“Let him go,” the woman repeated.
“Fuck, I can’t!” Miko’s boss snapped. “He’s a convicted felon.”
“You have to!” Miko snapped back. “You know what will happen if she’s killed, Hadrian. You know what’ll happen to me.”
“Have you taken the bond?” The man called Hadrian studied Miko for a minute. “No, you couldn’t have. They won’t kill her, anyway.”
“Who says I won’t?” the woman holding Sylvie said in an icy voice.
Sure convinced Sylvie. She stiffened.
“They’re murderers. Why wouldn’t they kill her?” Miko challenged.
“Because she’s their friend.”
“She’s not my friend,” her captor said. “I’ve never met this bitch before. I’m a cold-blooded murderer, right? It would take so little effort.” The woman pressed the blade into Sylvie’s skin. It pinched and she flinched when a rivulet of warm wetness dribbled down her neck. “Oh, dear. Looks like she’s bleeding.”
Precisely three seconds later, all hell broke loose. It went something like this -- Hadrian jumped at Burke. Miko jumped at Hadrian and Burke just started swinging at both of them. Three vampires fighting. It was a bizarre if not confusing sight. They moved so fast, it was like she was watching a movie playing back at the wrong speed. Or like a cartoon fight, where there was this cloud of smoke and arms or heads popping out every once in a while.
As quickly as it started, it was over. Burke staggered out from the cloud, followed by Miko. Hadrian was lying on the floor. She found herself hoping he wasn’t dead, or Burke’s problems -- which already seemed to be pretty huge -- had just gotten a whole lot worse. Whoever Hadrian was, it appeared he was some kind of VIP. Someone with ties to the police. Nothing good could come from killing a guy like that.
The woman’s grip on Sylvie’s neck loosened a smidge but not enough for her to break free.
Hadrian stirred, pushed himself up on one arm and rubbed his head. “Fuck!”
Miko shoved Burke. “Get out of here. Now.”
Before Sylvie knew how it had happened, Burke had her in his arms and was running for the door. Everything flew by her in a blur, like she was driving down a bumpy road at eighty. He stopped outside at his car, opened the back door, hurried her in, then slammed it.
In the back seat, she twisted around and caught Hadrian and Miko running from the bar’s front door. Hadrian stomped his foot as Burke gunned the engine and the car rocketed down the street.
Well, that wasn’t exactly the way she’d expected the evening to go. She’d been seduced. Held hostage. And then rushed from the building, with a couple of pissed off men on their tails.
She wondered what would happen next. She lifted her hand to her neck, found a little sticky wetness at the base, where her neck met her collarbone. She checked her fingers. Sure enough, it was blood. That… woman had cut her!
What the heck was going on? “Burke?” she said.
“Not now.”
What, not now? Was she a child whining for a cookie?
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Don’t you ever lay your hands on her again,” Burke said in a low growl, evidently directing his anger at the woman sitting next to him in the front passenger seat.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I was trying to help --”
“Not her! I can’t see someone hurting her without… without wanting to do something drastic.”
“Ohhhh. Oh!” The bitch who’d cut her twisted in the passenger seat and gave her a smile around the seat’s back. “I’m Isabella. Sorry about your neck.” She reached back with her right hand. “I… uh… didn’t realize you and Burke… I mean… Nice to meet you.”
Who was Isabella? Obviously she knew Burke. But how well? And why was Sylvie burning up with jealousy, even though he was so obviously steamed at her for the stunt she’d pulled at the bar?
She took Isabella’s hand in hers and gave it a polite but unenthusiastic shake before releasing it. “Sylvie Durand,” was all she could manage to utter. She raised her hand to her neck again, to see if she was still bleeding. Felt like it had stopped.
“It’s a shallow wound. It’s clotted already. Sorry. I had to do something, or Burke here would’ve been on his way to face the executioner if I had just stood there…”
Sylvie listened, half-comprehending what Isabella was saying. She was partly distracted by her efforts to remember where she’d seen the woman before -- she looked vaguely familiar -- and partly preoccupied by her attempts to figure out where Burke was taking them.
