by Amelia Elias
Diego closed his eyes in relief at the mention of the third Slayer in the city and didn’t ask how Eli knew where to send Ronin. Eli just knew things, and Ronin’s help was more than welcome. The Templars had been hunting vampires for almost a thousand years and Diego hadn’t been relishing the thought of taking them down alone. “And you?” he asked.
”I’ll be lounging around the house, feeding my addiction to reality TV,” Eli drawled. “I’m going to look for your runaway bride, of course. What did you think?”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t share your sense of humor about this,” Diego growled.
“If you want to live as long as I have, Diego, you’re going to have to learn to take things much less seriously,” Eli replied in a gentle tone Diego had never heard him use before. “Don’t worry about your mate. You can’t afford the distraction when you go after James. If your mind isn’t totally focused when you go in there someone’s going to end up dead—probably you, and definitely your Steward. Let me worry about Sian.”
Diego forced his anger and worry aside with difficulty. He really hated it when Eli was right. “You’re telling me you know she’ll be all right.”
“I’m telling you no such thing,” Eli replied. “The future is malleable, Diego. No one can read it, though many make a nice living by saying they can. Now unless you’d like to chat a little more, I’d recommend you get a move on. The Templars aren’t fond of mortals who help the enemy and they’re notoriously impatient.”
Diego hung up and called the hawk’s form again. He didn’t want to think about Eli’s last comment, but as he flew he found it hard to think of anything else.
* * *
Sian had to stop only a couple of hours after dawn. She didn’t know what Diego had done to her but there was no way she could keep on like this.
Her skin had reddened after only an hour in the sunlight, even through the car’s tinted windows. An hour later, she was developing blisters. The daylight stabbed her vision, the brightness unbearable. Her eyes ached despite the dark sunglasses she’d found in the glove compartment and tears streamed down her cheeks constantly. The saltiness stung her burning skin. What in the world was wrong with her?
Even if she hadn’t been roasting alive, she was utterly exhausted. After the third time she’d caught herself falling asleep at the wheel she knew she had to find a place to rest. She hadn’t had much sleep since meeting Diego and her blood loss hadn’t helped a bit.
Just after nine a.m., she stopped at a hotel on the outskirts of San Francisco, unable to force herself to endure the light any longer. The clerk looked at her strangely as Sian checked in, but she didn’t offer any explanation for her burns and the clerk was too polite to ask.
When she accepted the key the clerk spoke hesitantly. “I can send someone to the drugstore for you, if you like,” he offered. “There’s one not far from here.”
Sian nodded gratefully. “If someone would get me some aloe and some sunblock, I’d be eternally grateful.”
She groaned at her own phrasing as she walked to her room. Eternal was the last thing she wanted to think about after spending the last several days with a vampire and suddenly developing such an extreme sensitivity to the sun. She was starting to think Diego and Eli had both been mistaken when they’d reassured her the tiny amount of Diego’s blood she’d taken hadn’t been enough to Change her.
Had she been foolish to tempt fate by doing it again in the game room?
If she had, it had been the most glorious mistake of her life. Strangely, the thought of becoming a vampire was almost comforting. At least if she was immortal, she could outlive Santonyo and come back to Diego someday, and no matter how she told herself she’d done the right thing, she ached to return to him.
She forced her thoughts from him, glad of the pain of the sunburn for the distraction it provided. While she waited for the aloe to arrive she filled the ice bucket, dunked all the hand towels and washcloths in it to cool, and pulled out the room service menu. Despite the pain of her blisters, she was starving.
And thirsty. She’d already drunk two bottles of water in the car and it hadn’t touched her thirst. Maybe her body was trying to make up for the blood loss or something, she wasn’t sure, but she felt like she’d been stranded in the desert for a year and all she wanted was to drink everything in sight.
Her food and the things from the drugstore arrived simultaneously. Sian tipped generously and bolted the door before devouring her meal—a rare steak, baked potato with everything, and big pitcher of orange juice to wash it all down. The red juices running from the meat didn’t revolt her as they used to and she didn’t want to think about that too closely, either. She paused every few bites to change out the hand towels she’d put in the ice bucket to drape over her arms and chest, cooling the painful sunburn. Only when the tray was empty did Sian breathe a sigh of relief.
The bed looked so inviting she didn’t even try to resist it. Forgetting all about the aloe, she stripped off her clothes and crawled between the cool sheets.
She was asleep moments later.
Her dreams were incredibly vivid. She saw Diego pacing angrily as he waited for her to come home and guilt washed over her. She hadn’t even left him a note or thanked him for helping to throw Santonyo off her trail.
She tried to go to him, to put her arms around him and comfort him, but her hands passed right through him. She spoke but he gave no indication he’d heard her. Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away. It hurt too much to look at him knowing she would never see him again.
At least in a dream, she dared admit the truth to herself. She loved him, and he would never know it. Diego, I’m sorry, she thought again, and from the startled, anguished look that suddenly crossed his face she knew on some level he’d heard her. He bolted for the door and she tried to stop him from running out into the sunlight, but everything went black before she reached him.
