by Moira Rogers
The journals spoke little of the man, who had been dead by the time Ephraim found them. Nate lowered his voice. “If this is too painful—”
Diana continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Harrison was a bull of a man, you know. Strong and obstinate. Doc told me he was dead, but I didn’t believe him. If anyone could have survived a bloodhound attack—should have, even—it was Harry. Not me.”
Undoubtedly that discrepancy had kindled the old doctor’s curiosity. “Ephraim once theorized that certain people have an affinity for the transformation. He never managed to prove it, nor could he isolate what made it take hold so strongly in some while others didn’t survive. But your experience is not without precedent.” Cold, scientific words, and shame burned in his gut at being cowardly enough to take refuge in them. “I’m sorry, Diana. It must have been terribly hard.”
No confirmation or denial, simply another shrug. “Harry would have wanted it to be me. He’d have given his life for mine—and perhaps he did. I don’t know. I never will.”
If Ephraim had known the truth, he hadn’t deemed it relevant. “May I ask you a few questions about your earliest experiences? I’d like to compare them to what I know of the typical bloodhound transformation.”
“All right.”
He swallowed and flipped open his own journal to the perfectly reasonable questions he’d scribbled down the night before. Each one had seemed pertinent then. Now, faced with an attractive woman and a guilty conscience, they mostly seemed…invasive.
Especially the first one. “Do you remember your initial experiences with the moons, full and new?”
“The new moon was first,” she murmured. “I spent it alone.”
A horrifying experience, one the Guild went to tremendous pains to avoid by employing experienced women whose entire purpose was to guide newly created bloodhounds through their first encounters with the three days of blind lust brought on by the new moon. “I’m sorry,” he said again, though the words were insufficient.
Diana rubbed her hands over her arms. “Don’t worry, it hasn’t happened since. What about you?”
He blinked. “Have I experienced a new moon, do you mean?”
“You’re half bloodhound, aren’t you?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Perhaps answering her questions would lessen his guilt over digging through the broken pieces of her past. Besides, it made for an excellent exercise in framing his own painful memories as a scientific curiosity. “As best I can tell, I lack some of the benefits and disadvantages common in both vampires and bloodhounds. At worst, the new moon causes me some mild irritation.”
“Irritation?” She repeated the word with a soft laugh. “It can’t be anything like it, then, because that’s surely not how I’d describe it. An empty ache, maybe. A hunger nothing will sate.”
Nothing coolly scientific about those words. Even strict discipline couldn’t keep him from imagining Diana, her dark eyes hot with lust, her brown hair wild about her shoulders as she rode him with an ardor that would take three days to burn itself out.
His cock strained against his trousers before he could fully banish the image. “No,” he bit out, fighting a rising blush. “I can’t say I’m familiar with the feeling.” Liar.
“Then you’re lucky,” she whispered. “Next question?”
He couldn’t manage to tear his gaze from hers to check the journal, so he made one up. “I assume your increased healing abilities took hold at once. What about your other senses?”
“As soon as I woke up.” She slid off the stool and wandered over to a shelf on the other side of the room. “Hearing, smell, sight. Even taste—you know, I was ravenous, ate all the time. I still do.”
It usually took weeks for the newly transformed hounds to come into the full power of their new strengths. “That must have been overwhelming.”
“It was months before I managed to get a handle on it.”
“Your increased strength as well?”
She seemed to be struggling for words. “Months before I felt human again.”
Not so different from Hunter, after all. Nate rose and circled the table to stand at her side. “Enough questions. You’ve indulged me far beyond any reasonable expectation.”
“So make it up to me.” She leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Show me something you designed. One of the weapons you think I should master.”
He studied her for a moment, trying to judge if she was sincere or simply humoring him. “Have you ever fired a crossbow?”
“No, but there’s a first time for everything.”
“Well, then.” He nodded toward the door that led to his private laboratory. “It’s an elegant weapon, and crossbow bolts can be customized with an impressive array of surprises. Fire, silver, acid…even sunlight, after a fashion.”
