protection of a friend of mine, but they used your excavation to get to it and, I fear, have captured my friend.”

His gaze met Marcus’s over Pru’s head. The blue-eyed man nodded, understanding that Chapel was leaving other details up to him. Marcus knew this family better than Chapel, and he truly hadn’t intended anyone to be hurt. Plus, he was the one who had been duped by the order. The story was his to tell, not Chapel’s.

Pru’s brow puckered. “What of your friend? Is he dead?”

A sharp, piercing pain lanced his chest. She thought of him, of his pain, even now. “I don’t think so, no.” He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was almost certain Temple was alive. He was also certain that Temple was in the custody of the Silver Palm. The one calling himself Magus had not been among this group, which meant that the leader was probably already on the move. Whatever the order was up to, they apparently wanted all vampires alive. He had heard one of the men remind another not to kill him when they were attacking.