Her elbow dug into his side. “Darning? More likely I’ll be sharpening my stakes.”
With a chuckle Dante tapped the tip of her nose. “I’ve been taking care of myself for centuries, lover, and to be brutally honest, if I wanted a servant, I could enthrall any human to do my bidding.”
“Enthral?”
“A trick that all vampires possess.”
Her brows lifted. “Did you ever try to enthrall me?”
His finger moved to outline her lips. “Never.”
“Why not?”
“Because I liked you,” he said simply.
She blinked. “You liked me?”
“I liked your innocence, your honesty, your refusal to feel sorry for yourself despite the rotten breaks you’d gotten, and of course”—he slowly smiled—”that delectable body didn’t hurt anything. I didn’t want you to become a mindless sycophant. I wanted you.”
“Oh.” She sucked in a deep breath. “You keep surprising me.”
“And how is that?”
“When we first met, I expected you to be arrogant and dangerous and sexy.”
“All true. Especially that sexy part.”
“I never expected you to be kind.”
Dante glanced down in astonishment. Kind? He had never been accused of that before. And with good reason.
Until the witches had captured him, he had been a hunter who preyed upon anyone foolish enough to cross his path. And even after being leashed, he had been a lethal warrior who could kill without mercy.
It was only with Abby that he discovered the softer emotions he didn’t even realize he possessed.
“I wasn’t until you.”
They stood holding each other in the darkness, absorbing the pleasure of simply being together.
Abby at last pulled back with a grimace. “Do you want to go in search of the witches?”
“What I want is to have you naked and sweaty beneath me,” he murmured.
She nudged him with her elbow. “Maybe I want to be naked and sweaty on top of you.”
“God.” Dante went hard at the visual. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“I thought you were immortal?”
“Not even immortals can take that sort of torture.” He bent his head to snatch a brief searing kiss. “Let’s go before I forget what the hell I’m supposed to be doing.”
—
Abby absently allowed Dante to lead her back to the shattered mansion. A part of her knew that she should be on guard. She should be preparing for anything from zombies to hellhounds to wizards to leap from the bushes. Hell, at this point, she wouldn’t be surprised if a leprechaun popped out to do a jig.
Her sense of self-preservation at the moment, however, couldn’t compete with strange tattoos that shimmered with crimson fire beneath the moonlight.
Mate. Holy freaking cow.
Abruptly stopping in the shadows of the mansion, Dante turned to regard her with a smile that looked suspiciously smug.
“Stop scratching at it, lover. You’ll make it sore.”
“It looks strange.” She held up her arm. “How am I supposed to go out in public like this?”
The smugness deepened. “No one will notice.”
She shook her arm before his eyes. “Are you kidding me? I look like I got drunk on tequila and ended up in Shanghai.”
“It’s invisible to all but demons.”
“Oh.” Her arm dropped. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Then why can I see it?”
He leaned forward to gaze directly into her eyes. “Because you’re special.”
Ridiculously it took a moment before realization hit.
“Great. First my eyes turn blue and now my arm is red. Are there any other bodily changes you should warn me about? A horn? Forked tongue? Cloven hooves?”
He shrugged, taking her arm and leading her into the house and toward the servant’s staircase.
“Well, there is the tail, but once you get used to the wagging, you’ll barely notice it’s there.”
She batted his arm. “You’re lucky you’re already dead.”
He flashed a grin. “And you are already nagging like a wife.”
Her own lips twitched. God, he was so beautiful. And intelligent and strong and tender and… and perfect.
A rush of heat raced through her before she was sternly turning her thoughts to the matter at hand.
“Why are we going upstairs?”
“We can’t leave the spell books. They’re too dangerous to have lying around.”
“No kidding.” She gave a shudder as she recalled the strange magic that had gripped her as she read the spell. That was an experience she’d just as soon not repeat. “What do you think Selena was doing with them?”
He paused on the landing and turned to face her. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Maybe we should review what we know.”
“Review what we know?” he repeated with a faint smile. “Law & Order? CSI? Monk?”
“Agatha Christie.”
“Ah.”
“It might help.” She leaned against the wall, suddenly realizing how weary she was. The past few days had taken their toll on her body. “At the very least it couldn’t hurt.”
He gave a slow nod of his head. “True enough. Where do we start this review?”
Abby blinked. It always caught her off guard to discover Dante’s willingness to listen to her opinion. No one, no one had ever done that before.
“I suppose with Selena,” she said hesitantly. “You said you thought she was acting strangely before… the explosion? To be honest, I just thought she was crazy.”
He narrowed his gaze as he remembered back. “She was more secretive than usual. She would come and go from the mansion without taking me and then disappear into her rooms for hours.”
“You think she was visiting the witches?”
“Yes.”
“Did she get the spell books from them?”
