Silence. Nina didn’t know what she expected. An argument?
“I want to see you again,” Sam finally said.
“This is too weird; I can’t do this. Sorry.” Nina spun on her heel and told her feet to go. Hoping if she just went, she’d eventually find something familiar. She ignored the sharp feeling in her chest as she moved farther down the street.
***
Sam seriously debated not following her. He didn’t want it to look like he was stalking her. But it was late at night. And in this neighborhood, she really should have protection, at least against the supernaturals that one might stumble across.
His hard-on was still prevalent as he followed slowly in the direction she’d gone. Her scent tinged the air, and he pulled in a deep breath. Sam wasn’t surprised she’d freaked out. He’d only ever told one other woman he wasn’t quite human. Then she’d told him her secret: she didn’t want to be with him anymore.
That had been just before he’d gone off and lost his team. The regret he’d felt over the relationship with his ex didn’t hurt as much as it used to. Sam was just more interested in moving on. She’d ended up falling for his cousin. It was enough that he was reminded of his relationship failure every single family reunion when both his cousin and his wife gushed over their new baby.
Sam didn’t resent that happiness anymore. He wanted it for himself. And that meant he couldn’t let Nina fall through his fingers. He at least had to try and see if she was the one he’d been waiting for his whole life.
He quickened his pace, mind finally made up, his limp only hindering him slightly. As he rounded the corner to the main entrance of the bar, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Nina was no longer alone.
A man stood in the shadows beside her as she looked up at him, her blonde hair the only thing that was illuminated under the neon red of the bar sign. Sam heard her chuckle, and jealousy poured through his system, making his energy levels soar. It was only when he heard the man laugh in return that his protective instincts kicked in too.
Every part of the gargoyle inside urged him to walk toward them.
And every atom of his body knew what he would find.
“I thought you were dead.” Sam finally bit out.
Nina’s indrawn breath didn’t shake his intense stare as he pointed his gun at his old friend.
Finally the man who’d been hovering in the shadows stepped forward, and his face was everything Sam remembered from the past. It was the cause of his nightmares for the past year and not something he was ever likely to forget.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t my old friend, Sam. Long time, no see.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes as his gaze dropped to Sam’s leg. “What an expected surprise.”
Sam allowed the silence to stretch as the tension mounted.
Emotions he hadn’t felt for over a year rushed his body, and he could barely form the words. “Why did you do it, Dan? We were your team.” Visions of his other two best friends floated across his mind.
“I got offered something sweeter than friendship, Sam.” He paused. “Money. More money than you could ever dream of.”
The chuckle from Dan told Sam everything he needed to know. Dan was a sell-out. Anger boiled through him as he fought his anger. He didn’t want to do this in front of Nina. He didn’t want to show her that side of himself. She stood there, looking afraid, glancing surreptitiously between the both of them. Not quite understanding but knowing that she shouldn’t be there for it.
“That money killed me off and bought a new life.”
Sam found it hard to have a reasonable conversation. “Was it the crooks we were tracking that you sold us out to?”
Dan smiled slightly and nodded his head. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have considered it for almost ten million as well, Sam. Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot. You’re such a goody-two-shoes you never thought of anyone else except yourself and your precious morals.” The jovial Dan was gone. Now he saw the man his best friend had turned into.
“I would never have considered putting my team—the men I’d grown up with and trained with and worked with—in any danger.” Sam looked him up and down, taking in his expensive suit and shiny boots. “I guess we’re not alike at all.”
“Bullshit! We’re alike, Sam. We both liked taking what wasn’t ours—”
“That was different, Dan. We were stopping the bad guys. A few spoils of war were nothing. You betrayed us. You betrayed me. Do you know how much I didn’t want to believe it was you, even after I gained evidence? You were my best friend, and I loved you. We all did.” If he was expecting to see guilt on Dan’s face, he was mistaken and all the heartache over his lost buddies bubbled to the surface.
“Well, that was just your weakness, then.” Dan shrugged, “But since we’re both here, I’m going to finish what I started. You shouldn’t have survived that blast, Sam. And you’re the only one that can place me there, regardless of all the evidence you say you have.” As Dan moved out of the shadow, Sam saw the glint of light on the gun he held pointed at Nina. He lowered his own, feeling sick to the stomach. . “Why don’t you drop that gun of yours and kick it over to the road, like a good man.” Sam did as he was asked, trying to formulate a plan. “I’ve spent a long time looking for you. I’d never have thought to look in the most obvious place—a portal. Good job, team leader. Who’d have thought I’d have stumbled across you when I was meeting a vampire at a seedy little bar? I thought I was getting lucky with one of those pretty ladies in the bar tonight. Instead, I found you.” He took off the gun safety and smiled at Sam. “Au revoir, Sammy.”
Nina hadn’t moved up to that point, but her reactions were as quick as lightning as she shoved at Dan’s arm. The shot fired but flew past Sam. He went to move, jump at Dan, but his bad leg hindered him. He wasn’t fast enough to stop Dan from catching Nina with a glancing blow to the side of the head. She crumpled to the ground, the wound at her temple oozing blood..
