Maria hesitated. “I don’t like it—”
“Didn’t you hear the way he screamed my name? He was desperate for me. Desperate.” Chills raced down her spine at the memory of the anguish in his voice as he charged Damon. She had no doubt that in that moment, he was acting in defense of her. Her throat tightened unexpectedly. “Please, Maria. We can kill them later. We know that demon poison works on them. Right?” She glanced back at the man on the rock ledge. He’d gone still, the only sign of life his rasping chest as he tried to breathe. “I saw you look at him, Maria. I know he caught the interest of your lust demon. It’s been a long time since you’ve accepted a man. If you fed your demon side, your power would be stronger, maybe enough to defeat Lucien.”
“I’ll never be strong enough to defeat Lucien,” Maria said, but her gaze flicked back to the rocky ledge. “They did manage to breach the barrier,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe they have information that will help us get you across.”
“Us across.” Sophie folded her arms. “I’m not leaving without you and all the other women.”
Maria met her gaze. “Not all the women want to leave. Some of them have decent situations.”
“Until they die of poison—” The man on the ground groaned, and she whirled around. She gasped when she saw his face was almost completely black. “Maria! You have to save them now!”
“Dammit.” Maria eased Damon down to the floor. “This is going to sap me. I’ll have no defenses.” She met her gaze. “We won’t be able to get you out of here before tonight.”
Sophie bit her lip, glancing around. “Okay, then, we’ll hide out here.” She hurried over to the door and placed her hands on the walls, reaching out with her body. Instantly, she found a number of jewels buried in the walls of this rich soil. She disintegrated, reaching out in all directions to merge with the stones. Within moments, she reformed, and a pile of stones appeared in front of her. She piled them up quickly in the doorway, strategically placing them so their energy created a shield. Within moments, an invisible barrier was formed. She passed her hand over it, and grinned when it hummed. “That will block our energy from being traceable,” she said as she whirled around. “No one will find us unless they come here specifically looking for us.”
Maria met her gaze. “You better cross your fingers, girlfriend. This is going to get ugly. You’re going to be the only conscious one for a while.”
Sophie nodded. “I can do it.” She hurried over to the leather jacketed man, and knelt beside him. “Hurry.”
Maria took one last glance at the man on the rock ledge, and then she knelt beside the man on the ground. “I don’t know why I listen to you,” she muttered. “This sounds like a bad idea on every level.”
“Except for all the ones you just mentioned a minute ago.”
Maria glanced at her as she set her hands on his chest. “Yeah, true.” She winked. “If we don’t survive this, I just want you to know that you’re my best friend, and I would have given up a long time ago if it hadn’t been for you.”
Tears filled Sophie’s eyes. “Me, too, Maria.”
“Okay, let’s do this.” Maria closed her eyes, and she began to work her magic.
Chapter 10
Vlad awoke in a sudden rush of consciousness. His entire body went on alert, but he didn’t move even a fraction of an inch. He didn’t change his breathing, or even his heart rate. Nothing gave away the fact he was conscious. He lay utterly still, reaching out with his senses to determine the situation.
The first thing he became aware of was the faint scent of primroses. Recognition slammed into him at the scent he hadn’t smelled since boyhood. His kingdom had been surrounded by fields of primroses, fields that he and Sophie had spent hours roaming around in. Primroses.
Then, he noticed that the air around him was moving, undulating softly against his flesh like the first tentative breeze of summer. The current brushed over his shoulder, and then down his arm. Another rippled across his forehead, and through his hair. The air was warm, sliding over his skin like an invisible caress of silk. Chills popped up on his skin, and he couldn’t stop his sharp intake of breath.
The air went still, and the scent of primroses disappeared.
Shit. He’d just revealed he was conscious. Swearing at his mistake, he opened his eyes immediately, then froze in shock. Leaning over him, her blue eyes just as vivid and electric as he remembered, was Sophie.
Holy shit. It was her. She was alive.
