Mortal Sentry (Raina Kirkland Book 2)

by Diana Graves

  Jed saw only men as people deserving of respect. He treated Michael like a prince. Michael was never made to hear a single scream from his mother or sister. He never saw the abuse, and Rachael and Katie never hinted at their nonstop hell.

  But, something was to be gained by this. I understood then why I couldn’t stop him with my words before. I kept him out of my head, so I couldn’t get in his.

  “No,” I said calmly, “Stop—now.” It took such concentration to just talk and not scream or cry my demands. He stopped then, and didn’t move a muscle. He stayed exactly where he was. “Get off of me,” I said, again calm. He did, and I felt like I was going to be sick as he pulled himself out of me. I cried out in pain and tried to swallow pass the nausea. He was standing over me with his manhood still excited.

  It took some effort to sit up. That was just a taste of what he did to Katie and Rachael for years. Where was Katie’s mom, anyhow?

  “Where is Rachael?” I asked as I stood. I could feel warm blood trickling down my thighs.

  “Dead,” he said, like it was just another word. No big deal.

  “Why?”

  “She was being nosy.”

  “Nosy?” I should have just walked out of there. Hell, I should have ran. But, I stood there in the presence of a dangerous man, and asked him why he killed his lover…smart one, Raina.

  “She came into the room while I was punishing Katie for running off to live with you. She knew better than to interrupt.”

  Images of Katie’s punishment trampled through my mind. The rape was as brutal as ever, the blood, the smell of burning flesh. He shoved things inside her. He beat her without restraint. High on meth, there was no limit to his strength or his twisted lusts. It was too much, too fucking much! I fell to my knees, screaming wildly and pushing that bastard out of my head. Get out!

  I felt Jed looming over me before I realized my control on him had slipped.

  “Die bitch!” he screamed into my face as he grabbed me. I fought hard but he was unbelievably strong. He pulled me to the master bathroom and wrestled me to the ground beside Rachael’s body. She was cold pressed against me and I tried to scream, but Jed’s hands were around my throat. He put his weight onto it, crushing my windpipe. My body was losing strength, hands flailing, legs kicking all in vain. He was killing me. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want the last thing I saw in this world to be an evil man. I didn’t want the last thing I smelled to be his stinking breath. I focused instead on the people I loved; my family, my friends…and Mato. At least I had known something like love.

  Blood was pounding in my head as his fingers tightened. Tears filled my eyes and rolled down into my ears, playing in their curves. Was this my end? I opened my eyes, but saw only blackness. I thought I was dead for a moment, but the dead don’t feel pain. I was still dying, but I couldn’t fight anymore. I couldn’t think anymore, and I passed out to the sound of Jed screaming.

  A HELPING HAND

  I WOKE TO the cool rain on my face. I couldn’t see or hear anything. It was as though the world was coming back to me in fragments. I smelled burnt wood. I could feel the rain drops hit my face. It felt so good. My body was warm and achy. As my vision steadily improved I took in my surroundings. I looked down the line of my body and found that I was naked and covered in ash and burnt debris. Slowly I realized I was sitting in the midst of what was left of Rachael’s house! The house was still burning in some places farther away, but the flames had died down where I sat. Water was coming down through what was left of the roof. I could hear it hitting my skin and the material around me. Soft pattering. Then I heard the sirens, loud and blaring. Men were shouting, water was roaring through huge hoses and hitting the fire, but it would not give up the house. It was a hot white flame, my flame! It would see this house burned to the ground and I sat in awe of it. The flames fed well and there was nothing any of the firemen could do to stop them.

  I smiled, because my flame saved me. I looked on pyrokinesis as a curse, something else to make me less human, less loved, but it saved me. When my body and mind had failed, when my judgment was piss poor and death was near, the flame came as it came before. I couldn’t help but be thankful in that moment, joyful even. Yes, I was sitting in the midst of a burning home. Yes, I was nearly murdered, but I was ALIVE! I thought I was dead, I thought the worst. I was so angry and sad and lost, but there I sat fully alive and not dead or undead. Hazzah!