Sam reached Dan as he was about to shoot her, and he knocked him on his back and followed him down, the gun skidding away from Dan. Both scrambled to grab the weapon. A few swift punches to the face stunned Dan just enough to leave him flailing. Sam looked at Nina. She was up and backed against a wall, eye puffy and oozing blood. He needed to get her out of there before she got hurt even more.
“Nina, go. You don’t need to see this.” He didn’t glance at her again but saw out of the corner of his eye as she inched away from the wall.
“You motherfucker. What makes you think you’d get away with hurting those I care for again?” Sam pulled the gun from his belt and aimed it at the man who had ruined his life by taking away his career and his friends, all for his own selfish whims.
If Sam had known Dan was alive, he’d have never stopped looking for him. Now he had the perfect opportunity to try and remedy something that was long overdue. “I’m going to do you a favor, Dan. That night, you should have died instead of Scott and Jason. And now you will.” The gun was cocked at Dan’s head.
“You wouldn’t shoot me. You want to tear me to shreds with your bare hands; you just can’t do that anymore, can you? You’re passed it.”
Sam listened to what he was saying. “You’re right, I do, and you’re right, I can’t. But I also have a gun to do the hard work for me.” Sam shot him in the head and watched his former best friend fall back to the ground and bleed out. He knew the moment he was gone: the blood started to disappear until it was gone completely, and his body shrunk down and hardened into rock. Dan had gone back to his natural state—stone. A gargoyle started off in stone—created, rather than born—and ended in stone. A fact that Sam had always admired. Dan had been part of the griffin group. As the stone formed into the ugly grimace of one, Samreflected on what he’d just done. It might have been technically wrong, but he’d done the world a favor.
Sam kneeled on the ground next to the gargoyle and said a silent prayer for his team, Jason and Scott, before getting up and turning away from Dan.
They walked slowly back through another side alley, and they came back out on the street they’d made love in. It had been a hell of an eventful night.
He turned, unlocked his truck, and opened the door for Nina. She got in without a word.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said, and Nina nodded. He shut the door behind him, picked up his gun that he tucked into the back of his jeans alongside Dan’s, and made his way back to the rear entrance of the bar. He made a quick phone call to his guy inside and seconds later the neon lights went off. They were done for the night.
He picked up the ugly stone gargoyle and walked back the way he came, his limp more pronounced as he held the heavy statue. Sam rounded the flatbed of his truck and placed the gargoyle inside. Sam would put the gargoyle to rest on top of a building in the city with all the other fallen gargoyles. Although what he’d done was atrocious, Dan didn’t deserve to be smashed. There was still a part of Sam that remembered all the good times they’d shared.
And hopefully having a life of eternal bird shit would eat at the gargoyle anyway. Sam chuckled and walked around the truck to the driver side door and got in. “Thank you for saving me back there, Nina.”
Everything was silent for a few moments before he heard her voice.
“I’m not sure what to say,” Nina said quietly. “I think I just witnessed you murdering a man and him turning into a solid troll.”
“A griffin,” he said, and Nina turned to look at him like he’d farted in church, but he carried on. “Dan turned into a griffin gargoyle.”
“Whatever.” She pushed her hair away from her eyes and stared out of the window. “Either way, I’m pretty sure I’m on Candid Camera.” Nina sighed.
Sam laughed, started the engine of the truck, and pulled away.
CHAPTER FOUR
They were at her house in no time, the ride silent in the dead of night. He guessed that neither of them were particularly in the mood for small talk. Nina walked to her door, and Sam automatically followed. She opened it and stepped in, making no move to bar his entry, so he kept going into her house.
The hallway was painted a bright, pastel yellow, and on it, pictures of all kinds lined the wall. Sam stepped closer to an oil painted landscape and admired it. Then he noticed the signature in the corner and recognized the word “Nina” from the scrawl.
He slowly moved through the narrow space, looking at every one of them in turn. “You painted all of these.”
“Yes.”
He was in awe of the talent. Everything from landscapes to seascapes, portraits to sketches lined the wall. Sam turned back to Nina and watched her carefully. She had taken off her boots and was peering into a small mirror on the wall by the front door, prodding at her eye. There was a small cut on her orbital bone, and it leaked blood.
“Where’s your bathroom?” He took hold of her free hand, and she led him down the hallway into a small room.
Sam tried not to feel the heat rushing from her hand into his and reached over to run some water. He saw some cotton balls on a shelf to his right and took some out of the wrapper, soaking them. He opened her cabinet and found some antiseptic cream.
Sam sat Nina down on the edge of the bathtub and proceeded to gently wipe at the clotted blood on her face. He watched as eyelids fluttered shut as he dabbed cream onto her cut, and he took that advantage to have a good look at her face.
Her beautiful translucent skin was soft and perfect, her lips full and kissable. And her nose… Sam couldn’t help himself; he gently ran his finger down the bridge and watched her eyes flutter open. A dreamy expression gazed back at him.
Then he had a thought. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay, I guess. The side of my face is throbbing.” She reached up and touched at her eye gingerly.
“I meant, how are you feeling after the siren song earlier?”
Nina stared back at him and blinked. “The what?”
