Dark Promises (Dark 25)

Fane hooked his hand around her neck, laughing softly. "I will take care of the aches and pains and see to any of your requests on my return."

He leaned close, brushed his lips over hers and just like that he was gone. As in gone. The magician kind of gone. As in vanishing in thin air, which was a little disconcerting to say the least. What was he? If he was a vampire, wouldn't he feel evil even if he didn't look evil? Frankly, she didn't care. She was in a foreign country. No one, not even Teagan, knew where she was. Well. Not precisely. She was going to take as much as she could get from Mr. Gorgeous and then carry it home with her. A wonderful secret.

He'd woken her body after so many years of emptiness. Of being alone. When she was with him, she didn't feel alone. She felt alive and incredibly happy. She loved her girls and her great-grandchildren, but for the first time in her life, she felt beautiful and special to someone.

"Although," she murmured aloud, "I'd feel a lot more special if he had a bed."

She went to the door and opened it, looking out into the night. Fog swirled above the monastery. It was dense and dark, like a veil pulled over the entire fortress. She heard voices, muted, but male. They didn't sound happy, and she shivered and stepped out of the building. She was exhausted and nothing that had happened to her since she'd entered the monastery seemed real, but she knew it was. She wasn't caught in a dream or a hallucination. She couldn't conjure up a Mr. Gorgeous, not like him--she didn't have that kind of imagination.

Her granddaughters thought she was going insane when she made the mistake of telling them about vampires. Esmeralda had shown her video recordings and at first she thought they were faked, but eventually she became certain they were real. The idea of those monsters living anywhere near her grandchildren made her crazy. She'd protected them all her life, and Esmeralda admitted that Teagan would be a prime candidate for a vampire's victim. He would be drawn by her gifts. Everyone knew Teagan had gifts.

She'd been just as susceptible to Esmeralda's bullshit as she had been to Fane's touch. She was fairly certain her loneliness had made her susceptible. She didn't have that many friends, and she found herself on the Internet in the chat rooms with Esmeralda as often as she could, just because they laughed so much together. She loved having a friend.

Another sound reached her ears. Not male this time. Distinctly female, and whoever the woman was, she was crying. Muted. But definitely weeping. Like her heart was broken and there was no fixing it. Trixie tried to appear tough and mean, but she'd raised five girls and she was just as susceptible to a girl's genuine tears as she was to Esmeralda's bullshit and Fane's touch.

The sound was coming from inside a building. Fane had told her not to go into any of them, but she couldn't bear the sound of those heartbroken sobs. She made her way across the yard barefoot, because when Fane had clothed her, he had remembered underwear but forgotten shoes. She frowned. She didn't think Fane was the type of man to forget too much, and she couldn't get very far on the mountain, hiking around barefoot. Maybe it wasn't a mistake after all.

The dirt was soft under her feet, not at all rocky like she expected, almost like a thick carpet. She could see it was rich in minerals and somehow, although she wasn't a barefoot sort of woman outside, she liked the connection to the earth. The soles of her feet seemed to absorb the minerals, and the spots where she was aching from the hours of hiking in her boots just seemed to heal. No blisters. No pain at all. She curled her toes into the dirt while she stood at the door, staring at it, listening to the sound of sobs. She raised her hand and knocked.

The sobbing didn't stop. She was fairly certain whoever was inside hadn't heard. She dropped her hand to the carved handle and pushed the door open easily. Just as Fane's house was only four walls and a roof, with a dirt floor, so was this one. In the middle of the floor was a young woman lying curled up on a thick carpet. A blanket lay over her, but it was clear she was naked underneath it.

Moving closer to the crying woman, Trixie could see marks on her skin. Bruises. Love bites. Smudges that looked like fingerprints. Her heart turned over. What if this had been Teagan or one of her other girls? She couldn't leave her like this. In fact, she needed to come up with another weapon or two and help this child escape.

Trixie crouched down beside the girl and laid a gentle hand on her forehead. "Honey-child, you're going to make yourself sick."

