Salvation of the Damned

by Theresa Meyers

  Moist heat sheened her skin as Eva writhed on the velvet. She could swear she felt the slide of sweat-slicked skin against the length of her body, making her ache for release. She reached out, desperate to feel the solidness of him against her. She needed…

  And like before, it was as though he understood before she even completed the thought.

  Dammit to hell. Raphael couldn’t resist her. As much as he’d tried to give her release without endangering her fragile mortal form, this was more torturous for them both, and he gave up resisting.

  In an instant he was naked beside her, her heated skin an inferno that threatened to consume him.

  She locked a hot silken leg over his buttocks, pressing him close to her wet pulsing heat, and he groaned in desperation. Her pulse ticked inside him like a time bomb, each rushing movement of her hot blood screaming at him, demanding he take his fill of her.

  He clenched his jaw until he thought the bones might crack, determined not to drink, determined not to harm her. She lifted her hips and her slick heat convulsed against him.

  “Please. Raphael. Please—”

  He growled, knowing his eyes had gone red, unable to control himself any longer, and sank slowly into her, letting the fire and flood of sensations—hers, and his—overtake him as he moved with her.

  Nothing mattered now but the fire that licked and gnawed and roared between them. He felt her first climax rip through them both, shredding him into a thousand tiny bits then bringing them back together. And suddenly the world exploded into a thousand suns, and Eva was the center of it all.

  Chapter Five

  Eva was certain she had no bones left.

  At least no mortal should be able to survive a bout of incredible sex like that. But somehow, she knew that there was more to what had happened to her and Raphael than utterly fantastic sex.

  For the first time in her life she felt whole, as if she’d finally found the missing part of herself she’d somehow always known was gone.

  Which made keeping her promise to Raphael to be part of this ceremony, whatever it was, even more difficult. As desperately as she wanted to cling to him, since the crash she’d believed that she had a destiny to fulfill. Her hand pulled into a ball, the lines forming deep creases within her fist. The line of her fate crossing and ending at the line of her heart. The palm reader had warned her never to fall in love. Perhaps this was why. She’d seen that one line ended where it connected with the other.

  She could never have anticipated that falling in love would bring her to the brink of her destiny, but now that she knew, she could not turn away. Eva knew with a deep certainty she’d been born for this. The gods, the fates, whatever had been waiting for her in that white place on the other side, had confirmed it.

  He still lay beside her, utterly still, his broad chest not moving beneath her cheek. His fingers grazed a lazy trail up and down her spine, causing delicious shivers across her body.

  Eva savored the moment a few more seconds before she spoke softly, “We’re out of time, aren’t we?”

  His fingers threaded through her hair with infinite tenderness, and he tucked her closer into his side with his other arm. “I’m not certain I’m able to let you go.”

  Eva sat up on her elbow, resting her chin in her hand, and she looked at his golden eyes. “Maybe you don’t have to.”

  She felt the anguished sigh come from the very core of him. “If you do not, all my kind, including me, dies. If you do, you die. Somehow I fail to see how either choice is appealing, because I truly do not wish to live without you.”

  She lay back, curling tighter against him. “I wish there was some way.”

  His heart twisted. He pulled her close, wishing he were capable of tucking her fragile form inside of his immortal casing. “If there is a way, I’ll find it.”

  You must bring her. The ceremony has begun. Dammit. Couldn’t Janus stay out of his head, even now, in his last moment to be alone with her?

  We’ll be there shortly.

  Come alone. We will send an escort for her.

  Raphael’s brow pinched together. Why did Janus need him alone?

  “I’ve been told there is a maid coming to help you dress.”

  She looked up at him her eyes softening. “I’d prefer if you dressed me.”

  He smiled, but it hurt like hell. The last image he wanted of her in this form was of her naked beside him, not in some damn coffin, still as death after the others had leached the life energy from her to thwart the virus and sustain themselves. He brushed a kiss on her forehead. “As my lady wishes.”

