Page 16 of Too Brazen to Bite (Gothic Love Stories #5)

E llie had barely sprinted free of the guest quarters when an arm flashed out of the shadows, hooked about her waist, and reeled her into a small music room. The obsidian shine of a hulking piano was not what set her nerves afire, but rather the man whose strong arms locked her body to his.

Cain .

“Let me go.” Struggling to break free, Ellie pushed at his chest. “Leave me alone.”

“I just want to talk.” His voice was soft, worried, sincere.

She couldn’t have cared less. “I’ve heard more than enough for one day. I need to be by myself for a while.”

Despite the hesitant warmth in his voice, Cain’s grip did not slacken. “I can’t let you do that. Not after what happened.”

Ellie froze midstruggle.

Not after what had happened. He’d seen her fangs!

And the fact that he had them, too, could mean only one thing: He was one of the hunters her mother had warned her about.

That Mama had been hiding from her entire life.

And now that he knew the truth—thanks to her pursuing him, of all things—she and her mother were both going to die.

Cain wouldn’t let her go, now that he had her.

And Mama would never stand by and let her be taken.

“Please,” she whispered, risking a glance up at him to gauge his anger. “Not like this.”

However, he did not appear to be angry. If anything, his expression was stricken. His fingers relaxed, and he took a half step backward.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” His voice was low, but she could hear the note of self-recrimination.

“I just meant to kiss you. That’s all. I’d been longing to taste your lips from the moment we met, and I never meant to indulge that desire, much less.

..” He gave a dry little laugh and continued, “Much less bite you. That’s the problem with being.

.. what I am. Less human. Less thinking.

More instinct. If I could make you forget it ever happened, I would.

To be honest, I did try.” He shook his head.

“Maybe I’ve been so long from home, so long without a proper supply of.

.. sustenance, that my powers aren’t what they once were.

I don’t want you to be in pain. I won’t hurt you.

And so I am asking you, not as a vampire but as a man, if you could find it in yourself to please keep my secret. ”

His face was so earnest, his eyes so candid, his meaning so at odds with anything and everything she’d been expecting, that Ellie stared wordlessly up at him for a long moment before making sense of any of it.

He still thought she was human. He was afraid of her reaction. Of what she might do.

Ellie could have laughed at the sheer irony if she weren’t so close to tears.

For the first time in her life, a handsome gentleman actually liked her. Longed to kiss her. Fancied her. Right when she was no longer the girl either one of them thought they knew.

Ellie was a vampire now, but nothing else of import had changed.

She was still in the lowest class of her peers.

An outcast. An abomination. And instead of simply receiving a cut direct, once the truth became known, heads would roll.

Namely, hers and her mother’s. She couldn’t let that happen.

But how long could she hope to hide the truth from a centuries-old vampire hunter?

“I won’t tell anyone,” she promised. Years of unflinching honesty made her add in a mumble, “Except maybe my mother.”

“Och, Ellie, you cannot. Your mother...” He gazed at her unhappily, as if trying to determine how best to candy-coat some undesirable truth. “I have reason to believe your mother isn’t really your mother. No, don’t say anything. Come sit down. You can hear me out and then decide.”

He led her to the piano bench and seated her upon the cushion. He stepped back, paused, then stepped forward. He picked up her hands and held them tight. After a moment, he let go as though her touch had scalded him and shoved his hands into his pockets instead. He sighed.

“Just because I currently find my Compulsion skills lacking does not make it any less real. I’m afraid that the woman you know as your mother cannot possibly be so.

You are human. And she is as human as I am.

She’s actually Agnes Munro, a vampire even older than me.

” He gave Ellie a hard look, as if half-expecting her to tumble off the bench in a dead faint.

When she did not, he took up her hands again and fell to his knees before her.

“Listen to me, Ellie. You are in danger.”

Ellie shook her head. “She would never harm me.”

“You wouldn’t remember if she had.”

“I would know.”

“Look at me,” he insisted softly. “You have a logical mind. Use it. Do you remember your youth? If not, that’s because she stole it from you. If you cannot recall your parents, it’s because she erased the memory of them right from your brain.”

This latter hit close enough to the truth that Ellie flinched involuntarily. She tried to mask the unwanted flash of pain, but it was too late.