The smile she offered weakened his knees. “Enlighten me, Nathaniel Powell.”
For the first time he wondered if Wilder might be correct. Perhaps Diana was every bit the huntress Ephraim had named her. Perhaps he was the one in danger.
That was a thought to get his newly invigorated blood pumping through his old veins. He smiled, wide enough to show off his fangs. “It would be my pleasure.”
Chapter Two
She dreamed of teeth.
Diana woke flushed and aroused, certainly not the reaction she usually had to vivid images of sharp fangs scoring her skin. But never before in her dreams had the lazy graze of teeth been followed by a teasing tongue and the press of naked flesh.
She climbed from the bed on shaking legs and smoothed her nightgown. The light filtering through the drapes was scant, and Satira and Wilder would sleep for hours yet. A quick drink, and she could easily make it back to her room before anyone else arose.
But when she crept into the parlor, the soft sound of breathing alerted her to a presence. The scent and energy told her who it was. “Nate.”
“Diana.” He’d been sitting in the dark, but rose as she turned to face him. “Is everything all right?”
He was still dressed, after a fashion. At some point, he’d discarded his vest and tie, and Diana was left staring at the open vee of his rumpled shirt—and the dark hair that curled there. “What?”
“Are you all right?” he said again, bending a little to catch her gaze. “You’re not usually awake this late.”
“Dreams. Vivid ones.” No need to tell him what kind. Let him assume they were vicious nightmares, and she was desperate to escape them. “I thought a little whiskey might banish them for the night.”
“I no longer remember my dreams.” He set down his glass and reached for the bottle. “I’m not sure if I should be relieved, or worried about the possibility that I no longer dream at all.”
“You dream, even if you don’t remember.” She tilted her head and watched him splash a bit of the liquor into a glass. “Don’t you still feel it when you wake up, that little tickle in the back of your mind?”
“No.” He stared into the glass. “I don’t sleep as I once did, either. In that, I believe I’m more vampire than bloodhound.”
“If you don’t sleep, what do you do?”
Nate shook himself and held out the glass to her, his smile a tad too forced to be real. “Perhaps I die. They are the undead, are they not?”
The temptation was too great. Diana ignored the glass and pressed her palm to the bared skin over his heart. “You’re alive.”
He hissed and caught her wrist, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Are you so sure?”
She’d grown too accustomed to indulging her sexual freedom. Taking what she wanted was gratifying and harmless, especially when instinct told her a man’s desire matched her own.
But this wasn’t just a man, one she could easily either ignore or call on again if the mood struck. Nate was Wilder’s friend, Satira’s mentor, the manor’s resident inventor. He belonged here far more than she did, and if misunderstandings or thwarted expectations twisted things between them…
Bett
er to apologize now. “I’m sorry. This is a liberty I shouldn’t be taking.” She tugged lightly against his grip.
His fingers tightened, holding her hand to his chest. “I wasn’t chiding you. I was asking in all honesty. You’ve been a bloodhound longer than Hunter, and recognizing death is one of your instincts. Am I alive?”
“Your heart beats.” She could feel it, slow but steady, under her fingers. “And the sunlight doesn’t burn you. But it’s more than that. The undead—vampires and stronger ghouls—I feel them in my gut, this dizzy, sick sort of heaviness. But you make me feel—” She clamped her mouth shut and cursed herself silently.
Nate stroked his thumb along the inside of her wrist. “Something other than sick and dizzy, I hope.”
She shivered and pulled again, this time until he released her. “You’re alive, Nate. I’m sure of it, but what I think isn’t important. What matters is what you feel.”
“In this moment?” He held up her whiskey. “I feel the slightest bit inebriated, which supports your theory. Dead men don’t get drunk, do they?”
“I don’t think so.” She took the glass and drained half of it.
