Mark slanted a look down at her. “You’re asking me? I thought you were the one with the plan.”
“I’ve rethought it. I’m now leaning toward getting in the car and running like hell.” Though she had no idea how you could escape a monster who was inside your own head.
Mark’s eyes slid out of focus. “No. He’s got a woman with him.”
“Shit. She’ll be dead by dawn if we don’t do something.”
“Yeah.” Mark carried her across the porch and down the steps as easily if she were made of foam and feathers. Moving in a long lope, he headed for her car, still parked in the gravel drive. “Can you drive?”
“No,” Hope lied, having no interest in driving off and leaving him, which she sensed was his intention.
He subjected her to a narrow green stare. “Actually, I don’t think that was a lie. If you can’t even walk, you definitely don’t need to be driving. You’d kill yourself and whatever poor bastard you happened to hit.”
Read my mind, Hope realized, disgusted.
“Yeah, vampires suck.”
“Ha. Ha.”
He carried her out to the woods and settled her in a pile of dead leaves behind a cluster of leafy bushes at the foot of an impressive oak. “Not the best cover,” Mark told her. “But it’s something.”
She drew her gun and considered the distance to the driveway. “I think I could hit him from here. I took first place in the department’s tactical pistol tournament last year.”
“Good for you, Calamity Jane. Unfortunately, we heal bullet wounds too fast. They don’t do much more than piss us off. You need something with a lot more kick than that.” His expression went stony. “When I lure him close enough to the house, I want you to hit the detonator.”
Hope stared at him. “If you’re that close, what keeps the blast from killing you?”
Mark looked at her.
“Oh, fuck no!” she snapped. “That’s a non-starter. I didn’t go through all this to lose you just when I found you again.”
“Then give me the detonator.” He extended a big palm. “I’ll do it.”
Hope glared at him and covered the pen with one hand. “No.”
They both knew he could take it away from her, especially as weak as she was now. But Mark looked in her eyes, and his hand dropped. “I don’t want to leave you either,” he admitted in a low, rough voice. “We’ll figure something out. Somehow.”
* * * * *
When Stone’s big black Cadillac rolled up with the crackle of expensive tires on gravel, Mark stood on the porch, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his legs braced apart. It was a position of raw challenge, and he knew Stone knew it.
The vampire took his time getting out of the car, as if trying to build his opponent’s unease. But Mark’s combat experience had involved far too many tours of duty for that. He’d already let everything go—need, rage, hate, even the hot, desperate blaze of his love for Hope. Every emotion had drained away, leaving him in a clear bubble of cool readiness. Ready to react. Ready to kill.
Stone moved toward him in a slow stalk, his eyes burning an unholy red, menace in every step. “So, boy. You broke out of your cage.”
Mark watched him come and lifted a brow. “You did say her blood would give me the strength to escape.”
“So you killed the love of your life.” The vampire laughed, his fangs flashing white in the moonlight. “And now you think you’re a match for me.”
“I am.” Mark canted his head down, knowing his eyes, too, would flash red. “You’re weak, Stone. You can’t even break through my barriers. And you’re supposed to be my ‘Master?”
“I am your master, puppy!” Rage lengthened Stone’s stride, and his fangs flashed with every word. “I bled you, I fed you my blood, I touched your mind, I know your pitiful dreams and hopes. You imagine yourself the hero of this little farce, but you’re nothing. How did your lover’s blood taste, boy? Did you cradle her cooling corpse and cry?”
A wave of vicious will slammed into Mark’s consciousness, thundering against the barrier that protected him. But he’d built his mental wall from bricks of raw determination, reinforced with the mortar of Hope’s faith, and it held against the vampire’s attack.
Not this time, fucker.
Howling in rage, Stone threw the full weight of his mind at Mark in a booming mental blow. The barrier cracked. His enemy crowed in victory, but Mark threw his will into the breach, reinforcing it, blocking Stone’s attempts to push through. He couldn’t let the monster learn about the bombs.
