Twilight Vendetta

by Maggie Shayne

  “You were the one who grabbed the scalpel,” he said. “You’d be dead if they hadn’t done what they did.”

  “I am dead. And they only did what they did because they wanted to torture me into telling them where Devlin was. Make no mistake, kid, you are still alive for one reason and one reason only. Because I want to know where my father is, and you can tell me that. And if you don’t tell me, I won’t have to protect you from Devlin, because I will kill you myself.”

  Devlin felt a ripple of admiration ripple through him wrapped in pure desire as he felt her anger build. He’d completed his circuit and was on his way back, but suddenly the need to see her was stronger than his common sense, or his need to analyze why. He launched into a burst of speed, and when he drew near the house, he cloaked himself completely, hiding his energy beneath a blanket of vampiric will.

  Standing in the darkness outside the window of the guest room that held the young militant, he peered in.

  “You know what I’ve found out since becoming one of them?” Emma asked, moving closer to the man in the bed. “When I drink human blood, I can see inside their minds. I can experience them as if I am them. So all I have to do is drink you dry to find out where my father is. I don’t even need you to tell me.”

  She was beside the bed now. Devlin saw her there. The ceiling fan was swirling above her, moving her hair as if its strands had come to life, and her eyes began to glow, just a little. Just enough so he could see. More pink than red in this early stage, but she was working up to it slowly, and trying to guard against losing control.

  “If you kill me, who’s going to tell the world what really happened out there, in the woods?” The wounded crow tried to sit up in the bed.

  She gripped his shoulders and slammed him flat against the pillows, leaning over him, her face close to his. “I don’t care about that. I care about my dad.” Then her eyes focused on his throat, and her tongue darted out to moisten her lips. “I could try to take just a little. To drink just until I get the information I need. The problem is, you’ve already lost a lot of blood. I don’t think you can stand to lose much more.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, your well-being is no more my problem than mine was yours when you were helping my murderers, so....”

  She leaned in, and he shouted at the top of his lungs, “They took him to The Sentinel!”

  “The Sentinel?” she asked, backing off a little. But her eyes still glowed.

  He nodded hard. “East Coast. White Plains, New York. On the site of the old DPI Headquarters. High security. They think he knows more than he’s saying, that he’s conspiring with the vampires against the government.”

  “And why do they think that?”

  “Because of what happened to his wife. Your mother.”

  Emma’s entire being went very still and very cold in that instant. Devlin felt every cell in her body spring to attention and a light, a glimmer, came to life deep in her heart. “What do you know about my mother?” she asked. Her voice was dangerously soft.

  “She was a...a vampire,” he said. “You...you knew that, right?”

  Emma nodded and stayed silent, for the first time exerting her will on him. It was probably unintentional. She might not even be aware she was doing it, but her will shot forth from her like a laser beam.

  Tell me what happened to her, you son of a bitch

  “She was held there....at...at The Sentinel. Until she died in captivity.”

  An avalanche began inside Emma’s mind, a rockslide of thick, inky grief burying her soul beneath it. Crippling her. Breaking her. She fell to her knees as a strangled cry emerged from her very soul. The window in front of Devlin shattered, and he barely hit the ground in time to avoid the shards that exploded his way. Her heartbreak, though, he could not avoid feeling.

  Emma emerged from a mindless red haze to find people all around her. In front of her, that crow Devlin had rescued, cowered on the floor, his back crammed into a corner, whimpering and covering his face with his forearms. Behind her, Devlin’s powerful hands were on her shoulders, holding her forcibly away from the mortal. On either side of her, Sarafina and Willem Stone were trying to wedge themselves in between her and the mortal prisoner.

  And a second later she realized she was fighting them, all of them, to get to the boy. And he was that, a boy. Twenty-one, twenty-two at the most. And she’d been about to kill him. To rip his jugular from his neck and bathe in his blood.

