by J. R. Ward
She came around the corner of the sofa anyway. In the dimness, she could just vaguely make out the big shape of him.
“What’s wrong, Rhage?”
“Nothing.”
“Yeah, obviously.” Damn it, she hated the tough-guy routine. “It’s the sunlight, right? You’re allergic to it.”
He laughed harshly. “You could say that. Mary, stop. Don’t come back here.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you to see me.”
She reached over and clicked on the lamp nearest to her. A hissing sound shot through the room.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw that Rhage was flat on his back, one arm cradled against his chest, the other over his eyes. A nasty-looking burn had taken root on the skin exposed by the sleeves he’d rolled up. He was grimacing in pain, his lips peeled back from his—
Her blood went cold.
Fangs.
Two long canine incisors were lodged among his upper teeth.
He had fangs.
She must have gasped because he muttered, “I told you not to look.”
“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. “Tell me those are fake.”
“They aren’t.”
She pinwheeled backward until she hit the wall. Holy…good God.
“What…are you?” she choked out.
“No sunlight. Funky choppers.” He inhaled raggedly. “Take a guess.”
“No…that isn’t…”
He groaned and then she heard a shuffle, as if he were moving around. “Could you please shut that lamp off? My retinas got toasted and they need some time to recover.”
She reached forward and clicked the switch, then snapped her hand back. Wrapping her arms around herself, she listened to the hoarse sounds he made as he breathed.
Time passed. He didn’t say anything further. Didn’t sit up and laugh and take out a fake set of teeth. Didn’t tell her that he was Napoleon’s best friend or John the Baptist or Elvis, like some kind of crazy lunatic.
He also didn’t fly up into the air and try and bite her. Didn’t turn into a bat, either.
Oh, come on, she thought. She couldn’t be taking him seriously, could she?
Except he was different. Fundamentally unlike any man she’d ever met. What if…
He moaned softly. From the glow of the TV, she saw his boot poke out from behind the couch.
She couldn’t make sense of what he thought he was, but she knew he was suffering now. And she wasn’t going to leave him on her floor in agony if there was something she could do for him.
“How can I help you?” she said.
There was a pause. Like she’d surprised him.
“Could you bring me some ice cream? No nuts or chips if you have it. And a towel.”
When she came back with a bowlful, she could hear him struggling to sit up.
“Let me come to you,” she said.
He went still. “Aren’t you afraid of me now?”
Considering he was either delusional or a vampire, she should be terrified.
“Would a candle be too much light?” she asked, ignoring the question. “Because I won’t be able to see at all back there.”
“Probably not. Mary, I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
She put the ice cream down, lit one of her larger votives, and rested it on the table next to the couch. In the flickering glow she took in his big body. And the arm still over his eyes. And the burns. He wasn’t grimacing anymore, but his mouth was slightly open.
So she could just see the tips of his fangs.
“I know you won’t hurt me,” she murmured, while she picked up the bowl. “You’ve had enough chances to already.”
Draping herself over the back of the sofa, she spooned up some of the ice cream and leaned down toward him.
“Here. Open wide. Häagen-Dazs vanilla.”
“It’s not to eat. The protein in the milk and the cold will help the burns heal.”
There was no way she could reach where he’d been scalded, so she pulled the couch back farther and sat on the floor next to him. Working the ice cream into a thick soup, she used her fingers to smooth some of it over his inflamed, blistered skin. He flinched, flashing those canines, and she had a moment’s pause.
He was not a vampire. Couldn’t be.
“Yes, I really am one,” he murmured.
She stopped breathing. “Can you read minds?”
“No, but I know you’re staring at me, and I can imagine how I’d feel if I were you. Look, we’re a different species, that’s all. Nothing freaky, just…different.”
Okay, she thought, putting more of the ice cream on his burns. Let’s try this whole thing on for size.
Here she was with a vampire. A horror icon. A six-foot-eight, 280-pound horror icon with a set of teeth on him like a Doberman pinscher.
Could it be true? And why did she believe him when he said he wouldn’t hurt her? She must be out of her mind.
Rhage groaned in relief. “It’s working. Thank God.”
Well, for one thing, he was too busy hurting right now to be much of a threat. It was going to take him weeks to recover from these burns.
She dipped her fingers into the bowl and carried more of the Häagen-Dazs to his arm. On her third round, she had to lean down close to make sure she was seeing right. His skin was absorbing the ice cream as if it were a salve, and he was healing. Right in front of her eyes.
“That feels so much better,” he said softly. “Thank you.”
He removed his arm from his forehead. Half his face and neck were brilliant red.
“Do you want me to do this part, too?” She indicated the burned area.
His uncanny teal blue eyes opened. They were wary as he looked up at her. “Please. If you don’t mind.”
While he watched her, she put her fingers into the bowl and then reached out to him. Her hands shook just a little as she worked the stuff over his cheek first.
