More hands reached for her. Too many at once. Whipping the gun around, Jesse fired again, at random. Another wail went up. More filthy ash hit her in the face.
She fired a third time, swinging the weapon as she was knocked off her feet. A puff of stinking air arrived. More ash.
“That makes three!” she yelled, thrashing on her back in the dirt, smelling not only the presence of the two monsters holding her, but a third vampire as well. This third one was a more powerful bloodsucker, instinct told her. Its feel was weightier, more painful, like metal spikes jammed to her bones. It stank of dank, wet earth.
“Get … off … me!” Jesse barked.
A shoe came down heavily on her chest and pressed in. All Jesse managed to see was a long stretch of fabric; yellow, tinted with a red film from the moon bouncing off the ruined roof over their heads.
This was the female who had addressed her a minute ago. She … it … was the master monster here, the one Lance had tried to warn her about. The creature who had set free the other vampires from their holy, cross-filled prison, and who was behind the kidnapping and torture of a young girl.
“No soul,” Jesse whispered as a gleaming set of razor-sharp teeth came lethally close to her face, and as she feared the end might be near.
Silently, and with all her might, she issued a call to Lance. Perhaps a last message, born of fear and acceptance of the fate at hand. Save the girl. You promised.
She acknowledged the drumming in her neck and the awful ache of her scar coming to life. Felt the prick of teeth scraping across her throat in search of an artery. The predator’s teeth rested momentarily on her scar, as if surprised to find the ridged tissue. Then they moved in a slow drag across her skin that stung like the rake of a primed cutting knife.
The female spoke, her tone vehement, acidic.
“He gave it to you,” she hissed. “That selfish, arrogant bastard.”
And then Jesse’s windpipe took a blow that turned her world pitch-black.
Lance’s head came up. A voice, like a shockwave of dispersed night air, slammed into him. He turned. Jesse’s pilot pivoted alongside.
“No,” Lance said.
“Jesse?” Fear was etched on Stan’s hooded face.
“The church,” Lance directed. “Go there. Only one of them holds Elizabeth at present. She’s very near death, hanging on by a thread.”
“I have to get to Jesse,” Stan growled. “The girl is important. But Jesse …”
“You can’t help Jesse here. Not in this instance. I have to face this. It’s partially my fault.”
Stan shook his head adamantly, rocking onto his toes. “Jesse first.”
“No!” Lance said with a restraining hand on Stan’s arm. “It’s for me, because of me.”
Stan had the sense to believe him, as well as the instinct to give in to the powerful alpha immortal, like the rest of the Were clan. Stan had been holding on to his shape longer than he had the strength for. He was shaking all over, his face as gray as the ash on the ground as he fought his true nature.
“Go to it,” Lance urged. “Let the moon take you.”
Without wasting any more time, Lance ran like mad back toward the village center, where the very beat of his heart lay.
He knew her. The village center was wrapped in her smell, and reeked of her immortal presence. The master here was as familiar as his own feet. Although he’d known this villain was female, the slap of familiarity was a surprise.
“Hello, Gwen,” he said through clenched teeth, yank ing her upright, pressing the length of his body tightly against hers from behind before she could react.
The fragrance of flowers, twisted and modified by the centuries of blood she’d ingested and the loss of sunlight to enhance its glow, permeated her waist-length hair—still as fair in color as his own. His old love was skeletal, hardly more than stretched skin over bone, where once she’d had the lush, vital curves of a pampered queen. Her tresses, much envied in the past, were matted, falling over her shoulders like strips of unwashed, tangled rags.
Lance kept her from moving by wrapping his arms around her arms. He whispered, “It would seem you got your wish, after all.”
“No thanks to you,” she said. But the woman he had pushed away for her own sake centuries ago listened without a struggle, her body as cold as the patch of frost at their feet.
“To what do I owe this honor?” Lance asked quietly, eyeing Jesse on the ground, unconscious, but breathing fitfully. Jesse was alive. The scraggly creature he held in his arms had not killed her.