Except she wasn’t the Sophie he remembered. He’d lived with the image of a teenage girl with rosy cheeks and white blond hair. This Sophie was a woman, with an angular face and dark blond hair that tumbled past her shoulders. She had seven earrings in each ear, each a different, glittering stone. She had all the curves of a woman, and her eyes carried the depth of a lifetime of struggle, courage, and grit.
Gone was the innocent girl. In its place was a strong, confident, sexy-as-hell woman.
She narrowed her eyes. “Hello?” she said. “Can you hear me?”
Her voice rammed straight into his gut like a sledgehammer. It ripped right through his soul on a thousand different levels, sucking the breath out of his lungs so fiercely he couldn’t even speak. He thought he’d never hear her voice again, and yet, he was here, with her, the sound of her voice filling him with a hope he hadn’t felt in centuries. His throat suddenly became clogged, and for a moment, he had to close his eyes to fight off the emotion rushing through him.
“Hello?” she said again.
He opened his eyes again to see Sophie frowning at him. Sophie. Her cheeks were flushed, and instinctively, he reached toward her, needing to touch her, to feel she was real.
She pulled back quickly, fear flashing across her face as her hand went to the handle of a dagger tucked in her waistband.
Vlad gritted his jaw, but he dropped his hand. “Sophie.” He managed to rasp out the name, but his throat burned, as if he’d swallowed fire while he’d been asleep.
A smile flashed across her face, and she leaned closer. “When you say my name, it sounds like magic,” she observed. “Why is that? Who are you?”
He tried to answer, but his voice wouldn’t work anymore. The room seemed to darken. His vision blurred, and he lost sight of her. What the fuck? He blinked, but he still couldn’t see anything, even though his eyes were open. Just blackness. “Sophie!” He rasped out her name, and bolted upright, terror ripping through him. He couldn’t lose her again. “Sophie!”
“It’s okay.” Warm air rushed over him, and somehow, he knew it was her.
“Where are you?” He reached for her, but found nothing.
“Right here.” Her voice was beside his ear, almost melodic in its rhythm “It’s okay. It’s the demon poison. It will take a while for you to regain full functionality. Your vision and hearing may go in and out for a while. You’re in a safe place. Just lie down and let your body heal.”
“No.” Forget lying down. He had to get her to safety. See her. Touch her. He tried to stand, but he fell, crashing back down to the hard stone floor, his body too weak to hold him up. What the hell?
“God, you’re stubborn.” Her voice was firm, almost a little bossy, just as it had been so many times in the past when she’d gotten tired of him being too much of a pain in the ass. Jesus. It was really her.
He grinned at the same complaint she’d lobbed at him countless times over the years. “Yeah, I am. Always have been.”
“Well, it’s annoying. Lie down,” she ordered.
“Annoying?” No one had told him he was annoying in centuries. God, he’d missed her.
“Stop grinning like an idiot and lie down.”
He felt another push of energy at his chest, and this time, he surrendered to it and stretched out on his back. He closed his eyes, digging deep inside himself for healing energy. It surged through him, and he felt strength beginning to return almost immediately, slow but steady. He knew he’d be back to at least partial strength within
a few minutes…which was good. He’d heard the hesitation in Sophie’s voice when she’d said they were safe, and he knew that wasn’t entirely true. He had to get healed fast. “Are we in the demon realm?”
“Yes. I shielded our location, so we should be okay for now.”
His vision returned just as suddenly as it had left. Sophie was still leaning over him, but this time, her hands were moving across his face, almost touching him, but not quite. She stopped, apparently sensing that he could see again.
Her cheeks flushed red and she pulled her hands away. “Sorry, I just…I wanted to see what your face felt like.”
“It’s okay.” He couldn’t believe he was staring at her. It was surreal, almost too much to absorb. “You’re alive. I can’t believe it.”
Her eyebrows knit. “How do you know me? Did you come here for me? Do you know me from before I came here?”
