“Julian!” An arm slid around his waist, a warm body wedging against his side to support his weight. “Oh, my God…what happened to you?”
“You,” Ingrid said with blatant disgust. “You happened to him.” Then the vampiress turned toward him. “Saving Orson the trouble of killing you?”
The only one he wanted to save was Sienna, but he could barely stand or talk. He didn’t have to be a nurse, like Ingrid, to know that he was dying. But with his last ounce of strength, he would fight to protect the woman he loved. “Leave…her…be…” he murmured.
“You’re in no condition to be issuing orders,” Ingrid said with a vicious laugh.
“Julian, you have to leave,” Sienna whispered urgently. “Just leave…” Her small hands pushed at his chest, trying to shove him up the stairs.
He swayed and stumbled back a step. But other hands were there, not to catch him, but to hold him. He didn’t need to turn around to know that Ingrid had summoned her reinforcements. He lowered his head, focusing on Sienna. She stared up at him, her blue eyes wide with fear and glistening with unshed tears. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She shook her head. “You have no reason to be sorry. It’s my fault. I should have listened to you.”
“I didn’t tell you what you needed to hear,” he said. But he couldn’t say it now—he couldn’t say in front of all these people the words he should have given her when they were alone and in each other’s arms. He knew now what it would have taken for her to accept his proposal. His love.
“I’m sorry I’m not your hero….”
Chapter 7
S ienna’s heart pounded a frantic rhythm. And she couldn’t stop trembling—not just with fear, but from the cold. After night had fallen, they’d left the cellar, and they’d flown…to wherever they were now. But they hadn’t used a plane, or a helicopter or any other type of machine. They’d just…flown. They hadn’t flapped their arms or kicked their legs, but somehow they’d moved through the frigid night air.
Sienna was surprised they hadn’t killed her then. The man who’d carried her would have had only to drop her. The fall would have killed her, leaving her body broken beyond recognition.
But Ingrid had ordered them delivered here—to another underground dwelling even more opulent than the apartment to which Julian had brought her. He lay now, unconscious, on a hard marble floor. Sienna knelt at his side, stroking her fingers over the chiseled angle of his cheekbone and jaw. “Wake up. Please wake up…”
He wasn’t just sleeping. She wasn’t even sure he was breathing anymore. So she moved her hand to his throat and felt for a pulse. But her fingers were numb and his skin so cold, she could find no reassuring beat.
“Julian,” she whispered.
The men who’d flown them here stood around, glaring at her as she’d already been warned to keep quiet. They were beyond big, beyond her ability to fight. If only Julian were awake…
“He’s dying,” Ingrid said, her heels clicking against the marble as she walked back into the room from wherever she’d been.
And it’s all my fault. Guilt clutched at Sienna. If she’d listened to him, if she’d believed him—they’d both be safe now.
“It is all your fault, girl,” a man’s deep voice spoke to her thoughts.
Tearing her gaze from Julian’s pale face, she glanced up and then gasped. “You…” He looked so much like his “grandson”—even approximately the same age.
“We don’t age, girl,” he explained. “But we can die.” He knelt near Julian and brushed a trembling hand through his grandson’s hair. “That’s why it’s too risky for humans to learn of our existence. It makes us vulnerable.”
“I won’t hurt anyone,” Sienna promised.
“Too late,” the man snapped, as he rose to his feet and stared down at her. “You’ve already hurt my family.”
“Your honor.”
“Twice now,” he said. “Vossimers are Underground royalty. Royalty does not offer marriage to commoners only to have those commoners reject them.”
If Vossimers were Underground royalty, Julian was their prince and this man considered himself king. Regrettably, so did the burly men who hung on his every word as if he were issuing royal decrees.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured demurely. “I was wrong to turn Julian down. Help him, please…”
“It’s too late for my grandson,” Orson said, whatever affection he’d betrayed when he’d petted Julian’s hair was gone now. “He has brought dishonor to our family too many times. And he’s brought danger to the rest of the Underground.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Sienna defended him. “He never said anything to my grandmother. She had a gift. She knew things. Ask Ingrid.”
The older Vossimer turned toward the beautiful vampiress. “Is this true?”
After a slight hesitation, she nodded. “But it doesn’t change what happened. She knows our secret. She cannot live.”
Pride lifted Sienna to her feet. “I don’t care what you do to me. Just save him. Save Julian.”
Orson Vossimer narrowed his eyes and studied her. “You act as though you care about my grandson.”
“I love him,” she admitted.
The older man laughed. “You think me a fool. That I will believe your lies?”
“I love him,” Sienna insisted. “I’m not lying.”
“Then you’re the fool, girl,” Vossimer said.
“He’s a good man,” she defended her lover again. “He’s my hero.” No matter what he believed; she knew the truth now.
“Then why would you turn him down when he offered you marriage, when he offered you a way to keep your life…for eternity?”
She sucked in a shaky breath. “Fear.” Not just of the dark, but of the risk of giving her heart to a man who wouldn’t give his in return.
