The vampire took the bait and followed. With his first self, Adrien caught him from behind in the kidneys with his dagger. The man screamed and plunged into the water.
“Lily!” he shouted.
The vampire who’d dived earlier now surfaced, jeering. “She’s dead.” He lifted Lily’s pale hand and shook it.
Adrien could sense that she was close to death, but not yet gone. The sudden rage he felt was so raw that before he understood what he was doing, both parts of him moved at light-speed toward the vampire who now opened his eyes wide. He tried to dip below the surface, as though that would do any good.
His rage had opened his vision. He could see Lily floating now as well as the panicked, thrashing movements of the gloating vampire as he tried to escape. Adrien pierced the water, dove straight for the bastard, caught him with one self while his split-self cut his throat.
He turned in the water, grabbed Lily in all four of his hands, and took her straight into the air. He meant to get her to the club, but as he spun in a 180 he saw a dozen more hooded figures closing in.
He held Lily close to his primary self’s chest, re-formed, then flew away from the lake, faster than he ever had before, faster than any of these bastards could move.
He reached one of his private cavern homes, this time in South Africa, within twenty seconds of pulling Lily from the water. He stretched her out on the stone floor of his living room and began pumping the water from her lungs, then gave her mouth-to-mouth.
The moment she coughed and spewed all that liquid, her food followed. She cried out, grabbed her head, undoubtedly in pain from the speed of the recent flight, and with one arch of her back passed out.
He sat back on his heels, knowing that his life had just changed … forever.
Lily had almost died.
And his stubbornness about not embracing his Ancestral power had almost gotten her killed.
Well, that had to change.
He made plans with his housekeeper about caring for Lily.
Then he called Gabriel.
Three hours later Adrien sat in a chair by his bed, where Lily now slept. A fire roared in the nearby hearth. He sat in jeans and a T-shirt, his leathers and tank drying out. His housekeeper and one of her staff had taken care of Lily, changing her, washing the lake water off her, forcing a healing herbal tea down her throat.
The tea contained a short-term sleeping potion as well so that Lily fell into a deep sleep and no longer thrashed and cried out for Adrien, or for her family; for Josh, for Jessie, or for her husband, Robert.
Now she was quiet, though very pale.
He’d sent two of his more powerful male servants to the Himalayas to check on Lucian and Marius, to let his brothers know that as soon as he could, he’d come for them and arrange their escape. Somehow. He also sent them to Lily’s Manhattan apartment to bring more of her belongings back to South Africa.
He’d done all he could for his present situation, but the hardest truth about Lily’s near-drowning, and what he needed to do about it, hit him square in the chest.
From the time she’d put the chain on him and he’d flown her back to Paris at full speed, hurting her the entire way, he’d been avoiding what he needed to do.
Now he saw no real way out.
Lily had basically drowned in Lake Como tonight, and all because of his hatred for his parentage and his fear that if he embraced greater power, like his father possessed, he’d become like him: without conscience, a risk to his friends, even to his half brothers, certainly to his world.
If there was some way he could predict where and how the fanatics might attack, he could manage where he took Lily and how fast they traveled. But from the events of the past twenty-four hours, he understood they meant to stop him from getting the weapon at all costs.
He couldn’t let that happen. Silas and his fanatics were no more to be trusted than Daniel.
But the truth was, the source of the attack didn’t matter—only that Lily’s vulnerability and his stubbornness had brought her to the point of death. Now she had one more horror she’d have to recover from, of drowning while under attack by goddamn fanatical vampires.
Some kind of change needed to come to his world. Maybe Sebastien was right, maybe there was something he could do, especially with so many loose factions out there, ineffective courts, and not enough laws on the books to protect the innocent. The governing Council, prior to Daniel’s takeover, had failed time after time to do what needed to be done. So here he was, sitting in a goddamn chair in one of his favorite caves, on the edge of despair because he’d been pushed to this point through no fucking fault of his own.
He leaned forward and shoved a hand through his hair. Sweet Buddha Christ, and all the vampire gods thrown in together, he didn’t want to do this thing.
He scoffed mentally, then offered a deep disgusted grunt into the air. He knew about pain. He’d been on close terms with cuts, bruises, and suffering from the time he could remember. His father had been a sadistic brute and had taken the flesh off his bones a hundred times with his whips and razor-sharp knives.
