by Ava Benton
“Screaming.”
“Whatever.” She clenched her hands tighter but still didn’t look at me. “I meant it. I think you should go. I can talk Claudia into it. She’ll release you.”
“You know she won’t.”
“I think she will, if I tell her where my sister and the rest of my team found Ralf. It didn’t even take long. We were practically right on top of him.”
“We were?”
“In a sense. Much closer than I thought, at any rate. I was sure we’d have to travel to another state, at least. But he’s in an old mine. It’s been closed for years.”
“A mine?” It didn’t sound right. “The way Claudia described it, he lived in a castle in the mountains.”
“He may have at one time, but the High Council obviously felt it best to keep him in deeper seclusion. It might have been a matter of keeping him away from Claudia.” She snorted derisively. “They probably saw through the so-called relationship between the two of them and knew he was responsible for drawing her in. It could be punishment for him, as well.”
“It makes sense.” I watched her closely, making note of her every movement. She was on-edge, that was for certain. A little shaky when she unclasped her hands and twisted them in her towel. The hem rose a bit, then a bit more, dangerously close to the apex of her thighs. If she were any other woman, I would think she was trying to seduce me. Toying with me, getting inside my brain and mixing me up. But not her.
“I think my sister is onboard with giving us until tomorrow to go out there and start the process of finding him. I have a lot of thinking to do between now and then.”
“About?”
“We’ve already talked about it. Turning you loose. I have to turn you loose.”
“You don’t have to do any such thing.”
“Yes, I do. Or, at least, I think I do. Some of me thinks I do.”
“What does the rest of you think?”
I wished she would look at me. That would reveal her true thoughts.
“I don’t know anymore. Why are you doing this to me?” That was when she raised her eyes, and the first thing I noted was the way they shimmered with tears. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you like this. We shouldn’t be alone together. We shouldn’t even speak to each other as equals.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s a long story. But you know it’s true. Don’t you?”
She wanted me to say yes. The desperate, searching look in her eyes told me so.
“I don’t know that I do,” I admitted. “If you had asked me yesterday, before this started and Claudia had just woken me, I might have agreed.”
“And now?”
There was only one answer that made any sense.
I slid off the edge of the bed, onto my knees. At her feet.
She looked down at me with wide eyes, lips parting slightly. But she didn’t move away, not even when I pressed myself against her legs and forced them apart so I could be closer to her.
“And now? I don’t want to talk anymore.”
My face was inches from hers, and she reached for me with a trembling hand, sliding it over my cheek, closing her eyes and sighing as our foreheads touched and our breath mingled. She was right there. Ripe. Ready. For the taking.
For me to take.
I cupped the back of her head in my hand and pulled her to me, covering her mouth with mine.
She twisted fistfuls of my hair and gripped hard, tight, like she was fighting with herself between duty and passion, and passion was winning, yes, when her tongue slid against mine, and she wrapped her legs around my waist it was too late to stop.
13
Daniela
How was I supposed to explain that to Gwyneth? How could I made her understand that I couldn’t stop what happened any more than I could stop the direction of a river’s current?
I might as well have been floating along in that current, letting it carry me to the inevitable. No matter how hard I had tried to fight it, some things were unstoppable.
Even I couldn’t win when he was that close, that tempting.
I sat with my back to the headboard, surrounded by the mess we had made of the bed, and smiled to myself at the way Alexander flipped through TV channels. Just like a man, hogging the remote.
“Haven’t found anything you like yet?” I asked.
“I like all of it. I just don’t know what to make of it.” He was gravely serious about it, too.
And I didn’t know what to make of him. How could everything I had ever known be wrong? Everything Mother taught us, and her mother before her, and on and on.
That vampires were little more than animals, that they were suffering and deserved to be put out of their misery. While there were still moments when I was almost sure he was suffering—there was a darkness in him, a deep, brooding darkness just under the surface, just out of my grasp—he wasn’t an animal.
He had a sense of honor and duty, and he could be stirred to jealousy and anger when others breached that honor. The way he had knocked a man three times my size to the floor and pinned him there, ready to kill. For me.
I knew we couldn’t be together. I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking otherwise. But that didn’t mean I had to let Gwyneth kill him. I couldn’t do that and live with myself.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to hunt Nightwardens again, and that scared me the way questioning one’s entire life and beliefs would scare anyone.
I drew my knees to my chest, still watching him, longing for something I couldn’t put into words.
He hadn’t put his clothes on yet.
I comforted myself by looking over his body, remembering the ecstasy of his weight on top of me, his muscles flexing under my hands, his hips thrusting and sending me over the edge.
I wanted to commit him to memory, so I could go over the sweetness of that one, beautiful hour for the rest of my life.
“Is there anything you would like to watch?” he asked, looking over his shoulder.
I grinned. “Wow. How generous. Asking if there’s something I’d like.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that this is beyond anything I dreamed about finding here, in this time.”
