Tall, Dark & Heartless: A Pyte/Sentinel Series Novel

by R. L. Mathewson

  He had a vague recollection of what he went through when he first woke up to the changes and he couldn't remember it being this bad that he couldn't move without agonizing pain and he sure as hell didn't black out because of it. This wasn't right. She shouldn't be suffering.

  "I thought Pytes healed quickly," Jax said as he reached for the second box of donuts he left on the nightstand.

  Caine considered telling the shifter to take his food and get the fuck out, but he needed him and unfortunately for him, the shifter needed to eat a shitload of food after a shift. He forced himself to focus back on the woman curled up in the middle of the bed and felt his stomach twist. His mate was suffering and he didn't know how the hell to stop it.

  He reached out to give her thigh a comforting rub only to cause Danni to let out a blood curdling scream that had him yanking his hand back and his heart thundering against his chest as realization dawned on him.

  She'd been poisoned.

  "What the fuck!" Jax roared seconds later when Caine had him by the throat and slammed him against the wall, cracking the drywall. Large chunks fell among the debris as Caine pulled him forward so that he could slam the man against the wall, again. This time he sent the shifter through the wall and into the large bathroom.

  With a growl, he followed after the shifter as Jax's eyes flashed silver in warning. He was with an Alpha and the man held his strength in human form. He could also change at will, but Caine didn't give a rat's ass at the moment. He'd happily kick the shit out of him as a man or as Fido, he didn't care which at the moment. His mate couldn't tolerate sound, light or touch, all her senses were fucked up and for a Pyte that meant poison.

  "Back off, Caine," Jax said in a voice that was more of a growl as his long fangs slowly slid down, ready to tear Caine's throat out.

  "You poisoned my mate, asshole," Caine said as he went after the man seconds from shifting into a large beast.

  Instead of shifting, Jax stilled. "How the fuck did I poison her, you asshole? I wasn't even here when this started!" he snapped, sounding truly pissed.

  "You gave us the blood!" he roared, feeling his fangs grow impossibly longer as he truly considered tearing apart one of his oldest friends.

  "You were there when the order came in, Caine," Jax ground out. "Besides that you would have scented it!"

  Not everything, Caine reminded himself as a low vicious growl escaped his lips.

  "I didn't poison the blood, Pyte," Jax snapped as he shoved Caine into the wall and held him there. "Now calm the fuck down so that we can figure this out and help her!"

  "I am calm!" he shouted as the fact that Danni wasn't crying out in pain registered in his mind. "Son of a bitch!" He shoved the Alpha away, stormed through the open doorway and headed to the bed only to find Danni right where he left her except for one very important thing.

  Danni wasn't breathing.

  "I don't hear a heartbeat," Jax said, sounding close to panicking as he came up behind him and for good reason.

  If Caine lost Danni he would tear this fucking world apart and everyone in it.

  "She's a fucking Pyte. I can smell it on her so why the fuck isn't her heart beating?" Jax muttered nervously as he crawled onto the bed and pulled Danni onto her back, exposing his mate's body.

  "Don't. Touch. Her," he bit out through clenched teeth as he shoved the shifter away from her and scooped her up in his arms.

  "Caine," Jax said, holding up his hands in front of him in a placating manner as he slowly came towards him, "I'm trying to help her, but I can't do that unless you let me look at her."

  His breath sped up and his heart thundered in his chest as he looked down at the woman in his arms that appeared to be dead, but she couldn't be. He'd changed her and knew that she'd turned. She had fangs for fuck's sake! He could smell the change on her even now.

  She couldn't die on him. She was just hurt, he told himself. As soon as he figured it out he'd make this okay and take care of her like always. He'd fix this, he promised her as he kissed her cool forehead.

  "Caine, I need you to stay in control while we figure this out," Jax said calmly as he pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket.

  "Who are you calling?" he asked in a guttural tone, never taking his eyes off his beautiful mate.

  "I'm calling Ethan. If anyone would know what's wrong with her it's him," Jax said absently as he dialed.

  The Alpha's friendship with the vampire always confused him, especially given the vampire's tendency to slaughter shifters. Then again the man did have a reason. Over four centuries ago his son, a sixteen year old Pyte who hadn't yet made his transition, was kidnapped and God only knows what else by a pack up in Maine.

  Personally, Caine thought the pack probably tore the kid apart to make sure that he didn't reach his maturity, but the vampire wouldn't hear it. He was hell-bent on finding his son and had no qualms with killing anyone that stood in his way, something that Caine actually respected about the cold bastard.

  Jax was right. If anyone would know what was wrong with Danni it would be Ethan. For four centuries the vampire has searched the world looking for his son and gathering any information that he could find about Pytes. If the bastard failed to help them then he'd be making a little side trip later to rip his heart out.

  He looked down at the beautiful pale woman in his arms as Jax paced the room, explaining the situation to Ethan over the phone. She was so beautiful, fierce, funny, a smart ass and made him feel alive. He couldn't be expected to live an eternity without her. It would be his own personal hell, living without the woman who was made for him.

