"In the meantime," she continued happily, "I intend on enjoying myself. I think I'll sit in on one of those meetings Margaretta told me about. Why don't you and Alec come with me, and we can brainstorm if it will make you feel better?"
"Pass," I told her, smiling to myself at Alec's mental shudder. "We'll just work on getting out of here. I'll give you a yell if we find a way."
"Suit yourself," she said, giving Alec another once-over that had me shifting closer to him, which just made my inner devil giggle. "Then again, perhaps you are doing exactly that. Ta-ta!"
"Don't say it," I told Alec as he was about to make a comment that I knew would make me blush. Don't even think it.
He laughed, and my stomach did a happy little quiver at the sound of it. Dammit, he had a wonderful laugh, warm and deep and filled with genuine amusement. "I won't, but only because I'm doomed to disappoint you by not finding a magic solution to the problem of you being here."
"All of us being here," I said, allowing him to lead me out to a courtyard. It was the same shade of dusty brown as everything else, the building an anachronism of modernity in an otherwise blighted landscape. "You'll have to come with us when we leave."
"I can't. I've been banished here by the Moravian Council. If I was to manage to find a way out, they'd simply send me back."
I eyed him, leaning against yet another sharp, pointy rock. "What exactly did you do to piss off all the other vamps? "
His gaze skittered away as he gently, but firmly, closed his mind. "Seduced my best friend's Beloved, tried to have them both destroyed, and betrayed Dark Ones to those who would see us exterminated."
His face was a mask of indifference, but his eyes, oh, those lovely eyes, they revealed the emotions he kept from me. Pain was in them, both self-loathing and pain caused by others. His words confirmed what I believed about vampires - that their characters were reprehensible and unworthy of my concern - but just as I knew that not every vampire was created equal, so I knew that Alec wasn't truly any of those things.
"When you killed that woman, what were you thinking?" I couldn't stop myself from asking.
It took him a minute to respond. I had the feeling he was far away in his thoughts. "The one who killed my Beloved? "
I nodded.
His eyes closed for a few seconds as he struggled with the gut-searing agony that memory brought him. "I didn't think. I saw the corpse burned and mangled, and knew the reaper had deliberately killed her. I struck out of instinct. It wasn't until recently that I found out it had been an accident all along, and that the reaper hadn't specifically targeted my Beloved." He gave a short, bitter laugh. "All those centuries I spent convinced revenge would lessen the pain, all that wasted time . . ."
"I don't believe you," I told him, my emotions tangled up with one another, but his honor, at least, was something I didn't doubt.
His expression hardened. "That doesn't surprise me. No one else believes me; why should you?"
"I meant" - I slid my hand under his jacket, spreading my fingers out over where his heart beat true and strong - "I don't believe what you said about betraying your own people. You didn't."
His gaze searched my face for signs I was mocking him. I let him feel the strength of my conviction. "No, I didn't, but that didn't stop them from condemning me for acts I didn't commit."
"Why didn't you defend yourself?"
His lips twisted in a self-mocking smile. "Because I did betray my friend."
"And seduced his Beloved?"
He rubbed his thumb along my bottom lip, his eyes on my mouth. "That was before I knew she was his Beloved, actually. Once she made it clear her choice was him, not me, I left her alone. Other than trying to have them killed, but even that plan had lost its charm."
"So you're martyring yourself because you were a bad friend?"
His gaze flitted away again, his hand dropping. "It's a bit more complicated than that, but ultimately, I was responsible for trying to ruin Kris's life, and it's only right I should pay for that."
"Bullshit," I told him, causing his eyes to widen. "You're having a good old-fashioned wallow in self-pity is all. I don't say that you don't have it coming to you, because I think you've done some things that you shouldn't have done, but it seems to me that you've paid more than the price of your penance, and it's time to move on. And that's just what I intend to happen. We're going to get out of here, all three of us, and no, I'm not going to leave you behind - "
The words were ripped from my mouth as if a giant hand had snatched me aside, and flung me down somewhere else entirely.
Which is basically what happened. I was aware of a momentary dropping sensation, and landed on my hands and knees on a wooden floor. I stared for a moment down at the grain of the wood, my brain stunned into a complete lack of cognizant thought, before I looked up to see a man and a woman standing before me.
We were in a room that looked like a library of some sort, all deep leather armchairs, and pretty bound books in floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I glanced at the people watching me.
The man was of middle height, with black hair and a goatee. The woman, who edged away from him, had a sunny face, curly red hair, and a friendly demeanor that made me address her rather than her companion. "What on earth just happened?"
"I summoned you," the woman said. She had an English accent, and a nice smile as she gestured toward the man, who stood with his arms crossed, his eyes narrowed on me. "You have Mr. de Marco to thank for that, though, since he hired me. I'm a Guardian, you see. My name is Noelle. Do you know that you're glowing ?"