by Jenna Kernan
Johnny gave them one last look of censure and then disappeared back the way he had come.
Mac took her back to the compound, his mood no longer light. Once there he left her, going into Johnny’s refuge to change shape and dress. She didn’t have long to wait before he returned, in wrinkled khakis and a rumbled olive-green T-shirt. Mac’s shoulders slumped and his chin dipped. For just a moment he looked defeated.
“What’s wrong?”
When he spoke his voice held a deep sorrow that struck Bri like a blow. “You made me forget.”
“Forget? Forget what?”
“Everything. This place, the danger we’re in, your attackers, Johnny...my duty.” He stared down at her with blue eyes that glittered with emotion. “And I can’t forget. Not any of it.”
She nodded her understanding. “You have a duty.”
“Yes.” He scrubbed his face with one hand. “I have to stay. The colonel and the med techs are working to bring Johnny back. Trying to find a way to make him human again. It’s terrible, but they need my blood and they need more time.”
“I understand.”
He glanced at her. “All I can do is follow orders and pray they figure out how to bring Johnny back soon.” He took hold of her shoulders and drew her in front of him. “I need Johnny’s cooperation and I need him not to give up.”
“And you’ve been neglecting him because of me.”
“Yes. But I think he enjoys spending time with you, too.”
“I’m asleep most of it.”
“He says you talk to him at breakfast.”
She smiled. “Yes. Sometimes I sing. He likes that too, I think.”
Mac nodded. “He misses his mom and his sister.”
“I didn’t know he had...” She stopped. Had she really been about to say that she didn’t know he had a mother? Or family? She realized she just never thought about who Johnny was before. “They must miss him terribly.”
“They think he’s MIA. They don’t even know he’s alive.”
She gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. “That’s terrible.”
“For them and for him. It eats at him. But he can’t visit or call or write. He can barely hold a pen.”
“I could write it for him.”
“No. No contact. They can’t know. Not ever. It’s for their protection as much as his.”
She held his gaze and then recognized the truth. “You’re hoping that they fix this and he can reappear.”
He didn’t deny it.
“But what if that doesn’t happen?”
“It’s a military secret either way. But if he can’t change, he stays missing.” Mac rubbed the back of his neck. “Anyway. He says you remind him of his sister.”
“What’s her name?”
“Joon—Julia, they call her.”
“I’m making things harder for you both.”
“Yes. And easier. We both miss home.”
How was Mac’s family? Had he been in contact with them, made his video calls when he wasn’t in her bed? “How is your sister?”
“Bonnie? She’s good. Getting big. She says it’s a boy.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced away, as if anxious to be rid of her. She sensed that he didn’t want his world and that one colliding and why would he? She could kill them all by just spending the weekend.
He’d mentioned his father; heart trouble, she recalled. She briefly considered what her appearance might do to him.
“How is your dad?”
Mac actually flinched. “On a new diet and grumbling about it.” He forced a smile.
Bri felt the sorrow well up inside her like floodwater. She missed her nana. Johnny missed his loved ones. Mac couldn’t see his family except on a computer screen. Suddenly it all seemed too much. She wanted to be independent, but instead she’d let Mac and Johnny risk their lives for hers. “Maybe I should just go.”
“You aren’t ready to defend yourself. Though you are a damned good runner.”
“Are they close to a cure for Johnny?” she whispered.
“Damned if I know. All I can do now is hold on and hope. But it’s hard. Really hard.”
* * *
Mac started a fire in the brazier after supper. He was damned tired of sitting on the ground in these freaking qalas. He wanted to go fishing in his bass boat or sit in a recliner, preferably with a beer and a remote. He wanted to watch a Detroit Tigers game with his dad while his mother made pot roast and Yorkshire puddings.
He wanted to go to a bar with his squad and laugh and tell lies. But his squad was buried under the sod at Arlington, and he couldn’t leave Johnny or Bri to visit his family. Mac jabbed at the embers and watched the sparks fly into the metal pan. He readjusted the pillow behind his back and sighed.
Bri appeared from inside Johnny’s storage depot carrying two mugs. The aroma of coffee reached him an instant before the intoxicating scent of orchids. She gave him a smile, and he knew she was worth all the trouble. Bri didn’t make demands. She accepted that their relationship was physical. The problem was, he was having trouble accepting it. This attraction between them only seemed to grow with each passing minute he spent with her. And he liked her. He enjoyed talking to her nearly as much as sleeping with her. That had never happened before.
He’d told her that when she could defend herself, he’d let her go. But now he saw two problems with that. First, she might not ever be ready to defeat a pack of hunting male vampires. And secondly, he didn’t want to let her go. But how could he keep her? The woman killed people just by showing up.
“Here you are.” She passed him one of the mugs.
He took a sip. She made damned good coffee. She also managed to spruce up those MREs with the fresh vegetables he brought her to make some really good grub. He was getting used to having her around, and that was a problem.
Why couldn’t Bri have had a difficult mother or a brother in prison or a kid or some shameful secret in her past like other women? Why did he have to go for a fucking vampire?
