by Lori Devoti
“Montclair,” Karin muttered the name as if saying it put a bad taste in her mouth. Her lips curved. “No matter. He lost, and I won.” She smiled again, this time raising her upper lip as she did.
For a moment, nothing but confusion registered in Lindsey’s brain. Then her eyes zoomed onto her cousin’s face and the fangs protruding from her gums.
o0o
Harry bolted from the yard without waiting to see if Emilie and Montclair would follow. He’d checked the root cellar. It was empty, but Lindsey’s scent hung in the air. She had been here and not long before.
Midnight was only minutes away, but he could still save her.
There was only one easy-to-access exit from the backyard, a gate that led to a narrow alley. When he reached it, he paused. Right would lead him back toward the current town, the left to the river and the original sandbar where Ste. Genevieve had been located before the great flood that sent the town packing for higher ground.
It was also where Marie Jean had lived with her husband, what she would think of when she thought of her birth, marriage, and turn.
He chose left.
o0o
Fangs. Her gaze shot to her cousin’s eyes. Amusement filled them but not the jovial, I’ve-pulled-a-joke-on-you type. No, the mirth in Karin’s eyes was dark and malevolent.
Then she laughed, and any doubt left inside Lindsey disappeared. Her mouth dry, she stumbled backward.
“Don’t run. It will do you no good. I, dear cousin—or should I say niece—am not only a vampire, I’m the most powerful female vampire in this region. And soon, the most powerful period.”
Lindsey’s mind whirled. Nothing that her cousin…aunt…was saying made sense. Nothing made sense. She took another step back. Her foot hit a weathered branch, dropped at some point by the river. She stared at the piece of driftwood, her brain clicking like a lock looking for a combination. Then something fell into place. She grabbed the branch and spun on her relative.
Karin’s eyebrows rose. “Cute and new. None of the others have tried that. Actually, none of the others tried anything.”
Lindsey swung the branch, more in warning than in an attempt to hit the vampire. “Vampire or not, we’re family. Doesn’t that mean something?” she asked. Her eyes cut to the side. There was nowhere for her to go, no way she could outrun her unnatural relative across the rough ground. Her only possible hope for escape was…the river. And that, she knew from her life in New Orleans, was a fool’s choice. But drowning… It had to be better than being fed on by a vampire.
Karin glanced at the river too. “I’ve faced that monster before. Trust me, it isn’t a choice you will relish.”
Lindsey swung the branch again. Karin danced backward. She was playing with Lindsey. Lindsey could see it on her face.
Which made Lindsey realize she couldn’t play. Not any longer.
She swung again, this time making contact with Karin’s head.
Her cousin snarled and grabbed for the branch, but Lindsey was ready. She followed the directions Harry had given her and spun, striking her target again, this time in the gut.
The vampire, knocked backward, hissed.
Hope surged inside Lindsey. She glanced at the river again. She’d thought to jump herself, but if she could lure Karin closer…
She stepped sideways, closer to the rumbling Mississippi.
Karin followed, her gaze locked onto Lindsey. “Maybe some of my genes survived after all, little niece. Or has the dhamphir been at work?” She tapped a finger against her leg, thinking.
Lindsey didn’t let Karin’s actions—or inaction—pull her from her plan. She took another step toward the river.
Her “aunt” slid her eyes to the side. “You have my name wrong, you know. It isn’t Karin. It’s Marie Jean.”
Lindsey moved again. Karin, Marie Jean, vampiress, monster. It was all the same to her.
“And you haven’t asked me anything about our family. I’m practically a walking family historian. Isn’t there something you’d like to know?”
Lindsey didn’t let her concentration waver. The vampire was trying to break her focus; she knew that. One more step and Lindsey was on a large rock that jutted out over the massive river.
“I’ll jump before I’ll go through what my mother did,” she said, her voice grim.
“Your mother? You know I had nothing to do with that.” The vampire twisted her lips to the side. Lindsey knew she was weighing whether she could get to Lindsey without one or both of them going into the Mississippi.
