He had to be out of his fucking mind. That was the only explanation for his behavior during the last twenty-four hours. The only explanation for the fact that he was sitting at the bar of Blood and Whiskey, waiting for Jessica Greenwood to walk through the door.
Setting up this meeting had to be the stupidest damn thing he’d ever done. Sure, having an ally among the Fae royalty would be useful. But there was no guarantee that Jessica would ever be an ally. The smart move would be to forget all about her, and to concentrate on getting Mary back. Meeting with the enemy like this was risky.
But he’d fallen in love, like a goddamned idiot…and he had to see her again.
Not to tell her how he felt. No, that little fact would stay buried inside him until he was dust. But he had to tell her the truth about her mother. About the lengths Talia would go to protect her own power. If Jessica was willing to sacrifice her happiness at her mother’s behest, he wanted to be sure she knew the kind of person she was doing it for.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Evan asked as he put a shot glass of Jameson’s in front of him. Evan was behind the bar tonight, while Jack and Celia and Liz sat at a table across the room. Evan had told him he could talk to Jessica in one of the booths along the wall, out of earshot but in full view of her protectors.
It was early evening yet, and the club wouldn’t get going for another couple of hours. There’d only be a handful of patrons sharing the space with them.
“What do you mean?” Hawk asked. He tossed back the shot and slammed the glass down on the mahogany bar, and found the other vampire staring at him with narrowed eyes.
“You’re nervous. I’ve known you a lot of years, mate, and I’ve never seen you look nervous. The night those shifters jumped us in Brixton, I didn’t think we had a prayer. Then I looked at you, and you had this fucking half smile on your face, like you didn’t have a care in the world. And I knew we’d make it out alive.”
Evan rested his elbows on the bar. “So where’s that smile now?”
Hawk was saved from answering by movement at the front door. He jerked his head around, and saw Jessica Greenwood coming into the club.
She had dressed like a regular human girl tonight, in jeans and a blue cotton shirt. Her hair was down, shimmering around her face in a cloud of silver-gold, and in the dim light of the club it seemed to shine with its own light.
He’d thought she looked beautiful in her fairy-tale dress, but she looked even more beautiful now. The jeans were the perfect showcase for her long, slender legs.
She spotted him, and began to cross the club towards the bar. He’d never seen anyone—human, vampire, or Fae—move with more subtle power and effortless grace.
“Holy shit,” Evan said softly.
Hawk had almost forgotten the other vampire was there.
“What is it?” he asked irritably, keeping his eyes on the girl coming towards them. She paused at the table where Celia and Liz and Jack were sitting, and exchanged a few words.
“Occam’s Razor,” Evan murmured, which was bizarre enough that Hawk spared him a quick glance.
“What?”
“The simplest explanation is often the best.”
Hawk’s gaze had strayed back to Jessica, who was still talking to her friends. His hands twitched as he watched her, and he felt an urge to march over there, toss her over his shoulder, and carry her off someplace he could have her all to himself.
Evan was going on. “We spent hours trying to figure out what kind of game you might be playing. How you might be trying to manipulate events to your own advantage, and how you might be trying to use Jessica as a tool. And the most simple, obvious explanation never even occurred to us.”
Hawk was only half-listening. Jessica reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, and that simple movement did things to him. There was a tingling in his incisors and a tightening in his groin.
“And the obvious explanation would be?”
“You’re in love with her.”
Hawk froze for an instant. Then he turned to face Evan with what he hoped was an approximation of his usual sardonic expression. “You’re out of your mind.”
Evan shook his head slowly. “Sorry, mate. I know the signs. I see them every time I look in the mirror.”
Hawk felt his hands curl into fists. “Just because you’re a pathetic sod doesn’t mean that every vamp is. You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”
Evan grinned. “Jack figured out how it was with me and Celia in three seconds. I remember thinking, how the fuck did he know?” He shook his head again. “You might as well be wearing a neon sign, mate. Are you going to tell her?”
Hawk opened his mouth to deny it again, and then closed it. He looked over at Jessica, who had finished talking to the others and was coming towards them again. When she met his eyes a shudder went through him.
He didn’t have time to lie. “No, I’m not going to tell her. And if you say a word to her, I’ll rip your throat out.”
“No you won’t,” Evan said.
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because she wouldn’t like it. You’ll never be able to hurt me now, or any of us. Because hurting us would hurt Jessica.”
The hell of it was, Hawk knew it was true.
He leaned towards Evan and spoke rapidly. “You can’t say anything to her. Not now, not ever. She doesn’t feel the way I do and she never will. You know what I am, and you know what she is. And there are other things, too, things you don’t know about. Things that will make it impossible for us ever to fall into a cozy little happy ending, even if Jessica could ever…” He swallowed. “But she can’t. So for Christ’s sake don’t say anything to her.”
