There'll be Hell to Pay (Hellcat Series Book 6) (11 page)

Julius pulled
out a chair for her at the table, right in front of the tray. She
sent him a warning glare, babying her was strictly forbidden, but
she took the proffered seat.

Kyle brought
over the picture of the man who had more than likely kidnapped her
mother and set it on the table beside her before helping himself to
an energy drink and a chocolate brownie from one of two boxes of
freshly baked goodies.

Gabi growled
sharply, but anxious nausea still tempered her appetite. She
reached for a can of Coke, hoping it would settle her stomach,
cracked the tab open, then pulled the picture closer for another
look. Taking a large pull of the icy drink, she closed her mind to
outside distractions and concentrated on the face, trying to
connect it to something else: a scene, an emotion, whether he was
friend or foe. Anything that would ignite a full memory.

Razor jumped up
onto the chair to her left and purred loudly, his hunger
penetrating her mental bubble. Sighing, she opened her eyes and
pulled one of the food boxes closer to see if there was something
in it for Razor. Kyle’s box had been filled with sweet muffins,
brownies and custard tarts, but this one was stuffed full of
savoury delicacies. She reached for a bite-sized pie, moving a
small, pastry-wrapped sausage out of the way. As the pasty rolled
to one side, it reminded her freakishly of a detached human finger.
She broke the pie into pieces on a napkin, small chunks of beef
steaming in the cool air of the war room, and set it in front of
Razor. The cat wasted no time devouring the offering as Gabi’s hand
strayed back to the box to find something else for him.

“
Holy shit.” The memory burst alive in her mind, the details
crystal clear, his face etched into her memory.

“
What?” at least three different voices demanded
simultaneously.

“
It’s him.” She jabbed a finger at the man in the photo. “The
finger at Court, Helene… It’s him.” The faces looking at her
registered bemusement, confusion and outright concern. She took a
breath and tried again. “At Princep Court, when Mariska called the
demons to provide a smokescreen so that Helene could have me
captured. Kyle, you were there; you should recognise him
too.”

Kyle shook his
head, and the rest still looked perplexed.

“
He is the human who took me to her. At gunpoint. Raz hurt him
in the fight.” When Gabi and Julius had been ordered to Princep
Court to face charges brought about by Mariska, one of the
Princeps, a Vampire named Helene, had been trying to have Gabi
killed. She’d very much wanted the position of Julius’s Consort
once his new power level had been revealed. When she and Gabi had
faced off, Razor had bitten off one of her fingers during the
fight. She’d run once Kyle and Caspian had found them, and tried to
bluff her way out of her involvement. The severed finger had been
the proof Gabi needed to convince the rest of the Princeps of
Helene’s ill intentions. The man in the photo had been part of her
posse. “I don’t know what would’ve happened to him after Helene
ran. I was more concerned with the Werewolves and the
finger.”

Julius, Fergus
and Alexander now finally seemed to understand who she was talking
about. Murphy was too new to the circle to know what she was
referring to, and she didn’t care to fill him in just yet. Kyle was
the only one, besides Caspian the traitor, who’d been at the
showdown. She held up the print. “Wolf, you saw him too. He was
bruised, bloodied and only semi-conscious when you arrived, but
don’t you recognise him?”

Kyle took the
paper from her and studied it, holding it out at arm’s length, his
eyes narrowed. Then he nodded. “I’d be more sure if I could scent
him, but it does look like him.”

There was a
moment of stunned silence, and then everyone began speaking at
once.

As the
conversation heated up around the table, Gabi broke open another
pie for Razor and popped the sausage roll in her own mouth; either
the Coke or the break in the case had settled her stomach.

“
Benedict said that Helene was one of the Centuria,” Alexander
put in. “High up and trying to make herself eligible for ascension
to the Decuria when the time came.”

“
Which means if this man was helping Helene and he’s involved
in Gabi’s mom’s kidnapping…” Kyle said slowly, as though testing
his reasoning even as he spoke the words.