  Rising from the bed, he conjured white undergarments and a white gown. God, it could have been a wedding gown, with long trailing sleeves and a fitted bodice. She slid from the sheets, her dark glossy hair delightfully rumpled. He’d remember that. And the texture of it between his fingers, as well as the jasmine and spice scent that cloaked her satin skin.

  Raphael brushed light kisses up her legs as he slid the scrap of satin over her hips, cupping her bottom in his hands and pressing his cheek to her stomach. With infinite slowness, he pulled the silk stockings up her legs, brushing and caressing her smooth skin as he went. He held open the gown for her, and she stepped between the folds and into his arms.

  Raphael’s gut contracted. Need and sadness ripped him to the core. He showered kisses down her bare shoulders as he fastened the little hooks up her back. She looked like a damned fairy princess, and he was the monster that would take her to her demise.

  Anger, hate, at himself, his kind, boiled up within Raphael. How could he do this? God. How could he not? “You are, as ever, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he whispered achingly against the shell of her ear.

  Even though the memory of ever having a heart was gone, tonight he felt the phantom recollection in the tight ache in his chest. Phantom or not, the searing ache of loss squeezed at his chest and made his teeth clench with the pain.

  Duty or love?

  One he wanted; the other was the grim path he was forced to take.

  He’d damn them all, if they weren’t damned already.

  Eva turned and cupped her warm hand to his cheek, making his heart-of-stone fracture. “I’ve never wanted to be with someone the way I want to be with you. I think I love you.” She paused, a determined looking blazing in her eyes. “No, I know I love you. I’m not sure how or why, but you’re already part of me.”

  It took everything within him to keep standing. He grasped her hand, took it in his own and brought their joined fingers to his mouth, and gently kissed it. “You can never imagine how much you mean to me, how long I’ve waited for you. And I will wait for you Eva, no matter how long. I am yours, forever.”

  The door to their chamber snicked open, and they both started. A woman with long dark hair entered, nodding to Raphael.

  He caught Eva’s gaze and saw the fear creeping in. “Marie will bring you down to the ceremony, cherie. Never forget that I am yours.”

  Each step down the broad staircase felt like another step closer to the guillotine. When he reached the ballroom, the silent crowd was assembled, waiting.

  Raphael stared at the coffin as the gong sounded and Janus appeared, his skin almost alabaster beneath the trailing black cloak and the shock of white hair worn long down his back. Raphael locked gazes with the elder vampire, whose eyes glowed red.

  Janus’s lips did not move, but the words were uttered all the same in Raphael’s mind. It is better to have loved and lost—

  Raphael didn’t bother to hide his irritation and shot back his reply, glaring at Janus. Spare me that twaddle. The damn fool idiot who coined that saying didn’t have a clue what true love was. If he had, he never would have said that. The only true beauty in this world is love—without it, everything else is meaningless.

  The red glow softened slightly, but Janus’s face stayed inscrutable. But this time he spoke. “Are you certain she is the one?”

  Raphael leveled his gaze on Janus�
�s impossibly smooth face. “If I could have brought you any other, I would have.”

  “Then you truly love her.” It was not a question, but a statement, one that struck Raphael to the core. Even in his half-alive state, an aberration of nature, he was still capable of love. And if he were capable of that, could he save Eva?

  “I have loved her for a thousand years. I doubt a thousand more would change that.”

  “You have sacrificed much for us, brother.”

  Raphael turned away, his gaze locked on the glossy bones in the coffin before him.

  “The council has agreed that we will give you time to be alone with her on the other side. When the bones disappear, you will enter the coffin first. We will give you a moment when you can meld your soul with hers and take your sustenance without intrusion from the others. It is the best we can offer you in return for your loss.”

  Raphael clenched his jaw, his teeth grinding together. Certainly their offer was better than nothing, but it was hardly what he truly wanted. What he wanted was to die, too. The thought of once again living without her for another thousand years, possibly forever, was more than he could bear.