  She let go of that urge, which was far too unlike her to be her own. It felt like she’d vacated her body and some demon had taken it over. Except on some level, she knew that the demon was her. Everything about her was more, greater, bigger. Including her rage and grief, apparently.

  She blinked and stopped struggling, and as soon as she did, she was pulled backward into Devlin’s chest as his arms closed around her from behind.

  In front of her, Sarafina stood with her hand up, palms out, as if poised to stop her if she lunged again, while Willem knelt and gathered the trembling, weeping boy up off the floor. Emma thought he would drop him back into the bed, but when she glanced that way, she could see that the window beside the bed was gone. The bedcovers, pillows, and nightstand were outside, lying on the ground in a tangle of fabric and splintered wood. The curtains waved like flags in the night wind.

  Blinking, she looked at Sarafina and found angry eyes gazing back at her. “You are no longer welcome here,” Sarafina said.

  “‘Fina–” Will began.

  “I never should have left you alone with him. I thought you were reasonable. I thought you wanted peace–”

  “They took my mother from me,” Emma said, still seething inside, quaking under the landslide of emotions that had held her in their grip.

  “We don’t kill innocents,” Sarafina went on. “We do police our own.”

  Devlin said, “He’s no innocent and you know it.”

  “He’s a child,” ‘Fina said. “She’d have killed him if I hadn’t burst in when I did. You know that as well as I do. You felt her rage.”

  Emma blinked. They were talking about her, but what they were saying didn’t feel like her. It didn’t sound like her. It was completely alien to her.

  And yet, the knowledge that her mother was dead, at DPI’s hands, and that they now held her father in the very same place....

  She glanced at the man on the floor. “This boy stood guard while I was tortured and my life was taken from me. He stood by while they took my father, and two helpless teens prisoner and did God only knows what to them. This boy—” she spat the word “is as guilty as any of them.

  Devlin told her to shut up, and she sent a hateful look at him over her shoulder. The entire exchange was unspoken. Then he said, “We need him to tell the truth of what happened in the forest.”

  “We’ll see to it that he does,” Willem said. “You have my word on it. But Sarafina’s right. You two need to leave here. We’ve helped you all we can.”

  ‘Fina was still glaring at Emma. Emma glared right back.

  A few days Undead, Sarafina said, speaking mentally to Devlin alone. And she’s going rogue already. She needs to be dealt with, Devlin.

  You heard what he told her? That her mother had been murdered by those bastards?

  As were many of our friends and loved ones. And yet, we didn’t begin murdering innocents.

  These two were peacemakers, Devlin realized. They were among the idealistic Undead who thought coexistence with mankind was actually possible. They’d helped him rescue Emma, yes, but they didn’t have the stomach for what needed doing.

  Deep inside him a tiny voice whispered, Are you sure you do?

  He wasn’t sure of anything anymore, truth to tell. But he turned Emma in his arms and looked into her eyes, which had faded from the glowing, blood red of a minute prior to the wide black pupils and pristine whites of a vampire. Their irises were streaked with more shades of brown than they had ever been before. Fox and sienna, oak and strips of ebony.

&n
bsp; “We’re going home, Emma.”

  She blinked and looked up into his eyes. “You go where you want. I’m going to White Plains to get my father back.” She spun away from him, leaped out the broken window and ran into the forest like a wolf just set free from its cage.

  Devlin sighed heavily, but turned to Sarafina and Will. “I’m sorry for the damage and the upheaval we brought you.” Then he eyed the young, wounded man standing near Will, terrified. “If you don’t tell the truth publicly, and soon, I will find you, lock you in a room with her, and leave her to finish what she started. And don’t think for a minute that these two can stop me.” With a parting nod to Will, he jumped easily out the window and set off after his angry young vampiress.

  Emma ran into the forest much the way she might have done when she’d been alive, putting one foot in front of the other, watching where she was going, altering her course to avoid roots and low-hanging limbs, even breathing faster as she went. Her emotions were boiling over, like a pot left unattended on a burner turned too high. God, what was wrong with her? She’d almost killed that kid! She’d wanted to kill him. She’d imagined the richness of his blood coating her tongue and the energy of his life force filling her as she drained it from his body.

