by C. L. Quinn
Xavier forged ahead, but cautiously, because the only thing on his mind was to save Margot. David thought how very human that was of him, and how the Xavier he used to be would have scoffed at him for not just blowing in, guns blazing, radical and wild, and taking out practically everything in sight.
The old Xavier had been a man of action and explosions. This Xavier had no idea how to be that man. The thought struck David, though, that, in this situation, the old Xavier would have been a better man to have at his side than this new one.
“Do ya still feel him?”
Xavier watched David do the odd thing with his head where he lifted it up to search for something that he still found elusive.
At the back of the cavernous warehouse, a single door in the center of a long wall reminded them of the one in that last warehouse where they’d found Margot.
“Barely. He’s close, but I don’t think he’s in the next room.”
“Then it’s safe to enter?”
“With this man, nothing’s safe. Just be extraordinarily careful.”
Without answering, after a brief pause, Xavier stepped up to the wide door and pulled it open.
Light flooded out, a hard column of brightness that nearly blinded them. Xavier’s eyes adjusted first and he hurried inside, moving out of the direct path of the doorway to the right. He could feel David to his left, David’s hand on his arm.
“Careful, this is the kind of thing Claude loves. He thinks it will disorient us. Something like that could help him get the drop on you.”
“I figured. But I’m seein’ all right now. Are yer eyes okay?”
“Yeah.”
Both looked up at a strange form in the center of the room some distance away. It took a few seconds before Xavier and David realized, simultaneously, what it was.
“Margot...”
Xavier headed toward her. David scanned the room, saw no one, didn’t feel Claude’s life signal any stronger than he had from outside the room, and didn’t see any obvious traps. There had to be one or more.
“Xavier,” he spat out, and grabbed Xavier’s arm to pull him to a stop. “She’s here, and that isn’t how this guy works. Xavier, this is his endgame. He’s changed his tactics, and we don’t know what to expect, but it’s going to be bad. You don’t want to find her to just watch her die, or die yourself.”
“What else can I do? I have to get to her.”
“Not like this. Look at her, she’s alive, for now, so stop here for a moment, and let’s assess the environment.”
Margot was on some kind of pedestal, tied and chained, excessively, to a pole erected in the center of the room. She was awake, staring at them, her head still except for a tiny back and forth motion. A shake, a negative, a silent “no.”
Xavier grabbed David’s arm, breathing deeply. “Ye’re right. Okay, what do ya suggest?”
Screeching overhead drew both vampire’s eyes upward.
“I told you to come alone. That’s one,” Claude’s disembodied voice said over some type of loudspeaker.
His head up, Xavier walked into the center of the floor, his arms out, spinning slowly. “Come on, face me. If I’m such a great enemy, big man, face me! Let the woman go, and show me what ye’ve got!”
Squelch. “I don’t have to prove anything, I just have to finish the job. That was my code when I was a human assassin. Finish the job. You’re not walking out of here, vampire.”
“Wanna bet?”
Using the air displacement he’d finally gotten down, Xavier was on the pedestal, his arms around Margot in a split second. That she was alive meant everything to him, but what those animals had done to her broke his heart. Her beautiful face, torn to pieces…the pain she must have felt, the awful damage. It hurt so much to know that he hadn’t protected her.
“Aw, lassie…” He’d fix this no matter what it took.
Margot shook her head. “Get out of here. He’s going to kill you.”
“Aye, that’s his plan. I’ve other things in mind.”
He tore through her bindings and nearly had her free when a barrage of rifle shots rang out, bullets flying from all directions burrowed into Xavier and Margot.
“No!” Reaching for Margot, Xavier went down as her body slumped over against the final straps.
David searched for the openings above and started out of the room to try to intercept Claude and his team to stop them from firing, but he ran straight into Koen as he came through the door.
“Drop!” David yelled as the bullets suddenly shifted towards them.
