Mile High with a Vampire by Lynsay Sands
Fourteen
Quinn noted the shocked expressions on the faces of the people in the room and felt her mouth compress. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, but she’d woken up to find herself being carried into her bedroom. Humiliated that she’d basically puked all over Lucian Argeneau in front of everyone, she’d kept her eyes closed and feigned that she was still unconscious, fully expecting that she’d be put in her bed, and left to rest and heal. She hadn’t expected Jet and the women to have a powwow in her room that would tear away the blinders she’d worn since she was six. But the moment Jet had asked what was going on and how she could faint and vomit—both of which were things she too hadn’t expected or even imagined were possible for an immortal—she’d had to listen.
It had been hard not revealing she was awake. She’d had to bite her tongue to keep from gasping at several points, and a couple of revelations had been horrifying enough to cause nausea in her again. A possible life mate to the bastard who had murdered her beautiful mother and cousin, as well as her stepfather, the kindest man she had ever known? The very thought made her shudder with dismay.
But they were right; the scenario they painted explained her life perfectly. She’d been manipulated by fears she hadn’t even known she’d had her whole life. And a self-loathing she hadn’t understood the source of, Quinn acknowledged. Because it had been self-loathing that had made her the dutiful daughter and submissive wife, afraid to think for herself or even consider doing something her adopted parents or Patrick might not have agreed with. Yes, when she thought about it, this did explain her life. But that explanation didn’t at all match with the monster’s actions.
“Well?” she said now, shifting to sit up in bed and lean against the headboard. “Why would this leader of the Brass Circle try to kill me if I’m a possible life mate? Shouldn’t he be desperate to claim me?”
“Well, hell,” Mary muttered. “You weren’t supposed to hear any of that.”
“No, of course not. Why should I know my own history?” she asked dryly.
“Because you are supposed to discover it in therapy, gradually, as you are mentally ready to learn it. Not have the veil ripped away and your past forced on you when you might not be prepared to hear it,” she said on a sigh, and then eyed her briefly before asking, “How do you feel?”
“Pretty goddamned pissed, Mary,” Quinn said grimly. “I’ve been manipulated my whole life by my own mind and I don’t think I enjoyed the ride.”
“Oh, now, Quinn, that’s . . . well, actually, a pretty apt description,” she acknowledged.
“Having to always be the good girl, the dutiful daughter, anything to please Mom and Dad, and then Patrick, lest they figure out I’m—”
“Tainted?” Basha suggested quietly. “Somehow wrong inside? Unredeemable for feeling anything benevolent for a monster?”
Quinn let her breath out on a puff and nodded unhappily. “Although I didn’t know about the benevolent feelings for a monster part,” she said wearily. “I just always thought there was something wrong with me, and if I didn’t behave everyone would figure it out and . . .” She shrugged.
Quinn sat up straighter and waved those feelings away. They could wait. Raising her eyebrows, she peered around at the women in her room, and said, “Well? Why would a possible life mate try to kill me?”
“Unfortunately, that is the one thing we have not worked out yet,” Marguerite admitted solemnly, and then turned to Mary. “Unless you have?”
Mary shook her head. “It’s a new and unexpected development.”
“Maybe he’s jealous that Jet is your life mate and you appear to be choosing him,” Sam suggested.
“Except that Jet hadn’t even spoken to Quinn before the plane crash caused by the bombs,” Mary pointed out. “In fact, if anything, the crash did more for getting those two together than any of our scheming to get him on that plane when Pet finally convinced Quinn to come to Canada for counseling.”
Quinn turned to Jet with surprise to find him eyeing Mary and Marguerite narrowly. But then he seemed to sense her attention on him and offered her a crooked smile. “It was supposed to be my day off, but then Bastien called and asked if I could copilot for Jeff Miller on a long-haul flight: Russia to Italy to Toronto.” He shrugged. “I didn’t have any plans, and Miller was a friend, so I agreed and caught a red-eye to Russia.”
“Yes,” Marguerite sighed. “When Pet called to tell me she’d convinced Quinn to come to Canada for counseling, I asked Bastien to arrange for you to copilot her flight. The intention was to throw you two together naturally. But what we had not considered was that as the copilot you would not meet and greet the passengers as you do when you are the pilot. Jeff greeted them while you stayed in the cockpit doing preflight checks. If not for the crash, you may not even have known she was on board unless one of the Russian girls got bored and came to talk to you in the cockpit and mentioned it,” she said with a frown.