Something moved at the periphery of Mark’s vision, but he didn’t look away from Stone’s hell-red stare as the vampire beat at his mind. Not even when he glimpsed Hope slinking behind Stone’s back toward the Caddy.
Though she wove a little as she walked, Hope obviously intended to rescue Stone’s victim. The girl sat in the car staring straight ahead, no doubt locked tight in the monster’s psychic grip. The smart thing to do would be to get in the car and drive away. Maybe a bit slowly, given that Hope could barely walk, but still. He knew Hope had no intention of doing the smart thing. She was too determined to take Stone out and make sure Mark himself survived.
So he kept his gaze focused on the vampire while the woman who held half his soul put herself in danger. It took more strength than he’d known he had.
Chapter Seven
Mark repelled yet another skull-rattling attack, and the vampire pulled back. He felt Stone probing him, searching fruitlessly for an opening.
“How are you doing that?” Stone exploded at last as he glared up at Mark from the foot of the stairs. “How are you keeping me out? I couldn’t keep him out. Every time I fought him, he pushed his way in. If not for that fucking truck that took off my master’s head, I’d still be a slave. But you. . . I had you! Did drinking that bitch’s blood give you that much strength?”
“It wasn’t her blood.” Mark let himself smile, slow, icy and sure. Never mind that sweat rolled down his spine and his head had begun to throb like a sore tooth from the battering pressure of Stone’s power. “And if you call her a bitch again, I’m going to rip out your spleen.”
“You fucking little puppy, you’re going to submit or you’re going to die. Let me in!” Stone screamed.
“No.” Mark’s smile widened, deliberately taunting, trying to distract the vampire from the sound he knew was coming.
It didn’t work. Hope shoved her gun in its holster with one hand and dragged the Caddy’s passenger door open with the other. She winced at the creaking clunk it made as it swung wide.
Stone whirled, watching in incredulous anger as Hope freed the girl from her seatbelt. “What. . . ? Jennifer, kill that little slut!”
With a howl of sheer, crazed rage, the blonde launched herself at her would-be rescuer, grabbed her by the waist, and tumbled her into the dirt, clawing and punching.
Oh, hell. Mark catapulted off the porch and rammed Stone’s gut with a tackle he’d learned on the football field. They hit the ground rolling, and the vampire got in a punch that made Mark see stars.
Christ, the bastard can hit. Gritting his teeth, he slammed his fist into Stone’s jaw, ducking the ringed hand that clawed for his eyes.
“No, you little fucker!” the vampire spat as he powered a punch into the side of Mark’s head hard enough to make it ring. “You’re my slave. Mine! The key to my power. You’re fucking well not getting away from me!”
“Watch me!” Mark tore away from him and scrambled to his feet, backing away as Stone leaped after him. He needed more room to use the combat techniques he had in mind. Stone might have superhuman strength, but he knew jack shit about close quarters hand-to-hand. I’m going to hand you your ass, ‘Master.’
* * * * *
It was all Hope could do just to remain conscious. Jennifer slammed blow after blow into her head, her face twisted with the insane fury the vampire had induced.
“Dammit, get off!” Hope snarled, managing to drive a knee i
nto the blonde’s gut before levering her into an Aikido throw. Jennifer landed on her ass with a yowl of rage.
Hope rolled to her feet, out of breath, head aching savagely.
The girl leaped at her, screaming like a banshee in her pretty pink sundress, hands curled into manicured claws. “I’m going to kill you, bitch!”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to keep you alive, twit!” Hope yelled back, retreating from the blonde’s charge. Judging by the crazed glitter in her big blue eyes, Jennifer didn’t get the message.
God, I feel like shit. Even under normal circumstances, Hope figured she’d have her hands full with Stone’s little psycho. But given the blood loss, she had a feeling her only hope now involved planting a bullet somewhere non-fatal.
Dammit, I am not shooting her. She’s as much a victim as the others. I’ll just have to figure out something else.
