Joshua’s laughter reached him, and the soft, carefree sound did something to his heart. The child touched him in ways no other had. He was so like Alexandria, so filled with the joy of living, and he had the same beautiful blue eyes.
“No one will harm the boy, not if I live,” Stefan said firmly.
Aidan turned away. He did not want Stefan, who knew him so well, to realize how those words filled him with dread For all his powers, Aidan was vulnerable in the sunlight, and a vampire could use human puppets, minions, to capitalize on the weakness the day brought. Even with his ability to project during the daylight hours, a feat few of his kind had accomplished, Aidan would still be leaving Stefan without his physical aid, and Stefan was no longer a young man. Aidan did not want to lose his friend any more than he wanted to lose Joshua.
Joshua burst from the kitchen laughing, his blond curls bouncing. “Help me, Aidan, she’s after me!” he hollered as he charged toward them.
Stefan stepped squarely in front of his prize tulips, while Aidan glided in to wall off the roses. He caught Joshua’s flying figure with one hand and swept him up to his shoulders. “Who is after you, young Joshua?” he asked, pretending not to know.
“Don’t you protect that little scalawag!” Alexandria came running after her brother, her hair bouncing in a pony tail, her sapphire eyes dancing with mischief. “You won’t believe what the little monster has been hiding under his bed!”
Joshua ducked behind Aidan’s neck. “Run, Aidan! She’s gonna tickle-torture me, I just know it.” Aidan obliged, trotting the boy into the shelter of the garage, knowing Alexandria would follow.
“Ha!” Alexandria said, unaware that she had placed herself in danger from the early morning sun. “You wish I’d tickle-torture you. I’m going to do a lot worse than that,” she threatened. “Put him down, Aidan, and let me box his ears.”
Joshua clutched at Aidan’s thick mane of hair. “No! I’m telling you, Aidan, we gotta stick together on this.”
“I do not know.” Aidan pretended to think about it, winking at Stefan as he twisted and turned to protect Joshua from Alexandria’s jumping attempts to reach the boy. “She looks pretty mad to me. I do not want her coming after me like that.” He shifted slightly, as if he might really turn the child over to his sister.
Alexandria pretended to spring at him, laughing wickedly. At the last second, Aidan turned to keep his body between her and Joshua. Joshua grabbed him even tighter, squealing in feigned alarm.
“I’m gonna tell her!” Joshua cried. “If you don’t save me, Aidan, you’re gonna go down, too!” His eyes were alight with mischief.
Alexandria stopped in her tracks and glared at Aidan. “You are a party to this mutiny?”
He attempted innocence. “I have no idea what the child is trying to accuse me of to save his own life.” His golden eyes were laughing, belying his words. “Remember, Alexandria, that a man will say anything to save his own skin.”
“Ha!” Joshua snorted. “You tell her, Stefan. It was all Aidan’s idea, and you helped, right?”
Alexandria faced the older man accusingly. “You, too? You were in on this blatant disregard for my orders?” She put her hands on her hips. “And it
was
an order.”
The three males hung their heads in unison, looking for all the world like naughty little boys. “I am sorry,
cara
.”
Aidan took the blame squarely on his broad shoulders. “I could not resist the little creature.”
“Little? You call that
little
! It’s a moose!”
Stefan pushed out his chest. “No, Alexandria, it wasn’t Aidan. I saw the little thing, and young Joshua’s face was so bright, I just had to get it.”
“Little? Are we talking about the same animal here? That dog is not little. It is huge. Did either of you two pushovers take a look at the paws on that thing? They’re bigger than my head!”
Joshua burst out laughing. “No way, Alex. He’s really cute. You are gonna let me keep him, aren’t you? You just have to. Stefan says he’ll be a good guard dog someday. He says he’ll look after me and be a friend if I treat him right.”
“And in the meantime, he’s going to eat like a horse every day.” Alexandria swept a hand through her hair, her smile fading. “I don’t know, Josh. I barely make enough money to feed the two of us, let alone whatever that thing is.”
Aidan lifted the boy to the ground and circled Alexandria’s waist with one arm. “Have you forgotten,
cara
? You promised to marry me. I think I can cover the cost of the dog food.”
