The Falls (The Searchers Book 3)

by Jessica Marting

  “I haven’t eaten since I was turned,” said Tremblay. “And I’m hungry.”

  Tears welled up in Violet’s eyes. “Oh, Fred…”

  Tremblay’s eyes shone in a way that had nothing to do with vampirism. “It’s a hazard of the trade,” he said, trying to sound gruff. “I knew you’d come around soon. I took care of most of the nest in this house before I had to sleep the days away, and the ones across the street.”

  “I saw a bat before we came in,” Violet said.

  “There’s still one floating around,” Tremblay said. “But I won’t be one of them. I am not eating anyone.”

  “Maybe you could be treated,” said Violet desperately. “We could take an airship to New York.” A lump formed in her throat, and she had to force herself to speak over it. “You could see one of the Searchers’ doctors there.”

  That was the awful feeling she’d had outside, that they’d all had. One of their own had been turned.

  “No, Violet.” Tremblay shook his head sadly. A tear slid down his cheek, and he impatiently brushed it away. “I don’t have that much time before the vampire bloodlust starts and I eat someone in town. I can already feel it starting.” He squared his shoulders and looked at all three of them, determination on his face. “I need a favor from one of you.”

  Tears leaked from Violet’s eyes and she shook her own head. “No.”

  “I’ll do it,” Edgar said, stepping forward.

  Tremblay nodded and sized him up. “New York branch?”

  “Yep. Name’s Edgar Burgess.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Edgar. I’m Fred Tremblay, out of Montreal.” He held out a hand, which Edgar looked surprised to see before he shook it. “You seem a decent fellow for someone who’s going to be my executioner.”

  Tremblay looked at Violet, who had let Samuel wrap his arms around her. “Violet, Seecombe, let the Montreal branch know as soon as possible. Tell them the problem near the border was much worse than any of us thought, and I’m a goddamned fool for not bringing along a partner. That undead bastard flying around outside will be close by, and as far as I can tell he’s the last one on this street. Don’t go in the cellar. It’s bad down there.” He looked at Edgar. “We need to get this over with as soon as possible. You’re all starting to smell good.”

  A sob escaped Violet, and she pressed her face into Samuel’s coat.

  “Do you need help?” Samuel asked Edgar quietly, his voice a rumble under Violet’s ear.

  “I’m not going to fight back,” Tremblay said. “I think it’s best if you escorted Violet out, though.”

  Violet raised her face to look at Tremblay for the last time, noticing now that he had tiny fangs that extended over his bottom lip. There was a hungry look in his eyes that chilled her to her soul in a way that had nothing to do with winter cold.

  Frederick Tremblay was fighting with a new, demonic side now, and losing.

  “Goodbye, Fred,” she said.

  “It was a pleasure knowing you and your family,” he said. “Pleasure to work with you as well, Seecombe.”

  She let Samuel guide her out of the room to the hallway, and he closed the door behind them. She noticed that he still held on to his stake and mallet, ready to jump back in the room should Edgar require help.

  But all Violet heard was Edgar’s murmured apologies and the sickening sound of a wooden stake plunging into flesh, followed by a strangled noise of pain and the sound of something crashing to the floor.

  The ensuing silence was so loud Violet could hear her own heartbeat pulsing through her body, thought she could hear Samuel’s, as well.

  The door opened, and Edgar slipped out. “We need to get out of this house now,” he said. “I knocked over the oil lamp to destroy the evidence. This whole house is going to be a death trap in about five minutes.”

  “Frederick?” said Violet.

  “He went peacefully,” said Edgar, his voice curt. But Violet could hear the pain there. “And staking a Searcher was the worst goddamn thing I’ve ever had to do. Let’s go.”

  ****

  That bloody bat still circled the street when they let themselves out of the house, mocking all of them. “Get down here!” Violet screamed into the night. “Show yourself, you fucking bastard!”