Evan looked sympathetic, which would have been infuriating under normal circumstances. “All right, mate. But don’t you think she might figure it out herself?”
“After I tell her what I came here to tell her, she’ll have other things to worry about. She’s not going to be thinking about me.”
There wasn’t time for more. Jessica had reached them, and stopped a few paces off.
“I’m here,” she said coolly.
He hoped his voice was as cool as hers. “So you are. Would you like a drink?”
She shook her head.
“All right, then.” He gestured towards one of the velvet-upholstered booths along the wall. “Won’t you step into my office?”
She took a step back, instead. “You first. The last time I led the way, I ended up with a knife to my throat.”
“Fair enough.”
He slid off the bar stool and started across the room. He didn’t look back, but he was intensely aware of Jessica walking behind him.
He slid into one side of the booth and Jessica sat across from him, folding her hands almost primly on the table between them. She glanced around the club, which was practically deserted except for her friends, while Hawk kept his eyes on her face. Since this might be the last time he ever saw her, he wanted to drink his fill.
But when her cheeks turned pink, he followed the line of her gaze to see a collection of BDSM toys hung up on the opposite wall.
“Haven’t you ever been here before?” he asked.
She shook her head, still avoiding his eyes. “I know about the club, of course. But I’ve never actually been inside.”
He was actually glad she wasn’t looking at him, because he could stare at her without pretending he wasn’t.
Her skin was like cool ivory, but with that pink stain on her cheeks all he could think about was making her blush all over. He wanted her on her back while he pinned her down with his weight. He wanted her to feel every inch of him as he kissed her. He wanted her writhing and eager, her eyes half-closed with desire, her breath coming in pants.
When she finally met his eyes again, his entire body was hard and tight.
“Who hired you to kill Celia?” she asked.
He looked away, needing a moment to get a grip on himself. When he looked back, her blue-green eyes were cold. “I came here for answers, vampire. So start talking.”
“Give me your hand,” he heard himself say.
She stared at him. “Are you kidding?”
He hadn’t intended to ask that. Was he losing control of his brain along with his body?
“You don’t have anything to fear.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“So prove it. Give me your hand. And then I’ll start talking.” He laid his own hand on the table, palm up.
She studied him for a moment, a little frown drawing her brows together. Then she shrugged irritably. “Whatever,” she muttered, and placed her hand in his.
A shock of awareness traveled up his arm and all through his body. His fingers tightened around hers as the tremors rippled through him.
Did she feel it too? She was frowning down at their joined hands, and once he had his own reaction under control he could read the tension in her. Even if she did feel some of what he did, she wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. And she definitely didn’t trust him.
He turned her hand over, stroking her palm with the pad of his thumb. “The hands of a fighter,” he said softly, brushing over the calluses that roughened her skin.
“I know I have ugly hands,” she said brusquely, trying to pull away.
He tightened his grip. “Are you daft? They’re beautiful. Strong and capable, just like you.” He turned her hand over again, sweeping his thumb over her knuckles. The skin was whole, not a knick or bruise to be seen. “You heal quickly. You must have done a little damage here when you kicked the shit out of me.”
That actually brought out the shadow of a smile. “Maybe. And yes, I heal quickly. All the Fae do.”
“I’m glad.” But he wondered how quickly she’d heal inside, after he told her about her mother.
He was delaying, putting off the moment of telling her. But she was letting him touch her and he didn’t want the moment to end.
He turned her hand once more, making his touch feather light, brushing the inside of her wrist. He was so attuned to her that he sensed when her heartbeat quickened, felt it in the delicate veins under his fingertips. He remembered the scent of her blood, and just like that the bloodlust swept through him.
The need to sink his teeth into her wrist was overpowering. He kept his head down so she couldn’t see his eyes turn yellow. He kept his fangs from bursting out by sheer will, the effort making him shudder. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jack and Liz start from their chairs across the room, but then Evan was there, saying something that made them sit down again.
Christ. He was telling them what he’d figured out.
Well, there was nothing he could do about that. He supposed he should be grateful, since Jack and Liz had been on the point of attacking him.
“Let go of my hand,” Jessica said, her voice like steel.
He realized he was gripping her hard. Too hard.
“Sorry,” he said, managing to release her. Hoping his eyes were back to normal, he looked up again. “Got distracted for a moment there, remembering when those hands were feeling me up.”
“I didn’t feel you up. I patted you down.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” he said lightly, glad that he could produce a smile to go with the words.
