Finally, McKinnon closed the trunk and moved to open the front passenger door. She hesitated, her stomach jittery, her mouth dry. Imagination, she told herself. Get in the car, you idiot.
“Ms. Chase?” McKinnon turned to loom, his uniformed chest a solid wall of black.
Val licked her lips and stared up into his dark eyes. When she realized she was searching for a scarlet glow, she swore silently at herself and got into the Lexus, impatient with her own neuroses.
A nagging thought struck her as she settled into the butter-soft leather seat. Didn’t people who rode with chauffeurs normally sit in the back of the car?
Glancing behind her, she saw the back seat was full. A battered blue canvas gym bag sat on the seat, along with… Was that a sheathed sword? And the kite-shaped metal thing standing in the floorboard looked just like a shield. “Does Mr. Ridgemont collect medieval weaponry?”
McKinnon hadn’t yet closed the door. As she watched, frowning, he crouched on the pavement beside her and took her right hand in his, reaching into a back pocket with the other. The glare of the garage security lights cast a harsh glow over the sharp planes of his face, making him appear white and gaunt.
A seventeen-year-old memory rose in her mind.
He hunched on his knees on her bedroom floor, his black eyes burning, empty and feral. He was big, almost as big as the German who’d attacked Mama, but the bones of his face stood out as if hadn’t eaten in weeks. His clothing hung on his body, and he shook in racking quivers. In a voice that barely sounded human, he rasped, “Get out. Run before he makes me kill you.”
He had fangs like a wolf.
She felt a weird plummeting sensation, as if the ground had suddenly dropped out from under her feet. “You’re the third vampire. You’re the one he sent to kill us. You were with them when they murdered my parents.”
He flinched and tensed. As he lifted his head, the shadow of the cap’s brim fell across his nose -- just the way the Stetson’s always had.
“Cowboy, you son of a bitch!” She drove her fist toward his elegant nose with every ounce of her strength.
* * *
Ah, hell.
It was worse even than Cade had expected. Controlling her flailing fists took no effort at all, of course, but then Valerie shoved one high heel against his crotch. Before she could grind the spike into anatomy every bit as vulnerable as any other man’s, Cade dragged her out of the car. She howled and kicked as he wrestled her down onto the dirty cement. Her enraged screams rang off the garage walls.
“Calm down, Valerie!” he yelled over her curses as he worked to pin her wrists. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to hurt you, you gutless, blood-sucking bastard!” She writhed like a maddened cat, all curves and fury and long, slim legs. “What the hell were you doing in my dreams? Why did you pretend to be my friend -- my lover? Were you just setting me up the whole time? Well, it’s not gonna work.”
When she lunged for his lower lip with snapping teeth, he barely jerked back his head in time. “Dammit, Valerie,” he snarled, baring the fangs that had descended when her foot had threatened his balls. “Stop that!”
She screamed back a string of curses that would have made a mule skinner blush.
Trapping both her wrists in one of his, Cade clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle her furious shrieks. She dug her teeth into his palm and bit down hard. He jerked back, astonished at her gall. “Have you lost your mind? What’s wrong with you?”
“What the hell did you expect?” she spat. “You spent the past seventeen years playing me for a fool! I was a child, you bastard. I trusted you.”
“And I helped you!”
She laughed, the sound short and ugly. “Helped yourself to my ass!”
“It was never like that!” Gritting his teeth, he gave her shoulders a ruthlessly controlled shake. “You’re the one who reached out to me, Valerie! You wanted me to protect you from your monsters, and I did. Then you wanted a father figure, and I was. And later, when you wanted a lover…”
“You fucked me,” she snarled. She bucked under him, fighting to free her wrists from his grip, her knee driving up against his butt. Cade clamped his thighs around her legs, hooking her ankles with his feet to still her kicks. Dammit, surely she’d have to wind down sooner or later.
For the first time in his life, he was tempted to slap a woman, if only to shock her out of her blind frenzy. But judging by the crazed gray glitter of her eyes, she’d still go after him. She felt too betrayed.
