I’d made a decision… taken action for once in my pathetic life, and done something to try and protect the people I cared about. What a shock that it had backfired on me, and might well have left those people in even more danger than before, right? And here I was, stubbornly not dead like I was supposed to be, which meant I was going to have to deal with the fallout of my actions.
But I couldn’t face any of it right now. Hell, I could barely stand up right now, and I’d chased away the only shoulder that was available for me to lean on. I eyed the short cobblestone walkway leading to the front door, and the grass on either side of it. It was a testament to the state I was in that I seriously considered lying down on that grass and saying fuck it to the world for a few hours.
But, no.
I eyed the distance between the car and the nearest wall, and pushed off. My knees wavered, but I aimed the resulting stagger in the direction I needed to go, and the wall hit me before the ground did. The wood-plank siding was rough against my palms, reminding me unpleasantly of the tree-cell. By the time I made it to the open door, I had no doubt that I’d acquired a bunch of new splinters to add to my collection. But I was fucking well going to walk through that door under my own steam if it killed me.
I made it inside, but any delusions I’d had of entering to an impressed audience of one vampire were dashed as I gripped the doorframe and looked around at the place. It was tiny—even smaller than the Fae cottage where Dad was being kept.
I clenched my jaw at the unwelcome reminder of one of the many ways I’d failed, and pushed the thought away. In front of me lay a cozy room with a living area with a large hearth on one side, a cooking area with a second exterior door on the other, and a small table with two chairs set in between.
Three interior doors were set in the far wall. Through the left one I could see the end of a bed. Through the center one was a bathroom. The rightmost one was firmly and pointedly shut. Even in my current state, I could read the message contained in those tea leaves just fine, thanks.
I kicked the front door closed with a clumsy movement of my foot, and used the conveniently placed table as a resting spot in my final push to get from the front door to the empty bedroom. When I made it, I closed the bedroom door behind me with more force than was strictly necessary, because fuck it all. Fuck this. Fuck Rans. Fuck the world.
Fuck me.
My eyes fell on an overnight bag. The very same bag I’d abandoned in Chicago when I left with Albigard for Dhuinne. The bag Rans had apparently dragged halfway around the world to a bolt-hole in rural Ireland. My eyes burned, the room growing blurry around me.
No. Fuck all of it.
I stumbled to the bed and fell facedown onto it, fully clothed and probably stinking to high heaven after days of imprisonment and terror. There was no way I’d be able to sleep right now, I thought. Not with so many terrible things swirling around the edges of my mind like ravenous carrion birds sensing a meal.
Darkness swallowed me almost before I’d completed the thought.
* * *
When I awoke, it was dark. I had no idea what time it was now, or what time of day it had been when we arrived—only that it had been daylight. I was hungry and thirsty, and it felt as though a small, furry animal had crawled into my mouth and died of some horrific disease.
With tentative movements, I rolled over and sat up. The terrifying weakness had eased a bit, to the point that I now felt more like I was recovering from a nasty bout of flu, as opposed to being at death’s door. My stomach growled when I registered the smell of something rich and delicious wafting under the closed door.
Was that what had woken me?
The cramping hunger pangs in my belly drove me to shaky feet, propelling me with single-minded purpose toward the source of that mouthwatering aroma. I didn’t even stop to think that venturing out of my bedroom would probably mean interacting with Rans until I entered the main room to find it empty.
My eyes shot to the third door; the one that had been closed before. It was open, and also empty. Rans wasn’t here.
That might have worried me more if it weren’t for the pot warming on the stove. A single light over the counter area illuminated my surroundings—clearly, this place at least had electricity and running water, for all its isolation and rustic charm.
I lifted the lid from the pot, revealing soup. It looked and smelled like vegetable beef, hints of marjoram and thyme teasing my nose. It wasn’t as though it could have been meant for anyone else, so I rummaged around in the cabinets and found a bowl, a spoon, and a wooden ladle that had seen better days.
