Jack the Ripper movie. I heard what sounded like a brawl coming from an alley, and like an idiot, I investigated.” He remembered being horrified when he saw what looked like a huge, armored man in a bloody battle with a hooved, red-skinned, horned thing. “Now I know that one of the males doing battle was a demon. The other . . . he was a vampire, but not one like I’ve ever known.”
“What happened?”
Nate had stood there, shitfaced and blinking, as if it was all a drunken mirage. “The vampire killed the demon, but he was injured. Badly. He had a gushing wound in his neck, and when he saw me, his eyes lit like the fires of hell. I tried to run, but he was on me and feeding before I could stumble two steps.”
“So he forced you to drink his blood to turn you?”
“That’s the weird thing,” he said. “There was no blood exchange.”
She frowned. “You sure you just don’t remember? Because to make a vampire—” Blushing, she cut herself off. “Sorry. Duh.”
Gods, she was cute. How the hell could she be a hyena? She couldn’t. He’d have tasted it in her blood. The same blood that had left a trail in the corner of her mouth. Without thinking, he reached out and wiped it away with his thumb. He wanted to linger, to frame her face in his hands and kiss away her pain, but the wariness in her doe eyes told him she still wasn’t ready to take him for anything other than a miserable son of a bitch who profited off the blood of others.
Reluctantly, he dropped his arm. “I’m sure he didn’t do the blood exchange. He wasn’t normal. I can’t explain it, but whatever he was, he turned me . . . and made me different.”
“Different?”
He lowered his voice, because he’d learned a long time ago that this wasn’t something to be said out loud. “I can walk in the sunlight.”
Lena blinked. “That’s . . . that’s not possible.”
“I know. And yet, I can hang out on a tropical beach at noon.”
“Okay, so then what?” she asked, sounding very much like a medical professional digging to the bottom of a mysterious ailment.
“I went home to my wife. I don’t remember much, but I remember waking up so fucking hungry.” He hadn’t understood what was going on, only that he was starving, and the sound of Eleanor’s beating heart was driving him mad. “I attacked her. Nearly drained her.” She’d screamed, pummeled him with her delicate fists, calling him a monster. Which he was. “Afterward, she lay there on the bed, pale and limp, and a weird instinct to feed her my blood came over me, and . . . I did. But I didn’t know what I’d done. When she died a couple hours later, I went insane. That’s the only way to describe it. I took off, and the next decade was a blur. My mind came back gradually, and I decided I needed answers. I traveled all over Europe, trying to find the asshole who turned me, looking for other vampires. It was a shock to learn that other vamps couldn’t go out in the daylight.”
“You’re the only one?”
“There have always been rumors of others, but I’ve never found any. And I learned real fast not to announce my own sun-loving nature.” Other vampires either tried to kill him out of jealousy, or they wanted to experiment on him in order to find a way to cure their own issues with severe sunburn. “So anyway, eventually I realized it was possible that Eleanor could be a vampire, given what I’d done to her.” He closed his lids, but that didn’t shut out the memory. “I found her, in London. She hated me for what I’d done to her, and she’d moved on, right into Fade’s arms.”
“Oh, damn,” Lena breathed. She touched his knee, a soothing gesture he didn’t think she realized she’d made. “That must have been hard for you.”
He had to clear his throat of the lump of emotion before he continued, and it struck him that the memory wasn’t what was affecting him, but Lena’s concern.
“I was furious,” he said, “but I still loved her. So I seduced her away from him.” Nate looked down at Lena’s hand, which looked so dainty on his leg. “That proved to be a fatal mistake. I didn’t realize what he was. He chased us all over Europe, and when he caught us . . .” He trailed off, his mouth drying up and acid scouring his veins. Fade had tortured the fuck out of both of them, and then he’d dragged them both to one of his fight clubs, where he’d tortured them some more.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What happened, Nate?”
“He put Eleanor in a pit with two Cruentus demons. She put up a good fight, injuring one so badly that he had to be put down. But the other killed her. I had to watch the whole thing.”
“I’m so sorry.” Lena’s nimble fingers stroked his leg. No one since Eleanor had offered him comfort like that. He’d missed so much in his life, and it had taken Lena to make him realize it. Now it was too late. “So did he let you go?”
“He made me fight. He was pissed that I didn’t die the first time in the ring. Or the second, or the twentieth. Turns out that I’m more powerful than other vampires. Probably connected to the sunlight thing. Eventually, I grew numb to the death around me, and I started craving the fights. A way to release my hatred, you know?” No, she probably didn’t. “All the while, I plotted escape, and when I thought the time was right, I pretended I was over what Fade had done to me and Eleanor, and I made a deal with him. I’d fight his biggest rival’s champion, and if I won, he’d release me.”
“So you won.”
He snorted. “Nearly died, and I needed a week to recover, but I won.” He listened to the screech of some creature, took a deep breath, and continued. “I was still full of hate, but I knew I couldn’t kill Fade—I’d seen too many try. So I figured I’d do it from the inside.”
Lena regarded him steadily, with no judgment in her gaze. “You started working for him.”
“Yep. I claimed to be desperate for money, and since I’d once run a tavern, he thought I’d be useful in his social clubs. I had it all figured out. I was going to ruin him, sabotage his business so his customers would either kill him or bring Justice Dealers down on his head. Problem was, he was two steps ahead of me. He found my only living relative. My nephew.”
Her fingers tightened on his leg. “What did he do?”
“Cagey bastard got a vampire to turn him so he’d live long enough to keep me under his thumb. Then he gave him a job here so I’d have to see every day what I’ll lose if I don’t keep the fight club from going under.”
She sucked in a surprised breath. “Marsden. He’s your nephew, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. But he doesn’t know it. I was turned when he was only two, and I didn’t want to expose my sister and him to what I’d become, so I let them think I was dead.” He rolled his eyes. “Guess I am.” Okay, technically, he was. But for the first time since being turned, he didn’t feel that way. Lena had made him very much alive. “You should have left when I told you to, Lena. You should have gone and never looked back.”
“You know why I couldn’t.” She shot him a glare. “And you pissed me off.”
Right. That. What the hell . . . he might as well tell her the truth. It wasn’t as if any of it mattered now.
“I was trying to save your life,” he said. “Fade needed a virgin sacrifice for a new fight club he’s breaking ground on. If you wouldn’t sleep with me, I had to get you the hell out of the club and keep you away.”
She blinked. “How did you know I’m . . .”
“A virgin? I didn’t. He did.”
She cocked a blond eyebrow, clearly dubious about his intentions. “So you thought you’d be saving my life by having sex with me?”
Sounded so lame when she put it that way. “Ah . . . yeah. But I underestimated your willingness to hang onto your virginity.”
“I think you overestimated your effect on the opposite sex,” she said wryly.
“Me? Nah.” He winked, enjoying the brief moment of levity. “You wanted me.”
She made a low, needy sound that would have lit him on fire if they were anywhere but being held captive in a moldy dungeon. “I did want you.”
“Then why did you refuse? We could have avoided this mess if you’d just slept with me.”
“I can’t have sex.” She averted her gaze as though ashamed. “Another shifting issue. It’s impossible for me.”
Now he felt like an even bigger piece of shit for coming down on her when she didn’t jump into bed with him. “I’m sorry,” he said gruffly.
Footsteps pounded outside the cage, keeping him from saying anything else. Not that he knew what to say.