He wasn’t driving back to his home, or back to hers.
“Where’s he taking us? Burke?”
Isabella turned forward for a second then looked back again. “The Excoluni saw our license plates. They’ll be at our apartments before sunrise. We’re going to need new identities. Again.”
“What’s an Excoluni?” Sylvie asked.
“Dammit!” Burke said, smacking the steering wheel. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! I need to stop at an ATM, get as much cash as I can. Before my bank account’s seized. I won’t be able to get it all. There’s a daily limit. And there’s no way I’ll risk going back to my apartment to get the stash I hid there.”
“Bank account seized? For what?” Sylvie felt as lost as a movie-goer who’d walked into the middle of a mystery film. But tons more frustrated and scared. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on before I freak out?”
“I’d start from the beginning, but I figure that’s for Burke here to tell you. Maybe later,” Isabella said. “For now, I can tell you we’re being hunted by the Excoluni, the police force of the UMN, for murder.”
“Y-you? And Burke? Murder?” Sylvie heard herself stammer.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Burke said. “Yet.”
“Neither have I,” Isabella explained. “But we’re being blamed for the murders of several people, one of whom died last night. At your bar. We’re trying to catch the real killer.”
It was then that Sylvie realized why Isabella looked so familiar. She was Farrah! “You were at Carpe Nocturne last night, talking about Charlie’s Angels.”
“Yes. That was me. I thought you realized that already.”
“Well, gosh. You look so different.” Sylvie took a good long look at Isabella’s face and hair. Isabella had looked pretty in an innocent sort of way last night, wearing her midnight blue Victorian gown, her long deep-red tresses cascading down her back. Tonight, she looked tough and dangerous, like a spy chick. Her hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail at the back of her head. She was wearing all black. Snug pants, form-fitting knit top. Sylvie half-expected her to whip out some spy gear.
“Call our contact,” Burke said as he maneuvered the car into a bank’s parking lot. “I’ll be right back.”
Half-listening to Isabella place a call on her cell phone, Sylvie watched him as he walked to the front of the building, to the glassed-in enclosure holding the ATM. He was walking stiffly, like he was either in pain or so ticked off there wasn’t a muscle in his body that could relax. She hoped it wasn’t the first and suspected it was the second.
He was heading back to the car by the time Isabella had ended her call. “I got all I could. It isn’t much. We’d better get what we can from your account too.”
“Okay.” Isabella handed him the cell phone. “He’s working on our new papers. We can go pick them up in a couple of hours.”
“Good thing it’s early.”
When Isabella got out, Sylvie climbed out of the cramped back seat and took her spot in the front. She focused her attention on Burke.
He sighed and dragged his fingers through his hair, pulling out the elastic holding it at his nape. “I’m sorry I’m being such a bastard right now. I just didn’t need this. Any of this. It took so long to get to where I was. And now…” He shook his head, leaving the sentence hanging there, unfinished. He raised his fist and she thought he’d put it through the window. He didn’t.
; She wanted to do so many things -- comfort him, console him, help him. But mostly she wanted to bombard him with a million questions. Obviously, he wasn’t just a nice guy trying to protect her. He was a guy who had problems. Lots of them. He was a guy on the run from the police… or so she assumed. She had no idea what or who the UMN was.
Instead of doing anything useful, or helpful, she merely nodded and lifted the corners of her mouth into something she hoped resembled a smile. Their eyes met. That crazy connection zapped and buzzed in the air between them. She reached a hand out to touch him, but he jerked away before she’d done more than pat him.
“No. Don’t,” he said softly, grimacing as if she’d just scorched him with a branding iron.
