by Cynthia Eden
Adam gazed at Maya’s back, aware of a simmering sense of discontent within him.
His body was replete, the voracious hunger for Maya temporarily satisfied. But…
It seemed as if something were missing.
Because she’d turned from me.
Curled in on herself. Hunched her shoulders and drifted away from him.
He didn’t know how to pull her back.
His hand lifted, stroked a lock of her hair.
She didn’t stir.
His fingers clenched into a fist.
Sleep pulled at her, but Maya’s eyes were open as she stared at the peeling wall. Her sex still quivered with little aftershocks of pleasure. She clenched her thighs together, enjoying the feeling.
As she’d enjoyed Adam.
He was touching her now. Stroking her hair. She held carefully still when she felt that tentative touch, aware of a sudden yearning to turn toward him, to curl against that muscled chest and sleep cradled in his arms.
Ridiculous, of course.
She didn’t need to be held to sleep. Never had.
They’d just had great sex—pretty amazing sex, actually, but just sex. She didn’t need anything more from him.
Didn’t need anything more from anyone.
She closed her eyes and deliberately pushed Adam’s image from her mind. A battle waited ahead of her. She needed all the sleep she could get.
She pictured darkness, complete and empty in her mind. It was an old trick, one she’d perfected as a child when the sounds from the room next door grew too loud and she had to shut them out to sleep.
To stay sane.
Darkness. Always the darkness.
She pictured the darkness closing around her. Shielding her.
Darkness.
Silence.
Her breath began to slow. Her body to relax.
She went into the darkness.
“Bitch!”
At first, Maya thought she was dreaming. Or remembering. Sometimes the dreams and the memories got all twisted together.
Luckily, she didn’t dream much.
Just saw her blessed darkness.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” A man’s voice. Screaming with rage.
A loud crash sounded and a woman began to cry, harsh, gulping sobs.
Memory.
She’d hoped that being a vampire would have at least come with the perk of uninterrupted sleep. In all the movies, Dracula climbed into his coffin, closed his eyes—and wham—the guy pretty much died until sunset.
Maya figured you didn’t have to battle nightmares and memories if you were dead during the day.
Unfortunately for her, a vampire’s day sleep was all too normal.
She couldn’t hide from her past while she slept.
Dammit.
“No, Chuck, don’t! I-I’m sorry!” A woman’s voice. Thick with a southern accent and shaking with fear.
What the hell?
Maya’s eyes flew open.
Her mother didn’t have a southern accent. She’d been born and bred on the streets of L.A.
A thud shook the wall behind her, sending a tremble through the bed.
“No, please!”
“Fucking bitch!”
Breaking glass. A scream.
Not a dream.
Not a memory.
Maya jerked up in bed, glanced to the right. A faint imprint on the mattress was the only sign of Adam’s presence.
Where the hell had he gone?
“You’ll be sorry for playin’ me, Rosie.”
A whimper, barely discernable through the thin walls.
She grabbed her clothes. Jerked on the jeans and shirt, didn’t even bother with shoes. The asshole was hurting the woman, and if she didn’t stop him—
A woman lying twisted on the floor. Mouth bloody. Bruises around her eyes—eyes that stared up at nothing.
Damn memories. She hated them.
She ran for the door, yanked it open, and immediately had her eyes flooded with blinding light.
Figured. The sun would still be high and she’d be weak as hell.
Another scream.
Maya pounded on room 206, slamming her fist hard against the door. “Open up!”
Silence.
Her fist thudded into the door. “I said,” she snarled, “open this damn door!”
The door was jerked open. A big, fat, bull of a man with a pug nose, beady brown eyes, and a thick bald head glared down at her. “What the fuck do you want?”
Maya drew in a deep breath. “I’m trying to sleep next door, and the fact that you’re trying to beat your woman to death is keeping me awake.” Her fingers clenched into fists as she prepared herself for a fight. Without her vampire enhancements, she was going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.
Stupid sun. Why couldn’t it just set already so she could give this guy the ass-whipping he so desperately deserved?
His eyes raked over her, lingering on her breasts and hips. He licked his lips and damn if a smug smile didn’t stretch across his face, revealing a missing front tooth. “You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you? Wanna come inside and play with old Chuck?”
Why were the bullies always the biggest idiots in the world? “Chuck, I don’t think you’re going to like the way I play.” Oh, she could almost guarantee it. “Now why don’t you step aside and let the woman come out.” If she was even still alive. The guy’s knuckles were bruised and she could smell the blood on his hands, literally.
“Rosie don’t wanna come out, bitch.” He put one of his beefy hands on her chest and shoved her back, hard. “Now go mind your own fuckin’ business!”
“Mama?” A child’s voice. High-pitched, desperate with fear.
Oh, hell, no. The bastard had a kid in there.
And blood on his hands.
She stepped forward, still feeling the imprint of his hand on her chest. A big guy like that—she didn’t even want to think about what he could do to a kid. “Let me see the woman and the child.” She wasn’t leaving until—
He tried to slam the door, but she had her foot in the doorway and the old wooden door just flew back.
“Wrong move,” Maya whispered and rammed the bald badass back as she forced her way fully into the room.