Mac raised his nose to inhale the scents on the breeze. Her coffee came to him first. But then he scented the rain, coming from the west. There had been no sign of vampires. MI said that they smelled like blood, which was true, but they also smelled like rot. Apparently they didn’t just drink blood; they cannibalized their victims. Unlike the myths, being bitten by a vampire did not insure immortality—but death.
Mac sipped his coffee and stared at the fire. It kept him from looking at Bri, which was what he wanted to do. He failed to keep his attention on the flames and glanced her way.
She wore a white T-shirt. The stretchy cotton molded over her breasts revealing the shocking turquoise lace bra beneath. None of her clothes fit her, since they weren’t her clothes. He wondered what she wore before coming here. Likely not skintight blue jeans, extrashort shorts or tops that was gauzy and as transparent as a bridal veil.
Their usual routine was to finish their coffee, move inside and make love, sometimes more than once. Then Bri would fall asleep, and he would move outside to await the dawn and Johnny’s appearance to relieve him. The physical intimacy sated his body, but he wanted more. He wanted to know everything about her. He’d been trying to resist, instinctively fearing the intimacy while craving it.
“What did you do back there before this happened?” he asked.
She paused with the edge of the mug against her full lips and then lowered the coffee. She brushed the hair back from her face. Her eyes sparkled when she talked, and her nose moved when she smiled. He felt a tug of desire and pushed it aside.
“I just finished my bachelor’s degree. It took me five years, because we moved around a lot and because I was working to pay for it. I just started at Social Services in Sacramento. Nana didn’t like it. She said
social work was for saps. We argued about it. She was getting ready to leave again, and I was planning to stay put. She hadn’t told me yet and...”
Mac held her gaze. Bri looked away.
“That’s how they found me, isn’t it? Because I wouldn’t leave when she told me to.”
“Do you think your grandmother knew how to stay out of their way?”
“She must have. I never saw one until after her death.”
He drummed his fingers on the mug, wanting to know how to keep her safe. Needing the knowledge that her grandmother had. “But she never spoke about them or how to keep away from them?”
“Not until she knew she was dying. She kept a journal, but it’s still at my apartment. It was as if she thought keeping her secrets would keep me safe. But I knew I was different. Like when I’d ask about my mother, Nana would just say she was a bad mother, abandoning her child. I didn’t think she died on purpose, but Nana would get angry, so I just stopped asking.”
“Did your grandmother ever see you run?”
“No, but she knew about my metal allergy. She made sure the bathtub was fiberglass in the apartments so I didn’t get a rash, and she used ceramic knives. She mostly cooked casseroles in Pyrex. We ate with plastic cutlery.”
“Metal just makes you itch?”
“Break out, itch, a nasty allergic rash. I get headaches, symptoms of an allergies, runny nose. Only we both knew it wasn’t pollen. I’m a mess. I get carsick even when I’m driving and airplanes...” She shuddered. “The worst migraines ever. But now that I’m away from the wires and cars and well everything, I feel so much better. Stronger. And I can see more clearly, especially at night.”
She described her new night vision which was much the same as his own. “Sense of smell?”
“Yes, always better than...humans.”
“And you don’t know how to intentionally draw energy?”
“No!” She turned back to the fire and her mug of coffee. Her posture told him she was upset.
“You don’t want to learn how to use that power?”
“Only if I can learn how to shut it off.” She stared at him, her eyes luminous and shimmering.
“It might save your life.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m a pacifist. I’m a good person...or I thought I was. Now I discover I’m—I’m this.” She swept a hand over herself. “Mac, if we get through this and you catch your vampire and, we part ways...well, I’m not really free to go anywhere, am I?”
He inclined his head. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t go back among them. Humans, I mean. Not knowing what I can do to them. I can never do that again. So where will I go?”
He was silent as he considered that problem.
“I’ve spent my whole life trying to help people. I’ve put my energy into social causes. I’ve marched, petitioned, rallied, worked in the trenches. Well, not the kind of trenches that Marines work in, but I’ve tried very hard to make this world a better place. But I haven’t. I’m a fraud. I’m not a good person. I’m a killer like you.”
“No. All my kills were intentional.” The instant he said it he knew it wasn’t true. He still didn’t know if he’d killed any of his own men, because he couldn’t remember what happened after the werewolf attacked him. He’d tried several times, but there was nothing. But Lewis told him he’d attacked Lam.
She lowered her gaze to the flames and her words came at a whisper. “Mine wasn’t.”
Her fiancé, he recalled. His obituary said it was leukemia. That was a hard thing. He knew something about living with regret.
“You can’t change it by reliving it. Going over it and over it will just drive you crazy.”
She stared at him a long moment, those lovely green eyes shimmering. She looked at the contents of her half-empty mug. “But if my grandmother had explained it to me earlier—”
“Would you have believed her? If you didn’t see that vampire coming for you, if you didn’t jump out of that window, would you have believed any of this?”
