The Dark-Hunters, page 50
“One day, Gator bait…”
“Yeah, right. That threat might actually carry weight if I didn’t know how much you live to order me around. You’d go insane if you couldn’t page me at all hours of the night.”
Kyrian couldn’t deny that. The nights did have a way of getting long and boring when there were no Daimons to pursue. And bugging Nick at three A.M. did provide some entertainment.
Nick pulled out his Palm Pilot and made notes on it. “All right, secret mission, take woman shopping.” He looked up at Kyrian. “By the way, I want hazard pay for this. I seriously hate the mall.”
Kyrian laughed. “That I can tell by the way you dress.”
Nick gave him a fake wounded look. “Excuse me, Mr. Armani. I happen to like the grunge look.”
“Sorry. I keep forgetting it’s fashionable to look like you just rolled out from under a Dumpster.”
Stuttering in indignation, Nick pretended offense. “Why don’t you take your butt back to bed and save your oozing charm for your woman? ’Cause if you keep this up, I’m going to stake you…” then under his breath, he added, “while you sleep.”
Kyrian crossed his arms over his chest. “All right, you’ll get your bonus, but play nice with her. Keep your sarcasm to a minimum.”
“Yes, O great Lord and Master.” Nick added another note—“Be nice to woman, keep mouth shut”—then he looked up. “By the way, is there a limit on what I’m to spend for her clothes?”
“No. Whatever she wants to spend.”
“Visit Needless-Markup and Lord and Taylor. All right, next?”
“Have her back here before dusk or I’m going to feed your Cajun hide to Talon’s gators.”
A glimmer of fear flashed in his eyes. Nick hated alligators, but Kyrian had no idea why. “All right, that scares me.”
“I also want you to go by Talon’s and pick up a srad. Let’s give Desiderius a surprise he won’t see coming.”
Nick visibly cringed at the mention of Talon’s circular daggers. It was an ancient weapon that made a Ginsu look like a butter knife. “Do you even know how to use that thing?”
“Yes, I do.” Kyrian took a deep breath. “Now, I need some sleep. Your primary job today is to take care of Amanda.”
Nick turned off his Palm Pilot and clipped it to his belt. “You like her, don’t you?”
Kyrian didn’t answer. He didn’t dare. Neither one of them needed to know that one.
Instead, he left Nick sitting at the computer and went back to his room.
* * *
After a quick shower, Amanda quietly stepped into the bedroom to dress while Kyrian slept in his large four-poster bed.
The room was completely dark with the only light coming from the bathroom. No one would ever be able to tell if it was day or night from in here, and yet Kyrian always seemed to know when the sun was up.
She stepped over to the bed to watch him lying there with the sheet draped over his middle to shield his nudity. Oh, that man had a body …
She could stare at him all day long and not grow tired of all that lush, tawny skin that she longed to explore some more with her lips and hands. What was it about him that was so addictive?
She ached to kiss those poetic lips and run her hands through the golden waves on his head, but she didn’t want to disturb his sleep. He needed his strength.
Tiptoeing from the room, she headed downstairs to the kitchen.
Daylight sparkled against the white marble of the room, bright and cheerful. Rosa was frying bacon while Nick sat on a barstool looking through a college course catalogue.
Probably no older than twenty-four, Nick was lean and handsome. His shoulder-length dark brown hair could have used a trim, but somehow it suited his sculpted features. He was wearing a baggy sweater that had seen better days, and faded jeans with a hole in the knee.
“Hey, Rosa,” he said without looking up from his catalogue, “if I take Spanish next semester, will you help me study for it?”
“Sí. I imagine Kyrian will, as well.”
“Great,” he said sarcastically. “Between that and Ancient Greek Civilization, I’ll have the friggin’ time of my life.”
“Nick!” Rosa chastised. “Such language you use. It is not becoming of a gentleman.”
“Sorry.”
