Blood and Destiny (11 page)

Breathing in a deep breath of cool night air, I veered away from the vampires toward Luke’s car.

After Marcus’s show of temper, I wasn’t about to be stuck in a car with him. Luke might drive like a maniac, but he was the lesser of the two evils.

“Where are you going?” Marcus’s question didn’t slow my stride.

“We’re going to follow you so try not to dust him off your seats before I have a chance to talk to him, okay?”

“Destiny…”

I kept walking and he didn’t push. Maybe he knew he was on thin ice with me and was being good. I was more inclined to believe he wanted to question the errant vampire without me in his way, though.

Luke stepped around me to open the car door and I managed not to glare at him. Where, exactly, had he been while Marcus was being all dangerous-vampire-bent-on-murder? I waited until he slid behind the wheel before pursuing the topic. And they say I had no patience.

“Were you going to let him kill the man?”

“You had everything well in hand.”

The engine started and he seemed totally unfazed by anything that had gone wrong in the last half hour.

“Gee. Thanks for the backup, buddy. Way to be the muscle I thought I was taking in with me.”

He pulled the car out of the parking spot and followed the black limousine. At my jibe, he slanted me a terse look and appeared to consider his words before he spoke.

“Destiny, think about it. Marcus is a vampire powerful enough to maintain a firm hand over his tribe while letting them operate more freely than any other tribe I’ve ever seen. We could slug it out, but that wouldn’t have helped you because it was way too public. I’m not a fan of dying to keep a vampire king’s reputation intact, thank you. Besides, he was brewing for a fight and he didn’t come after me for the same reason. If we’d gotten to blows, one of us wasn’t walking away.

So, he picked a fight with someone he had a real grievance with other than personal jealousy.

Putting myself between him and how he manages his safe houses would have been enough reason for him to make an example out of me.”

“You talk like you don’t think you can win.” I didn’t mean it as an insult and he didn’t take it as one. His laughter teased my skin while he settled deeper into the seat as if he had been gearing up for a fight and I’d surprised him out of it.

“The man was born in an age where warfare and hand-to-hand combat were taught from the

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cradle. I’m a realist. Fighting him with no-holds-barred? Only has one outcome and it’s not in my favor unless he’s feeling suicidal. Vampires that old always think they’re in the prime of their lives.

They usually aren’t looking for a nice lion to put an end to them.”

“I’m surprised your ego can take that kind of logic.”

He glanced at me with a hint of the teasing grin I was coming to like. Well, honestly, the entire lion was beginning to grow on me.

“Don’t get me wrong, Destiny. I think you’re the best thing I’ve seen in a really long time, but I’m secure enough in my own appeal not to pit myself against impossible odds to impress you. At this point, you’ve made up your mind as to how far this is going to go and are just playing the game.”

“Why would you say that?” His analysis surprised me. I hadn’t reached any such conclusion, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Because, unlike you, I was raised in a pride. The one thing you can count on with young lionesses is that they can string a male along until they have him right where they want him.”

The way he said it gave me a clue so I guessed. “You have sisters.”

“Four of them. I’m the baby. You should know that identical twins run on my father’s side.

They’re in the genes.”

“Your genes are the last things I need to know about.”

He grinned and continued driving. It seemed surreal to be chatting like we were on an actual date and not tangled with vampires. Of course, it could have been the rush of adrenaline of expecting tigers and finding housecats instead. The sheer insanity of the thought made me match his grin and settle more comfortably in the seat. Without a word, he reached up to the console and flipped on the seat heater. It was a tiny gesture, but the thoughtfulness made me uncertain how to act.

In my experience, random acts of kindness expected to be rewarded with something tangible at a later date. I pushed the thought away and turned my attention to the car in front of us, wondering what was happening. Luke let me retreat to my own thoughts. He made no effort to push his advantage. That soothed the rush of suspicion regarding his motives.

