Teach martial arts, go get a job at Disneyland, whatever. Just get out of this as soon as you can, and stop being a vampire hunter. You already know it doesn’t make sense anymore.”
Letting him go, she turned away, joined Brian, leaving him surprised at what she’d noticed, for all that she appeared quiet and completely immersed in her work. But then, her Master was the same way, wasn’t he? Both of them noticing far too damn much.
Having made his good-byes to Anwyn, Brian lifted his hand to Gideon, gave him a courteous nod, a proper good-bye from a vampire to a servant. “I’ll keep Daegan informed about the status on Barnabus.”
Gideon grunted. “If you need someone to go stake his black heart, you don’t need to wait for Daegan. I’ll be happy to do it.”
Brian shook his head, a scientist’s resignation with the unenlightened, which Gideon preferred to call academia-with-its-head-shoved-up-its-ass, but then the vampire nodded once more, gesturing to Debra to head with him into the terminal.
Getting back into the car, Gideon sat silently with Anwyn for a couple of moments, both of them following their progress. Brian’s handsomeness and Debra’s muted appeal were enough to turn heads toward them. Laying a hand on her lower back, Brian guided her past a group of outgoing passengers, rolling their carry-ons behind them.
“I’m going to miss them. Not necessarily because I wanted them to stay longer, though they were lovely houseguests, but because it feels like they were an important moment, something that has to move on, but still needs to be mourned.”
“Yeah. Know that feeling.” Gideon cleared his throat. “How about we head for the private airstrip, go pick up that bloodsucking boyfriend of yours?”
Anwyn nodded, not looking toward him. “Okay.”
It was about midnight when they pulled up to the small airfield. “The only thing that’s landed is a Gulfstream,” Gideon noted.
“That’s his.” Anwyn gave a faint smile at his snort. “Well, he does a lot of traveling for his job.”
“Being the Council’s private assassin pays well.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. “How have you funded your . . . missions?”
Gideon’s jaw tightened. She didn’t intend it, but perhaps because of how much he didn’t want her to know, it flashed to the front of his mind, harsh and bright, so she couldn’t overlook it. “You took money from your victims?” Her brow rose.
“They weren’t victims,” Gideon said shortly. “They were vampires. And it’s not like I was using it to buy a fancy plane, or a car that heats my ass for me.”
“That’s true,” she said neutrally. “Though I don’t really know how Daegan got his money. I don’t know if the Council pays him, or if it’s just something that’s expected of him. It’s a pretty feudal society, from what I can tell.”
“Yeah.” Gideon focused on the airstrip. The pilot was talking to the controller, signing some paperwork.
Anwyn didn’t see Daegan, though she was sure he’d notice their arrival. He was probably in the terminal. She ran a fingernail along the curve of the steering wheel.
“So how does it work? If you killed me, would you take my purse off my body, see if you could find bank account numbers or credit cards? Or would you go to my home before anyone knew I was gone, take valuables?”
“Anwyn, don’t.” He spoke through stiff lips. “I’ve made money other ways. The occasional protection job. And our parents left us pretty well set up. It was invested for us, divided equally. I just don’t like to draw from that.”
“Not when you can take from the vampires you kill.”
He turned to look at her. “How about you answer a question for me? The last vamp I took murdered a twenty-four-year-old nurse behind the generator station at her hospital. He drained her dry. She had a fiancé, a life. They wanted kids, and she volunteered at a battered women’s shelter. She also liked to go shag dancing on weekends and her favorite drink was a blackberry mojito. She had brown eyes as soft as velvet, and a great smile. What do you think she’d say about me lifting her murderer’s wallet to fund my next kill, so someone else like her doesn’t have to die? Think she’d be sitting there acting so damn self-righteous?”
The coldness in his eyes pierced her heart, because it matched the frost that covered his mind. But something else penetrated. Daegan had spoken of Gideon’s last kill. The night he came to you, he killed a vampire who