In Her Shadows

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “Olivia…” he tried to calm her. Anger kept him from invading her thoughts and controlling her.

  “Leave. Go. My keepers will be back soon, and you don’t want them to find you away from your post.”

  “Olivia, wait, I don’t care if they—”

  “Oh my gawd, guard, your services are no longer needed. Go!” She lifted his pants off the floor and threw them at him.

  “I’ll tell them I care for you. I’ll tell them I—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Olivia charged at him and pushed him toward the window. “You’re just like the others. You just want to dictate and control me. I thought you were different. I thought…” The fight began to drain out of her. “No, never mind. It doesn’t matter what I thought. Just leave.”

  Jaxon studied her for a moment and then nodded. “As you wish.”

  Chapter Five

  The loss of Jaxon was a surprise. She never thought he’d treat her like the others—like a delicate flower to be marked and protected and controlled without so much as a say. He should have asked her first. She would have said no, on principal, but he should have asked.

  “I should have listened to my parents and not gone out alone. One mistake as a ten-year-old and I’m doomed,” she muttered to herself. The irony that she was sneaking out of her guardians’ home without their permission wasn’t lost on her. Really, what worse thing can happen?

  For a few hundred dollars and about thirty-two hours of travel, she could get to Kansas City by bus. Why Kansas City, Missouri? The ticket was for sale, and she had the money. It was half way across the United States. The Kansas-Missouri border seemed like a place people went to get lost. And, the cost of living was supposed to be cheaper in the Midwest.

  The sound of the bus slipping into gear caused a strange sense of relief and sorrow. Olivia’s favorite belongings were stuffed into the messenger bag at her feet, and her clothes were shoved into a canvas bag in the luggage storage. The nearly packed seats were filled with everyone from a crocheting middle-aged woman to twenty-something backers to and older woman who alternated pulling a tissue out of her sleeve to wipe her nose and shoving it back in.

  Daylight gave her some protection. Only Hathor and Servaes could chase her during the day, and they wouldn’t realize she was gone for hours. She rested her temple against the window and watched in silence as the city turned into interstate and trees. Before long she was in Idaho, and then Montana. As time slipped by and the day turned to evening, she began watching the countryside for blurs of movement beyond that of the moving bus.

  They drove into Missoula, Montana where she’d switch buses. She touched the tip of her tongue to Jaxon’s mark, which drew forth the memory of his passionate kiss. A very treacherous part of her wanted him to follow her.

  A tiny movement by her foot caught her attention, and she frowned. Without moving her head, she looked down. The guy next to her was trying to nudge open her bag with the toe of his boot. Her automatic reaction was to slam her foot down on his while turning to grab him by the neck. He gasped, startled.

  Seeing his shocked face, she let go. He pushed up from his seat and backed away from her. “Crazy fucking bitch!”

  Breathing hard, she grabbed her bag from the floor and hugged it to her chest. She held it tightly as the bus pulled into the Missoula station. Olivia waited until the would-be robber debarked from the bus and watched him through the windows until he was out of sight.

  “Which bus did he say, dear?” the tissue lady asked as Olivia stepped off the bus.

  She glanced at the old woman in confusion and didn’t answer.

  “Miss? What did he say? What number?” the tissue lady insisted.

  “Bus number? Oh, ah, it depends on where you’re going to,” Olivia said.

  The woman’s frail hands grabbed Olivia’s arm for support, slowing her down as she tried to walk inside. She caught a glimpse of the robber through the station window. His narrowing eyes met hers.

  “Which bus are you looking for?” the woman asked.

  “I know where I’m going. Let’s get you where you’re going.” Olivia kept ahold of tissue woman’s arm, escorting her in so she’d have some kind of witness if the robber tried anything. At best, he was a lowlife. At worst, he’d followed her onto the bus. Sure, the latter was most likely paranoia, but she didn’t like the anger in his eyes. The woman tripped a little and Olivia steadied her. “Nice and easy. So, are you on vacation?”