  She’d wanted to take his life. To punish him.

  His revelations had first horrified and then infuriated her. Her mother had been alive for who knew how long after she’d been stolen from her loving family, torn away from her only child. DPI had taken her, held her prisoner, probably tortured her and experimented on her. And then they’d killed her.

  Devlin was right. They deserved to die. All of them deserved to die.

  And as she was engulfed in her fury, she gradually became aware that she was not running like a human anymore. She was speeding through the night, seeing the trees and forest floor as blurs of browns and greens in the darkness. She wasn’t thinking about where she was going, but somehow, instinctively she was jumping roots, ducking limbs, zigging and zagging between the tree trunks. The wind sang in her ears, and the rush of power that filled her almost overwhelmed her pain.

  She brought herself to an abrupt halt, her body singing with the thrill of her newfound power. God, how could she feel this way, this alive, this high, when her heart had just been crushed? It was wrong.

  Everything she had spent her entire life working toward had been dissolved in a single conversation with a mortal barely out of his teens. Everything she’d done, everything, had been in hopes of finding and reuniting with her mother. And now it would never happen. Never!

  Her grief returned like a tidal wave, crushing her to the ground. She curled into a fetal position and surrendered to the pain.

  Soon, she felt Devlin’s presence and knew she was no longer alone. His hands came to her, one of them squeezing her shoulder, the other rubbing circles over her back as he knelt beside her, where she lay curled on the ground, shaking.

  “It’s all right, Emma.”

  “It’s not! My mother is dead. They killed her, don’t you get that?” She didn’t look up at him, continued facing the earth, her neck feeling too weak to support the weight of her head.

  “I do now,” he told her. “I didn’t before. At least I wasn’t sure, once I found out about...the book.”

  She knuckled her cheeks. “Fuck the book. I just want my mother.” Bracing her hands on the earth to hold herself up, and wondering if she would find the strength to stand, ever again, she said, “But now it will never happen. Because of those pigs.” Despite her crippling weakness, she managed to lift her head, to look into his eyes. “You were right all along, Devlin. They deserve to die. Every one of them. I won’t ever argue for peace again. I’ve been blogging. And yes, planning a book to try to tell the truth. To educate the ignorant masses. But they’re not just ignorant. They’re cruel. They’re evil. They don’t deserve peace. They deserve death.”

  He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. She saw something in his eyes, some kind of uncertainty, not the triumph she would have expected now that she’d admitted he was right and she was wrong. After a long moment of apparently searching for words he said, “We can still save your father. We can do that.”

  “You still want to help me? Even after what I did back there?”

  “More than ever,” he said. “You’re a fierce and powerful vampiress, Emma Benatar. I don’t ever want to be your opposition, that’s for damn sure.”

  She nodded, the motion jerky, and still kneeling, she tried to push herself at least into an upright position. He caught her shoulders and helped her straighten. “God, why am I so weak? A few minutes ago I was running like the wind.”

  “It’s exhilarating, isn’t it? Of all the things I can do as a vampire, I think running is my favorite.” He rose to his feet, clasping her outer arms and supporting her to stand as well. “You’re weak because of the emotional blow you’ve taken. As vampires, our every sense is heightened, and not just the physical ones. Emotions are supercharged as well. Grief is crippling to us. And joy...joy is beyond ecstasy.”

  “How do you...” She put her hands on his strong shoulders to keep standing. Her legs were like liquid. “How do you recover from this?”

  “You feed. You sleep by day. You heal.”

  “Then you should’ve let me kill that stupid punk back there.” She lowered her eyes, knowing she didn’t mean that. With a heavy sigh, she said, “Thank you. For stopping me.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He was staring into her eyes there in the forest. The songs of a thousand creatures scored the night. An owl hooted plaintively. Tree frogs called for their mates. Crickets sang a heavenly chorus. The leaves shared secrets with every breeze that passed, and even the pine needles were holding a whispered conversation with the night.

