Scorched [Pain & Love 3] (BookStrand Publishing Romance)

by Ashlei D. Hawley

  He attacked, and blood spilled on the gravel driveway. Lydia lurched forward, fire painting the night orange and crimson. Jade moved in tandem, flames rippling along her skin, as well. Daria hit the ground, and Jade and Lydia collided with her attacker, gripping him with fingers of fire and tearing him away from their injured sister. He burned faster and hotter than any of the others had and had died without time to scream even once.

  Before the bodies had finished smoldering, Lydia and Jade fell to their sister’s side. Her pale blue shirt was torn across the front, and the skin of her chest just below her collarbone was likewise ripped open.

  “Oh, little mother,” Lydia murmured as she held Daria’s hand and gestured for the first-aid kit. The wound needed to be disinfected. Human or vampire, fingernails carried bacteria and germs beneath them. So close to such a vital organ, Lydia was concerned the injury could poison Daria’s heart. The heart was the most important possession of a Dragon. If they lost Daria’s heart, they lost their sweet little sister forever.

  “Lydia told you to go back inside,” Jade scolded as she held Daria’s other hand. Tears wet her dark lashes and Lydia saw tremors shook her arm. “We didn’t know if the danger was over.”

  Daria smiled up at them and shook her head. The motion seemed to pain her, and she stopped with a wince. “You ruined your robe, Jade,” she pointed out.

  Jade laughed. The sound was shaky. “We can get a new robe, silly. What we can’t get is a new you.”

  Dan handed Lydia the first-aid kit and bunched up the robe Daria had brought out for Lydia. He slid the mound of fabric underneath Daria’s head and stroked her temples soothingly. Lydia tried not to notice, but his care for her sibling left her core melted into a pool of gratitude.

  “Might sting a little, Dar,” Lydia warned as she splashed disinfectant on a large sterile pad. There was so much blood. She needed to get it cleaned away before she could assess how bad the damage to her sister actually was.

  Daria hissed a breath through her teeth when Lydia pressed the first of several gauze pads to the area of the injury closest to the heart. Wiping as gently as she could, Lydia lamented the gored edges of skin and the large amounts of blood coating her sister’s torso. She needed to know why there was so much blood.

  “Maybe we should move her inside,” Mallory suggested, kneeling beside Lydia.

  The Dragon wet another gauze pad and ignored the vampire who spoke to her.

  Leigh, from his position standing guard, spoke up in his smooth voice. “Lydia, she’s right. There’s too much blood for that little first-aid kit to handle. You need towels or sheets. Come, let’s move her out of the open. There could be more threats in the night.”

  Leigh’s words made it through to her, and Lydia nodded. Blood still oozed from Daria’s skin, and the youngest Dragon seemed sleepy and unbalanced as Dan and Jade helped pull her to her feet.

  “Lydia, why do you always have to be naked?” Daria mumbled while Leigh approached.

  The vampire winked at Lydia as he wordlessly offered to carry the youngest McKinney sibling into the house. “She knows how much everyone likes the view,” Leigh suggested with a laugh.

  Dan and Mallory punched him at the same time. The Fallen’s hit packed a good deal more power than Leigh’s glaring youngling’s did.

  Daria clucked her tongue in disapproval, finding Leigh as impossible as she often found Lydia. Not knowing why she was so tired, Daria let her eyes slide closed. She trusted the people who carried her inside. They wouldn’t let anything else bad happen to her.

  Chapter Twelve

  “She’s going, and that’s final.” Lydia’s harsh tone made the perfect accompaniment to her furious pacing as she waited outside Daria’s room for the youngest of the Dragons to wake up. They’d called 911 after she lost consciousness and had received a recorded message. The town had lost its stable function and procedures such as hospital and ambulance services after only a few days of Henry’s siege. Most stores had closed, with gas stations being the only establishments maintaining operation. Because of the ongoing evacuations, the gas stations were a high priority to stay operational and protected.

