by A and E Kirk
She flinched away and shouted in an imperious tone, “Unhand me!”
Leontes removed his touch. “I meant no harm.”
Kiara blinked. “Of course not.”
He gave her a wary look, then said, “I was only going to suggest to Mai that since Nicolette gave us nothing, in the name of cooperation for finding an innocent child, she would allow us to interview Nicolette’s friends and associates. Perhaps in the morning, after things calm down.”
“And lose another day?” Jaeger protested. “No way!”
“We could gain valuable information. And avoid a war.” Leontes added quietly, “An event that would not serve Giselle, or the rest of your pack.”
Kiara folded her arms. “I could still fly out of here and go look for her.”
“As could I.” Leontes offered a hand to Kiara. “Shall we?”
Kiara gave him a suspicious look. “What about Jaeger?”
Leontes cocked his head, clear blue eyes playful under thick lashes. “What about him?”
“I can’t fly.” Jaeger ground every word to dust.
“Just one of your many flaws. Along with your tendency to state the obvious,” Leontes said, then turned his attention back to Kiara. “But what is your point?”
“We’re going to just leave him?”
Leontes smiled. “I am good with that.”
CHAPTER 65
Kiara bounded into the suite. “It’s humungopious!”
“That is not a word,” Leontes said.
“It should be. I’ve never been in a hotel before. Are they all this beautiful?” She flitted about the presidential suite, squealing at the grandeur, popping in and out of sight as she explored the rooms.
It held handsome tropical furnishings. Plenty of color on the walls and in the fabrics, and rich woods polished to a glistening shine.
Jaeger raised his eyebrows. “Never taken her to a hotel? Ever heard of a vacation, gramps?”
“She is safer at the mansion. Answer the door while I make sure the suite is secure.” He disappeared into one of the many rooms.
Jaeger called after him, “The door? Why? There isn’t anybody at the—” The doorbell rang a pleasant chime. “Show off,” he muttered.
After receiving a delivery of clothes from the housekeeper, Jaeger kicked back on the expansive deck, sunset sparkling in the waves crashing on the beach. He flipped through the room service menu.
“Nicolette’s shooter is still at large,” Leontes said. “I would advise caution at being out in the open.”
“Why? I’m not a loose end they have to shut up.”
“True, but we are getting close enough that they might consider us a threat as well.”
A squeal had them both racing for the bathroom. Leontes arrived first. As Jaeger rushed in, the vampire stopped him with a steely hand on his chest.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Leontes said, looking down and clearing his throat.
“Are you blushing?” Jaeger said. “Can vampires blush?”
“It’s the biggest shower I’ve ever seen!” Kiara called from inside the bathroom. “The water sprays from everywhere and I can make it—what’s it called—Spring Rain!”
“That’s wonderful. Just, uh, marvelous,” Leontes said with an uncomfortable look at Jaeger. “She likes showers.”
Jaeger eyed Kiara’s clothes splattered across the beige marble floor. “I can see that.”
Leontes closed his eyes. “Kiara, please be sure you are covered, completely, whenever you decide to join us.”
“Because you don’t like the naked thing?”
“I never said—”
“I like the naked thing!” Jaeger said, a smile in his voice. “Clothes optional as far as I’m concerned.”
“Order dinner.” Leontes pushed Jaeger out and slammed the door shut.
The smells from the room service delivery had reached Kiara in the shower and were the reason she finally forced herself out. Since Kiara did not care for artificial light, Leontes ordered dozens of candles and had them flickering when she eventually emerged, wearing the dark green spa sweats he had left on the bed.
She had considered entering the sitting room in a towel. Or less. But seeing how thoughtful he was, she was glad she had curbed her antics. He looked beat.
Jaeger’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “Clothes? Ah, you shouldn’t have,” he said, not bothering to hide his disappointment. He wore matching green sweats, his hair slick from his own shower. “I wanted you to scrub my back, but gramps was his regular stick-in-the-mud self.”
