Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In a daze, I pass the potted plants in front of the arched entrance of the hotel.
Guardians, all dressed in black, fill up the large space.
As soon as my feet touch the thick, colorful carpet in the lobby, all movement stops like someone pressed pause.
All eyes are on me, following my progress towards the elevator doors.
My instincts are screaming at me to run, but I move calmly, my focus entirely on the gated entrances like I belong here.
I don’t. I will never belong here.
Mutt trots next to my leg, aggression coming off of him in waves.
His lips are pulled back in a snarl, saliva dripping from his opened jaws.
The dog looks more threatening than I ever will, but he is being ignored.
No one stops me or even asks why I’m here.
The elevators are so close I can almost touch the cold metal of the door, but before I do, a large body, dressed in black, cuts me off from my escape.
“Where do you think you are going, human?” The monster glares down at me like I’m dog poop on his shoe.
“I’m here to see Sebastian.” I have no idea who the person answering him is, but she has my voice. While I’m freaking out inside, she sounds almost bored. The mutt releases a growl that makes the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand at attention.
“The Italian is not here,” the Guardian says before hissing like a snake at my dog.
“I’ll wait for him upstairs.”
Moving around him like I don’t have a care in the world, I reach for the button of the elevator.
The Guardian snatches my wrist, but not before I press it.
When his fingers close around my wrist, stars burst behind my eyelids from the pain of his skin touching mine.
A gasp is all I manage before mutt closes his mouth over the Guardian’s forearm.
The sound of shredding fabric and crunching bone is as loud as a bullet in the silence that still surrounds me.
Blood drips at my feet, drenching the dog’s muzzle and the tips of my boots.
The Guardian’s other hand, holding a vicious looking knife, lifts in the air just as the doors of the elevator open.
Yanking mutt back, and placing myself between him and the descending blade, I screw my eyes tightly shut, expecting the pain that will follow when the monster stabs me.
I’m even holding my breath, but when bursts of light start dancing behind my closed eyelids, I look up and suck in gulps of air.
The knife is stopped with the sharp pointy end right at the center of my chest. A large hand is wrapped around the blade, blood trickling from it, mingling with all the rest at my feet.
Following the hand, my eyes lock with Marcus’s.
“April?” I’m not sure if it’s surprise or hope that I hear in his voice. It’s almost as if he is scared to believe it’s really me standing here.
You and me both, buddy, I tell him internally.
“I’m here to see Sebastian.” Repeating the same words, it seems that’s all I can say right now.
“I told the human he is not here. She wouldn’t listen,” the Guardian spits angrily.
Marcus and I ignore him, still staring at each other.
I can feel that he is waiting for something, but I have no idea what that is.
We might as well stand here until the morning.
His focus is broken when mutt decides to start shaking his head, jaws still clamped on the offender’s forearm, trying to remove it from the body it’s attached to.
Hissing, the Guardian releases the knife to try and pry the dog off him.
“Don’t touch the dog.” Marcus looks at the vampire standing with us.
I have no idea if he will be fast enough to stop the Guardian if he tries to hurt mutt, so I shove my fingers in the dog’s mouth, doing what I can to unlock his sharp teeth.
Mutt opens his mouth straight away, releasing the limb.
Looking at his round, brown eyes, I try to ignore the blood coating him.
He protected me, and I love him for it, gore and all.
Jumping a foot off the floor when a hand grabs my elbow, I glare at Marcus.
When exactly I stopped being afraid of him is beyond me.
“Let’s go.” Pulling me along with him, we enter the elevator, mutt walking beside me as calm as ever. Like he didn’t almost chew off the arm off of a monster.
All eyes are still on us when I sweep my gaze over the lobby before the doors close in my face.
Marcus says nothing while we go up, still holding me by the elbow.
A strange sense of safety blankets the interior of the tight space.
In no time at all, we reach the top and Marcus strides towards the open door of the penthouse with me right on his heels.
When we are within the walls of the apartment, he slams the door shut and whirls on me like a wraith.
“What were you thinking?” Plastering my back to the door, I gape at his angry face. “You almost gave me a heart attack.” Eyebrows pulled low over his eyes, the tip of his nose is almost touching mine. “And I’m immortal!”
