“What is it?” Sebastian asked, terrified of the answer. “Is it Mommy?”
It was all he could think—that something had happened to Serenity. Normally, he sensed her presence in the world, a connection through the blood she took from him once a month and from the emotional connection they had. But, right now, he sensed nothing, as if something had interrupted their connection. His instincts told him he couldn’t hold the demon responsible for this particular change.
He hoped she was safe.
Bridget reached out and placed her palm over the back of Elizabeth’s hand. “Did something happen—” she started, but Elizabeth’s eyes widened in horror and locked on Bridget’s face.
“Oh, no, Bridget!” The little girl burst into tears.
Sebastian reached for his daughter, but she flinched away, moving fully into her old nanny’s embrace.
“Something bad’s gonna happen,” she sobbed. “Something real bad.”
“Tell me, Elizabeth,” Sebastian demanded, his tone firm. “You need to tell me what’s going to happen, so we can stop it.”
The girl cringed closer to Bridget. “Get away from here, Daddy! You need to leave, right now!”
“Why?!” He reached for her again, but she cowered and cried.
“Stop it, Sebastian,” said Bridget. “You’re frightening her.”
“She’s already frightened. I need to know what she saw.”
The two Irish men banged in through the door. “What’s going on?” demanded the sandy-haired Conner.
Sebastian spun around the face them, his eyes blazing yellow. “My daughter had a nightmare. It’s none of your concern.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem to me like she wants you to comfort her right now, buddy.”
Sebastian spun between the burly Irish men and his frightened child. He knew his eyes blazed yellow and he fought to control his emotions. His actions only created a vision of the thing they were all frightened of.
And right now, it didn’t seem to be anything to do with a demon.
Right now, they were afraid of him.
Iona stood before the veiled place, that thin membrane between the two worlds. She stood with her feet apart, her hands held in front of her body, palms up. With her head lowered, her long white-blonde hair fell over her face.
Serenity waited several feet behind, anxiously chewing her lower lip. She felt Vincent’s presence looming just behind her shoulder. Even though he’d saved her life, she struggled with her emotions about having him so close.
Guilt, she realized. That was the reason she didn’t want him near her, near any of them. She’d experienced an intimate connection with the big vampire—something she hadn’t experienced with anyone but Sebastian before. Also, this vampire had played a hand in kidnapping her daughter. The last thing she should be thinking about is how his mouth felt around her fingers.
Damn it! Stop thinking about it then. They had bigger things to worry about.
She forced herself to concentrate on Iona. The girl spoke in mumbled tones, just loud enough for Serenity to understand that she spoke in Latin. With her words, the area in front of her began to thicken, like textured glass, but with a fluid motion.
She wondered what would happen if she were to attempt to step through the strange spot. Would she find herself in the other place? If she put one arm through, would the arm exist in one reality and not the other?
Or had she got the whole thing completely wrong? After all, Iona said it was a veil, not a doorway. Perhaps she’d watched too many sci-fi movies?
The young sorceress’s words grew louder, more commanding. With her hair falling over her face, Serenity couldn’t see her lips move or the expression on her features, but part of her wondered if the same thing would occur as what happened at her trailer when she’d been unable to summon the demon. Would Iona’s ancestors find her here, at this random place in San Diego, and help her complete the spell?
A spot of darkness gathered above Iona’s head, like a small gathering storm cloud set in fast-forward. With it came a distant scream of rage and Serenity gasped, taking a step away. That forming darkness seemed awfully familiar—the same thing she’d seen lurking beneath the skin of the man she loved.
Iona lifted her face upward with a sudden, jerking movement. Her eyes were wide, but unfocused. The pool of black continued to grow, swirling above her head.
“Return to the world from hence you came,” she commanded, speaking to the entity above. “Release your hold on this world and go back to where you belong. I command you through the power of our nature.”
Noooo!
Serenity heard the word screeched in defiance.
“The pull of your world in this place is too strong for you to resist. Release your hold on the one you inhabit and return!”
Sebastian’s consciousness jolted to one side, the room going black for a fraction of a second, before returning. Something had changed.
Elizabeth stared at him with wide, terrified eyes. “It’s happening.”
“What? What’s happening?”
Something seemed to move inside his head and across his vision, like catching movement from the corner of his eye. Instantly he knew what he’d seen.
The demon.
Serenity and Iona must have done something, but what? A fission of fear raced through him. Whatever it was, he didn’t think it was good.
Sudden pain raced through him, like every nerve ending was on fire, and he roared in alarm. Falling in on himself, his knees hit the floor and he hugged his arms to his chest, his back curled over. He was dimly aware of every eye in the trailer fixed on him, the tension elevated to a point of breaking.
Sebastian lifted his pale hand and something dark rippled beneath his skin, passing from the tips of his fingers, across the back of his hand and up his arm. Was this the demon? The thing Serenity had seen in his face?
Suddenly, he could feel the creature inside him, like a huge parasite wanting to crawl from his skin. Overcome with revulsion, Sebastian roared. He wanted to reach inside and somehow rip the fiend from his own body.