Koen grabbed Bryn, who had entered behind him, and they dropped down to avoid the barrage.
“Where’s Tamesine?” Koen yelled.
“I didn’t see her. Was she with you?”
“Yeah! Damn, it!”
Bryn saw Xavier lying on the floor, bleeding, probably dead, but he’d be okay. The woman Xavier had been desperate to save slumped from where she was tethered to a pole, unconscious, gun shot, bleeding. He used hyper-speed to race across the room. Pulling Margot loose from the pole, he laid across her as a fresh spray of bullets exploded over him and struck his body. He didn’t move again.
“Bryn! Damn hero!” David called out as his friend went into the line of fire.
The barrage continued, bullets flying all directions, but there was no way to know exactly which gun was held by Claude. He’d obviously filled the top of the room with numerous human sharpshooters, but Koen knew, he knew, that one of them, the one targeting Xavier’s head, would be Claude.
Just as he pushed through a spray of bullets that struck him, though not fatally, the barrage of gunfire stopped.
The sudden absence of percussion was startling, and left behind loud ringing in both ears. But at least the lethal bullets no longer ricocheted around the room. Was it a trap?
“I’ve got all of them,” Tamesine’s voice came through the loudspeaker. “You’re safe.”
David hurried to the platform, Koen on his heels.
Koen went down on his side to check Xavier and pulled him into his arms. Head shots, more than one, he was dead, but nothing permanently lethal. Thank God!
“Ah, fuck!” David said softly, as he pulled Bryn’s body off Margot. Bryn was dead, too, but only from the bullets, so he’d recover. The woman, though, was in bad shape.
“She’s seriously wounded, Koen. Fuck, someone cut the shit out of her, too. I’ll give her some blood, but we need to get her to a hospital.”
“Do it.” Koen lifted his head and looked around the silent room. “Where’s Tamesine?”
“Here.”
Tamesine walked through the same door they’d entered through minutes earlier when all hell broke loose. She was elegance personified as she moved toward them, except for one incongruous image. She dragged Claude’s unmoving body behind her, the hand he could not lift wrapped around a sharp-edged ax. Everyone knew what he’d planned to do with that.
Nodding his approval, Koen brushed Xavier’s hair back. He saluted her. “Is he dead?”
“No. After all my posturing, I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to. I’m still recovering from all my terrible deeds. I just can’t perform another act of brutality. Besides.”
Tamesine’s eyes went to David. “I think there is someone else here who deserves a chance to right some wrongs.”
His wrist slit, Margot’s head tipped back, his blood seeping into her mouth, David looked up at Tamesine. He had every right to hate her; after so many years, the damage done to him still festered. Yet she was giving him the chance for avengement.
He glanced down as Margot choked on his blood.
“She’ll make it, but she needs an ambulance.”
“I’ll call for one,” Koen said, his cell phone in his hand.
David gently laid Margot back on the floor and moved to the edge of the platform to watch as Tamesine pitched Claude’s inert body twenty feet to land between them.
“Stand up,” she commanded, and although Claude strugg
led, he managed to gain his feet. He was completely under her control now, and she froze him again, except for his head.
That nasty smile that she’d always hated spread on his lips. “So, what now, my sire? You think you’ll kill your creation?”
His hubris surprised her. “You don’t think I will. You think that because I sired you, I wouldn’t end you. Claude, darling, you’re remembering those bad vampire movies or TV shows. A sire’s link is no deeper than that of any other relationship. If you’re someone I care about, then I care deeply. If you’re someone I loathe, as I do you, then the fact that you carry a blood link through the conversion means nothing at all.”
The smile faded. She could see that, even in the current dire circumstance, Claude did not believe he would die tonight.
“So you’d kill me?” he asked, still disbelieving.
“I’ve had a brutal past. When I was lost, I hurt and killed people. You forced me to make you, and it is my right to unmake you. But I have no need of vengeance, no need to prove myself to anyone. You must pay for your crimes, Claude. Your presence makes this world uglier, and there’s no place for you in it.”