I expected Marcus to take us back to the Vantage. Instead, his driver turned toward the industrial district in the other direction. The warehouses were far apart when we began to slow down.

“Where are we?” Luke’s question made me jump. I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Where no one can hear you scream.”

His face jerked toward mine as he followed into an empty parking lot. I waved his attention back to the front of the car. “Don’t worry. If he wanted to hear you scream, he would have found a way to send me somewhere else. Guess I’d better get my questions in order because I sincerely doubt our amnesic vampire will be around come morning.”

“Do you really think they’re going to kill him?”

The question was so terribly naïve I could only shake my head. He pulled the car to a stop behind the limousine. Before Luke cut the engine, the door opened and Marcus emerged into the glare of the headlights. He closed the door behind him and strode toward Luke’s car as the limousine pulled away.

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Luke and I watched him come. For a brief moment, I considered telling Luke to follow the car, but I didn’t. A loud click echoed in the silence as Luke pressed the button and the doors unlocked.

When Marcus opened the door, I turned to face him as he slid into the seat.

“Did the company become that tedious?”

He closed the door and buckled his seatbelt without rising to the bait. Luke looked at the vampire in the rearview mirror and waited for instructions. I gave him bonus points for letting me handle Marcus.

“Destiny.” Marcus’s voice was filled with enough sadness to make me feel bad for trying to antagonize him. “I’m afraid Todd isn’t going to be able to aid you in your hunt for Ms. Vincent. His memory has been erased.”

“Well, the experts say time is the cure for amnesia. Are you taking him to another safe house to wait it out?”

Marcus gave a bitter bark of laughter before he responded. “You misunderstand. Todd doesn’t even realize he is a vampire. His master removed all remnants of their time together. There is no cure for this type of amnesia.”

“What are you going to do with him?” I feared I already knew the answer. “You can’t hold his crimes against him if he doesn’t know he did it. He can start over as a truly reformed criminal.”

Marcus shook his head and dropped it back against the headrest. That he would let Luke see him look so defeated shocked me. Me? Well, I’d seen him at his best and his worst. But a stranger?

There was definitely more going on here than I understood.

“I did point that out to our forgetful friend. Regrettably, he decided he couldn’t bring himself to feed on people like a leech. He requested a quiet end to his situation.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me. A vampire who had reveled so much in the power of it that he was willing to take human life suddenly wished for beheading in a dark corner of some forgotten underworld crypt.

“You granted him his wish.” It wasn’t really a question, but Marcus answered it, anyway.

“I did. His memory is fragile and killing him now is kinder than watching his mind fail and putting him down in madness.”

“So there really wasn’t a choice.” My tone sounded defeated. I shared the weight of the decision with Marcus.

“No. His mind was too compromised. It would have failed him. Tomorrow or ten years from now, the outcome was inevitable.”

“You should tell him about your Pink Panther man,” Luke said.

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I jumped. I hadn’t forgotten he was there. Marcus’s logic bothered me to the point I’d hyperfocused on the mental image. The thought crossed my mind that if blackouts made your brain go to mush, I might be in trouble.

“I had my own little moment this morning after I got back from Yasmine’s luncheon.”

I brought him up to speed with the bare basics of my encounter with the Pink Panther vampire. At the description of my visitor, Marcus’s attention sharpened and the tension in the car skyrocketed as he straightened in the seat.

“We need privacy to talk about this. Mr. Stanton, would you please drive us to Destiny’s?”

If having Marcus know his last name fazed Luke, he didn’t let it show. He put the car in gear and began to retrace our steps. The tension hadn’t gone down between the two men.

“Your last name is Stanton?” Luke nodded, but didn’t comment. Turning to face Marcus, I continued, “And you knew that, how exactly?”

“I make it my business to know of males that come into my domain seeking to carve out territory, regardless of species.”

I thought his tone was dark before, but now it took on a positively aggressive edge. I glared at him and shook my head. “You always read too much into things, Marcus.”