Rosa set a plate of toast, bacon, and eggs down beside Nick, then turned and caught sight of Amanda in the doorway. “There you are, señorita. Are you hungry?”
“A little.”
“Come,” she said, indicating the stool beside Nick. “Sit and I’ll make you breakfast.”
“Thank you, Rosa.”
Rosa smiled.
Amanda took a seat beside Nick. He brushed his hand off on his jeans and held it out to her. “Nick Gautier,” he said with a charming, dimpled smile. “Better known as ‘Nick, get your butt in here, I need you to…’ Fill in the blank.”
She laughed. “Bossy, isn’t he?”
“You’ve no idea.” Nick pulled his cell phone off his belt and handed it to her. “Speaking of, boss man said you’d need to call work.”
“Thanks.”
While Rosa made her breakfast, she called her boss and explained about her house. Luckily, her director was understanding and gave her a two-week leave of absence to take care of it.
As soon as she hung up, Amanda felt ill as she remembered her loss. “I can’t believe they burned down my house.”
“Your house?” Rosa asked. “Who burned it down?”
“The authorities are looking into it,” Kyrian said from the direction of the living room.
Amanda turned around to see him standing in the doorway. He looked pale and uneasy.
Rosa smiled. “M’ijo, you are here today. Nick said you would be gone.”
“I’m not feeling well.” Even though his face was tender, he narrowed his gaze on Rosa. “You came in on time this morning, didn’t you?”
Rosa ignored his question. “Come and sit. I’ll make you something to eat.”
Kyrian cast a wary look to the sunlight spilling into the kitchen from the open windows. He took a step back into the dark living room. “Thank you, Rosa, but I’m not hungry. Nick, I need to see you for a minute.”
Nick gave her a knowing smile. “At least he didn’t tell me to move my butt.”
“Nick,” Kyrian said. “Move your butt, boy.”
While Nick went over to Kyrian, Rosa set a plate in front of her. “Poor little one. What are you to do without a house?”
“I don’t know. I guess I need to call my insurance company. Find a place to live…” Amanda’s voice trailed off as she thought over all the things that needed to be done.
She’d have to replace her entire life. Everything. Toothbrush, shoes, books, furniture, phones. She didn’t even have a pair of underwear.
Overwhelmed, she lost her appetite.
Whatever was she going to do?
Nick came back to the counter and picked up his catalogue, then went back to Kyrian in the doorway. “I need a favor. I have to register at one o’clock, so if we’re not back, can you sign up on-line for my classes? I know you need to sleep, but I really want to take Greek Civ next semester.”
“Why?”
“Dr. Alexander is teaching it and he’s supposed to be really good.”
“Julian Alexander?” Amanda asked.
“Yeah,” Nick said, looking back at her. “You know him?”
She exchanged a knowing look with Kyrian. “Not half as well as Kyrian does.”
Nick shuddered. “Ah, man, not another one of you. Great. Shoot me now and put me out of my misery.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Kyrian took the catalogue. “One o’clock. Anything else?”
“Yeah, do something about those eyes, they’re creeping me out.”
Kyrian arched a warning brow at Nick’s commanding tone. “You two have fun.”
“Fun?” Amanda asked as Kyrian left them.
Nick returned to sit on his stool. “We’re going shopping.” He curled his lips and shuddered at the word.
“For what?”
He took a drink of orange juice. “Whatever you need, my lady. Furs, diamonds, whatever.”
“Diamonds?” she asked, laughing at the outrageous thought.
“It’s on Kyrian, so I say go for broke. Literally.”
She smiled. “I can’t do that. I have my own money.”
“Yeah, but why spend it? You have no idea how rich the man is. I promise you, buy the mall and he won’t even notice.”
Amanda had no intention of doing that. Still, she did need something else to wear. “All right, can we also stop by my mother’s?”
“Sure. My assignment for the day is to serve you any way you want me to.”
She shook her head at his devilish smile.
* * *
After she called her insurance company about the fire, Amanda let Nick take her shopping. But what frustrated her was Nick’s inability to let her pay for anything.