Dear old Dad.
His sire had been a sociopath who tortured his children. Worst of all, though procreation was rare in their long-lived world, his father had been one of the few extraordinary vampires able to sire as many offspring as he liked. And his siblings had all suffered as he had.
All of them.
Yes, his pain went deep, his disgust even deeper for the governing Council who had accepted Daniel’s bribes and lain down for him, one and all.
When Lily began to stir, even to stretch her arms over her head, he rose from his chair and moved to the doorway. His housekeeper, who oversaw all of his homes, sat in a comfortable chair in the opposite alcove, reading the Vampire Quarterly.
She lifted her gaze, then her brows. “How’s she doing?”
“Starting to wake up. Is the soup ready?”
She nodded and unfolded her legs from the chair. Setting the journal aside, she headed to the kitchen.
When he turned to look at Lily from the doorway, her eyes were open. Her fingers moved uneasily over the edges of the sheet and blanket that covered her. “Where am I?” she asked.
“South Africa, a good five thousand miles from Italy. No lakes around.” He tried to smile, but the panic in her eyes as she put a hand to her throat set his lips once more in a tight line.
He returned to his chair, pulling it close to the bed. He reached for her hand and held it in his. She had long fingers and beautiful nails. He lifted her fingers to his lips. A swell of emotion tightened his jaw.
“You drowned,” he said. Some things need to be faced head-on.
She nodded, tight bobs of her chin. “When will this horror stop?” she murmured, not meeting his gaze.
He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the bed, folding her hand into both of his. “Hey, you’re alive. Right now, that’s all that matters.”
She let go of a quick sigh, nodding once more.
“Think about why you’re doing this.”
Her gaze slid to his and she frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I’ve decided, knowing all that I sense about your character, that you’re not doing this for money, are you?”
She shook her head. “Not even a little.”
He watched her eyes fill with tears.
“I wish you’d tell me.” There it was again, that profound need he felt to have her trust him.
“I can’t.” She shook her head back and forth, her gaze looking panicked again.
He eased back on pressuring her. “It’s okay. But I hope at some point you can trust me enough to tell me.”
She glanced around the room. “This is really nice.” Then her gaze drifted to the ceiling and her eyes widened. “Oh, my God.”
Adrien looked up as well. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” This part of the cavern was on a long ridge of granite that he’d had tunneled out into various living quarters. Vampire craftsmen had then chiseled and polished the ceiling of his apartment into a variety of patterns. “This design is called ‘The Brook.’”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not seeing it. I suppose there’s sort of a flow of water.”
He chuckled. “No, the design was named after the creator, Edgar Brook.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I believe Mr. Brook must be a genius.”
“He was. He died about three hundred years ago.”
She shifted her gaze to him once more. “Are you saying that this cave, in this state, has been around that long?”
He liked that the color was returning to her face. “Yes, that long.”
The housekeeper arrived with a tray bearing a small tureen of soup.
Lily moaned. “That smells like heaven.”
“We’re indebted to the age of electricity,” she explained. “And to hydroponics. We have acres of the best vegetables in the world growing deep in this system.”
Lily pushed herself to a sitting position, and the housekeeper carefully placed the tray over her lap. She said she hoped Lily enjoyed the soup then left the room. Adrien listened to the sound of her soft-soled shoes disappearing down the hall.
Lily wore a white cotton nightgown with small pleats across the bodice, which made her look youthful, even fragile. Her hair was clean and she swept it back with one hand to rest over her shoulder. As she lifted her spoon and dipped, Adrien didn’t know what to make of this woman or her sudden appearance in his life.
She didn’t look at him as she ate. The trip of her spoon from lips, to bowl, to broth and back, became a slow, steady progression.
He waited until she had finished the last bite, then rang the bell. The housekeeper returned to take the tray.
Adrien knew the time had come to tell Lily what needed to happen next, but she was already sliding out of bed. “We need to get to that club. What time is it? Wait, I didn’t sleep through the night, did I?”
He glanced at the clock. “No. We have several hours till dawn, but Lily, we’re not going there, at least not yet.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, and her brows rose. “Why not? I mean, I’ve recovered. I feel fine. I really do.” The whiteness of her complexion belied her true condition. Hell if he didn’t admire her all over again.