Wrath: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2

by Denise Tompkins

  Hellion stood and moved up behind me, wrapping his arms around me so quickly I jumped. Darius stopped rubbing his head and stared at us.

  “Darius, whatever is happening is beyond your control at the moment. I believe it’s in your best interest to leave and let me and Maddy sort this out.”

  “Right. I know exactly what you’ll be ‘sorting out’,“ Darius bit out, grabbing his glass and hurling it into the fireplace where it exploded into a million fragmented pieces. “You’ll be sorting out who’s on top.” His voice was low and threatening.

  A breeze rustled through the room as Hellion breathed deeper and gathered his power around him. He roughly set me aside as he faced the vampire. “Darius, Child of Lilith, I will not ask you again to leave this place,” Hellion said, his voice booming around the room as if amplified.

  “Stop!” I bellowed, stepping between the two men. Hellion’s power danced across my skin like thousands of tiny, painful pinpricks, but it was secondary to my memories. Flashbacks of the fight that had, ultimately, permanently separated me from Bahlin flashed across my mind like snapshots: Hellion entering the room; Bahlin fighting with him; the two of them going out the window; the feeling I’d had when I thought Bahlin was dead. “Stop,” I said softly, and Hellion’s power abated as he realized what I was reliving. Darius, however, didn’t back down. Instead, he bared his fangs and hissed at Hellion, his humanity folding away as the creature he was sought to satisfy some wrong it thought done to it.

  Hellion snapped his hand out and a small orb hung between us, pulsing like a heart beats. “Do not make me do this, Darius,” Hellion said gently. But Hellion’s blood was pumping too hard and too fast for Darius to let go of its siren’s embrace.

  Darius must have made some movement because Hellion grabbed me and turned, putting himself between the orb and me just as it flashed to a blinding light. A heartbreaking scream rent the air, and I grabbed onto Hellion as the light extinguished. Seeing spots, I tried to get my bearings. A horrible smell was creeping through the room, rising lazily like heat off pavement, and I realized what had happened. The light that had been given off had burned Darius, and it was his cooked skin I smelled. Pushing away from Hellion, I tried to get to Darius but Hellion wouldn’t let me go.

  “Mark!” he yelled. “Bring the first aid kit and a blood donor.” How he knew Mark was in the vicinity was anyone’s guess.

  “Let me go, Hellion.” I pulled but he wouldn’t release me.

  “No, anamchara. I won’t have you see him like this. He’ll heal; you might not. I’ll feed him my own blood if I have to, and with the blood and a night’s rest he’ll be restored completely. Trust me. Please. The next thing to have happened would have been a fight. I would avoid that all costs because I can’t restore him to what life he has left him.” His voice was pleading.

  I didn’t really want to see Darius, only to help him. If Hellion promised me he’d see him well, there was no reason for me to look other than to torture myself. But I was curious about the argument itself. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know, but rest assured I’ll be finding out. We’ve never come against each other before, so this makes no sense.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair before holding them out to look at them critically. “They hold such power, and power in the wrong hands is deadly. Connell’s hands are the wrong hands.” Hellion bent and kissed me quickly as Mark walked into the room. “Go now, Maddy. I’ll see him taken care of, and he’ll stay here to heal. I promise you this.”

  “Come to me as soon as you’re able?” I turned to leave the room, making an effort to keep my eyes from the corner where Darius lay. Already Mark and another coven member were taking care of him.

  “As soon as Darius is well-situated, mo chroí. Nothing will keep me away.”

  I nodded and left the room, feeling all the while like a coward.

  I rode the elevator to the master bedroom, not feeling like fighting two flights of stairs, and in my current condition it would have been a fight. I was contemplating the consequence of the weyr choice of magus, wondering how that might change the suspicion that Gaitha was the killer. It definitely changed things.

