by Lara Adrian
His name was a sigh on her lips, a thankful prayer. She kissed him hard, and wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders on the bed. His answering growl of interest made her smile against his mouth.
“You’re back,” she murmured, so relieved.
“Mmm,” he grunted, his hands coming up to caress her. “I’m back, Breedmate. Thanks to you.”
“So, you finally admit it—you need me.”
His smile was wicked. “Come up here with me. I want to show you just how much.”
She got up on the bed with him, straddling his hips and fully expecting him to pull her down on top of him and begin the seduction he was so skilled at. But he only looked at her. When he stroked her cheek, his fingers were tender, reverent.
“I admit it,” he said, his gaze so sincere it made her heart clench. “I’ll admit it to you now, and to anyone, anytime. I need you, Elise. I love you. You are mine. My woman, my mate, my beloved. My everything.”
Her vision swam with watery happiness. “Tegan … I love you so much. Tell me this is real. That this is forever.”
“You think I’m the type of male to settle for anything less?”
She shook her head, bleary-eyed with joy as she leaned down and kissed him.
The staccato rap on the door went ignored for a couple of seconds, but then Lucan’s deep voice sounded on the other side. There was a tense edge to the warrior’s tone. “How we doing in here?”
“Come in, Lucan,” Elise called to the Order’s leader—after what they went through together today, her dear, trusted friend.
She got up from Tegan’s body despite his groan of protest and walked over to meet Lucan as he came inside. He was cleaned up and healing, but it would take some time before his body was completely restored. He gave Tegan a weary smile as Tegan swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.
“What is it?” Tegan asked, snapping back into warrior mode despite the fact that he’d been leveled for the past few hours. “What’s happened?”
Lucan didn’t mince words. “Dante and the others just called in from Prague. They found the crypt up in the mountains, just like Kassia’s clues said they would. It was all there, T. A cave carved into the rock, a hibernation chamber full of dermaglyphic symbols and the bones of the humans Dragos fed his father in preparation of his long sleep.”
“But,” Tegan prompted, pulling Elise toward him like he wanted something firm to hold on to.
“But it was empty.” Lucan shook his head, ran his hand through his dark hair. “The goddamn crypt had already been opened. Someone freed the bastard. We can only guess how long ago, but it appears to have been years. Decades, even.”
“Then … he’s out there somewhere?” Elise asked, dreading confirmation of that terrible fact. “What are we going to do?”
“We start looking,” Tegan said. “Christ, assuming the Ancient is alive, he could be anywhere. A needle in a haystack.”
Lucan nodded. “And we’re going to need all the resources we can get. Rest up, both of you. We won’t be heading back to Boston until the others return from Prague tonight.”
With that, Lucan turned and started for the door. Halfway there, he paused. He came back to Tegan’s bedside, his expression serious. “From the beginning, Tegan, you were more brother to me than any kin by blood. You still are.”
Tegan felt likewise, in spite of all they’d been through. Maybe because of it. “I’ll always have your back, Lucan. You can count on it.”
Lucan held out his hand to him. As the two warriors clasped their palms together, Tegan felt the warmth of friendship—of brotherhood—flowing between them. It surprised him, how welcome that affection actually was to him. And how much he’d missed it.
Lucan nodded. The powerful Gen One vampire’s eyes warmed with unmistakable respect as he turned to Elise.
“The Order is in your debt,” he told her, now holding his hand out to her. “For what you did to bring us Dragos’s secret, and for what you did here today for Tegan and me … I am personally in your debt. Thank you, Elise.”
She gave a little shake of her head as she placed her fingers in his broad palm. “No thanks are necessary. I’m happy to do whatever I can to help the Order. And Tegan.”
Lucan smiled as he carried her hand to his lips. His kiss of gratitude was chaste and sincere, but it still made Tegan growl a little.
“You are well mated,” he said, that sage look shifting to Tegan.