  But my jubilance did not last long. I could hear the firemen and women shouting over the flames. The fire was spreading and in danger of encompassing another house. I couldn’t let that happen, but I didn’t know how to control the flames either. There was only one person I knew who could, Alistair. Through my connection with Adia, I could call out to him for guidance, but would he help me? He was crazy the last I checked. But, I didn’t have time to consider other options. The fire was spreading fast! I closed my eyes and thought of Adia. I called out to her. I’d only ever talked to her while dreaming, but I had to try something. I screamed her name, and for a terrible moment I thought it didn’t work. I thought I would be forced to watch my flame spread and devastate lives. I slumped in on myself in defeat, and I cried, more out of exhaustion and self-hate than anything.

  “Call it back,” said a voice.

  I jumped and looked around until my eyes landed on Alistair. He stood tall amidst the ruble, in black pants and a red shirt. His blond hair was tied back. I slowly stood, suddenly ashamed of my tears. It had worked.

  “How?” I asked.

  He smiled at me. “Well, it has ample fuel here, so it will be tricky. I’m not sure you’re powerful enough to do it, but I am.”

  “Please,” was all I said, and he began to undress. “Wait, what are you doing?”

  His smile never faulted. “I’m not about to burn my favorite shirt, Raina. It will only take a moment.” I watched him take his clothes off and suddenly I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I tried a few positions before settling on having them crossed under my breasts.

  He walked several paces away and set his clothes down before coming back toward me. The closer he got the more guarded I became. When he was inches away I was left staring at his chest, because looking up meant I would have to see that stupid smile on his face and looking down was not an option. He was well endowed. Even a witch could not help but blush. He reached out to me and I backed away.

  “What are you playing at?”

  “It’s your fire. I’m going to have to touch you to control it, darling.”

  The way he said ‘darling’ made me arch an eyebrow but I gave him the go-ahead. He put only his hands on my shoulders and closed his eyes. For a moment I felt nothing, and I let out a sigh of relief, but then it hit me. Heat was building in my core, so hot it took the air from my lungs. I tried to breathe through it as it was growing. Calling it back, hurt worse than creating it.

  “Alistair?”

  “It’s coming,” he whispered.

  I looked out at the burnt carcass of the house and he was right. The flames were crawling back toward us. Inching in small white arches, but soon they grew larger.

  “You may want to hold onto me. This is going to hurt,” he said.

  “More than it already does?” He didn’t answer me, so I took his word for it. I wrapped my arms around his chest and held on as the heat grew.

  When the first tiny flames touched my feet an involuntary whimper escaped my lips and I tightened my grip on him. He moved his hands from my shoulders and embraced me tight. He let out a shallow breath by my ear, just before the first large arching flame smacked into us like a great whip. I screamed then. Alistair gave a low grunt, but he couldn’t hold back when the brunt of the flames came. He flung his head back and screamed and I screamed with him as wave after wave of fire hit us, soaked into us and we took the heat. Our hair danced in it, our skin glowed with it. It felt never ending. My face was nuzzled into his chest, muffling my cries, so I didn’t see the look in Alistair’s eyes until the fl
ames stopped coming at us and I felt him shaking in my arms. I looked up at him then and saw his eyes glowing brightest-blue moments before he fell to the ground.

  “Alistair!” I tried to soften his fall by taking on some of his weight, but he was heavier than he looked, and he looked pretty heavy.

  “I tried to take most of it to save you pain,” he said in low rumbling voice before he smiled weakly.

  “Thanks—,” I didn’t know what more to say. He tortured my brother and killed a man in front of me just the other day. The last time I saw him he trespassed into my dreams and bit my jaw off, and now he was my hero? I licked my lips and tasted ash. “We need to leave. The firemen are coming this way.” I helped him stand and walk to his clothes.

  “How did you get here so fast?” I asked him as he put his pants on.

  “I was nearby,” he said with a zip of his pants.

  “That seems a little too coincidental,” I remarked, and he shot me a look that said I was being ungrateful. I looked down; maybe I was, but come on…

  He picked up his shirt and gave me his back. “I was on a date when I felt Adia. There was no time for words, so she gave me an image of you only. You were naked and crying in the dark. I followed your scent here.”

