Chapter 9

9

GAbrIEL

T he bed beneath me was soaked with blood. Every time I shifted, the bedding moved with me, plastered to my skin and clothes. The room had the acrid tang of a slaughterhouse. I had lost count of the number of humans who had been paraded in to kill themselves for my father's whims.

Had I really fallen so far as to dream of feeding off Evangeline? Was my psyche so ready to embrace being a parasite again that it would urge me to attack the woman I loved?

The door opened, and I braced myself for another victim, another feeding, another corpse. But the footsteps were silent. Not human. My father? No, he would announce himself. The newcomer made his way over to the bedside and stood there, looming over me.

"Damien," I rasped.

"Gabriel," he said.

Maybe it was my addled state, but the mundane greetings and our tone struck me as hilarious, like we'd just happened upon each other outside a meeting. If that had been the case, however, Damien wouldn't have been looking at me like that. He looked surprised to see me, which also seemed funny to me.

"Did he send you?" I asked.

"No," Damien said. I blew out a breath and relaxed back against the damp pillows. "You understand that I won't be telling you anything detailed, yeah?"

I nodded, closing my eyes. "He's entering my mind every time he comes in," I murmured. "You shouldn't tell me anything damning. It's a risk for you to be here at all."

"You can't hide things from him?" Damien asked. He sounded taken aback.

I looked up at him, and the light stung my eyes. "You can?" I asked, shocked.

"Yeah," Damien said slowly, like it should have been obvious.

"How on earth have you managed to keep him out of your mind?"

Damien scoffed. "Is that what you've been trying to do? Shit, no wonder it hasn't worked. No, I let him in. I just make sure he sees what he expects to see."

"How?" I probably sounded desperate, but I wasn't exactly in a state to mind to care.

"Well, for a start, I make sure he doesn't have any reason to scan me," he said. "I'm good at that. I make sure he thinks I'm smart enough to be useful, but stupid enough not to be a threat. Besides, Roland isn't the sort of guy who notices the help even when they're working closely with him. When he does bother to take a look around in my head, I focus on strong emotion, bring something up to the forefront to distract him from the stuff I want hidden."

"And that works?" He made it sound so simple.

"Well enough that he hasn't killed me yet," Damien said dryly. "As long as I piss you off enough that when he sees your memory of this, he thinks I was just here to gloat, we should be in the clear."

"Wonderful," I muttered.

"Got something for you first, though." Damien held out a small object, too close to my face for me to focus on it easily. I squinted, and Evangeline's pendant swam into view. I inhaled sharply and looked up at him, even sharper.

"How?" I asked.

"Don't worry, I didn't take it off her," Damien said. "It was with the stuff from when your dad held her captive." He bent and tucked the pendant inside my shirt, right over my heart. His hand came away streaked with blood, and he grimaced as he wiped his fingers on the sheets.

The cool weight of the stone on my chest was a soothing balm. I had a reminder now of who I was outside of this place—a reminder of the sort of man I wanted to be, the sort of man Evangeline made me want to be.

The relief was abruptly undercut when Damien spoke. "I've never liked you," he said. "I don't know if you knew that. I didn't really try to hide it, but you're a lot like your father when it comes to seeing what you expect to see."

I stared up at him, livid. I wanted to—what? What did I want? Did I want to lash out at him like my father would have?

"Not that I blame you," Damien continued. "You've never needed to learn to be clever. You've always had anything you needed. Didn't have to learn how to fend for yourself, did you? Your daddy made sure you were all soft and spoiled." He scoffed. "Centuries old, and you never grew up. It's pathetic."

I snarled at him, baring my fangs, and he laughed.

"Very scary," he said, like somebody telling a toddler their drawing was amazing. I knew what he was doing. With the anger to focus on, my father wouldn't bother looking for anything else. However, I wasn't overly focused on that at the moment. I wanted to strangle Damien. I tried to reach for him, but the chains pulled tight around my wrists, and I collapsed back onto the bed with a ferocious, animalistic sound.

"You're a useless, spoiled brat. Frankly, I'm amazed it's taken your father this long to get you back in line."

He turned to leave, and I reached out to hurt him in the only way left available to me.

I was used to the minds of animals, which were simple and generally quiet. Deer didn't think about much aside from leaves, suspicious noises, and other deer. Damien's mind, on the other hand, was a chaotic tangle of senses, memories, and emotions. I threw myself into it recklessly, and images flashed past me in a dizzying array. The corridors of the citadel. Falling snow. Hunger. A red-haired man holding a baby, giggling madly and slapping small, pudgy hands against his stubbly cheek. A swing set, and the feeling of flying. Warmth. Hunger, hunger, hunger. Burning anger and a deep, constant, aching grief, so intense that it overwhelmed everything else, saturating each memory.

I was snapped back into my own mind when Damien threw himself at me, bearing me back against the bed with his hand around my throat. His face, barely an inch from mine, twisted into a furious snarl. His grip was tight, and I was grateful I didn't need to breathe.

"Never do that again," he hissed. His cinnamon breath was hot against my face. "Stay the fuck out of my mind, do you hear me?" He shook me roughly.

I snarled right back at him but didn't resist. When my father pushed himself into my head, it was intrusive, brutal, like being flayed open, all my innards exposed to the light. Perhaps I did take after my father in some respects, but that didn't mean I couldn't make my own choices. I didn't want to become any more like him.

I looked into Damien's watery eyes and thought of that horrible sucking pit of grief that lived inside him.

I nodded minutely. With his hands on my neck, I didn't have a wide range of motion, and even with the tiniest movement, the skin of my throat pressed against the delicate webbing between his thumb and palm. It wasn't an apology. He didn't deserve that. But it was a promise—his thoughts were his own.

I was not my father.

Damien pulled away as suddenly as he'd attacked me. He looked unmoored, his shoulders drooped and raw emotion on his face. Then I watched him pull himself back together. He straightened and fixed a slightly vacant smile that verged on obsequious onto his face. He began to smooth out his suit jacket, but realized at the last moment that his hands were covered in blood again, and he let out a weary sigh.

"He's planning on starving you for a while," he told me quietly. "Making you beg for more blood. You'll have a little time to rest. Take advantage of it while you can."

I nodded again. I didn't know what to say to him. For the first time, I was grateful I couldn't see the door. It meant I didn't have to watch him leave.

Soon, the room was quiet and still again.

I was alone with the smell of blood.