  The smell of the burned skin and clothing clung to the inside of my nose and mouth so that it was omnipresent. That’s the only excuse I had for not identifying the smell of singed hair. Had I caught it, it would have saved me a lot of misery.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I was barely through the bedroom door when it slammed shut behind me and the lock snicked into place. Before I could react, I was shoved to the ground, and a heavy weight slammed into my lower back, arching my spine to the point I felt like it would snap before it gave another millimeter. The pressure all but rendered me paralyzed with pain. A second weight—a knee?—settled between my shoulder blades, and I couldn’t move at all. My lungs burned with the need to expand more with each breath, and I couldn’t get enough air to scream, but it didn’t really matter. The knife at my throat pretty much purchased my silence.

  “Murdering bitch,” said a vaguely familiar deep voice. “You’ve been hard to catch up to, but only because you had your trick pony around to pop you in and out of different locations so easily.”

  Why was this voice so familiar? Recognition flitted around the edges of my consciousness but frustratingly wouldn’t come within reach.

  “All those pretty girls, they were such wasteful sacrifices, don’t you think? Their deaths are on your hands.” He grabbed me by the hair at the crown of my head and hyper-extended my neck so badly that my eyes watered and I began to hyperventilate as I sought enough air to scream in pain. The knife pressed harder against my throat, and I felt my skin split under the pressure of the sharp blade. Warmth trickled down, pooling between my breasts.

  I rolled my eyes to the left and right, trying desperately to pick up some clue to his identification. On the off chance I lived through this, I wanted to be able to finger the bastard. I saw golden skin and darker hair, and my heart fell.

  But it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him! my mind shouted. I made a gurgling sound in lieu of a whimper and my breathing grew harsher, causing the blade to cut into my skin even farther. I grunted in pain.

  “I see you think you know who I am, whore. Too bad I’m going to kill you before you get closure.” Then he reached down and licked my ear, and his brown hair fell into my field of view.

  Black spots danced in my vision; I saw the hand draw away and his grip shift on the knife just as I heard voices coming down the hall. They say that a victim’s life will pass in front of her eyes in the final moments of life, but that wasn’t the case for me. Time slowed so that it ebbed and flowed like the shifting of a glacier—the pops of distinct sound like the sound of his hand on the knife handle and his labored breathing, the unseen movements from the men in the hall, the unfamiliar rustling of something in the corner of the room. Nothing happened until the knife began to descend. I yanked my head down with all my might and felt hair tear from the top of my head in a white-hot pain, and suddenly I could breath. The knife slammed through the hand that was spread out on the floor. I thought I heard a woman scream just before I passed out, but it could have been me.

  I woke to the feel of my hand being seared over an open flame, and I tried to plead for mercy only to find my voice was gone. All I could manage was a mild rasping sound. I rolled my head and found Hellion bent over my hand and Mark and Stearns, the driver, holding my arm still. Several other coven members gathered around, some mumbling unintelligible words while others looked on with a mix of curiosity and horror. I felt nausea building hot and bitter in the back of my throat, and I rolled toward the edge of the bed where the men were working. Despite my best efforts to hold my stomach, I lost its contents all over the floor and the shoes of those closest to me, namely the men. Mark and Stearns glanced my way but no one said anything. That scared me. Panting and wanting nothing more than a cold rag and a sip of water, I tried to fold my fingers up to get Hellion’s atten
tion.

  “Easy, mo shíorghrá, you’ll not want to push too hard. The wound is healing, but slowly.” His voice was like salve to my battered body. In it resided love and safety. I closed my eyes and nodded, but my brow must have creased because he said, “This is normal when other magic is part of the injury process. Just like when you couldn’t heal the fae’s curse?”

  I nodded slowly once again. I’d never used the word “weary” to describe myself before, but for the first time it felt entirely appropriate.

  “We’re nearly done, Maddy. One last push and you’re through. Be brave, my heart.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was speaking to me, or if he was literally asking his heart to be brave. Either way, the sentiment made me smile.