“You have no idea how much better it gets.” My voice caught a little, and I blinked back tears as I looked up at the ceiling.
“What’s wrong?” He was at my side in an instant, TV forgotten. The hand stroking my still-damp hair was tender. “What has you so sad?”
“Oh, what do you think?” I choked out. “I have to make a convincing case for us leaving you behind, or letting you run. I know I need to do it, because it’ll mean the difference between survival or death for you. My sister… she means well, and she can’t help her beliefs. She won’t give up her mission. I’ve already asked her to.”
And I could still hear her shrieks of disbelief ringing in my ear. How I was a traitor, how our mother would never forgive me for turning my back on everything that had ever mattered to us.
Part of me couldn’t help believing her. My mother would never forgive me if she knew. I wasn’t sure Gwyneth ever would. I’d be without Alexander and without my team, the makeshift coven that had been my family since the day I was born.
“I’m so alone,” I whispered, touching my forehead to my knees. “I have nothing.”
“That’s not true. I won’t leave you.”
“You have to. There’s no other choice if you want to live. And you must live. I won’t be the reason for your death.”
It didn’t make any sense, the thought of him dying feeling like a hand tightening into a fist around my heart.
“I can take care of myself. Do you think I’ve lived this long without learning how to keep myself alive?”
“This is different,” I insisted, taking one of his hands in both of mine. “Please. You have to take this seriously.”
“I take it very seriously whenever anyone wants to end my life. Don’t worry about that,” he said. “You have to kno
w there have been hunters and trackers looking for vampires since before Ralf turned me. Life was even more treacherous in the early days, living in Serbia. Practically the Dark Ages. Hunting only at night, since there was no Ra-Protection for us then. Sliding through the shadows, needing to avoid human eyes but needing humans to survive. I wanted to avoid them, but there was no getting away from that need. Oh, the need. Especially at first, when I couldn’t control it at all. It was a tightrope walk, every painful day. The lust for blood driving my every action. My survival instincts always in overdrive. Trailing my prey from a distance, watching them, waiting for the moment when they were alone, and I could pounce. Smelling the blood as it coursed through their veins, knowing it would smell and taste even better once I opened an artery. Knowing that at any moment, someone might come by and discover us and leave me no choice but to drain them into silence. It was exciting and terrible all at once.”
I shivered at his description. “And they hunted you.”
“They hunted all of us. We were the enemy, the creatures only spoken of in whispers, the Devil’s own. I think I can handle a cadre of witches if I took care of myself back then.”
“They’ll kill you. They see it as the only way to put you out of your misery. Ralf destroyed you centuries ago, and they’re setting the scales right.”
“They? Not we?”
“No. Not we.” I reached up, held his face in my hands. “Not we. Not anymore.”
“You’re not just saying that?”
“Why would I just say that? Do you think I’m cruel enough to trick you into letting your guard down? Is that it?”
“You wouldn’t be the first. Didn’t Delilah do that to Samson?”
I giggled softly. “I wouldn’t call myself Delilah. But thanks for the compliment.”
He stroked my hair, my face staring deep into my eyes. “You could tempt any man into anything. Even sleeping with you when he knows it’ll bite him in the ass—that he won’t be able to leave you when the time comes.”
“Oh, please, don’t say that,” I whispered, throwing my arms around his neck. “Please, please, leave me. Go. I’ll explain it to Claudia. She’ll understand if she knows the whole story. She’ll release you. And I’ll find a way to get her to Ralf, I know I can.”
“You won’t be able to get through to him.”
“We can break through any spells, any enchantments, anything. We don’t mean Ralf any harm, so it’ll be easy.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Oh, so what?” I wanted to scream, tear at him, beg him to listen to reason. Why was he deliberately ignoring good, plain sense? It was like talking to a wall. “So what if I can’t her through to him? We both know it doesn’t matter, that Ralf doesn’t care for her. The poor thing shouldn’t see him again if only to keep her delusions from falling apart. What happens when she sees him, and he rejects her? She can’t help him anymore, now that they threw her off the Council for what she did.”
“I know that.”
“So? Why? I don’t understand.” My hands, curled into fists, pounded against his chest. I couldn’t hurt him—he existed in a place beyond the sort of pain a woman could inflict, even someone with my powers. It wasn’t like I could really hit him, anyway. I didn’t have the strength anymore.
“That’s what the bond is there for. The bond between me and the witch I imprint on.”
“Then take my blood!” I hissed, and when I heard the words, I realized I had really gone over the edge. I was losing it over him.
And he knew it. The sorrow on his face told me he knew it. His hands cupped my shoulders, and he took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’ll pretend you never said that. We both know how dangerous that could be.”
“What difference does it make anymore?” My voice was as dull and lifeless as what the future looked like for me. “I won’t have Gwyneth and the others anymore. I won’t have you. There won’t be anything left for me. So what if I make things more complicated by letting you feed from me?”
