"You wouldn't have noticed me. He hardly did, either." There was an acid resentment in the tone, but something else too. An old, bitter hurt. "His unacknowledged bastard. The only kin he had."
Gideon narrowed his gaze on the other male. "Hugh Faulkner had a son?"
A thin, hate-filled smile stretched the polished facade of his face into an ugly sneer. "A teenage son who watched him die at your hand, slaughtered in the open with less regard than might be shown common swine. A son who vowed to avenge him, even thought he had no use for me in life." Hugh Faulkner's bastard smiled a true smile now. "A son who decided to take from my father's killer the only family he had left too."
Gideon bristled, fury spiking in his veins. "My brothers were innocent children. You arranged for those three Rogues to go in and murder them?"
"I thought it would be enough," he replied evenly. "I thought it would settle the score. And it did, for a long time. Even after I came to America to begin a new life under a new name. A name I built into something prestigious, something respectable: Cyril Smithson."
Gideon vaguely recalled the name from among those of the Darkhaven elite. A wealthy, socially important name. One that could be destroyed within the Breed's civilian circles, if word of its patriarch's ignoble, murderous past were to come to light.
"Knowing I took your last living kin might have been enough, even after I found myself in Boston and watched you carrying out your missions as one of the Order," Smithson went on. "But then my do-gooder Breedmate foolishly donated some of my private things to the university, including my father's sword. When I went to retrieve it, Keaton was in his office pounding into a young slut. She saw me and screamed." The Breed male clucked his tongue. "Well, I couldn't be blamed for what happened next. The girl saw my fangs, my eyes."
"So you killed her too," Gideon said.
Smithson shrugged. "She had to be dealt with. Her roommate, here too."
Gideon followed the vampire's glance toward Savannah. She was breathing hard, breast rising and falling rapidly in her fear. Her eyes locked on to Gideon's, pleading, praying.
Smithson spun the sword idly with his fingers. "This blade was never supposed to leave my possession after the Rogues brought it to me with your brothers' blood on it. You were never supposed to know the truth of what happened that night. Now that you do...well, I suppose it's all come back around to the beginning again, hasn't it?"
The vampire lifted the sword, testing its weight. "I'd never been much good with blades. Crude weapons, really. But effective."
"What do you want, Smithson? A contest to the death with me, here and now?"
"Yes." He met Gideon's seething gaze across the yard. "Yes, that's precisely what I want. But I won't underestimate you the way my father did."
He slanted a look at his Minion. Two shots rang out in rapid succession, a bullet for each of Gideon's shoulders.
Savannah screamed. She struggled in her captor's hold now, her eyes tearing up as she looked at Gideon and the barrel of the Minion's pistol came back to her temple.
He barely felt the pain of the new wounds. His focus was rooted wholly on her, and on the wild, desperate expression in her gaze. He gave a faint shake of his head, unspoken command that she not do anything to risk her own life.
"That ought to level the playing field," Smithson remarked as the gunshots continued to echo through the bayou. "On second thought, another for good measure," he told his Minion. "The gut this time."
The Minion's hand started to move away from Savannah's head. Gideon saw it in agonizing slow motion--the twitch of muscle as the human's wrist began to pivot from its primary target to the new one at his Master's command.
Savannah, no!
Gideon didn't even have time to bring the words to his tongue. She seized the opportunity to shift her weight as the Minion's attention flicked away from her. Savannah knocked the man's arm up, just as he pulled the trigger. The shot went wild, up into the trees, and Savannah broke loose of the Minion's hold.
"Kill her," Smithson ordered.
And in one awful, shattering instant, another bullet blasted out of the Minion's gun. It hit her in the back. Dropped her like dead weight to the ground.
Amelie shrieked and flew off the porch behind him to race to her sister's side.
Gideon roared. Horror and rage bled through him, cold and black and acrid. "No!" he howled, racked with an anguish unlike any he'd ever known. "No!"
He leapt on Smithson, took him down in a hard crash to the ground.
He pounded and beat him, the pair of vampires rolling around in a savage hand-to-hand struggle in the wet grass. Gideon was vaguely aware of the Minion racing toward them, the barrel of his pistol aimed down at the scuffle, but hesitant to shoot and inadvertently snuff his own maker.
Gideon ignored the threat and kept up his punishment of Smithson. They tore at each other, gnashing with fangs and teeth as they wrestled on the ground. Gideon's fury was a hungry beast, waiting for the chance to deal the final blow.
When Smithson turned his head to reach for his lost blade, Gideon pounced with lethal purpose. He grabbed hold of the other male's throat with his teeth and fangs, sinking them deep.
He bit down hard into Smithson's neck, ripping out flesh and larynx in one savage shake of his head.
Smithson jerked and flailed in agony, blood spurting everywhere.
His Minion stood in stunned silence, a brief hesitation that was all the time Gideon needed to finish them both in one strike.
He picked up Faulkner's sword and drove it into Smithson's chest.