  Another blast of raw heat seared my hand, and I screamed and started to thrash about involuntarily, but someone grabbed my ankles and pinned me down. Looking down, with tears flowing down my face, I saw Darius and I froze. He was burned everywhere that leather hadn’t covered his body. His clothes had been removed from the waist up and his chest, neck, face and hands were a series of oozing blisters and split skin. Closing my eyes seemed cowardly, but I just wasn’t up to dealing with his pain as well as mine.

  Darius’s voice was raspy when he spoke. “Rest easy, mia cara, rest easy.”

  “I didn’t know you spoke Italian,” I thought at him.

  “Ah, yes. Telepathy is quite handy,” Darius answered, clearing his throat. “I speak several languages, as a matter of fact. How did you know it was Italian?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Tyr said I’d have a gift for languages.” I rolled my eyes and shook my head, grateful for the conversation that was keeping my mind off my hand.

  “Tyr? So he’s really your great grampy, huh?”

  “I can’t believe you just said grampy, you mean-ass metrosexual, you.”

  He bared his fangs at me again, and they were wicked sharp, but I’d bought that ticket and been to that show when I’d saved his life in Ireland. I wasn’t impressed anymore.

  “Can’t even intimidate the damned locals,” he muttered, and I laughed. It was nothing more than the whooshing of air, but it was a genuine laugh.

  “Thanks,” I thought at him. “I wasn’t sure if I’d laugh again after that little nightmare come to life.”

  “You’d be surprised, cara, what one can and will live through. Fear is a fierce weapon, and violence acted upon is equally effective, but the human spirit is amazingly resilient.” He stroked my ankles now that I wasn’t struggling, and I relaxed some. “You were amazing.”

  “Right. Once again I ended up getting my ass handed to me on a platter, and I’m a fucking hero? Uh huh.” I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “If you were American, I’d ask if you’d ever sold used cars for a living because you wade through bullshit with amazing aplomb.”

  He chuckled then hissed as his skin cracked. “If I were American, I’d have asked you to just let me die earlier instead of letting Hellion save my so-called life.”

  “Don’t hate on America, Darius. You’re just mad because you fry up faster than an unlucky turkey at Thanksgiving.” I grinned, and he shook his head again.

  “Ah, you mean the holiday you Yanks celebrate where you invaded a foreign land, introduced disease and then took the land, lives and liberty away from the natives?” he asked, all pious innocence.

  I squinched my eyes at him and thought very clearly, “Don’t hate on me for what happened well before I was born. Besides, you’re just pissed because we threw your sorry British asses out of the country…twice.”

  He chuckled again and shook his head then hissed again at the pain.

  “If you two are done yukking it up over here, I think we’re through with you,” Hellion said gently. He laid his hand over my throat and, without his even uttering the words this time, my voice was restored.

  “Thanks,” I whispered. Mark reached over my shoulder and handed me a glass of water, which I started to take with my right hand before I remembered it was wounded. I looked down and saw it wrapped in a mountain of gauze, and I looked back to Hellion.

  He took the glass of water from Mark and sat next to me, helping me sit up. He held it to my lips and I took a small sip, reveling in the cool relief of such a rarely appreciated resource. “The gauze is just a precaution. It shouldn’t need to be wrapped up any longer than the rest of this evening. Then we’ll be able to remove it, and you should have the use of your hand back.” He cleared his throat and looked away, taking a deep, shaky breath. I started to reach for him but he got up and walked out of the room without seeing my gesture. He handed Mark the glass of water as he passed through the doorway, and Mark made his way back to my bedside.

  Looking over at the vampire, Mark said, “Darius, you should probably go rest, yourself. Dawn isn’t that far away, and I know you need to feed again and be bedded down before daylight breaks. You’re too weak to fight the sunrise today.”

  “You’re right, Mark. Thank you. Will you look after our girl here?” Darius’s fingers lingered, and he stroked the small node of the tibia on the inside of my ankle. His eyes were warm as he looked at me, and I blushed, feeling that same strange sexual tension I’d felt before he was magically flambéed.