Claude watched beautiful, powerful Tamesine shift her gaze to David. He followed her gaze. He knew the man she spoke of, the vampire that started it all with Lamont’s SRS. David’s thirty years of torture had formed the core knowledge of the society about vampires. That he had survived the worst that they could do to him was legendary. Claude noted that he was, like all of them, a very large man.
David slowly descended the steps off the pedestal. He watched Claude for several long moments before he reached down and snagged the ax from Claude’s fingers.
Several moments later after he paced back and forth, David cleared his throat and spoke.
“You came from nothing. You leave nothing behind. From what I know of you, from what you’ve done to us, I think that this is probably the worst thing for someone like you. That you walked the earth and left no real mark. You are nobody, and you’ve always been nobody. Claude, I return you to the nothingness from which you came. There will be no mercy for your soul.”
Tamesine turned her head a split second after she saw David lift the ax. The blow was quieter than she expected, but it was done. Her responsibility for the damage Claude would do to the world was finished. Without looking back, she walked toward the door.
She sighed. “Thank you, David. I’ll go wait for the ambulance.”
Moisture on her cheeks surprised her. Tears? For Claude?
No. Relief that it was over. Finally, finally, over.
Outside, mist was gathering along the docks, rolling in from the sea, the cool dampness welcome.
“May we have peace now for many, many years to come,” she prayed as a siren cut the silence of the night.
Thirteen
Koen laid Xavier on his bed in their hotel room.
“Just put Bryn on Tamesine’s bed. They’ll be out for a good while.”
Tamesine walked in and touched Xavier’s cheek.
“At least we can go home soon, heal his mind, and let him know who he is.”
David nodded. “I remember how awful it was, the detachment, the confusion, when I didn’t know my own name, my past. I feel for him.”
Standing, Koen laid a blanket over his brother. “He’ll be fine. Xavier’s a survivor.”
“Aye, he is,” David commented, and paced to the front of the room. “I’m starved. You want something?”
Koen stood. “Yeah. Why don’t you and I get a feast so that we can celebrate our victories tonight? We’ll need a lot of food when these two wake up. You know they’ll be famished.”
“Agreed. Um.” David looked toward the woman he’d had so much reason to hate for the loss of several decades of his life. She wasn’t the same person, he knew that now, but it had taken him a long time to get to the point where he could accept it. Oddly, this strange incident had also let him see her for what she’d become. “Tamesine, is there anything special you would like us to pick up for you?”
She looked up abruptly. David was asking if there was something he could do for her? A tickle of joy slid through her chest. Was there a chance that the one she’d hurt the most might forgive her?
“Uh, thank you, David. Yes, perhaps some ice cream? Chocolate chip?”
He smiled, which shocked her. “You got it. Koen, let’s do this.”
Tamesine turned back to Xavier as the door closed behind the two men.
Wow. The world could change on a dime. She’d learned that long ago, and yet moments like this still surprised her.
“Xavier, I hope you come back better than ever after this. It’s been quite a journey for all of us.”
Her eyes went to Bryn, lying dead in her bed, who had laid his body over Margot to protect her when the bullets began to fly. Had he not done so, the human woman wouldn’t have survived the assault. Vampire blood could help heal humans, but not once they died. The vampire had seen the danger and raced to protect her.
Tamesine had thought him a hero in Brazil, and she’d been right. What a big-hearted, beautiful man.
Taking another blanket, she laid it over him, and sat on the bed.
“You’re a kind man,” she whispered as she lifted a hand to brush his long hair from his face. Electricity crackled and her head swum, the sensation unsettling and familiar. What the hell? What had she felt?
Once she pulled her hand away, she sat staring at the unconscious man. What the hell was that? It was how she’d felt when she touched Dez, touched Olivia, for the first time. How could she…? Why would he…?
