Forever Kisses Volume 1

by Angela Knight

  Hope stirred faintly in Val. Apparently the police were on their way, no doubt alerted by some neighbor who’d heard World War III going on next door.

  And that meant Cade was safe. The cops would make sure he got a blood transfusion. Considering his vampire recuperative powers, by tomorrow night he’d have healed his injuries.

  It should be obvious the mercenaries had broken in, and as a homeowner attacked in his own house, Cade wouldn’t be charged with killing them. But the police could and probably would detain him for hours with uncomfortable questions like, “Why the hell did a gang of mercs attack your house? Are you a drug dealer or what?”

  He might be able to magic his way out of custody if he could get hold of a commanding officer he could compel, but if a group ganged up on him, he wouldn’t be able to quash the investigation.

  In any case, he wouldn’t be able to mount a rescue until tomorrow night at the earliest. The thought of what would happen to her in the hours until then made her feel sick and cold.

  Damn it, she should have tried to persuade Cade to Turn her earlier.

  On the other hand, at least if he came after her tomorrow, there’d be no time for Ridgemont to finish the process either. But what if the monster killed him during the rescue attempt?

  It might be better if Cade didn’t try to get her back. If he died, they’d have no hope at all. But if he waited long enough, she’d eventually be able to free herself from Ridgemont’s control. It might take a century or so, but she’d manage sooner or later. Then they could figure out a way to kill the bastard. She could withstand a century of abuse if she knew she had Cade waiting at the end of it.

  Unfortunately, Val knew him a little too well to believe he’d just leave her in his sire’s hands. He’d attempt a rescue, even knowing he couldn’t possibly win. And if Cade died, she might as well die herself. In fact, judging by the images Abigail had shown her, she’d probably long for death before Ridgemont got through with her.

  And what about her sister? Would the vampire leave Beth alone once he had Val, or would he come after her too?

  Had she lost everyone she cared about?

  As Val’s thoughts churned in despair, the mercenaries hustled her outside to a huge white moving van parked at the mouth of the garage. They’d backed the truck in so closely the men could enter and leave without the neighbors realizing they were carrying enough firepower to invade Mexico. Craning her neck as the men filed on board, she saw the truck’s back gate was lowered, revealing the bench seats, communications equipment, and weapons racks that filled it.

  Val’s captor pushed her down on one of the benches and sat down beside her as the rest of the men settled in. Sunk in misery, she barely noticed when they closed the gate and the van lurched down the curving driveway.

  Closing her eyes, she fought tears, knowing that even as they drove away, Cade lay helpless in his own blood.

  * * *

  Pain blazed through Cade’s chest in throbbing waves. He gritted his teeth and ignored it. The bullet had done extensive damage to his stomach and intestines. He had to focus all his power on stopping the blood loss before he passed out. He’d do Val no good if he dropped dead in mid-rescue. But he’d damn well better get himself healed as fast as possible. Every second added to the time Val was at her captors’ non-existent mercy.

  Focusing his power despite the waves of pain ripping through him, he managed to block off the hemorrhaging filling his abdomen with blood. God willing, he could hold the psychic bandages long enough to let him get somewhere he could concentrate on more permanent repairs. Of course, his body would eventually heal the damage on its own, but that would take time Val couldn’t afford.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, Cade could hear the distant wail of sirens. Fortunately, the house was so far out in the country, it would take sheriff’s deputies another ten minutes to arrive on the scene. He just hoped he’d have enough time to get into hiding.

  Which meant he’d need the help of his would-be murderer. The mercenary still stood there in the hallway like an abandoned android, paralyzed by Cade’s last compulsion. You must have been a real pain in your commander’s ass to get left with me, Cade thought in grim amusement. Guess that makes you lunch.

  He eyed his captive. The merc had a stone killer’s hard, square features, but oddly, his hair was carrot red, and freckles speckled the bridge of his nose. Despite the Opie Taylor coloring, he was a big bruiser, just under six-foot six, with the thick, powerful musculature of a body builder.