“It doesn’t matter.” Lindsey could feel moisture reaching up to her. Standing this close to the massive river was nerve-racking. She wanted to close her eyes, but she knew if she did, even for a second, Marie Jean would leap.
Lindsey couldn’t give her that advantage
She stared at her one surviving relative, knowing what she was going to do but waiting for the final nudge that would give her the courage to do it.
Uncertainty washed over Marie Jean’s face, followed by decision. She was going to leap, which meant Lindsey had to too.
She closed her eyes and stepped off the rock.
o0o
Harry heard and smelled the river before he saw it; he smelled vampire too.
Marie Jean was close. He doubled his speed, letting instinct rather than sight guide him.
His feet sank in pebbles and sand, but he kept moving up and over a small hill. There he saw them—Lindsey standing on a rock that jutted over the Mississippi and Marie Jean only a few feet away.
She was going to jump.
“No!” he screamed, running even faster until the world was a blur. His blade was already in his hand. Marie Jean was focused on Lindsey; Harry could reach her.
A splash sounded ahead of him, and the vampire cursed. She was moving toward the rock on which Lindsey—
Lindsey was gone.
No, his mind screamed again. He bent at the knees and catapulted his body forward, far enough his hand wrapped around the vampire’s ankle and jerked her off the rock, onto the sandbar.
He scrambled onto the rock and stared into the undulating water. Lindsey’s blonde head bobbed up and down. She was moving downstream, heading to a pile of logs.
“Lindsey!” he yelled, praying she saw the obstruction, could reach it and then hold on long enough for him to reach her. He leaned forward, ready to jump.
Arms wrapped around his shoulders, and fangs sank into his neck. Pulled by Marie Jean’s weight, he and the vampire tumbled backward and onto the sandbar below.
Knocked loose from her hold, Marie Jean hissed in his ear, “Dhamphir! I should have killed you as a babe.”
He thrust from the side with his blade, felt it slice into her skin. He didn’t wait to see if his aim was true. He rolled, ready to race back to the river and Lindsey.
Marie Jean leapt on him again, grinding his face into the ground. His blade was gone, lost somewhere in the dark and sand.
Fangs brushed his cheek. “You won’t kill me, dhamphir. You don’t have the power. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to enjoy this long overdue event. My niece is in need of my attention.”
He shoved his body upward in a one-armed push-up and reached behind him. Grabbing the vampire by her hair, he jerked her from his back. He dropped to a squat, and his fingers touched the metal of his blade. With the weapon in his hand, he stood.
Marie Jean lay on the ground, her eyes burning with anger, and for that moment, he knew he had the advantage, knew he could kill her now.
Or he could dive into the river and try to save Lindsey.
He dropped the blade and dove into the Mississippi.
o0o
Water swirled around Lindsey, grabbed hold of her and yanked her down. She sucked in the dark liquid and, back at the surface, sputtered it back out.
The river was cold and, despite its calm appearance from the shore, unforgiving. She had violated its depths, and it was determined to make her pay.
She tr
ied to swim, but the effort was wasted. The current was too strong; she got nowhere. Up and down, it was all she could do to keep from being sucked under so far she would forfeit the ability to rise again.
“Lindsey!”
She heard the call. Harry. He’d come for her. Her heart throbbed. Now she knew why he’d locked her in her room—to protect her from the vampire who claimed to be her cousin.
She closed her eyes and forced Marie Jean from her mind. She couldn’t think of her now. She needed every bit of concentration she could muster to keep her head bobbing up and her mouth gasping open for air.
She went under again, but this time she couldn’t get back up. Her foot was tangled in something. Her lungs threatening to burst, she kicked hard with her other leg. Her foot pulled free, her shoe staying behind, and her body flipped so she was moving backward, then sideways. From the corner of her eye, something flashed pale in the moonlight. Instinctively, she threw her body toward it.