  “My scent?”

  “We need to go, come.” I reluctantly gave him my hand and he guided me through the house, as blackened and frail as it was.

  Rachael’s backyard had a lovely vegetable garden and a shed, we stood between the two. Alistair stopped us there and looked down at me for a moment before picking me up without a word.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “Close your eyes,” he said. There was such demand in his voice, such power that I didn’t question him. Maybe a clean, clothed and fully well Raina would have pressed him on the matter, but I didn’t. I closed my eyes tight and instantly I felt a lifting sensation, like riding up an elevator, except elevators have walls, and I felt the wind brushing my naked body, cool and oh-so refreshing after the fire.

  “Alistair?”

  “Keep your eyes closed. I know you suffer from vertigo. Imagine you are sitting in a speedboat.”

  “Okay,” I barely uttered with my eyes still closed tight and my arms wrapped around his neck. I felt a rush of wind in my face, harsh and biting. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m taking you to Bastion Fatal.”

  SHE’S DEAD-DEAD

  ALISTAIR LANDED US safely on a balcony just outside his room. I opened my eyes the moment he let me down and my feet touched the tile. I let my arms fall from him and looked around the room and out at the view of Commencement Bay. Both were beautiful. It was night and the city lights reflected on the water like a second city. Grey clouds were splashed across the sky, partially hiding the moon from view, but not its halo. I looked back at Alistair’s room and it wasn’t exactly what I had expected. It was luxurious and comfortable, inviting even. Somehow, I had imagined something in cooler tones and less furnished. I knew it was his room only because he went straight to the wardrobe and began rifling through his clothes the moment I let go of him. But, I had to wonder where his coffin was.

  I didn’t know what to say in that moment, so I said nothing. I watched as he took off his ash covered clothes and replaced them with black sweatpants and a tank top. Once dressed he looked back at me with his head at a tilt, as though he was considering me, maybe wondering why I was still just standing there. Eventually he smiled and sat on his bed before, lying back with his feet still on the floor.

  “Raina,” he mused, “Raina Annabella Kirkland.” He said my name like it amused him, and for the second time in my life I felt uncomfortable being naked. I felt exposed.

  “I don’t want to get your floor dirty with ash,” I said, trying to pretend he was normal, and not a crazy master vampire whose particular brand of crazy tended toward the sexual. I just escaped one sexual sadist to land in the hands of another. Well, shit.

  He chuckled and put his arms over his head, stretching out his long torso. “There’s a tub in the next room, just over there. Wash yourself.” He pointed loosely to a door that I assumed was the bathroom.

  I tiptoed through his room and closed the door behind me, locking it for what good that would do, before looking at the bathroom. It was large and fully tiled in slate. The raised tub was large enough for five or six men. Near it was a shelf full of fluffy towels and an assortment of soaps. I climbed the steps to the tub and filled it with hot water before gathering some lavender soaps from the shelf. I took my time in the tub, both soaking my sore body and prolonging the moment I’d have to step back out into Alistair’s room wearing nothing but a towel. But, after almost an hour in the tub I could delay the moment no further. I opened the door reluctantly and stepped out of the bathroom. Alistair was still lying on his bed, but he was propped up on his elbow and watching me closely. Had he been there the whole time, waiting for me?

  “Thanks for the bath, and for helping me,” I said, but my words were hollow, because in that moment I was more concerned about what was going on in his sick mind than being grateful. I was taking in the bedroom; looking for an escape and weapons. Though, both were useless. He was a master vampire, fast and strong. I was emotionally and physically spent, slow and weak. I was at his mercy. “Should I call a taxi?”

  Alistair let out a breath. “Sit, Raina. I have some bad news.”

  I sat on the bed, as far from him as I could without risk of insult. I was scared and it was obvious. I was too tired to play the brave girl. I was too defeated to act like I was anything other than a sitting duck.

  “It’s Adia. She let go of me. She’s dead, truly.”

