I was concentrating on Conal, using so much energy trying to keep him from losing control that it took a while to realize something out of the ordinary was happening outside our prison. At first, I heard unusual sounds from upstairs, as if furniture was being scraped across the floor and knocked over. Then I heard yelling, both from inside and outside the building. I didn't know what to make of it. I tried to listen whilst I talked to Conal, trying to help him concentrate. He'd given up licking my wounds and lay in my arms, panting with the supreme effort required to remain human. He was drenched in sweat, a fine sheen of perspiration across his forehead and he lay with his eyes closed, groaning almost continuously.
There was the sound of more shouting nearby and the resonance of footsteps running down the hall outside. And then I heard something I'd never thought to hear again.
“Charlotte! Where are you? Charlotte!” It was Ben's voice and I extricated myself from Conal's arms to sit up.
“Ben! We're in here, in this room!” I shouted hoarsely.
The door was smashed in with such power, it collapsed from its hinges, the heavy metal screaming in protest. Ben and Nick Lingard stood side by side in the doorway, Ripley at their backs.
“Where's Lucas?” Dread crept over me when I realized Lucas wasn't here – had he survived?
“He's safe,” Ben reassured me quickly.
Conal hauled himself into a sitting position, his eyes wild and his breathing labored as he focused on Nick. “Shifter!” he growled harshly. His back arched and I could see he was almost beyond stopping himself from turning.
I placed a gentle hand on the centre of his chest. “Conal, Conal!” He looked ready to launch at Nick, his teeth bared, but the touch of my hand against his bare chest brought him back to himself and instead, he glanced down at me, his eyes animal-like and intense. “He's a friend, Conal. Don't hurt him.”
With a nod, Conal turned his attention back to the men in the doorway. “Get her out of here. I can't stop the transformation any longer.”
Ben glanced at Nick and inclined his head. “You take her. The blood…”
Nick was at my side instantaneously, before I could see him move and he scooped me into his arms. With Ben and Ripley running behind us, we were out the door and up the stairs in seconds, sprinting through the house I'd grown to despise. From behind us, there was a spine-tingling howl and I guessed Conal was transforming. I wrapped my arms tighter around Nick's neck, frightened to imagine what would happen if Conal caught up with us.
Everywhere I looked, there was carnage. Bodies littered the floor, some missing limbs, or worse, eviscerated and there was blood everywhere. I caught sight of William and Gwynn, fighting side by side, their clothes and skin covered with blood as they decapitated one of the guards. I squeezed my eyes shut and held Nick tightly, reluctant to see anything else.
Nick slowed his pace when we got outside and laid me on the grass. We were instantly surrounded by a guard of vampires and shifters, forming a circle around where I lay. Doctor Harding appeared, medical bag in hand and I smiled at him weakly.
Before I had a chance to speak, Lucas appeared in my peripheral vision, dropping to his knees. He was covered in blood, his blue jeans turned black with it and he was carrying a sword which he lay carefully on the ground before he caught my hand in his, drawing it to his lips to kiss my knuckles tenderly.
“Lucas, you came for me.” In the distance I could hear screaming and yelling, the sickening noise of bodies being torn apart and yet, it didn't seem to matter so much now Lucas was by my side.
Lucas gazed at me, horror reflecting in his eyes when he cast a downward glance across my injuries. “Yes, my love. I came for you.”
I suddenly remembered the state I was in and stared up at him, stricken with anxiety. “There's blood…”
Lucas squeezed my fingers, possibly the only part of my body that wasn't cut, scraped, or bruised. He kissed my fingers softly. “It's okay, Charlotte, I can handle it.”
With Nick's assistance, Dr. Harding lowered himself to his knees and opened his bag, immediately operating in physician mode. “Charlotte, I'm going to give you something for the pain, and then we'll get you out of here.”
I managed a faint smile. “I kept the cast on.”
A ghost of a smile curved his lips. “I'm glad to hear it. Now stop talking and relax. You need to rest, you're safe now.”
“Please, make sure no-one hurts Conal. He helped me, he saved me,” I begged quietly.
“Charlotte, we got your messages. Ripley heard you. I will make sure Conal isn't hurt,” Lucas said. “I give you my word of honor, no harm will come to him.”
