by Lisa Olsen
“It’s really her,” Bishop murmured, fingers dusting across the curve of her jaw, following a path he’d traced countless times before. His hand strayed to her shoulder and he hesitated, wondering the best way to remove the stake to cause her the least amount of pain.
“I’ll do it,” Jakob rasped, his voice cracking with emotion. In the next instant, he wrenched the piece of wood free, tossing it aside without hesitation. Carys’ mouth opened in a silent scream, blue eyes wide with pain, staring but unseeing at the sudden agony. The gaping wound quickly soaked her pretty dress with blood, but she showed no sign of weakness, fighting against Jakob’s hold like a wild animal, scratching and biting to be set free.
Jakob was easily able to overpower Carys, but still she fought, thrashing and squirming to break his hold on her. “Vara stilla, älskling,” he ordered, his voice gentle but firm. Instantly, she ceased struggling, her face turning toward the sound of his voice.
“Jakob?” she breathed, her lower lip trembling as his voice penetrated the haze of pain. That single word sent a glow of warmth through Bishop’s heart – he’d never thought to hear that voice again. It gave him hope that she could be saved, unlike mad Corinne who’d had to be put down. It was a good sign that Carys was at least mentally stable enough to recognize her Sire.
Her tongue darted out to moisten her lips, eyes misty with tears. “Jakob, I’m dying,” she said in a piteous voice, her face pinched with pain.
“No, beloved,” he smiled down at her, stroking the bright curls away from her brow. “I’m here to save you. Drink…” There was no need to give her a command as her body’s need for blood took over. Her fangs descended and she lunged for his wrist with a savage cry, pulling hard at his flesh. Jakob moaned at the intensity of it, gathering her close as he murmured endearments into her hair. The Ellri’s powerful blood spiced the air, which soon became thick with their intimate sounds.
Bishop’s eyes squeezed shut, doing his best to close his ears to the familiar catch of pleasure in her voice. How many times had he been by her side when she made that contented purr as she fed? How many times had she forced him to watch as she took her satisfaction from another? It both shocked and dismayed him that it still bothered him to see her in a clinch with Jakob, even knowing that she needed his blood to repair the damage to her body.
“Forgive me,” Jakob whispered when she released him, sated. “I swear to you, I thought you dead. I had no idea you were in Lodinn’s care. Say you’ll forgive me,” he begged, kissing her forehead, her eyelid, her cheek.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she replied, still half in a swoon. “I knew you’d come for me, minn hjärta.”
That was Bishop’s cue to leave. He’d done what he set out to do, he’d found Carys for Jakob as commanded. There was no reason for him to stick around, definitely not to watch their tender reunion. He turned on his heel, prepared to go wait in the car until a single word halted him in his tracks.
“Ulrik?”
He turned to find her watching him, her lips curved into a smile as though pleased to see him, but hardly with undying passion. After weeks spent reading about her eternal love for him, it was a disappointment, to say the least. Then again, she was still under Jakob’s compulsion not to love him, he reminded himself. Still, it was disconcerting to see those calculating blue eyes regarding him as though it’d been scarcely a week or two since they’d last seen each other. Maybe for her it was.
“Hello, Carys. It’s good to see you again,” he said simply, not quite sure what else to say.
“How strange you sound,” she smiled, her brows drawing together in puzzlement. “And how oddly garbed you are. What company have you been keeping?” Her own voice held the accent born of years of travel and a dozen languages spoken, heavily influenced by her Welsh upbringing.
Bishop looked to Jakob, not sure how to answer. In all the months they’d spent on the road together searching, never once had they discussed what to tell Carys once they actually found her. Though she’d retained enough of her wits to recognize them and carry on a simple conversation, there was no telling if there were any lasting effects of Lodinn’s treatment of her. No way to know if it could be damaging to tell her how much time had passed.
“That’s a question best suited for a later time,” Jakob said with an indulgent pat. “I’m more concerned with how you are. Are you in any pain, my treasure? Do you need more of my blood?”