“Wow. Sorry.” She heard the hurt in her own voice, but she hadn’t been able to stop it from coming out. Despite all the confusion, the questions, the men chasing them, she felt a strange and unexplainable draw to this man. And any distance, whether it was physical or emotional, hurt. Bad. Physically. It took the form of this burning deep in her gut. The pain made it hard to breathe. To think. To do much of anything.
It was so weird and horrible and fascinating.
“We’re both feeling it, the pain of the Iugum, the Binding. It’s because we’ve found the third member. The Iugum is calling to us. It will get worse.”
The third member. Miko. Could she be with two men? Be their lover? Would she desire them both? Serve them?
Love them?
Was that possible?
Isabella returned to the car, and without complaint took the backseat, leaving Sylvie beside Burke. “I got all I could too, but between us, I doubt we’ll have enough to pay for the new identities.”
“Dammit. We’ll have to go back to my place after all.” He pulled a U-turn in the middle of the two-lane road, heading the car back the way they’d come.
“No. It’s too risky.”
“What choice do I have? No money, no IDs. No IDs, no hotel or apartment or jobs or food for Sylvie.”
“Don’t worry about me. Sounds like you’ve got enough to worry about yourselves,” Sylvie said, trying to be helpful.
Burke shook his head. “You’re in my care. I will provide for your necessities. Besides, we cannot risk you using your credit cards, either. They may be able to track our movements and find us.”
“Okay.” Feeling torn, she clutched her purse to her chest. Thanks to all the commotion, she still hadn’t gotten to the bank to make the deposit on last night’s bar sales. Even though the night had been cut short, and a fair amount of the bar’s sales had been paid by credit card, she was still holding onto almost five thousand dollars. It was enough money to pay off all the vendors she owed money to, including the utility companies, and catch up the payroll.
But this was life or death.
She sucked in a deep breath, flipped open her purse and pulled out the envelope, already filled out and sealed. She swallowed a huge lump that had lodged itself in her throat. “You can have this.”
Driving, Burke glanced at the envelope she was offering him and shook his head. “No. I can’t take your money.”
“Please. I’ve thought about this. I want to help.”
“No.” He gently pushed her hand back toward her own lap. “Last night, when I searched your office, I saw more than that napkin.”
She had no doubt what he meant by that. He’d seen the piles of bills on her desks. The ones with red lettering all over them, threatening all kinds of horrific penalties if payment wasn’t made immediately.
They were important. The meat guy needed to get paid. So did the wine vendor, the electric company, the waitresses and cooks. But dammit, what good would the money in her purse do any of them if those two Exco-whatevers found them? Would she be named an accomplice? Was she now wanted for aiding and abetting felons?
Oy! She didn’t want to know the answer to that question at the moment. “I insist.”
“No. You need that money. We’re going back. For mine.”
Isabella placed her hand on Sylvie’s shoulder. It was a soft touch, a silent show of support and gratitude.
After studying the stubborn set of one adorable man’s jaw, Sylvie returned the envelope to her purse. He’d won the argument but she’d win the war. She’d just have to approach things with a different strategy.
All men had their weak points. She’d find Burke’s.
And she’d find a way to help him clear his name.
Chapter Seven
He would have his answer. Finally.
The pain of living this way had become unbearable. He missed her so much. Needed her more than anything. The price he’d had to pay to find the answer was a dear one, but well worth it.
The document was fragile. Scrawled in a barely discernable variation of the Ancient Tongue on a piece of dried human skin. The skin had then been rolled onto a bone that once belonged to a powerful wizard. The magic, which protected the document, shimmered in the air as he slowly unrolled it. The faintest zapping sensation, like tiny pinpricks, traveled over his fingertips.
It was the most amazing thing. And what it would give him was the one piece of the puzzle he’d lacked, the answer to why his past attempts at raising his beloved had failed.
He would not fail again.
He read the document for the third time, double-checking to make sure he had all the necessary ingredients for the revealing spell.