  I pulled away from him and sat up, embarrassed. “Thanks, Darius. I’ll, uh, see you tonight.” Gathering my wits about me and shielding my mind as hard as I could, I slid off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Behind the safety of the closed door, I could hear the men and the few remaining coven members gathering the flotsam of their visit and getting the hell out. I sat on the closed toilet and cradled my throbbing hand in my lap. I hadn’t had time to break down after the assault, and now I found myself shaking and dizzy.

  Slow down, Niteclif. Think about what you know for certain, I coaxed myself. But my brain just wouldn’t engage. It was partly because I was afraid of what it might confirm for me. That dark hair….

  No! Not going there. Pick another train of thought, my mind demanded. I complied.

  I tapped my good hand against my thigh, anxiety beating against me like a thumping bass speaker at a nightclub, but it was my heart that set the rhythm.

  Get a grip. What’s the one thing that immediately stands out, the thing that is most irrefutable? I made a conscious effort to stop the nervous movements and focus, but I couldn’t help but continue to worry my bottom lip with my teeth. Replaying the scene as I’d walked in the door, the most relevant fact broadsided me. The assailant was a man. I knew there were supes who could perform glamours to either appear to be something they weren’t or else enhance what they were, but this? No. He had clearly been a man. And I had thought I’d recognized the voice despite his efforts to keep it low and gruff.

  But if the assailant was a man, how was he connected to the blond hair in the letter and at Amaly’s? Because unless it was glamour, his hair hadn’t been the true blond of the hair left behind. That would confirm an accomplice. I’d have to ask Hellion about the probability of a wizard capable of dematerialization being able to both carry a passenger and breach wards. If one was rare, the combination should take truly remarkable skill. That should narrow the list.

  And if my assailant was a man, where did that leave Gaitha, Queen of the Fae? Was she a suspect or just a crazed and grieving mother?

  The door opened slowly and Hellion stepped through. He looked so dispassionate that I was concerned for a moment he might be upset with me. Then understanding blew across my skin. Hellion was struggling with the typical alpha male hero complex. That just wasn’t going to work.

  “You realize that there’s nothing you could have done, right?”

  “How well you already know me.” He took several long strides into the room and dropped to his knees in front of me, taking my one good hand into his. “If I’d come to the bedroom with you when you asked—”

  “Then we would have both been taken by surprise.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  I pulled my hand b
ack. “I know you’re not saying you would have defended us successfully whereas I only managed to get a beat-down.”

  “Maddy, a mhuirnín, how can you ask me to not regret anything that brings you harm?” He stood up and stomped to the mirror, his frustration palpable. “I’d have taken every blow. The one to your hand…” He paused, seeming bothered.

  Pretending I was brave, I held it up so he saw the bandage reflected over his shoulder. He glanced at it and then looked quickly away. “I’ll live, Hellion. In fact, I’m only alive right now because you came down the hall when you did. So thanks for saving my life yet again.”

  Hellion looked at me with a studied look, as if determining what was true and what was false in my words. He finally accepted my gratitude and nodded in response. “Do you love me?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  His gaze was unwavering, his black eyes still and deep. I stood then sat again, shifting on the toilet seat and trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable. I continued to squirm and he finally asked, “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Hellion, I love you. I sincerely, honestly love you.” The words still caused a thrill to run through me. I stood and walked toward him, carefully gauging his response. Just like earlier in the parlor, something was out of balance. This time, however, it was between the two of us. “Is there something you want to discuss?”

  He turned and leaned against the counter, ankles crossed and hands clutching the edge of the counter. “Was it Bahlin, Maddy? I need to know.”

  “I don’t think so.” Hellion shook his head and started to gather himself to leave but I grabbed his arm and snapped, “We seem to be doing this an awful lot, and I’m getting tired of it.”