The dream changed and she suddenly found herself outside, standing on the side of a wide highway. She forgot she was dreaming and winced in anticipation of pain, seeing the bright sun in the clear sky, but nothing happened. Only then did she see four men she didn’t recognize standing around a little blue car. “You’re sure the demon will look for her?” one of the men asked, his hand on the roof of the car. “I will gladly sacrifice my car if we could be sure it wouldn’t be in vain.”
The taller man clasped his shoulder. “Your sacrifice will be returned tenfold in heaven, Brother,” he said. “And the demon has already sent his human servant after her.”
“We’ll take him and save her,” another man chimed in. “We cannot allow her to fall back into the demon’s hands.”
“Then do it,” the first man said, stepping away from the car.
Sian watched in horror as they wedged a block of wood against the accelerator and aimed the car at the concrete support of an overpass. They released the brake and jumped back as the car leapt forward. Sian winced as it smashed against the concrete. It boggled the mind, the lengths they’d gone to to set a trap for James. She could hardly believe Diego had sent James after her!
No, wait. She had no trouble believing that at all. Of course he would’ve sent James for her, not knowing if she was in trouble or hurt when she hadn’t come home this morning. She hadn’t told him she was leaving for good. Diego would’ve come himself had it not been daylight—she’d seen him try to do exactly that and ached with worry, hoping he’d come to his senses before he’d rushed outside and burned alive.
But that meant James was driving into a trap.
The men surveyed the twisted wreck and nodded in satisfaction. Without another word, they moved away from the road and disappeared into the brushy area beyond the shoulder.
When James arrived and they ambushed him Sian tried to shout out a warning, but as with Diego she couldn’t make herself be heard. Watching her fists pass straight through the four attackers reminded her this was a dream and she tried to wake up, but she was trapped.
She was powerless, able only to watch the nightmare unfold.
James fought well, amazingly well, and she was almost positive he would win before the fourth man came back and pulled out the dart gun. Sian screamed and cursed her own helplessness when they shot James anyway. She burned with anger as she watched them bind his hands and feet tight enough to cut off circulation as a black van pulled up. James was tossed roughly into the back before the others picked up their fallen comrade and put him much more gently inside. Sian tried to get in too, wanting to see where they took James, but the sunlit highway swirled and faded despite her struggle to reach him.
Sian fought her way back to consciousness, struggling to the surface and panting with the effort when she finally opened her eyes. A glance at the wall clock told her it was late afternoon and she threw off her covers, wondering if the light was dim enough outside not to aggravate her burn. The unopened bag from the drug store was still on the dresser and Sian reached for it, intending to slather every inch of herself with aloe and sunscreen.
She froze when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Her face was raw and peeling but no longer bright red and blistered. She turned on the light, unable to believe her eyes. There was no way such a severe burn would’ve improved this much in only a few hours even if she hadn’t forgotten to put on the aloe before falling asleep. She remembered the bullet graze Diego had gotten vanishing in hours and shuddered. It wasn’t really possible for her to be becoming a vampire, was it? She’d been out in the sun for hours this morning, and while she’d gotten the mother of all sunburns she hadn’t burst into flames or anything. She’d eaten regular food, something Diego claimed he didn’t do, and she hadn’t gotten sick.
Finally she shoved her whirling confusion away, deciding it would be best not to question her good fortune. Sian pulled her clothes back on and picked up her purse as the sense of urgency and danger built inside her again. Comfortable as this room was, she didn’t dare stay here any longer. It was too close to San Francisco and therefore too close to Santonyo.
And Diego. She closed her eyes against a wave of regret. She hated Santonyo even more for forcing her to leave Diego behind without even saying goodbye.
Anger sparked through her, killing her sorrow with a rush of heat. Enrique Santonyo had taken everything from her—her badge, her home, her name, her father. How much more was she going to let him take? She reached into her purse for the keys and found herself clutching her gun instead.
She loved Diego. Was she really running away and surrendering him without a fight?
No. Everything in her rebelled at the very idea. Sian shoved the gun back into her purse and strode resolutely from the room. She checked out, ignoring the clerk’s surprise to see her leaving so soon, and raced to the Aston Martin.
She’d been running long enough and now she had a new place to call home and allies to help her in her fight. Would she ever have a better chance of beating Santonyo than here and now with an immortal warrior at her side? Diego had promised to protect her, to do whatever it took to keep her safe, and she’d rejected his offer out of hand while silently promising to do the same for him. She thought she’d accomplished it by fleeing again but all her instincts, stronger now than they had ever been before, screamed the opposite. Diego needed her and she’d run away.
No more. Sian pulled out of the hotel’s parking lot and shot onto the highway, pushing the Aston Martin hard. It was time to make a stand, and she would do it beside the man she loved.
She only hoped he could forgive her for leaving him in the first place.
It took Sian only about half the time to get back to San Francisco than it had to get to the hotel where she’d spent the bulk of the day. The pounding urgency gripped her and the need to hurry screamed in her brain, growing stronger with every mile she drove. When night fell, it intensified to the point that her hair stood on end.