  Just what Cade needed to get him the hell out of the house before the law arrived. “Help me up,” he ordered silently, diverting enough power from his injuries to make sure the man obeyed.

  Eyes wide with terror, the mercenary knelt and looped Cade’s arm over his own shoulders, then wrapped a thick arm around his waist and heaved him to his feet. Agony detonated in Cade’s guts in waves of alternating heat and cold. Wheezing, he tightened his grip around the merc’s thick shoulders. “My sword and shield.” Blood surged against the patches he’d created. “Get ’em.”

  As obedient as a robot, the merc bent and picked up the sword as Cade clutched his shoulder to keep from falling on his face. The man handed the weapon over, and he managed to force his weak fingers to close around the hilt. Collecting the shield, the mercenary straightened.

  The hallway spun, and Cade had to fight back a wave of blackness. “Let’s go.” He wrapped his slick, bloody fingers more securely around his weapon.

  The mercenary -- whose name was Hank Jameson, Cade saw from his thoughts -- obediently helped him stumble through the house. Each step set off rolling reverberations of agony, and he had to use every last erg of his power to keep blood from bursting through the patches.

  It was a damn good thing Val had let him take her. Without the blood and energy she’d given him, he’d never have been able to hold himself together like this.

  When they stepped outside into the morning sunlight, Cade hissed. As weak as he was, it was like walking into a furnace. He could feel his skin beginning to burn.

  “The woods. Hurry.” The shade would give him at least some protection.

  Rebellion stirred in Hank’s mind; he wanted to drop his erstwhile victim and run. Cade hastily diverted just enough power to drag him back into line.

  One arm clamped around Cade’s waist, the other thrust through the straps of his shield, the mercenary reluctantly dragged him toward the tree line. Cade let Hank do all the work while he concentrated on controlling him while preventing any more blood from flooding from his wounded belly. Sweat poured down his face, both from effort and the sunlight that pounded on his unprotected head, but he scarcely noticed.

  By the time they reached the trees, Cade was only distantly aware of their cooling shade. The police were less than a mile away. He wanted to get far enough into the woods that they wouldn’t be found until he was healed enough to send any searchers away. Mentally prodding Hank onward, he gritted his teeth against the pain as the big mercenary lengthened his stride.

  * * *

  When the mercenaries’ van stopped in front of the small brick ranch ten minutes from Cade’s home, Val was astonished. She’d expected to be loaded onto an airplane for the flight to New York.

  Instead, the leader hustled her out of the van and through a carport entrance. She registered a small kitchen with battered white appliances before he shoved her through a doorway into a tiny den.

  As Val regained her balance, she realized she wasn’t her captors’ only victim. Two young women, neither more than twenty, sat on a couch that looked as if it had come from a thrift store. Both girls had deep puncture wounds in their throats. Dressed for spring in shorts and tank tops that bared a constellation of bruises, they wore identical expressions of dazed suffering. Neither flinched when the mercenary forced Val down on the couch beside them. She winced at their blank, shocked stares and hunched poses. When she murmured a greeting, they didn’t respond, too dispirited -- or too dazed -- to
care.

  Glancing around, Val spotted a college chemistry textbook on the battered coffee table and a backpack lying on a flowered armchair. They must be students at the community college, renting this house for the semester.

  Imagining her sister in their shoes, Val shuddered. I’ve got to keep Ridgemont and Hirsch from getting their hands on Beth.

  Studying the nearest girl’s bruised, blank face, she wondered if there was something she could do to help the pair in the meantime. Though from what Cade had said, they’d probably be released eventually, if much the worse for wear. She herself was unlikely to be that lucky. Yet to do nothing…

  Footsteps in the hall.

  Val jerked her head up just as Gerhard Hirsch swaggered in, smug and grinning. “Hello, fraul…” He broke off in mid-word. Fury twisted his features.

  She couldn’t help cringing as he strode toward her, moving with that oddly weightless grace that was the mark of vampire strength. “You whore,” he spat, grabbing her by one arm. “You’ve been fucking him! You’ve got his mark on your neck!”