Leontes appeared, fresh and unrumpled, wearing his original clothes. Kiara kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for the candles.”
He tensed, but managed a tight smile. “You are welcome.”
Leontes pulled out a chair, then tucked it in after she sat and handed Kiara her pills. She downed them with water, then opened her mouth so he could check that she had swallowed. “Enjoy your meal.”
He left her and Jaeger to eat at a long wooden table away from the French doors that opened to the pounding surf, while he paced outside on the terrace and pulled out his phone.
“What about the shooter, gramps?”
“Bullets do not harm me.” Leontes stepped out of sight and began speaking with Rusila on his cell.
With Leontes busy, Jaeger flicked Kiara a mischievous look. He held up a finger for silence and pulled her from her chair, leading her out of the room. Kiara paused at Jaeger’s bedroom door and cast a look back at the vampire, who faced away, deep in conversation.
Jaeger guided her inside, his smile devilish. “Shut the door. I’ve got something for you.” From under the mattress, he pulled out the file they had found in Adele’s office.
Kiara’s breath slipped from her lips. “You stole it?”
“And thanks to you, Adele will never miss it.” He settled himself cross-legged on the bed. “Ready to see what it says?”
“You haven’t looked at it?”
“I was tempted,” he admitted. “But it didn’t seem right without you.”
With an excited smile, she joined him on the bed. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We don’t know what it says. Although on second thought…” He chuckled and leaned toward her, his golden eyes full of mirth. “If you’re looking for another excuse to kiss me, who am I to deprive you of the satisfaction?”
She leaned in so their faces were close, and said in a low voice, “I’m looking for an excuse?”
One side of Jaeger’s mouth quirked up. “You’re right. Who needs an excuse?”
When he leaned in, lips puckered, she laughed and gave him a playful shove. He fell back on the pillows with a dramatic sigh of defeat.
“You’d better wait. Whatever’s in that file might send you running for the hills,” she joked, but an underlying sadness edged out the humor.
“I’m a big bad werewolf prince.” He lifted his arms and flexed his biceps while grunting a manly growl. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
“You can’t promise that,” she whispered, but there was hope in her tone.
The vampires at the mansion did not know the details of her past, just her reputation, and they kept their distance. Jaeger was the first friend she had made besides Leontes and Frankie, and she feared he might want nothing more to do with her. If the stories were true, how could she blame him?
Jaeger interrupted Kiara’s thoughts by taking her face in his hands. “It’s your choice. Read it or don’t. Either way, I’m here.”
The sincerity in his expression stirred her chest and made her eyes brim with tears. With a tender touch, he brushed them away and held her gaze. She swallowed.
Butch suddenly appeared in the corner of the room. “Wait for Leontes.” He took off his cowboy hat and pointed it at her. “Don’t be so impulsive.”
She ignored him and nodded at Jagger. “Let’s do it.”
Jaeger’s face split into a wide smile and he pr
essed a soft kiss on her cheek, then scooted next to her and slapped the file down in front of them.
Butch tossed his hat over the document and pleaded, “Don’t .”
Kiara knocked it aside and opened the file. As she read, an odd mix of feelings tightened her chest. The initial bubbling anticipation gave way to uncertainty and disgust. A dark, cold, ugly pit of revulsion. Her thoughts swirled like the murky bile of swamp water and as the visions stirred, her stomach lurched, threatening to evacuate their recent meal.
Blood splattered on the paper. Kiara jumped and looked up. Butch swayed a few steps away from her. She could see the wall through the gaping hole in his stomach. Blood painted his lips and teeth, dribbled down his chin.
“Why—why didn’t you stop?” Butch coughed.
Kiara lifted an arm to shield herself from the spray. “I’m sorry!”
Butch reached for her as he fell. Kiara rose to help him, but someone clutched at her leg.
“Please!” It was a young woman on her knees, ash and blood smeared on her skin. “Please, spare my son!”