“Pain?” Her hand massaged her chest where the wound had fully healed, smearing the blood all over her hand, and she stared at it in confusion. “No… there’s no pain,” she murmured, her tongue darting out to daintily lap at her sticky fingers.
“Yes, pain. How long were you in torpor?” he tried again, but she merely shrugged.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Bishop probed, disturbed to see her placidly ignoring them while she continued to clean her hand like a cat.
Carys stopped, staring off into the distance. “There was a party, in Lichtenstein. I wore my pretty dress…” She looked down, her face crumpling in distress to see the bloody tear over her heart.
“Did no one know who you were?” Jakob asked. “Could you not tell anyone your plight or get word to me?”
Her blonde curls danced as she shook her head. “No, he’d compelled me not to speak of it, and there was no one there in my acquaintance. They were all humans,” her nose wrinkled with disdain.
That explained why no one had known she was still alive. “Did he do this sort of thing all the time?”
“Not too often, no. Mostly he delighted in keeping me to himself, depriving me of all good society,” she sniffed, her eyes growing shiny with unshed tears as she turned her gaze up to Jakob, who still held her in his lap. “He subjected me to all manner of debasing indignities.” Her voice throbbed with emotion, lower lip trembling with just the right touch of vulnerability that set off Bishop’s bullshit meter. He’d caught her act before, it didn’t make it any less convincing though. “I can’t even speak of the advantages he took of me.” She dabbed at her eyes, crying prettily into Jakob’s shoulder when he pulled her closer.
Knowing first hand how low she set the bar for moral standards, Bishop doubted that very much. She’d continually shocked him with her behavior both in and out of the bedroom, and it was unlikely she would’ve rejected Lodinn under normal circumstances. But he reminded himself that it’d still been a horrible ordeal for her. No matter what her personal proclivities were, she hadn’t deserved being kept as little more than a pawn of revenge against Jakob.
He cleared his throat when she continued to snuffle and carry on, the tears ringing false with him, even if Jakob didn’t seem to notice. “When was this last party?” Bishop asked. Judging from her style of dress, at least a hundred years had passed, unless she’d been on her way to a costume party.
“I hardly know,” she frowned. “What day is it now?”
Looking to Jakob, Bishop took his subtle nod as a sign to go ahead and drop the big one. “There’s no easy way to say it, but I’m guessing it’s been a century or more since Lodinn last took you out to play.”
Her eyes clouded with genuine alarm for the first time since she’d tasted Jakob’s blood. “How is that possible? I realize some time has passed, but surely not that much.”
“Carys, over three hundred years have gone by since we thought you died,” he said gently and Jakob nodded as well.
“But… why would you think me dead? Surely you knew Lodinn had taken me. He spoke often of taunting you with my capture. Why did you wait so long to come for me?” she demanded, punching Jakob in the shoulder as her lips pouted in a petulant moue.
“I had no idea you lived, my angel,” Jakob insisted. “When the reports of your death came to me, I wept for a month, barely able to eat or sleep. I was beside myself.”
Carys seemed mollified by his words, but turned to focus on Bishop. “And did you weep as well, Ulrik? Or was there nothing but relief?”
“I grieved,” he said shortly, not liking to think back to that dark period in his life. He’d very nearly ended it all. Carys had been the absolute center of his universe. When he’d thought she’d killed herself because he’d driven her to it, it’d been almost more than he could bear. If not for the Order, he might’ve followed her into the sun. Only that wasn’t what’d happened at all, he reminded himself. She probably hadn’t cared at all that he’d shacked up with another girl that night, her heart had been hardened to him for centuries.
“Apparently not for very long,” she murmured. His less flowery response clearly wasn’t what she’d been hoping for, and he had to admit, the old Ulrik would’ve thrown himself at her feet to beg forgiveness for having failed her.
“It’s been over three centuries, Carys. I’ve had time to get over it.”
“It seems like yesterday to me,” she said softly, and then Bishop did feel a tug at his heartstrings. “Then Lodinn never told you he’d been keeping me here against my will?”