  He stepped up on the dais, moving toward the coffin. The bones of Siphidius disappeared the instant he touched their smooth ivory surface, as if they had been made of nothing but mist. He climbed in; placing his body in the indentations the bones had leveled upon the crimson velvet.

  An intense pull centered on his naval, as if he were being sucked inside out, his stone-like flesh bursting apart into atoms of dust as he disappeared from the coffin in the grand ballroom. Surrounded by the rest of his kind, Raphael had never felt more alone. And then, there was nothing but the white mist that enveloped him.

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  Chapter Six

  When Eva entered the vast ballroom, the first thing she did was search for Raphael’s face. But despite the hundreds of faces she saw, he wasn’t there.

  Somehow that hurt even deeper than she’d thought possible. Had what they’d shared meant so little to him? The stiff brocade of her over gown felt suddenly too heavy and the room too cold.

  The sea of faces crowded in, making her heartbeat stutter. They all seemed to press closer and Eva was afraid she might faint.

  A firm hand grasped her arm, supportive, but hardly kind. She glanced at the red-eyed man with long white hair whose pale face was placid, almost devoid of emotion.

  “I am Janus, the elder of those gathered here. This way, my lady.” He led her up the steps of the golden dais, ever closer to the mahogany casket with the strange skeleton. But when she was close enough to see inside, she noticed that the skeleton was gone.

  She turned to the man. “Where is Raphael?”

  “He is waiting for you on the other side, my lady.” He nodded toward the coffin.

  Eva clasped her hands together tightly.

  “It won’t hurt. I give you my word,” Janus encouraged.

  Using the small step stool beside the coffin, she climbed inside, her heart frantic in her chest.

  “God. This better work,” she muttered, and closed her eyes.

  True to his word, nothing hurt. Almost like having a heavy quilt tossed over her, everything suddenly felt heavier and heavier and Eva grew warmer and warmer.

  Instead of being dark, the light outside her eyelids intensified just like before until Eva was forced to open them. The room was white, if it was a room. She really couldn’t see any walls, or a ceiling. Just light, everywhere. And Raphael, standing there, waiting for her.

  She rushed at him, flinging herself into his arms.

  “You came,” he whispered into her hair.

  “You’re here.” Her voice broke with a sob.

  “I have only a moment before the others arrive, and I must tell you something.” He bent to one knee, and Eva found it all suddenly rather old fashioned and pulled on his hands, but he would not be moved.

  “I love you, Eva. I always have and I always shall. You are my life, my breath, my very being. Will you come back to me?”

  “Come back? Aren’t you staying here, with me?”

  “I wish I could, but there is only a little time given to us on the other side of the veil separating life from death. You will meet each of my family in turn and they will ask the blessing of you, then they and I will return.”

  “Will I?”

  He closed his eyes, and when he did look at her, the anguish etched into the planes of his face said it all. “I can only hope.”

  Then he kissed her fiercely, as if his entire being depended on it, and Eva held nothing back. But as she reached to lock her arms around him, he dissolved into nothingness.

  Atom by atom, Raphael’s body exploded outward, knitting together, taking shape. The snap of an electric-like charge skittered over his skin as the transformation was complete, and his eyelids felt heavy as he forced himself to open them. Reluctantly, Raphael sat up, pulling himself upright. He used what little will he had left to climb out of the coffin. He stumbled down the steps of the dais into the now-empty room and wept. All the others were already transporting to the other side and would reemerge shortly. It took only mere seconds for the transformation to occur, and yet it was that brush with death, that moment they touched life, that kept them all safe for a thousand more years. All but the sacrifice. If she did not return from the other side of the veil, she would be lost to him.

  The ache inside him was nearly unbearable. He’d sacrificed everything, and gained nothing but millennia to agonize about losing her again and ponder his destructive fate. Perhaps he should leave them all, and venture out alone. The last time, he’d lived in seclusion for nearly four hundred years. That would not nearly be enough this time. He’d realized that his desperate need for Eva, for Isabeau, was love.