Her repeated questioning finally registered. She didn’t remember him. He’d spent decades tormenting himself about her death, and she had no memory of who he was? “Yeah, I do.” He started to sit up, and she jumped backward, her hand going to the handle of a dagger again. She moved away from him so quickly that he felt another brush of wind from her action.
Shit. She didn’t trust him at all. A bleak darkness settled over him, but he shoved it aside. He had no time to take her response personally. He was here to rescue her, and that meant he had to gain her trust quickly. “My name’s Vladimir Hawkings.” He waited a heartbeat to see if that meant anything, but she was still staring at him expectantly. “Vlad,” he tried.
She shook her head and held out her hands in a helpless gesture. “I don’t remember.”
He sighed. “We were friends. Best friends.” He didn’t mention they were married. She was so skittish, and he had a feeling that discovering she was bound to him might put her over the edge…either to shutting him out or killing him. Neither of which was high on his list of goals for the day, so, he didn’t mention the husband-wife thing. But he couldn’t keep himself from glancing at her left hand to see if she still wore his band. Her hand was hidden behind her thigh, out of his view, leaving him with no answers.
“We were friends? Really? Vladimir Hawkings,” she said to herself, as if she were testing the name. She shook her head, her face furrowed in thought. “It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
She didn’t remember. Grief and guilt flooded him, a sharp stab of isolation. How did the woman who’d consumed his every thought for the last two hundred years not remember him? To her, he was nothing. Nobody. A stranger not worthy of trust. Son of a bitch. He wasn’t going to lie. That hurt like hell.
She cocked her head. “Why are you here?”
He sighed. “To rescue you.”
Her eyebrows shot up. For a moment, she looked shocked, and then she burst out laughing. “Rescue me? I’ve been here for two hundred years. I think you’re a little late. What have you been doing all this time? Napping?”
He was stunned by her laugh. It was exactly as he’d remembered. A genuine, heartfelt laugh that seemed to roll through her entire body and out into the air around her. “I’ve been saving kids,” he snapped, his guilt making him cranky.
When her eyebrows went up, he swore. “Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “Look, I feel like shit about it. I had no idea you were alive. When the demons took you, I felt…” Shit. What was he going to do, declare to her that he’d felt like his soul had been cleaved from his body, leaving behind nothing but an empty wasteland of isolation and hell? And that he’d thought that it meant she’d been severed from him by death, not just by a veil that separated the worlds? She wouldn’t get it. Not now. Not with her thinking he was a stranger. “I thought you were dead,” he said simply. “I didn’t find out until yesterday that you were alive.” He leaned forward, urgency coursing through him. “I swear on my soul that if I’d known you were alive, I would never have stopped trying to find you.”
Her eyes widened, and she caught her breath. “Wow. Were you always this intense?”
“No. I used to laugh. Then you died, and I became a miserable, bitter, isolated bastard who hates the world and every person in it.”
She stared at him. “I was that important to you?”
“Yes.” He wanted to grab her, drag her into his arms, feel her body against his…but she wasn’t his to touch anymore, regardless of whether she was wearing his ring. She clearly belonged to herself, not to him…as she should, after he’d abandoned her for two hundred years.
“Wow.” Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes wary but vibrant as she studied him. “How do I not remember you then? Did I feel that way about you?”
It was his turn to catch his breath. Did she? How had she really felt about him? What would she have done if he’d been the one to die? Would she have reclaimed her life and found a way to be happy? Probably. She was tougher than he was, in that way. He shrugged. “You used to sneak into my room at night and force me to take you to the river to search for fairies in the moonlight.”
She smiled. “Fairies? I believed in fairies?”
“Yeah. You forced me to swear I believed in them too.”
Her eyebrows went up then. “You don’t seem like the type who could be forced into anything.”
“I’m not. Except when it comes to you.” Shit. He couldn’t believe he was telling her all this. He felt like he was being stripped bare and raw, all his shields shattered, just because he wanted to help her, to connect to her, to give her back the past she’d lost…to give her back him. “I wouldn’t have given up, Soph. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have given up.” He wanted to ask her for her forgiveness, but he didn’t deserve it, not from her, and not from himself.