The truth struck her like a bolt of lightning. Was it possible…?
Tamesine slipped off the bed and stared at the big man. For minutes, she just looked at him, closed her eyes, paced, pondered, considered how possible or impossible this situation was, and yet was aware that there was a good chance that what she suspected was true.
All that remained was to confirm it. Tamesine pulled a chair over to the bed and carefully sat down. Her hands hovered above Bryn for long moments before she leaned in and curved each hand over his cheeks, then leaned down to place her forehead against his. With every touch, sparks traveled through her skin.
Moving through the spirit plane had become second nature to her now, and she walked easily through a sunset that faded to night, then back to sunrise in minutes. She reached for the past, for days long gone, centuries before now, searching for an event in Bryn’s past.
A scene revealed, a dingy room lit by low candles, a woman lying bloodied on a cot, her hands out to her sides, puffing in pain.
“It’s dead, the poor thing,” another woman proclaimed.
“What?” The woman on the cot finally croaked out.
“The bairn didn’t make it, lassie.”
The woman in the bed began to weep. Then she screamed. “Take it away! I never wanted the thing anyway! I don’t want to see it!”
Sobbing outright now, nearly hysterical, her voice raw and guttural, she yelled, “Get it out of here! Please.”
The woman who had just given birth was Desiree.
Tamesine’s spirit-self watched this moment of human drama and pain. The dead baby…this man who lay in this bed, were one and the same. Bryn was Dez’s son, and he was Tamesine’s grandson. First blood. Her blood. He was a third generation first blood vampire and he was family. Pulling from the spirit realm, the regression quick, she lifted her head when she regained consciousness.
“My child,” she whispered.
So this strange trip to stop Claude and rescue Koen’s brother had led her to the grandson she and Dez had been searching for. This was the last thing in the world she would ever have expected when she’d joined Koen to look for her enemy and for Xavier.
“Thank you,” she said to the universe as she laid her head on Bryn’s chest and took his hand.
For the next half hour, she just touched him, spoke to him, told him how much she loved him, told him that now every
thing was in place, and all would be all right.
“I’m happy you found your mate. I hope you’ll be equally happy to discover your family.”
Looking over at the dresser to where her cell phone lay, she went to it and lifted it from the empty top.
After a quick dial, tears sliding from her eyes when the call connected, she brushed the moisture away as her voice cracked. “Hi, Dez, it’s me. Dez, I found your son.”
“You’ve healed remarkably quickly, young woman.”
Margot nodded to the doctor after he came to check her chart and her condition.
“Good to hear. So sign me out of here, hey, Doc?”
“Yes, it looks like we can. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such serious wounds heal so quickly. You need to follow up with your physician within the next two days, though.”
“Yeah, yeah, you got it, just get me the…heck, out of here.”
“I can see you’re impatient. Okay, I’ll start the paperwork, and you should be on your way home within the hour.”
Nodding, Margot pushed the blankets off as the doctor disappeared out the door.
Cautiously, she slipped from under the sheet and placed her feet on the floor, pushed up, and made her way to the slim closet near the bed. Fresh clothes hung on a hangar, thank you Freddie, as well as her own brush and lip gloss. She caught her image in a small mirror over the sink and lay a hand on her cheek, memory of the deep rips in her skin vivid. Why were there no scars?
At first, the doctor had been amazed, but the next time he’d stopped in, he didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary. Margot still felt blindsided with no idea what was happening.
She’d been here for two days without any word from Xavier. Robert and Freddie had been here, but when she’d asked about Xavier, and what had happened, they’d just smiled and said that everything was all right.
Now, once they released her, she could go to the Smoke District and check on him. She would admit that even she was fuzzy about what had happened.
Ten minutes later, dressed against the advice of the nurse, Margot sat on the edge of her bed. Another bland hospital meal had been delivered and she was picking through an uninspiring pasta when she heard a familiar voice.