  “You need blood,” he said softly. And he reached for her. “Come here.” He pulled her to him, pressing her body to his chest. Cupping the back of her head in his large and powerful palm, he tucked her face into the cradle of his neck. “Take some of mine.”

  His body supported hers. They fit together, their forms molding each to the other. Where he was hard, she softened, and where she pressed he received. His fingers moved in her hair, a caress more tender than she’d ever felt before. Her lips rested against his skin, and she parted them to taste him, just a little. Taking a bit of his neck, she sucked it between her teeth, tasting the salt of him. She let her fangs pinch, and heard his stuttering breath of pleasure. His hips arched into hers, one arm tightening around her waist.

  “Go ahead, Emma. Drink from me.”

  She didn’t even want to argue. The hunger was like a sleeping dragon inside her, and he had stirred it awake. She felt her body begin to tingle and yearn, and the heat behind her eyes told her they were starting to glow. She opened her mouth wider, then bit down hard. The satisfying feeling of her incisors sinking through his flesh like a knife through butter, then popping through the barrier of the jugular, was eclipsed only by the rush of blood, of life, of sheer, unbridled pleasure. Passion came right on its heels, and she snapped an arm around him, jerking his hips tighter to hers, holding his head with the other hand as if she wouldn’t let him pull free. As if she would drain him the way she’d wanted to drain that boy.

  He let her drink, then gently, his hand in her hair, tugged her head away, turned her face to his, and kissed her. And oh, how he kissed her, devouring her mouth almost as hungrily as she’d been devouring his blood. He held her hard to him as he fed from her mouth, so that when he dropped to his knees, she had to drop to hers, and when he pushed her backward to the earth, he came with her, landing on top of her. He pressed her legs apart with a knee, then ground against her, groin to groin. And she ground back, wishing her clothes would dissolve around her.

  She drew a hand between them to undo her jeans, and he pushed them down over her hips, lifting her off the ground to do it. She kicked free of them, still kissing him, over and over. She licked at his mouth, nipp
ed his tongue, tugged on his lips. He wedged a hand between them to push the blouse up, baring her breasts. She tore his shirt open so she could feel the nakedness of his chest against hers, and it was heaven. God, it was heaven!

  Struggling to get free of his pants without disrupting the press of their bodies against each other, he finally managed it, and then there was nothing between them. She felt his thighs on hers, and his hardness nudging and prodding to find entry. And then he did, and when he slid home, her eyes flew wide and she sucked in a noisy, strangled breath.

  Clasping her hips, he held her to him and then slowly, began to move. She wasn’t having the slowness. She sank her nails into his flank and moved her own hips faster, slamming up to meet him as she drew him deep inside her. And he didn’t try to resist. He kissed her harder, deeper, his tongue mirroring the movements of his body inside hers. Harder and faster, he took her, until the climax building up in her became too much to bear. The tightening taking place would surely tear the muscles from their bones if it went on. And yet it did go on, and on, and on, until finally, when she literally could not bear anymore, she exploded in ecstasy. Her body pulsed with her release and the immense pleasure emerged from her lips in the form of his name, echoing endlessly through the forest. He drove harder then, once, twice, and then he was holding her to receive him as he pumped his release into her.

  They lay there, just like that, both of them clinging, him buried inside her as they shivered and the aftershocks rippled through them, each one a little less, until at last they melted, languid and sated against each other.

  He held her in his arms for a long time. The smells of earth, of leaves and moss were rich and pungent, and the breeze that touched her skin was soothing, almost erotic.

  She came back to herself slowly, and had not one single regret. As she nestled in his arms, she realized that she felt a little better. The weakness that her grief had caused in her was gone. She felt strong now, and the pain in her head was like a scraped knee after her mother had smeared it with ointment and patched it with a cartoon character bandage. Still there, but not as sharp.