“You are a fool, girl.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I should have said yes. If I could go back…” She glanced down at Julian’s lifeless body and remembered the passion with which he’d made love to her. “Please, help him…”
“It’s too late, girl,” Orson said, emotion turning his voice into a rough rasp. “It’s too late…”
“Ingrid,” she turned to the other woman. “You’re a nurse. You must know what to do…how to save him…”
“His life is ebbing away,” Ingrid said with a weary sigh of her own.
“But he’s not dead yet.” She refused to believe that, refused to let him go. “Please, help him,” she beseeched the other woman. “You can help him.”
Ingrid shook her head. “No, I can’t. But you might be able to…”
“How?”
“Let him take your life.”
“He can have it,” Sienna offered. If not for him, she wouldn’t have lived as long as she had. No one would have ever found the wreckage of her family’s car. She wouldn’t have survived without him. “I owe him…my life.”
“Is this a trick, girl?” Orson asked.
“This is love.” Love was selfless, like Julian endangering himself to find her and try to rescue her. It was her turn to rescue him—even if it killed her.
They’re going to kill her. The horrific thought chased the blackness of unconsciousness from Julian’s mind. He fought the heaviness of his lids to blink open his eyes, gritty with fatigue.
“Sienna!” He tried to shout her name, but it escaped as a weak rasp. “Sienna!”
A soft hand brushed hair back from his face. “I’m here,” she assured him, with a sigh of relief. “And so are you…”
She blurred before his weary eyes, and he blinked again until he could clearly see her. Even tense and pale with concern and fear, her face was beautiful. Then his gaze moved beyond her to register their surroundings—the marble floors and walls. “We’re at my grandfather’s.”
She nodded. “He had us brought here…to this bedroom…”
“My bedroom,” Julian said, with a surge of hope. “Are we alone?”
A laugh, high-pitched w
ith a hint of hysteria, slipped from her lips. “You can’t want to…”
“I will always want you,” he said.
“But you’re so sick.”
If that was all he was, he could rally the strength to help her. But his situation was worse than that. Her situation didn’t have to be the same. “I can tell you how to get out of here,” he said.
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you!”
“There’s a bathroom behind that door…” He tried to lift his arm to gesture, but his limb was too heavy, his muscles too weak to move. His lungs ached as he struggled for breath with ragged pants. “There’s a vent in the ceiling. If you climb on the vanity, you’ll be able to reach it.”
She pressed her fingers across his lips. “Shh…save your strength.”
What strength? If he had any left, he could carry her into the bathroom, lift her to the vent and help her get away from the Underground. But once again, he was too weak to be her true hero.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said, her voice firm and her statement implacable.
He managed to curl his fingers into the curve of her hip. “You have to…” He pushed her. “You have to go. Now.”
“There’s no time,” she said.
“There’s time,” he argued, “for you to get away.” But how long could she stay hidden from Ingrid and Orson?
“I’m not leaving without you.”
“I can’t move,” he admitted with frustration and stinging pride.
“You don’t have to do anything,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “But bite me…”
He tensed; maybe he was so weak that he’d imagined what she’d said. “What?”
“Turn me, Julian.”
He moved his head, to shake it, but she’d put her neck there so that his lips brushed across the silky skin of her throat. “No…it’s too great a risk.”
“They’re going to kill us both if you don’t,” she reminded him.
“But I might kill you,” he said, dread twisting his stomach in knots. “I’ve never turned anyone before.” And fatigue had stolen his usual cocky assurance, so that he wasn’t convinced, even if he wasn’t so weak, that he’d know how to turn her without killing her.
“You’re going to die if you don’t,” she said. “Ingrid told me that this is your only chance—to use my life to save yours.”
He shook his head. “I can’t…”
“Julian, you’re dying now. This is your one chance. I’m your one chance.”
“No…”
“I love you, Julian.”
Her words suffused him with heat and passion. “You love me?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“But you left me.” Pain, more emotional than physical, staggered him as he remembered waking alone and finding her gone. “I thought you couldn’t accept my part in your parents’ tragic deaths. I thought you hated me…”
“I had to get away to think,” she explained, “to consider the life you offered me.”
“The life you rejected when you rejected me.”
“I rejected the life—not you,” she insisted. “We made love…twice…” She entwined her fingers in his hair. “I love you.”
He wanted to believe her, but nobody had ever said those words to him let alone meant them. Did she? Or was she only trying to help him because she was used to taking care of people?
“I only take care of people I care about,” she said.
“What?” Shocked, he met her gaze, her blue eyes wide with awe.
“I can hear your thoughts,” she told him, as shocked as he was.
“You have your grandmother’s gift.”
She nodded. “I just realized that now. I wish I would have realized it sooner. If I could have heard your thoughts earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have left you and then you wouldn’t have had to risk your life in the daylight. It’s my fault, Julian, that you’re dying. You have to use me to save you.”
“Sienna…”
“If you don’t, we’re both going to die anyway,” she said, “because I’m not leaving you.”
“C’mon, Sienna, you can go out the vent,” he urged her. “You can save yourself.”