Nate lifted his own drink. “Then I’m nothing more tragic than a man who could do with less whiskey and more sleep. Especially since liquor tends to loosen my tongue, and there are things I shouldn’t say.”
Such dangerous, dangerous ground. “We have more in common than you realize.”
“Perhaps.” He tossed back the rest of his drink and set the glass aside without taking his gaze from hers. “At the end of the day—or the night, as it were—the most important thing for us both to remember is that you are a beautiful young woman with many, many years of living ahead of you.”
Oh Christ, he was letting her down easy. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “I’m not going to throw myself at you. No more than I already have, anyway.”
He moved so fast she only had time to draw one startled breath before he gripped her chin, forcing her head back to meet his eyes. “I would give anything to be sober enough to congratulate your good sense instead of wishing you a fool.”
His skin was hot on hers, almost as hot as his gaze. If she pushed, would he give in? And what would he do if he did? It was far easier than it should have been to imagine him bending her over the end of the sofa or pushing her to her knees to take his cock into her mouth.
Her hand crept up of its own volition. Her fingers slipped under the placket of his shirt, between two of the few buttons that were still fastened, and rubbed over the hard flat of his stomach.
Nate shuddered under her touch, his grip tightening for half a second before he reached for her wrist to pull her hand away. “I’m not this selfish. Not yet.” He released her abruptly and pushed past her, striding toward the door.
Diana didn’t stop him. She finished her drink and stayed stock-still until his footsteps receded. It was just as well he’d gone. It didn’t take a genius of Nate’s caliber to know the dawn—and his sobriety—would bring nothing but regret and recrimination.
She could do without more of either.
Diana passed the rest of the night in fitful but blank slumber and woke long after the sun had already risen. She bathed and dressed quickly, ate even faster, and hurried out into the training yard.
Satira was there, setting up the range with targets and an array of weapons. “Good morning, Diana.”
“Good morning.” Nerves left her fidgety, and Diana picked up a pistol and studied it. “Practice shooting?”
“Nate said you might be interested in learning to use a crossbow.” Satira’s eyebrows drew together as she bent over one of the weapons, a rifle that seemed almost too heavy for her to lift on her own. “Ophelia said it was very fitting, and Nate swore the decision was practical, not whimsical, and then I asked what the hell they were talking about and got a reading assignment.”
“Doc named me after her.” Diana set the pistol aside and eyed the crossbow. “The Roman goddess of the hunt. And of the moon, I think—he mentioned that once or twice, when he was in a particular humor.”
“Clever.” Satira scrunched up her nose as she finished her adjustments to the weapon. “I’m clever enough, but not like Ophelia and Nate and even Hunter. All I’ve ever wanted to learn is how things are put together and how they work.”
Diana recognized the words for what they were—an admission of sorts. The others weren’t clever, they were educated, and Satira wasn’t. “I left school at sixteen and started working with my mother. You should have seen what she could do with a needle and thread.”
“I’ve seen what you can do. You make your own clothing, don’t you?”
“I do.” Men’s clothes were practical, especially for a bloodhound, but they didn’t fit a woman’s body. “I could make some alterations to yours, if you like. Surely Nate couldn’t complain about my safety in that endeavor.”
Satira blinked and straightened, her expression turning thoughtful. “Oh dear. Is he being old-fashioned?”
“He doesn’t like the fact that I’m training with Hunter, or that Wilder is allowing it.”
“Nate can be protective.” Satira busied herself with the crossbow, but she kept sneaking looks at Diana, as if gauging her reaction. “Maybe he doesn’t mind the training as much as he minds seeing Hunter hit you.”
“Of course that’s it.” Diana shrugged. Principle alone couldn’t account for it. “Theoretically, he agrees I need to train as much as any other bloodhound. In practice, however…”
“In practice, he’s being thickheaded.” Lifting the crossbow, Satira shook her head. “Men so often seem to be. Especially where women are concerned. I honestly don’t understand how they manage to hold all the power in this world when a woman with a pretty smile can turn them into fools.”