  "I love you, Danni," he whispered reverently as he leaned down and brushed his lips against Danni's cool ones. When he pulled back, part of him was hoping and praying that was all she needed to hear before she came back to him and kicked his ass. He'd happily take it too. As long as she came back to him he'd do anything.

  "Hey!" Jax snapped. "I said Ethan wants to know if there was something wrong with her when she was human."

  "She was perfect," he said in a daze as he continued to gaze down at her, "absolutely perfect."

  "There was nothing wrong with her? She wasn't hurt or anything? Caine? Caine!"

  "What?" he snapped, dragging his eyes away from the woman in his arms to glare at the impatient shifter.

  "I'm trying to find out if there was anything wrong with her, you jackass! Did you change her because she was hurt or to take her as your mate? Ethan needs to know."

  He gave himself a mental shake as he forced himself to focus. "Her heart stopped," he said, his eyes moving back down to his mate as he sat down on the bed and leaned back against the large headboard, careful with the woman in his arms.

  "Come on, Danni," he said softly as he gently ran his fingers through her beautiful hair, pushing it back away from her face.

  "Ethan said that wouldn't explain this, Caine. Was there anything else going on with her?"

  "She was dying," he mumbled as he pulled her even closer so that he could rest his cheek against her cool forehead.

  "From what?" Jax pressed.

  "Cancer," he choked out, still unable to believe that he could have lost her.

  "What kind?"

  "I don't know," he mumbled as he nuzzled his cheek against her forehead.

  "Did you scent it on her?"

  "No," he said hollowly, knowing that he would have dragged her ass to every specialist in the world if he had.

  "Thank fucking God," Jax said as he hung up the phone.

  "What's wrong with her?" he asked, willing his mate to stop scaring the hell out of him and wake up. She had to wake up.

  "It's poison," Jax said as he allowed his fangs to drop.

  Caine frowned as he watched the man bite into his own wrist. "That's what I told you in the first place, asshole. How exactly is this helpful?"

  "Because," Jax said as he climbed onto the bed and reached out and gently pried Danni's mouth open, "it wasn't the blood. It's the cancer."

>   "Bullshit!" Caine snapped as he watched the shifter place his bleeding wrist against Danni's slack mouth. "I changed her. My blood fixed her."

  Jax nodded as he got comfortable in front of them. He kept his eyes on Danni's face and away from her large teardrop shaped breasts, his large teardrop shaped breasts, which is why he didn't kill the bastard for coming this close to her while she was naked.

  "Didn't you listen in?" Jax asked as he gripped his wrist and squeezed, forcing more blood into Danni's mouth.

  "No," he said hollowly as he focused on his mate. She wasn't swallowing and her heart hadn't started beating.

  He learned long ago how to control his abilities to the point that everything came naturally now. If he wanted to, he could have heard the entire phone conversation with very little effort, but he'd been too focused on his mate.

  "Well, according to Ethan, she should have overfed for the first couple of weeks on fresh blood. None of that bagged shit for her and especially not human blood for a while. She needs immortal blood to help kill the poison that shut down her system," Jax said, releasing his wrist to rub Danni's jaw in an attempt to get her to swallow.

  Caine kept his eyes locked on Danni's ghostly white face, silently pleading with her to swallow as he frowned. "What the hell are you talking about? My blood killed it and made her immortal. It's gone."

  "Have you tasted her blood since she turned?"

  No, he hadn't.

  Several times he'd been tempted to, curious to see how her blood would taste now that the cancer was gone, but he forced himself to hold back. Not only because he didn't feed from the source anymore and didn't want to fall back into old habits, but because he was afraid that her blood was going to taste as good as he imagined over the years and that he wouldn't be able to let her go.

  He wasn't worried about that now, because he was never letting her go.

  "Ethan thinks the cancer forced her body to shut down. It must have been terminal," Jax murmured conversationally as he moved his hand down to Danni's neck and rubbed, but nothing worked. Jax's blood spilled out of her mouth and down her cheek and still her heart refused to beat.

  He didn't bother to answer the man as he brought his own wrist to his mouth and bit. As soon as he tasted blood he pulled his wrist away and replaced Jax's wrist as the shifter smartly pulled his arm out of the way.

  "My blood should have taken care of it," Caine said as he silently pleaded with Danni to take his blood.

  "Unless you fed her continuously during her change and kept shoving bags of blood down her throat, the cancer remained in her system. When your blood changed her and made her stronger, it probably failed to kill every last cancer cell because you didn't give her enough blood to get the job done so it stuck around. Ethan thinks that when your blood made her stronger that it-"

  "Made the cancer stronger as well," he finished for the shifter on a groan. He'd fucked up, but there was nothing he could do about it now but figure out a way to get the poison out of her system.

  "How much blood is it going to take?" he asked as he tried to figure out how many bags of cold blood he was going to have to down between feeding her so that he didn't accidentally go into bloodlust.