  The one person Lydia trusted to take care of her sister was the wisewoman, Heddy. Mallory’s grandmother had some healing talent as well and had retired from a career as a nurse. She would be able to tend to the injured Dragon.

  “Jade, you should stay there, too,” Lydia suggested. She stopped pacing momentarily, long enough to lock gazes with her middle sister. She dared the other woman to object.

  Jade gladly delivered. “Like hell I will,” she snapped. “Daria I understand. She isn’t a fighter. But we need to get people out. I know the evacuations are already in full swing, but we need to get as many out as possible. Anyone who hasn’t heard or doesn’t think it’s that serious needs to be told now. We need to take Henry’s food source and bodies to turn away from him. You aren’t putting me under lock and key and doing all of this yourself. No way.”

  Lydia returned to her pacing. She was too worried about Daria to waste energy arguing with Jade.

  “We shouldn’t even wait for her to wake up,” Mallory suggested with worry in her voice. “We should just take her to Gran right now. What if she needs actual medical assistance?”

  “Nine one one isn’t answering calls,” Lydia snapped. “How can we get actual medical assistance if the people who give it can’t be reached?”

  “Gran has better resources than we do, at least,” Mallory retorted. She didn’t want Lydia’s stubbornness to put Daria at further risk. “Let’s just go. The longer we wait without someone who actually knows what they’re doing, the worse off Daria will be if she needs something more than sleep.”

  Lydia didn’t have the spare energy to argue with Mallory either. She jerked Daria’s door open and switched the light on. How long would the night last, she wondered. It had already seemed to go on for a century, at least.

  “Allow me, please,” Leigh offered as he made his way to the side of Daria’s bed. He moved like magic, so quick that Lydia hadn’t seen or felt his passage. Why didn’t he move like that when Daria was attacked, Lydia thought bitterly to herself. She immediately hated herself for trying to switch the blame to him. It had been and always would be her responsibility to protect her sisters. Lydia knew she was the only one who had failed.

  Lydia nodded in agreement as Leigh bent to lift Daria from the bed. Her thick blanket slid down to rest on the mattress, and Lydia’s heart skipped a beat. Blood dotted the fabric. She was still losing blood.

  “Let’s hurry,” Lydia suggested.

  Jade and Daria drove the injured Dragon in Daria’s car. Mallory, Leigh, and Dan drove in Mallory’s vehicle. Dan’s had been nearly destroyed by the feral vampires. He frowned at it as they drove away toward the lake.

  “Looks like you need a new ride,” Mallory commented to break the silence.

  “Yeah, I kinda figured that,” Dan replied with a sigh.

  As they drove, Mallory noted many of the houses along the road were dark. No televisions sent their glowing images into the night to illuminate around the windows, no porch lights pierced the shadows around entranceways. In the area around the McKinney home, many people had already left. Or Henry had taken them. Mallory didn’t like that thought and pushed it away.

  “Do you think Daria will be all right?” Mallory asked. She didn’t even want to be around the injured Dragon anymore. The scent of all the blood made her throat burn with fire of longing. She would have to get blood soon or she wouldn’t be able control herself.

  “She’s lost a troublesome amount of blood, but I do believe she will be fine if we can keep her out of the fray from this point on,” Leigh assured his youngling. He took her hand and squeezed it, noting that she seemed unsteady. “Do you need blood?”

  Mallory flashed her eyes to the mirror, where they locked on Dan’s. Her gaze filled with discomfort and guilt, so he smiled at her before she returned her attention to the road.


  “It’s fine,” Dan encouraged her. “It doesn’t bother me.”

  It still bothered her, but Mallory didn’t admit to it. She nodded at Leigh, the movement barely perceptible.

  “You’ll take from me when we get there, then,” Leigh said in a decisive way.

  “But you need to be at full strength,” Mallory protested. She turned down a dirt road. They were close to her grandmother’s house.

  “It will hardly affect me,” Leigh promised. “We don’t want to risk anyone else being too weak. I’m the best option for a strong team.”

  Mallory reluctantly agreed as she turned into her grandmother’s driveway. Daria’s empty vehicle was already positioned and parked. Jade must have been speeding.

