“Because I love you as you are. Even when you scare the crap out of me by putting yourself in danger.”
“Sweet-talker.”
He brushed a kiss across her lips, then a second and a third. “You are so tempting.”
“Do you want to call it a night?”
“Yes.”
“But?”
“We need to find a newbie vampire to tag. It’s taking too long. And I was serious when I said I want this shit to end.”
She nodded, face full of regret. “Me too. Let’s get going then and tag one of these bastards before another immortal gets tranqed.”
“Where do you want to search next? UNCG?”
“I think Krysta and Étienne are hunting there tonight.”
“Duke?”
“Sounds good.”
Looping an arm around Lisette’s waist, Zach drew her up against him. “Too tempting by far,” he said with a smile and teleported them.
As soon as the darkness faded and Duke’s campus materialized around them, a foul breeze struck, carrying with it the scents of blood and death.
Zach stiffened and looked around.
Whimpers sounded in the distance, accompanied by growls and laughter.
He jerked his chin to the north. That way.
Lisette nodded, face grim.
Zach took off, streaking through the campus at speeds he knew Lisette could match, always conscious of her at his back.
In the loading dock behind a building Zach wasn’t familiar with, half a dozen vampires crouched in the shadows. Zach drew daggers and peered around the corner, motioning for Lisette to stay behind him.
Like jackals, the vampires feasted on two females, lips locked on every major artery. The girls appeared to be college students. As did the two males, who had been disemboweled and tossed aside like discarded toys. One was dead. The other died seconds after Zach’s arrival. The heartbeats of the females, if they lived, were too faint for Zach to hear above the snarling and bragging and bullshit spouted by the vampires, one of which bore the appearance of a newbie.
How many? Lisette asked in his head as she drew her shoto swords.
Half a dozen. Only one looks to be of the new breed of vampires.
Let’s do this then.
Zach and Lisette stepped from behind the building.
The newbie vampire saw them and rose.
The other vamps followed his gaze and dragged to their feet.
“Who the fuck are you?” one demanded, his mouth and chin slick with blood.
“Is he an Immortal Guardian?” another asked uneasily, and bent to pick up a discarded bowie knife.
“Immortal Guardians don’t walk around shirtless, dumb ass,” the first sneered.
The newbie vampire ignored them and reached behind him.
Zach shot forward, his daggers finding flesh before the vamps even had a chance to react to his first step. As maddened vampires sank to the ground amid a river of blood, the newbie vampire drew a tranquilizer gun from behind his back.
Zach dropped a dagger and grabbed the vamp’s wrist, forcing the barrel of the gun up.
Behind him, Lisette huffed, “Damn it! You didn’t leave any for me!”
Zach said nothing, just stared into the eyes of the newbie, who reached for a tactical knife on his belt.
As the vampire drew his knife, his body relaxed. His fingers uncurled and dropped the weapon. When Zach released the vamp’s other arm, it fell to his side, still clutching the tranquilizer gun.
“You encountered no Immortal Guardians tonight,” Zach told him.
After a pause, the vampire said, “I couldn’t find any Immortal Guardians.”
“The vampires with whom you chose to band together proved to be too volatile,” Zach continued.
The vamp nodded. “Those vamps were freakin’ crazy.”
“So crazy they turned on you, leaving you no choice but to kill them.”
“I had to,” the vamp agreed. “It was kill or be killed.”
“Once they were dead, you found no others with whom you could band together, so you ended your hunt for the night.”
“I’ll start fresh tomorrow.”
“Good. Now open wide.”
The vampire dutifully tilted his head back and parted his lips.
Zach drew the tracking device from his pants pocket and dropped it in the vamp’s mouth. “Swallow.”
Closing his mouth, the vampire swallowed.
“A piece of candy one of the women dropped when the other vampires attacked her,” Zach said. “Strawberry flavored. Delicious. You wish she had been carrying more.”
Again the vampire nodded and worked his mouth as though he could still taste it.
Zach stepped back. “Run along. You saw neither me nor my companion tonight.”
Tucking the tranquilizer gun in the back of his pants, the vampire loped off up a darkened sidewalk.
Zach turned and found Lisette watching him.
“How do you do that?” she asked.
“It takes a great deal of power.”
“Enough to attract the Others?” The threat they posed loomed always in the periphery of her thoughts.
“Not when I only do it once and for such a brief time.”
She tucked her shoto swords away. “You could have let me take care of the weasels while you did your mind-control thing.”
“I wasn’t willing to take the chance. Thus far, none of the standard-fare vampires have carried a tranquilizer gun, but that could change if the new vampires keep failing to capture us and decide to recruit the slacker vamps instead of just using them as bait.”
She drew out her phone, a faint smile toying with the corners of her lips.
“What?” he asked.
“You said us.” She dialed a number. “You’re one of us now. You’re an Immortal Guardian. You’re one of the family.”
He was? Seth had said as much earlier, but . . .
Zach thought about it for a moment and nearly staggered in shock as he realized he did think of himself as one of them.
“Chris?” she said. “Lisette. We need a cleanup crew at Duke.”