Jet shook his head. “That wouldn’t have happened. Jeff was old-school. He didn’t like anyone in the cockpit but the pilot and copilot, and discouraged anyone from thinking they should come up.”
“Just so,” Marguerite said on a sigh. “I cannot call the crash lucky, because I liked Jeff Miller and he lost his life in it. But the two of you would not have met and found you were life mates on that flight without it.”
“Right,” Sam muttered, drawing everyone’s gaze back to her. “So, the Brass Circle monster who may be Quinn’s life mate isn’t trying to kill her out of jealousy.” She pursed her lips briefly, her face scrunching up in thought, and then her eyes suddenly widened and she suggested, “Maybe it’s not him that’s trying to kill Quinn. Maybe it’s the Brass Circle trying to kill her. Maybe they’re worried that he might abandon the group to be her life mate, and even join the good side and spill all their secrets. Maybe he’s here because he’s trying to save her from them.”
Well, that definitely had everyone thinking, Quinn thought wryly as she peered around at the reactions on the faces of the others. Jet and every woman there was looking wide-eyed at the suggestion. Because it was possible, and definitely made more sense than that the monster was trying to kill her if she was his life mate.
“Then why hasn’t he tried to contact her?” Jet asked, and turned uncertainly to Quinn. “He hasn’t, has he?”
“No,” she assured him solemnly, and didn’t miss the relief on his face.
“How was he supposed to contact her?” Sam asked. “Call the Enforcer house and ask to speak to her? What would he say when Mortimer or I asked who was calling?” Taking on a deeper voice Quinn supposed was meant to be male, she said, “Uh, well, she may not remember me, but I’m the guy who killed her parents so horribly, and I’m sorry for that now because it turns out we’re life mates.” She raised her eyebrows at the end as if to say, Ridiculous.
They were all silent for a minute, and then Basha pointed out, “His being here to try to save her from the Brass Circle would explain things nicely.”
“Yes,” Marguerite agreed thoughtfully, and then frowned. “I wish the Enforcers in Italy would hurry and get through those tapes. It would help if we knew if he was the one who planted the bombs or not.”
“They have finished and we do know,” Basha told them. “The second man in the picture is the only one caught on film around the plane. It seems he was interrupted as he set the second bomb and had to hide, then slip out of the hangar. We believe that is the only reason the second bomb merely damaged the engine it was placed in and did not destroy it completely like the first bomb did to the other engine. It is the only reason Captain Miller was able to get that second engine going again. The special investigator Lucian called in says the engine was damaged enough that it could only have worked at half capacity, but that was enough for him to get the nose up, even if it was too late to avoid a crash altogether.”
“Then it is possible that he is not involved in trying to kill her,” Mary murmured.
“But he was at the airport with the one who did,” Jet pointed out.
“He could have been sent to help kill her, but is pretending to go along with it and trying to warn her at the same time,” Sam suggested.
“But he hasn’t warned me,” Quinn reminded her.
“Well, he did show himself to you outside the store,” Sam said slowly. “Maybe that was him trying to warn you. It’s not like he could have walked in and talked to you with Russell and the rest of us there.”
Quinn was considering that when Marguerite said, “You need more blood, dear. You’re pale and your head doesn’t seem to be paining you as it did after you downed the first two bags. The nanos must have stopped repairs until you get more blood for them to work with.”
“Maybe they’re done,” Quinn said hopefully, and immediately had Mary at her side unwinding the cloth from around her head.
“Not done,” she assured her solemnly, but didn’t rewrap her head. “The wound is closed, but your head is still dented. You need more blood.”
“Here.” Sam walked to the bedside table, and opened the door, revealing the interior of a refrigerator stocked with bags of blood. Retrieving three of them, she handed them to Jet and then closed the door. Straightening then, she noticed the other women eyeing the bedside table with interest, and said, “Custom-made. You each have one in your room. Except maybe for you, Basha,” she added apologetically. “I had no warning you and Marcus were coming. I’ll go down and fetch some blood for you now so you can put it in the refrigerator next to your bed.”
“I will come help you,” Basha said, following her out of the room.
“I guess we should leave you to feed and rest,” Marguerite said now. “We can talk about this more later.” Her mouth firmed before she added, “After we talk to the men and find out if they have any kind of plan to end these attacks on your life before the Brass Circle crashes through the gates in a van rigged out as a car bomb and blows us all up.”
