by CJ Flynn
He slid my shirt up, and I maneuvered a little to allow him to slip it off of me, exposing my skin to the cool air of the room. His fingers grazed across my neck for a moment before he pressed the full weight of his palms down on my shoulder blades and began working the knots there. I groaned into the pillow as he caressed my skin, moving down my back and pushing away the tension in every part of me.
His lips followed his fingers, his breath caressing my skin. I arched my hips as he moved lower, his hands brushing over my backside and down my thighs. His lips lingered just above my jeans before his hands swept upwards again, releasing tiny knots in my lower back I didn't even know I had.
Just as I began to walk that fine line between desperately needing him to roll me over and do things to the other side of my body or keep rubbing me until I passed out, he obeyed my unspoken demands and rolled me onto my back. Daniel continued his gentle path of kisses along my shoulders and up to my cheeks.
I grabbed his head between my hands, anxious to switch gears and give back some of what he'd given me.
Everything around us dissolved away as his mouth found mine, and I breathed in everything I could about him. He tasted like night air, and his lips were cool and firm and yielding all at the same time. He smelled like leather and January snow as he shifted above me for a moment to remove his shirt.
He pulled away from me before I could kiss him again, his lips tracing a path across the tops of my breasts and down my stomach. I threaded my fingers through his hair as heat shot through my core, beginning and ending with the icy fire of his mouth. He moved in circles before his tongue flickered against the lace that lined my bra, and then it too was gone.
His mouth dipped lower as he lifted me, sliding off my jeans so fast I was sure there was no way they were still viable as pants. I arched my back, desperate for the feel of his skin against mine. The fire in the hearth blazed, filling the room with the heady scent of smoke and wood.
Daniel's lips were on mine again as he removed my panties, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, craving him as his fingers traveled over my skin. His hands settled on my thighs again as his lips moved across my breasts and down my torso. He pressed a kiss on the inside of my thigh before his tongue darted between my legs and I cried out his name.
His mouth was cool and hot at the same time, and I'd never felt anything so intense in my life. My legs quivered as he held me, his mouth pressing against me with a need that matched my own. I arched into him and his hands squeezed tighter.
He finally came up for air and stood to remove his pants. I let my gaze travel up his body, taking in every glorious inch of it. He was muscular in every way, and the lightest blond hair trailed down his abdomen. His skin was flawless and unblemished. I met his gaze and matched the silly grin he had given me earlier.
“I can't believe this is what you look like in the sun.”
Chapter 27
I awoke hours later, wrapped around a cool body in a warm bed. It was a disquieting sensation, but not at all unpleasant. His body was still as I stared at him, a little panic rising in my belly. I couldn't find a thread of logic in what I had allowed to happen, but I didn't feel as if I'd done anything wrong. Not one single shred of guilt hovered in my mind, just a clarity that I hadn't felt in ages. I watched Daniel for a moment, realizing that I would be working for him just as much as I was for Ben. Who knew what had been taken from Daniel? Who knew what he'd left behind? I reached out and stroked my fingers over the taut skin of his shoulders, hoping he'd stay asleep just a little longer.
I stretched away from him and let myself gaze at him in the unnatural sunlight glittering through the windows of my cottage. He was still asleep and he did not breathe—he didn't have to. I had known him for almost two years, had learned everything about vampires I could get my hands on it that time, but it wasn't enough. Staring at him, my brain slid away from the sexy thoughts I had entertained upon waking and shifted towards the science behind this man.
I had full access to my lab now, and would call Olivia first thing in the morning about getting access to the servers. Sunrise was only an hour or so away, but I knew better than to call her at dawn. I needed to get back to the lab, analyze my results, and get to work.
I slid out of the bed and went to my closet. I pulled on a pair of blue jeans and a thick, gray cabled sweater. I grabbed everything that could possibly help me along: my father's journals, books from Christian Michaels, papers and writings... everything I had kept hidden under lock and key in this tiny cottage. It was finally safe to bring it all into the open, even if only for a while.
I woke Daniel, gently shaking his shoulder. “It's time to get up,” I whispered. “I need to get to work.”
He grumbled in his sleep, his form reanimating a bit. He lifted his arms from the bed and wrapped them around my waist, pulling me back down on top of him. He planted a kiss on my lips without ever opening his eyes, his mouth and tongue pressing urgently against me. I kissed him back, raking my fingers gently across his shoulders, wanting so badly to stay in that very spot until Daniel did things to me that left me blind.
But there was work to be done.
I pulled away from him and gave him my biggest grin. “Save some of that for later. We have work to do now.”
He grumbled and shifted out of bed, the sheets revealing a body that made me want to crawl right back in.