The water fought her, but she kicked her legs and lunged again. A downed tree protruded from the river. She kicked and pulled at the water, shoving it behind her, moving as fast and sure as she could across its angry stream.
But it wasn’t far enough, or she wasn’t strong enough. The water pulled her away, and she watched, her hope sinking, as she moved out of reach.
Exhausted from her failed efforts, she let out a sob. She couldn’t swim any longer, couldn’t fight. The river had won.
Diverted by some obstacle, the current changed, and Lindsey flipped around again. In front of her wasn’t one tree but three, laced together like giant pickup sticks dropped from the sky.
The image still forming in her mind, she smashed into the first tree.
Chapter Fifteen
The current shoved Harry forward, urging him toward his goal.
He had to get to Lindsey; she had to survive.
Propelling his body upward with his feet, he surged out of the water for a better view. The collection of downed trees was still one hundred yards away.
He prayed Lindsey had made it there. If she hadn’t… He tightened his jaw. He wouldn’t allow himself to think of that possibility.
He tilted onto his side and began to swim, strong and steady, his arms slicing through the water like the blade he’d deserted on the shore cutting through cream.
Fifty yards past and he bobbed up again. He yelled this time. “Lindsey!” There was no answer, but he hadn’t expected one. He’d yelled because he had to, because he knew no other way to release the pain building inside him, so tightly packed he knew any moment he would explode.
He couldn’t lose Lindsey. He couldn’t.
Resolve intensified, he put his face into the water and swam some more.
o0o
Marie Jean climbed back onto the rock and stared at the rolling river. The river had tried to stop her once before, but she had won.
As she would win this time too.
The dhamphir had jumped and was swimming now, with annoying strength and speed, toward a group of partially submerged trees where, Marie Jean guessed, he hoped to find her niece.
She couldn’t see the girl in the dark, but—the vampire inhaled—she could smell her last remaining relative and feel her presence. Marie Jean’s veins thrummed, calling to be filled with Lindsey’s blood.
The girl was out there, alive.
If the dhamphir found her and brought her back to shore, Marie Jean would kill them both. If the dhamphir drowned trying…Marie Jean would have to go for a swim herself, annoying, but considering the prize, worth the inconvenience.
Either way, it was time to move downstream. Time to take up a position to wait for the outcome of this little melodrama so she could enter the next stage of her life.
She jumped off the rock, too caught up in the moment to notice she was no longer alone.
“Mon oiseau.” Rodrigue stood six feet away, his feet and chest bare. The wind had picked up, or perhaps he’d created the breeze, but his hair flowed away from his face, much as it had on this same spot over two centuries earlier.
“Rodrigue.” Marie Jean hesitated. Despite living only a few miles from him, she hadn’t seen her old lover for fifty years or more. “You look well.” More than well, he looked as strong and appealing as he had when she’d first spotted him selling furs to merchants in Old Ste. Genevieve and heard the rumors of what he was.
She studied him, looking for some clue to his state of mind, a hint as to whether she needed to worry that he had come here to stop her plans, but she sensed no anger from him, only a peace that seemed to radiate out from him like tea from a tea bag dropped into boiling water.
“As do you, mon oiseau.” His eyes glistened, and it occurred to her he might have come not to stop her but to help her, to join with her.
Together they could rule not only the midsection of this country but past that—to the oceans and perhaps even overseas.
She weighed the idea a bit, liking the feel of it—as long as he realized he would now have to play the role of second.
With the thought planted in her mind, she smiled. “It is good to see you. I’ve missed our fights and our time making up.”
She had missed him. Rodrigue at his best had been blindly dedicated to her and the ultimate in lovers. She would not mind rekindling their relationship, once she had finished her task tonight.
But Rodrigue wasn’t looking at her. He was glancing around, sadness pulling at his features. “This is where we began,” he said.
She nodded, but her impatience was growing. The dhamphir would surely come to shore soon or be pulled under by the current. In either case, she needed to move down river, but as she took a step, Rodrigue leapt onto the rock and held his hand down to her.