She sniffed, and the tears that had hovered on her lower lids splashed down her face. Damn, she was even beautiful when she wept. “I don’t want to believe it now.”
“We are what we are. All the tears in the world won’t wash that away.”
“You’re the only one I can’t make sick.”
Her glamour didn’t work on him. He knew it. So why then did the thought of letting her go fill him with a kind of creeping panic? The only thing more frightening was losing his family. He ground his teeth together and met her gaze. “Me or another werewolf.”
She set aside her mug and clasped her arms around her knees. She looked small and helpless. An illusion, he knew. She was powerful, more powerful than she knew. If he were not able to tolerate her, would he be able to resist her? He didn’t think so.
But he knew that Bri was getting faster each day. Fast enough to outrun them, he believed. After he caught his vampire, he’d have to let her go, because he knew he was growing too attached to her. He felt it, those tendrils that bound him more tightly to her. The intimate moments and the realization that each day he wanted her more, instead of less. This had never happened before. He wasn’t bored, distracted, restless. The only restlessness he felt came from thoughts of their parting.
But he’d have to let her go soon. He’d send her on her way for her own good as much as his. He and Johnny could go back to the way they had been. The med techs could find a cure for Johnny. Then maybe he could visit Mac’s family, see with his own eyes that his dad was all right. Hold his nephew. Oh, damn.
What if they didn’t find a cure, and what if they couldn’t go back to the way they had been?
Her chances were worse without him. He knew it.
But she was safe now. He’d put himself against any vampire to protect her; he relished the thought. He anticipated the encounter more than he should have, and that made him think he was in the right profession. He wanted to fight. Needed to.
Bri sniffed, and he found that her suffering cut him as deeply as his own. He reached out to her, wrapping an arm about her shoulders. She sagged against his side, molding to him as he stroked her back.
“Come here,” he said and turned her so he could brush away the tears that now glistened on her cheeks. “There have to be others like you. Ones the males haven’t found yet.”
“I could join them.”
He nodded, but he didn’t want her to join them. He wanted her to stay here with him forever.
He kept thinking what it would be like to have her in his life. It wasn’t a pretty picture. To have Brianna, he’d have to give up his commission, possibly go on the run, because he just couldn’t picture military intelligence letting one of their two werewolves and the only one who could change shape, just waltz out into the general public. So he’d be a wanted man. They’d be coming after him and Johnny, because he wasn’t leaving his friend behind.
Even if they did remain free, Mac would have to be on constant guard for the vampires who hunted her.
Then there was his family. He couldn’t introduce Brianna to his mother or his father. His sister was pregnant. Mac thought what horrors Brianna could bring to a fetus or newborn, and winced. And while he was on that topic, what about kids? He wanted them, a pile of them. Her children would be vampires, and his...
He lifted one hand and used his thumb and forefingers to rub his tired eyes.
He couldn’t have the life he led or the one he imagined and have Bri. He would have to choose.
Chapter 14
Mac watched her as she left the brazier’s warmth and swept inside toward the room they had arranged for her to sleep in. He let her have a few moments’ privacy, but the pull was there, urging him to follow her. His skin itched and he could no longer sit still. He poked at
the fire. He paced. Still the need built inside him. He could hear her removing her clothing. Here the whisper of sheets as she pulled back the covers. Her scent lingered in the air, growing weaker by the second.
He needed that scent, needed to touch her soft skin. He balled up his fist and pressed it to his forehead. Mac didn’t remember leaving the fire or walking across the clearing. Instead he just found himself at her door.
The door she had left open.
To him.
He drew himself up, tightened the muscles of his shoulders and torso. Even if he went in there it would change nothing. She wasn’t his. Couldn’t be. He could sleep with her, but eventually he’d have to let her go.
Her scent came to him with the rustling sound. His body went cold, then hot, then ready.
The flickering light told him she’d lit a candle again, instead of the kerosene lantern. She said she preferred the soft illumination, and the lantern was mostly metal. Likely it burned her to turn the knob.
Did she know how lovely she was by candlelight, her hair all ablaze and her skin gilded?
He stepped into the doorway. She stood beside the bed straightening to stillness at his arrival. The tension between them tugged like a rope stretched to its limit.
The bed stood between them with the covers turned back so that the top sheet lay half over the blankets. She’d centered the two pillows, one at the headboard and one where her hips would be when he kissed her there. He lifted his gaze to Bri, seeing first her long, taut legs and the scrap of blue lace that hugged her like a second skin. Her wide hips narrowed at her bare waist, and he studied her belly button, the small, enticing indenture. She didn’t wear a bra or tank this evening. Her lovely, full breasts hung like ripe fruit, soft, perfumed and inviting. Her large rosy nipples tightened under his scrutiny. He took a step closer. She lifted a hand to her throat, her fingers splayed. He watched her hand slide down to cup one breast.
He closed his eyes and listened to her approach. He heard everything she did, whether it was brushing her hair or rubbing on moisturizer. She glided across the room on bare feet, pausing so close that he could feel the heat of her skin in the cold room.