  Hirsch drew back his hand for a slap. Val threw up both arms to shield her head, but instead he transferred his grip to her hair and hauled her brutally off the sofa. She bit back a yelp of pain, damned if she’d give the bastard the satisfaction.

  The German shoved his face against hers. She hunched her shoulders in revulsion as he drew in a deep breath, inhaling her scent.

  When Hirsch pulled back, the fury had faded from his eyes. “His stink is all over you, but he hasn’t begun Changing you.” Slowly, tauntingly, he grinned. “Saving yourself for me, fraulein?”

  * * *

  Finally, Cade judged that they’d gone far enough into the trees. The deputies would have to separate to search the woods; anyone who might stumble over them this far out would probably be a lone man he could telepathically send somewhere else.

  He sent the merc a mental command: “Put me down.” Hank obediently lowered him into a pile of leaves. Pain seared him as his body shifted position, but he gritted his teeth until he was finally prone. Blessedly still at last, Cade closed his eyes and panted for breath.

  His skin was already stinging with a sunburn; it was mild enough now, but it wouldn’t be in a few hours. Luckily, yesterday he’d spotted the kind of tarp used to cover a swimming pool at one of the neighbor’s homes. He sent Hank an image of the sheet of plastic draped over the fence to dry. “Go get it.”

  The big man set off at a jog, the compulsion planted so deeply he couldn’t have disobeyed if his life had depended on it.

  While he waited for the mercenary to carry out his orders, Cade stared blankly at the painfully blue sky and concentrated on his telekinetic patches.

  Finally, he heard the rapid thud of running combat boots. Hank skidded to a stop, looming over him like Frankenstein’s monster. Without wasting his breath on speech, Cade mentally instructed the merc to tent the tarp over his body. The big man got to work, draping the thick rubber sheet across a tree limb over his head and anchoring the corners with stones.

  When he was done, Cade ordered Hank to crawl into the tent with him. So lightheaded with pain he could barely focus, he whispered, “Freeze.”

  Instantly Hank’s body locked into place, eyes focused straight ahead, his face settling into expressionless lines belied by the stark panic he felt. Cade could have calmed his fear, but right now he needed the son of a bitch scared out of his wits. All that emotion made a good power source.

  Safe now, Cade allowed himself to slide into a half trance as he spread a web of psychic energy over his shredded organs. It was a new experience for him; he’d rarely had to use his powers to accelerate the healing process. Ordinarily he’d just go to sleep and let any wounds take care of themselves, but he didn’t have time for that now. He had to recover as quickly as possible, no matter how much energy he had to burn to do it.

  Luckily, the bullet had torn its way free when it had exited, but he still had the broken ribs and punctured organs to contend with. He went to work on forcing his body to heal. Sweat broke out on his face with the effort, and his head began to pound as he willed the torn flesh to knit.

  He lost all track of time, rousing from his trance only long enough to use his powers on any deputies who wandered too close.

  Despite the urgency of his situation, Cade’s mind kept drifting to Val. Where was she? Was she in Ridgemont or Hirsch’s hands -- and if she was, what were they doing to her? The raw panic triggered by that thought forced him to drive it from his mind. He had to save his own life before he could save hers. I’ll get to her in time, Cade told himself.

  He had to.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Val fought Hirsch’s pitiless grip as he dragged her into one of the house’s tiny back bedrooms, but she might as well have saved her strength. The German easily forced her down on the twin bed and straddled her hips, pinning her with his weight as he jerked a piece of thin cord from a back pocket. Val aimed a punch for his nose, but he grabbed her fist before it could land and began lashing her wrist to one of the bedposts. She darted her head forward and clamped her teeth down on his muscular forearm.

  He damned well wasn’t going to rape her without a fight.

  “Stop that, you little bitch!” Light detonated behind her eyes. Val went limp, stunned by a slap she hadn’t even seen coming. Over the ringing in her ears, she heard him growl, “You’re going to start learning your place right now, slut.”