“You mean it, Aidan?” Joshua shouted, jumping up and down. “You mean it, Aidan? You’re really gonna marry Alex? And I can keep my dog?”
“You’d sell me out for a dog?” Alexandria demanded, catching Joshua around the neck in mock aggression.
“Not
just
a dog, Alex, but this neat house and Stefan and Marie, too. Plus, you won’t have to work for that bozo.”
“Bozo?” Alexandria turned slowly and regarded Aidan with glittering blue eyes. “Now, how would an innocent little boy come up with a descriptive word like that?”
Aidan smiled at her, a sweet, innocent smile that should have made her feel like laughing but instead sent heat curling through her body. She tilted her chin. “You’re lethal,” she accused him.
He framed her face with his large hands and lowered his head slowly, purposefully. “I would hope so,” he murmured right before his mouth claimed hers, sweeping her into their own private world.
But Alexandria was soon reminded they were not alone. “Holy moly,” Joshua said in a loud whisper. “Can you believe that, Stefan?”
“Never saw such a display,” Stefan admitted.
Chapter Seventeen
The sun was unusually large in the sky, gleaming a strange red. There was little wind, few clouds, and the ocean itself was tranquil, the surface like glass. Beneath the earth, a heart began to beat. Soil shifted, churned, then spewed like a geyser from the secret chamber beneath Aidan’s house.
He lay still, his great body drained of strength. Beside him, as silent and still as death, lay Alexandria. Aidan’s eyes snapped open, fury burning in their depths at the disturbance to his sleep. Outside his home, somewhere close, something evil lurked in the bright sunlight on the peaceful afternoon.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, his arms folded across his chest. He sent himself seeking outside his body and into the air itself. It took intense concentration and focus to be bodiless, completely without form. He moved upward through the chamber and passed through the heavy trapdoor. Passing through solids was disorienting, a strange wrenching of atoms and molecules, and Aidan mentally shook himself. He had experimented with this process and often found the complete separation of body and mind difficult. In the other forms he took, his body was different but still with him. With only his mind and soul, his senses were altered. Sounds were strangely distorted, as he had no ears, and he couldn’t actually touch anything, passing straight through it if he tried, causing a slightly sickening sensation. As he had no stomach, the nausea was even stranger.
Yet it was imperative to stay completely focused; it was essential not to allow himself to be disturbed by the unwanted sensations. He traveled along the rock tunnel deep within the earth. It always seemed so narrow, his shoulders nearly brushing the sides, but without his body, the space was enormous, another sensory distortion.
He passed through the door leading to the basement. Already the dark, oppressive evil that had awakened him deep within the earth was filling the air with its stench.
Aidan proceeded through the basement door into the kitchen of his home, warped vibrations and tones seeming to bounce through his being before he could identify them as Joshua’s laughter, Marie’s musical voice, Stefan’s deeper baritone. The knowledge that the three were still safe gave him a me
asure of comfort. Whatever was in the air, whatever was stalking those he loved, had not penetrated the safeguards of his home.
The sun blazed through the huge windows, and Aidan instinctively veered away from the rays. He had no eyes, no skin to burn, but he felt the wrenching agony all the same. When every survival instinct screamed at him to go back to the safe, cool earth, far from the burning sun, the stench of evil impelled him forward.
Over the centuries, he had often lived in proximity to humans, more so than most of his kind, yet it never failed to astonish him that they had so few warning systems, or if they did, that they completely ignored them. The air was thick with the stench, the disturbance so great it had penetrated his chamber below the rich earth, intruding on his deep sleep. Yet Marie was singing in the living room as she dusted his jade collection, and Stefan was humming as he tinkered with an engine in the huge garage, one of his many hobbies. Aidan wanted to call to him, to warn him, but in his energy-consuming formlessness, he didn’t dare try. He moved through the garage and back into the house, homing in on Joshua in the kitchen.
The child was the obvious target of the madness aimed at both Alexandria and Aidan. Aidan sped toward him, the bright sunlight sapping his energy. His mind rebelled, flinching from the brilliant rays, but he forced himself through the light to reach the boy.