Horrified, Kiara stumbled away from her.
A small boy poked his tear-stained face out from behind the woman’s shoulder. As Kiara’s eyes landed upon him, the child burst into flames. The mother screamed and held onto her son. The fire devoured them both.
Kiara screamed, too, and jumped back into a solid chest.
“Hey, hey!” Jaeger turned her around to face him.
But she could not look at him. The hotel room disappeared. Shadows rose from the floor and took on mutilated human shapes. They surrounded Kiara and Jaeger from all sides. One man managed to get a mangled hand on her ankle and crawl up her leg.
“Mercy,” he rasped. “Have mer—”
His head fell off his shoulders and onto her bare feet. Blood stained hot and wet on her toes.
Kiara stared in shock at the bloody blade in her hand. “I—I didn’t mean to.”
“Just breathe.” Jaeger took Kiara’s chin in his hand and tilted her head to look at him.
His eyes burst. Blood spurted from the sockets and sprayed hot on Kiara’s face. Jaeger crumpled. Nero stood in front of her, fingers bloody from where they had jabbed through the back of the werewolf’s head.
“I didn’t like him much.” Nero licked the blood from his finger. “Mmm.” He cast a hand at the army of miserable souls moaning in agony, piled atop each other in the room, begging her to stop. “Get me more, Kiara. I want them all.”
CHAPTER 66
“Rusila, you need to get us out of here. Now,” Leontes whispered into his phone.
“She did magic.”
“But she—”
“Complicated magic.”
Leontes could hear the smile in her voice.
“She does not remember doing it. She is losing her memory again.” He paced the balcony outside the suite’s dining room. “All of the progress she has made, you are about to lose it.”
“Nothing risked, nothing gained.”
“I swear to God, if we lose her again because you push her too hard to remember…”
“If I push her too hard?” She laughed. “I think you’re forgetting—”
Kiara’s scream stopped him cold. He looked back at the dining table. Empty. Leontes could hear two hearts, one racing faster than a panicked hummingbird.
In Jaeger’s bedroom.
Leontes dropped the phone and raced across the suite, ready to kill the prince. He threw the door open so hard the handle buried into the wall. Papers were strewn all over the floor.
Jaeger grasped Kiara’s chin, tilting her head to look at him. “Just breathe.”
Kiara flinched back with a scream and fell to the ground.
Not the scenario Leontes had envisioned. It was worse.
Leontes dropped to her side. She cried out again and slapped her hands to her face, trying frantically to wipe off something that was not there.
“Kiara, I am here,” Leontes soothed.
He laid a light hand on her wrist. She knocked it away and scrambled back until she bumped into the bed.
“I don’t want to kill them all!” She clutched both sides of her head, eyes squeezed shut. “Stop it! Stop hurting them!”
“No one is—” Jaeger began.
“Silence,” Leontes said softly, his cold gaze unleashing the fury he could not allow into his voice. The prince had broken her. Naturally, he would break the prince. But first, he had to put her back together again. As best he could.
Leontes pointed to the door. “Get my phone. Call Lyons.”
Jaeger hesitated, and then hurried out.
Without his presence, Leontes sighed, shoulders relaxed. He did not move from where Kiara had left him.
Tears streamed down her blotchy, red cheeks. With abject terror, her wild eyes flickered in every direction. She wiped her hands on her shirt and brought them up for inspection. Whatever she saw made her lips to tremble, and she tried to scrub them clean again.
“I—I didn’t mean to,” Kiara sobbed. “Butch told me to stop, but I killed him, too. And Nero wants more bodies.”
“Nero?” Leontes felt as though someone opened his chest and dumped ice water inside. He knew of Roxy and Butch. Nero was new. And apparently deadly. She was getting worse. “Ignore him. Focus on me.”
“I try. Why can’t I stop?” She hugged herself, squeezing her biceps so tightly that her fingernails drew blood.
