From what she knew of history, she was fairly certain she wouldn’t find a cozy paneled family room down there with outdated carpet and video games. It would be a cellar for storing wine or food that needed to be kept cool before fridges had become handy.
Just the place for an impromptu dungeon.
Holly edged closer. “Here be monsters” wasn’t nearly as comforting as it should be considering she was a monster as well. She felt like a college girl in a slasher flick being watched from below by a maniac with fangs and matted hair. Do. Not. Go. Down. The. Stairs. How many times had she shouted that at the screen?
Holly stepped on the first tread.
She hadn’t heard another sound. No one called her, but she was…beckoned. An unspoken need for her rose up from the cellar like a tangible cry.
Holly moved down the stairs. They were thick, oaken timbers that had fared better against time and the swamp than the house above them. They hardly creaked beneath her slight weight. Even though the foundation was disintegrating before her very eyes, Holly came down into a massive room lined with rows upon rows of empty shelves. It had been a wine cellar, but it was long since depleted and forgotten. Or so it appeared at first. Then Holly noted the trails through the dust that led from the room she stood in down a dark and seemingly endless corridor. Perhaps they stocked something besides wine down here these days?
Mold grew and damp dripped and Holly walked farther into the dark, musty dampness. And still, no sound.
It wasn’t a good idea.
She could be walking into a trap. She should turn around and run back to the hotel for backup. Only thing was, Winters would never agree to back her up on this, a rescue mission for Dillon or her mother. He wouldn’t think it was in his best interests and he would misperceive her interests all over again.
How could she explain to him quickly and believably that this wasn’t about love or loyalty or becoming a minion? This was cold, hard calculation. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
She moved down the corridor and noted when the ceiling dropped to the point that it was more like a tunnel than a hallway. She liked to hike, but when several of her friends had decided to try spelunking, Holly hadn’t felt the slightest desire to join them in their caving adventures. She hadn’t wanted to leave the bright, open, airy light of day and venture down into the dark earth. It wasn’t claustrophobia so much as her questioning what could possibly be fun about that. She was a sunshine kind of a girl. Sigh. Not anymore. Here she was, practically underground, without lantern or rayon cord or trail mix.
Holly heard a sound.
It was low and soft and familiar. It was Dillon and he was humming. This time she recognized his tune as an old ballad. She caught a flash from inside of his head and it was an instant of connection so bright and vivid that she staggered.
He was beside a campfire with a guitar and his voice was a husky murmur that would have sent a CD to platinum. In the memory, he sang with only a horse and the stars for an audience, but his whisky-kissed treatment of the haunting lyrics would have seduced a million modern-day female fans.
She stepped into the room where he lay chained to a cot. He stopped singing. She must have been only a shadowy figure in the doorway. There was no moonlight. There was no candlelight. The campfire had burned out long, long ago. Yet she saw him. Somehow, her eyes could pick him out in the darkness as if he glowed just for her. She moved closer, wondering if he saw her in the same way, lit by an eerie, intimate glow.
“You can’t be here.” His voice wavered. He didn’t sound at all like the monster she had grown to know and not love.
“I think we’ve already had this conversation in reverse. My reply should be something along the lines of…dungeons? I like musty, crusty old dungeons. They’ve got wine, men in chains and songs. What more…oh yeah, the wine’s all gone and I don’t care for chains. But the song was nice.”
Holly moved toward him. She didn’t know why she made jokes except to hide the awkwardness of the moment.
If she lived to see tomorrow, if she lived to see the next day and the next and the next, she would always be haunted by the very real concern for her that flashed in Dillon’s eyes.
“You laugh in a dungeon. I always knew you were a woman after my own heart.” A ghost of his former self rattled its chains as she rattled the chains that held him.
“I’m not interested in your heart, Dillon. I’m not,” Holly reminded him even as she had second thoughts about setting him free. To break the chains or not suddenly seemed like the most momentous decision of her life. Was she afraid of him or was she afraid of herself with him? The question made her rest her hands lightly on the chains, on his chest. His fancy red shirt was missing buttons and material and his skin was bruised. She looked away from the intimacy of that naked skin. She looked down into his eyes.
“My body then,” Dillon teased. He was weak, chained and not one bit of a threat. And she still felt threatened. Imagine that.
“No. Not your body either,” she assured him. The chains were an inch thick, but her hands were far too close to the exposed skin of his chest.
“You came all this way to reject me again? Cruel, darlin’. Just plain cruel.” His complaint was voiced in a silky whisper that said he didn’t believe her. Her fingers burned.
“Why did she do this?” Holly changed the subject.
“Because she knows I’m no longer loyal…to her. I’m a wild card she’s not willing to play.” His shadowy gaze caressed her face, enticing her to guess where his true loyalties were placed.
“But she can control you,” Holly reminded him.
“Not completely. I wouldn’t…let’s just say my mouth is bleeding from the bit, but I’m headstrong and don’t care.” He smiled and Holly curled her fingers around the chain. The tips of them brushed his skin.