“I heard she was here,” Gwen said, “and that you’d gifted her. I came all this way to meet the woman who had tamed you into submission. Yet she isn’t one of us, after all. Look at her, my love. How pathetic she lies there. White and pathetic and sickeningly human to some degree.”
“I did not bring her over,” he said.
“Nor did you change me,” Gwen snapped dangerously.
“I do not hand out immortality, as well you know. That was not my purpose.”
“Nevertheless, here I am,” Gwen taunted. “Tainted, of course. I could not find the Six, though I searched long and far for your brothers. My immortality is not pure. Not a match for yours. Still, I exist.”
“You’ve let the vampires out,” he said.
“To bring you here.”
“The crosses were for the protection of the mortals.”
“I’m old enough that tricks don’t matter. Neither do your precious mortals.”
Lance took a tighter hold on her. “You did this for me, Gwen? Brought the American girl here for me? Hoping to lure me?”
“A gift from an old flame. Though there’s not much of the girl left. The others in this village, weakened by your restraints, couldn’t be made to wait. You starved them, my love. Your own kind.”
Lance ran a hand along her shoulder, feeling every jagged bone. “You know better,” he admonished. “They are not my kind.”
“Nevertheless, the trick worked.”
“It did,” he agreed, noting the damage Jesse’s gun had dealt, smelling the ash all around that meant she’d taken out more than a few of her monsters before falling prey to this one.
“And now?” he said to the creature he held.
“You will love me again,” Gwen said.
The flavor of her lie was muddied earth. Lance felt the hatred emanating from her that had simmered for centuries. Gwen was a killer now. Psychopathic. An instrument of death whose diluted blood had no doubt sired numerous others, and who had loosed the potential for a reign of terror upon the Slavs in this part of his country. Gwen, once so beautiful and golden in his memory, was an abomination, just as he had feared she might be.
Heat rushed through his veins. Blood pounded in his ears. Gwen couldn’t be allowed to exist. What were the chances she’d go away or repent her sins? After finding Jesse and realizing what existed in Jesse’s veins, Gwen would never allow her a moment’s peace. Jesse would never be safe. She’d have nowhere in the world to hide from this shunned vampire’s grudge.
Still, he’d find killing Gwen difficult. She was the only other woman he had loved, or thought he loved, until the real thing came along to prove the difference. Jesse.
He listened to the sounds of fighting in the distance. Nadia had arrived—a familiar touch of wolf on his sensitive skin.
A half-starved vampire was no match for two were wolves bent on revenge, let alone a wolf pack. Perhaps Stan and Nadia were working together to free the American girl. He sensed Elizabeth Jorgensen, too. Alive. Gwen had at the very least seen to that, whether or not she meant to. A last mistake? A final triumph? Who knew, since truth had no part in Gwen’s existence these days.
Moonlight dripped over him, over his captive and over Jesse’s body on the ground. Tonight, the moon was thirsty. Sacrifices had to be made. The village would be cleaned up, Gwen among its casualties. That ought to satisfy a blood moon. But the ultimate sacrifice? His own sacrifice? He’d
let Jesse go. Make her pilot whisk her away to safety, without so much as a last agonizing pressure of his lips on hers.
“A parting gift, Jesse. Your life back,” he whispered.
“No!” Gwen twisted in his grasp. “You cannot have her.”
“I won’t have her,” he said, meaning it.
“Then you will have me.” Gwen’s remark belied the severity of her need for revenge. The odor of that need seeped from every pore of her emaciated body.
A cry went up from the wolves, closer this time; yips and howls of triumph from Nadia’s creatures. Animals trained to trap and rip apart ripe vampire flesh before the monsters dissipated completely.
He heard the padding of running paws and the heavier footsteps of the two werewolves leading them. Dried blood laced through the foul air in the village center as a stocky figure appeared beneath the roof cover, carrying a girl in his arms and trailed by a pack of wolves as black and as feral as the overlapping shadows.