“See?” he murmured sadly. “Some part of you recognizes my words as true. Who knows what else may have been cleaned from your mind. Perhaps you’ve served as an easy meal for years, or even decades.”

Ellie recoiled so violently that if Cain hadn’t been clasping her hands, she would have tumbled right off the bench. A source of food for her own mother? What a repugnant idea. Mama would never have done such a horrific thing... would she?

“Listen to me, Ellie. Listen to your own heart. If you don’t feel safe, it’s because you are not. If you don’t feel free, it is because you are not. And you should be. You deserve to be.”

“And my mother?”

“She... does not.” His spine straightened, and his shoulders seemed to expand. “Besides her crimes against you, she must also answer to her clan for crimes committed in the past, contracts broken in direct violation of blood oaths she voluntarily swore to uphold.”

“Are you her judge, her jury, or her executioner?” She tried to jerk her fingers from his hands.

“Neither,” he answered, holding fast. “I am a hunter. A warrior whose primary use to his clan is his superior ability to find that which doesn’t wish to be found. Two hundred years ago, I was sent to find Agnes Munro. I have found her. And I will take her home.”

“That’s it? Your clan just says, ‘Go and get our woman, dead or alive,’ and off you go for two hundred years?”

“Preferably alive. And aye, that’s what hunters do. Their duty.”

Ellie glared at him. “What do you mean, ‘preferably’ alive? It’s optional?”

“The elders mean her no lasting harm,” he answered carefully.

“Ha. Then why did she run away?”

“She’d broken a cardinal rule, which at that time was punishable by death.” The pads of his fingers stroked the backs of her hands. “But times have changed.”

Ellie chuckled bitterly. “Have they?”

Cain’s brow creased, but his answer was firm. “Yes.”

“Then what are the new rules?”

“No more death. There are less of us now than ever before. The elders can’t afford to enforce the old ways. Either we change with the times, or we all die.”

“So her crimes have been forgiven? Or will she spend the next millennia chained to a dungeon, expected to be grateful to still be alive?”

“Ellie.” Cain still knelt before her, Ellie’s hands still clasped in his. “Stop worrying about Agnes and start thinking about yourself. You can’t go back to how things were. And you can’t go back to Aggie. I’m taking her with me. And then I’m going home.”

“What are you suggesting I do?” she demanded, as suspicion began to creep back up her spine. “Go with you?”

“Good Lord, no.” Cain’s surprised laugh was short, but genuine.

“When I said vampires were dangerous, I most certainly was not exempting myself. I’ve already taken a bite out of you uninvited.

And here I am, making bad decisions worse by abducting you into a piano room and confessing clan secrets you have no business knowing.

As I said, if I could have bade you forget, I would have.

So to that end, I am no better than Aggie.

But going forward, I want you to do whatever it is that you want to do. I want you to be safe.”

Ellie shook her head. “If I’m not with her, and I’m not with you, then I’m alone... and how safe is that? I may be legally of age to fend for myself, but with no money and no property and no particular skills outside of reading books and solving riddles, where exactly do you propose that I go?”

Cain dropped onto his haunches and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his eyes were haunted.

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “You’ll have to decide.

I have never been in this situation. Nor would I presume to make your decisions.

You’re welcome to my coin. I just need enough to return home, which should leave you with plenty to take up residence somewhere, to be an independently wealthy, thrice-removed cousin of some far-flung nob.

For long enough to create a new life, make human friends, and perhaps. .. perhaps fall in love.”

Love. Her hands still rested in his. Ellie nibbled her lower lip and gazed back into his eyes.

Within days of meeting her, Cain was doing the one thing her own mother hadn’t done in over a century: voluntarily entrusting her with the truth and allowing her the right to weigh the evidence herself in order to make her own choices about her life.

Unfortunately, he was only in possession of half the evidence. As lovely a picture as his words had painted, Ellie was no longer a simple human girl, if she ever had been. And no matter how angry she was with her mother’s decisions, Mama was still the person Ellie cherished above all others.

Mama’s life was inextricably tied to hers, and there was no way Ellie would allow either of them to face a vampire tribunal over a lovesick girl’s rash decision two centuries ago.

They would slip through the night, as they’d always done.

They would hide from hunters—from Cain—forever, if that was what it took.