The woman lifted her tear-soaked lashes, now long and spiky, her gaze startled, her dove gray eyes swimming with tears. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Did I disturb you? You could hear me?" She sounded frightened, and she sat up, pulling the blanket around her.

At least the woman had a carpet to sit on, much better than Trixie's sleeping bag. Trixie sat on the edge, close to the woman without waiting for an invitation. "I'm Trixie. Trixie Joanes."

"Gabrielle Sanders," the woman introduced herself. "You must be related to Teagan."

"I'm her grandmother." Trixie smiled her encouragement. "Do you know her?"

Gabrielle shook her head. "I know her lifemate, Andre."

There was that word again. Lifemate. Clearly it meant something and no one took it lightly. Still, she'd come back to that. She touched Gabrielle's shoulder gently. "Did someone hurt you?"

Fresh tears flooded Gabrielle's eyes. She shook her head and pushed back her hair. "Not like you're thinking. No one hit me. I'm just a . . . a mess. It's me. Not him. I screwed up so badly there's no fixing it."

"Honey-child, there is always a way to fix something. I raised five girls. I've seen and heard it all. Just talking to someone else helps sometimes."

Gabrielle pressed her lips together. "How are you inside the monastery? No one is supposed to be here."

Trixie waved her hand airily. "Fane is my lifemate." She had absolutely no idea what that meant, but Fane had said it and she was going to put this child at ease by using that as an excuse for her presence.

Gabrielle's eyes widened. "That's amazing. And good. No, great. I'm Aleksei's lifemate." She burst into a fresh storm of tears.

Trixie gathered her into her arms, blanket and all, holding her like she had her daughter and granddaughters when life had been cruel--and she was fairly certain life had been cruel to this woman. She looked young, very young, to be all alone, lying on a carpet naked, covered in bruises and up in the mountains inside a hut with four walls, a roof and dirt floor.

"Talk to me, Gabrielle. I've seen a lot of life." And tasted bitterness and cruelty. She knew those things. She knew about giving up dreams. She knew about loss.

Gabrielle looked up into Trixie's face. The woman was beautiful. She had exquisite skin and incredible hair. Gabrielle wasn't certain how old she was; she seemed elegant and timeless, even in her cargo pants and bare feet. Still, she'd been attacked by a man who wanted to kill vampires, and she couldn't allow herself to be deceived.

She chewed on her lower lip. She had never pushed her way into another's mind. Not once. Not for any reason. She could talk telepathically to her sister and brother. She could use the common path of the Carpathians, but actually invading someone else's mind, or having them in hers, seemed far too intimate. She had planned to give that to Gary. At the thought tears welled up again.

Trixie put her hand over Gabrielle's. "I raised five girls, and I can't have you lying in this empty shell of a house crying your heart out. Talk to me. Let me help. If nothing else, use me for a sounding board."

Gabrielle looked into Trixie's eyes. More than anything else, it was the kindness in her eyes that allowed a very private and distrusting Gabrielle to blurt out her sins to Trixie.

She confessed everything to this total stranger, but Trixie actually seemed to care. She actually seemed sympathetic. Gabrielle needed someone she wasn't afraid of to talk to. How could she just stop loving Gary? It wasn't possible. She couldn't let Aleksei into her mind, but she knew sooner or later he would just stop giving her that and take it. He would know how she felt about Gary. She had sworn her allegiance to Aleksei, and she c

raved him. He did fill her mind and her thoughts. He owned her body. But the betrayal was there now on either side. She betrayed Gary with Aleksei and Aleksei with her feelings for Gary.

Throughout her entire confession, Trixie remained silent, intently listening, her hand rubbing Gabrielle's back gently.

"You can't have your Gary?"

Gabrielle shook her head. "Worse, he won't be able to feel anything for me. Well, that's worse for me, but thankfully not for him."

"If you could have him, would you leave Aleksei for him?"

"It isn't possible. I'm Aleksei's lifemate. We're bound together."

Trixie frowned, looked as if she might question that and then shook her head. "That isn't what I asked you. If you could, right now, after all that's happened, after spending time with Aleksei, would you leave him and go to Gary?"