by Sylvia Day
“No need. Raze and I get along fine, things are moving forward, and I’ll get to Huntington before the end of next week. All’s right in your world, Vashti. Leave it be.”
She stepped outside.
“For what it’s worth,” he said as he swung the door closed, “I was crazy about you, too.”
Vash stared at Elijah’s closed door and didn’t know what to do with the vibrating anxiety that rattled through her. Everything inside her rebelled at the realization that she was on the outside and he was locked away from her. Closed off in every possible way.
Christ, she’d come all this way with the thought that she would be with him tonight. She’d been pushing toward that all day and now she had nothing at all…
She’d never seen him so furious. He was livid. And his anger was more terrifying for its quiet strength. If he’d yelled or hit the wall…anything…the passion of his response would’ve given her something to hang on to. But his chilly fury had been emotionless. His parting comment had been made without any inflection at all. And spoken in the past tense.
Cursing, she ran both of her hands through her hair.
“Fucked it up, didn’t you?”
She glanced at Raze, who sauntered toward her, flush with the healthy glow of a vampire who’d just fed.
His gaze darted over her face and he sighed. Pity shadowed his eyes. “Ah, Vashti. Maybe it’s for the best.”
She nodded violently.
“You got a room?” he asked.
“I should head back.”
“Nah.” He tossed an arm around her shoulder. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow and we can use you. Wanna stay with me? I have two beds.”
“What about the waitress?”
One thickly muscled shoulder lifted in an insolent shrug. “What about her?”
Vash leaned her head in to him. “Still hung up on that med tech in Chicago?”
“Just not in the mood for anything complicated. You know what that’s like.”
“Sure.” Only she didn’t, not really. She’d connected with Char and, to a certain extent, Elijah. Raze had only ever connected with one woman, a mortal who’d drifted through his life as quickly as all the others but somehow managed to leave an indelible impression behind. Raze had been a man whore as long as Vash had known him. But when he’d come back from Chicago not too long ago, he’d gone from barely keeping his pants on to never dropping them at all. Aside from his fangs, he kept his body parts to himself.
When she had the time, Vash intended to look up Kimberly McAdams in the Windy City and see if she could get a handle on what it was about the woman that had so drastically altered one of her best captains.
He changed the subject. “I have to head to the airport in a couple hours to pick up the night shift and backup crews we have coming in. If you want to tag along, you still have time to feed. Plenty of selection in the restaurant—a couple truckers, the bartender, a handful of locals. You’ll feel better.”
No…she wouldn’t. Her head turned involuntarily toward Elijah’s door. He had to hear their conversation with his lycan hearing, yet he didn’t come storming out with his demand that she not feed on anyone but him. He’d really washed his hands of her.
Still, she couldn’t do it. Didn’t want to, even though she was now two days out from when she’d last drunk from Elijah.
“I’m good,” she said instead. “Why don’t you fill me in on what you picked up today and what you’ve got on the agenda for tomorrow?”
“Where’s your stuff?” His mouth curved. “You brought an overnight bag, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. I’ve got the Explorer over there.” He handed her his keycard and she tossed him her rental keys. As embarrassed as she was that she’d been kicked to the curb, at least no one knew she’d been hoping for some after-fight, make-up monkey sex when she’d hopped on a plane a few hours ago.
A girl had to have her pride.
Then she looked over her shoulder at the worn blackout curtains that blocked Elijah’s room from her gaze and wondered if maybe she had a bit too much of it.
CHAPTER 14
Vash’s brows rose when she saw Syre exit from the private plane.
“Damn. We got the big gun,” Raze murmured before stepping forward to clasp forearms with their commander. “Syre.”
“An entire subdivision?” Syre asked without preamble. He stood on the tarmac with the wind blowing gently through his hair, his head-to-toe black attire making him nearly one with the darkness.
A beautiful and deadly dark prince, Vash thought whimsically. Regal, powerful, and lethal.