  Samuel’s heart broke for her, but he didn’t have time to console her over the loss of her friend right now. He and Edgar stood at the ready, stakes and mallets out, Edgar’s still dusty from executing Tremblay. The moon overhead offered just enough light so they could see the footprints in the snow.

  The smell of smoke descended on the small group as it seeped from the windows of the old house behind them. Whether they found that vampire or not, very shortly they would have to leave. Fire had a way of attracting attention, and they would not be able to explain away their weapons.

  The bat flopped down on the snow and shifted into a nude, pale-skinned woman, tangled hair streaming behind her in the winter wind. An inhuman snarl escaped her, and she launched herself at Violet.

  Violet nimbly jumped out of the way, and Edgar removed a small vial of holy water from his coat pocket. Uncorking it, he threw it at the creature, who screamed as it burned her skin. She hunched over in the snow, frantically scratching at her burned shoulders and back.

  Violet took the opportunity to plunge her stake into the vampire’s back. She slammed her mallet down with more force than Samuel had ever seen, rage marking her own features as she did. “You bitch!”

  The vampire collapsed into the snow, the stake sticking out of her ribs. Her body began to disintegrate, and Violet retrieved her stake, pressing a booted foot on the creature’s rotting back for purchase. Her heel slid into the rapidly decomposing flesh and lifted out with an audible squish.

  She gave the corpse a harsh kick, scattering ashes across the snow. “That was for Fred,” she said, dragging a sleeved arm across her eyes.

  The sound of breaking glass behind them had all three of them turning around. The fire was rapidly consuming the old house, having blown off the nailed-on boards and the window glass at the front.

  “We need to leave now,” Samuel said, reaching for Violet. She remained rooted to the spot, staring at the greasy mess that used to be a vampire. The ashes were already starting to swirl in the wind.

  “Violet?” said Edgar. “He’s right. We have to go before someone sees us.”

  She finally looked up, eyes meeting Samuel’s. “All right,” she said.

  There wasn’t any time to be sentimental about what had just happened. The three of them broke into a run, the smell of smoke in their nostrils, ashes of the house and executed vampires clinging to their clothes.

  Chapter Eight

  Two vampire-free nights in Niagara Falls had everyone convinced that the problem there had been resolved, although it was undoubtedly temporary. Vampires were expanding their ranks at a speed far faster than Violet had ever considered possible, thanks to railways and air travel. It was only bound to get worse.

  Since their declaration of the town being vampire-free, Edgar and Molly had remained holed up in their hotel room, determined to enjoy their belated honeymoon. On this night, the first one that Violet and Samuel could actually try to enjoy, Violet had cajoled Samuel into attending a hot air balloon display taking place over the Niagara River. Samuel hadn’t needed as much persuading as he might have a few weeks ago, and Violet knew her own pleas sounded false even to her own ears. They both needed something silly and fun to distract them from what had happened in that deserted house.

  Violet knew that Searchers occasionally died at the fangs of vampires, but she’d never been witness to it, let alone a Searcher being successfully turned. She, and everyone else in the American and Canadian branches, mourned Frederick Tremblay even though the exact details of his death weren’t yet widely known.

  He had been brave, asking for execution. Violet had never experienced bloodlust herself, of course, but she’d witnessed it in vampires before she killed them. Tr
emblay had been in its throes since he was turned and by his sheer force of will had managed to control it. Edgar had staked him before he could do any harm.

  Violet didn’t know if she was more relieved that Edgar had taken care of Tremblay, or ashamed that she couldn’t do it herself. She was the only person out of their small group who’d been acquainted with him, and she’d let him down.

  She couldn’t stop those thoughts from floating through her mind as she and Samuel leaned against a safety rail, watching the colorful balloons drift in the night sky over the roaring falls. He placed a proprietary hand on the small of her back, and Violet moved a little closer to him.

  Such a dear man.