Gripped in madness, he thrashed from one side of the room to the other, knocking furniture flying, like a whirling dervish. His skin stretched outward, as though the demon was trying to tear skin from bone, muscle and tendon.
Sebastian’s consciousness started to pull from the edges, like he was falling into a deep hole. Somehow he knew the hole didn’t exist inside himself. Instead, it was the other place—Dominion—trying to pull him back. If he went, would the demon take over forever? Would it hurt his daughter?
“Get out of here, Elizabeth.” Bridget’s voice yelled in the distance. “Run and hide.”
But the little girl ran to stand in front of her old nanny, holding her arms out, as though trying to protect her. “No,” she sobbed. “I can’t leave you.”
“Yes, you can and you will!” Bridget turned to Conner. Roughly, she grabbed the top of Elizabeth’s arm and shoved her at him. “Get her out of here!”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What the fuck is that?!” Conner and Henry’s eyes were wide with horror, locked on Sebastian’s face. Sebastian couldn’t even imagine what they witnessed.
He could feel his skin stretch—his face, his arms, his chest—the demon trying to burst from his body. He screamed in agony, a sound that filled the relatively small space of the trailer. The pain and the horror inside of him encompassed all thought. He’d forgotten who he was—the names of the people he loved. He was no more than a ball of writhing, struggling emotion and instinct.
Out of the blur of pain and darkness, only one thing focused his mind, offering him the promise of strength and healing.
With a roar of defiance, he snapped around and bit. Merciful, hot blood poured down his throat. He focused only on the act of feeding, blocking out the screams and yells of those around him, of pitifully weak arms attempting to pull him off.
As he fed, the sense of the demon weakened, as though shrinking inside
of him. A screech of rage not coming from his own mind filled his head.
But, instead of the blood healing him, Sebastian’s grip on the world loosened further, like he was looking at the room from the end of a long tunnel.
The last thing he saw before he lost himself to the darkness was Elizabeth clutched in Conner’s grip, her white, terrified face as she stared at him holding Bridget’s limp body in his arms.
A burst of light exploded around Iona’s body, smoothing the swirling pool of darkness like water drenching flames. Serenity ducked away, her arm raised to cover her face. She collided with Vincent’s solid form, but barely registered being held in his arms once again.
The light dissipated, leaving Iona standing there looking small and frail.
“It’s done,” she said, though her face remained grim.
“The demon is gone?” Serenity couldn’t keep the hope out of her voice.
Iona nodded. “Yes. The demon is gone back to Dominion. But so, I fear, has your vampire.
Chapter Twenty
Serenity stared at Iona, aghast. “Are you telling me we’ve lost Sebastian to Dominion?”
Iona nodded, her slender eyebrows drawn together with worry. “I think so, yes. The demon somehow attached itself to him and took him back with it.”
“How do we get him back?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know if we can.”
Serenity’s whole body trembled, tears flooding her eyes. She bit them back, fighting against the painful knot in her throat threatening to choke her. “No! Don’t say that! There must be a way.”
She still stood, engulfed in Vincent’s huge frame, her back pressed against his chest. His hands gripped her upper arms and he squeezed her gently. “Something else is wrong too.”
She twisted to face him, looking up at him in alarm. “What?” What else could possibly have happened?
His gray eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure, but I think something’s happened to my mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something doesn’t feel right. We need to get back to the trailer right away.”
Serenity understood what he was saying. “We leave the car here?”
“For the time being. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”
They both looked to Iona for confirmation. The girl nodded. “Okay. I can’t say I’m looking forward to this, but I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”
Vincent shrugged. “Unless you know some kind of teleportation spell …”
She gave a wry smile. “Unfortunately not.”
Serenity didn’t relish the idea of traveling with the big vampire that way either—an hour or more of being held against him while he ran through the desert. But how she felt didn’t matter. She only wanted to be by Sebastian’s side, to find a way of making this right again. She prayed Elizabeth was all right and not in too much distress over what had happened to her father.
What will Sebastian look like? The same as when he slept—physically present, but otherwise vacant? She didn’t want to think about any other possibility. An awful thought occurred to her—what if they were unable to bring him back? What if they were left with a shell of a man? What would they do then? Would he continue to deteriorate and eventually die? Or would she and Elizabeth be forced to continue their lives around the shell of the man they both loved, like the family of a coma victim?
She clutched the palm of her hand tight to her mouth, suppressing a sob. She couldn’t stand the thought that she’d lost him—forever this time. How would she go through each day knowing she’d never hear him speak again, never hearing him say the words “I love you?” How would Elizabeth cope? She loved her father more than anything—she worshiped him. How would she grow up to be normal—as normal as she could be—living with the knowledge her father existed in some other place?
“Serenity?”
Vincent’s voice drew her from her thoughts and she shook her head, sniffing back her sorrow. “Sorry.” She turned to Iona. “What about this?” She gestured to the area Iona had worked her magic through. “Do we leave it … open … like this?”
“The veiled places are a part of our world and theirs, like mountains or the ocean. I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to close it. I don’t know what effect it would have on either world.”
