by Tes Hilaire
He looked over the valley and saw the charred remains as they floated to the ground. At the same time the unnatural light dissipated, only so did the clouds, leaving the valley bathed in sunlight.
And still he didn’t burn.
His eyes flashed to Karissa. She still smiled. Completely unharmed by the rays of the sun. “How?”
He shook his head. Didn’t matter how. Somehow he was alive and so was Karissa. But though Christos’s vampires were dead and Lucifer’s demons similarly banished, there were still a couple dozen merkers to contend with. And if there was one thing Roland had always been good at, it was dismembering a merker. And with Karissa’s ability to transport their vulnerable remains into His light? Well, they now made the perfect team.
“Come on. I think the others could use our help.”
***
Karissa scrambled up the mountainside beside Roland, cursing her weakness. Being turned into a vampire may have given her body the ability to heal enough to function, but it did nothing to alleviate the pure exhaustion that the trauma of the last twelve hours had rendered.
She stumbled another few feet, tripping over both root and brush. Only Roland’s firm grip on her waist kept her upright and running. She’d tell him to go on without her, except for the fact that she never wanted to do without him again. Nope, she’d already made that mistake once. From now on they were joined at the hip. Well, not literally. She had insisted he put her down when it became apparent that he too was tiring from the whole ordeal. A decision she was regretting now with her bare feet and only his thin T-shirt to cover her against the branches and twigs that grabbed at her.
“Where are we going?” she demanded when her knee tried to buckle out from under her.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, then pulled her in tighter. “Let me carry you.”
“No. I just want to know where we are going.”
“Top of the ridge. The Paladin are good, but there were a couple dozen merkers who will have survived Logan’s little bomb.”
“Why are we running?”
“Don’t want to let them have all the fun.”
She planted her feet, forcing him to stop. “No. I mean why are we running? Why not jump?”
“Because there’s also a trigger-happy Paladin with a rifle. No offense, I don’t like healing large caliber holes through my head. That shit can really fuck with your mind.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re not hearing me. I can see the edge of the cliff over there, so I can jump us to it. That can’t be far from the ridge.”
His eyes widened. He smiled. Then his mouth was descending onto hers. She hardly had time to acclimate to the heady taste of his tongue as it pierced and plundered her mouth and the throb of their simultaneous heartbeats, before he was pulling away. “You’re brilliant.”
She winked. “Just keep that thought in mind and we’ll never have a fight as long as we live. Which, I’ve been told, could be a long, long while.”
He laughed, grabbing onto her hand. “Let’s go, mon chaton.”
She turned her attention to the cliff, concentrating on setting her will on a spot that was just a touch back from the ledge, though slightly above. They’d fall when they came out of the netherplanes, but it would be only a couple of feet, and far better than finding themselves encased in granite rock.
When she was sure she had a bead on the extraction location, she pulled them both into the netherplane, brilliant light flashing as they traveled the couple hundred yards in an instant. They hit the end and popped back out, falling with a grunt and thud to the ground.
She started to turn around to see where they were, but Roland quickly grabbed her up, pulling her into a nearby set of bushes.
“What?” She tried to crane her head around. “What is it?”
“Crap, Logan. Can’t you stay out of trouble when I’m not around?”
Roland set her down carefully, his hand reaching down to the wicked looking knife strapped onto his thigh. She followed his gaze to where he was looking and gasped when she saw that Logan wasn’t more than a dozen yards away, struggling with two imposing looking men who she guessed were merkers. As she watched, the fight drew close enough to hear the heavy panting of the creatures and the undertone of Paladin swearing.
“Stay here,” Roland commanded, then dove into the fray, his knife carving chunks out of the merker who’d been lunging toward Logan’s back.
Karissa couldn’t keep up with the movements and found her gaze pulled to another battle going on a few yards away. The red-haired giant she’d met back at the hall—heck if she couldn’t remember his name—was back-to-back with a man who looked alarmingly like Logan. They were both muttering some strange sort of chant, their blades flashing a defensive pattern against the clawed attack of a blackened demon that had somehow managed to survive the blazing light of a few minutes before.
She forced her attention back to Roland and Logan. She couldn’t do much, other than maybe bare her fangs and bite one of the two merkers. But she could be ready to distract if needed.
Good thing it wasn’t needed. The two men had obviously worked together in the past. They didn’t rely on standing back-to-back, but the merry dance they led the two merkers on as they played with their prey was impressive to watch. They taunted, they parried, each swipe of their deadly knives wearing their opponents down, raising their frustration levels, and inviting them to make a mistake. It happened fast. A merker lunged at Logan as Roland swiped the head off the second merker he’d just spun behind. Logan’s knife pierced into the first merker’s chest cavity. The creature screamed as fire pulsed down Logan’s blade as he focused his gift into the knife. Then Roland was there, ignoring the blind stumbling of the other merker as he sank his hand into the creature’s hair, pulled its head back, then sliced through its neck.
“Thanks.” Logan yanked his knife from the creature’s heart and plugged it into the eye socket of the skull Roland held.