“You didn’t want me to leave, remember.” Screaming the words, I push on his chest, hoping he will give me a little space.
Flying back like hit by a cannon, Marcus smacks into the opposite wall, crumbling into a heap on the floor. My eyebrows hit my hairline, and lifting my hands in front of my face, I look from them to him. What the hell is going on?
Marcus starts chuckling, flipping on his back.
Stretched out with plaster all over his hair and shirt, he shakes his head, the chuckling turning to deep belly laughs.
Maybe the Council did something to them to drive them insane.
There is no other reason he will find this funny while I’m freaking out.
“I’ll be damned if he didn’t succeed.” Fists pounding on the floor underneath him, Marcus keeps laughing.
“What is going on?” Andrei comes from somewhere in the apartment, his hair all messed up, the shirt and the buttons on his pants open. Too much skin and too many muscles exposed for my sanity to stay intact, I look away from him, my face burning.
“Where is Sebastian?” Maybe Andrei was getting ready to sleep, and my screaming and tantrum woke him up. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“You never bother.” He waits until I glance at him before he continues. “Sebastian is not here. The Council took him.”
“I told her this,” Marcus says, lifting himself up. “She ignored it.”
“When will he be back?” Ignoring the jerk still chuckling, I do my best to concentrate on Andrei’s face. His lips twitch for a second when I fail miserably. I am a woman, not a child. I also have a pulse, so he can’t hold it against me.
“He is not coming back.” Marcus stops laughing, and the sadness in his eyes rips my chest open.
How many people need to die because of me?
“Come, April.” Reaching for me, Andrei leads me to the living room, depositing me on a familiar sofa.
“When Marcus tried taking you out of here, Khan confronted Sebastian about it. Telling him you were dead because Sebastian took too much blood didn’t work as we’d hoped.
” Sitting on the edge of one of the chairs, he leans his forearms on his knees.
“Khan called the rest of the Council members. They showed up with their sentinels. There are enough of us, as I’m sure you saw when you came to the hotel, but Sebastian didn’t count on being weak when he confronted them.
You took too much of his blood. We fought, but we couldn’t win.
Not with our Sire weakened as he was. He held them off until he was sure Marcus got you out of here.
As soon as Sebastian was certain you were safe, he made a deal with the Council.
” The blue eyes looking at me swirl with sorrow, making lead pool in my stomach.
I swallow a couple of times before I can speak. “What kind of a deal?”
“He traded himself to save the rest of us.” Looking over my shoulder, I see Marcus leaning at the entrance of the living room, his feet crossed at the ankles and his hands in the pockets of his pants.
“He promised them he would not fight, and none of us would try to free him, as long as they leave us alone. Sebastian is too great of a price not to be traded for a simple runner. They took the deal before he finished talking.”
“They will hold him in a cell I guess for a few centuries or unless he agrees to join them.” Andrei looks at Marcus over my head but shakes his head, dismissing his own comment. “Nah. He will never join them. He will suffer and plot how to get to them after his sentence is up.”
“He is not in a cell.” My words are mumbled under my breath, but instantly, I feel both of them looking at me so intently it’s like they are physically touching me.
“What did you say?” Andrei leans further towards me, poised like a snake ready to strike.
With a deep breath, I lift my head up and square my shoulders.
“I said he is not in a cell. I don’t know what he did to me when he asked me to drink his blood, but there is something wrong with me.
” Waving a hand at Marcus, I blow out the air through puffed up cheeks.
“You saw how I flipped this one as if he was a fly.”
“And how do you know this, bella?” Ignoring the fact that I called him a fly, Marcus’s eyes glitter in the light of the chandelier.
“I saw it through his eyes? My eyes? I have no idea what I was looking through, but I know it wasn’t a dream.
” My chest feels too tight as I remember how I couldn’t move my body while they stared at me from above.
“He is in a casket made of some clear crystal, wrapped in chains. And he is aware, he knows everything that’s happening while they loom over him like vultures. ” The words come in a rush.
“And why are you here?” Marcus asks after him and Andrei and him glance at each other meaningfully.
“I came to help you save him.”