“And you always underestimate what drives men to do the things they do.”

“Well, if he’s here to carve out territory, that’s between me and him since we’re the only lions in town. You stay out of it.”

“Ah, but it’s not only territory he’s after. He also wants something I hold precious.”

I rolled my eyes and caught a glimpse of Luke’s smile as he drove through the dark street. It was aggravating to have him so sure of his place already.

“Do you recall the ‘no’ part of our conversation yesterday, Marcus? That still holds. I’m not one of your girls anymore. I don’t belong to anyone and certainly don’t see myself settling down with the first lion that prances into town.”

Luke’s smile slipped as Marcus began to smirk. Their respective attitudes made me mad.

“But understand this, Marcus. You’ve gotten a firm answer to your offer and his is still solidly on maybe.”

“Maybe?” Luke’s question was full of heat and I shivered as the lioness in me purred against my control. The smile order reversed and I wanted to throw up my hands. How could men as powerful as they were be so willing to bicker over a woman like toddlers over a toy?

“Maybe. But don’t let it go to your head. If I did take you up on it, you’re going to have to learn to get along with Marcus because he’s my oldest friend next to Yas. If we can ever get past the point where he accepts my answer, we’ll still be friends.”

Neither of them smiled at that. Guess it wasn’t what they wanted to hear, but oh well. My life wasn’t cookie-cutter neat. And I was woman and feline enough to want the freedom to change my mind with an annoying bit of frequency.

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Silence reigned during the drive across town. I let each man have his own thoughts and didn’t pry.

I concentrated on trying to remember the face of the vampire this morning. What had been so familiar about it?

Then it hit me. Turning, I scrutinized Marcus, glad of my kitty-cat vision.

“He looked like you.”

Marcus simply stared at me and waited. He wasn’t surprised in the least. I pressed for more when he didn’t volunteer it.

“Who is he?”

“He’s my father.” A wealth of emotion rested in that simple statement, none of it kindling warm familial feelings.

“So, what? The same vampire brought you both over?”

Marcus’s mouth turned up in an expression that usually made my heart turn over. Except there was no giddy sensation this time.

“Have you spent so much time around us that you truly don’t know the specifics?” It was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t bother answering. He gave a heavy sigh. “I’m not some bitten fool to throw away my mortality so easily. I was born as I am, as was my father and my mother, as well.

The lines of hereditary vampires are thinning, but there are still some of us.”

A chill ran down my spine. Vampires were a species as well as an aberration of nature? It almost seemed too much to wrap my mind around. The last few years flashed through my mind, along with all the questions I had never asked about why Marcus was so different from the other vampires I knew. What hit me most, though, was the fact that he was someone’s child in the infant sense of the word. Granted, everyone was someone’s child, but in his case, unlike the other vampires, he only had one sire. It made him obviously capable of having his own biological children as well as blood children. That, of course, made me realize that I hadn’t always been as careful about contraception with him as I should have been. My mind slithered away from that uncomfortable thought and landed on another as it dawned on me that I was the only one this was news to.

I glanced at Luke and saw none of my surprise on his face. He nonchalantly drove down the street as if he had known all about them. For all I knew, he had. After all, a werelion who packs prepared for vampire hells obviously showed a more complete and intimate knowledge of the vampires than me. For some reason, it made that sliver of doubt about him splinter into several shards.

I’d have to wait until Marcus and I were alone to ask all the questions lingering in the back of my mind. Letting it go, I turned back to a topic that I could talk about without revealing too much information to unfamiliar ears.

“So, let me give this a logical spin. Your father, as in the man who put you in the cradle, is behind our mysterious memory-zapping madness which happens to have long-term consequences?”

“He is one of the few kings old enough to have acquired that particular skill. Having said that, he used a gentle touch on you if you can still remember his face well enough to connect him to me. He was careful not to damage your mind and in being so careful, wasn’t as thorough as he could have been. Poor Todd lost entire segments of his life.”