  The two vampires and the Fallen got out of Mallory’s vehicle and moved up to the house. Mallory clicked a button on her key fob until the horn honked. With the vehicle locked, she pushed open her grandmother’s door and walked inside.

  Lydia and Jade had gotten their sister inside. She was in one of Heddy’s spare rooms, draped with blankets on a queen-sized bed. The mattress depressed around her, making it appear as though she was floating in a sea of blankets and softness. She slept without moving, making no expression or sound. Lydia hoped it was a healing sleep and not something worse.

  Dan sat beside her, having brought in a chair from Heddy’s small kitchen. Lydia sat at the foot of the bed rubbing her hand over Daria’s leg through the blanket. She didn’t look at Dan, but she felt comfort from his presence.

  “The others are here,” Dan said quietly. “We should go talk to them.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  She sounded disinterested, and Dan knew he had to pull her away from worrying about her sister. They needed her functioning and focused. “About the fact that the Hunters take on a den in a few hours, with Mallory’s brother and our other officers accompanying them. We need to talk about whether we want to try to help, or what kind of help we could even offer.”

  “I’m not fighting with the Hunters,” Lydia declared.

  “They’d probably kill you on sight, even if you tried,” Leigh put in as he stood in the doorway. “Come on. Dan’s right. We need to talk.”

  Lydia stood after giving her sister’s leg a loving squeeze. “Sleep well, Dar,” she whispered and kissed Daria’s pale cheek. The skin felt colder than Lydia liked, but Daria had always run cool. She stopped herself from inviting trouble and followed the men to the living room.

  Mallory sat with Heddy discussing Junior. Heddy had told Mallory about the boon the previous matron had left with Heddy for Junior’s use. Mallory found herself even more worried for her brother. She didn’t want him to be involved with this fight. She especially didn’t want him to play a crucial role.

  As soon as Lydia entered the room, the conversation turned serious.

  “What are our chances of catching Henry in that den tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Not high,” Leigh answered as he took a seat beside Mallory. The younger vampire had fed and no longer vibrated with the furious energy of her hunger. “Henry has always preferred homes to hovels. This den is supposedly in a park, where they’ve taken up residence in one of the abandoned park ranger stations. The building is barely more than a shell. Henry wouldn’t be able to stand being there. He’s working with the Hunters, so we have to assume this den is filled with his expendable younglings.”

  Even saying the words pained Leigh. It showed on his face, though the ancient could easily have kept his turbulent emotions masked. Converting people into the vampire fold and then discarding them like broken dolls was too much for Leigh to take in. How could the man he’d once respected, the person who’d given him the gift of eternal life, become such a monster? Had he always been? Or had Leigh’s unreturned affections over the centuries made him what he’d become? Guilt twisted within him at the possibility.

  Jade piped up. “All right, so we let the Hunters go in and take out what they can. Screw them. We don’t need to help them.”

  “But the officers,” Mallory put in, twisting her hands.

  “Mallory, he has to go,” Heddy said gently. She took her granddaughter’s hand and held it, preventing the nervous motions. “You can’t protect him.”

  “But there’s no reason why not!” Mallory’s lip quivered, and she hid her face in her hands.

  Leigh rubbed her back. More pain etched lines into his flawless face. “You know there are very good reasons,” he told her. Mallory cried into her hands.

  Lydia sighed and stood. She couldn’t sit still. She had to pace.

  “So we’re useless for what’s coming tomorrow,” she said. “We have to save our strength for what comes next. Agreed?”

  Leigh nodded, as did Dan and Jade. Mallory kept her face in her hands, hating her lack of options.

  “There’s not much room,” Heddy said. “But you’re all welcome to stay here tonight. After tomorrow, we’ll have a better idea of what needs to be done.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dan followed Lydia when she left the house and made for the dock. She’d spent several sunny days in the summer of her youth at Heddy’s lakeside home, though, strangely, she’d never interacted with the wisewoman’s grandchildren. Her mother had drawn power from the water. Sitting on the dock made her feel closer to her mother, less lost than she had been in the years since her death and the destruction of her heart.

