Someone had kidnapped me and tied me up. A wave of frustration passed through me. Damn vampires couldn’t do this the easy way.
But as I sorted through my most recent memories, dread replaced frustration. It couldn’t have been a vampire that had taken me. It had been broad daylight when I was last awake. Caleb, Grigori, and I had been heading to one of the most recent crime scenes. We’d never arrived.
I remembered passing through Alba Iulia, curious as to why we hadn’t stopped when the murder supposedly took place there. I’d assumed that it had occurred just outside the city.
I strained to remember what had happened after that. I’d been tired, so I’d downed my coffee, which only seemed to make me sleepier. There’d been an unnatural heaviness to my limbs.
I swore, the sound muffled by the cloth in my mouth.
The coffee had been laced with a sedative. I’d been drugged.
Andre dug through Gabrielle’s clothes, searching for those damn files. Instead he came across lacey lingerie. His nostrils flared at the sight. Still, he snarled and threw the bag aside when he didn’t find what he was looking for.
He grabbed the next bag, her laptop case. He almost shuddered out his relief when he saw the familiar manila folders sticking out.
The coven, and not the Eleusinian Order, could be behind this. He dialed Vicca.
“Hello Andre,” she purred.
“Has the court decided to detain Gabrielle again?” Andre asked as he made his way down the hall.
“Last I heard, she was under your roof. You know as well as I do that no one would try to kidnap her if she was staying in the royal quarters under your watch.” Vicca paused, and when she spoke again, her tone dripped with interest. “Has the little siren vanished under—?”
Andre ended the call before she could finish. Vampires weren’t behind this. He’d figured as much.
Like a madman he stalked to his office, throwing the folders down on his desk. If the Eleusinian Order was after Gabrielle, then he was going to have to figure out where the killers would take her. If it wasn’t too late.
It couldn’t be.
He opened the files and began thumbing through them. Stashed in one of them was a map of Romania. On it the crime scenes had been circled.
My brilliant queen. He grabbed the phone and dialed the Politia’s offices in Cluj. “This is Andre de Leon, and I need to speak to Ivan Serban,” Andre said in Romanian.
As usual his name elicited no questions. With a click, the line was transferred, and after two rings Ivan picked up. “This is Chief Constable Ivan Serban.”
“Evening Ivan, this is Andre. One of my subjects, Gabrielle Fiori, is in Cluj working on one of your cases.”
“Yes, I’m aware of this. What is it you want?” the chief constable said.
“She was supposed to meet me this evening, but she never showed.”
“What makes you think this concerns the Politia? This sounds like coven business.”
“You misunderstand,” Andre said, anger sapping his voice of inflection. “I have reason to believe that she left my mansion when the sun rose with one of your men—Inspector Grigori Vasile.” The inspector’s name had rolled off Andre’s tongue from memory. Gabrielle might think her business with the Politia was hers alone, but Andre had made a point to make it his as well. “She has not come back since the sun has set, which means that her safety falls under your jurisdiction.”
When his words were met with silence, Andre went on. “I will lay it out for you, Ivan: I am not only her king, I am also the person standing in as her sire. And I’m dating her. So you could say that I have a lot of vested interested in her.”
The supernatural community didn’t know much about vampires, but they did know they were territorial creatures with a penchant for violence.
“I will go to great lengths to protect her,” Andre continued, “and if harmed, I will go to great lengths to avenge her. So do me a favor and place a few calls. Find out what happened to her, and I’ll make it worth your while.”
Ivan cleared his throat. “Call me back in ten minutes, and I will give you whatever information I can find.” Ivan’s tone was gruff when he spoke, as though he had control of the situation. As though he hadn’t simultaneously just been threatened and bribed within the same breath.
As though he hadn’t just been bought.
“Make it five.” Andre glanced down at Gabrielle’s map. “Oh, and while you’re at it, give me the names of the cities where the two most recent murders took place.”
Someone had taken his soulmate. His. And now they would pay.
The realization that I’d been drugged followed quickly with an even grimmer one. Grigori must’ve done it.
The betrayal left a bad taste at the back of my mouth. Literally—that coffee was awful.
My thoughts turned to Caleb. He’d been asleep while we were traveling. Had he been drugged too?
I scented the air, searching for his familiar smell, but it was absent. Oh God, where was he?
Pull it together, Gabrielle. You can’t help him until you help yourself.
I wrestled with the bindings around my wrists. Someone had tied them together with rope, lots and lots of it. I tugged, trying to break the bonds, but I was weak from being drugged. Even my blindfold seemed to be immovable, no matter how many times I rubbed my shoulder against it, trying to pry it free.
I gave up trying to loosen my bindings for a moment, relaxing my body against the soft mattress I’d been laid out on. I was on someone’s bed. Tied up. That meant that one, someone probably had carnal deeds on the mind, and two, only my cursed luck would land me into a situation where this wasn’t kinky. Just twisted as hell.
Soft, fluttery material brushed against my legs when I readjusted myself on the mattress. I froze at the sensation. It felt distinctly different from the wool sweater and jeans I’d been wearing.
Had someone dressed me?
Across the room a door opened, and I pushed myself upright and onto my knees.