by Kari Gregg
He was losing her.
During the daylight hours, the pallor of her skin blanched to bloodless alabaster. The purpling of her bruises had intensified, and the slashed skin on her back had ceased knitting. Most telling, Lucien had forced her to feed for the past two days. Before, feeding had been instinctive. Though weakened, she’d fought for survival.
Not anymore.
He ran his fingers through her long, dark hair, comforted by its softness. “I’m sorry, bébé. So sorry.”
Once they’d gone to ground in Chicago, he hadn’t dared leave her. Garrick prowled, closer by the day, and though Lucien didn’t know what had happened to Malachi, whether his partner lived or died, he knew Krystiyan hadn’t followed the vampyr elder. The dark master pursued him and the woman instead. Both Garrick and the master tracked him through the scent Lucien couldn’t avoid leaving in the human prey he trailed behind them. The Russian’s foul odor soon joined Garrick’s seductive scent to permeate Chicago’s West Side.
Lucien couldn’t hunt.
His strength deteriorated with each feeding he missed, and he’d missed too many. He felt the loss in the deadweight of his limbs, the lethargic beat of his heart. Fatigue crept over him, through him, and saturated his every pore and muscle.
His options had dwindled to a blur his mind refused to process.
He needed blood, but he couldn’t feed while their predators were so near.
He couldn’t run from them either.
Kate’s transition had grown more difficult—and dangerous—every night they’d spent on the road to Chicago. He’d flee if he could, but she wouldn’t survive if they ran again. Better to starve than allow Krystiyan to snare them on open ground. And Garrick? Damn his conniving, manipulative soul! Luc would fight him, inch by cursed inch, before allowing the vampyr elder to take her so readily.
Instead, Luc had gambled that he was strong enough to sustain them until the search wavered.
He’d been wrong.
He planted a kiss on the crown of her head.
He must call Garrick.
“I have fed richly, Luc, glutted myself for you and the woman both.”
His eyes flashed open.
He tensed, tucked Kate against his side.
A startled growl emerged from his throat.
Garrick’s eyebrow arched. “You would have called, and I would have answered.” He lifted his arm and slashed at his wrist with sharp incisors. “I found you first.”
The metallic scent of his blood burned Lucien’s nostrils. “Stay away from her!”
“She’s dying.” Garrick shoved his streaming wrist toward him.
Lucien flinched from the first blow of a battle he knew he couldn’t win, but instead—
“Feed.”
Garrick’s fingers dripped sweet crimson.
With the first splash on his lips, Lucien fastened one hand to Garrick’s meaty forearm. He held it in his tight grasp, and bending to the wound, he drank.
Had he been so dry? So cold?
He hadn’t noticed.
But as blood poured into his ravenous mouth, he recognized the disorientation hunger had wrought in him. If he—a three centuries-old headhunter—was so frail, how much weaker would his ward be?
“Restore yourself, and your ward will feed from you.”
She would live.
She must live.
Lucien clamped his teeth into the wound, satisfied when Garrick’s breath hissed at the roughness.
He drank.
Within moments, Garrick’s strength seeped into his drained body, first as a trickle, then as a flood. Nerve endings snapped. His heartbeat doubled, tripled, until his heart pounded against the wall of his chest as the power of the elder vampyr’s blood stirred it to brutal life. Flush with the virus that made them vampyr, Garrick’s blood singed his veins like an electric current and so filled him with life, with energy, and blessed God, the power, Lucien sucked greedily.
“Drink deeply. The woman will need it.”
With the first urgent demands of his hunger appeased, Lucien slid his fingers into Kate’s hair. Cradling her scalp, he guided her mouth to the opening he’d made on his chest.
She sniffed at fresh scarlet gurgling from the cut, her nose wrinkling. They hadn’t time to wait for Garrick’s blood to steep inside his, but traces of Lucien’s familiar scent would tempt her. It had to.
It did.
Kate traced the wound with the tip of her pink tongue.
