Harlequin Nocturne January 2014 Bundle: The Vampire HunterMoon Rising

by Michele Hauf

“Might be too late for that.” He kissed her again. “I’d do it again in a heartbeat to know it was for you.”

  Zoë swallowed.

  He touched the base of her throat and lifted the pendant. She nodded, and took off the necklace. Kaz pocketed it. He opened the door and Zoë walked inside.

  As soon as he saw her, Luc moaned and twisted against the chains that bound him by ankle, wrists and across the neck.

  “Zoë! You’ve brought me more magic. Need you so bad, Zoë. Oh, sweetie.”

  Luc was too thin. The torn jeans he wore hung on his frame. His chestnut hair, once his pride and object of at least an hour of grooming before going out, was now greasy and tangled. His bare chest and arms sparkled. He was full of faery dust.

  As she moved closer he twisted and contorted within the chains. “More, yes, come on, Zoë. Hurry! Need more!”

  The flechette hugged his shoulder and blood drooled from the serrated skin. Kaz had been careful to ensure the chain would not fall against it. Zoë wasn’t sure how she was going to extract it with Luc gyrating and pleading for more of the drug.

  She glanced over her shoulder, seeking Kaz’s reassurance.

  He gestured to the whining vampire. “You should get that thing out while he’s chained down.”

  “More dust!”

  “I can’t do it when he’s struggling like that,” she told Kaz. Then she turned to her friend. “Oh, Luc, please. I’m so sorry.”

  “Give me!”

  Kaz stepped around and as he approached the vampire, Luc lunged and gnashed his fangs at the slayer.

  “Goddess,” Zoë swore as she noted her friend’s teeth.

  Just one fang. He was the vampire Kaz had been searching for.

  Luc had killed his friends. He’d taken lives in a quest to find more Magic Dust, to feed the ravenous craving within. And Kaz hadn’t said a thing to her.

  She searched Kaz’s shadowed eyes. “He’s the one.”

  Kaz nodded, bowing his head. Words weren’t necessary.

  “Why didn’t you stake him the moment you realized he’d killed your friends?”

  He stroked her cheek, the scar beneath his fingertips. There was so much he still did not know. And if he did? Zoë wasn’t sure how to reveal all.

  “He’s your friend and you asked me to rescue him. I’ve done my part. Now it’s up to you.”

  He didn’t want to say he should stake the vampire. He wanted her to say it. She couldn’t. Not ever.

  But she had to make it stop. Right now.

  “I’ll get that thing out of him and then we’ll figure things out. Can you silence him?”

  Kaz punched Luc in the jaw, knocking him out cold. The thin vampire dropped, his arms wrenched back, his collarbone catching against the taut chain. It hurt Zoë’s heart to look at how he’d changed from someone she called friend to a murderer.

  Because of the Magic Dust.

  That she had created.

  “Hurry,” Kaz said over her shoulder. “He’s like the Energizer Bunny. Doesn’t stay out for long. The Magic Dust burns in his system like some kind of manic fuel.”

  Forcing herself to study the flechette, Zoë glanced her fingers over the faery metal, moving it carefully from side to side. “I think it’s embedded in the bone. I’m not sure I can remove it. Kaz, maybe you should pull it out.”

  They both knew such a move would release the poison, resulting in a dead vampire. Zoë had been able to bring Kaz back from near poisoning but only because a small amount had dispersed into his system. If she were to sacrifice her life energy to save Luc from so much poison, surely that would bring her death.

  “You don’t want death for your friend,” he said calmly over her shoulder. “I know you don’t.”

  “Neither do I want to set him free to kill again.”

  He embraced her from behind. The reassurance of his strong arms felt too rich, and she, so undeserving. Yet she wouldn’t refuse the comforting offer, couldn’t. Closing her eyes, she shut herself away from the horror chained before her and tried to step into what she had with Kaz. A new and exciting love. With a man who was willing to go against his very code of honor to help her. Her knight.

  “You’ll find a way to help him,” he said quietly. “I know you will.”