“I wouldn’t do that, love. I said not completely. I’m a wild card, emphasis on wild.” She paused. The twinkle was back in his eyes. He was chained, at the queen’s mercy and he warned her away? This was new territory. Dangerous territory. She didn’t know where to go from here.
“I can’t trust you either,” Holly guessed, pretty sure that even without the warning she’d known it all along.
“In some things…absolutely. In others…I wouldn’t recommend it. Not. At. All.”
Her hands almost slipped off the chains as the look in his eyes darkened and deepened into something far more serious than mere teasing seduction.
“I can’t leave you here like this. I won’t.” Holly spoke to bolster her courage.
“You should.” He was a fallen angel of a devil’s advocate, for sure. It was less of a warning now and back to his usual tease. He smiled again, bigger and more wicked than before.
“Probably,” she agreed. She should turn and walk away. She should leave him here.
“Undoubtedly.” He knew she wouldn’t. He teased her and warned her and watched her waver all the while knowing that she would do what she’d come to do.
The chains rattled to the floor. Dillon was too weak to move, but she saw the desire to move flare up in his eyes and the desire for other things as well.
“You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have set me free. You might regret it.”
She thought there was a hint of Dillon the man in those words, but it was the vampire that gleamed in his shadowed blue eyes.
“I’m hoping the queen regrets it more,” she said, turning away from the man and the vampire.
“Don’t underestimate her.” Definitely the man. He warned her like a man who cared if she lived or died.
“I won’t,” Holly assured him.
“Don’t underestimate me.”
Her steps faltered. She had reached the doorway, but the vampire tone to his words made her realize she needed to be much, much farther away.
“Never,” she responded, trying to decide whether to face him or run away.
Holly turned back as a sudden flow of air against the na
pe of her neck told her he had moved. He wasn’t there. The cot was empty. The room was empty, but her heart hadn’t skipped a beat.
Dillon was playing.
Holly called herself a fool for breaking his chains. She did it under her breath all the way up the stairs and then out to the night under the stars.
Somewhere. He was somewhere nearby.
His chuckle met her and proved her right.
“You look like The Ripper was at your heels, darlin’. I didn’t mean to spook you…that much.” He leaned against the side of the house, half-hidden in the weeds. One booted foot was up to prop behind him and the other was braced against the ground. A match flared and a cigarette tip glowed red. The acrid scent of tobacco filled the night, overwhelming the moist decay with warm smoke.
How many vices could one creature embrace?
He inhaled deeply and exhaled a long plume of blue-gray smoke that showed up only when it rose high enough to be silhouetted against the moon. Holly tracked it with her eyes. Taking her eyes off her Maker was another in a long string of “shouldn’t haves”.
While she was distracted, he moved to stand with her, against her, the cigarette dropped and forgotten on the ground.
“You came for me,” he whispered. She tried to decide if it was the man or the vampire speaking only to realize it was a blending of the two.
“For my mother,” she argued. He was very, very close. Too close. The night pressed in around them, making him seem closer still.
“Let’s not split hairs, love. Those chains were around my chest and you broke them.” He was confident, sure of her feelings. She heard the smile in his words.
“For my mother,” she insisted. She knew he wasn’t listening because his breath teased across her face as he leaned closer.
“You are so stubborn and so very, very beautiful…” The words caressed her skin even as the sentiment went deeper and warmer to places she wouldn’t, couldn’t allow him to touch.
“I don’t love you,” Holly interrupted quickly. She wanted to stop him from speaking and stop her body from reacting.
“Don’t or won’t, darlin’. There is a difference. I think you do and it scares you. I think you’d rather love someone who’ll make the monsters go away, but that’s only because you’re intrigued by what you could have with the monster…with me…and it scares you.” Dillon’s voice was persuasive and softly amused and more confident than ever.
“You have a high opinion of yourself,” Holly responded. She tried to sound light and dismissive, but instead, she sounded like she’d just crossed the English Channel without a swimsuit in winter.
“Not true. I know myself and I know you and I know you came for me.” He brought his hand up to lightly trail his fingers across her left cheek. It was a whisper-soft touch, but it shamed her because she didn’t jerk away. She tried to tell herself it was because she didn’t want to call the vampire in him to life. Like a hiker who had startled a mountain lion, if she ran he would pounce. Better to freeze. Better to hold her breath and pray. It was at least partially a lie because part of her didn’t want to run at all. Part of her wanted the pounce.
“And my mother,” Holly reminded him before he got too carried away, before she got too carried away.
“Ah, ‘and’ is different than ‘instead of’. We’re makin’ progress.”
She was flustered at her mistake and he was more amused than ever. “Dream on,” she cracked. It would have been more effective if her voice hadn’t cracked as well.
“Oh, I do, Holly. Believe me. I dream of you often.” He tilted her face up with his hand on her chin. She had to look at him and she was more afraid of what he would see in her eyes than what she would see in his.
She was used to darlin’. She was used to little one or love. Her name said in such serious loving tones was…tragic. There was no other way she could label the warmth that burgeoned in her chest. It was not okay. She wouldn’t accept it. The warmth made her resolve to pull away, but the shock of it made her slow to react. She didn’t pull back as his hand cupped her face more intimately. She didn’t pull back as he subtracted another millimeter from the space between them.