The small fridge held an assortment of bottled water along with more sports drinks. I grabbed some water and carried my small feast to the table. The light above the counter barely reached the dining area, but the dimness suited my mood right now.
I ate and drank, going back for seconds and eventually thirds. I felt like one big, gaping hole that needed to be filled up before I could focus on anything else. And—oh yes—I was painfully, viscerally aware of how many things required my focus right now. But at the moment, the soup was here, while the person who could answer at least some of the many questions I had was not.
I finished the entire damned pot of soup, along with two bottles of water. When I was done, I dutifully washed the pot, bowl, and utensils, setting them to dry in one side of the sink. Then I succumbed to paranoia and peeked out a front window just to confirm that the car was still there.
It was.
My eyes scanned the darkness outside, illuminated only faintly by the moon as it played tag with banks of clouds. There was no sign of glowing blue eyes… no silhouette of a brooding figure in my field of view. I could have made a circuit of the other windows in the house to check—or just gone outside and walked around the cottage—but Rans had made it clear enough he wanted space.
Besides, now that my stomach no longer felt like a black hole, exhaustion was hitting me again. The soft bed I’d collapsed in earlier suddenly sounded a whole lot more appealing than playing hide and seek in the dark with a pissed-off vampire. I left the kitchen light burning and headed back to my room, pausing this time to undress and pull on an oversized t-shirt before climbing under the covers.
Jesus. I desperately needed a shower. Unfortunately, the moment I touched the bed, my body seemed to grow heavier and heavier until my arms and legs were too difficult to lift. My eyes slid closed once more.
* * *
Daylight. Once again, the smell of food reached my nostrils. Oatmeal, maybe? My stomach rumbled, and I began to wonder how much food it would take to convince my body that it wasn’t being starved anymore.
I felt a little stronger than I had when I got up during the night. As tempting as the smell of breakfast was, the smell coming from my armpits really needed to be dealt with first. I poked my head out of the room, but the little cottage still had that quiet feeling of emptiness about it. The door to Rans’ bedroom was once more standing open. The main room was devoid of life.
I went into the bathroom to scope out the bathing options. An old claw-foot bath had been outfitted with a shower nozzle on a freestanding metal arm, positioned so it would rain down over the center of the tub. There was no shower curtain to prevent splashes, but the tiled floor sloped down to a drain in the center of the small room.
Good enough for me.
The water pressure sucked, but it was at least nice and hot. Scrubbing at the days of grime, I let it flow over my head and face, blocking out the rest of the world. The soap and shampoo options were basic, but I had some leave-in conditioner in my luggage. Brittle hair probably shouldn’t be my biggest worry now, regardless.
I dried off and wrapped the towel around myself before returning to my room. Not gonna lie, here—the silence of this place was starting to get to me. I took comfort in the familiar ritual of moisturizing and picking out my curls, then I noticed something folded up in the corner of my bag.
It was Rans’ shirt—the one I’d s
tolen as revenge after he tore my nightgown. Chewing my lip, I debated for several moments before pulling it out. It smelled like him, with a faint hint of my body lotion layered over his scent from when I’d worn it briefly back in Chicago. I put it on and buttoned all but the top two buttons.
The pot was back on the stove. As I’d suspected, it contained oatmeal. Since my dietary choices still seemed to be relatively low on the list of things likely to kill me, I ladled up a bowl and grabbed a sports drink from the fridge, wishing briefly for orange juice instead.
After blowing on the first spoonful of oatmeal and popping it in my mouth, I made a face and reached for the cheerful little sugar bowl sitting in the center of the table with the salt and pepper. Rans had salted the oatmeal but not sweetened it at all. I wondered if that was an Irish thing… or maybe a Middle Ages thing. With the addition of what was probably too much sugar to counteract the salt, it was surprisingly good.
