He pulled her in close to him. “Don’t let them take over, Anwyn. Breathe. Let me in your mind.”
She wouldn’t have been able to keep him out, but later she’d appreciate his courtesy. For now, he invaded like a calming force of wind. The shadow creatures, building in volume like a lynch mob, were thrown into chaos by the disruption. Her blood heated, and she felt her fangs elongating, but she was able to dig in her heels, refuse to let them have this moment. It was stress, and she could control it. Daegan was here. In fact, he’d folded her into his arms and taken them down to the ground in the way he did, where his body caged her with solid, heated flesh and comforted her at once.
It was a near thing. Sometimes it was inevitable, nothing she could stop, but tonight she gazed up at the stars, pressed her face into Daegan’s bare chest, and held on to the tail end of her sanity while those voices muttered and her blood heated to boiling, making her shake and perspiration soak through the terry cloth. But the tide was turning back, a near miss. She swallowed, digging into his forearm.
She took a deep breath, tried to calm herself. “Gideon . . . tells me things, to keep me distracted. So, tell me . . . about Gideon. You followed him for almost a year. Tell me . . . things about him I don’t know. Things that will help me know which way to go.”
She’d never felt so incapable of making decisions, and yet such an urgency to make some before she destroyed his life, her future, and everything she’d built.
“He’s given me a gift. I don’t want . . . to abuse him.”
“But it’s okay to abuse me?” His tone was light, though his gaze remained fastened on her face, his hands both soothing and a restraint, if needed.
She let out a muffled snort, her body twitching but mind calming. “You need abuse . . . on occasion. Humility is a rare experience for you. So tell me more about him. What does the Council know . . . that I don’t? Everything. Don’t . . . pretty it up.”
“Very well.” His voice quiet, he stroked her back as he held her close. “In the past two years, he’s killed a significant number of our kind, for a human hunter. With the exception of two, they fortunately were vampires who had racked up multiple violations of Council rules. His brother, Jacob, thank all the gods, figured out a way to channel Gideon’s anger, and has been giving him the names of those who have crossed the line. Never speak that truth aloud, cher. I found that out through my own investigations and deductions. If the Council could prove Jacob had been doing that, it would not go well for him. Trust me when I tell you that Jacob Green and Lady Lyssa are the greatest friends to the survival of vampires, though not always to the Vampire Council.
“No vampire hunter has ever had the one-on-one kill rate Gideon Green has. You have seen our speed and strength. He succeeds because he is patient, methodical, and he figures out how to set up the vampire. He is also afraid of nothing. Not in the foolish way that would get him killed, but in the way that has kept him levelheaded in situations where plans went awry and he was caught. You have seen the scars.”
She nodded, remembering the burns, the lash marks. “He’s been caught twice,” Daegan said. “In both cases, the vampire made a mistake, deciding to make him pay for his gall, rather than quickly dispatching him. In both instances, Gideon managed to escape and finish off the vampire who thought he could teach him a lesson.”
Anwyn thought of her own burgeoning vampire strengths, the ones that had nearly killed Gideon, and those merely a whisper of the formidable powers that Daegan had demonstrated. “Oh my God,” she murmured. “It’s unreal. He should be dead.”
“Thirteen times over. He is a remarkable man.”
“Damn it, Daegan, they won’t let that pass. They’ll execute him.”
“Gideon has a better grasp of a vampire’s mind than I expected, but I don’t know why that surprises me. A successful hunter does more than have the best weapons. He learns his enemy, inside and out. He believes the Council will be far more . . . gratified . . . seeing