“I’m under orders,” Nick said for the fifth time. “You shop, I pay.”
She growled good-naturedly at him. “Do you always follow orders?”
“I do so complainingly always.”
She laughed yet again as they left the store and headed back out into the mall with Nick carrying her bags. “How long have you worked for Kyrian?” she asked as they got on the escalator.
“Eight years now.”
She gaped. “Really, you don’t look that old.”
“Yeah, well, I was barely sixteen when I started.”
“You can be a Squire at that age?”
Nick turned his head to ogle an attractive young woman in a tight, short skirt going up the escalator beside them, then he turned to flash a dimpled smile at her before he answered the question. “I didn’t know what he was for a long time. I just thought he was some whacked-out rich guy with a ‘pity the poor kid’ complex.”
She frowned as they left the escalator and walked through the downstairs level. “Why would you think that?”
Nick adjusted the bags he carried. “You see beside you, my lady, the son of a career felon. My father died in Angola eleven years ago during a prison riot.”
Amanda winced at the thought of losing a father like that. “And your mother?”
“She was an exotic dancer down on Bourbon Street. I grew up in the back room of the club where she worked, helping the bouncers hustle clients.”
Amanda cringed at the life he was describing. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “Don’t be. My mother might have her faults, but she’s a good mom, and a terrific lady. She did her best with what little we had. My father knocked her up when she was fifteen and her father threw her out. So it was just the two of us while my dad hit the revolving door in and out of the penal system. We never had much, but she’s always loved me.”
Amanda smiled at the love she heard in his voice. It was obvious he worshiped his mother. “So how did you meet Kyrian?”
He paused for a second as if gathering his thoughts. “When I hit my teens, I was sick to death of watching my mom hang her head in shame. Of her doing without food so I could eat a little bit more. I can remember walking to work with her and watching the way her gaze would stare longingly into store windows.” He sighed. “She had such hungry eyes.”
His stare was hard, penetrating. “My mother is the best-hearted woman God ever put on this planet. And I couldn’t stand watching her degrade herself to feed me. Men groping her all the time. Or seeing the look on her face whenever she saw something she wanted and she couldn’t afford it. At thirteen, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I started stealing.”
Amanda’s throat tightened. She didn’t condone it, but she wouldn’t judge him for it, either.
“One night, the gang I was in decided to mug a couple of tourists and I drew the line. It was one thing to shoplift and break into rich people’s houses, but I wasn’t about to hurt someone.”
So, even as a thief, Nick had honor.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The guys were furious at me and decided to get a little practice in by beating the crap out of me. One minute, I was under their feet, getting bludgeoned to death, and the next thing I knew there was this guy holding his hand out to me, asking me if I was okay.”
“Kyrian?”
Nick nodded. “He took me to the hospital and paid for them to stitch up my head and knife wounds. He stayed with me until my mom got there. While we were waiting, he asked me if I wanted to go to work for him, running errands after school.”
She could just imagine Nick as a smart-mouthed teen. It said a lot about Kyrian’s character that he had seen through Nick’s caustic personality to find the goodness beneath it all. “You agreed?”
“Not at first. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be anywhere near some guy who had all the money in the world. Plus, my mom was very suspicious of Kyrian. She still is. She can’t imagine why on earth he pays me so much money to do practically nothing.” He laughed. “She’s still half convinced I deal drugs for him.”
Amanda scoffed at the thought. His poor mother. “What do you tell her?”
“That he’s Howard Hughes with a God complex.” He sobered and gave her a harsh stare. “I owe Kyrian my life. There’s no telling where I’d be if he hadn’t found me that night. One thing’s for sure, I wouldn’t be a pre-law student at Loyola, driving around in a Jag. I know he’s a major asshole, but he’s really a good guy underneath it all.”
Amanda thought about his words as they left the mall and stowed her purchases in the trunk of Nick’s silvery-black Jag.