Jessica sighed with exaggerated patience. “Look, vampire—I don’t have all night. So if you wouldn’t mind?”
He nodded. “Yeah, all right. But I’m going to tell this my way.” He hesitated, hating to talk about his past but knowing it was necessary. “I’ve got to give you a bit of history first.”
“Fine, whatever. Just start.”
Jessica was sitting back against the deep red velvet seat, the rich color a perfect backdrop for her platinum hair and fair skin. Her arms were folded and her soft pink lips were pressed into a thin line.
Christ, he wanted her. He wanted to ease his way past her defenses and into her body, her heart, her very soul.
“Well?” she asked, impatiently.
Since looking at her seemed to have a debilitating effect on his mental processes, he looked down at the wooden table instead. And then he began.
“The vampire who made me was a proper villain, as they say. Wanted to create a master race. Ahead of his time, he was. The Nazis wouldn’t come along for another fifty years or so. And to achieve his goal, he started turning people against their will. Like me.
“His idea was to turn the strongest, healthiest humans he could find. Then he’d train us up into an unbeatable army, to take on other, weaker vampire clans—not to mention other supernaturals. I was thirty when he turned me, and the first time I heard him give one of his little speeches I knew I wanted no part of his plans. But he had control of London and half of England at that time, so I kept my opinions to myself. My idea was to play nice and then get away to Europe.
“I had a little sister, Mary. She had tuberculosis. Hector—the vamp who made me—had one law that took precedence over all others. Never turn a weak or ailing human. Never turn any human without his express permission.
“I went to Mary and told her what I had become. That broke another of Hector’s laws. Once he made you, you were supposed to cut all ties with your family. Family ties were another weakness, a point of vulnerability.
“I told Mary what I was, and offered her the choice. She could live as a human for the short time she had left, and die. Or she could let me turn her, and live. She chose to become a vampire.”
“Did that cure her?”
He glanced up, and saw that Jessica had relaxed a little as he’d been talking. She looked almost interested.
“Yes, it did. Becoming a vampire cures disease.”
“Then why was that vampire…Hector…so opposed to turning humans with illness? It doesn’t make sense.”
Hawk smiled a little. “That’s the thing about would-be dictators. They don’t make sense, but they sound so bloody sure of themselves that people follow them anyway. Most people hate to think for themselves, and they’ll look for any excuse to avoid it. Preferably by finding someone who promises to do their thinking for them.” He paused. “You’re a bit like that yourself, you know.”
Jessica stiffened. “That’s not true. I don’t let anyone think for me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Seems to me you’ve let your mother do a lot of thinking for you. You’re trying to tell me this whole marriage deal was your idea?”
Her eyes snapped fire. “Being loyal to your family—to your people—doesn’t make you a sheep. It means you have to make the best decisions possible for the people you’re responsible to. Didn’t you do that for your sister? Even though it put you at risk?”
He shrugged, feeling uncomfortable. “I raised my sister after our parents died. I was all she had. I couldn’t abandon her.”
Jessica frowned. “Is that the only reason you saved her life? Didn’t you…love her?”
His insides tightened. Of course he’d loved his sister…but his love had never done her any good. “That’s not relevant. Anyway, I turned her. I made plans for us to cross the Channel to France, and we were a day away from leaving when Hector caught us. He…decided to make an example of us. He chained us both up, in front of the others, and made me watch while he…hurt her.”
Jessica was a warrior and a demon hunter, which meant she was no stranger to evil. But it was obvious by the way her eyes widened with horror that she hadn’t yet been hardened to it.
He kept going. “This went on for a few days. We became Hector’s nightly entertainment. It was on the fourth night that one of the guards got careless returning us to our prison. He turned his back on me, and I killed him.” That had been his first kill. “I grabbed Mary and we got away.”
“Did you go to Europe then? Like you’d been planning?”
“No,” Hawk answered, and then stopped. It occurred to him, suddenly, that there hadn’t really been a need to go this far back. He could have started the story ten years ago.
Which meant that, on some level, he’d wanted to tell Jessica all this. He wanted her to know who he was.
Jesus. What was he thinking? Telling Jessica his history would only drive her further away from him. Make the chasm that divided them seem even wider.
But now that he’d started, he might as well go through with it.
And he wouldn’t spare himself, either. He’d tell her everything.
Even if it meant watching the sympathy in her eyes turn to disgust.
“No, we didn’t go to Europe. Mary wanted us to, but I had a different agenda. I wanted to send her on without me, but when I told her I intended to stay she insisted on staying with me. So I found her a safe house, and I…”
There was no good way to say this. No way to make it less what it was. “I set out to kill Hector, and every single vampire who’d colluded with him in our capture and Mary’s torture.” He swallowed. “In the end, I killed them all.”