  Raphael pulled himself together, sensing that the next vampire was going to reappear. He leaned against the wall and watched as one by one they quickly rose from the coffin, their bodies reborn. Safe from the ravages of the plague, they filled the room, but there was utter silence. All eyes looked to the empty coffin, waiting for the sacred bones to emerge to complete the transformation ceremony.

  Raphael stood next to the casket, waiting. In the precise place where he had lain, the bones of Siphidius began to reemerge, seeming to appear first like a thick mist that grew more and more dense.

  The skeleton was now complete. Behind Raphael the gong sounded, ending the transformation ceremony that had been the salvation of his kind.

  It was done.

  Eva had not survived.

  Why he had hoped this time, when it had not happened before, he wasn’t sure. He just had harbored the one small sliver of hope in his being.

  He moved to turn away, already shielding his mind from the others. Only the briefest flicker of movement caught his eye. It was as if a thousand invisible spiders spun their silk wrapping the bones of Siphidius in a white shroud that grew and filled out, quickly becoming flesh. Raphael gripped the edge of the coffin, silently willing that something different, something impossible had happened this time.

  A murmur rippled through the vampires as they crowded up, jostling each other to get a better look. Janus pushed his way through the crowd and stepped up on the dais, standing across from Raphael on the other side of the coffin.

  Raphael caught his gaze. “What do you make of this?”

  The elder vampire steepled his fingers, placing the tips to his mouth, then he shook his head. “It is nothing we have ever seen before. So there is no way to know what will happen. The virus has mutated, becoming more deadly. Perhaps the cure has changed, too, becoming stronger.”

  If she had returned from death once, could she do so again? Slowly, a female form began to appear, and Raphael felt his granite heart begin to beat again. There was no mistaking the lips, the smooth curve of her cheek or the long lashes that lay in dark crescents on her pale cheeks. Eva had returned.

  He waited for her to gasp, to take in a breath an
d wake. But nothing happened. The buzz of voices grew louder, like an angry hive of bees, disturbed and unsure of what to do next.

  Raphael’s gaze flicked to Janus. “She’s come back, why isn’t she breathing, dammit?”

  Janus’s mouth didn’t move as his red gaze bore into Raphael, but the words came through clearly. Just because she has returned, does not mean she has survived the sacrifice.

  Raphael tore his gaze away from the elder vampire and let it linger instead on the sweet form of the woman lying before him. He gathered together his powers and focused. Between his fingertips a perfect red rose materialized.

  He placed it gently between her smooth hands, and realized with dread that there was no pulse. He closed his eyes, willing his acute hearing to pick up any trace of a heartbeat, any stir of movement within her body, but all was silent.

  A suffocating blackness crowded in, drowning out the hushed conversations of the others around him. She was truly gone. Again.

  He opened his eyes to gaze at her current form one last time. If he was lucky, extremely lucky, perhaps in a thousand years she might come back again in another form. But even as the invisible vise around his chest tightened further and his throat burned, he knew that the waiting would be hell.

  The petals of the rose shivered slightly. Had it been the air currents in the room? Or was it something else? He stared, thankful that he didn’t need to draw a breath so he could focus. The room faded around him, all his attention riveted on her slender white hands. He saw her finger move, the movement so subtle no one else would have noticed.

  Raphael’s knees gave way and he sank down beside the velvet edge of the coffin, his face near hers. The thin skin of her eyelids quivered. It was all the encouragement he needed. He bent down to her, stroking her cheek. “Eva, darling. It’s time to wake. Don’t be scared. Don’t try to breathe. You don’t need to. Just open your eyes for me.”

  Eva could hear the hot silk of his voice, could feel the heat radiating off him beside her, but she felt like she was bound in a block of cold wax, unable to move, unable to speak, and she realized with a growing panic, unable to breathe.