The burbling sound of water running over smooth stones grew louder as they neared the stream. “We’re close. It should be just past those trees.” The year-round stream had been the reason that Auntie Lee’s forbearers had built their cabin near the rock promontory. As they cleared the line of trees, the afternoon sun warmed her back and changed the moving water into a ribbon of sparkles.
Raina knelt by the stream and motioned for Slade to join her. There was no point in looking for something to scoop up water. Their gear was lost in the heap of her aunt’s cabin. Raina’s heart gave a sad little lurch. “What do you think happened to my Aunt Lee?” she asked as he crouched down beside her at the stream’s edge.
Slade brushed his hand, fingers splayed through his hair, the dimple in his chin growing deeper as his jaw tightened and flexed. “I don’t know. But the blood on the porch wasn’t human. That much I know for sure.”
“How could you tell?” Raina scooped up a handful of water and smoothed it over his chest. The muscles flexed, whether from the icy temperature of the water or her touch she wasn’t sure. She knew Slade affected her. But did she affect him?
“I could smell it from fifty feet away. It was deer blood. Your aunt is alive.” He took a quick sample of the air, sniffing the old woman out. “She went toward town. Do you want me to track her for you?”
Raina shook her head. “We don’t have time for detours. You’re injured, and from what I just saw we’ve got bigger concerns.” The dried crust of ichor began to dissolve, running in dark little rivulets down his sculpted, scarred chest and abs. She resisted the urge to follow the path of the dark water with her fingers. There was no denying the man was built. She scooped up another handful of the snowmelt stream.
A sly smile tilted his lips upward at the edge. “And the answer is yes.”
Her hand stopped midmotion, the icy water trickling out between her fingers. “What?”
He grasped her hand in his much larger one, his thumb stroking the center of her wet palm, making her shiver. “The answer is yes. You affect me just as much as I affect you.”
The shiver turned into a chill. Raina tugged her hand out of his. “Did you just read my mind?”
He tilted his head to the side and lifted his sunglasses with one finger so she could see his eyes. “Even if I couldn’t, I would have known. It’s written all over your face.”
The sunglasses fell back into place and she suddenly noticed her reflection in their smoky mirrorlike surface. Her eyes were bright, her hair loose and full about her face, and her cheeks were a dusty pink beneath the smudges of dirt. The cut on her forehead was an ugly gash, still raw and weepy.
She scrunched up her nose and watched her reflection do the same. “Where? In between the dirt and the gash in my head? Maybe it was a smudge you misread.”
Slade crooked a finger beneath her chin, bringing his mouth perilously close to hers. “I could get closer and try reading it again if you think it would help.”
Raina swatted his hand away, mad at herself for being so damn attracted to him and mad at him for not letting her keep that bit of information to herself. “Are you sure I’m the only one who got hit in the head during that fight?”
Slade laughed, a full-out belly laugh that made her smile against her better judgment. He took his tattered shirt and tore off a piece, wetting it in the stream, and gingerly began to clean her face. Raina’s heart did a little backflip at the tenderness of his touch so at odds with his bad-boy demeanor.
“Maybe I did hit my head, but that wouldn’t change anything. You’re more than you appear, Officer Ravenwing.”
“I think you can drop the Officer now, seeing as how we’ve, well—” She waved her hand about. “Whatever. You know what I mean.”
He stood up, then held one hand out to assist her. “So you want me to call you Ravenwing now?”
She took his hand and was surprised at the warmth of it. “Raina. Just plain Raina would do fine.”
“You know, Raina,” he said as he brushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ear, “I think I’m beginning to like you.”
Chapter 9
Raina kept still, held her breath actually, like a frightened rabbit. He could tell she was waiting to see if he was going to kiss her again. Slade chuckled and kissed her on her damp forehead. He didn’t need to read her thoughts to know she wanted more, but this was hardly the time or place. Besides, he was certain she was still under the influence of the glamour he’d thrown over her and that meant any reactions she was having toward him weren’t purely her own.
She kept fairly silent as they walked through the woods, using her GPS as a guide. He could smell the way back, but he said nothing. If it gave her some security, let her use it.
Slade didn’t know if her sudden quiet streak was because his admission that he liked her had made her uncomfortable or because she was still peeved that he’d read her mind. He shoved the thoughts out of his head and instead kept alert for the movement of anything suspicious. He wasn’t taking a chance of them getting ambushed again no matter how distracting nature girl was.
A light breeze carrying the haylike scent of dried grasses and the woody scent of warm fir needles rustled through the tall tops of the trees, making the leaves shush and the trunks creak. Crickets and birdsong overtook the sound of the stream as they walked farther and farther down the mountainside, winding their way back to Joe Edgewater’s farm.
Slade was frankly glad she didn’t want to talk. While he wanted to just find a dark bit of shade to hide out in and wait out the daylight, he knew their chances would be far better if they made it off the mountain before nightfall.
In addition to the broken bones he already had he knew he was going to have one hell of a sunburn by the time they made it down the mountain. He did everything he could to minimize it and phased himself a leather jacket and a ball cap and some high SPF sunscreen. But beyond wearing his sunglasses and the hat, there was little he could do about the persistent migraine pounding away behind his eyes, as if it was slicing horizontally across his skull.