  Dan hesitated in his approach, not knowing how to say what he needed. They had to keep looking for the Hunter strongholds. The closer they came to driving the Hunters from the city, the more likely the chance they would lose the last secret Dan had been keeping from the Dragon sisters. He didn’t want to tell Lydia until they’d found it, but she needed a reason to leave Daria unprotected for the night. They had to find the stronghold.

  “Lydia,” he said as he sat beside her. She actually smiled at him, which set the conversation up to be even more difficult. He couldn’t return the expression. He looked out over the water and sighed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Besides everything, of course.”

  At her blandly spoken declaration, he couldn’t help but find his smile. He took her hand, hoping she wouldn’t refuse to touch him for the rest of her life after he gave her his final confession. If she did, he would take the physical contact he so desired of her now, before she had a reason to deny him.

  “We need to go look for the Hunters,” he told her, hoping he could draw her away without giving her a reason. She looked shocked by his request, though, and he knew his suspicions had been right. She wouldn’t leave Daria.

  “We’re waiting until after the raid on the den,” she replied in a confused voice. “We can’t go out now, not with Daria…” She trailed off, and her eyes narrowed behind the thin frames of her glasses. “What’s so important about finding them that you think I’d risk leaving my sister alone tonight?”

  He didn’t draw his hand away from her, because he assumed she’d be jerking hers away momentarily. Instead, he gripped her fingers more tightly between his and brought their entwined hands up so he could kiss the back of hers. “I didn’t want to tell you before because I thought it might make you reckless, but there’s an advantage the Hunters have over us that can be negated if we take something from them.”

  “I’m listening,” Lydia said with suspicion coloring her words.

  Taking a deep breath, Dan debated for several seconds whether easing her into the information or delivering it bluntly would be the best idea. Going with blunt, he announced, “The Hunters never destroyed your mother’s heart. They have it. With it in their possession, a spell is maintained that keeps your powers locked. If we can retrieve the heart, we can return your access to your Dragon form. Your sisters’, as well.”

  Lydia drew her hand back slowly from Dan. She looked out over the water and absorbed the information he’d just given her. On one hand, she felt a swell of joy at the thought of her mother’s heart being out the
re, able to be reclaimed. They could have their mother back. She wasn’t gone forever. The knowledge opened up a part of her heart and flooded it with internal tears of pure happiness. On the other hand, Dan couldn’t have kept anything more important from her. On that hand, he needed to be punched. Hard.

  She punched him. Startled by the quick movement delivered from what he’d thought was shocked motionlessness, the move knocked him so off balance that he fell right in the water. Lydia thought about going after him to pummel him, but she didn’t feel like getting wet. Instead, she bent over the side of the dock and reached for him. She grabbed what should have been air, but felt the invisible yet solid form of Dan’s wing stumps.

  The pain couldn’t have been worse if she’d grabbed his sac with her sharp-nailed fingers, dug them in, and twisted. He howled in legitimate pain.

  While Dan spluttered and coughed up cold lake water, breathless from the assault he didn’t even know she’d been aware she could inflict on him, Lydia stood and glared down at him. “Get ready, you asshole,” she snapped as she turned on her heel. She walked toward the house without another word, intending to never speak to Dan more than she needed to for the rest of her life.

  He shakily dragged himself out of the water and collapsed on the dock, trying to relearn how to breathe before he followed her inside.

  * * * *

  Leigh and Mallory were glad to have something to do, but they didn’t enjoy the reason for their newly needed nocturnal activity. Lydia had entered Heddy’s home after her alone time on the dock looking like she should have been enveloped in hellfire. Instead, only her golden eyes burned, though her voice held enough ire it felt like the lash of a flaming whip.

  “Two teams. We find the Hunter stronghold tonight,” she’d announced to Leigh and Mallory. “We’ll hopscotch. You and Mallory, me and dickhead. He’ll give us directions between each hit. We need to do it fast and quiet.”