Joshua was playing with the puppy, his eyes dancing, his blond curls bouncing, the picture of boyish joy. He had no idea he was in deadly peril.
Even as Aidan observed, the dog ran to the door, whining softly, and Joshua glanced about, looking for Stefan or Marie, who had told him in no uncertain terms not to go outside. Snapping a leash on the puppy, he opened the door and rushed into the garden.
The heat of the sun pierced Aidan’s very soul. He felt as if he were on a skewer, roasting, burning. He followed the boy anyway, putting aside the pain.
“Come on, Baron,” Joshua insisted. “Hurry it up.” The little boy looked around again to make sure he was alone. “Baron’s a dopey name, but Stefan really wanted you to be called that. He says it will make you noble, whatever that is. I’ll ask Alexandria. She knows everything. I wanted to call you Alex. That would have made her laugh.”
“Joshua!” Vinnie del Marco appeared, his large frame intimidating, his arms folded, his face stern. “Weren’t you given orders? Soldiers get court-martialed for less than this.”
The air was thick with the stench now. Aidan could see that Vinnie felt safe in the garden as he teased the boy, the high wall around them, the security system in full force. He had no perception of the danger lurking so close. Vinnie bent to scratch behind the puppy’s ears.
A rush of wind, sound, and movement displaced Aidan, knocking him sideways as a blurred mass leapt the fence. A furred, powerfully muscled beast hit Vinnie squarely in the chest, its huge gaping jaws going for his throat.
“Run, kid! Get in the house!” Vinnie yelled just before the animal tore open flesh and sinew. Blood sprayed into the air, showering Joshua and the puppy as they stood frozen to the spot.
The boy said one word, whispered it softly like a prayer amid the ugliness. “Alexandria.”
A second animal hurtled over the wall and rushed at Vinnie, and its dripping fangs closed over his leg. With a vicious twist of its massive head, it audibly snapped bone, and Vinnie’s screams filled the air. Rusty charged around the corner, gun in hand, but Joshua was in his line of fire. A third animal sprang from the wall onto his back, teeth clamping tightly around his shoulder.
Aidan could hear Stefan running, but he knew the vampire had laid his trap all too well. The beasts were sacrificial pawns. Stefan would shoot them to save the two men from the crazed animals, but by then the human puppet moving over the wall had scooped up the terrified child and tugged him back over the wall. The air reverberated with gunfire, then with Stefan shouting to his wife.
“Call an ambulance, Marie, and get out here now! I need some help!” Stefan knelt beside Vinnie and tried to clamp the worst of the wounds pumping out the man’s life onto the ground.
“Joshua! Where is Joshua?” Marie cried when she joined him.
“He’s gone,” Stefan reported grimly. “He was taken.” Marie’s sobs faded behind him as Aidan followed the human and child. Joshua was thrown into the trunk of a car, and the puppet walked with the characteristic jerky motions of a vampire-induced trance to the driver’s seat. Aidan streamed in through the open window and hovered, but the puppet could not detect his presence. The vampire could not direct this assault while he lay beneath earth in the daylight hours, but he had implanted his orders into his minions’ minds before he had sought the safety of his lair.
The car swerved along the winding road, the driver drooling and staring vacantly ahead with the gaze of the possessed.
Aidan moved away from the abomination and into the trunk. Joshua lay in a stupor, the left side of his face swelling, his eye already turning black. Tears rolled down to his chin, but his sobs were silent.
Aidan concentrated, calling on all of his strength to communicate silently with the boy.
Joshua, I am here with you. I will have you sleep. You will stay asleep until I come for you. When I say to you, “Alexandria needs to see your blue eyes,” you will know it is safe to awaken. Only then will you do so
. The mind meld was draining, and he had so little energy during this terrible time of the day. He also needed to cast spells, the most intricate, dangerous ones Gregori had taught him. If the vampire was somehow able to rise before Aidan could return to the boy, it would take a time to unravel the spells, and Joshua would be safe from harm and further trauma in his sleep.