They got in the car and she buckled up. “When did Kyrian tell you what he was?”
Nick started the car, then backed out of the parking space. “When I graduated high school. He offered me a permanent job as his Squire.”
“And what exactly is a Squire?”
He pulled out into traffic, and as he shifted gears, she noticed a strange spiderweblike tattoo on his right hand. It held some kind of odd Greek design and she wondered if all Squires held such a mark.
“We were set up to protect the Dark-Hunters during the daylight hours and to procure whatever they need. Food, clothes, cars, maintain their homes, whatever. At one time, we literally stood guard over the special crypts they slept in, which is what started the whole vampires-sleep-in-coffins myth. Since sunlight is deadly to them, they used to sleep in caves or isolated chambers where there was no possibility of sun exposure. In return for our service, they provide financial support to us.”
“So each Dark-Hunter has a Squire?”
“No. Some Dark-Hunters prefer to go it alone. I’m the first Squire Kyrian has had in over three hundred years.”
She flinched at the thought of Kyrian being alone all that time. She could just imagine him walking the floors of his mansion like some restless spirit in search of comfort and finding none.
“And if you want to quit?” she asked Nick.
He sucked his breath in between his teeth. “It’s not really that easy. The Squires have a whole detailed organization that’s kind of like the Hotel California—you can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave. Once you get out, they will monitor you until the day you die. If you ever betray them or the Dark-Hunters, you won’t live to regret it.”
His ominous voice sent a chill down her spine. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. Some of these guys come from a long family history of Squirehood that goes back thousands of years.”
“Is it like slavery?” she asked.
“No. I can leave at any time I choose, I just can’t breach my Squire’s oath. Once taken, the oath is unbreakable and eternal. When I get married, my wife won’t ever know what Kyrian is, or what I do for him, not unless she’s a Squire, too. After my children reach adulthood, I can decide to let them in on it or not. If I choose to let them in, they have to go before Acheron and Artemis, who will review and hopefully approve their application.”
Now that was truly scary, because as he spoke those words, a horrible thought occurred to her. “What about me? Wouldn’t they think I pose a threat?”
His face turned deadly serious as he paused at a red light and turned to face her. “If you do, one of the Squires will kill you.”
She swallowed. “That’s not comforting.”
“It’s not meant to be. We take our duties very seriously. The Dark-Hunters are all that stand between the human race and slavery or extinction. Without them, the Apollites and Daimons would own us all.”
* * *
Kyrian lay in bed, trying his best to sleep, but over and over he felt Amanda inside him. She was at the remains of her house. He knew it. He felt her tears, her rage. Her despair.
And he ached for her.
How he wished he could be there with her right now. Comforting her. Never before had the loss of daylight freedom bothered him, but now it did. If he weren’t a Dark-Hunter, he would be able to stand by her side and offer her his strength. His support.
Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply, trying to stave off the pain. In a fit of anguished rage, he had chosen this course. Now, there was no way out. Artemis guarded her army zealously and had set the bar so high that in all this time, Kyrian had only known three Dark-Hunters to ever regain their souls.
All the others had died trying.
“What do I need with a soul, anyway?” he breathed as he opened his eyes to stare up at the brown and gold canopy over his bed. “All it does is make a man weak.”
His life had meaning. It had purpose.
Then why did something within him actually hurt in desperate need for Amanda?
It was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in centuries and it was a feeling that had once caused him to betray everyone who had loved him.
“I won’t be weak again,” he whispered. It wasn’t that he thought Amanda would hurt him intentionally. It was himself that he feared, for once he gave his heart or his loyalty, he never revoked it.
It came down to one basic fact. He was scared of himself and the lengths he would go to keep her safe.
* * *
After they visited the remains of Amanda’s house and her mother’s home, Nick drove into the heart of the French Quarter and parked on a side street so that they could walk over to Chartres. He led Amanda down the semicrowded retail area until they reached a small boutique called Dream Dolls and Accessories.