“I believe you,” she said softly, searching his face. Her inspection was non-judgmental and genuine, as if a lifetime in the demon realm hadn’t taken away the purity of her world view, her ability to see through the crap to find the scrap of beauty in a moment. That was why he’d gravitated toward her when they were kids: all he saw was darkness, and she’d changed that for him. She’d taught him to see light and sunshine…until he’d lost her.
And now, she was doing the same thing, looking at him as if he were a thing of wonder, not a stranger who’d abandoned her for two centuries.
“I feel the connection between us,” she said quietly. “There’s something there.” She reached toward him again, her fingers drifting just above his forehead. “I’ve never wanted to touch a man before.” Her blue gaze drifted to his. “But from the first moment I saw you, I wanted to feel your skin under my fingertips. I wanted to see how soft your hair was.” Her gaze went to his jaw. “I want to run my fingers over your whiskers.”
Jesus. Heat poured through him, the kind of dark, primal heat that could consume a man. Sophie had been his best friend, his partner in crime, his wife in name only. But the way she was looking at him made something inside him shift. Stunned, his gaze slid over her, across her lips, along her collarbone, over the swell of her breasts, down to the curve of her hips. Raw need arose hard and fast within him, shocking him. He realized he wanted her. He wanted to slide his hand through her hair, draw her to him, and taste her mouth for the first time ever.
She dragged her gaze back to his eyes. “Why do I respond like that to you? Why not anyone else? Why you?”
Why him? Her question jerked him back to the present, and he swore, trying to shut down his physical response to her. “We’re connected,” he said carefully. “Even though you don’t remember me, your soul recognizes me.”
She raised her eyebrows at his reply, but didn’t deny his claim that her soul knew who he was, even if she didn’t. “Connected how, exactly? More than friends?” she asked, astutely.
“Yeah.” Slowly, he raised his left hand, showing his ring. It was still swirling with red, purple, and black, indicating that she was still in as much danger as before he’d arrived. Clearly, his mere presence wasn’t enough to change the storm that was coming for her.
/> Sophie’s eyes widened and a little gasp escaped from her throat.
Wordlessly, she held up her left hand, and he saw a matching band wrapped around her ring finger. Something lurched inside him at the sight of his ring on her hand, something deep, powerful, and primal. She was still his.
Her ring was equally turbulent, angry and dangerous. “What’s our connection?” she asked, sitting back on her heels. Her dagger apparently forgotten, she tucked her hands over her heart, as if she were trying to protect herself from him. “Family? Brother and sister?”
“What? Your brother?” He sat up suddenly, forgetting that he was trying not to scare her. Was that really her response to him? Like a brother? This woman who had been a part of his very soul since he was a kid, thought he was like her brother? “Hell, no,” he snapped. “We’re married.”
Chapter 11
“Married?” Sophie’s heart lurched, and sudden fear seemed to paralyze her. For a moment, all she could think of was the bonding ceremony that demons performed with their lovers to trap them forever, to make them crave no one but their demon, to be unable to ever break away from the monster slowly killing her.
It was a marriage of sorts, and it trapped the women in hell…literally.
Instinctively, she recoiled, fisting her left hand against the burning from her ring. “No.”
Vlad nodded at her ring, and held up his own. “Matching wedding bands.”
“No.” She jerked her hand back, her pulse hammering frantically. “That’s impossible!” It had to be impossible. It couldn’t be true. She knew too much about what happened to women who were bound to males. They died. Every single time. And this man had a claim on her? No, there was no way. It couldn’t be. He was trying to trick her. Manipulate her. Something.
She scrambled away from him and stood up, pulling out one of the many knives she had strapped to her body. “Who are you?”
He leapt to his feet, then staggered slightly before catching his balance, not that she was going to feel bad for him. “We got married when we were sixteen. We did it in secret, to protect you.”
Hunt the Darkness (Order of the Blade Book 11) Page 9