  She knew the trauma caused by his friend Radcliffe’s death had spurred changes in him, transforming him from the arrogant bastard Ada Sterling had to deal with in London to the quiet and more sensitive man that he was now. She felt guilty for being pleased that this was the man she had come to know, when the reasons for his change had been so awful.

  But Violet had changed too, since seeing one of her friends and allies turned into what they all hated the most. She wasn’t the self-assured lieutenant of the largest Searcher branch in America anymore. In fact, as soon as she returned to New York, she would be resigning, effective immediately. She would return to fieldwork full-time and do as much as she could to atone for Tremblay’s death.

  She wasn’t a shell of the woman she was before Tremblay’s execution, but seeing his fangs and red eyes, seeing him struggle against that primal urge to eat her, had irrevocably changed her. She would not return to New York the same person.

  “You seem distracted,” Samuel said in her ear.

  She shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold. “The balloons are beautiful.”

  He gave her a look that clearly asked if she questioned his intelligence.

  “I was thinking,” she said. She didn’t need to elaborate. She didn’t want to talk about Tremblay or the changes that would be coming to Searcher headquarters when she returned to New York.

  He seemed to sense that and didn’t prod further. Instead, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her closer. Welcoming his heat, she leaned into him, his coat and scarf grazing her cheek.

  The contact, innocent as it was, still brought a flush to Violet’s face and a wave of heat coursing through her body. She remembered that interlude in the hotel room and every cell in her body urged her to tell Samuel to forget the hot air balloon show and go back, right now.

  Was she actually brave enough to offer an indecent proposal to him? She worried her lower lip with her teeth, considering everything.

  They were attracted to each other; she knew that even though Samuel hadn’t tried to so much as kiss her since Tremblay died. He was giving her space, just as she’d given it to him following his guilty confessions about his friend Radcliffe.

  A brightly-colored hot air balloon drifted past them, then floated toward the ever-rushing falls. It was fascinating to see them so closely, but Violet’s initial curiosity gave way to something—someone—else.

  In a couple of days, they would return to New York, and from there, Samuel would go back to London.

  Excitement and nervousness thrummed through her veins, each clamoring for her attention. Would he reject her?

  The worst thing he can do is say no, she reminded herself.

  Which meant that the best thing he could do was say yes. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. How did one go about seducing someone, anyway?

  “Sam?” she said.

  “Mm?”

  His breath ruffled the wisps of hair that had managed to escape from underneath her hat. She could feel it even over the pervasive chill in the air.

  Here goes nothing. “Do you…?” Her voice dropped off, and she took a deep breath and tried again. “Do you want to go back to the hotel?”

  “What for?”

  Oh, God. She should have asked someone for advice. Ada, perhaps. But Ada was on the other side of America.

  Violet was not a seductress, damn it all.

  She looked up at him. “I just thought … you might want to go back to the hotel,” she said, trying to inject as much flirtatiousness into her voice as she could and probably failing at it.

  But it seemed to work. Under the bright light offered by the streetlamp, his eyes widened. “Oh.”

  “I just thought—we’re going back home in a couple of days anyway…”

  He grasped her hand and led her back through the throngs of spectators. “You don’t have to talk me into it.”

  “I don’t?” Relief poured through Violet, followed by excitement. She hadn’t botched this.

  “Of course not. Violet, you could talk me into anything.”

  Before she could form a response, his mouth crashed down on hers. In those few seconds, she forgot all about the people around them, the cold, the devastating loss the Searchers had experienced. There was only her and Samuel.

  The sound of a throat indignantly clearing had him pulling away from her, and he quickly grasped her gloved hand. “Come on,” he said, an uncharacteristically mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  She easily kept up with his long strides as they wove their way through the crowd back to the hotel. Already her clothes felt too constricting.

  She was nearly shaking when they finally reached their room, her fingers fumbling when she unwound her scarf and took off her coat. Samuel shucked his off more quickly and took over. “Here,” he said, deftly unfastening the buttons.