He limped slightly, the fractures painful although they were healing rapidly thanks to Raina allowing him to feed. Why had she done that? Was she just more susceptible to the glamour than he thought? She had no love of vampires, he was certain of that. Curiosity got the better of him.
“So, Raina, other than me and the shifters, have you actually had much experience with other beings?”
Raina climbed up a large fallen log in the path, then glanced back at him. “You mean do I randomly go around picking out weird stuff with which to endanger myself? No. Not really.”
Slade couldn’t resist the grin that tugged at the corner of his mouth as he leaned up against the log and rested. “Yeah, I could see how all this might be a little weird to you.”
She brushed the back of her hand over her damp forehead and rested her hands on her hips, breathing heavily. They’d been hiking down the mountain at a pretty good clip, considering that he was still injured. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze raked over him. “You broke something in that fall, didn’t you.” It was statement more than a question. “You’ve been limping the last four miles and holding your left arm close to your chest.”
“Few ribs, my left arm, might have cracked some other stuff, but it’s healing fast. Should be good to go by the time we make it off the mountain.”
Her face slackened slightly, but her eyes glittered with anger. “Seriously? Why didn’t you say something! I thought maybe you’d cracked your collarbone or a rib when I was washing you, but I had no idea it was that bad. Are you sure we shouldn’t contact someone to Medevac you out of here?”
Slade threw her a disarming grin. “Vampire, babe. You saw the cuts. I heal fast. But it’s nice of you to worry about little ol’ me.”
Raina snorted. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that, Donovan? I don’t know half the time whether I like you or loathe you.”
“I think you like me at least fifty-f
ive percent of the time. That’s more than half.”
“Be honest with me. How badly are you hurt?” She speared him with a no-nonsense glance.
“Not enough to keep us from getting off the mountain before dark.”
Her glance transformed into a glare. “That’s not a straight answer and you know it.”
Slade shrugged, his ribs protesting with a sharp pain shooting through his back. Teasing her came as naturally as breathing and it kept him from contemplating things he had no business thinking about. “You planning on reading me my Miranda rights before you interrogate me further, ’cause I’m pretty sure my lawyer would tell you I don’t have to answer your questions.”
Raina huffed, throwing her hands in the air. “See, this is when I loathe you. For one moment, just one moment, you seem like a decent, regular guy, then you have to go and ruin it by pulling this macho, I’m-such-a-strong-vampire crap. Why can’t you just be honest with me?”
Her frustration and annoyance scented the air with a mix of stale sweat and smoke. Slade’s face tightened, being able to smell her emotions only adding to the intensity of confusion. An unsettling combination of anger and attraction bubbled up inside him in response. “You want me to be honest with you?”
Raina shuffled her feet to move out of his way as he climbed up on the log beside her. He stared down at her, all broad shoulders and seething attitude, his eyes glittering like chips of cut topaz. “I don’t like cops. They’ve done nothing but cause me a lot of hard times and try to cramp my style. But I think you’re different. You’re special. And I don’t know why in the hell I’m attracted to you, but I am. In fact, if you weren’t a cop I could see us hanging out together, having a few laughs. Is that honest enough for you?” Irritation was in his voice, but she could somehow tell it wasn’t with her so much as with himself.
For a moment Raina couldn’t make her mouth work. She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d expected from him. A confession of deep inner longing? A need to feel alive that pushed him to these wild extremes? But not this. Not him admitting outright that he found himself attracted to her. A bad boy with a heart? Not likely, but she was dying to find out.
Temptation tapped on her shoulder just daring her. You know you want to, it whispered insidiously in her ear.
“So now it’s your turn,” he said, as if they were playing some juvenile game of truth or dare and expected quid pro quo. “Why’d you feed me?”
She sputtered for a moment. “You needed help,” she said as if her actions were common sense, deliberately ignoring the attraction that shimmered like static electricity between them.
“I would have survived.”
“That wolf ripped you open. If you’d been human, you’d have been… Never mind.” She shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes.
Slade caught her hand in his, pulling her attention back in to focus on him. “You’re right. If I’d been mortal I would have died from that attack. But that’s why you’re with me and not some other mortal officer out here. Achilles knew what these shifters are capable of and he didn’t want you risking your life.”
Raina quickly swiped her lips with her tongue. “You vampires are a lot more than people give you credit for.” Deep down Raina knew precisely what had tipped the scales in favor of feeding him. Her curiosity had won the round, but it didn’t mean she’d lost the battle. Not yet.
By nightfall they’d made it down the mountain. Slade took one look at Raina’s compact car and decided a two-and-a-half-hour car trip cramped in that thing was going to drive him over the edge. Time was critical.
“If we drive straight through we could be back to Seattle by ten, maybe ten-thirty,” she said. She appeared from behind the edge of Joe’s barn where she’d changed back into her police uniform once more. She had it in her trunk along with some other extra items. “Here, I brought you a shirt.”