  “I’m going to die soon,” the old woman said. “Nothing nice or easy about that.”

  Olivia turned her attention to her to gauge the woman’s expression, unsure how to answer the cryptic statement.

  The wrinkled face smiled. “I had your youth once. Your beauty. I was a nurse for fifty years. Fifty years. A person sees a lot of sad things in that time, and a lot of sad, lonely ends. Each time a patient died, I always thought, not me, not like that, I’ll go on my own terms. Then age finds us poor mortals, and you can’t remember which bus to take.”

  Immortality. Mortality. Neither side seemed happy.

  “But the next stage will be different.” The woman patted her hand.

  “Heaven?” Olivia asked with a small smile. She glanced to see where the robber waited. His attention was turned from her.

  “Oh, dear, no.” The woman gripped her arm tight, and she felt the sting of something in her thigh.

  Stunned, Olivia looked down to see a syringe sticking out of her leg. Her vision blurred, and she stumbled.

  “Weren’t you listening? I told you, not me, not like that. I’m going to live forever.”

  Chapter Six

  “What happened last night while we were gone?” Tyr demanded. He grabbed Jaxon by his shirtsleeves and hoisted him into the air, slamming him against the second story of the house. The siding cracked beneath his back. Tyr then flung him down to the ground.

  Jaxon barely righted himself before hitting the pavement. His boots skidded on concrete. He didn’t want to answer. Not only because Tyr was a Dark Knight, but also because he was Olivia’s guardian. Tyr took both roles very seriously. Though is voice was calm, the knight’s eyes were lined with red in warning. The giant Viking of a vampire appeared capable of cleaving him in half with just his hand.

  Jaxon touched the tip of his tongue to his fang. He imagined he could still taste the flavor of her blood. The feel of her flesh against his was emblazoned on his body. Even now he wanted to hold her. Every nerve ached to be with her.

  “That was Hathor,” Jaden said, hanging up the phone. “They traced her movements to the bus station. Servaes is interrogating the workers now to find out where she’s gone. We’ll find her.”

  “I smell her in you,” Tyr stated to Jaxon. “What did you do? Why did she run?”

  “I made her my indicia.” Jaxon lifted his chin, trying to look confident in the face of so much power. He could no more fight them off than he could fight the sunlight.

  Jaden stepped forward, grabbing Tyr’s arm. “You marked her?”

  Jaxon nodded. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be out looking for her. Vladamir wouldn’t hurt her, but what about Vincent? If it were true, and he was close…

  Jaden slammed her fist into his face, taking him by surprise. “That is for assuming you’d ever be good enough to mark her.”

  He landed on his back, and she grabbed his neck. Tyr was all brute strength and age. Jaden had a wild quality to her, the newness of a young one with the strength of an ancient. He felt her prying into his thoughts. Her eyes filled with the yellowish-green as she started to control him. Within seconds, she didn’t need her strength to hold him down. Her mind did it for her. They’d read him like this when they hired him to watch Olivia before Vladamir came.

  “Why did you claim her? Who sent you?”

  Jaxon tried to resist, but in the end, it was futile. Jaden saw the answers she sought. She found the memory of their shared, stolen moments. Of the feeling the first time he saw Olivia drawi
ng on a napkin, the same napkin he had in his small apartment. She saw the paintings he kept of hers; hanging like a shrine he stared at for hours just to feel closer to her. There were also the long nights, keeping away, as he watched over her. Torment. Desperation. Need.

  “Love,” Jaden whispered. “You love her.”

  Jaxon wasn’t sure if he should answer. His mind was not his own as she played within it.

  “What else are you hiding in there?” she demanded, prying away at the mental locks. Suddenly, she pulled back and away, leaving him dazed on the ground. To Tyr, she stated, “We have the name the council seeks.”

  “Who?” Tyr frowned and gestured down skeptically. “Him? Jaxon killed the club vampires? But he’s so…young.”