She’d lived with this sixth sense, intuition, whatever she wanted to call it, all her life, but never had it been this strong or clear. Something was badly wrong. There was no longer any point in trying to tell herself those vivid dreams had been merely the imaginings of her guilty conscience. Every time she thought of James, the sense of pain and danger that swamped her made her feel physically ill.
Thinking of Diego was even worse. His desperation, his worry, his guilt beat at her. Sian finally had to turn on the radio loud enough to drown out her thoughts so she could concentrate on her driving.
She turned off the highway and drove as fast as humanly possible through San Francisco, aching to see the iron gate and serpentine gravel drive leading home. She didn’t even pause at the word. After three long years, she finally felt like she had a home again.
And damned if she was going to give this one to Santonyo too.
She passed a police car and a feeling of foreboding swamped her. They were looking for her, she was sure of it, but she didn’t know why. She couldn’t imagine Diego calling the police about her disappearance—it was too soon for an official report in any case—and he’d told her she was welcome to anything he owned, cars included, and she didn’t think he’d have reported a stolen car. The memory of the informant who had given her location away time and time again in the Witness Protection Program tickled her mind and she couldn’t help wondering if Santonyo had dirty cops in his pocket in San Francisco too.
It would’ve been too easy to have someone follow James when he’d brought her Mini back to Diego’s house the night she’d struck him, tracking her down, and she hated herself for not thinking of it before.
“Don’t see me,” she whispered as she kept an eye on the police car. “Don’t see me until I do what I have to do. Don’t see me.” She kept repeating the mantra even as she readied herself to run for it.
She’d been hell on wheels in her poor deceased Mini. The cop didn’t have a chance of catching her in the Aston Martin.
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
Diego flew toward the pier where the Templars had directed him and circled once before landing several blocks away and shimmering back into his normal form. There was no way he was going to walk into this blind, no matter how worried he was about James. He’d do no good to anyone if he rushed in and found himself at the wrong end of a stake.
Doubtless that was exactly what the Templars hoped he’d do.
Diego closed his eyes and was about to send his senses scanning over the area when his phone buzzed silently in his pocket. He snatched it out and flipped it open. “What?” he snapped.
“You’re taking your time getting here, demon. Changed your mind?”
It was the same voice that had taunted him before. Diego made a silent vow that when he found the owner of that voice, he’d hear it begging for mercy.
“It occurred to me that I have no proof whatsoever James is with you,” he said, stalling for time. He didn’t know if Ronin had arrived yet. “Give me a reason to come to you.”
The Templar laughed. “If it’s proof you need, we’re happy to provide it.” There was a brief pause and Diego heard footsteps echoing faintly in the background. “Here’s your thrall,” the Templar said.
There was another pause. “James?” Diego said. “Talk to me if you’re there.”
There was no reply. He heard the sound of a slap and barely bit back a growl of rage. “Answer him!” he heard the Templar demand.
James didn’t say anything. This time the sound was of a fist striking flesh and he heard the faint hiss of breath but nothing else. “James, say something if you’re there!” Diego said again, his knuckles white on the phone as he imagined what they were doing to his friend.
There was still no answer and the silence was all the proof Diego needed that they truly had James. He’d taken an oath when he had taken over as Steward from his father and a part of that oath was to never put his vampire in danger.
“James,” Diego said quietly, “I’m coming whether you talk or not, so there’s no need to let them hurt you. Now say
something!”
There was another long pause and finally he heard James take a deep and ragged breath. “Ten men with crossbows,” he said all in a rush.
The Templar roared with outrage and Diego’s anger rose to dangerous heights at the sound of him beating James. “Two on the roof!” James shouted between grunts of pain.
Diego almost shouted for the Templar to stop but caught himself in time. He wasn’t far away from the address they’d given and he didn’t want to give away his location. Stifling his shout was one of the most difficult things he had ever been forced to do and he swore vengeance for every blow that fell.
The phone went dead a moment later without the Templar saying another word.
Diego forced himself to dial Ronin’s cell instead of charging in right that moment. The line clicked open and he heard Ronin tap once but he didn’t speak. Diego kept his own voice quiet as he relayed what James had told him. Wherever Ronin was hiding, Diego didn’t want to give him away.
“Roof’s clear,” Ronin breathed back before disconnecting.
It was exactly what he’d been hoping to hear. Diego turned and slipped down the alley, one more shade in a world of dark shadows, and made his silent way to the warehouse where his Steward was being held.
It was time to make these bastards sorry they’d ever heard of Diego Leonides.
* * *
Sian didn’t relax until she came within sight of Diego’s gate. Relief filled her when the police car didn’t follow her—she’d been positive they’d been looking for her, and even now she didn’t doubt it. No, for some reason, despite the distinctive car she’d taken, they hadn’t seen her. Her mantra, desperate as it had been, seemed to have worked despite all the rational reasons it shouldn’t have.
Of course, rational had had little to do with her world lately.
She’d wondered how she was going to get through the gate since she hadn’t found an opener anywhere in the car, but when she pulled up to the gate she was surprised to find it already open. She frowned for a moment before driving through. It didn’t seem like something Diego would do, leaving his gate open like that when he knew full well there were vampire hunters after him.