“This clears up our scoreboard again. All debts are paid,” Roland said, then casually reached out to grab the fumbling body of the second merker and tossed it to the ground. She watched as Roland placed his foot on the merker’s chest, but she had to turn her head away when it became obvious he planned to carve the creature’s heart from its chest.
She looked back at the red-haired Paladin and the Logan look-alike to see how they were faring. The demon was gone and they were both bent over, arms resting on their knees as they tried to catch their breath. She’d seen that man before. Where? The other man in the study at Haven?
His head lifted, his gaze locking onto hers. She didn’t know why, but her heart started hammering in double-time.
The man pushed up. “Logan, take care of that other merker. Alexander.” The man made a cutting motion at Roland.
Karissa sucked in a breath, watching as the giant red-haired Paladin straightened, took a step forward, then halted, lowering his knife.
“What are you doing?” the man demanded, his anger obvious that the red giant would disobey him.
“Karissa, I believe you’ve already met Elder Calhoun.” Roland came up behind her, leaning down to whisper the next bit close to her ear. “He has a thing against vampires.”
“Is that so?” She bared her fangs at the man who she was now sure had reamed Logan out in the study. “I guess that means he won’t be interested in pairing me off anymore.”
The man’s eyes widened, the blood draining from his face. His nostrils pinched as he snapped his gaze to Roland. “What have you done to my daughter, you bastard!”
Her eyes flew back to Roland, shock causing her vision to blur for a moment.
“Oh yeah. And he’s your father. Though he never told anyone. Not even Logan.”
Holy crap. A flash of light in the corner of her eye told her that the man was stalking toward them, knife in hand. She hissed, placing herself between Roland and her…nope, she couldn’t even think it. A real father wouldn’t have abandoned her the moment sh
e was born. A real father wouldn’t have clinically talked about pairing her off. “You stay away from us.”
The man hesitated, his face inhumanly cold as he stared at her. No, not cold. Disappointed. Well, too bad. That made two of them.
His grip firmed on his knife, his face set into lines of determination as he started forward once more. Roland sucked in a breath, one arm reaching in front of her in an attempt to put her behind him again.
“Stop that,” she snapped. “What’s he going to do? Drive that knife through me to get to you?”
Then Logan was there, stepping between his father and them both. “Not unless he plans to go through me first.”
“Get out of the way, fool.”
“Why? So you can kill her like you did her mother?”
Karissa gasped, her hand flying to her mouth.
The man’s eyes flitted to her then narrowed back on Logan. “Her mother died the moment she was bitten. As now has my daughter.”
“That’s my sister you’re talking about, old man. I’ve been a sucky brother until now, but I’m going to make up for it. You’re not to harm her. Or her bond mate.”
“They can’t be bond mates. They have no souls.”
Karissa shook her head, old wounds and new wounds spreading out and melding together. In an instant, she was made an orphan—again.
“Uh, hate to interrupt this riveting family reunion, but—”
They all looked to where Alexander was pointing at the decapitated body crawling across the forest floor toward its blinking head.
Roland grunted, stepping away from Karissa to grab up the head by the hair, the creature’s heart still beating in his other hand. “Can you send these to His realm?” he asked, holding them out to her.
She recoiled from the sight of them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The place of light.”
She looked up at Roland’s face. “That’s His realm?”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Where did you think you were going, mon chaton?”
“I had no idea. I called it the netherplane.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. The important thing is that the light of that realm will burn away the presence of pure evil. Can you either send this there or bring them there and come back?”
She looked down at the bloody heart and the dangling head he was holding out to her. “I’m not touching those things.”
“How about you bring me there, then. Works either way.”
“As long as I don’t have to touch them.” She stepped forward, laying her hands on his upper arms, but pointedly keeping a large amount of space between them. She didn’t want to accidently touch his bloody trophies either. Then she concentrated, shifting her being and everything she touched into that “other” place which was here and nowhere at the same time. The moment they passed through the line of here and now and there, the heart started shriveling in Roland’s hand, and then the head. She shuddered. Sparks popped within the skull, the bright white light of…His…planes burning the brain out through the eye sockets.
“Good enough,” Roland prompted when the skull stopped sizzling.
With a nod, she popped them out of the plane and back to the same place they’d been before. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dimmer light, but when she did, it was to find Logan smiling and Elder Calhoun standing mouth agape as he stared at the empty skull and the ashes in Roland’s hand where the heart had once been.
“You can get rid of those now,” she told Roland.
With a shrug, he turned his hand over, ashes spilling onto the ground. The skull he tossed over at her father’s feet, the empty eye sockets staring up at the stubborn Elder.
“Isn’t that interesting?” Alexander asked, folding his arms across his chest. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Elder, but doesn’t that prove that both Roland and Karissa here can’t be evil?”
Karissa slid her arms around Roland. “Of course Roland’s not evil. He’s my soul mate.”
***
“I think that’s the last of them.” Roland brushed the ashes off his hands, tossing the merker’s empty skull onto the pile of others. It thunked up against another, making a sound reminiscent of a hollow drum. Karissa visibly shuddered.
“Thank God.” She gestured at the pile. “I mean, can I just say eww? That’s just gross, really gross.”