Zach heard a security guard strolling their way and sent him in a different direction as Lisette let Chris know where on the campus they could be found. Can you inform him we tagged a vampire without Cliff overhearing? he asked, knowing the vampires who resided at network headquarters could hear both sides of the conversation if they were listening.
She nodded and started pushing buttons on her phone. A few seconds later, she returned it to her pocket. “I texted him. He’ll understand why. And a team will be here in five.”
Zach nodded.
“You look thoughtful,” she commented, bending to check the pulses of the females.
Both were dead like the males, he knew. Once the vampires had fallen, he had heard no heartbeat other than his own and Lisette’s. But Lisette was kindhearted and always hoped their ears deceived them when they were too late to save a mortal.
“What’s on your mind?” she asked as she rose, absently wiping her bloody fingers on her new coat. The old one had suffered too many slashes and stains in recent weeks to be salvaged.
“Nothing really. Just wondering what it’s like.”
“What what is like?”
“Being part of a family.”
She smiled and walked into his embrace. “You’ll know soon enough. Seth and my brothers are already beginning to think of you as such. The rest will, too, in time.”
Zach kept a sharp gaze on the campus around them, ears attuned to anything that might indicate another newbie vampire lurked nearby. “I’m not so sure.”
Two college students strolled in their direction. Zach mentally guided them away.
“Is that what you want?” Lisette asked.
The hesitance in her voice made him pause his vigil and look down at her. “What?”
“Is that what you want—for the rest of the Immortal Guardians to accept you into th
e fold?” Her gaze dropped to his chest. “We’ve never really spoken of the future. Not long-term, anyway.”
“My future is with you,” he said simply. He could no longer conceive of one without her.
Her eyes rose, snaring his. “I want you to be happy, Zach.”
Smiling, he drew the fingers of one hand down her soft cheek. “I didn’t know what happy was until I met you.”
Taking his hand, she pressed her lips to his palm. “Nor I until I met you. But . . .” She shook her head. “Zach, if you aren’t happy here, in North Carolina, mingling with the other Immortal Guardians, we can go somewhere else.”
“You would do that for me?” he asked, touched that she would leave her brothers.
She nodded. “You’ve said little of your past, but what you have said has led me to believe you’ve spent much of your existence . . . isolated. If you aren’t comfortable dealing with over a dozen immortals and their Seconds on a nightly basis, I can request a transfer. We can go someplace more remote—”
“It doesn’t matter where we live, Lisette,” he interrupted softly. “Or how many of your brethren surround us. It won’t even matter if they can’t come to accept me as one of them. All I need to be happy is you. All the family I need is you.”
Rising onto her toes, she brushed his lips with a kiss. “Weren’t the Others like your family?” she asked.
“Not really. We got along and were friends for the most part. But it was friendship that was forced upon us by our circumstances rather than a friendship we chose. We didn’t share the affection Immortal Guardians hold for each other.”
“You never talk about them, aside from letting me know they’re still hunting you,” she said softly. “Do you miss them?”
“The Others? No.” He sure as hell didn’t miss their judgment or their punishments or their fanatical determination to refrain from any and all interaction with . . . well . . . everyone else on the planet.
“Why can’t they just let you go?”
He shook his head. “They fear what will happen if I decide to follow Seth’s example and start dabbling in the lives of humans. They already believe Seth’s actions will one day bring about their downfall. Allowing a second to stray and threaten their existence is unacceptable, so they are determined to capture me and show me the error of my ways. So determined, in fact, that I felt one do a flyby over David’s earlier tonight when we were making love.” Zach still couldn’t believe they had resorted to such. The Others must be getting desperate, with no clue as to where they might find him.
She stiffened. “Did he sense you were there?”
“No. As long as I’m at full strength, they can’t sense me.”
“But you’ve been pouring so much energy into Ami.”
“Forgive me. I should have said as long as I retain my powers, they can’t find me. Even while sleeping or drained of energy I should be safe. Only large bursts of power expenditure will tip them off now.” And while he had been guilty of a few of those while helping Seth search for the betrayer, he had thus far managed to teleport away before the Others could pinpoint his location and catch him.
He smiled down at her. “Besides, the one who flew over earlier was searching for a cold, distant Other, not a man making passionate love to the woman he adores. I would have seemed a stranger to him had he felt my presence.”
“Will he come back?”
“I doubt it. I’m surprised he even dared to venture so close this time. Seth’s and David’s homes have pretty much been designated no-fly zones. Violating that is tantamount to issuing a threat that could incite Seth’s wrath.”
“Do they fear him that much?”
“They don’t fear Seth. They fear the destruction he would unleash if they pushed him too far. They fear the attention it would draw and the consequences that would follow. I’m not sure why Seth is so much more powerful than the rest of us, if it’s simply because he has worked hard to increase his strength and extend his gifts, or if it’s more that we’ve suppressed our own for so long. But when his temper fully erupts . . .”
She grimaced. “I know. I’ve seen it.”