Serenity nodded. “Okay, so we just leave.”
Iona gave a single nod in return. “We just leave.”
They stepped from the unit and Vincent held out his arms to them both. The two women exchanged a glance and Serenity forced a smile for Iona’s sake. If the girl had never traveled this way before, the experience was bound to be daunting. Nerves danced in Serenity’s own belly, but for different reasons. She was terrified of what they’d find when they got back, and she didn’t want to be in such close proximity to Vincent.
But she had no choice.
Vincent scooped Iona up in one arm and the girl suppressed an almost flirtatious squeal of surprise. Serenity stopped herself raising one eyebrow. Oh yeah? Vincent was clearly far too old for her, and not just in vampire years. He must have been in his late twenties when he’d been turned—twenty-eight, she guessed—and so was even younger than Serenity in human terms.
Serenity mentally stopped herself. What was she thinking, getting possessive over him?
She cast a glance to Vincent. He studied her face and one corner of his lips turned up in a smirk, as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. Damn that vampire blood.
Focusing on her need to get back to Sebastian, she stepped forward into Vincent’s body space. She wrapped her arms around his broad back, her fingers digging into muscles layered over muscle. Even if Vincent wasn’t a vampire, she thought he’d still be strong enough to carry them both. Iona clung to his other side, her legs wrapped around his waist, one arm around his neck. Vincent held them both, one in each arm, the bulge of his bicep pressing into Serenity’s back.
He set off with a sudden lurch and Iona gave a shriek of surprise. The sound was quickly lost as the rush of wind snatched the air from her lungs. Serenity was used to traveling this way and tucked her face against the ball of his shoulder, trying not to inhale the musky, masculine scent of him. She still had his blood racing through her veins and, as such, was aware of everything around her with a heightened sensitivity—including his muscles contracting beneath her body in a way that went beyond distracting.
His run felt different from Sebastian’s, somehow less graceful, more loping, despite the obvious speed.
Sebastian, Sebastian, Sebastian …
She clung to the hope that Iona had been wrong and he was safe.
Another fear worried at her. What if, by her taking Vincent’s blood, Sebastian had lost his connection to her? What if that connection had been the last thing holding him to this world?
Or, even worse, he had sensed what happened between her and Vincent and simply decided to let go.
No, she couldn’t blame herself. If she hadn’t taken Vincent’s blood she would have died, no question. But perhaps her physical and emotional response could have been different?
She struggled against fresh tears, knowing they wouldn’t help anyone. She couldn’t change what had happened, but, if it turned out Sebastian was lost in this other place, she would do everything in her power to get him back again.
With Vincent’s speed, the journey back through the desert took only a fraction of the time. Because of the wind and sand his passage whipped up, Serenity was unable to judge the distance they’d traveled, but as soon as he slowed, she lifted her head from his shoulder. To her surprise, the shapes of the trailer park rose like sleeping giants out of the expanse of desert ahead.
Vincent dropped them both to the ground. Serenity stretched out her arms and legs, the cool of the desert night and the cramped position having stiffened her muscles. Iona leapt down and started to stride across the sandy terrain, her age making her more limber than Serenity.
Vincent took a step forward and
then froze. He lifted his face to the air and sniffed, his nostril’s flared. Panic streaked across his face. “Oh, no!”
Serenity’s stomach lurched. “What is it? What’s—”
He didn’t answer her question. In a movement that was a blur, he raced to the park.
Iona and Serenity exchanged a glance and ran after him. His howl of rage filled the desert night as he hit the force field Iona’s warlocks had put up as protection against vampires.
They reached him, Serenity gasping for breath, a stitch threatening to cramp her side. He spun around to her, his eyes blazing yellow in his fury.
“What’s he done?” he snarled. “What’s your goddamned vampire done?”
Serenity fell back, terrified of the sight of the huge vampire towering over her, his eyes blaze, his face white and terrible.
She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I can smell my mother’s blood.”
Her fingers pressed against her lips. “Oh, God.” Her voice came out as a breath.
“Stand back,” said Iona, striding forward. She swept one arm up around over her head. “Protection, disseminabunt!” Protection, disperse!
With the force field gone, Vincent vanished from their sides, the door of Iona’s trailer opening and closing with a bang that ricocheted like a shot around the still night. Immediately, the yells of Iona’s men followed and Serenity heard Elizabeth’s cries.
“Elizabeth!” She took off after Vincent, Iona at her side.
Together, they burst through the trailer door. Serenity’s focus was on Elizabeth, at first ignoring the rest of the scene around her. Her eyes sought out her daughter and she found her huddled up in the corner of Iona’s big white, leather couch, Henry and Conner sitting on either side of her. The little girl’s face was white, her eyes huge and dark in her head. She caught sight of Serenity and burst into tears.
“Mommy!” she cried, climbing off the couch and running to Serenity. She collided with Serenity’s legs, almost knocking her off balance. Serenity scooped her up and Elizabeth’s arms and legs wound around her body, clinging to her. The girl’s whole body shook with uncontrollable tremors.
Dominion Page 18