  His confidence in her banished her fears and gave her hope.

  Luc shook his head, coming to with a grin. “Zoë, love you.” And he smiled that innocent smile that had won her heart so many times before. That apologetic smile that said, “I was wrong, and now that I understand, I want to make amends.”

  The single fang was down and Zoë wondered if he were even aware of losing the other. He must remember his cruel acts.

  They’d talk about it later. After the dust worked through his system. Kaz had told her the dust built up, and unlike regular drugs, it never dissipated, only raged within the body, forcing the vampire to heinous acts against innocents.

  Hands shaking, she reached for her friend’s shoulder. “Luc, I need to get the flechette out of your shoulder.”

  “Pull it out!”

  “No. It’s embedded in bone, and if I break the glass tips, a faery poison will be released into your bloodstream.”

  “Do it!” He wriggled, attempting to twist his head to bang against the flechette, but could not. “Please.” He caught her gaze and in those moments, his eyes said forgive me and sorry and love you again and again. “It’s your turn to hurt me, Zoë. You have to.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Then give me peace. Please?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She gripped the flechette, holding it steady against his struggles. “There’s got to be a way to get it out. If you’ll hold still.”

  “If I do, will you give me more dust?”

  “It’s killing you, Luc.”

  “Exactly. Slowly. Painfully. I’ve...killed, Zoë.” Tears spilled down his cheeks. “I hate myself. You know I can’t abide the kill. Do it!”

  And Luc wrenched back his shoulder, tearing the flechette out of his bone and skin while Zoë was still holding it. She dropped the faery weapon and stumbled back, landing in Kaz’s arms.

  “No,” she whispered. “He pulled away. I wasn’t ready—”

  Her friend’s body began to spasm.

  “No, Luc!”

  Kaz pulled her toward the door.

  “No, I can’t leave him to die alone!”

  “I’m not going to let you watch whatever happens next.”

  Kaz dragged her out into the hallway and slammed the door behind him. He drew her against his chest and they waited for the dying yell.

  Chapter 19

  The woman clinging to his chest and arms shivered so intensely, Kaz’s bones shook in response. He identified this unfamiliar feeling as sympathy, an unusual emotion that he had been experiencing more and more. Thanks to the witch that he hated to love.

  Even more, he hated that Zoë had to experience pain or heartache. But knowing her friend was probably now dead on the other side of the door had to be the worst.

  And who was he to comfort her? He didn’t know how to do this kind of stuff. He was solid and unshakable, sure, but so solid that he didn’t have a clue how to soften and make it all better. He couldn’t remember how his mother had done it for him when he was a child, and he sure as hell had never gotten comfort from his father.

  He needed to let Zoë in, no matter how much it hurt him. He suspected it wouldn’t hurt to give her access to his heart. He’d already done that, and it had felt damned good. But to simply open himself and give everything he had to her?

  Kaz bent his head to nuzzle against the black-and-white strands of hair that dusted his lips, his cheeks and nose. She gave him softness in a manner he’d not expected or asked f
or. And, hell yes, he’d selfishly take it. He needed it to temper his hard edges. They did have much in common, as she’d said. They needed one another. And since everything in life happened for a reason, he could accept that.

  Wrapping his arms about her shoulders, Kaz hugged Zoë until he felt her heartbeats thunder. Her body melted against his, her bones still shivering yet calming as he squeezed her closer. He could not remember ever being held like this, like a precious object one should not think to release. For to do so would shatter worlds and destroy hopes and dreams.

  Yet to do so meant the person giving the hug loved the one in their arms and would do anything to make her world right.

  “I’m sorry, Zoë,” he whispered. And then, he said what he’d always wanted to hear from his father. “For all of it.”

  She nodded. “I am, too.”

  She blamed herself. Kaz knew how easy it was to blame oneself for things he didn’t understand. Zoë could have had no idea the blend of faery dust she had made could have produced such devastating effects. If the vampire Luc had lied to her about it helping him, as opposed to granting a greater high, he had perpetuated the lie that Zoë had grown to believe.