“For the moment. You think they won’t track me down again? Where am I supposed to go? I have no place else to go—no one I want to be with but you.” She kissed him, her lips pressing against his until he opened his mouth. Then she dipped her tongue between his lips, sliding it across the sharp tips of his fangs.
Hunger stirred within Julian, but it was nothing in comparison to the power of his love for her. “Sienna, if this doesn’t work—”
“If it does, we can be together forever,” she pointed out. “Unless that isn’t what you want…?”
His heart contracted at the image she painted—the image of the two of them, in each other’s arms, for eternity. Making love, making each other laugh—making each other happy. “It’s what I want—more than anything else in this world, more than my own life. I can’t…”
“You have to,” she begged him. “Before it’s too late for us. You have to—” And she kissed him again, first his lips. Then she slid her mouth over his chin and along the line of his clenched jaw.
He wanted her so badly. Not just now, but forever. “Are you sure, Sienna?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she assured him. Her fingers in his hair, she tugged up his head until his lips brushed across her throat. A moan slipped from between her lips. “Please…turn me…”
His heart, which had been beating weakly, kicked against his ribs—with anticipation and fear. “This might hurt.”
“Just do it,” she urged. “Just…bite me…”
He rubbed his lips back and forth across her throat, lifting goose bumps on her skin. She shivered. “Julian…”
He curled back his lips and pressed his fangs against her skin. And pressed harder until her skin broke.
She gasped, her breath hissing out between her teeth. But when he moved to pull back, she tightened her fingers in his hair and clutched him to her. “Turn me…”
He couldn’t argue, not with her sweet taste sliding over his tongue. Heat and passion and love filled him as he drank. Too much or too little? The line was fine. One way would kill her; the other would leave her human and in danger of the Underground Society killing her.
Reenergized with her spirit, he pulled away from her. Her body had gone limp against him. He rolled her onto her back on the mattress and leaned over her. Her eyes had closed, her thick lashes lying against her pale skin. His hand shaking, he stroked his fingers over her cheek. “Sienna!”
Her skin had paled to a porcelain so clear her veins shone beneath the thin surface. Her pulse barely moved in her throat. Had he killed her?
“Sienna!”
The bedroom door squeaked open on rusty hinges. “Julian,” his grandfather called his name. “You’re all right?”
He shook his head, his eyes burning as he studied Sienna’s beautiful face. “No, I’m not all right.”
Strong fingers squeezed his shoulder. “You’re alive. She’s not—that’s what needed to happen.”
“She’s not dead!” Not yet. Although faintly, her heart beat beneath the palm he pressed to her chest. “She can’t die! She can’t…”
She’d promised him eternity.
“If it’s meant to be—if you’re meant to be—she’ll come back to you,” Orson assured him.
“We’re meant to be,” Julian insisted as he stroked her hair back from her face. “We’re meant to be.”
“You have to prepare yourself,” his grandfather warned him. “In case she doesn’t make it.”
Finally Julian tore his gaze from her and focused on the man who’d raised him in the ways of the Underground. “If she doesn’t make it, neither will I.”
“You say that now, but you’ll get over her…like you got over her grandmother.”
“I won’t. I love Sienna.” And yet he’d never given her the words. H
e’d never proved his love—like she had proved hers. For him she’d given up her life.
Chapter 8
L ight flickered, glowing through Sienna’s closed lids—calling her back from the darkness. Her body ached in protest as she shifted under the blankets pulled to her chin, her muscles weak and cramped. But the pain was good; the pain convinced her she wasn’t dead.
Unless this was hell.
She dragged her eyes open to a room bathed in candlelight, as it had been the first time he’d brought her here. Plaster walls rose to that ornate coffered ceiling with the chandelier hanging low and dark above the bed. This wasn’t hell; this was where she’d found heaven in Julian’s arms.
Julian! Had it worked—had he’d drunk enough of her spirit to revive his dying body? “Julian!”
“Shh…” a deep voice murmured, then strong arms closed around her, pulling her tight against a muscular chest. “I’m here.”
“You’re alive!”
“And so are you…” His breath escaped in a shuddery sigh of relief. Lips skimmed across her cheek then brushed over her mouth. “You’re alive!”
She blinked again, unable to believe that they were together. Free. “He let us go?” she asked, confusion muddling her weary mind.
“Yes.”
Because Julian had done what his grandfather had wanted. He’d taken the only option the old man had given him besides her death. She glanced down at herself, her arms bare as she pulled them from beneath the blankets. Her throat dry, she swallowed hard and managed only, “Am I…?”
“You’re back to not being able to say it?” he teased, his lips curving into that wicked grin.
“I could accept your being one,” she said. “But me…” How could she have become what she didn’t understand?
“You didn’t think it through,” he said, worry furrowing his brow.
“I thought only of you, of saving you,” she admitted. “I didn’t care about myself.”
“That’s why I love you,” he said, “so much.”
“I know you love me,” she assured him. “Going out in the sunlight, you risked your life for me. You proved it.”
“That last time I had,” he agreed, but guilt haunted his dark eyes, “but I could have saved you from the wreck earlier and I waited…”
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