“It’s almost dawn,” she warned. The words ended up against his lips as he lowered his head.
“Time for dreamin’,” he teased, his breath smoke-scented and warm against her mouth.
Holly wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t a saint. She wasn’t even human anymore, but the woman in her did cringe when Dillon replaced his breath with firm lips. She hadn’t wanted to provoke the vampire in him to flare to life by fighting or protesting, but she found her reaction to his kiss was just as hard to handle.
She didn’t respond…much. There might have been a sigh and she didn’t clamp her lips together. She was pretty sure she did not meet his tongue with hers on purpose. But she didn’t push him away. She stood and he kissed and she told herself it was prudent and cautious and careful even though it was decadent, sinful and more wicked than anything she’d ever done.
“Holly?” It was a question against her lips. She’d managed to surprise the monster when she hadn’t pulled away. She’d managed to surprise herself. She did jerk away then, before she moved from surprise to there’s no turning back.
“A woman scorned and all that jazz,” she mumbled. She wasn’t the first woman in history to handle rejection with stupid recklessness, but that didn’t make her feel okay about it. Winters may not want her, but his rejection of her didn’t make allowing Dillon’s kiss smart.
Dillon didn’t laugh. In fact, he looked…shaken.
“His loss…the fool…” His words trailed off as if he was still a little stunned. Dillon the man was here with her stronger than ever before. Holly moved further away. She’d been afraid the vampire in him would take control, but the look on his face made her realize the man in him might be the more dangerous of the two after all.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything between you and I. I’ll still fight by his side.” It was a dismissal of her actions and a reaffirmation of where she stood. She just wished she wasn’t standing on such shaky ground. Her legs were like rubber. Her knees trembled.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” he whispered. It wasn’t seductive. It was ragged and raw, a man’s pain that had brewed and stewed and simmered and steamed for a hundred years.
“Love isn’t earned. It just is.” She sounded raw herself. In her voice, she heard every bit of hurt Winters’ rejection had caused. She heard her despair and loneliness and hunger and it called to the similar emotions that churned in her Maker’s chest.
“It just is.” Dillon lifted his chin and she knew if the night had been longer she would have suffered for it. She was vulnerable and Dillon knew her heart better than she knew it herself. His devotion, strange though it was, was also soothing and seductive. He saw her pain and met it with the pain he had felt for so much longer that it had become torture. He saw her loneliness and met it with loneliness that had gone on for so long that it was burning bereavement. He saw her alone and he was alone and he vowed that together they could have the world.
She feared him, but she feared this commonality even more. She feared the way it drew her and soothed her. She had come so close to kissing him back…and she hadn’t been under his control.
“Run,” he whispered. Holly heard it like a shout. Her indecision had called to the man in him, but it had also tempted the vampire beyond all reason. She saw the hunger rise up in his eyes and recognized it because like calls to like. He didn’t add “while you can”, but Holly heard it in her mind.
And she didn’t look back.
Chapter Nineteen
“A woman scorned…”
Winters turned away. His blade was in his hand. His two greatest adversaries were vulnerable, lost in each others’ arms and highlighted by moonlight and he turned away.
He didn’t think while he moved back through the cold puddles. Under the skeleton trees draped in clumps of spidery Spa
nish moss with their bony limbs reaching, reaching, he doggedly pushed his way back through the swamp. He focused on his chilled, wet feet. February in South Carolina wasn’t frigid by any means, but his wet toes were numb enough to match his mood.
He operated on automatic. He retraced his steps through mud and damp, through the ruined cemetery and back to his car. Amazingly enough, his sense of direction led him back to the car even though he couldn’t think.
He turned the key and turned on the heat and the rush of air from the vents roared in his ears much louder than it actually was. It reminded him of her and her shivers and he leaned his head against the steering wheel and held his breath, hoping the thought of her would go away.
It didn’t. She didn’t. They didn’t.
If he lived to be a hundred, he wouldn’t be able to erase the vision of Holly willingly going into Dillon’s arms. Sometimes being a vampire hunter had strange advantages. He probably wouldn’t live to see fifty much less a hundred. Of course, right now, he couldn’t imagine surviving a day, an hour or even one more second with that vision behind his eyelids.
The air began to warm. He thought of Holly’s shivers. If he hadn’t seen the rose, how long would it have been before he knew? If he had stayed with her and they’d spent the evening wrapped up in lovemaking, when would he have figured it out?
He imagined Holly turning on him in the heat of battle and siding with her Maker. He wondered if the shock he felt right now would have made the difference between life and death in that moment, his life and his death. Even warned, would he be able to maintain the kind of disciplined control he needed to face the queen or would he lose it if…when…Holly turned on him.
She was Dillon’s.
He’d feared it all along and tonight he’d seen the proof of it with his own eyes.
When had it happened? Last night, when she’d gone out alone and returned with the rose clutched in her fingers? Or had it been happening all along, right under his nose?
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