“That’s Elijah’s take.” Raze glanced at the three lycans and four minions disembarking. “Good thing we brought two cars.”
“Where is the Alpha?”
“Snoozing. It’s damn near two in the morning. Unlike us, he needs sleep.”
Syre acknowledged that with a nod. “What’s your take, Raze?”
“Same as his. Place gave me the willies. It’s like a ghost town.”
Syre looked at Vash.
“I haven’t scoped it out yet, but if Elijah says it’s squirrely, then it’s squirrely. We’ve never faced a cleanup of this magnitude before,” she said grimly. “How do you keep a lid on an entire neighborhood vanishing overnight?”
“UFOs.”
They all turned their heads toward the minion who’d spoken. Vash placed him in his mid-thirties when he’d gone through the Change, and by the brightness of his smile and his twinkling eyes, he hadn’t been a vampire long enough to become world-weary. He wore his dirty-blond hair in a shaggy style, which gave him a laid-back and youthful appearance.
“Seriously,” he said. “We snag a few of the video cameras that we’re bound to find when we enter the houses and film the rest of you running around with flares in the darkness. You’ll look like streaking lights. Then let the government cover it all up.”
“Fuckin’ A,” Vash said, deciding to run with the absurdity. “I’ll man a camera. Syre, you’re the fastest. You can run around with the flares.”
The look on Syre’s face was worth the cost of admission. Grinning, she asked the minion, “What’s your name?”
“Chad.”
“Don’t talk around Syre, Chad,” she suggested. “He might kill you.”
Chad laughed, but she was only half kidding.
He was definitely a newbie. One who hadn’t been around long enough to figure out what his moniker would be. Most minions changed their names a century or two into their new lives, when everything they’d once known and loved had burned through the finite days of mortality and passed away. Vamps often chose names that represented who they’d become. Like Raze, who leveled every opponent in his path, and Torque, who tweaked, finessed, and applied pressure to situations as necessary. Contrarily, Vash had kept her angelic name, as a reminder of the woman she’d once been, one who’d been worthy of Charron’s love. She’d changed a lot since then. She wondered what Char would think of who she was now, whether he’d want her as much as he had before, whether he would want her as much as Elijah did.
Syre held out his hand. “I’ll drive. Chad, ride with Raze.”
“Gee,” Raze muttered. “Thanks, sir.”
Vash took the three lycans with her and Syre; Raze took the four vamps. They hit the road with Vash resetting the GPS so Syre knew where they were going.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Vashti,” Syre said, glancing at her.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Not as surprised as I am to see you.”
He adjusted the rearview mirror. “I’ve yet to see one of these wraiths in the flesh and it’s high time I did so.”
She hit the button to lower the window and rested her elbow on the frame, relishing the cooling kiss of the breeze on her face. “I feel like you’re checking up on me. Again.”
“Maybe I am,” he conceded. “You’re valuable to me and I’m concerned that you’re…confl
icted.”
Great. Pretty soon everyone who mattered would know she was a mess. “There’s a lot on our plate right now. I’m worried we won’t be fast enough.”
“We’ll know more once the other teams check in.” His voice was low and soothing, wielding his ability to mesmerize and charm.
“And if they all come back with reports of entire neighborhoods taken over by wraiths? What then?”
“Ah, my eternal pessimist. Then I guess we’ll stock up on zombie apocalypse movies and try to pick up some pointers.”
She didn’t want to smile, so she turned around and looked at the crew instead. The males were dark haired and big. Beautiful male specimens really, but mere shadows of Elijah. The female was blond and petite, pretty in a wholesome homespun way with her stick-straight hair, green eyes, and pink bow lips.
Vash briefed them. “Elijah will be able to zero in on the aspects relating to lycans better than I will, but I’ll tell you to be careful regardless. Wraiths seem to have a hard-on for you guys, and our alliance is new enough to be a liability. We haven’t fought alongside each other long enough to dance together without stumbling. A stumble with these guys can get us killed. Watch each other’s backs more than usual.”