Jesse groaned, slowly regaining consciousness. Lance’s heart went out to her.
“For the sake of what we had,” Gwen pleaded, eyeing the gnashing jaws of the oncoming wolves.
“Yes, for the sake of that,” Lance said. Then he let Gwen go.
He didn’t truly believe she’d run away, predicting how this would play itself out, knowing how it would end.
With the speed of a malicious Reaper, Gwen dropped on top of Jesse, her fangs bared. Before Lance reached for her, the wolves, in a heated wave and with the force of a hurricane, swept Gwen away.
It only took one good bite to the jugular from a well-trained enemy for the woman Lance had left in a long-faded past to become dust.
And he was on his knees, beside Jesse.
Chapter 19
Jesse was deathly cold, but maybe not dead, because her head hurt like a tractor had rolled over it.
Moving a leg, she encountered the chill of crisp sheets. A little voice in her mind whispered: Four-hundred-count.
She opened her eyes, cringed at the light streaming over her and over the bed. Sunlight squeezing between the slats of a shuttered window.
Daylight.
She shot upward, and was pushed back down. Finding the nerve to look around, Jesse found herself buried beneath a fluffy beige comforter with the consistency of a cloud. An elaborate footboard rose up just past her feet. She wasn’t on the ground in a cursed village. It was no longer night.
The gravelly voice of a man broke the silence. He exuded an aroma of damp hair and muffins, and was trying his hardest to remain calm when he was anything but.
“You awake, boss?”
She turned her head, her pulse tapping out her wariness, her body ready to leap.
“It’s morning,” Stan said.
Jesse let that news settle, took a breath, calmed her self. “Hotel?”
“Bingo,” Stan said.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Fine. Elizabeth will be too, in a month or so. She’s in the hospital with the senator by her side.”
How the hell had she missed that part? Oh, yeah. A vampire in a yellow dress had her teeth on her throat.
Her hand went to her scar. “Status?”
“The girl’s had several transfusions already. She lost a lot of blood, but she’ll make it.”
Jesse already knew that, somehow. How had she known it?
“The senator and this government are waiting to shake your hand,” Stan went on. “I think they might throw a parade in your honor. Not to mention the quite remarkable bonus they’ll be adding to your usual fee.”
She knew this, too. Maybe she’d overheard people talking.
“I told them no parade,” Stan said teasingly, though his tone came across as thoughtful. “No fuss.”
“Thanks,” she managed to say. “Appreciate the help.”
“Hey, no problem.”
“No, I mean thanks.” Jesse looked closely at the man who had faced down death with her, by her side, way above and beyond the call of duty. Beyond even the realms of the believable.
He nodded solemnly. “You all right, Jesse? Really?”
“I think so. No new holes, anyway. How do I look?”
“Like—”
“Death warmed over?”
She was sorry the second that came out, and turned her head. “I guess I can’t say that anymore, right?”
“You can say whatever the hell you like. To me, any way,” Stan said.
Stan, she saw, was a little ragged around the edges. A bandage, smelling of plastic and antibiotics, hid a cut over his right eye. Some sort
of iodine tincture painted the scratch across his nose, highlighting a palm-size bruise.
“It wasn’t a dream,” she said.
He shook his head, probably wondering what she’d remember, while knowing in his gut that she knew it all, and maybe even about the secrets he kept. She saw this as clearly as if he’d spoken out loud.
Dear, dear Stan. What secrets was he hiding?
“You brought both of us back here? Heck, Stan, the parade should be for you.”
Stan shook his shaggy head again. “He brought you here.”
Those words twisted through her, tasting of smoke, stone and leather. Exotic, sensual, golden fare.
Fingers on her scar, she found another memory. Lance’s mouth on hers, pressing the life back into her, seeing that she called up what she needed to make it this time … as always.
Lance Van Baaren. In the blood-washed alley, looking like an angel. In the hotel. In the castle, the village, picking up the pieces of the puzzle she’d lost, helping to get Elizabeth Jorgensen back.