  He hated what he had to say next, but it was necessary. “I can’t stay here overnight. I need to vacate the safe house. Can you go ahead to my place, and I’ll meet you there? After I...”

  “Oh.” Releasing a heavy sigh, she shivered wickedly against his arm. “I understand.” Nodding too quickly, she inhaled a deep breath and exhaled another shivering sigh. “Let me help you clean up.”

  “Not a chance. What’s on the other side of that door is not for your eyes.”

  She peered up at him, a lost innocent fallen into darkness and shadows. Kaz stroked the scar on her cheek. Not so innocent, but nevertheless forced to tread the darkness.

  “I’ll wait out here,” she finally said, “and then walk home with you. Yes?”

  He nodded. “Go wait in the living room.”

  Twisting the doorknob, Kaz slipped inside the safe room. But what he saw took the horror from his heart and replaced it with a strange wonder. Really? But... How?

  “Uh, Zoë?” he called. “Why don’t you, uh...come in here.”

  She quietly joined his side. He grasped her hand and pulled her around to stand before him, placing his hands reassuringly on her shoulders.

  She gasped. “Goddess.”

  The vampire smiled up at them. A whole vampire, not a pile of ash and faery dust. He was alive, and amazingly, smiling. His skin glittered with so much dust Kaz thought he might have been bombed by a bunch of mad faeries. But he decided it was instead the dust Luc had imbibed, bleeding out through his pores.

  “Luc?” Zoë cautiously approached the vampire and knelt before him. She stroked aside a strand of dark hair from the man’s eyes. “The poison?”

  “I feel—” the vampire inhaled and exhaled deeply “—as if I am rising, Zoë.”

  “From the drug?”

  He nodded eagerly.

  She glanced to Kaz. He could but shrug and swipe a hand across his mouth in wonder. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes... Who the hell knew anymore what creatures could survive what calamities? This whole business with faeries challenged his knowledge of the paranormal realms.

  “Oh my goddess, you’re alive.” Zoë lunged forward and hugged the vampire, who smiled over her shoulder at Kaz. Not the vindictive sneer he’d cast him earlier, but one of utter relief and salvation.

  Yet as stunned as Kaz was, he remained stoic. The vampire had killed his friends. Just because he’d gotten a pass didn’t mean he didn’t still deserve the stake.

  “The poison,” Zoë said as she pulled back and dashed a finger through the dust on Luc’s forearm. “It’s faery derived. I wonder if it’s acting as a counteragent to the Magic Dust?”

  “I feel clear, Zoë. I think it’s pushing out all that nasty dust. I’m so sorry. The things I did... I didn’t want to lie to you, but Mauritius—”

  “Shh...” She pulled him to her shoulder and hugged his head. “We’ll talk later. We need to leave now and find a safer place to keep you. You shouldn’t even be here.”

  “Where is here?”

  “None of your business,” Kaz tossed out quickly before Zoë could give away too much info about the Order.

  “Will you unchain him, Kaz?”

  Kaz drew out the handcuff key from his pocket, yet rattled it in his cupped palm. Keys meant safety to him. He wasn’t stupid. They were never safe around a vampire. And the man’s skin was covered with dust. Their kind got a contact high from the sparkly stuff.

  “Please?” Zoë softly implored. “He won’t harm me.”

  “I won’t,” Luc offered. “I swear it.”

  Going against every ounce of training that he’d lived, breathed and killed by for the past decade, Kaz unlocked the chain across Luc’s neck and his ankles, but before he freed his wrists, he retrieved a zip tie from the closet in the bedroom—stocked with Order gear—and secured the vampire’s wrists behind his back.

  “Kaz, really?” Zoë asked.

  “It’s okay,” Luc said. “As much as I feel no compelling desire to lick the dust off my skin, I don’t trust myself. Let him do what he needs to do. I’m just thankful he hasn’t staked me yet.”