Slade hadn’t missed how she’d been casting glances at his bare torso the whole time they’d been trekking down out of the woods. He purposely hadn’t phased himself a new shirt; one, because the scars the shifter had left on his chest were still tender, and two, because he plain enjoyed goading her and the jacket was plenty protection against the sun on his back. “I’ve got a better idea.”
“Look, Donovan,” she said as she twisted her hair into a knot at the base of her neck and secured it with an elastic band, “This is my investigation and I’m too tired to argue. Let’s just get in the car and get you back to your commander.”
So much for Raina. Officer Ravenwing was back in full command. That was too bad. He’d really enjoyed walking with her when it was just the two of them and her officer persona wasn’t hanging on like a third wheel. “All the better reason you shouldn’t be driving. How opposed would you be to transporting back to Seattle?”
“Transporting?”
“The only way to fly.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly with suspicion. “This doesn’t involve you shifting into a giant bat and me flying on you, does it?”
He chuckled. “No. You’ve just got to hold on tight. Think you can manage that?”
A sexy smile curved her lips. “Why didn’t you say so sooner?”
Slade was amazed at the difference in her attitude toward him. In the back of his mind he wondered if perhaps the glamour hadn’t actually worn off yet. Perhaps that’s why she was so accommodating. Perhaps that’s why she thought she was attracted to him. Glamours were powerful things and she seemed more susceptible to them than most.
Being attacked by the wolves on that mountain had shown Raina one thing—she needed to live in the moment. While getting involved with Slade might be top on the list of really bad ideas for her long-term, in the short term it fell more on the list of what the hell.
As far as anyone else knew, she was doing her job. She was investigating the strange wolves and what had happened to Robbie. And if that meant she had to spend more time in close quarters with the seriously sexy Slade Donovan Blackwolf, so be it. After all, it was only temporary. And once this assignment was over, so would anything they shared. As long as she didn’t let him totally distract her from her duty, she might as well live a little. After all, it wasn’t like anyone from the force was going to be rubbing shoulders with the vampire community.
She stepped up close to Slade and wound her arms around his neck in a loose hold. “So do I have to do anything besides hold on?”
He wrapped a thick arm around her waist and pulled her close until there was not even room for air between the two of them from chest to toe. With her breasts pressed against the solid wall of his chest, all the air left her lungs and she couldn’t seem to find a way to get a sip of it back. Being this close to Slade was getting addictive. Power rolled around him like a dark cloud full of sparks, shots of lightning igniting a storm of desire and need in her.
“You might want to close your eyes, just so it doesn’t make you queasy.” He gently stroked each of her eyelids closed, then ran the tip of his finger over her bottom lip, making it tingle.
“It’s not going to hurt, is it?”
“Just a little tug. That’s all.”
A strong sucking pull from just behind her belly button yanked her inside out, leaving her weightless. The sensation like falling down the long drop of a roller coaster was so intense and so fast that Raina forgot to breathe. But Slade’s arm around her waist remained strong and reassuring and in just seconds she felt firm ground beneath her feet again.
“You can open your eyes now.” The amusement in his voice irritated her a bit.
“Just because I’ve never transported before doesn’t give you the right to laugh at me.” She pushed against his hold and he let her slip easily from his arms. She wobbled and he grabbed her by the elbow, steadying her.
“Take a few deep breaths. It should help.”
“Should?”
He shrugged. “Kind of a guess. I don’t breathe anymore, but I remember it helping.”
“Great.” Raina bent double,
taking deep breaths, then straightened up and took a good look at where they’d landed. She hadn’t seen the large airy atrium before.
“Where are we?”
“At the center of the clan’s complex.”
“I didn’t see this part before. It’s beautiful.” The two-story room had a spalike atmosphere created by the pleasant, quiet bubbling of the water cascading down the stone wall on one end of the well-lit space and a zenlike rock garden on the other. In between were clustered conversation areas of cushy white sofas and chairs and a myriad of palms and other green plants. Overhead, soft light spilled from the frosted panes of glass, as if it were sunny just outside.
“Are you sure we’re under the city?”
“Yep. About two stories.” It hardly looked like something that should be underground beneath the bustling streets of Seattle. The complex was large enough she’d need a map, and even then she wasn’t precisely sure she’d be able to find the security center where she’d first met Slade.
“So where to now?”
“Now we see Achilles. And tell him what happened with the shifters.”
She fell into step beside him as he navigated his way through the atrium toward a set of dark wooden double doors. Slade paused, opening the door and holding it for her. “After you, Officer.”
He’d seemed a bit irritated when she’d insisted on changing back into her uniform. He really had a thing against police officers. But she wanted Slade’s commander to understand that she was here in an official capacity, not as her tribe’s Whisperer, if she still even was one. If nothing else it made her feel more secure and capable when she was in uniform.
The hallway out of the atrium was far smaller and not nearly as well lit. One wall was of old brick, the other of concrete. All along the hallway there were shafts of light coming from skylights formed from small squares of glass set into the ceiling. Some were blacked out, others cracked, but they all looked old, with the odd greenish cast of old glass Coke bottles.
The Half-Breed Vampire Page 9