“It is not my idea of romance to immediately run off to a science lab and perform experiments on your ex-boyfriend.”
“I don't plan on performing any experiments. Yet.”
“So it's something to look forward to then,” he said, as he pulled his pants over his hips. “Very well.”
He finished getting dressed and shouldered with ease the metal case I gave him. We walked in silence to Sorrell's mansion, taking in the strange light bathing every inch of the estate.
Everything was silent. Only Ernie and his witches were nearby, but the strange magic was wreaking havoc with my tracing abilities. I couldn't seem to sense anyone outside.
I tried to shake off the unease that gave me, but I didn't like it. I wouldn't know if anyone was coming.
We entered the underground lab and I began firing up the computers and setting up for the day. I would start my work comparing Imala's samples to Ben's. Once I'd gained full access to Harding's notes, I would go through those, and then try to get any other data about Ben that Sorrell had on file. I knew they had drawn blood from me at the beginning of my tenure. I hoped Ben would be the same.
I worked while Daniel paced.
“You have to stop,” I finally blurted out. He'd been at it for over an hour.
“I need something to do,” he replied. “I find myself rather short on assignments at the moment.”
“Can you see about getting me access to the servers? Full admin privileges if you can manage it. Otherwise, I'm going to have to bring someone else in, and I don't want to do that if I can avoid it.”
He nodded. “I can do that. It may take some time. The security protocol you triggered last night includes the main servers, so I will have to work around it.”
He left the room without any other information and I smiled to myself as I watched him walk away. Still Daniel, no matter what he'd done to me the night before.
I didn't look up from my test results until I heard footsteps in the lab. “That didn't take as long as I expected,” I said.
“I haven't a clue what you're talking about, Miss Stuart.”
The strange voice startled me, and I spun around to find Erika Weiss, the phoenix I'd had the pleasure of working with last year. She hadn't changed much in that time, though her hair had changed from an icy platinum blonde to a deep, fiery red.
“Erika!” I jumped up from my seat and tried to collect myself. She had caught me completely off guard, but I felt an odd relief at seeing her again. “What are you doing here?”
“Word of your work has gotten around, at least to those of us who choose to listen. I know
you need my help, Allie. You haven't gained access to Harding's notes.”
I shook my head. “No, I haven't. I can see you have admin privileges though.”
She nodded. “Harding came to me some time ago, and we began cross-referencing some of our notes. I think a great deal of it will be helpful to you.”
“What is it?”
She slid out of the cranberry pea coat she was wearing and hung it on the back of a chair. Her regular uniform of head-to-toe black was still in place underneath it.
“It is complicated,” she said, as she took a seat. “But in short, we were writing our own version of the Mythos. Harding was running tests, mapping out the genomes of various supernatural creatures, and I was filling in the blanks of the story.”
“The blanks?” I said, my mind racing at her words. Harding had been keeping it all from me, but why?
“Yes. We can't know everything about ourselves just from the genes. We need the written and verbal histories too. We need the stories.”
“Have you continued the work?”
She nodded. “I have, at least my side of it. My notes are mostly the stories I have access to in second-hand telling. Sources that sort of all circle back to each other.”
My interest was piqued. The science of the various creatures was fascinating, but not as much as their stories. The vampire history was epic and dramatic, full of blood and greed and raw hunger. What little I had gathered about the witches painted a picture of whole-earth-magic and a connection to energies that almost no one else felt. I wanted to glean everything I could about their histories, but it had proved a hard nut to crack.
“What have you learned?”
She frowned. “Not as much as you'd think. There's so much to connect, and the only person that could help us connect it all isn't talking.”
“Who?” I asked, feeling frustrated that maybe Harding's work wouldn't be as helpful as I'd hoped.
“Ernie Haden.”
“But he's helping me now, even though he warned me before that helping me too much could affect his influence and abilities to work with everyone. Do you think there's a chance he'd answer your questions now?”
Erika shrugged. “I am not certain. I think perhaps if you asked, the answer would be different. He is helping you now because of who your father was, and because it has become obvious that neither the witches nor the vampires are capable of keeping things under control. The mess with Lillith wore his patience thin, I would imagine.”
I gave her a tight smile. I knew she was right on all counts—Ernie's reasons weren't solely on my behalf. “Do the phoenix have a complicated back story like the vampires and the witches do?”
Erika nodded. “Absolutely. We are Fire creatures, of course, and have more in common with the earthborn than we do with the Aereans. We are prone to drama.”
“The Aereans?”
“Air. I'm sorry; I forget that your access has been so limited. The elemental creatures are called Aereans. The water are Oceani, and we—”she pointed to her chest—”call ourselves the Ignis.”
“Earthborn isn't as poetic,” I said.
