Mistress of the Underground

by Lisa Childs

  But he caught her wrists and pulled her hands away until they dropped back to her sides. Then his fingertips moved across her skin, along the scratches his fangs had left on her. “Paige, I’m so sorry. I never meant to be so rough.”

  “You weren’t,” she assured. “You didn’t hurt me.”

  “But I would.” He tensed and clenched his jaw, a muscle leaping in his cheek. “Because of what I am, I would…”

  She shook her head. “No, you wouldn’t. You didn’t hurt me.”

  He lifted his fingertips, stained with a faint streak of blood that had trickled from one of the scratches. “I have and I would—”

  “That’s nothing,” she said, dismissing the blood.

  He shook his head. “I know what they’re capable of…what I’m capable of. This was the last time.”

  That was all this had been; she realized now that he’d spoken the truth. And no matter how much he loved her—or maybe because he loved her, he was going to walk away from her again. And she doubted she could fight hard enough to get him to return to her.

  “You didn’t have to walk me back here,” Paige said, “especially seeing as how you intend to stay away from me from now on.”

  “I have to,” Ben reminded her, and himself. He never should have touched her. One last time. It wasn’t enough. He wanted more—he always wanted more with Paige.

  Even now he tasted her on his lips, the sweet flavor of her blood. He’d nearly sunk his fangs into her neck, nearly drank of her essence. His control had held barely. This time. He couldn’t trust that if there was a next time, he’d be able to control his new dark desires.

  “I could find my purse on my own,” she said as they neared Addi’s room. “I think it’s just under the chair.”

  “I need to check on her,” he explained. Paige had distracted him from doing that earlier. He also needed to make sure that Paige got safely home—since the sun had hours before it rose.

  “H-how are you going to handle your career now?” she asked.

  He blew out a ragged breath. “I don’t know….”

  “You can’t give it up,” she said.

  “You gave up being a lawyer.”

  “I got fired,” she reminded him.

  “And you could have got another job at any law firm in Zantrax,” he pointed out. “Or you could have started your own practice.”

  “I could have,” she agreed.

  “Then why didn’t you?” he asked.

  “I thought we weren’t talking anymore,” she said as she slipped inside the room.

  The hair lifted on Ben’s nape with foreboding. Even before he joined her, he knew they weren’t alone. Someone stood in the shadows of the little girl’s private hospital room. Addi lay in her bed, her skin paler than he’d ever seen it.

  “There’s something wrong with her,” Paige said as she leaned over the child’s bed. “She’s barely breathing.” Then she lifted her head to the person lurking in the shadows, and a scream escaped her lips.

  Ben covered Paige’s mouth, not wanting anyone else drawn to the room—anyone else hurt. “What did you do?” he asked Addi’s mother. But she was so much more than just a patient’s mother.

  The vampiress met his gaze across her daughter’s bed. “I did what you couldn’t, Doctor. I made certain that she will never die.”

  Paige’s breath escaped in a gasp against his palm.

  “You turned her?” Ben asked, dread filling him.

  “I—I had to….” She pushed a bloodstained hand through her hair. “I didn’t want her to die.”

  “But you wanted Sebastian to die,” Ben said.

  “You saved him?” She laughed. “I knew I should have killed you first. Then you wouldn’t have been able to help him. But then, if you were dead, you wouldn’t have been able to help my Adelaide if she needed you.” She smoothed her fingers over her daughter’s forehead, streaking the pale skin with blood. “She doesn’t need you anymore.”

  “Miss Plumb—Marissa, this is a bad idea,” Ben said. “She’s not strong enough…to survive being turned. She just had surgery.”

  “And it didn’t help.”

  “You just needed to give her time to heal. It takes longer for…” He couldn’t say us, but he couldn’t bring himself to say them, either. “She’s human.”

  “She’s not anymore,” her mother said with great satisfaction.

  “She may not be anything anymore,” Ben said, his voice cracking as emotion overwhelmed him. “She’s not strong enough, Marissa.”

  “You’re not strong enough,” she said. “And neither is she.” She gestured at Paige. “You can’t fight me off.”

  “You’re wrong,” Ben said as he pulled Paige away from the bed and thrust her behind him. “I’m not human anymore. I’ve been turned.”

  Marissa shook her head. “No…”

  “I’m a vampire, too,” Ben said, nearly choking on the declaration as he made it aloud for the first time.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can’t operate on yourself. You won’t be able to change your own legacy. And you won’t be able to change his when I finally get rid of him for good.”

  “You attacked Sebastian,” Ben deduced. “This time and the last time it was you.” He glanced to the little girl in the bed and realized why Addi reminded him so much of Paige. “She’s his daughter.”

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “You don’t deserve her,” Paige said, able to speak now since Ben’s hand no longer covered her mouth. “She deserves more than you.”

  “You,” Marissa snarled at them. “You’re the only one he cared about. I’m glad it’s working out this way. That I’m going to kill you first.” She flew at them, over her daughter’s bed, a stake clutched in her bloody hands.

  Ben blocked Paige with his body and lifted his arms to thwart off the attack. Having just been turned, he wasn’t as strong as Marissa was. Not only was she strong, but she was also out of her mind with madness. Even crazier than Ingrid….