“No, we just found out he had you at all a few months ago. Apparently, he decided his private revenge wasn’t enough to make Jakob pay and he decided to kick it up a notch.” Bishop looked to Jakob, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. Now wasn’t the time to bring up Anja. Carys wasn’t paying attention to them though, her anger growing as she realized she’d been hoping for a rescue that would never come as long as Lodinn had kept her imprisonment to himself.
“That whoremonger!” she hissed, her eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “Where is he? I’ll skin him alive! I’ll roast his liver and eat it for dinner!”
Bishop would’ve laughed if he didn’t know she meant every single ugly threat that tumbled from her cherry lips. His hands came up to stem the colorful swear words that were far removed from her usual ladylike pose. “Sorry, there’s nothing left of him but ash.”
“Which one of you avenged me then?” she demanded, looking from one to the other.
“Jakob’s your man,” Bishop replied first, wanting none of the glory for his part in it. Besides, Lodinn would’ve been just as dead with or without his help, Anja had seen to that.
“I hope you made him suffer before you tore out his black heart,” she smiled up at Jakob, a mixture of sugar and spite in her voice.
“He had time enough to regret how he wronged you,” Jakob boasted, leaving out the actual details, for which Bishop was grateful. Mollified, Carys flowed against Jakob like honey, her arms twining around his broad shoulders as she offered herself up as a reward – which Jakob gladly took.
Bishop looked down at his boots, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the display as it grew more intimate – clearly her appetites hadn’t dulled over the years. He cleared his throat, taking a step backward. “Okay then. We’re good? I have to get back to Rome.”
Carys wrenched her mouth away from Jakob, who suppressed a groan of disappointment. “You’re not leaving me, are you, Ulrik?” she blinked up at him.
The way she looked at him almost changed his mind, and he wondered if that was due to the compulsions she still held over him, or nothing more than nostalgia for a time long gone. But every time she called him Ulrik, he was reminded of how far he’d come since living as her lapdog for the better part of a century.
“That isn’t me anymore,” he said shortly. “I left Ulrik behind hundreds of years ago, I’m known as Bishop now. I have a new life, a new…”
“A new love?” she interrupted, arching a delicate brow only to change her mind. “Perhaps not. You don’t have that besotted puppy dog look of a man in love.” Her lips pursed as she studied him. “No, you look… far too intense. It doesn’t suit you, Ulrik.”
“I told you, I’m Bishop now.”
“Not to me.” The hint of a smile curved her lips, reminding him she knew him better than anyone else in the world. No, she knew the man he’d been, not the man he was now. It didn’t matter what she called him, Bishop wasn’t about to start jumping when she snapped her fingers again if he could help it.
“Look, you’ve got things in hand,” he said to Jakob. “Keep the car, I’ll make my way back to town and make other arrangements.” He took another step, and then another, his chest feeling tighter the farther away he got from her.
“Car?” Carys blinked, unfamiliar with the term.
Jakob straightened, holding Carys close as he stepped off the tomb’s raised dais to the soft ground below. “Perhaps we’d better go up to the house and let Carys clean up and get some rest. There is no need for you to run off so quickly, Ulrik. I should think you’d welcome the chance to attend to your Sire.” His voice deceptively mild, there was no mistaking the command in his face when he stared Bishop down. Bishop’s jaw twitched, but he said nothing, merely stepping aside to follow them up to the house.
Carys chattered happily as they walked, full of a hundred questions, which Jakob answered patiently, with a smiling indulgence. A piercing alarm went off when he forced the back door open, the house wired with a security system, and Carys clapped her hands over her ears, screaming until Bishop bypassed it a few seconds later. Even after the alarm was silenced, Carys continued to wail, fat tears rolling down her cheeks at the fright, despite Jakob’s soothing words.
“There is much for you to adjust to, my angel,” he crooned, stroking her hair until she quieted.
The estate had lain mostly vacant for the better part of a century, with few updates beyond the addition of electricity and some modern appliances in the kitchen. But it was elegantly appointed with high ceilings and lavish Edwardian furnishings. Whatever provisions Lodinn had made for the place, the power was still on at least.