Lucien’s body clenched.
The violent bite of his teeth hurt Garrick, but Lucien couldn’t help himself. His former partner had abandoned headhunting—abandoned him—when the temptation to turn had drawn perilously close. Garrick had said killing had become attractive to him. Too alluring. So he’d laid down his sword before he became what they fought to destroy—a monster.
Lucien had understood.
He’d tried.
But he’d missed him, missed his mentor and friend.
And God have mercy, he’d missed Garrick’s blood.
He couldn’t break free, would savor the feast he’d yearned for. The anticipation of Kate strengthening, taking the undiluted power of elder blood from his veins, maddened him. “Drink, chère. Please.”
Her mouth flitted over the opening.
Lucien yanked his from Garrick to sever the link, but his old partner shoved his wrist forward, forcing his blood into Lucien when Kate gently suckled. Lucien’s back bowed, nearly unseating her, but Garrick clamped down on her shoulder to hold her to the wound and maintain the intimacy of the connection.
Lucien shouted rage. He choked on hot blood forced past his gritted teeth. Garrick’s presence speared through his mind, searching for Kate. Lucien cursed, marshaled his power to protect his ward while she took the sustenance she so desperately needed from him.
Garrick’s will battered his. Determined. Violent.
Excruciating.
Nausea coiled like vipers in the pit of his stomach. He clawed at Garrick’s wrist, fighting to wrench it away.
Garrick must not reach Kate.
The son of a bitch would fry his brain before he’d allow the link with her.
“Only a moment, Luc. Just to be sure…”
“Get away from her!”
When he launched his body forward, toward his mentor instead of away, Garrick stumbled. His wrist fell from Lucien’s mouth. Kate slid from his chest. Once his fist connected with Garrick’s jaw, Lucien’s gaze darted to where she’d curled into a fetal ball on the stained linoleum.
Cracked and crumbling plaster spilled to the floor when Garrick crashed into the wall. “Enough,” he shouted.
Lucien scooped Kate from the floor and sprinted for newspaper-covered windows—their only chance for escape.
Garrick lashed out his hand and shoved them toward the sofa. “No!”
Lucien used his momentum to pivot, angled his body between Kate and the danger Garrick represented. His lips curled to a sneer. “I’ll see you dead first.”
“Hold, Luc.” Garrick stepped back, hands raised. “Hold!” Blood slid in a vermillion trickle from his wrist. “Krystiyan is three blocks away. He’ll slaughter us.”
“You won’t take her.” Lucien let Kate tumble to the ratty cushions of the sofa and reached behind it to slide his sword free from its snug hiding place. “I’ll have your head first.”
Garrick’s blue eyes, blank, dead, studied him long minutes. He fell to his knees and clasped his hands at the base of his spine. He bent forward, dark hair fanning at the nape to expose his vulnerable neck. “If you want it, take it.”
Lucien tightened his grip on the hilt.
His stance widened for the more powerful blow.
Every instinct inside him screamed for the kill.
That horrifying impulse made the sword bobble in his grasp.
He shook his head, stunned.
Kate was his ward. The responsibility fell to him to ease her transition to vampyr. She was his to care
for, his to guide and protect.
That and no more.
Only dark masters forced females to remain with them. Or God forbid, forced a sick travesty of what mating should be. Images flashed through his mind—the masters he and Garrick had hunted together, the vampyr Lucien hunted still. David, who had taken Kate, tortured her…
He dropped one hand from the hilt of his sword to reach for her. “Kate?”
“The others, Luc. They will not be far behind.” Kneeling on the floor, Garrick peered at him through thick, dark lashes. “I won’t take her from you, but they will. They’ll kill you to take her.”
Lucien stooped until his fingers brushed her pale cheek.
“Where will you run that I can’t find you? That Krystiyan won’t? Let me help. Kill me or let me help you.”
“You can’t have her.”
Garrick’s steady gaze never left his. “No. Not yet.”