  “Vladamir. He killed the club vampires, found Olivia and somehow hid the truth inside her so we could never find it. He also told this one to watch her after we’d already hired him.” Jaden reached a hand down to help Jaxon to his feet. They stood on the driveway in the middle of the quiet Spokane neighborhood.

  “When a tribal elder gives you an order, you cannot disobey,” Tyr acknowledged. “We understand why you did not speak about this to us.”

  “Oh, he disobeyed,” Jaden inserted. Her eyes flashed with amusement. “He loves our Olivia.”

  “She is special,” Tyr nodded.

  “And he showed her how much he loves her,” Jaden continued with a strange amount of delicateness to her words.

  “He has been courting her without the permission of her guardi—?” Tyr paused as he took in the full meaning of Jaden’s expectant expression. He turned toward Jaxon, eyes filling with red once more. “You defiled our daughter?”

  Jaxon barely saw the blur of a fist coming. One moment he was standing trying to clear his mind from Jaden’s probe and the next he was in a world of darkness.

  Chapter Seven

  “Dancing puppets. Slabs of meat on a string. That’s all you humans are.” The sound of footsteps punctuated the words. “Ugh, as if I’d turn you and curse myself to staring at your face for an eternity.”

  It took all of Olivia’s strength to open her eyes. She’d been drugged and couldn’t move her limbs. Light and shadows blurred her vision. Soft music played in the background. A waltz?

  Jaxon? Not unless he was angry with her for running away.

  Vladamir? Why would he appear now?

  Vincent? Fuck, she hoped not. Vincent was a wild, slashing animal.

  A couple danced by her field of view, giving her something to concentrate on. The long rail of a ballet bar came into focus. A dance studio? Behind the bar, a mirror reflected her image back to her. She lay on a red couch, her limbs at awkward angles as if she’d just been dropped into her current setting. The smell of dust and decay indicated the studio was not in daily use.

  The couple passed by again. Olivia couldn’t look up enough to see their faces, so she focused on the mirror. A tall vampire held a limp woman in his arms. His feet hit heavily on the floor, not keeping great time with the old music like a clumsy kid playing around, which revealed he had no real dance training. It certainly wasn’t Vladamir. The woman’s feet were suspended over the floor, and her arms hung at her sides. Olivia made out the woman’s fancy red dress.

  “One-two-three, one-two-three. That’s it, love,” the vampire continued. “You’re so light on your feet.” He danced the woman closer to the couch. “Good evening, sleeping princess. What do you think?” He dipped his dance partner in front of her. The slack, bloodless, wrinkled face stared at her with dead eyes. It was the old lady from the bus station who’d jabbed her in the thigh. It looked as if Nurse Kidnapper didn’t get her immortality after all.

  “A-ume,” she mumbled, not sure why the “fuck you” she was thinking didn’t come out of her mouth.

  “Not a dance fan?” He dropped the corpse of the old woman next to the couch. “Sorry, love, you didn’t make the cut.” The vampire leaned over so she could finally see who he was. “I’ve found a new partner.”

  Blood smeared his chin. His green eyes came right out of her childhood nightmares into reality. Vincent. Tiny bits of ash seemed to fall over them as the memory of their past came back to her. She blinked until the hallucination went away. “Miss me, princess?”

  Olivia wished Vladamir had finished the job and killed this animal. Her parents would still be alive. Then again, if she’d not gone out that morning, if she’d obeyed…

  “Oh, I love this part. You’re remembering, aren’t you? I see it in your eyes.” He pretended to frown and pointed a long fingernail in her face. “Can you still hear the crying?” He threw his voice to mimic her mother’s cries, “No, please, don’t, no, no.”

  “She didn’t sound like that,” Olivia grunted, forcing the words out.

  “All mortals sound like that,” Vincent dismissed. “Father dead on the floor. Mother begging me. The little princess in the corner humming to herself and plugging her ears like her mummy said to do.” He grabbed her shirt and tugged her up on the couch. Her limbs flopped, all but useless, and she weakly tried to stop him. “Should we start where we left off? Or did age put brains into that head of yours? Ready to give me the name I seek?”