“I’m sorry to be such a bother,” Carys sniffed, her cool fingers slipping inside Jakob’s shirt to brush against his chest. “I’m sure I’ll feel so much better after a hot bath and a few hours sleep.”
“Of course you will,” Jakob agreed, kissing the top of her head, still carrying her as if she didn’t have the strength to walk on her own. “Ulrik, go and fetch her something else to wear.”
“Yeah, let me get right on that,” Bishop muttered, glad to have an excuse to leave the pair. In the bedrooms upstairs, he found a wardrobe full of women’s clothing, too demure to belong to Carys, but he thought the sizes might not be too far off. They were all fashioned from roughly the same time period as her dress, and he looked for the least complicated pieces, not wanting to be pressed into acting as her lady’s maid as well.
Laying the clothes out on the bed, he considered calling Anja to let her know that her hunch had been right. They’d found Carys exactly where she’d told them to look. Running a swift calculation in his mind, he figured she might be awake, though it was still very early evening on the west coast. He tapped the phone against his upper lip –what if she was with Rob? He didn’t want to interrupt what could already be a very difficult time. His fingers hovered over the screen, wondering if it’d be better to send her a text.
Carys interrupted his thoughts, striding into the room. “There you are, Ulrik. I almost thought you’d gone after all.”
“Glad to see you didn’t lose the ability to walk.”
“You of all people know I’m a good deal stronger than I look,” she smiled, and Bishop had to admit, she was right. That was one trait she shared with Anja. Carys studied the clothes he’d laid out with a critical eye before rejecting them to go search through the wardrobe herself.
“What’d you do, bash Jakob over the head?” Bishop smirked. “I didn’t think he’d let go of you for a week at least.”
“Jealous?” she asked with an arch smile.
“Not hardly,” he smiled back, because it was true. While he hadn’t wanted to sit around and watch the two of them suck face, he had absolutely no problems with Jakob taking her off of his hands. The realization made him breathe easier, recovering some of his equilibrium in a situation that’d been growing dangerously off kilter.
That obviously wasn’t the answer she’d been hoping for,
and her eyes hardened, her voice growing frosty. “Run me a bath, won’t you?”
“I doubt there’s any hot water.”
“Then heat some,” she bit out, her temper running high.
“Did you find anything suitable?” Jakob called out, joining them in the bedroom, and Carys kept her eyes on Bishop as she tore the bloody dress in half and daintily stepped out of the ruined pile of fabric to stand naked before them.
“No, Ulrik always did have abominable taste in clothing,” she taunted, parading unconcerned with her nudity to rifle through the clothes in the wardrobe. Jakob chuckled in amusement over the bold move, but Bishop turned away, having seen too many times before where that kind of boldness led. He found the closest bathroom and turned on the taps, but after several minutes of running, the water didn’t get any warmer.
Half expecting to find Carys straddling Jakob when he returned to the bathroom, he was relieved to find them chatting easily, as it was the most natural thing in the world for her to be standing there naked. “There isn’t any hot water,” he reported, averting his eyes.
“Ah well, no matter,” she sighed, pulling on a silky dressing gown. “I am rather tired anyway, I suppose it can wait until tomorrow.”
“Yes, you must rest now,” Jakob agreed, turning down the bed for her and kissing her brow once he’d tucked her in, like a small child.
“But… you’ll be here when I wake, won’t you?” A touch of fear slipped into her voice as she looked between the men. “Both of you?”
“Of course, älskling,” Jakob replied instantly, glaring at Bishop to do the same.
There were so many reasons why he should get the hell out of there while he could, but Bishop found himself giving her a solemn nod. “I’ll be here.”
Chapter Seven
Why does everything always end up being harder than it has to be? I kept asking myself that question over and over again as we got back into the car to head over to Leila’s apartment. Taking Rob out to feed turned out to be a bigger ordeal than I’d thought it would be. His willpower was nonexistent, and I could see why he’d been limiting his feedings as the only way to exercise control over his actions. Thank goodness we had Lee to play lookout or we might’ve ended up in a sticky situation in the teeming city.
