There would be no stopping her now.
He’d told himself he couldn’t trust her, and wouldn’t feel anything for her. He’d written off her allure to the natural bond between his kind and The Chosen. And yet now, that was all gone. All his reasons had been obliterated by those bastardly scientists and their desire to keep her alive so they could torture her and learn his whereabouts.
They’d changed her. They’d done it with his blood. He was alive inside her now. He was coursing through her veins.
A sudden burst of gunfire had him diving facedown into the fragrant leaves on the forest floor even before he realized that no one was shooting at him. How could they when he’d been moving too fast for human eyes to see? But he lay there all the same, in the dampness of decaying leaves, and opened his senses to attune to everything around him. He heard the surprised grunts of men, and felt the sensations of pain exploding. He smelled blood and gunfire, each with its own hint of sulfur, blending and mingling together to create a distinct aroma. And the energy of death, dark and heavy, was settling over the area like a thick fog. Humans were being shot down.
A lot of them.
He sprang to his feet and raced forward again, arriving almost instantly at the scene. Crouching behind one of the military vehicles, he tried to see what was happening. The rapid patter of machine gun fire went on, making men in black fatigues dance like marionettes as bullets riddled their bodies. They fell to the ground as the gunfire halted.
He shifted his gaze from the dead to the killers. Three men with automatic rifles, and one standing beside them. Hobbs. He’d held up a hand to tell them to stop shooting. The three had tears streaming down their faces.
“It was necessary,” he said. “You’re heroes, though you don’t yet know it. And those men gave their lives for the cause. This will be the turning point. And all because of you. Thank you for your service.” He paced behind them as he spoke, and said, “Ten-HUT!”
They snapped to attention. Hobbs pulled his service pistol and shot them each in the back of the head. Pop, pop, pop! Just that fast. The men dropped as if their legs had dissolved. Dead. Every single one of them. It happened so fast it was over almost before Devlin realized what was happening. And why would he stop the man, anyway? He was doing exactly what Devlin had planned to do.
And now only one remained. Hobbs himself.
Dev started to straighten from his hiding place, but motors came roaring, even helicopters were swarming overhead. Hobbs picked up the three dead assassins’ machine guns and tossed them into the woods, then pressed his pistol to his own belly and pulled the trigger.
Pain exploded from him and he fell to his knees. He managed to hurl his handgun into the woods, all the same.
And then more vehicles were arriving and men came pouring out of them, weapons drawn, fanning into the forest while others ran to check on the dead. Devlin retreated, but not too far. He gave a mighty leap, and landed on the large limb of a redwood. Well hidden there, he resumed watching.
Some of the newcomers were the ones who’d been cut off from the convoy by the first dropped tree. He didn’t know where the choppers had come from. Someone must have called for reinforcements. One fellow knelt beside Hobbs and shouted for a medic then asked, “What happened, Commander?”
“It was an ambush,” Hobbs said, his voice quaking with pain. “That vampire, the one that got away. I saw him and I don’t know how many others, but I know he wasn’t alone. They disarmed some of the men and then just....” His voice broke. “They just shot us all. It was a mass execution. It was brutal.” He nodded in the direction he’d tossed the weapons. “They were over that way.”
And as a few men rushed off in that direction, Devlin understood Hobbs’ plan. He’d murdered his own men to prove to the world that vampires were heartless, evil predators who needed to be wiped out for the good of mankind.
Hobbs looked at the medic who was pressing white pads to his belly to stop the bleeding. “Leave me and see to my men!”
Oh, yes. He was so selfless, wasn’t he?
“I’m sorry, sir. They’re dead.”
“All of them?” Hobbs blinked as if against a flood of tears.
“Yes, sir.”
No, Devlin thought as his attention returned to the victims. Not all of them. One lived, though only barely. And Devlin’s mission changed in that moment. It became to rescue the one and only human, besides Hobbs himself, who knew what had really happened tonight. He homed in on the sense of life emanating from the dead men who lay crisscrossing each other like pick-up-sticks in the forest. He would have to be fast, silent, and accurate.