“That would be my guess.”
Abby bit her lip as she attempted to make sense of the strange path of events.
“What sort of spell would she be working on? Was she afraid of something?”
His lips twisted as his gaze flashed over her. “At the time I didn’t care. I had more… intriguing matters to consider.”
The heat returned, with interest.
Damn but he shouldn’t be so distracting.
“And now?” she grimly pressed.
“There’s a possibility that the witches might have stumbled onto the wizard and his followers,” he said. “If they sensed his power, they would have taken steps to protect themselves.”
“That makes sense.” She hesitated, sensing the frustration that simmered within him. “You don’t think that’s the answer.”
He studied her a moment. “Giving you my blood was a dangerous thing.”
“Tell me what’s bothering you.”
He shifted restlessly. “If they were worried about the wizard, they wouldn’t have felt the need to hide it from me. More than likely I would have been sent in to deal with the threat.”
“And?”
“And the spell you were chanting was obviously intended to harm demons, not humans.”
She reached out to touch his arm. She had told him of the demon attacking her, but she had forgotten to confess the wrenching agony that had drilled through her just moments before the spell had been brought to an end.
“Maybe not.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was in the middle of that spell, I felt… pain.”
His brows snapped together, his fingers reaching out to touch her face as if needing to reassure himself that she was unharmed.
“What sort of pain?”
She grimaced. “Like someone was shoving a hot poker through me.”
“The Phoenix?”
She tried to remember back, only to give a shrug. “I don’t know. There was just pain, and then
the demon hit me from behind and it was gone.”
His frustration deepened as he turned to pace across the landing. “This makes no sense.”
“After the past few days, you’re going to have to be a little more specific,” she said wryly.
“We still don’t know what the witches were up to, who killed Selena, or what the bloody hell the wizard has to do with all this.”
“You’re saying we don’t know squat.”
His low growl made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. “There’s a connection. We just have to figure it out.” Reaching out, he took her hand and pulled her down the hall. “We need to find those damn witches.”
Chapter 20
They moved swiftly through the darkened house, only pausing when they reached the hall where Selena had hidden her safe.
Dante was intent on the scents that filled the air when he felt Abby dig in her heels. He turned to discover her peering uneasily through the shadows.
“You’re sure the wizard is gone?” she demanded.
“One way to find out,” he whispered directly in her ear. “You go first.”
She rolled her eyes. “Very funny.”
“If the wizard was near, we would hear him screaming for mercy,” he assured her. “Viper doesn’t screw around when he’s on the hunt.”
She sent him a knowing gaze. “Then what is bothering you?”
Dante gave rueful grimace. This mate thing was going to take a bit of getting used to.
“I smell something strange.”
“It’s not me is it?”
His lips quirked. “No.”
“The demon?”
“No. The smell is human, although strangely masked.”
Abby peered down the hall and oddly stiffened before stabbing him a glittering glare.
“What’s with all the charred marks on the wall?”
He shrugged. “The house exploded, lover. There are a lot of charred marks.”
“They weren’t here earlier.” Her hands landed on her hips. “The wizard did that when you were fighting, didn’t he?”
“Abby, the wizard is no longer our concern. Viper will deal with him.”
“The point is that you told me you had a minor disagreement.”
“No one died,” he pointed out in perfectly reasonable tones, flicking a glance over the unmistakable damage. His gaze lingered on the singed carpet before his teeth snapped together. “Damn.”
“What is it?”
“The spell books are gone.”
“The wizard?”
Dante gave a shake of his head. The wizard had shown no interest in the books.
“More likely the demon returned to retrieve them. Along with a witch.”
“They were here and we missed them?”
Dante brooded for a long moment. Dammit, he hated this feeling he was stumbling about like an idiot. Especially when he feared he was putting Abby’s life in danger.
“It was a foolish risk,” he growled. “They must have known the dark wizard was near.”
“They must really have wanted those books.”
“Yes.”
Abby abruptly grasped his arm. “Oh…”
“What?”
“Do you think they wanted the books enough to kill for them?”
Dante shrugged. “The witches would not hesitate to kill if they thought someone stood in their path. They are utterly ruthless.”
“Even Selena?”
Dante frowned. “Selena?”
“Maybe they wanted the books and she wasn’t in the mood to hand them over.”
The memory of Selena’s secretive manner flashed through his mind. The woman was certainly arrogant enough to be dabbling in magic the witches would have forbidden. Or even to seek powers that would have given her control of the coven.
But even as he considered the notion of a battle between the witches and Selena, he was giving a shake of his head.
“No. Selena was the Chalice. They would never put the Phoenix in danger. Protecting the spirit is their entire purpose in life.”
Abby grimaced. “Oh. Just a thought.”
“A very clever thought.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you patronizing me?”