Pain exploded inside him.
Right or wrong, Lucien couldn’t bear the thought of losing Kate. She could save Garrick’s life, but the need to keep her for himself, his and his alone, still ripped at Lucien’s gut. His eyes squeezed shut as he fought for control. Sweet darkness beckoned, the darkness of never, ever letting her go.
But that was a battle to be fought later.
For now, his old partner was right.
Kate must be protected.
He wasn’t strong enough to guard her alone, and among his brother vampyr, there was no one Lucien trusted more than Garrick. They must work together—again—to defend her. Take her where Krystiyan and the others dared not follow.
He lowered the sword, dropped it to the floor with a deafening clang. He lifted Kate into his arms. “If she doesn’t accept you—”
“I’ll beg you for death.”
Lucien prayed, when the time came, his integrity would be as strong. “All right.”
* * *
They drove through the night.
At sunrise, the tinted glass of the SUV couldn’t spare her tender skin, so Lucien pulled a blanket over the nest he’d created for them in the backseat. Hour after hour, she woke. And fed. Mile by mile, her mouth moved over his skin, blindly seeking the wound he made for her.
By midday, his strength flagged.
Garrick reopened the wound on his wrist and reached behind him to offer his blood.
Lucien had fed extravagantly, so he fed Kate when she woke half an hour later.
Day faded to night.
He noted the telltale pinking of her cheeks. He tested her back with tentative fingers, pleased and alarmed to find her skin knitting. Pleased, because her body was mending quickly with the aid of Garrick’s elder blood. Alarmed, because soon Kate’s feedings would no longer be instinctive. Soon, she would grow strong enough to overrule her new vampyr nature.
Soon, Kate would choose.
Excitement made his hands shake. Garrick’s presence withered to a minor distraction. All Lucien could see was Kate. All he wanted to see was Kate. Feel, smell, touch—his world narrowed to his ward, and nothing else mattered.
Did humans feel this fascination for their infants? Did they, like he, obsess over their child’s every need? He watched her, wondered at her, was struck dumb by the miracle of her. Only awareness of his growing absurdity prodded him to resist counting fingers and toes.
The vampyr inside him had ensured he’d never father children. The virus would not tolerate that waste of precious energy and had sterilized his reproductive system upon his infection to guarantee it. Fuel was used to maintain and repair his body, for that purpose alone, and not even for his benefit.
His prolonged lifespan was a biological necessity—for the virus. Longevity gave the virus the opportunity to search out the meager humans susceptible to it. Survival demanded that it spread, and the most efficient means of doing so was robbing its host of the same capability. The vampyr virus reproduced. Slowly, inevitably.
Lucien never would.
Kate was no less his daughter, though. She was his ward, the child of his heart if not his loins, and soon, the transition changing her from human to vampyr would come to its fruitful conclusion. And if God was with him, she would live.
His eyes met the glacial blue of Garrick’s in the rearview mirror. He’d been watching her.
Of course.
Lucien traced the line of her jaw with a finger, gentle so he wouldn’t wake her. “What do you think she’ll be like?”
The vampyr elder refocused his attention on the highway. “If she survives?”
“No, I wonder what she’ll be like if she dies.” Lucien’s lips pursed in annoyance. “Stupidity doesn’t flatter you, Garrick.”
He grunted. “I was smart enough to find you.”
Lucien’s attention wandered to her chin. It narrowed to a point that would’ve seemed painfully sharp if not for the concave of a wicked dimple. “I think she’ll be fun. Playful.”
“Not bloody likely.” Garrick snorted. “Not my mate.”
Lucien studied her full, wide lips, plump now and rosy with her body’s new supply of blood. When she slept without pain of the transition tormenting her, her mouth curved sometimes, just one corner. More than once, Lucien had wanted to wake her and ask her to share the joke. “You don’t laugh anymore. The war took that from you.” His finger traced the upslope of her nose. “I think she’ll give your joy back to you.”