“Or they take control of a pilot’s mind and make him crash his plane into the house,” Mary added dryly, moving around the bed to follow Marguerite to the door. Once there she paused and glanced back to offer, “If you feel the need to talk about anything, I’ll be downstairs. Otherwise, I guess we can have another session tomorrow, same time as we did today.”
Quinn managed to hold back a grimace and whispered a polite, “Thank you,” as the woman left.
“You seem less than eager for more counseling,” Jet said with amusement once the door had closed behind the women.
Quinn shrugged, and accepted the bag of blood he held out to her. “I kind of just want a little time to absorb what I’ve learned so far.”
“It has been a lot,” he said solemnly.
“Yeah,” she sighed, and then smiled crookedly and said, “Lucky you, getting stuck with the most screwed-up immortal possible for a life mate.”
Jet was silent as she popped the bag of blood to her fangs, and then took a minute to rearrange their pillows so that they could both lean back against the headboard. Once they were settled comfortably, he said, “I think I mentioned that people like to talk to me on the flights I pilot.”
Quinn nodded, and eyed him with curiosity over the bag of blood at her mouth.
“Well, it’s because of that I can tell you that you are not the most screwed-up immortal out there,” he assured her. “Heck, Mary, Marguerite, and Basha can all probably give you a run for your money on that count.”
Quinn’s eyes widened and she pulled the bag from her mouth as it finished emptying. “No way,” she said with certainty as he took the bag and replaced it with a fresh one.
“Way,” he said, urging the hand holding the bag toward her mouth until she popped it in place. “Marguerite apparently had a monster of her own who she thought was her life mate, but wasn’t. The bastard spent a couple of centuries doing some horrible things to her,” he announced, and then added, “And Basha?” He grimaced. “She probably wins the award for most screwed-up life thanks to a monster named Leonius Livius. She spent more than twenty-seven hundred years in a sort of hell thanks to him.” He was silent for a minute and then said, “It’s not just the female immortals who have their demons either. Santo has one hell of a history. You should ask Pet about it sometime. It’ll make you grateful you only had thirty years or so of what was basically mental conflict to deal with.”
Quinn frowned. His words made her troubles sound somehow trivial, and she was torn between being offended and wanting to believe they were and therefore might be easier to get over. Which is why she almost laughed around the bag at her mouth when he said, “Not that I’m trivializing what you’ve been through.”
Pulling the now empty bag from her mouth, she arched one eyebrow and asked, “No?”
“No,” he assured her, taking the empty bag to drop in the garbage bin on his side of the bed. He picked up the last full bag from his lap, but didn’t hand it to her right away. Instead, he shifted it from hand to hand, and said, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like to watch those men from the Brass Circle torture and murder the rest of your family. And then to feel whatever you did when the murderer touched your hand or arm afterward and you felt whatever you felt.” He shook his head. “I’m staggered that you came away from it as well as you did. I mean, that has to seriously screw up a kid. But you packed those memories away where they couldn’t hurt you and got on with life.”
“But they did hurt me,” Quinn said with a frown. “I was always struggling to be good for fear I might be as bad as him.”
“Is that so bad?” he asked solemnly. “I mean, I know it wasn’t good for you emotionally to never feel secure in love, but you didn’t get into drugs, didn’t end up a statistic of teenage pregnancy, you didn’t even flunk out of school and become an alcoholic or something. Instead, you became an overachiever. You’re a cardiothoracic surgeon, Quinn. You yourself told me there are less than four thousand of those in America. And you even had a son while you were at it, and a brilliant son, who you did a hell of a job with.”
“Do you think so?” she asked with concern.
“Oh, hell, yeah,” he assured her. “I really like Parker. He’s smart, he’s funny, and he’s not afraid of anything as far as I can tell from the couple of dozen times I’ve talked to him.”
“That many?” she asked with surprise.
Jet shrugged. “I didn’t just talk to him on the plane when they flew places. Pet and Santo were always bringing him to the Notte family shindigs, and for some reason the boy usually ended up coming to talk to me. He’s a good kid.”
“He did talk about you a lot after the family functions he went to with Pet,” Quinn admitted. “I had no idea who you were, but he seemed to like you a great deal.”