The blonde charged her, arms swinging, D-cups heaving, lips pulled back in a snarl under a layer of baby-pink gloss. Hope sidestepped, swept her foot behind the girl’s ankle, and jerked. Jennifer tumbled into the grass with a screech, only to scramble back up a moment later, wild-eyed as a psychotic.
Hope glowered at her. Bloody hell, is the little twit made out of rubber? Throw her on the ground and she bounces.
Beyond the blonde’s narrow shoulder, Hope glimpsed Mark and Stone fighting. The vampires moved in a blur of savage punches and kicks, separating in acrobatic leaps before charging in again for another flurry of blows.
Mark fought with a Marine’s skill, blocking Stone’s attacks, then landing sweeping kicks or powerful punches that knocked the vampire on his heels.
A hand darted into her field of vision, followed by a blaze of burning pain as Jennifer’s fingernails dug ragged furrows in her cheek. Hope yelped, recoiling. The blonde crashed into her, and they went down in a tangle of arms and legs.
Sharp-nailed hands locked around Hope’s throat and begin to squeeze with startling strength. Hope drove a punch into Jennifer’s fury-contorted face, but the girl shook it off and went back to crushing the breath from her throat.
Well, fuck.
* * * * *
Mark bounced on his toes, waiting to deliver another roundhouse kick, when he heard Hope’s yelp of pain cut off by a gurgling wheeze. His head jerked around.
Jennifer sat on top of his lover, strangling her with both hands. Hope’s face was going purple from lack of oxygen, and she gasped, fighting for air as she punched weakly at the other woman’s face. Mark took a single step toward them.
Stone grabbed him from behind, a vicious python grip around shoulders and waist. The vampire’s breath heated his throat an instant before fangs ripped into the vein, clamping down, digging in hard. Stone’s mind slammed into his, strengthened by the bite, by the blood, by sheer frustrated rage. Mine, the black heaving presence snarled into his brain. You’re my slave, and that’s by God what you’ll stay.
* * * * *
Black spots danced in front of Hope’s eyes. Dammit, I’m not going to be murdered by Psycho Barbie!
The blonde straddled her chest, a crushing weight that added to her suffocation. Hope grabbed for the Glock and dragged it out of its holster as the spots of darkness thickened into a black fog.
Hope swung the gun up and around with the last of her fading strength. The weapon slammed into the side of Jennifer’s head. Blue eyes rolled up, and she tumbled on the grass beside Hope in a sprawl of arms and legs and ripped pink dress.
Air! Blessed air! Hope coughed, struggling to suck in oxygen past her swollen windpipe. The dark spots thinned, and she rolled onto all fours, still gasping. Jennifer was out cold, a knot already growing on one pale cheek. Hope winced, hoping she hadn’t done any permanent damage.
Right now, Mark was her priority. She could feel his mind as she had since he’d drank her blood, could feel Stone’s will digging into his psychic barriers, infecting him with the monster’s evil. Enslaving him all over again.
Hell, no. You’re not doing that to my Mark, you bastard.
Hope staggered up—and damn near fell right back on her ass. She braced her feet and spent a minute sucking air into her starved lungs. Aching in every muscle, Hope felt so damned weak she could barely stand. Her skin stung from countless scratches inflicted by Jennifer’s manicured pink claws, and her throat was probably ringed with bruises shaped like dainty hands.
But none of it was going to stop her, because Mark writhed in Stone’s grip. The vampire’s fangs were buried in his throat, tearing so deep blood rolled down his heaving chest. Worse, the monster’s power savaged his mind, amplified to howling force by the bite.
A flood of adrenaline shocked Hope out of her desperate exhaustion. She charged across the yard toward the pair, cursing as it seemed to take far too long to reach them. Until she was there, right beside her lover, inside his mind, the smell of blood and fear searing her nostrils, Mark’s despair battering her consciousness as Stone gloated in triumph.
Hope jammed the Glock’s muzzle into the vampire’s ribs and pulled the trigger.
The gun bucked with a deafening rolling boom. Blue smoke, blood, and bits of tissue exploded from the hole she’d blasted in the killer’s ribs. A human would have been dead in thirty seconds.