“Fun is for children. My mate will be steady, single-minded. A hard worker.”
Her forehead furrowed to a shallow crease that delighted him. Kate was young for a human, so the line between her eyebrows hadn’t etched there, but the promise of it creased her smooth skin now.
Oh, she’d lead them a merry chase, the both of them.
Lucien chuckled, already anticipating it. “Steady? Single-minded? Are you describing your mate or yourself?”
Garrick glared at him in the rearview mirror. “There’s nothing wrong with diligence or the resolve to do what must be done.”
“No, there isn’t, but you insist those qualities and a sense of humor are mutually exclusive.” Lucien grinned. “I think she’ll prove you wrong.”
Garrick grumbled vague dissent, his concentration returning to highway traffic.
Lucien’s attention returned to Kate.
* * *
She woke next at midnight. Ferocious hunger twisted her limbs and forced a whimper from her lips. When Lucien urged her to take from a fresh wound at his throat, she balked. Heart beating a panicking staccato, he nudged her mouth back to the opening, but she clenched her teeth and pressed her lips shut.
Lucien held her to the wound. Heart-wrenching minutes passed while his will fought hers.
Her self-control at an end, she reared back, nostrils flaring at the scent of blood. “No…”
He cupped her jaw with a firm hand and guided her open mouth back to his throat. When she involuntarily swallowed the blood filling it, he shuddered. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, bébé. Feed.”
Yet unable, he knew, to fight the demands of the vampyr inside her and him both, Kate drank.
* * *
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Southern France
AD 1727
The chill of the stable spiked into the shell of Garrick’s body as he waited for Luc.
Waited to live or die.
Waited for his head to stop spinning.
How had Luc known?
Garrick had wanted Nathaniel to pay for the evil he’d inflicted for so many years that Garrick couldn’t remember when vengeance hadn’t ruled him. He’d longed for justice. He’d needed it more than he had desired his freedom, his life, Luc’s life…more than everything else. Or so he’d believed.
After three short decades, Luc knew him too well, though. The fledgling vampyr had realized there was one thing Garrick craved more than revenge—forgiveness.
He needed to atone.
Luc—a lowly slave and the least of them—would help.
So Garrick fought when exhaustion
would’ve dragged him under. He focused the little power remaining to him to force his heart to beat.
And he shared Luc’s feral excitement when the young vampyr selected his human prey in the keep. Once he’d drunk his fill, Luc made for the rear staircase as Garrick had recommended. His breath caught when Luc crept through the servant’s entrance of Nathaniel’s private baths and released in a slow hiss as the vampyr cracked the door to the bedchamber to spy the dark master within.
Nathaniel stood alone, his back turned.
Perfect.
He felt the strain of muscle in his own biceps when the slave lifted the sword. Garrick’s teeth gritted with the pendulous swing of the first blow.
Blood.
Spilled blood.
Paralyzing hunger stiffened Luc’s body as his master’s blood beckoned to him—taunting, cruel, and so horribly good. Mesmerized by the sight and scent, Luc should’ve been helpless.
As though Garrick would allow Nathaniel that last line of defense. “Kill him.” Garrick’s mind reached for Luc’s, intensifying their connection to shake the young vampyr free of the thrall of Nathaniel’s ruinous blood. “Kill him!”
Heeding Garrick’s urgency, Luc lifted the sword.
Again.
And again.
The last of Nathaniel’s blood influence over Garrick fled, those cords severed by each downward thrust of Luc’s sword. After more than a century, Nathaniel’s sway over Garrick had run deep. Prizing those threads away? Excruciating.
Garrick would’ve screamed if he’d had the breath.
He would’ve gasped, begged, and groaned.
Sweat dotted his brow. His body trembled, too weak to fight the pain. Or accept it.
Sharing Luc’s bloodlust at the kill, Garrick felt the young vampyr’s exhilaration rocketing through his beleaguered head. Garrick let it take him.
His world faded to black.
* * *