“No, you haven’t. You’ve only had a tiny taste of it. When Seth’s wife and children were slain so long ago . . .” Zach shuddered, remembering the carnage. “It took all of us—all of the Others—and David combined to reel him in. And we took a lot of damage doing it.”
“David was alive way back then?”
“Yes. I don’t think we would have been able to reach Seth without him.”
“What did you do? Did you . . . torture him the way you were tortured?”
Zach snorted. “No. We were too broken and bloody ourselves. We combined our own powers and used them to drain Seth of his. It was a temporary fix. Or punishment. Call it what you will. But it protected the world from his wrath long enough for him to get his shit together.”
He heard the rumble of an approaching vehicle.
“Can they do that to you?” she asked and tightened her hold on him. “If they find you, can they drain your power and take you away from me?”
Yes, they could. And would, if he wasn’t careful.
Zach rested his chin on the top of her head and rubbed her back. “That isn’t going to happen, Lisette. I won’t let it.”
He had too much to lose.
Kidneythieves singing “Before I’m Dead” drew Lisette from slumber. She had been having the most marvelous dream about Zach. He had been laughing—his handsome face carefree, his manner playful—as he walked backward and tugged her after him through a forest. She had been laughing, too, but couldn’t remember why. Just that she had been happy to have his fingers curled around hers and awed by the brilliant rays of sunshine that streamed through the branches and dappled them with light.
Light that didn’t harm her.
Opening her eyes, she found herself stretched on her back on her bed at home. Naked. The covers bunched around her hips. Zach sprawled facedown beside her, pressed up against her side, his head on her chest, a heavy arm draped across her stomach.
“I’m going to kill whoever is on the other end of that line,” he muttered groggily.
“You’ll hear no complaint from me.” She fumbled for the phone she had placed on the bedside table.
“I was having the best dream,” he continued, voice gravelly from sleep.
She looked to see who was calling. Tracy.
“We were in a forest.” He snuggled closer.
Lisette smiled. “Were you holding my hand and pulling me after you?”
He lifted his head. “Yes.”
She winked at him. “I was there.”
He smiled, so damned irresistible with his hair tousled.
“What’s up?” she asked her Second.
“Chris has called another meeting. Everyone needs to be at David’s an hour after sunset.”
“Thanks. We’ll be there.” She returned her phone to the bedside table.
“Perhaps the vampire we tagged produced some fruitful intel.”
“I hope so.” She brushed his hair out of his eyes. “You’ve been pulling me into your dreams, haven’t you? Intentionally?”
He nodded. “I knew you missed the sun and wanted to share it with you.”
Her eyes burned as tears rose. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He brushed a kiss across her lips. “Anything for you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Immortal Guardians and their Seconds once more gathered around David’s long dining table. Ami’s chair remained empty as the coma, as Dr. Kimiko and Melanie now called it, continued to hold her in its grasp.
Was this, Lisette wondered, what it had been like for the others when she had been trapped in that awful darkness? The waiting. The wondering. The worrying.
They had at least had some hope that the drug would eventually wear off in Lisette’s case. With Ami, none knew what to expect, because none were certain what was causing her coma. Every day that she lay unresponsive,
hope suffered another blow. When she had been gravely wounded early in her relationship with Marcus, she had completely recovered within twenty-four hours without any help from Seth or David, her alien DNA having given her incredible regenerative capabilities.
Now, even their aid seemed incapable of returning her to them.
Roland and Sarah had coaxed a weary Marcus into leaving his wife’s side long enough to attend the meeting. Linda now sat with Ami in his stead.
Seated at the table, Marcus cradled his infant daughter to his chest.
Lisette didn’t think she had seen him set the babe down once other than to change her nappy, something for which Jenna had praised him endlessly.
I loved John’s father, Jenna had said, but that boy wouldn’t have changed a dirty diaper if someone had offered him a million dollars to do it.
Marcus had exhibited no such reluctance, though he had been pretty intimidated by the babe’s tiny size the first few times.
His daughter stirred and opened her eyes, a beautiful green like her mother’s.
Beside Marcus, Roland smiled and reached over to cup the soft, downy head in his large hand and give it a gentle stroke. He alone, of all the men present, had had children in his mortal life.
Lisette thought she detected a certain wistfulness in his dark eyes and wondered if he were wishing he and Sarah could have a child together.
Zach squeezed Lisette’s hand under the table. I’m sorry we can’t have a baby.
She smiled up at him. Me too. Immortal Guardian couples had never been able to conceive children.
Conversation floated around the table.
Only David and Seth were absent. David remained in the infirmary, channeling healing energy into Ami until the meeting began. Seth was . . .
Actually, she didn’t know where Seth was. But, based on the two days Zach had spent walking in the shoes of the Immortal Guardians’ leader, she assumed he was taking care of some emergency.
The front door opened.
Chris Reordon strode in, his usual battered briefcase in one hand and what looked almost like a rifle carrying case gripped in the other.
Darnell rose and crossed to take the rifle case.
“Thanks.” Chris nodded a greeting to everyone and joined all of them in the dining room. “Is David with Ami?”
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