His senses picked out the one with a hint of life still left in him. He lay partially beneath a fallen log…perhaps he had thrown himself there for cover.
Devlin leapt from the tree he was perched on into another. He was up high enough that any sound he made could be attributed to the wind blowing through the needled boughs. The men were not looking up. They were searching the woods at their own level. He jumped again, and then again, until he was in a tree directly above the fallen man.
Unconscious. He had a thin face, exquisite bone structure–the cheeks, the jaw. He was very pale just now, and his eyes were closed, thick lashes resting on his white skin. There were at least three bloody holes in his torso.
Devlin moved himself around the tree until its trunk was between him and Hobbs and company. Then he shimmied down, silent, easy. He touched the ground, then dashed to the young man’s side in a blur of speed. Devlin gathered him up, and launched himself back up into the tree. The entire operation took less than two seconds. He climbed upward again until he’d reached a dizzying height, and from there, he moved through the canopy, willing the man to stay alive until he could get him some medical assistance.
“Sip this,” Sarafina said, pressing a warm mug into Emma’s hands. Emma closed her eyes and drank. Then she resumed looking around the place. It was a beautiful house, with large chandeliers, curving staircases, towering ceilings, massive windows and doors. The kind of place where the extremely wealthy would live.
She’d been taken into a bedroom, given a soft muslin nightgown to put on, and then tucked between layers of down that felt like a cloud.
“Thank you. But I don’t feel any need to rest.”
“Don’t underestimate the debilitating impact of pain and stress on the vampiric body, Emma. I know you feel better, but you won’t be completely restored until you’ve slept through a day.”
Emma set the mug on the white nightstand, admiring its gold trim and brass fixtures and wishing for a coaster. “Do you think he’ll really do it? Kill them all?”
“You know him better than I do. What do you think?”
Sitting up in the bed, Emma met the other woman’s eyes. “He hates them. And I don’t know why. I mean, sure there’s enough reason to hate them. The persecution, the murders. But I think with him there’s something else. Something more...personal.”
“I think he’ll confide in you, if you ask him.”
She shook her head. “Up till now, he hasn’t even liked me very much.”
“Up till now, you were one of them,” Sarafina said. “Now you’re one of us. What do you know of your new nature, Emma?”
She drew a breath, then smiled because she had. “I don’t have to breathe. I keep doing it out of habit, but I don’t have to.”
“True.”
“I have to drink blood to survive.”
“Yes.”
“And I can no longer tolerate food or sunlight.”
Sarafina nodded. “There are three things that can kill you now. You can bleed out, just as you could before. The sunlight will kill you. And any open flame is a danger. We are highly flammable. We have to be careful around fire.”
She sat up straighter in the bed, eager to hear more about her new nature. “What else? I want to know everything.”
“Everything, you will learn in time. The best teacher is experience, after all. But
I can tell you some things. Your senses are heightened. You feel everything more keenly now, both pain and pleasure. Pain can be debilitating. Pleasure can be....” She lifted her brows and smiled a little. “Beyond anything previously imagined.”
Emma nodded. “All my senses are sharper. I can see farther and in more detail. I can smell everything that has a scent, and some things that I didn’t think did. Like rocks. They have an aroma all their own.”
“Yes, they do.”
“I’m stronger, and can run faster, jump higher–”
“And every one of these things grows over time. The longer you live, the more acutely improved you will find all of these areas. But the more susceptible you are to pain and blood loss, too.”
“I didn’t know that.”
And we can speak to each other mentally, Sarafina added without moving her lips at all.
“That’s going to take some getting used to,” Emma said softly. She was making small talk and not getting to the questions she really wanted to ask the vampiress, though. Maybe she was almost afraid of what her answers would be.
