Midnight's Kiss(38)

His expression turned impatient. “The risk to me only means you’ll have to hurry.” He paused. “I’m pretty sure we’re underneath San Francisco.”

“Yeah, I figured that out already.”

“That means help is a lot closer than you realize,” he told her. “When you get out, you shouldn’t just call your mom. You need to call Xavier too — he’ll be able to get trustworthy people to you much faster than Tatiana could.”

She cast a leery glance over her shoulder at the empty cells. “Do you have any idea where we are in the tunnel system?”

“Nowhere I recognize.” He angled his face up toward the chains overhead and braced his body to pull on them again. “If I had ever seen these cells or heard of them, I would have had them filled in with cement a long time ago.”

As he strained to break free of his bindings, her gaze pulled back to him.

She didn’t want to look. She didn’t. But she also couldn’t help herself.

Nothing about Julian was smooth or civilized. His powerful, heavily muscled body still retained a deep, burnished tan from when he had been human, and he still carried all the scars he had acquired throughout his years of waging war. The rough life he had lived showed on his hard face — while he had been turned in his midthirties, he looked more like a man who was in his midforties.

His looks might be rugged, but he didn’t carry an ounce of extra fat anywhere on him. While certain parts of Roman society had been famous for its excesses, it was clear that Julian had not taken any part of it. His tastes ran to the simple, even Spartan.

That had been another thing that had attracted her to him. Given the many opportunities to indulge in excess that he must have encountered throughout the centuries, he still maintained an aura of mature, settled discipline.

She had tried before to imagine him as a young Gladiator in the arena. Back then he must have been as dangerous as a lean, half-starved alley cat. Now, the alley cat had long since vanished. What stood in his stead was a scarred and even more deadly lion who carried the weight of having lived for many years in his prime.

The muscles in his biceps, chest and flat abdomen bulged as he heaved again at the chains. He was an old Vampyre, on a par with Justine in terms of sheer age, and given the years of the blood oaths he had taken, Melly thought she had some kind of inkling just how Powerful he really was. Yet there wasn’t an inch of give in his restraints.

Disquieted, she swallowed hard. “Justine built this place too well.”

Spearing her with a sidelong glance, he said, “Yes, and none of it is new construction. She must have been using these cells for years.”

Rubbing her arms against the chill, she looked around. “You never could fully eradicate the feral Vampyre problem.”

“No, I couldn’t. No matter how many times I burned out the tunnels, eventually they always came back. Whether it was fair or not for them to judge me on that, it’s always been a black mark against me in the Nightkind council.” He wiped his face on one bare arm. “This has got to be a completely separate tunnel system, or I would have found it before now.”

Her body wasn’t doing very well at warding off the deep underground chill any longer. Shivers ran through her muscles, and she felt too hollow, almost lightheaded. She forced herself to concentrate. “What happened to turn Justine rogue? Do you know?”

His attention focused on her. “That’s right, you don’t know any of the events from the last two days. She tried to have Xavier assassinated.”

“What?!” She hadn’t thought she had any room in her to be shocked at anything else, but she was wrong. “Please tell me he’s all right.”

He gave her a grim smile. “Luckily, Xavier is one tough son of a bitch to kill. He needs some recovery time, but he’ll be fine.” Telling the story in a few concise sentences, he filled her in on what had happened in the Nightkind demesne over the last forty-eight hours.

She grew more dazed as she listened. When he reached the part of exploring Justine’s property, tears sprang into her eyes. “All of them,” she echoed. “She murdered all ninety-two of them.”

“Yes.”

Some crimes were unfathomable. Dashing a hand over her eyes, she fought to steady her voice. “I knew some of those people. Not well, but still, I knew them. Sofia. Her majordomo, Peter. He was always so charming.”

Julian’s hard expression, normally so cold whenever he looked at her, seemed to soften. “I know.” After a few moments, he said quietly, “Melly, I think you might be going in shock.”

“I’m all right.” Her voice sounded flat and dull, and she couldn’t muster the energy to put any strength into the words.