  "Well, first we have to find out how much of it is still in her body. Then I guess we keep feeding her until it goes away."

  "How in the hell are we supposed to know how much is in her body? And how do you propose we keep feeding her until it's gone when she can't swallow?" he snapped, feeling his control slip as more blood overflowed from Danni's mouth.

  Jax pursed his lips up in thought. "Actually, I had an idea, but it's going to be a little tricky."

  Chapter 39

  Just outside of Albany, New York

  "I told you that he wasn't here," one of the minions who up until this morning had been forced to follow Greg's every command said as he kicked a pile of brush about ten feet to Greg's right, forcing Greg to duck down even lower in the vegetation and move closer to the old rusted can of W-40 and a ripped garbage bag full of rotting baby diapers that someone had tossed on the side of the road.

  "Hurry up and get your ass back in the car!" John, the little bastard who kissed Greg's ass until the moment the Master ordered Greg's death, said. "We've got eight hours to find the little bastard before the sun goes down and the vamps get their chance at the reward."

  "Well, just remember not to kill him when we find him. Lucan wants the pleasure of killing the little shit," the one he hadn't bothered learning his name said, as they jogged back to the small SUV parked on the side of the road and jumped in.

  Lucan was definitely getting added to the list. Well, he was already on the list, but his position had just been bumped up a few spots. Then again, maybe he should give the man a little credit since he'd warned him about the Master. Not that Greg had believed him.

  He hadn't.

  He knew that he was indispensible to the Master, especially now that the Pyte and the bitch had escaped. The Master needed him more than ever and the man obviously wanted him, Greg reminded himself, letting his mind wander back to the other night and hating the way his cock twitched in interest.

  Fuck it, the Master was at the top of his list for not only lying to him, but for convincing him to enjoy it and making him think that it would get him what he wanted that much faster. The bastard had lied to get him into bed, he thought with disgust for probably the hundredth time that morning.

  It was obvious, or at least now it was thanks to the fact that he had to run for his life a few hours ago, that he'd gone about this whole thing the wrong way. Instead of making a deal with the Master and signing on as a fucking slave he should have just kidnapped the bitch, locked her ass up somewhere and refused to tell the bastard where she was until he changed him. If he had he'd be a Pyte right now instead of-

  "I'm a fucking moron," he muttered to himself, standing up and dusting himself off with his only hand, but that would change and soon.

  Once Caine changed him, and the bastard would change him or he'd kill the bitch, his arm would grow back. From what he'd heard and read over the years, his arm would grow back if, when, Caine transformed him into a Pyte since the blood would correct anything wrong with him. It would take a hell of a lot more blood during the transformation because of all the damage, but he'd have his arm back and that's all that mattered to him. Well, that and killing the bitch as soon as he woke up changed and then getting his revenge on everyone who'd ever pissed him off.

  It was a long list and he planned on starting at the top with Caine and the Master that crossed the line.

  ********

  Boston Compound

  "I love you, sweetheart," Chris said in a syrupy sweet voice while Kale tried not to gag.

  It was bad enough that he somehow got stuck with the bastard and the Pyte currently babying his mate, but this was ridiculous. For the past ten minutes he'd been stuck standing here while the bastard drew out a goodbye that when all was said and done should only take a minute, two tops.

  "Are you going to miss Daddy?" Chris asked, smiling hugely and completely oblivious to his mate's murderous glare or the fact that he'd asked the squirming little girl in his arms that question a hundred times already.

  "Oh, for all that is holy!" he snapped. "How long does it take to say goodbye to a baby?" he demanded even though he fully planned on taking his time when it was his turn to say goodbye to his goddaughter. As her godfather it was his duty to spoil her and make sure she knew to scream her cute little head off whenever her mother tried to eat any of the candy out of the bowl in her office that he decided was his.

  "Be good for your mommy," Chris said as he carefully handed the giggling baby girl off to her pissed off mother.

  With a heavy sigh, he gestured for Izzy to give him little Jessica. She ignored Chris' glare as she did that, which of course the bastard took advantage of. While Jessica giggled and grabbed onto his chin with her two little hands, Chris knelt down and started what had better be a short goo
dbye to the baby boy in Izzy's large belly.

  "Are you going to miss Daddy?" Chris asked as he cupped Izzy's stomach through her vintage Goonies tee shirt.

  The man was pathetic, he thought as he pretended to nibble on Jessica's little hands, growling softly as he did to amuse the little girl in his arms. He'd never been big on children until he'd met this little girl. It also didn't hurt that he didn't have to be there for all the little things like diapers, baths and all that crap that he didn't want to deal with. He could come and go, in and out of this child's life as he pleased, which of course was the way it should be.

  He didn't want children and he sure as hell didn't want a mate, which was why he avoided female shifters like the plague. There was no way that he was about to allow fate to fuck him over and stick him with a mate, not now, not ever.