Everything, even this room, revolved around the golden vampire and his choice of actions.
He had given her back the blood she’d lost so long ago—its consistency thick, and tasting of copper. His blood, sliding down her throat and into her bloodstream, united them in a supernatural way that had carried her all the way to the here and now.
To him.
The vampire had done all this, and had brought her here to heal. Not to his castle, where he’d have the advantage, but to the hotel, and Stan. To sunlight on a beige comforter, surrounded by the sounds of civilization.
All the things Lance Van Baaren would never have.
For your own good, he had said. But what did he know of that, or about her needs? She was restless, and knew why. She was hungry for … him. And he had gone.
Voices were buzzing beyond the window. Stan’s heart beat loudly in her ears. The sheets, whatever count they were, felt rough against her sensitive skin. She found the light, though welcome this morning, too bright to stare into …
And he was thinking about her. The vampire with a soul. The being who called himself a Guardian, and whose blood flowed through her.
The old enemy? No. Not at all like them. Different. Honorable, in the end.
“We can leave tomorrow,” Stan suggested.
“You’re under a doctor’s orders to stay in bed until then.”
“Okay,” she acquiesced.
“Like hell,” Stan said, reading her easily enough.
“I have one more trip to make,” she confessed, only then realizing this was true. She had to thank Lance for, if not herself, Elizabeth Jorgensen. She had to see him one more time.
“I won’t condone it, Jesse,” Stan grumbled. “Because this big doofus, sitting here next to you, is going to admit, verbally, right this second, that I don’t want to lose you.”
After a short span of silence, he added, “There, I’ve said my piece.”
Jesse’s heart nearly broke. It actually shuddered. So, she thought, this was what friendship felt like. Nothing at all like pain. This was joyous, heartwarming, new.
“We won’t lose each other.” She laid a hand on Stan’s rugged face. “Not ever. Friends?”
Stan nodded soberly. “Friends.”
“Partners?”
After taking a second to take that offer in, Stan showed the beginnings
of a surprised grin.
“Good. I’d like to rest now,” Jesse said. “I need to think.”
“Like hell,” Stan repeated, but he got to his feet. “I’ll be cleaning up the bird, in case you need to find me.”
When their eyes met, he smiled.
The chopper touched down. Jesse hopped out. The whir of the blades filled the quiet, echoing the hum going through her mind.
“Vampire,” she whispered, staring up at the castle.
Turning, she looked to Stan. He nodded. They hadn’t discussed this visit. On some internal level, Stan had known where she wanted to go. Why she was here remained the question at hand. Which reminded her … they’d need to talk about Stan’s secrets if they were to be partners. Fair was fair.
“Lance,” she said, slightly louder this time and with the weight of her presence behind the use of his name.
She felt him acknowledge her from a distance—a sudden flare of heat in her limbs and a sensual vibration—knowing he didn’t move from wherever he was. His touch seemed to hail from a far place, as if he wasn’t tucked behind those granite walls at all. Had he left the privacy of his retreat, moved on, because too many people knew about it? Because she did?
The heat he caused gathered into a central ball of fire in her abdomen, where it revolved for several slow turns before beginning to dissipate. Jesse folded her arms across herself automatically, hugging the warmth to her torso and feeling so very cold everywhere else. But this heat wasn’t to be trapped. It remained elusive, as did its cause.
Lance had gone from this place, taking with him some of the color, intensity and spark that had flared between them. He wasn’t coming out to meet her. He didn’t want to see her. That much was clear. Not even to say goodbye.
A great sense of loss descended upon her as his front door, with its carved Van Baaren crest, remained closed. This need to see him was stupid, really, Jesse told herself, since despising vampires had been her lifelong mission.
From now on she’d be able to find vampires every where. Thanks to what this one had done, nothing in her future would look the same, be the same. It wouldn’t even smell the same. Lance had seen to it, and virtually guaranteed, that her life would be altered.
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