  “Don’t ever get comfortable,” Kaz said as he pulled up the vampire and gave him a shove to start walking out of the room. He glanced over the floor, littered with faery dust, and wondered how he was going to clean this up.

  He should be thankful. It was going to prove easier than cleaning up an exploded vampire.

  Zoë spoke some Latin words and with a snap of her fingers, the dust lifted from the floor. A sweep of her hand sent it toward the ventilation grate. Within a few minutes, the room looked as clean as it had been before he’d chained up the vampire.

  “Well, all right then. Let’s go home,” Kaz said, and took the witch’s hand.

  * * *

  Initially, the plan was to go to Zoë’s house, until they remembered her house no longer stood. She suggested Luc’s apartment, but Kaz figured Mauritius would have dispersed scouts to keep an eye on the place. One option remained.

  Sid snuggled up to Zoë on the couch in Kaz’s living room. Luc slept in the back room where Kaz kept his weapons, his wrists zip-tied to an iron plumbing pole. She hated treating her friend like that, but even Luc had confessed he wasn’t sure what he would do if left free.

  With Luc resting, Zoë had washed most of the faery dust from his arms, but the stuff clung. Only time would tell if Luc could get clean or would perhaps grow worse because of the faery poison coursing through his system.

  “I wish I could change it all,” she said as Kaz wandered into the living room, bare feet padding across the dark wood floor. He’d showered after freaking over all the faery dust that had clung to his skin.

  She shook her head. “Maybe it would have been kinder to stake him.”

  “I can make that happen. A guy really has to be in love to carry a vampire across his warded threshold.” An act possible only because Kaz had carried the vampire in, granting his permission to enter.

  Kaz kissed her, and then settled onto the couch next to her and pulled her onto his lap. Sid joined them, climbing onto Zoë’s lap for a big ole family snuggle.

  She knew he would like nothing better than to stake the vampire. And by rights he should, to take vengeance for his friends. She didn’t believe in an eye for an eye, though.

  “Thank you.” She kissed him. “For always helping me. And never asking for help in return.”

  “I don’t need any help.”

  “You do. You’re just not willing to voice it. I can wait. But Kaz, please know how much this means to me. I understand it’s difficult for you to have the vampire who killed
your friends in your home.”

  “Beyond difficult. Like I said, it must be love.”

  She tucked her head against his shoulder, taking that declaration for its worth. Invaluable. And she felt it in her very soul. Misplaced, as her neighbor Lillian had alluded? Perhaps. But more and more she felt as if her soul were moving toward home, a place it belonged. And Kaz stood upon the threshold of that home.

  “Will Luc be secure back there while he sleeps it off?”

  “Yes. No more zip ties. Those chains will keep a werewolf down.”

  “You’ve all your weapons in the same room as the vampire. It is quite the arsenal.”

  “I’ve been collecting weapons for years. Come in handy in my line of work.” Kaz rose and studied the map on the wall. “We need to find the new lab Mauritius set up.” He tapped the map where the steel office building stood.

  “If he was telling the truth,” Zoë said, “he had his people take the things from my spell room before burning my house. I may be able to claim some of my most precious belongings like my grimoire.”

  “Yes, but then we’re going to destroy anything that could be used to make Magic Dust. Deal?”

  Zoë nodded. “I’ve the recipe up here.” She tapped her head. “No one could figure out the transmutation spell to alter the faery dust the way I did it.”

  “What if they took some of the Magic Dust and reverse engineered it?”

  “I don’t think that’s possible with a spoken spell, but I’m not sure. But Kaz, I have an idea!”

  He returned to the couch and kissed her deeply. His warm licorice scent encompassed their embrace. “Lay it on me.”

  “The faery poison may be curing Luc.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “So, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do—help cure those vampires addicted to dust. I need to find out what’s in that poison.”

  “Huh. It might work. But if it means you have to ask the faery who was trying to kill me what he put in the poison, then no deal. I’m not letting you anywhere near that psycho. Dude had big black wings. Looked demonic.”

  “He only wants to kill you. I haven’t had faeries after me.”