“I’m glad, but right now I’m more interested in his mother, and I have to tell you, I think you really rocked your mortal life. I suspect you’ll do the same with your immortal life too. But more importantly, I think you’re a good person. I like you, Quinn. When we’re together, whether we’re talking or whatever, I feel like we’re on the same wavelength.”
“I do too,” she acknowledged softly.
They stared at each other silently for a minute, and then Jet cleared his throat and held up the last bag of blood. “Here. You’d better get to work on this before I’m tempted to kiss you.”
Quinn accepted the bag and popped it to her fangs, but really would have rather he’d kissed her. Because she liked him too, and she was really starting to think she might not have as much stuff to work out as she’d thought. She supposed finding out the motivation behind her actions helped. She suspected Mary and Marguerite were right about what had happened after her mother and stepfather had been murdered. As they’d speculated on what may have happened, she’d had a flash of her wrist being grabbed, and a sudden rush of confusing feelings. She still wasn’t sure what they would be called. Her adult mind hadn’t recognized it as desire when she’d experienced those sensations again in her memory. Quinn could only say it had been an odd awareness, and a tingling that had pushed her terror and grief away and left a yearning for the safety she sensed she would find from the man touching her.
Which hadn’t made any sense at all, especially when she had watched his brutal abuses of her mother, stepfather, and cousin just moments before. So Quinn had immediately been ashamed of herself and tried to distance herself from the feelings. Apparently, she’d found a way, by blocking the memory of it from her mind. But it had meant blocking the memories of most of her childhood as well, which had made it impossible for her to understand her own motivations most of the time.
A shaft of pain slid through her head and Quinn’s fangs nearly tore through the bag at her mouth before she forced her jaws to relax.
“What is it?” Jet asked, turning toward her. “Are you in pain?”
She started to nod her head, but that just exacerbated her pain, and she closed her eyes on a moan.
“Oh, yeah, you are,” Jet breathed, sounding dismayed, and she opened her eyes to see him staring at her forehead with fascinated horror.
Quinn reached for the bag at her mouth, wanting to ask what was wrong, but Jet caught her hand.
“No. Leave it. You’ll get blood everywhere. Besides, it’s almost empty,” he told her, and then added, “And you’ll need it.”
Quinn grunted impatiently and raised her eyebrows when he shifted his gaze down to her face, the best she could do to ask why he’d said that.
Apparently, he got the gist. After a moment to grimace at whatever he was seeing, Jet explained, “You really hurt yourself when you fainted. You had an open wound on the side of your forehead that was bleeding, but it was also . . . well, it looked like your skull was all broken and caved in where it hit.”
Quinn winced at the description. That explained her pounding head.
“When Mary removed the bloody nightgown from your head and checked your injury up here, the wound was closed, but you still had a great dent in your head,” he continued. “But I’m pretty sure the nanos are repairing your skull now. The dent is kind of pushing its way back out.”
Quinn heard the end of that through a terrible, rending pain. It felt like someone was sawing the top of her head off rather than repairing it. She knew the brain didn’t have any pain receptors, but the meninges—a membranous covering of the brain—and periosteum—a membrane covering on the bones—as well as the scalp itself did have pain receptors and every one of those receptors appeared to her to be screaming in agony. It was unbearable, and she couldn’t stop a whimper from slipping out.
“Okay. Okay,” Jet said soothingly, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her against his chest. He held her like that for a minute, rubbing her back, and then stopped to tug the finally empty blood bag from her mouth.
“What can I do? How can I help?” he asked as he tossed the bag onto the bedside table. When she hadn’t answered by the time he turned back, he eased her to lie down on the bed, and started to slide away. “I’ll go see if there’s some kind of drug they can give you. I know immortals are drug resistant, but there must be something they can—” His words died abruptly when she grabbed his hand to stop him, and tugged, although not as hard as she could have. She didn’t want to force him back into bed against his will; she just wanted to stop him.
Quinn had been given drugs to help her through the turn four years earlier and hadn’t cared for the hungover feeling she’d had on awakening. Besides, she suspected she wasn’t going to be conscious long anyway. The pain in her head was building to a crescendo that kept her fully occupied as Jet settled back on the bed, eased down to lie next to her, and drew her onto his chest.
He started to rub her back again, and she could hear him murmuring soothingly through her pain, but couldn’t understand what he was saying. Still, it was comforting and she appreciated it, right up until the pain suddenly intensified and her screaming shut out his voice.