With a frustrated growl, he let his full weight crush down on her. There wasn’t much else he could do. He’d never lifted a hand to a woman in his life, and he’d certainly never hit Valerie. But he had to shut her up before someone heard her screams over the jet engine roar from the nearby runways.
* * *
Cowboy wrapped himself around her like a living straight jacket, heavy and hot. At first Val was too far gone in hysterical fury to be aware of him as anything other than a target for her fists and teeth.
But bucking against all that sheer strength and muscled weight was exhausting, and the massive chest pressing into hers made it hard to breathe. Her struggles weakened until she collapsed under him, panting in fury and exertion.
“You ready to talk now?” he gritted.
“What’s there to say?” Damn it, vampires were supposed to feel cold and dead to the touch. Cowboy was all heat and brawn. “If you’re going to rip out my throat, get it over with.” Fear slid through her at the thought, only to be overwhelmed by another surge of rage. She couldn’t believe he’d betrayed her like this.
Cowboy’s sensual mouth flattened into a hard, tight line. “I’ve got no intention of hurting you, Valerie. Hell, I’m trying to save you. Again.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re a big hero, you lying son of a bitch. You said you’d save my parents, and you let them die!” Dammit, she should have seen this coming. Deep down, she’d always known Cowboy was real, no matter what logic insisted, just as she’d always known her parents had been murdered by vampires.
But finding out Cowboy was one of them -- God, that hurt.
“I didn’t ‘let’ them die, Valerie. I did fight for them. I was just too late.” Tightening his grip on her wrists, he got to his feet, hauling her up effortlessly.
Val braced shaking legs under her and stared up into his handsome, implacable face. There’s no way to fight him, she thought, bitter and terrified. He’s just too damn strong.
Her parents had tried to fight too. It hadn’t done them any good either.
Her father screamed and struggled as a short, muscular blond man dragged his head back by the hair and buried long white fangs in his throat. An even bigger man had Mom pinned on the living room couch. He’d ripped open her nightgown, and he was hurting her. She sobbed as he mocked her terror in a thick German accent before leaning down to bite her neck. Blood spurted around his lips. He hummed in pleasure.
A gaunt, dark-haired man stood watching like a robot, his face blank and white.
The same man who held her now.
Something cold circled her arm, jolting Val out of the paralyzing grip of memory. She looked down to see Cowboy snapping one bracelet of a pair of handcuffs onto her right wrist. “What are you doing? Let go!” She tried to jerk back, but he’d already crowded her backward to the open car door and begun forcing her down into the seat.
“We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve wasted too much time as it is.” He released her uncuffed wrist to thread the other bracelet through the door handle, then grabbed for her free hand again. She cocked her fist and aimed for that handsome nose.
The vampire jerked his head up, meeting her eyes with his lips drawn back from white fangs. “We don’t have time for this. If you want to be something other than Edward Ridgemont’s sex toy, stop fighting me.”
Surprise penetrated her fury. “Ridgemont? What’s he got to do with this?”
“Who do you think killed
your father, Valerie?”
The leader knocked her father aside with a brutal swat. “Well, if it isn’t little Valerie Chase.” His accent was clipped and English.
Ridgemont had an English accent.
“That’s right,” the vampire said, snapping the handcuff closed. “He got you fired from your newspaper job and offered you that money as a lure so he could get you to New York. Now that you’re here, he means to Turn you into you a vampire -- and then he’ll get artistic. You’ll pray to die.” He glared at her, tight-lipped. “A fate I’ll save you from if you don’t screw up our escape.”
“Too late,” growled a deep Germanic voice.
Cowboy spun. Something blurred out of the garage shadows. He vanished like a leaf in a whirlwind.
Metal crunched and glass shattered, accompanied by the shrill cycling howl of a car alarm. Val jerked in the direction of the sound and saw him tumble across a minivan parked in the opposite row of spaces.