  Ben didn’t have her strength, but he had something more powerful to use in this fight. Love. This time he would protect Paige—or die trying.

  Chapter 18

  A scream burned Paige’s throat, but she was afraid to utter it. She didn’t want to draw anyone else into the room and risk his or her safety; nor did she want to wake the sleeping child, if Addi actually could awaken.

  Had her mother killed her?

  She’d heard that fear in Ben’s voice—the fear that echoed in his grunts as he grappled with the crazy vampiress. His hands locked around her wrists, holding the sharpened point of the stake away from his chest.

  The scream threatened to slip free—not out of fear for herself but for Ben. She could not keep losing him—especially not like this. This time would be permanent. No one could repair the damage that stake would do to his heart. Renae hadn’t been able to save Sebastian without Ben’s help; she wouldn’t be able to save Ben.

  As the only human in this fight, Paige had no idea what to do. She just cowered behind him as he fought—not for his life but for hers. Because she wasn’t one of them—of that damn secret society—she was helpless to fight them. She could not match their strength. But she could find someone who would help—someone, she suspected, who had always been there for her whether she’d known it or not.

  Slipping from behind Ben, Paige ran for the door. But the woman was there, vaulting over them to block the exit with her body. “Where are you going?”

  “Please, let us go,” she beseeched her.

  “You need to die first,” the woman said, her eyes glowing with madness. “You’re the only thing he ever loved.” Her nails like talons, she reached for Paige.

  But Ben jerked Paige back, with such force that she fell onto the floor behind him. “You don’t want to hurt her,” he said. “You want to hurt me.”

  “No, she wants to hurt me,” a deep voice murmured.

  Suddenly Sebastian was there—as if he’d slipp
ed through a window. He stood over Paige, protecting her—as she realized he always had.

  The vampiress snorted with derision. “Of course you would come out of hiding to protect her.”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” he said.

  “Then why were you never there for me…for her?” With the hand clutching the stake, she gestured toward the child lying on the bed.

  Sebastian glanced at the little girl, and a gasp slipped from his lips. “She’s mine?”

  “No! She’s mine!” Marissa screamed. “You’re not going to take her from me!” And she lunged toward the bed with the stake.

  But Sebastian, despite the injury he’d suffered, was quicker than she was. He caught the stake in his hand, holding it back from striking his child’s heart.

  Marissa turned on him, flying at him. He wasn’t strong enough to simply knock the stake from her hand. He held it off, as Ben had, his fingers locked around her wrist. “Get her out of here,” he yelled at them.

  While Paige struggled to understand who he meant, Ben reached for the little girl and lifted her from the bed. One arm wrapped around the child, he extended his other hand to Paige and dragged her to her feet. Then he pulled her along behind him down the darkened hall.

  “We can’t leave him…alone with her,” Paige protested, turning back toward the room. An eerie flash of light burst through the doorway, along with an inhuman scream.

  “Now,” Ben said, urging her faster. Instead of jumping into the open elevator, he pushed open the door to the stairs. “Hold on to me.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist, holding tight as he vaulted up—instead of down—the steps. His feet didn’t even touch the metal treads, and as he burst through the door to the roof, he launched into the air.

  Paige fought down another scream—of fear and surprise. Ben really wasn’t the man she’d known any longer. He was one of them.

  “Is she okay?” Paige asked as he joined her in the dark garden behind Ben’s house. She hadn’t even glanced up, but yet she’d somehow known he was there.

  He wondered if she’d ever be able to look at him again after what she’d witnessed. Feeling his fangs had been one thing, now she’d experienced the entire reality of his new existence.

  “Addi? Yes, I think she’ll be all right.”

  “I thought you were going to bring her to that secret room….” She shuddered. “The one at the club.”

  Despite everything that had happened and the nightmare he was now living, Ben’s lips curved into a faint smile. “That’s why I couldn’t bring her there. She’s just a little girl. Now she will always be a little girl.”

  “What?” She finally turned to him, her brow furrowed with confusion.

  “That’s what happens,” he explained. “They don’t age from the moment they’re turned. Now she will always be nine years old.”

  Tears glittered in her eyes. “How could that woman do that to her own daughter?” She lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. “What about Sebastian? What did she do to him?”

  “He’s fine,” Ben assured her.

  “He wasn’t hurt?”

  “No.” Not physically. Emotionally, Ben doubted his friend would ever be the same. Sebastian had spent the past several centuries as a lover; he had never been a fighter. Until tonight. But then he’d never had as much to fight for. “He’s in there, sitting with Addi.”

  Paige nodded. “She’s his daughter? My sister. No wonder she looked so much how I imagined—”

  “Our baby would have looked had she lived?”

  Paige sucked in a breath and pressed her hand against her heart.

  “I had no idea how much you were still hurting until you told me.” He grimaced, hurting for her and himself, for all they had lost. “I should have known.”

  “How?” she asked. “I wouldn’t talk to you about it…about her.”

  And that explained why she’d wanted only fun and games and sex—and nothing serious between them anymore. Because she hadn’t wanted to think about their child.