Roland smiled, shaking his head. “I adore you.”
“Good.” She stepped up into him, linking her arms around his back. “Because you’re stuck with me. Especially now. And just so you know, there will be no biting of necks other than each other’s.”
Biting necks. He was hit by yet another pang of guilt, the one of many that he’d been having since the moment he’d sunk his teeth into her down in that cavern. She seemed to be taking it all in stride but he wondered how long it would be before the full import would hit her. He only hoped she’d still want him when it did.
He squeezed her tighter. “I’m sorry, Karissa. I never would have turned you, I just couldn’t…”
She squirmed, freeing an arm so she could place her finger over his mouth. “Hush. You did what you had to. And I for one am glad. I’m not sure my soul would have survived waiting an eternity for you to join me.”
“But it would have been an eternity in heaven.”
“You big fool. You are my heaven.” She snuggled in closer, her sweet scent drifting into his senses and turning him hard. “Why else do you think He made sure I found my way to you?”
Maybe she was right. But damn, he couldn’t help feeling that he’d stolen something from her.
Karissa pulled back, her eyes narrowed as she grabbed onto his hand, placing it over her heart. “Can’t you feel it, Roland? It beats for you.”
She took the same hand, slid it down her front until the heel of his hand was settled over the pulsing heat of her core. He sucked in a sharp breath, his cock throbbing in rhythm against his leather pants.
“And this,” she rubbed his hand over her mons, a soft moan parting her lips, “this throbs for you.”
Holy fuck, she was killing him. “Oh yes, mon petite peste, I can feel that. And if you don’t stop doing that, I’m going to conveniently forget we’re less than a dozen yards from both your father and your brother.”
She smiled. Her small hand slid around his, linking through his fingers as she pulled it behind her back, jerking him as close as humanly possible.
“And this…”
He felt the caress on his mind, the slight shift as he was pulled with her to the edges of His realm. The blinding white light was as stunning as always, but all he felt was a sense of ease.
“Why would He allow us this, if not to show that within us both lies a soul in His keeping?”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Of course I believe that. I believed it before.” She lifted their linked hands up, kissing his knuckles as she dropped them back into the real world. “The sunlight might be a miracle, but His place is truth. And the truth is, even when you feared you’d fallen, you were still welcome there. Remember your loft? The first time we met?”
He did. Now that she brought it up, he recalled that first time she dragged him through the other plane. He’d been terrified and shocked that he’d survived breaching a barrier he’d thought off limits to the likes of him. Yet, he’d come out whole at the other end.
“It’s about time you showed up. I was about to send a search party in for your body!”
Logan’s voice brought Roland out of his ponderings. He twisted Karissa around, his gaze honing in on the Paladin who had re-formed on the edge of the ridge.
“Huh. I think I’m starting to get used to that,” Karissa said.
“What?” Roland asked, studying the taut pull of the skin around the Paladin’s nose and mouth. His pulse accelerated, not liking what the seriousness of the look suggested.
“Valin. Poofing out of the air like that.” She bit her lip
, gnawing on the plump flesh. “And really, he’s not half bad to look at naked.”
He blinked down at her, a bit taken aback by her laid-back attitude until he remembered that she wasn’t aware enough back in the tunnel to remember who Valin had chased after.
“What the heck?” Valin exclaimed.
Roland looked back up to find the Paladin staring at him and Karissa, shocked.
“Remember that vision Roland’s dad had?” Logan asked, dragging his T-shirt off to hand it to Valin.
Valin nodded, then took the T-shirt and pulled it over his head all the while keeping his incredulous gaze on the pair of vampires “lounging” in the sun.
“Seems Roland’s dad was right,” Logan explained. “Karissa is the child of light. Literally. One sip of her blood and presto. A vamp can stand the light of day. Though not His light. Suckers still fry in that.” Logan’s gaze turned back to Roland and Karissa. “Unless they have enough of a soul left to still be His, I guess.”
“Gabriella?” Roland asked.
“I couldn’t find her, and then the light…” Valin’s gaze drifted back to the entrance to the mines.
Roland’s heart howled. It shouldn’t hurt this bad, the kid had been more annoying than anything else. But damn, she’d been plucky. And over the years he’d come to think of her as his.
Karissa squeezed his hand, offering comfort. “I’m sorry, Roland.”
Valin looked back at them, down at their linked hands. His head snapped back up. “She drank Karissa’s blood. So she could be alive, right?”
Roland sucked in a sharp breath. Gabriella had taken Karissa’s vein? Impossible. The girl would rather die than give in to her nature. “Gabby did what?”
“I found her chained up in one of the warehouses. There was an IV bag next to her. She said she could find Karissa and the indication was that she’d been given some of Karissa’s blood.”
The tightness in Roland’s chest eased. He squeezed Karissa closer into his side. “Then she’s okay. The light won’t hurt her now.” Because of Karissa. Another gift. Another miracle. And another affirmation that Ganelon and Christos had had no idea what his father’s vision had actually meant. He tipped his head down and brushed his lips against her temple. “Thank you.”