“
Then it’s th’ Decuria at wark here,” Fergus finished the
sentence, and silence once more engulfed the room.

Gabi didn’t
know how to feel; she wasn’t sure if this was better news or worse
news than when they were completely in the dark. The sausage roll
she’d just eaten turned into a ball of lead in her stomach.

“
Gabrielle, tell us everything you know about this man,” Julius
pressed her, his urgency cloaked in a soothing tone.

She tried to
speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. She downed the last of the
Coke.

“
He, uh, he was human,” she finally managed to say, pulling up
her memories of their time at Court. It had been a bleak few days
punctuated by more than one attempt on her life and topped off with
her and Fergus secretly assassinating one of the Princeps, a vile
excuse for a man who’d taken pleasure in Turning and abusing young
girls.

“
He arrived after the other two thugs had tried to subdue me.
He was carrying a Sig Sauer P226, so he had the upper hand despite
being human. I’d killed one of the other two human men. They were
both hyped up on Vamp blood, and he claimed it was their first
time. He seemed disdainful of them. When he realised I’d only
knocked the second man unconscious, he killed the man without a
second thought and made me throw him down the stairwell so it would
look as though the two men had been fighting and killed each other.
His utter disregard for their lives chilled me at the time.” She
still felt cold when she revisited the memory of the human running
a long-bladed knife through the unconscious man. “His attitude and
bearing hinted at some kind of military special forces training. He
was good at reading body language; he picked up when I considered
diving down the stairs and turned the gun on Razor instead of me.
And he told me that even though he was only human, he never missed
a target.”

“
That sounds very much like Sicarius.”

Every one of
them jumped to attention as the door to the war room swung open
once again and Benedict, the teenage-looking Vampire Princep,
lounged in the doorway, his jaw working lazily on a piece of
chewing gum, a grin creasing the corners of his baby blue eyes. “I
come bearing gifts.” He had his hands up defensively as Fergus and
Alexander lunged towards the door, blades drawn.

“
It’s alright,” Julius said, calming the atmosphere in the room
with a breath of power. “Benedict, you really should announce
yourself. We’re all a little tense at the moment.”

Benedict’s grin
just widened. “So I’ve noticed. But I’ve come to ease the tension
just a little. Come along, pup.” It was then that Gabi saw he held
something in his left hand. A length of chain. Something was
obviously attached to the other end of the chain. Everyone tensed
again, Gabi and Kyle automatically putting themselves between the
door and Murphy while Julius strode forward.

Without changing
expression, Benedict moved to one side of the doorway and yanked on
the chain. A man stumbled into view, the chain padlocked around his
throat, his arms secured behind his back. His face bore red welts,
one eye was swollen shut, and blood trickled from the corner of his
mouth, but Gabi still recognised him. As the man from the
surveillance photo.

CHAPTER
6

“
How did you get in here without my guards alerting me?” Julius
asked their unexpected guest. Fergus and Alexander had still not
moved from their positions blocking Benedict’s entry into the war
room.

Benedict shoved
the chained and beaten-up human away from the door, and Mac stepped
into view.

“
Sorry, Sire,” the grey-haired Vampire muttered. “He swore
you’d be happy to see him; I didn’t think to check whether you were
actually expecting him.”

“
You’d better all get inside,” Julius growled. “Benedict, I
hope you have a legitimate reason for showing this human where we
live.” He stalked away from the door to Gabi, pulling her with him
towards the far side of the long table. Fergus and Alexander stood
down, Alexander moving to join Gabi and Julius while Fergus stayed
on full alert to one side of the door. He’d sheathed his sword, but
his right hand hovered just millimetres from the hilt. Kyle and
Murphy retook their seats.

Gabi stood
frozen, caught between confusion at Benedict’s sudden arrival and
wanting to rip the human male to shreds with her bare hands. Mac
was her one tiny spark of hope and relief; his weathered face,
greying beard and the mischievous glint in his eye never failed to
lift her spirits. As a recently Turned Vampire, he understood her
brushes with Red Rage and her human idiosyncrasies better than any
of the others. He was a true and trusted friend.