  “What?” I asked, feeling the beginnings of tears fill my eyes as what he said sunk in. Adia was dead and gone, his sister, my mother…of sorts.

  “She came to me tonight. She asked me to save you. It was her dying wish.”

  “Why did she let go? Why’d she give up tonight?” He didn’t answer me, but I wasn’t really expecting him to. Whatever her reasons were, they didn’t change anything. She was dead.

  Adia was my maker and the connection between us, while alien and scary as all get out, was strong. I loved her more than anybody in the world, and she just committed suicide. I didn’t know what to think or how I felt; sad, guilty, angry, or all of the above. My body was physically shaking with the effort to hold back tears. If I let myself cry I didn’t know if I could stop. It was all too much; Katie, Jed, rape, torture, death. A lady can only take so much tragedy…then again; my godmother was the muse of tragedy.

  We sat there, quiet and lost in thought. Time went by unnoticed until he finally stood and wiped away the tears I hadn’t known he’d shed. He confused me. I was expecting something different from him, leather and whips maybe. But, perhaps he was too depressed for all that sadistic jazz. His sister just died, after all.

  “I’ll have someone fetch you some clothes and I’ll drive you home,” he said, giving me his back. He turned his head and looked down at me, and the look was a stern one. It made me feel uncomfortable and I pulled my fluffy white towel in closer. “I’m not crazy, Raina, not anymore. You don’t need to be so afraid of me…anymore.” I just blinked at him. I didn’t know what my face looked like, but his eyes seemed less stern and more haunted. Like he just woke from a horrible nightmare, and found out that it was all real, and he was the bad guy.

  ♦

  Alistair and I sat in his Porsche in my aunt’s driveway. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and I was wearing a lovely but simple blue dress that fit snugly in all the right places. After my last conversation with Adia I felt responsible for her leaving him. I felt like I killed her.

  “It’s my fault Adia’s gone,” I said over the soft music he had turned on to fill the awkward silence between us.

  “Yes,” he said, and I hung my head. “But not how you think. When I began slipping into madness she ignored it. She just took what she needed from me and paid no attention to what I was doi
ng. No matter how horrible the act, her first thought was for survival.”

  He almost sounded angry at her, though I suppose if it were me, I’d be angry, too. She made him crazy and let him kill, rape and torture people, and then she left him to live on with what he’d done.

  “But then you came along. I was drawn to you, am drawn to you and your brothers because of your connection to her. Somewhere in my sick mind I associated you and your siblings to her and I both hated you and wanted you near me. I tortured your brother—I wanted so badly to hurt you.” He shook his head, “The things I had planned for you would curdle your stomach.”

  “But, you’re not that man anymore,” I said.

  “Because of you, Raina. Adia finally saw me through your eyes. She couldn’t ignore me anymore, because she loved you as you loved her. She knew my mind and what I wanted to do to you and she couldn’t let me. She loved you too much. I could rape and kill hundreds of women, but not you, not her Raina.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Today had been a little too exciting. “I think I need some sleep.”

  “Of course.”

  I began to open the door when I felt Alistair’s hand brush my jaw. He gently brought my face to his. Our lips were nearly touching. I couldn’t help the fear I still felt being that close to him. As first impressions went, his would take a while to look past.

  “I will spend the rest of my life making amends for my sins, but at least I have a life thanks to you.”

  ANGELS

  I DIDN’T BRING my purse with me to Rachael’s; thank Goddess. It was still sitting on the passenger seat of my unlocked car. I vaguely remembered trying to drive to Rachael’s after the police left, but my hands were shaking too much. I couldn’t focus or function enough to drive, so I just got out, closed the door and started walking. Looking at the dry blood on the driveway, I felt stupid for going after Jed on my own. Was that really me that acted so brainless? Had my ill-deserved reputation as a bad ass gone to my head? Yes, on both accounts. I could have died; I could have been raped and murdered by a shit-for-brains pedophile! It seemed odd that the very disease that would make me undead, kept me alive. And to further the weirdness, the very man who threatened to kill me just a couple days ago was my hero…When had the world turned upside-down?