“Why would I wish to patronize you?” he demanded in startled curiosity.
“I know I’m not overly bright, but I’m not stupid.”
Dante regarded her in astonishment Devil spit, but she was the most baffling woman. “Of course you’re not stupid. I always found it astonishing that such an intelligent woman would be content to work as a minion for someone like Selena when you could so obviously do better.”
Her eyes darkened, almost as if she was relieved.
“It paid the bills. Trust me, it wasn’t as bad as some places I’ve worked.”
Taking her hand, he led her down the hall to the back staircase. The trail of the demon was growing ever fainter, and he had no intention of losing it.
At the moment it was their one and only lead to the coven.
“You could do anything with your life. Be anything,” he told her softly.
Struggling to keep up with his long strides, she gave a short, humorless laugh.
“How? My father and brothers abandoned me when I was still a child, and my mother never left the couch until she drank herself into a grave when I was seventeen.” He felt her shudder as she dredged up painful memories of her past. “I dropped out of school and got a job so I wouldn’t be shuffled off to some foster home. I’m lucky I didn’t end up walking the streets.”
With one smooth motion, he reached down to scoop her in his arms and cradled her to his chest. Her fierce, relentless nature made him forget she possessed a human lack of endurance even with the additional power of the Phoenix. And God knew she was too stubborn to confess she might need to rest.
The fact that she didn’t so much as mutter a protest at him taking matters into his own hands told him just how weary she must be.
Taking the stairs in a fluid bound, he studied her too-pale face.
“You would have never walked the streets. You have too much courage and power for such a fate.”
Her features hardened. “It takes more than courage to survive.”
In the blink of an eye, he was out of the house and swiftly moving down a back path.
“You need no longer fear. I will always be here.”
“Not fear? A high school dropout who can’t pay her rent is expected to save the world. How scary is that?”
“The world is in very good hands.”
Her head rested against his chest as she gave a wry laugh. “You’re demented.”
He risked a glance downward as they left the estate, and he slowed to a more cautious pace. Even tired and rumpled as she was, he had never seen a more beautiful woman.
“What would you do if anything was possible?”
There was no hesitation. “Travel.”
“Travel where?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere.”
He paused at the road, sniffing the air until he caught the scent of the demon traveling away from the city.
“Very ambitious.”
She snuggled closer, creating an aching heat that clenched the muscles of his thighs and an assortment of other pleasurable parts of his body.
“When I was little and my dad would come home in a drunken fury, I used to hide under my bed with an old globe that a teacher had given me,” she murmured. “I would close my eyes and point at a spot, and then I’d imagine I was on a boat traveling there. In my mind I have been all over the world.”
A sharp pain raced through him. This woman had been betrayed by those who should have protected and loved her. She had battled monsters in her own home and then been thrown into the world with no one to stand at her side.
But now that was all done.
She belonged to him.
He would devote his life, or even his death if necessary, to making sure she was never hurt or lonely or afraid again.<
br />
“Someday you will go,” he swore softly. “I promise.”
Her arms wrapped about his neck, almost as if she sensed his dark determination to do whatever necessary to keep her safe.
“We will go. After all, you owe me a honeymoon.”
“Honeymoon. I like the sound of that.” Without thinking, he reached out with his thoughts to gently stroke her face.
Her eyes widened in shock. “What did you just do?”
His lips twitched as he deliberately shifted his thoughts to cup her firm breast.
“You mean this?”
“I can feel you touch me. How can you do that?”
“You’re my mate.”
“But…” She gasped as he teased her nipple to a hard point. “Stop that.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Can I do that to you?”
“Not unless I take your blood.”
Her gaze narrowed. “That’s not fair.”
He chuckled as he bent to press a kiss to her lips.
“Life is never fair, lover.”
“Tell me about it,” she groused, her gaze scanning the darkness about them. “Are we following the trail of the demon?”
“For now.”
She turned her head to regard him with a frown. “You’re worried.”
He sniffed the air. The worrisome smell of blood had been growing stronger. Now the ground seemed to reek of it.
“The Shalott has been injured.”
“Viper?” she demanded.
“He is on the trail of the wizard.”
Her breath caught. “The witches?”
“They may have punished her.”
“Why?”
“You slipped through her clutches.”
He slowly lowered her to her feet. A vague sense of menace was crawling over his skin. He couldn’t yet pinpoint the source of unease, but he wanted to be able to strike swiftly.
Abby shifted close, no doubt feeling his own prickling alert. “You think she was sent to get me?”
“I think it’s a possibility.”
“Then why didn’t she?”
Dante shrugged. At the moment all he could do was speculate.
“If she is in the power of the witches, it’s not by choice. Shalott’s are independent, fierce creatures, and she would struggle against her commands whenever she was able.”
When Darkness Falls Page 22
