“That will be the last time you point this thing at me,” he warned.
We’d see about that.
“Didn’t realize it scared you so bad,” I said.
He pressed his nose against my neck and inhaled. “That’s not what it does,” he rumbled in my ear.
I could feel the press of a smile against the side of my cheek before he stepped away. His face was a neutral mask.
He addressed Brax, “You’ll clean this up?”
Brax nodded and flicked his hand at him in dismissal.
He turned, expecting Nathan and I to follow. Like good little soldiers we fell in, leaving the house of horrors behind.
* * *
“Where are we?” I asked from the back seat.
Nathan was driving and Liam was in the passenger seat.
I didn’t recognize this part of town or the big hulking mansion surrounded by houses that looked like they were about three steps up from being dilapidated. The mansion, one of those gothic ones out of the turn of the century, surrounded by its manicured lawn and wrought iron gate did not fit into this neighborhood.
With a sharply sloping roof and pointed buttresses, it was at least four stories tall and was everything I’d ever imagined as a clan home. It looked like it could fit dozens of rooms.
“We call it the gargoyle,” Eric volunteered. “For now, it’s home base.”
I could see why he called it the gargoyle. It loomed over the surrounding neighborhood. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it elegant or even pretty, but it definitely had substance and character.
“Why would you need a home base? I thought, as enforcers, you tended to travel a lot.”
Nathan shot a glance at Liam before turning his attention back to his driving.
“We do, but it’s always nice to have a place to call home and head back to after a difficult job.”
Hm. I got the feeling that wasn’t the entire story.
Judging by the rigid line of Liam’s back, it was all the explanation I was going to get.
Nathan pulled into the drive and parked. The three of us climbed out and walked up the steps to double doors that extended well above our heads. They looked like solid oak, stained a dark brown.
This place would have cost a pretty penny, I was betting. Strange that the neighborhood wasn’t nicer.
I gave my companions a second look. Or maybe not so strange after all. They’d certainly be able to come and go in a neighborhood like this at all hours of the night or day without rousing a single question.
The doors opened before we reached them and a young man who looked like he was barely in his twenties slipped out. He shot me a grin, a glint of fang denting his lower lip, as he caught the keys Nathan tossed at him.
He was a vampire. I turned to watch him saunter down the steps.
I blinked, trying to catch a peek of his power signature with my left eye. All I got was a faint haze. No colored veins of power threaded through him that I could see.
I turned, noticing the two had gotten ahead of me and hurried to catch up.
The furnishings in the entryway and the hallway matched the exterior. Dark, masculine and old. I’d bet my fangs that every one of them was an antique.
We stepped into a large room that was three times the size of my entire apartment. A raised ceiling created the optical illusion that it was bigger than it probably was. It was tempting to call the place a ballroom, with its ornate chandeliers hanging above us.
The people in their fancy clothes, some verging on costumes from a point far back in history, added to that perception. Not everyone wore clothes that would have been at home in some French court in the seventeenth century, preferring the simpler styles of today. Suits or slinky dresses were just as common.