“Yes, I am,” Tegan agreed without the slightest hesitation. He grinned at Elise, desire sparking as always just to look at her and know that by some miracle of fate, she was his. “I am very well mated.”
Lucan nodded. “Rest up. I won’t bother you again until we’re ready to move out and head back to Boston.”
As soon as he was gone, Elise wrapped Tegan in a loving embrace, her lips warm with promise as she kissed him. He felt the strength of her love surrounding him, and he knew that no matter how dark the coming days might be, he would always have this light to hold him. He kissed her back, interest stirring rigidly to life.
“You heard Lucan,” she murmured against his mouth, a smile in her voice. “You need to get some rest.”
“So?” he growled, playfully nipping her supple lower lip.
Elise laughed. “So, maybe we should wait to do this until we get home.”
Tegan rolled her onto the bed with him, smoothly pinning her under his awakening body. He looked down into her wide lavender eyes, which held him with so much love it staggered him.
He kissed her slowly, tenderly, sincerely.
“I am home,” he said, his voice rough with emotion as he pressed her down beneath him. “This is the only home I’ll ever need.”
About the Author
With family roots stretching back to the Mayflower, author LARA ADRIAN lives with her husband in coastal New England, surrounded by centuries-old graveyards, hip urban comforts, and the endless inspiration of the broody Atlantic Ocean. To learn more about Lara and her novels, please visit www.LaraAdrian.com.
Read on for a sneak peek of
Midnight Rising
by
LARA ADRIAN
Coming from Dell in spring 2008
Midnight Rising
On Sale spring 2008
Chapter One
The woman looked completely out of place in her pristine white blouse and tailored ivory pants. Long, coffee-dark hair cascaded over her shoulders in thick waves, not a single strand disturbed by the moist haze that hung in the air of the forest. She was wearing tall elegant heels, which hadn’t seemed to keep her from climbing up a wooded path that had the other hikers around her huffing in the humid July heat.
At the crest of the steep incline, she waited in the shade of a bulky, moss-covered rock formation, unblinking as half a dozen tourists passed her by, some of them snapping pictures of the overlook beyond. They didn’t notice her. But then, most people couldn’t see the dead.
Dylan Alexander didn’t want to see her either.
She hadn’t encountered a dead woman since she was twelve years old. That she would see one now, twenty years later and in the middle of the Czech Republic, was more than a little startling. She tried to ignore the apparition, but as Dylan and her three traveling companions made their way up the path, the woman’s dark eyes found her and rooted on her.
You see me.
Dylan pretended not to hear the static-filled whisper that came from the ghost’s unmoving lips. She didn’t want to acknowledge the connection. She’d gone so long without one of these weird encounters that she’d all but forgotten what it was like.
Dylan had never understood her strange ability to see the dead. She’d never been able to trust it or control it. She could stand in the middle of a cemetery and see nothing, then suddenly find herself up close and personal with one of the departed, as she was here in the mountains about an hour outside Prague.
The ghosts were always female. Always youthful-looking and vibrant, like
the one who stared at her now with an unmistakable desperation in her exotic, deep brown gaze.
You must hear me.
The statement was tinged with a rich, Hispanic accent, the tone pleading.
“Hey, Dylan. Come here and let me get a picture of you next to this rock.”
The sound of a true, earthly voice jolted Dylan’s attention away from the beautiful dead woman standing in the nearby arch of weathered sandstone. Janet, a friend of Dylan’s mother, Sharon, dug into her backpack and pulled out a camera. The summer tour to Europe was Sharon’s idea; it would have been her last great adventure, but the cancer came back in March and this time the chemotherapy wasn’t making so much as a dent in the disease. Sharon was still in the hospital, and at her insistence, Dylan had taken the trip in her place.
“Gotcha,” Janet said, clicking off a shot of Dylan and the towering pillars of rock in the wooded valley below. “Your mom sure would love this place, honey. Isn’t it breathtaking?”
Dylan nodded. “We’ll e-mail her the pictures tonight when we get back to the hostel.”