Brutal hands closed over hers. With a gasp, she snapped her head around. A man crouched at her feet, both her handcuffed wrists in his grip. Blond and GQ handsome, his face was as elegant as if someone had laid it out with a straight edge, but his body was vintage Conan the Barbarian. “Hello, fraulein.” He wore a leather jacket and dark blue jeans that looked pressed and new. As he spoke, she glimpsed fangs in his mouth. “You’ve grown up to be quite the beauty. I do hope Ridgemont will share.”
Staring into the vampire’s cold smile, Val recognized him. It had been seventeen years, but he hadn’t aged at all. The cruel hands around her wrists were the same ones that had held her mother down as he raped her.
This can’t be happening, a small voice wailed somewhere in her mind. None of it. It’s impossible. There is no such thing as vampires!
But there was. Grandma had been wrong. They’d all been wrong.
A sudden vicious pain in her wrists snapped Val out of her shock. The German was pulling her wrists in opposite directions, trying to break the handcuffs.
No!
Vampires or not, real or not, she wasn’t going to let them take her. Neither of them.
Her paralysis shattered. Val drew in a breath and screamed with all the air in her lungs as she tried to throw herself back into the car. The handcuffs jerked her to a stop, ripping pain through her muscles.
Her panic gave way to rage again, cleansing and welcome. Goddamn it, I’m not going to let them do this to me! I’m not going to let them kill me too! Val threw up both legs and kicked her captor savagely in the face. “Let go!”
“Bitch!” the vampire roared, releasing her wrists to knock aside her frenzied feet. He rose, drawing back a big fist as blood snaked from his nose.
A hand clamped into the leather collar of the German’s jacket and snatched him off his feet as though he weighed no more than a child.
“That’s one woman you’re not going to beat,” Cowboy snarled. With a twist of his powerful torso, he tossed the German across the parking garage to slam into a cement wall. The big man bounced off it and fell in a heap.
The brutal impact should have broken bones, but the blond vampire rolled neatly to his feet, one hand wiping blood from his nose. With the other he drew a huge knife sheathed at the small of his back. Its curving blade was fully as long as her arm.
“That’s it, McKinnon, I’m going to cut out your heart.” His chilly blue eyes glittered as he stalked her kidnapper. “And then I’m going to fuck her while I feed.”
“Oh, come on, Gerhard.” Cowboy drew the blade’s twin from under his own jacket. “The only thing you’re going to do is bleed, and you know it.”
Val’s heart lunged into her throat. The blond -- Gerhard--was three inches taller and outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. How was her leanly muscular Cowboy supposed to defeat that beefy monster?
And if he loses, I’m dead.
Chapter Five
Val shoved the car door open and got out. The cuffs hooked around the doorhandle wouldn’t let her straighten, but she barely noticed, too busy watching the vampires fight with her heart jamming her throat.
Enormous knives clashed together with the ring of steel. Leaping, feinting, the vampires circled in a muscular dance across the garage, fluid as wolves.
And just as inhuman.
Then Hirsch hacked for his opponent’s head. Val flinched. Cowboy jerked clear of the blade only to snake back inside the German’s guard. When he darted out again, the front of Hirsch’s jacket hung in tatters of expensive leather. Valerie exhaled in relief.
And instantly felt like a fool. Idiot, she told herself. He betrayed you. It would serve him right to get gutted.
“Ridgemont sent you after me all by yourself?” Cowboy gave Hirsch a taunting grin. “Either he’s getting senile, or he wanted you to lose.”
The German spat something vile and lunged.
Cowboy slipped aside like a bullfighter. His knife flicked out. Hirsch leaped back. A thin line of scarlet marked his throat, but he’d saved his jugular. Val cursed his reflexes.
He’s my mother’s murderer, she told herself. Of course, I want him dead. The fact that he meant to kill Cowboy had nothing to do with it.
“Why didn’t you bring a shotgun, Gerhard?” Her dream lover’s gaze was as fixed and ferocious as a hunting tiger’s. “You’d have had better luck.”
“He wouldn’t let me, or you’d be dead now. But then, he’s always been soft on you.” Hirsch’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “Or should I say, hard for you. You must be a very talented cocksucker.”