God, his lashes were thick. Thick and dark blond. And his skin was soft, though his beard had grown in some overnight. He had a great nose. Straight as an arrow. And his lips were perfect. Big enough to fit the size of his face. Dark pink. The lower one was larger.
She went back for more and covered his jaw. Then she moved down his neck, passing over the thick cords of muscle that ran from his shoulders up to the base of his skull.
When she felt something brush her shoulder, she glanced over. His fingers were stroking the ends of her hair.
Anxiety spiked. She jerked back.
Rhage dropped his hand, not surprised she rejected him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, closing his eyes.
With nothing to look at, he was acutely aware of her gentle fingers as they moved over his skin. And she was so close to him, close enough that her scent was all he could smell. As the pain from the sun exposure faded, his body began to burn up in a different way.
He opened his eyes, keeping the lids low. Watching. Wanting.
When she was finished, she put the bowl aside and regarded him directly. “Let’s assume that I believe you are a…you’re different. Why didn’t you bite me when you had the chance? I mean, those fangs aren’t just for decoration, right?”
Her body was tense, as if she were prepared to bolt at any minute, but she wasn’t giving in to her fear. And she had helped him when he needed it, even though she was scared.
God, courage was a turn-on.
“I feed from females of my own species. Not humans.”
Her eyes flared. “Are there a lot of you?”
“Enough. Not as many as there used to be. We’re hunted for extinction.”
Which reminded him: He was separated from his weapons by about six yards and a couch. He tried to get up, but the weakness in his body made his movements slow and uncoordinated.
Goddamned sun, he thought. Suck the life right out of you.
“What do you need?” she asked.
“My duffel. Just bring it around so it’s at my feet.”
She stood up and disappeared around the couch. He heard a thud and then the sound of the bag being dragged across the floor.
“Good lord, what is in here?” She came back into view. As she dropped the handles, they fell to the sides.
He hoped like hell she didn’t look in there.
“Listen, Mary…we’ve got a problem.” He forced his upper body off the floor, bracing his arms.
The probability of a lesser attacking her house now was low. Although the slayers could go out in sunlight, they worked at night and needed to trance-out to replenish their strength. Most of the time they were quiet during the day.
But he hadn’t heard back from Wrath. And evening would come eventually.
Mary stared down at him, her expression grave. “Do you need to be underground? Because we can get you into the old grain cellar. The door to it is through the kitchen, but I could hang quilts over the sliders—Shoot, there are skylights. Maybe we could cover you in something. You’d probably be safer down there.”
Rhage let his head fall back so that all he saw was the ceiling.
Here was this human female, who wasn’t half his weight, who was ill, who’d just found out she had a vampire in her house—and she was worried about protecting him.
“Rhage?” She came over and knelt beside him. “I can help get you down—”
Before he could think, he took her hand, pressed his lips to her palm, and then put it on his heart.
Her fear swirled in the air, the sharp, smoky smell mixing with her delicious natural scent. But she didn’t pull away this time, and the fight-or-flight cocktail didn’t last long.
“You don’t need to worry,” she said softly. “I won’t let anyone get to you today. You’re safe.”
Ah, hell. She was melting him. She really was.
He cleared his throat. “Thanks. But it’s you I’m worried about. Mary, last night we were attacked in the park. You lost your purse, and I have to assume my enemies got it.”
Tension shot down her arm, traveled through her palm, and hit him in his chest. As her anxiety spiked, he wished there was some way of bearing the fear for her, taking it into himself.
She shook her head. “I don’t remember any attack.”
“I hid your memories.”
“What do you mean, ‘hid’?”
He reached into her mind and released the events of the night before.
Mary gasped and put her hands to her head, blinking in rapid succession. He knew he had to explain quickly. It wasn’t going to take her long to process everything and jump to the conclusion that he was a killer worth running from.
“Mary, I needed to get you home so I could protect you while I waited for word from my brothers.” Which still hadn’t come through, goddamn it. “Those men who attacked us, they aren’t human, and they’re very good at what they do.”
She settled onto the floor with no grace, as if her knees had given out. Her eyes were wide and sightless while she shook her head.
“You killed two of them,” she said in a dead voice. “You snapped the neck of one. And the other you…”
Rhage cursed. “I’m sorry that I got you tangled up in all this. I’m sorry that you’re in danger now. And I’m sorry I stripped your memories—”
She pegged him with hard eyes. “Don’t do that again.”
He wished he could make her that promise. “I won’t unless I have to in order to save you. You know a lot about me now, and that puts you at risk.”
“Have you taken any other memories from me?”
“We met at the training center. You came with John and Bella.”
“How long ago?”
“Couple days. I can give you those back, as well.”
“Wait a minute.” She frowned. “Why didn’t you just make me forget all about you before now? You know, take everything.”
As if she would have preferred that.
“I was going to. Last night. After dinner.”
She looked away. “And you didn’t because of what happened in the park?”
“And because…” God, just how far did he want to go with this? Did he really want her to know how much he was feeling her? No, he thought. She was looking totally shell-shocked. Now was hardly the time to come clean with the happy news that a male vampire had bonded with her. “Because it’s an invasion of your privacy.”