Aidan wove his spells as the car moved northward, toward the mountains. Toward Gregori’s new home, came the unbidden thought.
It couldn’t be Gregori. Aidan wouldn’t believe it. The vampire simply had no idea Gregori was anywhere in the vicinity. It wasn’t Gregori. Gregori was so powerful, he would not need the deceitful tricks, the beasts, the mindless puppet doing his bidding, or even the child. Gregori would need no help. This was not Gregori. Aidan held on to that certainty while he wove the spells. Ancient, binding, dangerous to any who tried to harm the boy.
When he was finished, he rested, exhausted. He had done all he could. Once he knew the child’s exact destination, he would have to make his way home. He dreaded the journey in the bright sun; there was no pain quite like it, nothing more sickening to one of his kind.
The puppet stopped the car at the entrance to an old, rundown hunting lodge with rotting timbers and overgrown with vines and bushes. Aidan knew at once that the vampire was close, most likely beneath the decaying planks of the floor. Rats scurried visibly, the sentinels for the undead. The walking marionette, the minion of the undead, already drained of his mind and free will, opened the trunk and reached in to pull the child out by his shirtfront.
The protective spell instantly sent fire racing up the puppet’s arm to his shoulders and enveloped his head. The thing, no longer really alive, programmed to do one thing only, continued to try to clutch the boy even as his flesh burned.
Aidan was thankful Joshua was asleep. The putrefying stench was incredible, even to one without a nose. The blackened carcass fell to the ground, bits of charred flesh dropping away. The puppet issued a low, keening vibration, his death slow and difficult, the macabre caricature still trying over and over to drag the boy to the vampire. Aidan hated the torment resulting from the vampire’s twisted schemes. But then, the undead liked his minions to suffer as much as possible.
When the thing was finally still, the last breath dragged from its lungs, Aidan inspected the remains to ensure it was truly dead and to leave no smoldering ember that might accidentally ignite any vegetation. Satisfied that he had done as much as he was able, Aidan had to leave, to travel through that terrible sunlight, back to his home.
His strength completely drained, the journey took the better part of the afternoon, and he feared that when he did reach home he m
ight not have energy enough to rise with the setting sun and return to the vampire’s lair. He was growing ever weaker, his being becoming even more insubstantial, a feather blown about in the elements. Only the thought of Alexandria sustained him. And a welcome dense, blanketing white fog eased his passage home.
Once there, with his last ounce of energy, he made his way unerringly to his resting place beside Alexandria. The wrench of reuniting with his body contorted his very bones, his muscles contracting and locking in hard, swollen masses. Vulnerable and without strength, his great power drained completely, he lay as one dead, the cool earth closing over him. A soft hiss escaped, the last breath from his lungs.
Upstairs, above Aidan and Alexandria, Stefan could only try to comfort his wife as they huddled together awaiting the setting sun, awaiting the moment Aidan would arise. The sun seemed as if it wanted to stay up for all time, but unexpectedly a slow, thick fog began to roll in just before six o’clock. Stefan felt some of the terrible tension leave his body, though the guilt remained as he waited.
Deep below the earth, Aidan arose, voraciously hungry to replenish starving cells and sinews depleted from his earlier task. Yet his first thought was of Gregori. There could be only one answer. The Carpathian had intervened. He was great enough, powerful enough to feel the disturbances in the land even from beneath the earth itself. He had sent the fog to aid Aidan when he knew Aidan was far too drained to build it himself. And the fog remained, here before the sun set, giving him a head start on what he must do.
Aidan had studied for centuries, believing, as Gregori did, that knowledge was power, yet he could not do all the things Gregori was able to do. He would not have detected a bodiless being while sleeping in the ground, and Aidan was certain Gregori had not only done so but had also sent the fog to aid him. Aidan found himself smiling. The vampire was not Gregori.
Glancing down at Alexandria’s face, he brushed his fingers tenderly through her hair before floating them upward to the underground chamber. Alexandria always went to sleep on a bed and awoke on one, but as long as a vampire preyed in their city, Aidan always brought her beneath the healing soil, where she was impossible to detect.
Dark Gold (Dark Series - book 3) Page 31