“Better not let Ridgemont hear you say that.” Cowboy’s grin held absolutely no humor. “He’d gut you -- again. Besides, if anybody’s hitting his knees, it’s you. I’m not the one who’s still in thrall.”
This time Hirsch’s slashing knife left a line of blood on his opponent’s lean cheek.
Please, God, let Cowboy win.
She shook the thought off. Why the hell was she just standing here waiting to see who’d get her? There had to be something she could do to save herself.
Rising onto her toes, Val peered around the garage, scanning for headlights, a cop, a Good Samaritan. Anybody. Why the hell hadn’t someone come to investigate? But she saw nothing but rows of cars gleaming dully in the amber glow of the security lights. “Help!” she yelled, praying someone would hear her anyway. “Somebody help me!”
A jet roared by overhead, drowning her out. Fighting a sob, Val raised her voice, trying to make herself heard over the waves of sound. “Somebody please help! Dammit…”
The German glanced over at her and snarled. “Shut up, you stupid little bitch. If you bring the police down on us, I’ll flog you bloody after I rip out their…” He broke off to suck in an agonized gasp.
Val jerked around. Cowboy stood nose to nose with Hirsch, one hand wrapped around his opponent’s knife wrist. She couldn’t see what he was doing with the other. “Your problem, Gerhard, is you never know when to shut up.”
Cowboy released him with a shove. The German staggered backward and stumbled against the open door of the Lexus. It swung inward to pin Val.
As Hirsch fell past, she saw the black hilt of a Bowie knife protruding from his belly. When he hit the ground, he curled into a groaning knot of agony.
Boots rang on concrete. Val jerked her head up. Cowboy circled around the car to the driver’s side, opened the rear door and reached in. When he straightened, he held a sheathed longsword in his hands.
He met her horrified stare with a cool, emotionless gaze. Drawing the sword, he tossed the sheathe into the back seat. “The stake thing is a myth.”
Jesus, Cowboy’s going to execute him! She felt sick.
“You play the hero with such flair, McKinnon,” the German sneered from the pavement, blood snaking from his pale lips. Turning a seething glare on Val, he added, “Don’t imagine you’re safe, girl. He’ll pretend to be your knight in shining armor, but he’ll fuck you just as quickly as I would.”
“I don’t rape women
, Gerhard.” He slammed the car door. “That’s your perversion.”
“You will this one.” Hirsch rolled over and grabbed the knife, jerking it from his belly. Gasping, he lunged to his feet as Cowboy stalked him, sword raised and ready. Holding the Bowie knife in a shaking, bloody fist, the German backed away. “You need the power you’ll get from her if you want to kill Ridgemont. And you want to kill Ridgemont even more than you want to be a hero.”
“Not that much.” Dark eyes studied him, deadly and intent. “Not that way.”
“Ah.” Hirsch’s grin twisted. “You think to play Prince Charming, wooing the maiden fair.” His eyes flicked to Val’s face. “Are you going to let him seduce you, fraulein? I wouldn’t, if I were you. Not unless you want to spend the next century on the end of his leash, sucking his cock.”
Val swallowed as her mind supplied the image with a coil of shameful heat.
“Are we going to do this with some dignity, or are you going to make me chase you down and butcher you like a boar hog?” Handsome and remorseless, Cowboy lifted the sword, looking more like a Renaissance archangel than a vampire.
And nothing at all like the noble Texas Ranger of her dreams.
“You’re the one who’ll die squealing,” Hirsch spat. “Ridgemont will gut you and feed her your blood as he fucks her. Unless you do her first. I wonder if she’s as tasty as her mother was?”
“You’ll never know.” He braced for the brutal horizontal slice that would take off the German’s head. Val looked away.
“Police! Put it down!”
Cowboy whirled. So did Val, a grin spreading over her face as she saw the patrol car that had rolled up unnoticed in the midst of the fight. A New York Port Authority cop jumped out to aim his gun at him across its roof. The officer’s cold eyes narrowed. “I said put the weapon down, sir!”
“What weapon?” Cowboy’s gaze locked on his. “I don’t have any weapon.”
Forever Kisses Volume 1 Page 6
