chapter 19
Quinn turned on his heels before he could follow his first impulse: to take Rose into his arms and sink his fangs into her lovely neck, to show her what his bite would do to her. It made no difference that she wasn’t human. His bite would have the same effect Amaury’s bite had on Nina.
He was glad when he ran into Blake as soon as he turned a corner. At least having to deal with his grandson would keep his mind off Rose’s enticing neck.
“You’re just the man I’m looking for,” Quinn said, and steered him away from the kitchen, knowing it hadn’t been made human-proof yet.
Blake grinned. “Hey, cool digs.”
“Come, I want to introduce you to one of your trainers.” Then he raised his voice. “Amaury, where are you?”
“Looking for you,” his voice came from the living room, before he popped his head out into the hallway. “Are we going over the rules?”
“Thought we’d start with that,” Quinn said, entering the room.
Blake followed him like a well-trained puppy. “Rules?”
Quinn exchanged a quick smirk with Amaury, before turning to him. “You’ll have rules coming out of your ears by the time we’re done here. But, first things first. This is Amaury LeSang. You’ve lucked out. He’s our best trainer.”
Eagerly, Blake shook his hand. “Bond. Blake Bond.”
Noticing how Amaury’s lips twisted, Quinn instantly shot him a warning look to compel him to remain serious. Encouraging Blake’s 007 routine would only make matters worse. It was best to ignore it. His ego was big enough; now it was time to take him down a notch and make him realize that he had a lot to learn. Why that idea pleased him, Quinn didn’t really want to examine. Maybe in some small way, Blake reminded him of himself as a young man when he’d thought he could conquer the world, when he’d thought even going to war would not change him. He’d thought he’d be prepared for everything that was thrown at him. Well, he hadn’t been prepared for death.
Pushing back the rising memories, he motioned to the sitting area.
“We have a lot to discuss. There are ground rules every trainee has to comply with. Break one, and you’re out. Orders will be followed. Think of this as boot camp. Once you pass this, you’re ready to join the general trainees.”
“Huh?” Blake asked as he dropped onto the sofa. “This is not the real training yet?”
“It is,” Amaury cut in. “It’s where you get taught the basics, you and one other trainee. Only once you have those down is it safe to let you join the other trainees.”
Blake’s eyes lit up. “So, you’re saying this is dangerous?” The thought seemed to excite him.
“Absolutely.”
Quinn shot Amaury a scolding look. Great, now he would have to come up with some seemingly dangerous element of training just to keep the kid interested.
“Like what?”
“We’ll go into that later,” Quinn deflected. “Rule one: you won’t leave this house unless it’s in the company of one of the trainers or another trainee. You have to understand that there are other outfits out there that love poaching our recruits, and they will go as far as practically kidnapping a trainee just to throw a wrench into our operations.”
A deep frown built on Blake’s forehead. “Kidnap? You’ve gotta be joking. Why would somebody do that?”
“Because we’re too valuable,” Wesley’s voice came from the door.
He entered with long strides, an air of confidence around him. It appeared that the dressing down he’d received only minutes earlier had pearled off him like he was made of Teflon.
“I’m Wesley.” He stretched his hand out, and Blake jumped up to shake it.
Quinn nodded at him. “Wesley is the other trainee.”
“Hey,” Blake greeted him.
“Take a seat. To address your question, Blake, I’m afraid Wesley is right. You are too valuable. We’re making a large investment in you, and we’re prepared to protect this investment. In order to help us with our task, we require our recruits to be in top physical condition . . .”
After leaving Blake to a rigorous physical exercise program in the gym in the basement, under the supervision of Oliver, Quinn nodded to Amaury.
“I’m going on a perimeter check.”
Quinn welcomed the cool night air as he stepped outside into the dark. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, but the cold didn’t bother him.
Unsuccessfully, he tried to shake off the unease that kept creeping up on him. While he knew bringing Blake in was the best way to protect him in the short term, he also realized that in the long run, the only way to keep him safe was to eliminate the threat. If only he knew what Keegan really wanted.
His schooled eyes surveyed his surroundings as he walked along the sidewalk. The light of the streetlamps lining the quiet residential street threw dark shadows of his form onto the pavement.
He missed nothing: not the young man who stood hovering over his dog as the animal did its business, nor the car that tried to squeeze into a parking spot that was entirely too short for it.
With a sigh, he turned left at the end of the block. In the distance, several cars could be heard passing. There was light in the neighboring houses, but nobody was outside. His gaze drifted up to the windows and the roofs. No movement. Then his eyes roamed the gardens, his vampire night vision easily penetrating the dark shadows the bushes and trees created.
This was routine for him, and he or Amaury would perform this check several times a night. His actions were so automatic, so familiar to him, that his mind drifted back to Rose.
Why had everything gone so wrong?
He could still taste the bitterness in his mouth when she’d rejected him after he’d come back from the war a changed man. Her frightened look had shredded his heart, so much so that he was ready to die there and then.
London 1814
Quinn didn’t bother with the carriage, leaving his coachman waiting. As the heavy door fell shut behind, the knocker echoing the sound, he fell into a frantic run as if a slayer were chasing him with a wooden stake. He couldn’t get far enough away from Rose and the pain she had inflicted on him by rejecting him.
The words pierced through his heart like tiny spikes. Get away from me!