Who’d known each spell in the Book of the Shadows had its own key? Lucky for him, a mage had owed him a fairly large favor, or he would never have known.
It paid to know people in high places.
He drew the circle on the floor with ash, set the candle in its center and lit it. Then he read the spell on the scroll aloud, poured the virgin’s blood onto the ground. Setting the scroll down, he slowly tipped the burning candle, adding the molten wax to the puddle of blood.
Slowly at first, then quicker, the blood congealed. It turned into a thick black gelatin, forming words on the ground.
But the words were nonsense. Utterly meaningless, even in the Ancient Tongue.
Had he been taken for a fool? Furious, he thought about throwing the still burning candle into the mess, but ran to gather a pencil and paper first.
It never paid to act in haste.
He copied down the entire message then completed the final cleansing step to clear away the results of the spell.
He took a moment to read what he’d written on the paper. Was it some kind of code? A puzzle he had to solve?
He supposed it would be foolish for a mage to hand over a spell this powerful if there were no protective measures in place.
That had to be it. A code. A puzzle. He was excellent at both.
“It won’t be long, my love,” he said to his beloved, still lying in her resting place on the altar. “It won’t be long at all. The next time I cast the spell, you will be mine for always.”
* * *
Burke Langton parked the car in the middle of a drugstore’s parking lot. He turned to Sylvie Durand -- his Origo, his mate -- and was immediately rendered a near cripple by the pain of the Iugum, the Binding. It had increased a hundredfold since leaving the bar.
Fuck!
Of all the Insurgis who had to be Sylvie’s other mate… of all the fucking Insurgis! Why did it have to be Miko Dvorak, brother and second in command to Hadrian Dvorak?
While he knew in the back of his mind there was the possibility the situation could work to his advantage, right now, while his blood was burning like acid and his body ached for what it could not have, he didn’t care. All he cared about was completing the Binding. The pain would be gone. And if the legends were true, he’d not only find completion, but he’d also experience the one thing that was impossible for him now -- love.
The emptiness, the hollowness, he’d lived with all his life would be gone.
His suffering would not end until the Binding was complete. The ache would steadily increase until it either killed him or
drove him mad. Would he catch the killer in time? Before he lost his grip on sanity? Before he lost his life and soul?
And what about Sylvie? He knew she was a resilient woman, with a strong will and spirit. But how much suffering could she endure? Would he be forced to take his own life just to free her from the torture?
She licked her lips as she looked at him, searching his face for the answers he’d been too unwilling to answer yet. His cock stiffened as his gaze fixed to her mouth. To feel those lips down there, gliding up and down his shaft. Her tongue swirling around the head.
He stifled a roar of frustration. He needed to get moving. Now. Get some money and find them a place to hide until their paperwork was done, allowing them to travel freely, register in a hotel, rent a car.
He needed to ease the burn a little. Fucking her would do that, lessen the pain. For both of them. But only temporarily. There was only one permanent cure. And it was impossible without Miko.
“Stay here and stay together,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“What if you don’t come back?” Isabella, his dearest friend, asked.
“I’ll be back. Just stay out of sight. And don’t go anywhere.” He knew he’d regret it, but he leaned over and brushed his mouth over Sylvie’s. It hardly qualified as a kiss, but the effect would have knocked him on his ass if he hadn’t already been seated.
Dizzy and lightheaded, he fumbled with the door handle, pushed open the car door and after standing on legs that felt wobbly for the first time ever, he gently shut it to keep from making too much noise. It wasn’t too late yet, not even eleven in the evening. But the suburban neighborhood was quiet. Dvorak had no doubt tracked down his address and was trolling the area, looking for him. He’d have to be careful.
He stuck to the darkest shadows as he walked to his building. Once again, he found himself thankful for the fact that his apartment complex didn’t have street lights. It made for plenty of shadows. The moon, mostly hidden behind an inky cloud, produced only the faintest bluish glow, barely enough light for even a creature of the night to see.
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