She led her group away from the rock, eager to leave the whispering otherworldly presence behind. They walked down a sloping ridge, into a stand of thin-trunked pines growing in tight formation. Russet leaves and conifer needles crushed on the damp path underfoot. It had rained that morning, topped off with a sweltering heat that kept many of the area’s tourists away.
The forest was quiet, peaceful … except for the awareness of ghostly eyes following Dylan’s every step deeper into the woods.
“I’m so glad your boss let you have the time off to come with us,” said one of the women from behind her on the path. “I know how hard you work at the paper, making up all those stories—”
“She doesn’t make them up, Marie,” Janet chided gently. “There’s got to be some truth in Dylan’s articles or they couldn’t print them. Isn’t that right, honey?”
Dylan scoffed. “Well, considering that our front page usually runs at least one alien abduction or demonic possession story, we don’t tend to let facts get in the way of a good story. We publish entertainment pieces, not hard-hitting journalism.”
“Your mom says you’re going to be a famous reporter one day,” Marie said. “A budding Woodward or Bernstein, that’s what she says.”
“That’s right,” Janet put in. “You know, she showed me an article you wrote during your first newspaper job, fresh out of college—you were covering some nasty murder case upstate. You remember, don’t you, honey?”
“Yeah,” Dylan said, navigating them toward another massive cluster of soaring sandstone towers that rose out of the trees. “I remember. But that was a long time ago.”
“Well, no matter what you do, I know that your mom is very proud of you,” Marie said. “You’ve brought a lot of joy into her life.”
Dylan nodded, struggling to find her voice. “Thanks.”
Both Janet and Marie worked with her mother at the women’s center in Brooklyn. Nancy, the other member of their travel group, had been Sharon’s best friend since high school. All three of the women had become like extended family to Dylan in the past few months. Three extra pairs of comforting arms, which she was really going to need if she ever lost her mom.
In her heart, Dylan knew it was more a matter of when than if. The relapse had come on fast, the cancer proving even more relentless than the first time.
Nancy came up and gave Dylan a warm, if sad, smile. “It means the world to Sharon that you would experience the trip for her. You’re living it for her, you know?”
“I know. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
Dylan hadn’t told her travel companions—or her mother—that taking off for two weeks on such short notice was probably going to cost her her job. Part of her didn’t really care. She hated working for the cut-rate tabloid anyway. She’d attempted to sell her boss on the idea that she was sure to return from Europe with some decent material—maybe a Bohemian bigfoot story, or a Dracula sighting out of Romania.
But selling bullshit to a guy who peddled it for a living was no easy task. Her boss had been pretty clear about his expectations: If Dylan left on this trip, she’d better come back with something big, or she didn’t need to come back at all.
“Whoo, it’s hot up here,” Janet said, sweeping her baseball cap off her short silver curls and running her palm over her brow. “Am I the only wimp in this crowd, or would anyone else like to rest for a little bit?”
“I could use a break,” Nancy agreed.
She shrugged off her backpack and set it down on the ground beneath a tall pine tree. Marie joined them, moving off the path and taking a long pull from her water bottle.
Dylan wasn’t the least bit tired. She wanted to keep moving. The most impressive climbs and rock formations were still ahead of them. They had only scheduled one day for this part of the trip, and Dylan wanted to cover as much ground as she could.
And then there was the matter of the beautiful dead woman who now stood ahead of them on the path. She stared at Dylan, her energy fading in and out of visible form.
See me.
Dylan glanced away. Janet, Marie and Nancy were seated on the ground, nibbling on protein bars and trail mix.
“Want some?” Janet asked, holding out a baggie of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds.
Dylan shook her head. “I’m too antsy to rest or eat right now. If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to take a quick look around on my own while you all hang out here. I’ll come right back.”
“Sure, honey. Your legs are younger than ours, after all. Just be careful.”
“I will. Be back soon.”