The woman he loved more than his own life was afraid of him. Too afraid to recognize that he was still the same man as before. That what was in his heart hadn’t changed. She believed him to be a monster and had recoiled from him.
Despite the fast sprint through half of London, he arrived at his house showing barely any exhaustion. Pushing the front door open, he marched inside, heading for the parlor, his mind focused on one single thing: to eliminate the pain.
As he reached for the crystal decanter that contained the amber liquid that had helped him so many times before, he took it and poured a glass to its rim. But when he lifted it to his lips, the scent of it stung his nostrils. Instinctively he tossed the glass to the floor where it shattered.
Anger churned in him: he couldn’t even get drunk to forget his sorrow! He couldn’t do what any sane man in his position would do, to obliterate any memory of her, to drown it in alcohol.
Frustrated, he growled and took hold of the small side table that held the liquor he’d enjoyed as a human. Without another thought, he flung the table and its contents to the other end of the room. With a loud bang it crashed against the wall, the glasses, bottles and their contents scattering across the rugs, the wood splintering. The stench of alcohol filled the room instantly, only fueling his anger.
His eyes surveyed the scene, honing in on the pieces of wood that had only seconds ago been a beautiful table. Before he knew what he was doing, his feet catapulted him toward the chaos. Crouching down, he reached for a piece of wood. It tapered to a sharp point at one end. The perfect weapon, the perfect way to die.
Yes, it would be better that way. He should have never survived. He should have died on the battlefield instead, and spared both him and Rose this tragedy. She would have remembered him in a more favorable light than she would now. But he couldn’t change that.
He lifted the makeshift stake. But as much as he tried to move it toward his chest, his hand wouldn’t follow his command. Almost as if his survival instinct was stronger. God, how pathetic was that? He couldn’t even kill himself!
Angrily, he jerked his hand toward his chest once more and was stopped in the process. An iron hand clamped around his wrist.
“Careful with that.”
Quinn snapped his head to Wallace.
He lashed a furious glare at his sire. How dare he stop him? “It’s my life! My business, my choice.”
“No! It is not! How can you want to throw this life away? The power that I gave you, how dare you waste it? As if it were worth nothing? Do you have no concept of what you are, what makes you great?” He pointed toward the door. “There are thousands out there who want to be like you, who want to remain young and powerful, who crave immortality. And you, you’re prepared to throw it into the gutter! To toss it out like last week’s whore.”
Wallace twisted the stake from his hand and hurled it to the other end of the room. Wrenching his arm free from Wallace’s grip, Quinn bared his fangs.
He needed no lecture from a man who clearly had no idea what he was going through.
“I can’t live like this!” He avoided looking at his maker.
Wallace put a calming hand on his shoulder. “What happened?”
Quinn took a breath, but when he released it, it came out as a sob. “She doesn’t love me anymore . . . because of what I am.” He lifted his eyes. “I’m a monster to her. A monster she’s afraid of.”
Putting it into words made it even worse. As a human, he’d never felt as much pain as he felt now. Not even when he’d been injured on the battlefield, had his body been in such agony.
“I can’t live like this. Don’t you understand? I did this for Rose. Without her, there’s no point in going on.” Eternity without her would be one endless night of torture.
Wallace pulled him against his chest. “Son, you will get over this. Your heart will be broken many times until you learn to protect it. The humans around you that you love will die. You’ll lose them one by one. But there’ll be others who will take their place.”
Quinn yanked himself free of Wallace’s embrace. “Nobody can take Rose’s place!”
“You love her so much?”
“More than my life.” Without her he felt nothing. Only pain and coldness.
“We’ve all said that when we were young. We all had a woman who we thought was above all others. Special.” His eyes suddenly drifted away as if remembering somebody. “So beautiful that it aches to even think of her. And to see her wither away. To see her grow old. Such pain. Yet over time, it all fades. We continue living. We survive. Pain is only temporary. We are powerful. No heartache shall ever bring us down.”
“Powerful? To do what? To live in the dark? Without love, without sunshine?”
Wallace narrowed his eyes. “You want love? Buy it from a whore. That’s the kind of love you need. It’ll make you forget.”
“You think you can throw whores at me so I’ll forget Rose? How dare you! You don’t understand me at all! You want to help me? Then help me! Help me make her love me again. Or get out of my sight!”
Wallace gave him a dark look. For a long moment, he simply stood there like a statue.
“Very well.”
Then he turned and left.
It was the last time he ever saw his sire. He had clearly taken his words to heart and disappeared. Just when he’d needed guidance the most. He had nobody in his life now. To fill the emptiness in his heart, he’d done exactly what Wallace had advised in his anger: he’d purchased love from whores.
Quinn suddenly shivered as he turned the last corner to enter the block on which the B&B stood. For two hundred years he’d tried to forget Rose by drowning out any feelings in senseless debauchery. And for two hundred years he’d failed. He wanted Rose back, not just in his bed—that was the easy part—he wanted to be back in her heart.
Determined to try anything in his power, he straightened his shoulders and walked up the short path to the entrance door, when he froze, an offending scent penetrating his nostrils: spray paint.
There, on the white front door of the B&B, somebody had spray-painted a message. Quinn’s gut clenched. He’d suspected that Rose hadn’t told him the truth about why Keegan wanted to harm Blake, but to have it confirmed tore at him nevertheless.
Give me back what you’ve stolen.