Chapter 6
The door to room 204 was open. Shit. Adam glanced up at the sky, saw the sun sitting bright and heavy between the clouds.
Maya wasn’t in the room anymore. He knew it without having to take a step inside, but her scent lingered around him—actually, it was—
“I told you not to fucking touch me again!” Maya’s voice, filled with fury, and coming from the room next door.
Adam dropped his food. He didn’t stop at the closed door, just kicked it in—and then drew up short at the sight before him.
Maya had a man, a human, shoved up against the wall. The fingers of her right hand were wrapped around his beefy throat. In her left hand, she held a broken beer bottle—and that bottle was currently pushed up against the guy’s side.
“You don’t touch me, you don’t touch Rosie,” Maya continued, her voice hard and mean. She hadn’t so much as glanced over at the sound of the door shattering beneath his fists. “And you sure as hell never touch that kid, got it?” The jagged edges of the bottle cut into his stomach.
Rosie? Adam’s gaze darted around the room. Found a thin woman with bright red hair and a face stained with bruises huddled in the corner. The woman’s skirt fluttered, just a bit, and Adam saw the bright eye of a child peeking from behind her.
“You’re gonna walk out of here—and you’re gonna keep walking, Chuck. You’re never gonna bother Rosie or her kid again—”
“Fucking whore!” He spat. “Just like you.” He tried to lunge forward, but Maya caught him and slammed him back against the wall.
Adam frowned. The guy was big, too big for her to be handling during the day. He stepped toward her, then caught a glimpse of fang.
“I’m
not a whore,” Maya murmured, bringing her face in close to the man’s. “I’m something much, much worse.” Her lips were parted. Her teeth bared.
Blood began to trickle from the guy’s neck—where her claws had buried themselves deep in his flesh.
The guy whimpered.
Maya stood on her toes and licked away a rivulet of blood. “I’ve got your taste now, Chuck,” she said, “so I can find you, anywhere, anytime.” The beer bottle fell to the floor. “And I won’t need glass to kill you if I come hunting.” Her teeth snapped together. “I’ll rip you apart with teeth and claws.”
The guy, Chuck, had turned white. “You’re some…kinda devil.”
She laughed at that. “Yeah, and I’ve come to take you to hell.”
He started to shake then.
Maya released him, but kept her eyes glued to his. “Get out before I kill you.”
Adam didn’t doubt that she would. There was something different about her at that moment. A rage was in her—one he hadn’t seen before.
The human ran from the room, leaving drops of blood on the floor to mark his wake.
Maya turned to him then, finally acknowledging his presence. “Give me a minute, Slick.” There were lines of tension around her mouth.
He nodded, prepared to watch and wait.
Slowly, Maya walked toward the woman and child. She studied the woman first, then said, “Where are you from, Rosie?”
“B-Barlow, A-Alabama.” Rosie stared at the floor while big, fat teardrops rained down her cheeks.
Maya crouched in front of her and held out her hand. “And who are you?” she asked the black-haired child who peered around his mama’s skirt with big, wide eyes.
“Jake.” A faint whisper.
But Adam heard it, and Maya’s equally soft reply.
“It’s good to meet you, Jake.” She still held out her hand. After a minute, two, the little boy’s fingers lifted to touch her.
Rosie gasped then and jerked the boy back. “Don’t you be hurtin’ him!”
Maya glanced up at her. “I won’t.”
Rosie swallowed. “You gonna…hurt me?”
From the looks of things, Adam thought the woman had been hurt enough.
Maya stood, swayed just the faintest bit. “Not if you do what I say.”
Her eyes doubling in size, Rosie nodded.
“I want you to take Jake and get the hell out of town. I want you to go back home to Barlow.”
The tears fell faster as Rosie’s head bobbed in quick agreement.
“Good.”
Maya moved toward him.
“I-I’m not a-a whore.” Rosie’s chin was lifted, her shoulders struggling to straighten.
Maya didn’t glance back at her. “I know.”
“You—you’re not a devil, a monster, either—are you?”
Now she did look back and Adam wished that he could have seen her expression as she said, “Sorry, Rosie, but I’m both.”
She didn’t speak until they were back in room 204 and the door was firmly shut behind them. Her shoulders sagged and her feet shuffled slowly across the floor.
“Hate assholes like that,” she muttered heading for the bed. “Think they can do anything they want to a woman.”
She turned toward him, her chin raised, and he caught sight of the faint blue bruise along her jaw.
The bastard had hit her.
He reached for her, but she was already turning away from him. “Had to watch jerks like that with my mom. So many fucking bruises.”
Like the one she now wore?
“Wasn’t gonna let another woman die, not just gonna stand around and let it happen again.”
She stood before the bed, hands clenched into fists at her sides.
“Another woman?”
Her back was stiff, her voice gruff as she said, “My mother.”
Damn. No wonder she’d run to the other room when she heard old Chuck threatening the woman.
She climbed into the bed, fully dressed, and pulled the covers up to her chin. She met his stare with a glare. “I’m not talking about this, about her. Not now, not later.”
Stubborn vampire. He bit back the questions that sprang to his lips and managed a nod.