  “I should have known,” he said with another grimace, of pain instead of regret this time, “because I still hurt for her, too. But I want you to know, Paige, that I never blamed you.”

  “I thought you did,” she said, reminding him of the guilt she’d shouldered alone. “I thought that’s why you didn’t fight the divorce.”

  “The secret—”

  “You didn’t let me go just over the secret,” she said, a lawyer arguing her case.

  He sighed, weary from more than lack of sleep. “I wanted to give you what you wanted, Paige.”

  “I couldn’t have what I wanted. She died.” Her breath shuddered out in a sob. “What did they do with her after she died?”

  Paige had nearly died, too, so she’d been unconscious during the C-section and in and out of consciousness for days afterward. Ben had had to deal with the death of their daughter alone, but he was used to dealing alone.

  “I had her cremated.”

  “Did you…name her?”

  He nodded again as he blinked back the threat of tears. He’d never cried over their daughter.

  “Ben?” Her voice cracked with the emotions clawing at her. “What did you call her?”

  “The name we’d agreed on for a girl.”

  “Penelope.”

  “Penny,” he said. He’d warned her when she’d brought up the name, that he would never call her Penelope, at least not as a baby. The name was too big. Penny was better. Since she’d never be anything other than a baby, Penny was perfect.

  She dashed away some tears with the back of her hand. “What did you do with Penny’s…ashes?”

  Ben took her hand and led her deeper into the dark garden, toward the small koi pond they’d put in the backyard, in the middle of the evergreen garden. A tiny fountain in the shape of a cement angel spewed water into an arc that reflected those streaks of pink and purple light breaking over the horizon.

  Those streaks were a warning that he needed to go inside soon, before the sun rose. But he couldn’t leave Paige and their daughter alone.

  “You put her in the pond?”

  He gestured toward one of the stones on the side, to the bronze plaque riveted to its surface. Penelope “Penny” Culver-Davison, 2006, Precious Baby, Eternal Angel.

  She ran her fingers over the engraving in the bronze plate. “Penny…” Then she rose up on tiptoe and pressed her lips against Ben’s cheek. “Thank you. For taking care of her….”

  “I wish…” He swallowed hard, choking on his regrets and the desire that clutched at him over her nearness. “I wish I’d taken care of you. That I’d been there for you more.”

  “We can’t go back and change the past,” she pointed out.

  “And we have no future.”

  “We could…”

  He shook his head. “You know—you’ve experienced it—that I’m one of them.”

  “Make me one of them, too,” she implored him. “Then we can share a life—the way we’re finally sharing our loss.”

  His heart constricted. “Paige, you don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I know that everyone I care about is part of this society. You, my sister, my…father…”

  “Your friends,” he pointed out, “aren’t part of it. They can’t learn of it. You’d have to give them up before they caught on.”

  “They were there for me….” she murmured, her gaze drawn again to the bronze plaque and the pennies sparkling in the bottom of the pond.

  “They were there for you when I wasn’t,” he said. “They stood by you. Can you leave them…like I may have to leave one day?”

  She sucked in an audible breath. “You’re leaving?”

  “Members of the society can’t stay in one place very long—not without risking others learning the secret. They have to move around. You can’t,” he pointed out. “You have a life here.”

  “So do you,” she said. “You have a career.”

  “I can b
e a doctor in other cities, other countries—anywhere,” he pointed out.

  “So you’re going to leave?” she asked, her voice hoarse with pain. “And Sebastian and Addi?”

  “They’ll have to leave, too,” he admitted. “Sebastian should have left years ago. You were already remarking how he never ages. Other people will have noticed that, too.”

  “But he stayed for me,” she said, her eyes warm with love for the father she had spent most of her life resenting. “To keep me safe from that woman.”

  “She’s gone now,” Ben revealed. “You have nothing to fear from her. But your knowledge of the secret risks your life. You need to leave.” He glanced toward the lightening sky. “And I need to get inside.”

  “Ben…” She grasped his arm, holding on. “Please, let me stay with you. Forever.”

  The temptation pulled at him, but he shook his head and shook off her hand. “I can’t…”

  He had no idea how he would endure eternity without her, but he couldn’t hurt her anymore. He’d already hurt her too much.

  Paige stepped inside her empty condo, and the loneliness consumed her. They were all going to leave her; she should have been used to it. Yet she couldn’t imagine a life without Ben in it.

  She had no more than kicked off her shoes than the doorbell rang behind her. He’d changed his mind. Her hands shaking, she pulled open the door. “Ben—”

  But it wasn’t Ben. Kate pushed her way inside. “Okay, tell me what the hell’s going on!”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, stalling, then closed the door behind her irate friend. Had Renae called the detective, after all?

  “You’re being stalked but I haven’t heard from you in days. I’ve been scared as hell that something happened to you,” Kate explained.

  “I’m fine,” Paige lied.

  Her eyes narrowed, Kate studied her as she probably studied the face of suspects. Finally, after a few long moments, she sighed. “You’re not going to tell me the truth.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “That scar on your neck tells another story,” Kate said.