Sarafina crooked a brow. “Go on, I can see there’s something. Good blocking by the way. What is it, Emma?”
Emma nodded. “My...mother was one of us,” she said. “She nearly died when I was born. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. She wouldn’t have made it till morning, but–”
“By the gods, you’re the daughter of Diana Benatar,” Sarafina said. “I knew there was something familiar about your energy.” Smiling, she seemed to drink Emma in with her huge expressive eyes. “How is your mother?”
Slowly, Emma felt her smile die. “I...was hoping you might know. She vanished when I was twelve. Neither Dad nor I have seen her since. He said the place where she used to rest by day had been torched, but of course, there were no bodies. I’ve never believed she was dead though. I never will.” She lowered her head as she said those words. “And now Dad’s a DPI prisoner. That’s why we were there, to try to get him out. Him and those two kids.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry, Emma. I haven’t seen Diana since that night. I taught her what I could about her new self in what time we had. But no, I have no idea what became of her.” She seemed awash in sadness. Was it like losing a relative, Emma wondered, when a vampire they had made passed away?
Emma slipped a hand over hers, and said, “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have had a mother for the first twelve years of my life. I’d have no memories of her at all. Thank you for that.”
She nodded. “You’re welcome, Emma. I wish....”
“I know. So do I.”
Devlin was back. She felt him. And he was not alone.
Sarafina’s head came up too, eyes narrowing as she, no doubt, sensed the same things. “He’s got a mortal with him.”
“God, I hope he hasn’t decided to take one of them prisoner.” Emma flung back the covers and put her bare feet on the floor, pausing only briefly to relish the sensation of her toes sinking into the thick, plush carpet.
It was hard to stay focused with so much competing for her attention. But she forced herself to stop feeling and start thinking. She had to get to Devlin, to find out just what he had done.
She raced out of the room ahead of Sarafina, down the hall and quickly descended the beautiful staircase, her palm skimming the gleaming smooth hardwood bannister that smelled of walnut and polish. At the bottom of the stairway, she came to a stop at what she saw.
Willem Stone stood holding the large ornate entry door open as Devlin carried a bloody, half-dead DPI crow inside.
“Devlin, what are you thinking, bringing him here?” Sarafina shouted, pushing past Emma to race to the door.
Will was taking the man from Devlin’s arms, though, and he was the one who answered. “He’s been shot. Three times, by the looks.” He turned, “‘Fina, he needs a bed, bandages, medicine–”
“He needs a hospital,” she snapped.
“He won’t make it to one. It’s up to us.” As Willem strode through the house carrying the human, Sarafina followed. Devlin stood there, head down, the door still open behind him. Emma went to him, closed the door and, taking his arm, drew him inside. “Tell me what happened,” she said.
He shook his head.
“You didn’t shoot that man only to have second thoughts and decide to save him.”
“I didn’t shoot that man.”
She touched his chin, lifted it. “Who did?”
He swallowed hard. He looked exhausted, drained by whatever he’d been through. What he’d seen…or maybe by what he’d done. “Hobbs,” he said. “He killed all of them. All the men who were with him. It was happening as I arrived. Three men, mowing down all the rest with automatic weapons. And then Hobbs shot the three gunmen, just put a bullet into their heads, one by one. Then he put one into his own gut.”
She frowned. Her first thought was that he was making this up. She’d asked him not to kill them. Maybe he found that once he’d done it, he was too ashamed to own up to it and–
“I don’t take actions I’m ashamed of, Emma. I would’ve done it myself if Hobbs hadn’t done it first. And I would have had no guilt about it. The only difference is, I’d have killed Hobbs too.”
“Then why save one man? Why even bother trying if you would’ve killed them all anyway?”
“Because Hobbs is alive. And he’s planning to tell the world that I did this. I, and some other vampires, maybe including you. He killed his own men so that he could blame it on us, use it to convince the world we are everything he and his kind believe we are. Murderers of the innocent, predators without souls. Mindless killers who need to be vanquished if mankind is to survive.”