Mac entered
first, going straight to them, bowing his head subserviently to
Julius in greeting and casting a worried gaze over Gabi, but he
held his tongue, just taking up a position near them but closer to
the door. Benedict strolled in behind Mac, yanking the human in
behind him. He slammed the door shut with one booted foot and then
kicked the back of the human’s knee so that the man fell to the
floor, landing hard with a barely suppressed grunt of pain.

“
Sit,” Benedict commanded redundantly, a dog handler cussing
out a recalcitrant pup. Then he turned to his audience. “He already
knew where you live, Julius. He’s been spying on you for
months.”

“
What?” Alexander demanded, his eyes narrowing in anger and
suspicion. “How? And how do you know this? How long have you known
this?” His tone was curt to the point of disrespect. The animosity
between Julius’s second and the Princep hadn’t abated since the
battle for the Source. A love triangle had the tendency to do that,
Gabi sighed. If Athena could just pick between the two men, maybe
they would settle their differences and move on, but, with the
Magus attracted to both men and unable to make a choice, she’d
instead been keeping both at arm’s length while she figured out her
own feelings. Gabi sensed the thread of warning Julius sent to his
second. Benedict might be an uninvited guest, but he was both a
Princep and one of the Higher Order of the Lucis. They needed to
tread carefully.

The amusement
had left Benedict’s face, his lips thinning slightly, but he
allowed Alexander’s insolence to slide.

“
We received intel a couple of weeks ago that Sicarius has been
following a designated target for several months now,” the Princep
explained. “I tend to keep an
ear
out for unusual movement around the City, and I
finally picked up his trail.” Gabi knew his
ear
referred to his ability as a
clairaudient. He could ‘hear’ something happening, or about to
happen, in the next room or in a city on the other side of the
world, much like a clairvoyant could envision something before it
happened or a world away from where it happened. “Sicarius is more
a title than a name. It is given to the official assassin of the
Decuria. I caught him a few blocks from here.”

Gabi’s nails
were digging into her palms; only Julius’s calm presence and her
own exhaustion were keeping her from flying at the kneeling
captive. Common sense was calmly reminding her that hearing the
whole story and keeping the man conscious and alive was the
quickest way to find out where her mother was. But oh…the need to
rip him to shreds for daring to touch something precious to her was
so intense that it tore at her with wicked fangs and claws.

“
You know that I was on my way here anyway,” the man ground out
from between clenched teeth. “You didn’t need to capture me.” It
was the first time he’d spoken, and it was all Gabi needed to be
sure this was the same man who’d held her at gunpoint in a Vampire
castle all those months ago.

“
You weren’t waving a white flag,” Benedict commented
mildly.

“
I didn’t come here to surrender; I won’t be waving any white
flags.” Annoyance poured from him in waves.

His misplaced
anger snapped the fragile threads holding Gabi back.

“
What have you done with my mother?” she hissed, her rage honed
to a fine edge. She evaded Julius’s grasp and stalked down the
length of the table towards Benedict and the human. The Princep
moved a fraction of an inch, keeping himself between
them.

“
I believe he has a message for you, Gabrielle,” he told her.
“You should probably hear him out first. After that I’ll help you
dice him into cubes and feed him to the cat.” A low growl erupted
from beside her right knee. It seemed that Razor recognised him as
well; he’d given the man some permanent reminders of their
encounter.

The man
straightened a little, his eyes widening as he swallowed
noticeably, his anger doused by wariness. “My employer sent me to
you,” he said quickly, his eyes fixed on Razor. “I am just the
messenger.”

“
I’m pretty sure you were the messenger last time too,” Gabi
snarled, “only you had a gun last time, and the package you were
delivering was me. To a Vampire who wanted me dead.”

“
I’m an employee; I was doing my job.” His tone was sharp, but
a slight whine spoilt the show of bravado. “Just like I’m doing my
job now.”