In the silence that followed, he could see her working over the events, the implications, the reality of the situation. And then her body let off the sweet scent of arousal. She was remembering how he’d kissed her.
Abruptly, she winced and frowned. And the fragrance was cut off.
“Ah, Mary, in the park, when I was keeping away from you while we—”
She held her hand up, stopping him. “All I want to talk about is what we do now.”
Her gray eyes met his and didn’t waver. She was, he realized, ready for anything.
“God…you’re amazing, Mary.”
Her brows lifted. “Why?”
“You’re handling all this shit really well. Especially the part about what I am.”
She tucked a piece of hair behind her ears and studied his face. “You know something? It’s not that big a surprise. Well, it is, but…I knew you were different from the moment I first saw you. I didn’t know you were a…Do you call yourselves vampires?”
He nodded.
“Vampire,” she said, as if trying the word out. “You haven’t hurt me or scared me. Well, not really. And…you know, I’ve been clinically dead at least twice. Once when I went into cardiac arrest while they were giving me a bone-marrow transplant. Once when I came down with pneumonia and my lungs filled up with fluid. I, ah, I’m not sure where I went or why I came back, but there was something on the other side. Not heaven with the clouds and the angels and all that jazz. Just a white light. I didn’t know what it was the first time. The second, I just went right into it. I don’t know why I came back—”
She flushed and stopped talking, as if embarrassed by what she’d revealed.
“You have been to the Fade,” he murmured, awed.
“The Fade?”
He nodded. “At least, that’s what we call it.”
She shook her head, clearly unwilling to go further with the subject. “Anyway, there’s a lot we don’t understand about this world. That vampires exist? It’s just one more thing.”
When he didn’t say anything for a while, she glanced at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You are a wahlker,” he said, feeling as if he should stand up and bow to her, as was custom.
“A wahlker?”
“Someone who has been to the other side and returned. Where I come from, that is a title of distinction.”
A cell phone’s bleating turned both of their heads. The sound was coming from inside the duffel.
“Could you hand me that bag?” he asked.
She leaned over and tried to lift it. Couldn’t. “Why don’t I just give you the phone?”
“No.” He struggled to his knees. “Just let me—”
“Rhage, I’ll get it—”
“Mary, stop,” he commanded. “I don’t want you going in there.”
She recoiled from the thing, as if it were carrying snakes.
With a lurch he put his hand inside. As soon as he found the phone, he cocked it and put it up to his ear.
“Yeah?” he barked, while partially zipping the duffel shut.
“Are you okay?” Tohr said. “And where the hell are you?”
“I’m fine. Just not at home.”
“No shit. When you didn’t meet Butch down at the gym, and he couldn’t find you in the main house, he got worried and called me. Do you need a pickup?”
“No. I’m cool where I am.”
“And where’s that?”
“I called Wrath last night and he didn’t get back to me. He around?”
“He and Beth went down to his place in the city for some private time. Now wh
ere are you?” When there was no quick answer, the brother’s voice dropped lower. “Rhage, what the hell’s going on?”
“Just tell Wrath I’m looking for him.”
Tohr cursed. “Are you sure you don’t need a pickup? I can send a couple of the doggen out with a lead-lined body bag.”
“Nah, I’m good.” He wasn’t going anywhere without Mary. “Later, man.”
“Rhage—”
He hung up and the phone rang again immediately. After checking caller ID, he let Tohr go into voice mail. He was putting the thing down next to him on the floor when his stomach let out a grumble.
“Would you like me to get you something to eat?” Mary asked.
He looked at her for a moment, stunned. And then had to remind himself she didn’t know the intimacy she was offering. Still, the idea that she would honor him with food she had prepared with her own hands left him breathless.
“Close your eyes for me,” he said.
She stiffened. But she lowered her lids.
He leaned forward and pressed his lips softly to hers.
Those gray eyes popped wide open, but he pulled back before she could.
“I would love it if you would feed me. Thank you.”
Chapter Twenty-two
As the sun came up, O riffled through the building sketches that covered U’s kitchen table. He spun one around.
“This is what I want. How fast can we get it up?”
“Quick. Site’s out in the middle of nowhere, and the facility’s not going to be hooked to any municipal utilities, so there’s no need for a building permit. Putting together the wall supports and throwing some exterior clapboards on a fifteen-hundred-square-foot space won’t take long. Installing the storage facilities for the captives shouldn’t be a problem. As for the shower, we can divert the nearby stream easily and install a pump to provide running water. Supplies like hardware and tools are all generic and I’ve kept the board lengths standard size to reduce the amount of cutting. Gas-powered generator on site will provide electricity for the saws and nail guns. It’ll also give us light if we want it. We’ll keep that long-term.”
“Give me the number of days.”
“With a crew of five guys, I can have a roof over your head in forty-eight hours. Provided I can work them into the ground and the supplies come in on time.”