She lifted her head, met his eyes. “If you had done what you planned to do, isn’t that exactly what you would have been?”
He took the blow well, she thought, even though it seemed to render him speechless for a second or two. And then he nodded. “What do you want me to say? That you were right all along? I still don’t agree with you. I still believe we need to fight back.”
“I know you do. I believe it too. But we have to do it in the right way, Devlin. Wars in this country are won and lost by public opinion.”
He sighed, not agreeing, but not arguing either. “A medic told Hobbs that his men were all dead. But I could feel that one of them clung to life. He’s the only one who can tell the truth about what happened in that forest tonight.” He lifted his head and looked in the direction Sarafina and Willem Stone had taken the wounded man. “And I intend to keep him alive long enough to make sure he does just that.”
Chapter Twelve
Emma’s bedroom was lovely, and lonely. She’d rather have spent the day sleep in Devlin’s arms, but he was still tense and closed off where she was concerned. And despite the passion he’d shown upon rescuing her, she wasn’t sure if that had been anything more than relief she was alive. And anger at those who’d tortured her. He probably would have felt the same way if it had been Bell or Tavia he’d rescued. Though he might not have kissed them senseless. But that was a feeding induced sort of passion. Wasn’t it?
She was one of his kind now. He was protective of his kind. Furiously so.
She got up and headed into the adjoining bathroom to take a blissful and overdue shower, shocked to see that the marks from the defibrillator paddles had vanished completely. Amazing. After drying off and damp drying her hair, she dressed in some of the clothes she’d found stacked on the dresser in her room. Sarafina had left her a wide variety of things to choose from, but only one pair of skinny jeans. The rest were skirts and dresses. She put on the jeans, pairing them with a colorful paisley blouse in blues and greens that had draping handkerchief sleeves. She’d have chosen a T-shirt if there had been one in the pile.
When she left her room to step into the hall, she felt Devlin near, looked up and saw him, just stepping out of his own room. His hair was still damp from his shower, but pulled back and held with a band. It
was, in her opinion, his sexiest look. He turned her way and almost smiled.
“Morning,” she said as her eyes wandered lower. He wore a T-shirt that fit him like a second skin and a pair of borrowed jeans.
“Morning.”
“You should see my chest.” She bit her lip after blurting the words and quickly added, “I mean, the marks are gone. I don’t even have a bruise left.”
He nodded. “Any injuries you suffer will heal during the day sleep. As long as you make it to sunrise, you will rejuvenate.” Then he frowned. “Well, most of the time, anyway.”
She warmed as he came closer and tried to focus on his words and not on how much joy she got just from looking at him. “Most of the time?” The stairs were in her direction, so she waited for him, then walked beside him to the staircase and down it.
“I used to think all the time,” he said. “But my friend Roland lost an entire leg, and last I knew, it hadn’t grown back. Although there were some signs of healing.”
“That’s terrible. How did he lose his leg?”
“Shark,” Devlin said. “He nearly died.”
“And you expected it would grow back in a single day?”
“Well, I’d never seen an injury in a vampire that didn’t.” He shrugged. “Then again, I’d never seen a one-legged vampire before, either.”
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs when Sarafina came in from another room, carrying a tray filled with a silver coffee carafe, three mugs, and the scent of warmed blood. Not fresh, but at least human. She smiled a welcome and carried the tray toward a sitting area, her long skirts swooshing with every step, her bangles ringing. She set the tray on an ornate coffee table as big as a bed. Its gleaming wood was completely etched with swirls and curls, all the way down to its clawed feet. Its surface, however, was glass.
They joined her there as she poured. “Willem was up all day, caring for our...”
“Guest,” Emma filled in at the very same instant Devlin said, “Prisoner.”
Emma shot him a look, realizing how far apart they still were on this topic.
Twilight Vendetta Page 17