“Stand with me, like we did in the beginning, with the water below us.”
She hesitated, torn between the promise of what an alliance with the prince might bring and her fear that she would miss the dhamphir’s rescue of her niece.
As if reading her thoughts, Rodrigue murmured, “The dhamphir is having a tough time. Do you suppose he will fail?”
Concerned that her niece might be lost to her too, Marie Jean took Rodrigue’s hand and stood next to him on the rock.
The wind blew strong and steady, wrapping Rodrigue’s hair around her like a protective cape. She felt strong beside him, knew they looked good together, undefeatable.
She spotted her niece. “There!” she shouted. “She’s alive, and we can get to her.”
“You wish to save your blood?”
Knowing he knew better, Marie Jean smiled. “From the river.”
His hand moved to her waist. “Yes, the river. She has taken many a life too soon.”
Thinking of her husband who the Mississippi had spared, Marie Jean laughed. “And many not soon enough.”
“True. I stole you from her and suffered for it.”
Intent on watching Lindsey, it took a moment for Rodrigue’s words to form meaning in Marie Jean’s mind. She twisted toward him. “What?”
His hand tightened on her back, he pulled her against him until her chest pressed against his and there was no room at all between them.
“I took you from the river, and now I must give you back.”
“What? No!” Marie Jean lifted her hand. Her nails scraped across his face, but he was already falling backward toward the rolling, menacing waters of the Mississippi.
Silver flashed at her side—a blade descending toward her back. Fangs extended, she hissed, but it was too late. The blade had already found her heart. She collapsed against Rodrigue, shock taking away the last of her fight. He pulled her tighter still and captured her lips with his.
Then they hit the cold, uncaring river, and every dream she’d had disappeared.
o0o
Lindsey clung to the pile of broken trees and debris. The water pounded against her; her body was numb. She could feel her fingers opening, feel her ability to hold on slip away.
Slowly, she
slid down the pile and under the water.
Air bubbled from her lungs, and her eyes opened. She was going to die, was letting herself die. It was crazy; she had survived too much. To drown now… It wasn’t the ending meant for her. It couldn’t be.
With a scream, she surged back up. Arms and legs flailing, she fought the river again.
And this time she wasn’t alone.
A hand grabbed hold of her shirt, and she was jerked backward against the heavy current as if the water flowing around her didn’t exist. She sucked air into her lungs, and water too. Coughing, she tried to turn, tried to see who had her—Harry or the vampire.
Or maybe Harry was a vampire. It occurred to her briefly that she didn’t know, not for certain. Maybe the world was made up of vampires, and she was the lone human. Maybe nothing she’d ever believed was true.
Then she saw him. His dark gaze bore into her, the love and worry pouring out of his eyes so intense that even in the cold water of the Mississippi, her body warmed.
He slipped his arm around her chest and started to swim. He moved with speed and accuracy, as if a motor propelled him forward.
Too fast, she thought. Too fast.
Then she blacked out.
o0o
Cold and wet, Harry waded from the river. The unconscious Lindsey in his arms, he staggered up the sandbar and lowered her to the ground.
Her arms were limp. Her fingers like ice. And she was pale, vampire pale.
A vise gripped his heart as he pulled her close once again and cradled her in his lap.
She couldn’t die.
From near the river, something moved. He’d forgotten about Marie Jean. Harry reached for his blade and realized he’d dropped it. He was unarmed and unprepared. He’d failed Lindsey again.
But when a voice spoke, it wasn’t Marie Jean. It was her lover, Rodrigue.
“I can save her,” he said, standing but keeping a distance.
“Make her into what you made her aunt?” Harry’s voice was rough and his words bitter. As much as he loved Lindsey, he couldn’t see her become that.
“She is not mon oiseau.” The vampire moved closer then. His chest and feet were bare and his pants and hair wet. Something silver flashed in his hand.