All three glared at her with mute hostility.
“Names?” she asked, lacking the energy to get into a pissing match now.
John, Trey, and Himeko, she was told. Turning back around, she called Raze. “Hey. How’s the sleeping situation going to work at the motel?”
“I picked up three additional rooms, aside from the one Elijah’s got. I wasn’t expecting you, Syre, or a five-man backup crew. Hopefully, we can snag another room for the commander; the motel isn’t exactly in high demand. If not, we’ll put you with Syre and I’ll take one of the vamps in my second bed. The other two rooms have multiple beds, so we’ll have them bunk up.”
“Sounds good. Thanks.”
But when they arrived at the motel, they found the place sold out, thanks to a popular band playing at the restaurant next door. Vash claimed her backpack from Raze’s room and exited out to the sidewalk to wait for Syre, who was grabbing his bag from her rental on the other side of the lot. Raze was in the front office, taking care of getting keycards for the new arrivals.
She stood alone, feeling inexplicably lonely.
Drawn to Elijah, she sidled closer to his room. Her stomach knotted with every step she took, her mouth watering with the need to taste him. Not just for blood and sex, but the sound of his voice, the beat of his heart beneath her ear, the warmth of his arms around her. It struck her that she was terribly afraid he might open his door and she would plead for him to stop shutting her out, forfeiting all her dignity and pride.
She was shaken by the depth of her craving. She didn’t understand why he had to make their…association—she wasn’t going to call it a relationship—so complicated. Couldn’t they just take what they needed from each other, give each other what they had to give, and take it one day at a time?
She was formulating an argument to hit him with when a suspicious sound caught her ear. When she heard it again, her lungs seized and an icy lump settled in her gut.
“No, no, no,” she growled, stalking closer to Elijah’s door. Her blood heated and her heart began to pound.
Horrified and disbelieving, Vash stared at the number on the door, willing it to change when she blinked. The unmistakable sounds of enthusiastic sex emanating from Elijah’s room twisted her stomach into a hard knot. A shard of white-hot pain speared through her chest.
A woman’s breathless pleas for more…rhythmically squeaking bedsprings…the growl of a man pumping his way to climax…
Her bag fell from her nerveless fingers to the ground. For a moment she stood shattered, something inside her broken into pieces. Then fury took over. Lifting her foot, she kicked in the door. The woman’s high-pitched scream only spurred her bloodlust. The smell of sex hit her hard, propelling her across the room toward the big figure rising up from the mattress.
“I’ll kill you!” she hissed, backhanding him so hard he flew from the bed and crashed into the dresser. Her head swiveled toward the cowering nude woman on the mattress, her hand rising and clawed to strike.
Her wrist was caught in a steely grip midair. “Vashti.”
Syre’s voice, low and furious behind her, penetrated her wrath. She glanced at him. “Let me go.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
Her spine stiffened at Elijah’s barked question. Her gaze shifted to the silhouette in the doorway—the familiar broad shoulders, tapered waist, and long legs. He was shirtless, barefooted, his jeans unbuttoned and barely clinging onto lean hips.
The woman on the bed was still screaming like a banshee. The man who’d been fucking her moaned from where he was sprawled on the floor.
Yanking her arm free of Syre, Vash rounded on Elijah. “This is your goddamned room!”
His eyes glittered in the semidarkness. His arms crossed, taunting her with the sight of his gorgeous biceps and lickable abs. He was hard all over, precisely cut and built. And she wanted him. Desperately.
Sudden silence descended as the woman abruptly ceased her caterwauling. Syre’s soothing murmurs registered in Vash’s brain, then faded beneath her roaring blood.
“It was my room,” he corrected silkily. “Obviously, I moved.”