“One of life’s great mysteries.” Just like Nate himself. “Now tell me, Satira—how do I fire this thing?”
“Oh, it’s fun. But you don’t need this part…” She fiddled with the base of the weapon until the end piece with its hand crank detached. “The windlass isn’t enough to decrease the draw weight for me, but you should have no problem. The cylinder holds twelve bolts you can fire without reloading, but you’ll need to draw each time.”
Diana hefted the bow. It was heavy, probably due to the automatic cycling cylinder that held the extra bolts, but well balanced. She needed a second hand on the barrel only to guide the weapon, and she nodded toward the targets that had been set up with a questioning lift of her brow. “May I?”
Satira stepped aside. “It’s loaded with practice bolts now, but we have quite a collection of explosives.”
Diana drew the bow in a halting movement. “The tension’s all right, but I’m not used to this sort of thing.”
“It takes a little practice,” Satira admitted. “Wilder never took to it, and Hunter’s as likely to forget weapons and tear apart an enemy with his bare hands. But if someone learned how to use it… Oh, the bolts are so much easier to modify. I had a thought about compounds that react with a vampire’s blood. I got the idea from something Ephraim had written, in fact.”
Ephraim. The man she’d known as Dr. Thomas Beale, the man who’d saved her life, who was actually named Ephraim Phillips—and had been instrumental in the creation of the first bloodhounds.
Diana set the bow on the table. “I have some things to do inside this morning. Do you mind if we handle target practice later?”
Color flooded Satira’s cheeks. “Oh, Diana, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I know better. I’ve suffered enough loss of my own to not be so damned clumsy.”
Making Satira feel bad would only leave her feeling worse. “Truthfully? I had a late night, and I drank too much.”
“I understand. Go inside and—”
Horses. Diana cocked her head to listen. More than one, and moving toward the manor at such a breakneck speed that it took only a heartbeat for Satira to draw a breath and tense, as wel
l.
It could only mean trouble. Diana grabbed two revolvers from the table and holstered them as Satira armed herself with a rifle. “Stay close.” It came out sounding like a barked order, and Diana winced and tried again. “I mean—Wilder’ll have my hide if I don’t look out for you.”
Satira didn’t blink. “You’re the bloodhound, I’m the inventor. I follow your lead.”
A jarring thought. Diana took off toward the sound of the pounding hooves, moving carefully. She was used to facing trouble alone, of putting herself between danger and the people of Crystal Springs. Doc had said it many times—They depend on you, Diana. They cannot fight these monsters as you can.
Perhaps not, but they’d stayed home while she did it. They never huddled close to her back with a rifle.
The horses didn’t come through the side to the stable. Instead, they stopped at what sounded like the front of the house. Diana hurried through the back door and almost ran into Hunter. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Hunter ignored her question and fixed his gaze on Satira. “We need you to fetch Ophelia. I believe she’s visiting with Sylvie this morning. And see if you can find the doctor.”
Satira nodded and bolted out the back door. When it slammed behind her, Hunter gestured for Diana to follow him through the kitchen. “Wilder’s trying to rouse Nate. Or sober him up. Not sure which.”
Nate’s confessions were his own to make. “Who’s hurt?”
“A girl Emmett rescued from the Deadlands.” Hunter shook his head and dragged open a door for her. “Don’t think you’ve met him yet, have you?”
She’d heard tales about the grizzled old hound, mostly from Wilder. “Something of a legend, isn’t he?”
“One of the first bloodhounds. He knew Nate when Nate was just a boy. Knew your Doc too, I wager.”
“I’m sure he did.” Doc had never spoken of him, nor had she seen the name in the translated journals she’d been able to get through so far. But that didn’t mean much.
There was a lot Doc never told her.
The wide doors to the sitting room were open, but she stopped when she saw the woman laid out on the sofa. She looked fragile, more dead than not, and all at once the last thing Diana wanted was to be in the room when the lady lost her tenuous grasp on life.