“I don’t like hearing you talk that way.” He eased me back onto the bed. “I don’t like thinking you don’t have any hope left.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m so tired.”
“You’re tired. That’s the problem. Rest.” He pulled the blankets over me as my head sank into the pillow. “Just sleep for a little while. I have to check on Claudia, but I’ll be back.”
I was too exhausted and heartsick to do anything but nod as my eyes slid shut.
No family.
No Alexander.
No anything.
I won’t have anything.
14
Alexander
Never, in all my long life, had I felt quite so powerless. It wasn’t the same as when the blood lust overtook me and wiped out my reason. I was helpless against it, yes, but there was nothing else for me in the moment. No room for regret, no time to ask myself if there was a better way than turning into a mindless, blood drinking monster. The regret and powerlessness would come later.
The fact was, I liked drinking blood when I was feeding. I liked it just fine.
Standing on that ugly, concrete passageway outside the two rooms, I didn’t like it at all.
Because I finally knew what true powerlessness was all about. Daniela felt like she didn’t have a future, and it was all because of me. I could’ve blamed it on her mother and mother’s mother for teaching the wrong lessons. I could’ve cursed them for letting the past dictate their present, for carrying on the way they did over something that happened so long ago.
Witches obviously weren’t good at putting the past behind them—hence Beatrice’s curse, enslaving us for a thousand years.
No, it was my fault for letting whatever happened between us happen at all.
I should’ve felt it growing. I should’ve pushed her away from me. When that bear attacked, I should’ve let nature take its course. Instead, by saving her life had made her mine. She was mine to protect, forever. As simple and hopelessly complex as that.
Male voices floated up to me from down below, where the cars and trucks were parked.
“Are you sure they came here?” a man asked.
“Waitress told me they asked for the closest motel,” another man grunted.
I had only heard that voice once or twice back at the diner, but I already knew it. I would recognize it anywhere. He was directly below me, outside the room under Daniela’s.
He had followed us, the fool.
“You shouldn’t have come here. You should’ve stayed at the hospital.”
“Hospital? Shit. I only went because Mick made me go. Didn’t want a lawsuit on his hands if I was hurt badly in his diner. Didn’t give a shit if I was okay or not, just about a lawsuit.”
“You got four broken ribs.”
“That ain’t nothin’.”
He was right. I was more than happy to show him just how little four broken ribs were.
“Nobody even saw if they were in a car, truck, whatever. We wouldn’t know whether they were here or what.” His friend had a lot more sense than he had.
It was a shame for him that he didn’t listen.
“You heard what she said in the office. They had a man and woman check in earlier today, but she can’t tell me the room numbers. That’s just fine. I can wait.” He let out a mirthless chuckle which dissolved into a snarl. “I can’t wait to make that bitch pay. She’ll find out that it would’ve been a lot easier on her if she just went along with me.”
“You never said anything about that.”
“I didn’t think I had to. What? You think I’m gonna let her get away with making me look like an asshole? I’m gonna do her ‘til she splits in two.”
I gritted my teeth and fought to control the need to go down there, to jump over the railing and land in front of him and tear his head from his shoulders and kick it across the road. Or maybe I would split him in two, the way he wanted to split Daniela. Or slit him open and let him watch his intes
tines spill out onto the concrete.
“Jake, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Yes, Jake, your friend is right. This is not a good idea.
HIs friend continued, “I seen the way he took you down and held you there. He ain’t human, that guy. And you never said nothin’ about wantin’ to hurt the girl. Just leave her alone, man. It ain’t cool.”
“You pussy. If you were gonna wimp out on me, why didn’t you say so? I coulda driven the rig here myself instead of you driving.”
He sounded like a real prince.
“I’m gonna go home. You need a ride later, you gimme a call. I can’t be no part of this.”
Smart man. Smarter than his friend.
Of course, if he were really smart, he would inform the police of what his friend intended to do. He was smart, but he was a coward, too.
“If I need a ride, I’ll call a fucking cab, you pussy.” The vile piece of shit muttered every curse under the sun.
A short, bald man with a worried face crossed to where his car was parked. His eyes swept the lot as he moved, his head turning from side to side as though he were looking for something. He sensed trouble. I had found throughout my years on the hunt that humans were imbued with a very strong survival instinct—and it was the arrogant, bullheaded of them who insisted on ignoring it that I’d dined most frequently on.
Like the arrogant, bullheaded, would-be rapist standing one level below me. His time would come.
I had other concerns to deal with first.
Claudia was combing through her long, dark hair. Without the dirt and grime she’d accumulated, she really was an attractive woman. And her face glowed with anticipation of what was to come. What did she imagine? A loving reunion? Melting into Ralf’s arms?
It pained me to watch.
She wore the same sort of towel Daniela had, and when I entered the room, she pulled the blankets around her body for modesty’s sake. “I washed my clothes in the sink and hung them over the shower rod,” she explained, pointing into the bathroom.