  Green eyes bore into hers, growing brighter in color as he tried to gain access into her drugged mind. The childish sound of her scared voice began to echo as she sang some stupid school song. Blood appeared across his face as it had that night, only to disappear again to the smudge on his chin.

  Jaxon flashed into her thoughts, the blood on his chin from a much more enjoyable act. Wonderful. She was losing her mind. Her mind tried to focus on Jaxon’s image, keeping his hallucination wavering before her. There was comfort in his face, in his eyes, in his kiss. She imagined her lip to pulse where he’d bit her.

  “What are you smiling at? Do you have something to say to me?” Vincent slid his hands under her armpits and lifted her up before him.

  “You dance worse than a child.” Olivia flung her hand at him, slapping his arm the best she could with the useless limb. It was all she could do to keep her head upright.

  “You try dancing after someone melts off your foot!” he yelled, shaking her.

  “Looks like it grew back,” Olivia observed. “You’re going to have to let it go someday.”

  “You fucking meat puppet.” He dropped her, and she landed on the couch. Her feet hit the corpse. When he stepped away from her, she noticed that the indelicate dancing might have been due more to his pronounced limp rather than lack of skill.

  Poor hobbled monster, she thought sarcastically.

  “I’d eat you, but you smell like a drugged out whore,” Vincent spat.

  And whose fault is that, asshole? She tried to pull her feet away from the body on the floor. Talking took too much effort, so she didn’t bother.

  “You’re not scared of me, are you?” Vincent frowned, observing her face.

  No, not scared. She was terrified. The drugs the nurse had given to her apparently numbed any expression of fear, but it was there. With each passing second, she was becoming more lucid.

  Was it too late to play the damsel in distress card? Jaxon, help? Come save me? Get your fucking ass over here and start that guarding thing anytime now?

  “Remember our last kiss? Your blood was so young, so sweet.” Vincent touched the scar on her neck. The warmth of his finger reminded her of the dead woman at her feet. He parted his lips to let her see his fangs, a practiced move she remembered well. He flicked his fingernail against her neck so hard it stung. The thud of her heartbeat began pounding in her ears. He smiled as if hearing the call of it. He cut her with his nail before bringing his finger to his lips. She felt him in her mind as if leading her out of the fog. “Ah, yes, there it is. I smell the pain now. Your eyes are beginning to clear. Hello, princess. There you are.”

  She slowly lifted her hand to his face and pushed at his cheek. He laughed at the weak shove. The bravado she’d felt moments before faded as awareness rolled in. T
he more the vivid memories of her parents’ deaths filled her, the wider his smile became. She began to tremble.

  “I told you not to harm her until I had my chance to read her,” a male voice interrupted. The accent sounded somewhat like the Albanian neighbors she’d had in London. She hadn’t detected another presence in the room with them.

  Vincent instantly let her go and stepped back. He was frightened by whoever spoke.

  “Methinks you need a lesson in control,” the vampire continued. “Perhaps then you would still have your full foot.”

  Olivia let her gaze slowly move toward the sound. Cold eyes met hers. The once darker complexion was now ghosted with a paler undertone. Graying hair at his temples stood out against the dark brown of his straight, long hair. The ageless face would give little away, but she could tell this creature was ancient.

  She opened her mouth to ask what he wanted with her, but no sound came out. Olivia turned her gaze toward the floor, not wanting to meet his eyes should he decide to crawl inside her thoughts. On her best days, she wasn’t strong enough to take on an old vampire. Now? Weakened by drugs? She barely had the strength to stand, let alone run away.

  “I do not like that I was forced to come to this country, but it became imperative.” Though his accent was thick, the old vampire spoke the language flawlessly. “The only reason a mortal girl would resist so many vampires is that she is more frightened of the secret she protects than of those asking.” Olivia gasped as the vampire was suddenly before her, lifting her chin. “This is a secret worth knowing. For who could scare you, little lamb, more than the monster I sent to your parents’ house?”