So… now I was fed, rested, and bathed. Which meant I was quickly running out of excuses and distractions. Real life was going to come crashing back down on my head before long, I was certain.
I staved it off for a few more minutes by brushing and flossing my teeth. Then I repeated the faintly ridiculous ritual of checking that the car hadn’t moved, because seriously—did I think the oatmeal had cooked itself? It was still parked in the same place.
The morning was beautiful. So was the landscape around the cottage. Yesterday’s gray clouds had given way to brilliant sunshine, turning the blue of the sky and the green of the fields to jewel tones.
For the lack of anything better to do, I pulled on some shorts under the oversized button-down shirt and padded outside barefoot. It was pleasantly cool here. Much cooler than it would have been in St. Louis or Chicago in late June.
That gave me pause. It was the end of June, though I couldn’t honestly have said what the exact date was. But I knew it was almost July. It was almost the twentieth anniversary of my mother’s death. A thick feeling clogged my throat, and I swallowed hard to clear it.
I couldn’t face all the things that came along with that realization just now, so I started walking instead of thinking.
It wasn’t obvious whether this place was a farmhouse attached to the surrounding lands, or just someone’s private getaway retreat. There were indeed sheep wandering in some of the fields in the distance, but I didn’t see any outbuildings nearby for keeping animals or equipment. That probably meant it wasn’t a farm.
The area around the cottage was landscaped, with stone paths and hedges and a few carefully placed shade trees. Flowers dotted the meticulously maintained beds at the bases of the trees. My mind flickered back to the choking plant life of Dhuinne, and I shook my head sharply to dislodge the image.
Someone—okay, Rans, since no one else was here—had closed the passenger-side door of the car properly, after I’d left it unlatched. I wandered around the side of the cottage, noting that the kitchen door led onto a little stoop. Beyond lay a modest herb garden. The smell of lavender and basil wafted through the air, carried on the light breeze.
The land behind the house was just grass. No effort had been made here with landscaping, although there was a weathered wood-and-wrought-iron bench set facing toward the rolling green hills beyond.
A figure sat halfway up the nearest hill, picked out in black and white. Rans.
I swallowed hard and walked toward him, the soft grass tickling my bare toes. He was dressed similarly to the first time I’d ever seen him, minus the gruesome bloodstains—dark jeans, white shirt, black leather vest, combat boots. His knees were drawn up, forearms resting on them limply as he gazed out across the valley. He didn’t look at me as I approached—not even when I sat down next to him, separated by an arm’s length, my joints creaking in protest.
“So,” I said, when the silence grew too stifling. “Are we still doing the not-talking-about-it thing?”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he finally glanced over at me, and his gaze dropped from my face to the shirt I was wearing. After a beat, he looked away again, staring into the distance instead.
“Still experiencing incandescent rage whenever I try to think about the last three days,” he said eventually, “so continued silence on the subject would probably be the best plan, yes.”
I pondered that for a minute. “Okay,” I said, not sure how else to really answer.
The silence stretched again, even longer than before.
“It reminds me of home a bit, this place,” he said at length.
I didn’t know what to say to that, either.
We sat, separated by three feet and the unspoken gulf of my betrayal. When it became obvious that neither of us had anything else to contribute to the conversation, I climbed inelegantly to my feet and walked back down the hill to the cottage.
Once inside, I nosed around the place, poking into closets and drawers. I was getting more and more of a ‘vacation home’ vibe from the little house, with the way it was furnished just enough for someone to be able to stay here comfortably, without so much as a hint of anything personal.
There was also precious little in the way of entertainment to be had. No TV, no radio, no computer, no bookshelves. Who normally stayed here, I wondered? I could maybe picture it as a writer’s retreat—a place with distractions so few and far between that someone might pound out an entire novel through sheer desperation to keep the boredom at bay.
That made me think about the copy of Sherlock Holmes I’d bought in Atlantic City. Was it still in my bag?