He waited for the expression in her eyes to change, but all she did was nod. “I would have done the same,” she said quietly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’d have murdered your own people, even those who’d been terrified into doing what they did? The ones who’d just blindly followed orders?”
Her eyes flickered. “If they’d hurt someone I cared about, then yes. But my people would never do something like that. When I said I would have done the same, I meant to any creature capable of such a thing.”
“Like vampires, you mean.”
“Any creature, I said.”
“And you honestly believe the Fae can’t be cruel? That they aren’t capable of torture, or hurting one of their own?”
“Not the Fae I know.”
It was obvious she truly believed that. Her faith in her own people was one of the cornerstones of her life.
And for one moment, he considered not telling her the truth.
But only for a moment. Because if their positions had been reversed, he’d want to know the truth.
No matter how much it hurt.
“One unintended consequence of my killing spree was that I earned a reputation, and that led to my first kill-for-hire. A vamp offered me twenty thousand pounds to take a bloke out. Another of Hector’s crew, actually. One I hadn’t targeted since he hadn’t been part of what happened to Mary. But he was a real nasty piece of work, worse than some of those I’d killed. The vamp who hired me wanted revenge for the murder of his maker.”
This was the place of worst temptation. He could gloss over this bit, move ahead to ten years ago.
But he forced himself to tell her everything.
“I learned something about myself while I was going after Hector’s people. I was good at fighting, good at killing. And if people were willing to pay for those abilities, I wanted the money. For Mary. Hector had hurt her badly, and he’d done it in ways that would resist healing. I knew a Fae or a witch could cure her, but it would cost big. So I took the job.”
“That’s how you became an assassin.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I became the highest-paid assassin in England and Europe. My price was so high I didn’t need to take many jobs. Two or three a year, maybe. And I could set my own rules. I would only take out vampires, and only the ones that deserved it. The ones who killed innocents.”
Did he sound like he was trying to justify himself? Probably.
Jessica’s face hardened. “You were willing to break that rule for Celia, though. Is this the part where you tell me who hired you for that?”
“Just about,” he said quietly. “So, things went along like that for a number of years. It wasn’t long before I had enough money to pay for the magic to heal Mary, and I could have stopped after that.” This was another of the parts he could have skipped over, but he didn’t. “Mary wanted me to stop. But the truth is, I liked the money. I liked being able to buy Mary a mansion in Wales, and to know that we’d never want for anything. And I liked being a badass killer, too. I liked knowing that other vampires were afraid of me.”
Jessica nodded. “You were victimized once, made powerless. And you’d watched someone hurt your sister without being able to do anything about it. You wanted to be sure that could never happen again. That you’d never be anyone’s victim.”
He kept waiting for contempt to darken her eyes, and instead she kept surprising him. “Psychologist, are you?” he asked lightly.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t take a psychology degree to figure that out. It’s obvious.”
“Nice to know I’m an open book. That night at your mother’s, you called me a filthy assassin. Why are you going soft on me now?”
“I’m not going soft. I just understand you more now, that’s all.”
He felt an unfamiliar nudge of panic. He’d told her all this so she would know who he was, but he hadn’t counted on the way that would make him feel.
Exposed. Vulnerable.
He tried to shrug off the feeling. “Well. Everything went on like that for a while. And then, ten years ago, I made a mistake. I always checked out my targets before I went after them, to verify for myself that they…”
“Met your standards of villainy?” Jessica asked dryly.
He almost smiled. “Yeah. And to be sure the folks who hired me weren’t keeping anything back. Well, this one bloke took out a contract on a vamp I’d heard of. And I knew without doing any checking that he met my ‘standards of villainy.’ He was a blood trafficker.”
He was sure that Jessica, a demon hunter, had dealt with blood traffickers at some point. She’d probably killed a few, too. And good riddance if she had. Blood traffickers worked for wealthy vamps with specific tastes in victims—usually children.
“That’s when I made my mistake. I didn’t check out anything else about the job; I just did it. It was only afterwards that I found out that this vamp had a Fae lover. One of your lot. A demon hunter.”
Jessica froze. “A Green Fae warrior?”
The story of his history hadn’t shocked her, but this did.
“Yeah. Deirdre, her name was. An Irish bird.”
“But…she can’t have known what he was.” She sounded bewildered.
“Yeah, she knew. Fact is, she worked with him. They had a partnership of sorts. Catering to vamps with a taste for Fae blood.”
Jessica’s face drained of color, and he had to fight the urge not to reach for her. To comfort her.