Dylan avoided the spot where the dead woman’s image flickered up ahead. Instead, she cut off the established trail and onto the densely wooded hillside. She walked for a few minutes, simply enjoying the tranquility of the place. There was an ancient, wildly mysterious quality to the jutting peaks of sandstone and basalt. Dylan paused to take pictures, hoping she could capture some of the beauty for her mother to enjoy.
Hear me.
At first Dylan didn’t see the woman, only heard the broken-static sound of her spectral voice. But then, a flash of white caught her eye. She was farther up the incline, standing on a ridge of stone halfway up one of the steep crags.
Follow me.
“Bad idea,” Dylan murmured, eyeing the tricky slope. The grade was fierce, the path uncertain at best. And even though the view from up there was probably spectacular, she really had no desire to join her ghostly new friend on the Other Side.
Please … help him.
Help him?
“Help who?” she asked, knowing the spirit couldn’t hear her.
They never could. Communication with her kind was always a one-way street. They simply appeared when they wished, and said what they wished—if they spoke at all. Then, when it became too hard for them to hold their visible form, they just faded away.
Help him.
The woman in white started going transparent up on the mountainside. Dylan shielded her eyes from the hazy light pouring down through the trees, trying to keep her in sight. With a bit of apprehension, she began the trudge upward, using the tight growth of pines and beech to help her over the roughest of the terrain.
By the time she clambered up onto the ridge where the apparition had been standing, the woman was gone. Dylan carefully walked the ledge of rock, and found that it was wider than it appeared from below. The sandstone was weathered dark from the elements, dark enough that a deep vertical slit in the rock had been invisible to her until now.
It was from within that narrow wedge of lightless space that Dylan heard the detached, ghostly whisper once again.
Save him.
She looked around her and saw only wilderness and rock. There was no one up here. Now not even a trace of the ethereal figure, who lured her this far up the mountain alone.
Dylan turned her head to look into the gloom of the rock’s crevice. S
he put her hand into the space and felt cool, damp air skate over her skin.
Inside that deep black cleft, it was still and quiet.
As quiet as a tomb.
If Dylan was the type to believe in creepy folklore monsters, she might have imagined one could live in a hidden spot like this. But she didn’t believe in monsters, never had. Aside from seeing the occasional dead person, who’d never caused her any harm, Dylan was about as practical—even cynical—as could be.
It was the reporter in her that made her curious to know what she might truly find inside the rock. Assuming you could trust the word of a dead woman, who did she think needed help? Was someone injured in there? Could someone have gotten lost way up here on this steep crag?
Dylan grabbed a small flashlight from an outer pocket of her backpack. She shined it into the opening, noticing just then that there were vague chisel marks around and within the crevice, as if someone had worked to widen it. Although not anytime recently, based on the weathered edges of the tool marks.
“Hello?” she called into the darkness. “Is anyone in here?”
Nothing but silence answered.
Dylan pulled off her backpack and carried it in one hand, her other hand wrapped around the slim barrel of her flashlight. Walking forward she could barely fit through the crevice; anyone larger would have been forced to go in sideways.
The tight squeeze only lasted a short distance before the space angled around and began to open up. Suddenly she was inside the thick rock of the mountain, her light beam bouncing off smooth, rounded walls. It was a cave—an empty one, except for some bats rustling out of a disturbed sleep overhead.
And from the look of it, the space was mostly manmade. The ceiling rose at least twenty feet over Dylan’s head. Interesting symbols were painted on each wall of the small cavern. They looked like some odd sort of hieroglyphics: a cross between bold, tribal markings and gracefully geometric patterns.
Dylan walked closer to one of the walls, mesmerized by the beauty of the strange artwork. She panned the small beam of her flashlight to the right, breath-taken to find the elaborate decoration continuing all around her. She took a step toward the center of the cave. The toe of her hiking boot knocked into something on the earthen floor. Whatever it was clattered hollowly as it rolled away. Dylan swept her light over the ground and gasped.