He knew she tried to use the pain to ground herself with something real in the present. She dropped a crumpled piece of paper to free her hands and better scratch deeper lines into her skin. Blood coursed down her arms as steadily as the tears down her face. Her flesh desperately healed back together only for her to rip it to shreds again.
Kiara hiccupped between breaths. “I didn’t want to.”
“You do not have to anymore.” Leontes picked up the paper. “Tell him to shove his orders up his ass.”
The paper held many names, but one struck deep in his heart and left him cold.
Eponine Rittenhause.
He looked around the room. The words on the scattered papers finally registered for Leontes. Names. Dates. Kills.
“Son of a bitch.” Jaeger froze in the doorway, gaping at the bloody mess that was now Kiara. He dropped the cell phone and rushed at her. “Why aren’t you stopping her?!”
Leontes stood and backed away.
Jaeger tried to yank Kiara’s hands from her arms. She screamed and sent him flying. He hit the wall like a wrecking ball, bursting through it and disappearing in a storm of plaster and dust.
Leontes shrugged out of his coat and rolled up his sleeves.
“Get away from me!” Kiara shot up, swinging her arms to ward off an invisible attacker. Many of them, judging from how wide her gaze flickered. “I won’t do it. I won’t!”
She turned and sprinted headlong through the sliding glass doors.
Glass rained, glittering her hair, nicking her skin. She thudded onto the balcony. Shards crunched under her bare feet.
“Get away!” she screamed and threw herself over the railing.
Leontes followed, and hit the sand running. Her footprints gradually left less and less blood. He pursued from a distance as she ran across the sand.
“Leontes?” Kiara spun once, eyes desperate. “Leontes, help me!”
“I am right here,” Leontes said.
“Please help me!” She cried, and flinched from nothing before running again. “Leontes!”
Kiara reached the ocean, but did not stop. She splashed into the heavy surf, running, falling, getting back up, splashing forward again, until her head disappeared under the surf.
He understood. She was so far gone, she saw only one way to rid herself of the madness.
Death.
Leontes dove into the crashing waves. The salt stung his eyes. Foam and churning sand compromised his vision, but he searched, seeing so little in the dark murkiness. Finally, his hand brushed against fabric. He
grabbed a fistful and within moments he had hauled her head above the surface.
“No!” she rasped between coughing up water. “No, no, no!”
She thrashed in his arms as he dragged her ashore. He clamped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides. She still kicked and threw herself about. Leontes fell on the sand, wrapping his legs around her. Sand caked like glue to every inch of them.
“Someone get them off!” Kiara cried. “Please!”
“I am here.” Leontes buried his head in her shoulder. “Always here.”
A maniacal cackle shuddered her body, then she collapsed into a tired sob. “Why can’t I die? I just…want to…die.”
CHAPTER 67
“I could push you on the swing after we tend to your gardens.” Leontes forced a laugh as he entered through the French doors and carried Kiara into the bathroom. “Do you remember that year you planted tomatoes? You could not eat them all so you ran around the grounds with a sling shot, hitting any undead you could find.”
His smile wilted when he glanced down at Kiara in his arms, her blank stare. The sun had completely disappeared beyond the horizon in the time it had taken for her energy to wane. For her to simply whimper unintelligently and twitch like a fish left to die on the beach.
“I still cannot believe you managed to hit Rusila.” He shifted Kiara in his arms to turn on the shower. “I thought her head was going to explode.”
Kiara stayed mute. Her pupils remained grotesquely dilated, staring at nothing, her breathing labored, shallow and panicked, her mouth frozen in a silent scream.
“You would not set foot in a car.” Leontes sat down in the shower, settling her in his lap, and let the warm water spatter her skin, so cold from the ocean depths. She did not flinch. “You thought they were run by spells, and witches were not to be trusted. You eventually drove in one with me, after you had helped me rebuild the engines on six.” He smiled faintly. “Frankie said we looked like you and da Vinci, back in the day.”
Jaeger stood in the doorway. “What are you doing?”