“They kidnapped Fae? To be used for their blood?”
“Yeah. Eighth-bloods and sixteenth-bloods, mostly. They knew there wouldn’t be as much of a fuss about them.”
That was a bit of a nasty crack, but Hawk had always disliked the Fae caste system.
“My God,” she whispered. “But you…you stopped them. Didn’t you?”
“I stopped him, yeah. But I didn’t know about Deirdre until she came after me.” He paused. “After Mary, actually.”
“What did she do?”
“She killed her.” His jaw tightened. “Or so I believed. You know that vampires have a connection with their makers, and vice versa?” Jessica nodded. “The only thing that can end that connection is death. Ten years ago, I discovered Mary missing. Two days later, the connection between us was severed. A day after that I got a call from Deirdre. She told me that she’d killed my sister to avenge the death of her lover.
“I went after her, of course. That’s how I learned about her…activities. I learned that she had fled to America. And in the course of tracking her I met with the queen of the North American royal family.”
“My mother?”
He nodded. “I told her about Deirdre, and she was furious. She said that if I brought Deirdre to her she would be executed at once.”
Jessica swallowed. “I never heard about any of this. There hasn’t been a Fae execution in a hundred years.”
“Your mother didn’t want it known that a Fae could be capable of kidnapping and selling her own people. A few others in the court knew about it, but not many.”
He leaned back in his seat and dragged a hand through his hair. “It had been my intention to take care of Deirdre myself. But the truth is…I’ve never killed a woman. Or a Fae. And so when Talia offered me another way, I took it. I figured the Fae deserved to administer their own justice, and that trumped my personal vengeance.”
He sighed. “And that was that. I found Deirdre and brought her to the queen, and the next day she offered me proof that the execution had taken place.”
“Proof?”
“She showed me Deirdre’s head.”
“Oh.”
“And so I went back home. But with Mary gone, I found I no longer had any desire to pursue my profession. I already had more wealth than I could use in a hundred lifetimes. I retired to my home in Wales, and let it be known that I was out of the assassin business. Until last month, when I received a phone call.”
He looked across the table at Jessica. There was a kind of peace between them right now—not trust exactly, but a tacit truce. She looked absorbed in the story he was telling, her expression thoughtful and a little frown between her brows.
That peace was about to end.
“The phone call was from a Fae. She told me that Mary hadn’t been killed ten years ago—that she’d been sold. Sold to the Dark Fae as a prisoner. When she crossed into the other dimension, the connection between us was severed. That’s why I couldn’t feel her anymore.”
Jessica’s eyes widened. Her hands were on the table, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for one of them. “That’s the reason I agreed to take out Celia. The Fae told me that if I did, she would restore my sister to me. If I didn’t, she’d ensure that Mary was killed. I would never…” He swallowed. “I would never have taken the job otherwise. But if there was even a chance that Mary was alive, I couldn’t abandon her. I couldn’t leave her in another world, a prisoner…” He stopped, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to justify myself to you, when I know there’s no justification you could accept.”
Jessica hadn’t pulled her hand away yet. “Celia told me she doesn’t think you would have gone through with it. Killing her.”
He smiled grimly. “Celia judges people by her own heart. Don’t believe that, Jessica. If I had no other choice, I would have killed her. But luckily for Celia it wasn’t necessary. After your engagement was announced, the threat Celia represented to the Fae way of life was neutralized. And I was told that my services were no longer needed. So I went to the Fae who hired me, and told her that I still expected my payment. My sister returned to me.”
Surely she would connect the dots now, realize who his client was. It was so bloody obvious…
“Hawk—you have to tell me who it was. Who hired you.”
She hadn’t made the connection. Her aquamarine eyes were wide and curious, undarkened by any hint of the truth.
“Jessica. I’m putting myself…and my sister…in your power. After I tell you, if you choose, you can go to that person and confront them. But if you do that, it’ll jeopardize my chances of getting Mary back.”
She frowned. “I get that, Hawk. And I’ll wait until your sister is safe before I do anything. But why…”
She trailed off, her eyes searching his.
His hand tightened on hers. “Why what?”
“Why are you telling me this? What advantage do you gain?”
A reasonable question to ask of someone like him.
“I don’t gain anything,” he said quietly. “I just thought it was important for you to know. For you to have all the information.”
“All the information?”
“Yes. Before you make any decisions that will change your life.”
She still didn’t suspect the truth, but there was a flicker of unease in her blue-green eyes.
“Hawk…who was it? Who hired you?”
He forced himself to let go of her hand. Then he spoke in a low voice, keeping his eyes on hers.
“It was your mother.”