To my relief, it was. I grabbed a bottle of water and retreated to the worn couch in the living area, angling myself so sunlight from the open window fell across the yellowed pages. I read for a couple of hours, only stopping when I felt the burn of angry tears as I read about Charles Augustus Milverton’s downfall and found myself picturing Caspian in the villain’s place.
I set the book aside listlessly, staring instead at the pattern of bumps on the plaster ceiling until it all started to blur together. I must have fallen into a doze, because I woke to find the sun no longer illuminating the room through the east-facing window. Rans was seated in the chair set at right angles to the couch, watching me over steepled fingers.
I blinked several times in rapid succession and straightened self-consciously from my casual sprawl, feeling my muscles and joints howl in protest. Blue eyes tracked the movement, but I couldn’t read the expression behind them.
“This is stupid,” I said, my voice raspy. “And you’re being a bit of a creeper right now with the whole watching me sleep while you’re angry at me thing. I got enough of that kind of creepy shit from the faeries.”
His face darkened, and that expression was easy enough to read. Fury. Ah, well. We might as well have it out now rather than later, I supposed.
“Tell me what you did back there with the crystal,” I ordered, before he could open his mouth and remind me again how pissed off he was at me. “What the hell is a life-bond?”
His hands fell to rest on his knees, and those icy eyes narrowed. “It’s the thing that’s keeping your head attached to your shoulders. Now—your turn. Tell me why you went behind my back in an attempt to commit suicide. Or maybe suttee would be a better term?”
I frowned at him. “I don’t know what that means.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Suttee—the outdated Hindu practice of immolating oneself on a loved one’s funeral pyre as some ill-conceived act of solidarity.” The words were bitten off in that precise English accent, sharp as knives.
“That’s not what I was doing,” I said.
“Wasn’t it?” he asked.
Now I was angry. “No! Why the hell would you think that?”
The furrow between his brows deepened. “Why would I think that? Possibly because you disappeared while I was sleeping in order to go to a place where you knew your life would be in immediate and mortal danger, in pursuit of someone who is most likely incapable of giving a tinker’s damn
about you or your wellbeing.”
I surged to my feet, ignoring the sharp pains in my knees and hips at the sudden movement.
“Fuck you, Rans!” I snarled. “I left to try and keep you safe—not just to find out what happened to Dad!”
He was on his feet and in my face so fast I barely registered the movement. “To keep me safe… can you even hear yourself?”
His voice was a cold growl as he loomed over me, using his height to advantage.
I shoved at his chest, suddenly enraged. Of course, I grew even more enraged when my shove failed to move him an inch. Instead, I was the one who stumbled back half a step.
“And how did that grand gesture work out for you?” he continued relentlessly.
I shoved at him again, with exactly the same result.
“I had it under control!” I practically yelled. “Albigard was going to try to get Dad out for me, and you were supposed to stay away!”
His eyes flared with inner light at the mention of Albigard’s name, and he caught my wrist when I pulled my fist back to punch him in the chest.
His tone was low and rough when he said, “I did not rescue you from Caspian in St. Louis just so you could seduce one of my few allies into betraying me, Zorah.”
Guilt and fury warred in my stomach. I hauled off and slapped him as hard as I could with my free hand. An instant later, I grunted as my back impacted the front door with a thump. Rans had swung me around in the blink of an eye and now held me pinned against the worn wood, my wrists held in an unbreakable grip above my head, our bodies pressed together from chest to knee.
“Fucker,” I whispered, right before his mouth crashed into mine.
SEVENTEEN
I GROWLED AND KISSED him back, feeling the sudden uncontrollable desire to… just… burn everything between us to the ground. His body was hard against mine. Unforgiving. I bit his lip with enough force to draw blood, and his dick twitched against my stomach. He wrenched away, pulling me with him, whirling me around to face away from him and pushing me against the back of the couch.
The Last Vampire Box Set Page 31