A heavy sigh slipped past her lips. “I’m not like her,” she whispered and her eyelids began to flicker. “Never was.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and watched in silence until her breathing smoothed out and sleep claimed her again.
After a moment, he brushed the hair from her face. “You lied to me,” he whispered, and realized that it shouldn’t change anything. It shouldn’t. “You helped that woman, that kid.”
I’m not a helper, Slick.
Bullshit.
There was more to Maya than just the monster she carried. A hell of a lot more.
Just as there was more to him.
“You lied to me.”
Tim Largent jerked awake at the angry snarl, blinking the sleep from his eyes and gazing around his office in dazed confusion.
He’d fallen asleep on the couch after a rather enjoyable, if tame, bout of sex with—Karen? Michelle?
He just couldn’t remember—
“I don’t take well to liars.”
Tim swallowed, rising slowly to his feet. He realized that Karen and Michelle didn’t really matter right then.
The thing that mattered—it, he would be the giant wolf shifter standing in his doorway.
Lucas Simone snapped his fingers and four other men walked into the room. “Neither does my pack.”
Fear began to ice Tim’s veins. The packs—they were vicious. They’d been known to rip men and demons apart.
“I-I didn’t lie to you,” he managed, putting the heavy desk between them. Shit, where were his bodyguards when he needed them?
One of Lucas’s men dropped a small, dented, black box-like object onto the desk.
Tim got a really, really bad feeling in the pit of his gut. “What’s that?” But he already knew.
GPS. The tracking box.
“Funny thing,” Lucas murmured. “We found that car you told us about, but there was no sign of the vampire or her companion.”
His mouth went desert dry. “She was going to Mexico, I told you—”
“The coyotes have been looking for her, guarding the border.” Tim knew the coyote shifters had long since taken over Mexico. “But they haven’t so much as caught a whiff of her scent.”
The lying bitch. “Maya set me up.” How had she known what he was planning? How?
Lucas rubbed the tattered edge of his right ear. “Or you set us up.” He jerked his thumb toward the door and a young, dark-haired shifter hurried to seal the room. “Something you should know about me,” he said, and his fingernails began to lengthen into claws. “I get angry—real angry—when some asshole tries to play me for a fool.” His claws raked across the desk, leaving deep grooves in the wood.
Tim was very much afraid those claws would soon be used on something softer than the wood. He swallowed. “I’ll give the money back.” He didn’t need it, not really, and he had the cash in the office, right there in his safe.
A smile curved the alpha’s thin lips. “Oh, you’ll most definitely give it back.”
His hands slick with sweat, Tim turned to the wall safe, fumbled with the dial, and managed to open the lock. He tossed the still-bagged money to Lucas. “Take it, and get the hell out of here.”
The shifter didn’t look at the money as he caught the bag. His stare was on Tim, and his teeth were sharpening. “Not quite ready to leave yet.”
Tim’s gaze darted to the circle of wolf shifters closing in on him. “Wh-what do you want?”
The pack leader’s eyes were colder than death as he said, “Our pound of flesh. Demon flesh.”
The pack began to growl in hungry anticipation.
He woke her an hour before sunset. They didn’t speak about the incident in room 206. Not then.
Before they left the room
, Maya used one of the disposable cell phones she’d picked up to call L.A.—to check in on Sean again.
He was awake, but not making much sense. She promised to call and check in with him again later.
Adam drove the SUV, following her directions to Red Rock Canyon. The sun’s rays looked like streaks of fire, blazing across the horizon.
Streaks of fire.
Or streaks of blood.
The vampires had long since claimed the canyon as part of their territory. Humans didn’t realize it, but tunnels crisscrossed the canyon. Hidden deep in the ground and stone, the vampires had created a near-impenetrable lair.
Blood Rock, that’s what they called it. Maya had heard whispers about the canyon before. She’d overheard tales in feeding rooms about the dark deeds committed beneath the heavy stones.
The caverns were said to be lined with skeletons.
The way Maya figured it, she was about to find out if all the gossip was true.
And, with any luck, find the girl.
They stopped a few miles from the canyon. Maya climbed from the SUV, her eyes squinting against the sun’s fading rays.
“You all right?” Adam asked, moving almost soundlessly to her side.
The sun had already half-settled beneath the horizon. She managed a nod. “Getting better every minute.” And she was. Her strength was returning. Her power. She hated the curse of the sun. She couldn’t stand being so weak. So…human.
They started trekking through the desert, moving quickly, but quietly. She’d already warned Adam that the vamps could have human guards stationed in the area.
She wasn’t the only one of her kind to use a day watcher.
As they traveled, the sun inched even farther below the horizon. Maya opened her senses fully, straining to hear every sound in the desert and to catch any unusual scent.
But so far, she didn’t hear or smell anything out of the ordinary.
And that fact had her body tensing.
The twisted, thrusting sight of Red Rock Canyon soon greeted her. The Aztec sandstone gleamed a blood red in the light of the setting sun.
Blood Rock.
Her gaze scanned the area.
No sign of vamps. Or humans.
The hair at her nape began to tingle. “Something’s off,” she whispered. “There should be guards here.” But the place looked completely deserted.