  With every breath, she inhaled his scent: Calvin Klein and something not human. She felt her arms and legs being spread, ankles and remaining wrist tied. Fight! Val mentally screamed at herself, but her dazed body refused to cooperate. Something grabbed the front of her shirt and jerked, lifting her half off the bed. Fabric tore. Oh, God, she thought as her head spun, he’s ripping off my clothes.

  Suddenly Calvin Klein became peppermint, and something shattered directly over Val’s head. A rain of small objects pattered against her face. Opening her eyes, she saw fragments of porcelain hit the mattress beside her head.

  Hirsch swore. “What? What the hell is…?” Then he snarled, “Abigail!”

  Abigail? Val thought. What’s she doing here? She opened her eyes just in time to see a college textbook sail across the bedroom to slam into the German’s head.

  The vampire flinched and leaped off her, looking wildly around the room. “Abigail, you little bitch, this is none of your affair!”

  “She’s Cade’s, Gerhard. Leave her alone.”

  Abigail floated in one corner of the room like something out of a horror movie, her hair streaming around a half-rotted face, her eyes yellow and bulging. Judging from the German’s wild stare, Hirsch found her as thoroughly unnerving as Val had when the ghost had played the same trick on her.

  “Abigail, what are you doing?” Val thought, still confused from Gerhard’s slap.

  “I’m trying to save you, child. Be still.”

  “I take back everything I ever said about you.”

  “She’s mine now!” Hirsch blustered, backing up a pace. “As for Cade, he won’t even have a dick -- or a head -- by the time I’m through with him.”

  “Assuming Ridgemont lets you live long enough to fight him. He’s not going to like this, Hirsch.”

  He bared his teeth. “That won’t matter after I’ve Changed her.”

  “At the moment, Gerhard, that looks doubtful.”

  Hirsch spun. A short, muscular man stood leaning against the doorframe, his powerful arms folded, desert robes draping his body in yards of flowing white cotton like something out of Laurence of Arabia. The face framed by his keffiyeh wasn’t handsome; with a nose that appeared to have been broken a few times and a thin, white scar over one cheekbone.

  Something about those features snapped Val’s mind sharply into focus. Oh, God, she thought, going cold as she recognized him from Abigail’s visions and her own traumatic childhood. It’s Ridgemont.

  Even the ghost recoiled as the master vampire st
rolled into the room. He flicked Abigail a dismissive glance. “Get you gone, spirit, or I’ll drink you down like a virgin’s blood.”

  Abigail seemed to expand in size as she floated toward him, her face darkening and rotting even more until Val felt her stomach twist in revulsion. “Keep your hands off her!”

  One of Ridgemont’s huge hands flashed out and closed around the ghost’s thin, insubstantial neck. Terror twisted Abigail’s little face as she tried to jerk away, but he held her fast. He gave her a slow, mocking smile. “I’d think by now you’d know your place, child. Which could easily be across my trencher with an apple in your mouth.”

  How the hell is he doing that? Val wondered in shock.

  The ghost stopped struggling and met his eyes with defiance, her rotted features blurring back to their normal contours. “Do it, then. I’m sick of being used as a stick to beat Cade with.”

  His grin revealed a horrifying length of fang. “Perhaps I will, at that. My plans are at endgame now -- you’re no further use. And you’d be delicious. So much power…”

  Oh, God, Val realized. He’s going to absorb her. And her destruction would kill Cade. “No! Abigail, go Beyond!”

  “He won’t let me.” The ghost stared at Ridgemont, hopeless defiance on her face. “He’s holding me here.”

  I’ve got to distract him… “Let her go. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Ridgemont lifted a brow at her. “Intriguing offer. And rash. Are you sure you want to…?”

  The ghost seemed to dissolve like mist between his fingers, only to reform right over the bed. “What are you doing?” Val thought, staring up at her furiously. “Get out before he eats you!”

  “Cade is on the way,” the ghost told her, voice weakening. “Hang on. Don’t push him, Valerie. I want to help, but he’s hurt me. I’m losing my grip on this plane.”

  “Just go!” Val thought, though part of her cringed at the idea of being left alone with Ridgemont.

  Abigail bit her lip and nodded, eyes tormented. She didn’t so much fly away as waft into smoke.