As it was, Stone’s grip on Mark’s mind shattered in a thousand smoky shards. The vampire screamed and convulsed, teeth ripping free of his victim’s throat. Bleeding, raging, Mark whirled with a roar and hit him so hard Stone’s jaw crunched under his knuckles.
“I’m not your slave!” he bellowed. “And I’m never going to be your fucking slave again!”
Stone clutched his wounded ribs and reeled away from Mark’s bunched fists. “Don’t bet on it, you little bastard,” he wheezed. Rage and frustration ignited red coals in his eyes as he wheeled and staggered back toward the Cadillac, stepping heedlessly over Jennifer’s unconscious body. Dragging the car door open, he fell inside and started the car with a roar.
Mark shot Hope a look. She heard his thought as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud. Where’d you put the bombs?
He plucked the image from her mind and ran to snatch one of the pipe bombs out of a cluster of bobbing daffodils. As Stone roared up the driveway toward the street beyond, Mark pivoted, and hurled it in a long, spiraling arc toward the car.
Then he went airborne in one of those flat, impossible vampire dives, knocking Hope to the ground as the bomb slammed into the Caddy’s rear windshield. It detonated in a fireball that shook the ground and sent fragments of metal, fiberglass and burning upholstery raining down over the yard. Mark didn’t even flinch under the pelting fragments as he sheltered her with his broad back.
Hope’s ears were still ringing when Mark lifted his head and looked down into her face. Dark triumph blazed in his eyes. “Stone’s dead. He’s not in my mind anymore.”
Huddled together, they watched the Caddy burn down to a black metal frame and twisted lumps of carbon that might have been bone.
* * * * *
“They saved me,” Jennifer Campbell told the deputy earnestly. “That monster would have killed me just like those other girls if Detective Barton and Mr. Wilder hadn’t blown him up.”
Hope hid a smile as the ambulance team loaded her onto a stretcher. The lead paramedic had said her blood pressure was dangerously low, so they’d already started IV fluids. The blood transfusion would come after they reached the hospital.
With Stone dead, Mark had been able to break the vampire’s lingering hold on his victims’ minds. Jennifer now had no memory of attacking Hope.
Instead, she firmly believed Stone had told her he’d killed the first five victims and intended to murder her next. There was more than enough physical evidence in the basement to reveal it had been the site of the previous slayings.
And then there were the bite wounds on Hope and Mark, also attributed to the killer.
The bombs had similarly been explained as Stone’s effort to booby trap the house in case he was ever caught.
Thanks to Mark’s abilities, nobody would examine the story too closely.
“So the bastard thought he was a vampire,” the detective said, shaking his head as he put his notebook away. “I thought I’d seen every kind of crazy, but that guy was nuttier than a pecan tree.”
“Yes.” Jennifer shivered delicately. “I just go cold thinking about what he would have done to me.”
Hope looked past the EMTs as they lifted her into the back of the ambulance. Mark met her gaze over the shoulder of the cop he was talking to. She felt the warm stroke of his mind again just before the vehicle’s double doors swung closed.
Chapter Eight
Hope thumbtacked the thick blue curtain to the wall, then stepped back to consider the results. She’d stretched the fabric tight before securing it to make sure no light got through. It looked like hell and would probably raise questions from her mother, but it would keep the sunlight from burning Mark as he slept. That was all she cared about.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said from behind her. “I can go home and sleep in the walk-in closet again.” Which was what he’d done while she’d been in the hospital for observation yesterday.
“Forget it,” Hope told him. “I’m not sleeping in a closet.”
His lush mouth drew into a grim line, and he squared his shoulders as if preparing for battle. “That’s not a good idea.”
She threw up her hands. “Here we go. I knew this was coming.”
“Yeah, because you’re not an idiot. I’m a vampire now, Hope. I’m damned if I’m going to put you in the hospital every time we make love.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” She’d wrestled with the problem during her hospital stay, in between answering incessant questions from the sheriff and assorted detectives.
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