She bit off a scream of frustration. His mouth twitched as his gaze took in the scene behind her.
Mortified at her lack of control, she got in his face. “Don’t smirk. If that guy had been you, you’d be swallowing your severed balls right now.”
He set a hand over his heart. “I feel so loved.”
Her mouth opened on a retort when Raze sauntered up with their reinforcements in tow. He looked at the crumpled metal door, the warped frame, and the situation inside. Then he looked at Vashti with one brow raised.
“Don’t say a word,” she warned him. “Not one fucking word.”
Syre came out of the room like a shadow, sinuous and silent. His face was impassive, but his eyes were deadly. “The mortals won’t remember this incident, but damned if I’ll let you forget it, Vashti.”
His chin lifted. Elijah stepped forward, positioning himself in a way that put him between her and her commander. The gesture was a protective one. And undeniably challenging.
She didn’t need a shield with Syre, but that didn’t stop her throat from tightening over Elijah’s willingness to be one for her.
Himeko stepped up behind her Alpha, her smile too damn intimate for Vash’s tastes. “Does your room have two beds, El?”
His gaze never left Syre’s face. “It does, yes. It’s open to whoever wants it.”
Vash fought with herself, wondering if he’d reject her publicly if she jumped at the chance to share a room with him. She didn’t get the opportunity to find out.
Himeko pounced first. “I’ll room with you. I know you don’t snore.”
Vash scowled. How the hell did she know that?
“Come on, then.” Elijah gestured down the hallway. “We need to crash. We’re gonna have a hell of a morning in a few hours.”
Which, Vash suddenly realized, was why she needed to be with him so badly. She’d very nearly lost him once. Every minute she wasn’t with him was a minute wasted. The fact that she even thought of her time with him in those minuscule terms was telling, considering how long she’d been alive and how much longer she had yet to live.
Needing something else to focus on, she turned to clean up the mess she’d made. Damn it. The poor bastard inside was probably hurt real bad. She’d hit him with the thought that he was a lycan and therefore could take the force of her strength.
“I took care of it,” Syre said grimly. “His wounds are healed, but he’ll have a hell of a headache.”
Wincing, she nodded. “Thank you.”
“Take care of that door,” Syre ordered Raze, before collecting Vash’s bag from the ground and grabbing her by th
e elbow to steer her away.
The door to their room hadn’t yet shut behind them when Syre went off. “What the hell are you doing, Vashti?”
Her spine stiffened at his icy tone. “I…I don’t know.”
“You’re a mess. You’re a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”
Her chin lifted, accepting the hit. She was hungry, hurt, bewildered…“I am, yes.”
Cursing, he shoved a hand through his hair. “And I can’t do a fucking thing about it besides stick close and clean up after you.”
Guilt humbled her. He had so much on his plate. He needed her running at one hundred percent. Everyone did. “I’m sorry.”
Syre looked at her and she winced at the torment in his eyes. “No, I’m sorry. After all the times you’ve been there for me…all the ways you’ve helped me over the years…the fact that I can’t do one goddamn thing to help you is killing me. You’re falling apart, and I can only stand here and pick up the pieces.”
“Samyaza.” She didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the wetness on her cheeks.
He opened his arms to her and she walked into them. Fisting her hands in his shirt, she poured out her confusion in a storm of tears.
Vash entered the motel’s restaurant at eight thirty in the morning and found the lycans eating breakfast. John and Trey sat in one booth, Elijah and Himeko in another. The striking beauty was laughing at something Elijah had said; her sloe eyes were bright and her smile warm. When she reached out and set her hand over El’s, Vash knew they’d slept together at some point in their history.
The bruised feeling in her chest bloomed with a deeper pain and her claws extended, piercing her palms.
Sucking in a deep breath of courage, she did what she’d come to do.
She approached Elijah’s table, meeting Himeko’s gaze when it lifted to hers. “Beat it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Get lost. Take a hike. Go away.”