  As soon as her coat was off, he collected her in his arms and pressed a kiss to her lips that left her knees weak. She clung to his shoulders as he picked her up bodily and gently set her down on the bed, then lay next to her. Before she could move for him again, he pulled her on top of him so her legs straddled his hips, lacing her fingers through his and pulling her down for a kiss.

  She could feel the hard ridge of his erection between their layers of clothes, and she’d never been more eager to take hers off. Or his, for that matter. She broke the kiss long enough to reach for the buttons on his shirt and plucked at them, far less shakily than she had with her own coat.

  She didn’t have much time left with him. Her heart lurched at their inevitable separation, but she forced that thought from her mind. Violet was going to enjoy every second she still had with Samuel.

  Maybe it didn’t have to end after this.

  But if it does… She wanted this, one sweet, selfish memory to hang on to when he returned to his starched life in London, and her to her tangled one in New York.

  She pushed the sides of his shirt away to reveal his chest, with its healed scars and bite wounds from long-ago vampire hunts. She didn’t care. She had her own scars. All monster hunters did.

  He brushed an escaped lock of silver hair away from her face. “This won’t be the only time,” he said.

  Her heart fluttered at those words. “What do you mean?”

  “This doesn’t end here,” he said. “Whether I come to New York or you come to London—I need you in my life, and I’ve never needed anyone before. I thought it would scare me, but…” A smile bloomed across his face. “It doesn’t.”

  “What are you saying?” Violet asked.

  She had a fairly good idea what he was saying, but she wanted to be sure.

  “I think I’m in love with you,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  His words echoed in Violet’s ears. Heat flooded her body. “Really?” she said, her voice breathless.

  “I wanted to tell you before I left, and now … before this,” he said.

  “Samuel, I’m a sure thing.”

  She could tell he was trying to resist rolling his eyes at that statement. “Even if you weren’t, that wouldn’t change anything.” His thumb traced the outline of her lips. “Tell me we have a chance after we go home.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We do. We’ll make it work out, somehow.”

  His hands pulled at her shirtwaist buttons. “How attached a
re you to this blouse?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just a blouse. I have others at home.”

  “Good.” His hands tore at the fabric, scattering tiny buttons across the bedclothes.

  A thrill ran through Violet at the motion, and heat coiled low in her belly. She lifted herself off him just enough so she could reach for the fastening on his trousers, and he helped her push them down his body.

  He slid his arms out of his shirt and tossed that aside, as well, then his underclothes. He was magnificent, all lean and corded muscle from years of fighting.

  And winning. That was important to remember. Both of them had fought and come out the winners.

  It was a curious and powerful feeling, being mostly-dressed with a naked Samuel Seecombe beneath her. She liked it.

  He caught her appreciative look and stretched out. “Like what you see?”

  “You know I do.”

  “I don’t like being the only person on this bed in the altogether, Violet.”

  She was the one on top, the one who still wore most of her clothes, but there was a commanding note in his voice that told her she wasn’t in charge. The notion was exciting.

  “I need some help with my skirt,” she said.

  “Are you very fond of that skirt, Violet?”

  “Are you going to rip it off me, too?”

  “Would you mind if I did?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  He tugged at the cloth, tearing at the buttons on the back. He took more care with her corset, but still quickly unhooked it and tossed it off the side of the bed. Violet slipped out of her underclothes before he could tear them off her, as much as she wanted him to, and finally rested against him, skin-to-skin. His breath had sped up to match her own, their hearts beating in tandem.

  Her responsibilities evaporated from her mind, along with grief and uncertainty—no matter what Samuel wanted for their future—just to focus on the man beneath her, the first person she’d ever shared such a connection with.

  Violet’s hand strayed between them and wrapped around his cock, eliciting a moan from him. She didn’t stop, sliding up and down the way she knew he liked. “If you keep that up, it’ll be over before it can start,” he said.