“It is, I think. Very strong and solid.” She smiled at me. “Perhaps when this is over, we can work together to study the histories.”
“I'm not sure,” I said, hesitation filling my mind. I couldn't focus on much beyond my work right now.
“You will have time to think it through,” she replied. “For now, we will work on this. So. Ernie? You will ask him?”
I considered this for a moment, unsure if I could really ask for another favor right now.
“I need to think on it,” I finally said. “Where are you at in this process right now?”
She settled into the chair at Harding's old workstation and began typing at a login. After a few moments, a file structure opened that I hadn't seen before and she began navigating through a series of folders. Finally, she clicked on a document icon and tapped on the screen after it had loaded.
There were four columns, and the headings Earthborn, Oceani, Ignis, and Aerea. “He's collected samples from all but two of the Druids' creatures still in existence.”
I looked over her shoulder at the document. The creatures that Michaels had first told me about were listed under the headers. Only two, Phoenix and Avernale, didn't have an asterisk, which, according to Harding's footnote, meant they hadn't been sampled.
“How come there isn't a phoenix sample?” I asked.
Erika turned her head and smiled at me. “I am the only one of my kind and I must guard my gifts carefully. I have not been able to come to the states to give Harding any assistance. I waited too long, and I have lost the chance to work with him on this in person. You must take up his work, Allie. I'm here to help you now.”
“I can't do that, Erika. I don't have his skills, his knowledge... I just want to help Ben.”
She frowned. “You cannot do one without the other. Harding's work is the key to your search. I know it in my bones.” She rolled up her left sleeve. “Take the sample. There is no time to waste.”
Chapter 28
I spent nearly three days pouring over Harding's notes, and by the end of it, I was so sure he was sitting next to me in the room I caught myself wanting to ask him questions. Erika answered as many questions as possible, but it wasn't the same.
Harding had been working so much harder, and at a much deeper level than I'd realized. His retrovirus “cure” for Laura was much more complicated than I'd thought, but I knew from his notes that it wasn't capable of curing a fully changed vampire. I didn't even think it could handle Ben. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing.
I went over to the freezer and pulled out the trays of gel I'd set samples in the day before. I felt rusty working so in depth in the lab, and I wasn't sure I could trust what I was seeing. Samples from eight different creatures stretched across the gel, and I could readily identify similar markers in each of them, but I couldn't isolate the like markers. My brain started to hurt the longer I stared at the tray.
I checked the tray of agarose gel I'd made the night before, where Ben's most recent sample sat between the one taken when he'd first started working for Sorrell and Imala's sample taken right before she died. The identical markers were in Ben's most recent sample and Imala's. Whatever occurred in the change process was complete enough to bring out those markers. I knew from Harding's notes that they hadn't been present in Laura's. He hadn't identified any of the markers before he died.
I pushed the trays back into the fridge and slammed the door. I needed out of the lab—I had lived and breathed that recycled air for three days.
I hung up my lab coat, and donned a black wool coat. The air outside was icy and almost painful, but I took in great lungfuls as soon as I was out the door. I waited until my heart and head stopped pounding, and for the first time since the witches had shown up, I wished for the sun to disappear for a while. The brilliant light overwhelmed me, and I needed a level of quiet I couldn't seem to find.
I listened to the snow crunch beneath my feet as I made my way to the little house where Ernie and the witches were holed up. I needed out of this sunlight compound they had made, but I wasn't sure how to make it happen.
Sorrell's entire estate was dotted with other buildings, mostly for storage. I was the only person in his employ who had managed to get my own private space. Everyone else either lived someplace else, or resided in the main mansion. Ernie had set up camp in one of the storage buildings, and despite the addition of sleeping bags, a camp stove, and various other goods needed for their impromptu lodgings, the place still felt like a storage room.
Ernie was seated in a folding chair at a rickety metal card table, with a newspaper stretched out in front of him.
“Why can't you relocate to the house?” I asked.
Ernie shook his head. “Too much darkness there. We need clear spaces to work.”
“I see.” I couldn't fathom how they were holding that magic in place for so lo
ng.
He folded up the paper and gave me a smile. There wasn't so much as a hint of exhaustion in his gaze. “So, how goes it?” he asked.
I slumped down into one of the other chairs and shook my head. “I feel like I'm running circles. We don't know what these markers are, or where they came from.”
He frowned. “I wish I could help you more. Whatever magic my ancestors used to create the vampires and the shifters is long gone. When I read their stories, I feel as if I am but a shadow of what they were.”
I offered him a small smile. “I definitely know exactly what you mean.”
“Is that what brings you here? You want to talk about what your research has told you?”
I shook my head. “I want to leave.”
Ernie frowned. “I don't think that's wise.”