Sam watched her carefully for a short time, wondering how much he should tell her. He busied himself discarding the cotton balls into a small bin, then soaking the wash cloth under the cold tap for a while.
“What’s a siren song?” Nina asked again, this time her voice a little more determined.
Sam turned around and placed the folded towel against her puffy eye, and Nina winced. “This will help until we ice it.”
“Are you going to tell me what a siren song is?”
Sam sighed and leaned back against the bathroom door. “When you and your friends were in the bar tonight, so was a merman—”
“A merman? You mean a man fish?” Nina laughed, then sobered. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Sam nodded.
“Why shouldn’t you be? There’s a whole new world out there of bizarre creatures, and now I know all about them.”
Sam took a moment to figure out what he would say next and to wonder if all this new information was going to fry the poor woman’s sense of reality. “He was looking for a mate and put out a siren song to all the women in the bar.” Sam hesistated as he saw her face change but carried on. “Most of the women became susceptible to him, and they felt, well, horny.”
“Horny,” she said the word out loud, but it took a second for it to sink in. “You mean it was… Oh God!” She buried her face in her hands before pulling back, anger filling her cheeks with color.. He definitely wouldn’t be telling her that Dan had more than likely witnessed the whole moment when they’d lost themselves in each other.
“What we did, what we felt, was all a lie.”
***
“No, it wasn’t. At all. It was just slightly exaggerated.”
He grimaced at his word choice, she noticed. Nina got up off the side of the bathtub and paced around the small bathroom. “I can’t believe I had sex with you outside.” Nina put her hand through her hair and grimaced, her face hurt like hell. “If I ever get hold of that man fish, I’ll rip his balls off and stick them in a stew!” Sam snorted, and Nina stared him down. “This isn’t funny. I’m a respectable woman. What if someone had seen me?”
“No one saw us. And what if they had? They’d have just seen a beautiful woman in the throes of passion, and it would have been the highlight of their life.”
Nina blushed. None of this made sense to her. She’s been thrust into a world of paranormal weirdness, and she didn’t even know what she was doing here, in her bathroom, with a man with whom she’d felt more than she had for a long time. It seemed her only way out was to lie to him because she couldn’t do this. It was too much, too soon.
“I’m a married woman, Sam. I can’t do this sort of thing.”
Sam’s head shot up, and he glared at her. “You’re married?” He stood to his full height, and she saw the pain in his face. From putting his weight back on his leg again or her revelation, she wasn’t sure.
She knew she couldn’t lie to him completely. “Yes, well, I’m widowed. John died two years ago.” Sam looked like he wanted to turn and run. Half of her wanted him to do just that. A one-night stand was all she’d craved out of tonight. But what she really wanted, what she didn’t want to admit, was that even though she didn’t know how to react with this man, he was everything she wanted right at that moment.
At the silence in the room, Nina continued. “I’m not ready for this, Sam. I didn’t start tonight wanting to get into anything. I just wanted…” What had she wanted?
“Yes?” Sam asked quietly, stepping toward her.
“Just a warm body.” Even as she said the words, they made her disgusted with herself.
Sam stopped and smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Was I warm enough for
you, Nina?” He reached out to brush his finger over her lips. The motion heated her belly and made all the sensations she’d felt earlier rush back and overtake her.
“I can be just a warm body again, sweetheart.” Sam’s words didn’t match his tone. She shivered as his fingers grazed her chin before slipping down to her neck, and tracing her throat and over her cleavage.
Nina found her voice as her eyes closed, desire spreading lower in between her legs. “I didn’t want to use you, Sam. I’m so sorry.” But guilt was fast fading as her mind became entranced with feeling again what she had before. Nina leaned into his hand and made a step toward him.
“I’m willing to give you my body to use, Nina,” Sam said quietly. “All I want from you is to give me yours without guilt or doubt in return.”
She looked into his eyes, but they were blank now. She really wanted to take what he offered with both hands. Dare she? She knew it was wrong on many levels. It wasn’t proper to have this type of relationship with a man, not a businesswoman of her standing in the community. But right now, making love with Sam was everything to her. Still, memories stayed. John played into her mind; her five-year marriage was battling with all the wonderful things she’d felt with Sam.
“I don’t think I can.” Had she really meant to say that? Moments of silence made the air thick, and she found herself holding her breath, not knowing what to expect.
“Why the hell am I here, then?” He took his fingers from her skin. Instantly her body chilled. He opened the bathroom door and strode out toward the front entrance. Sam stopped at the door, his hand resting on the doorknob, and turned to look at her after she followed him into the hall…
“You need to let it go, Nina. Your husband’s dead. You’re not. I’m not. Why can’t we appreciate each other’s bodies in exactly the way we’re supposed to?” He turned again and pulled open the door, letting a blast of air into the toasty house. Stepping outside, she heard his footsteps fade into the night.
Nina hesitated for only a few seconds before she ran to the door and held it open with both hands, certain she was mad for even considering what she was about to do. “How do I know what we have is real? How do I know what I’m feeling isn’t because of a bloody fish doing his voodoo on me?”
The Protectors: The Blood Bar Chronicles, Book 2 Page 10