Dr. Harding injected something into my arm and I drifted away into a place that was peaceful and quiet, the worry, and stress floating away from me as though they no longer existed.
Chapter 8: Rescued
I drifted back into awareness with a television playing softly somewhere in the room. I was lying on my side, warm and comfortable under a pile of blankets. Memories began to seep into my consciousness; being rescued, the blood, the bodies. Relief was sweet as I relished being out of harm's way and knowing Lucas and my friends had survived. I rolled carefully onto my back, which was incredibly painful. I wasn't sure there was a square inch of my body that wasn't bruised and hurting. Badly.
I opened my eyes and glanced around slowly, in too much pain to move more than an inch at a time. It was dark outside and the room was illuminated by a couple of elegant table lamps. To my right, a large window revealed a view of the city, thousands of lights spreading out into the distance and twinkling brightly. I didn't recognize it and wondered where I was. I tried to raise myself on my elbows in the bed and groaned. Big mistake.
“Charlotte.”
I breathed in deeply, inhaling the aroma of pine needles, ocean, and sunshine. Instantly I relaxed. Lucas was here, with me, and I was safe.
He sat on the bed cautiously, taking care not to jostle me. He smiled, but there was concern etched into his perfect features. He reached forward and tucked my hair behind my ear, his cool fingers brushing across my skin.
“Hi,” I croaked roughly, my throat sore and dry.
“Hi yourself,” he breathed. The skin around his eyes was dark, confirming he hadn't fed recently. Lucas picked up a glass from the bedside table and held it for me so I could sip the cool water from the bendy straw.
“What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“How long have I been asleep?”
“About nine hours.”
I tried a shrug and grimaced when pain rippled through my shoulders and back. “Seems like longer.”
“It was a good, heavy sleep. Jerome said you needed rest before dealing with anything else.”
“You didn't bite me,” I stated seriously. “There was a lot of blood.”
He smiled. “There was a lot of blood. Seeing you so badly beaten, the blood didn't seem to matter all that much. All I wanted to do was get you out of there and I knew I wouldn't be tempted. I knew I could control it.”
“I hurt,” I admitted.
“I know, my Charlotte.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead, his lips little more than a whisper against my skin. “You were wounded quite seriously.” He motioned to a bag hanging on an IV stand, attached to a thin tube and needle inserted into the back of my hand. “Jerome is giving you saline to rehydrate you and he will give you something again soon for the pain.”
“Where are we?”
“New Orleans. This is where you were being held, in a house to the north of the city.”
I glanced around the room. “This isn't a hospital?”
“No. Once again, we were at a loss to explain your injuries. Those marks on your chest,” his eyes flickered down to my chest, his eyes hardening visibly with fury, “were difficult to give explanation. We decided to bring you here to the hotel and when you are well enough, I'll take you home.”
Home. What a wonderful thought. I wanted to go ho
me, wanted to be held by Lucas, and made to feel safe. Tears welled unbidden in my eyes. This wasn't going to be as simple as I wanted it to be.
“Charlotte, what's wrong? Should I get Jerome?” Lucas leaned over me, his face inches from mine and I closed my eyes, frightened to tell him what I knew had to be admitted. It was only fair that I was honest and guilt filled my heart.
“Lucas – I'm ashamed of myself.” Tears fell in earnest down my cheeks.
“Why, my love?”
“I— when we were being held, I did some things I'm ashamed of. Things that I shouldn't have done.” I was struggling to put into words what needed to be said, things which needed to be brought out into the open.
“None of that matters now,” Lucas responded soothingly. “You did what you needed to do to survive. We are amazed that you survived at all.”
“No!” I paused, taking a deep breath. “I let Conal kiss me. And… I kissed him back.” I looked away, squeezing my eyes shut – certain Lucas would be disgusted.
“I already knew, my Charlotte,” Lucas said, his voice raw with emotion. He waited for a response and when nothing was forthcoming; he caught the tip of my chin with his thumb and drew me to face him. “Look at me, please,” he commanded.
I bit my lip anxiously, but did as he requested. I searched his face for anger, but there was nothing to see.
“Charlotte, I know what happened. After Conal transformed back to human this morning, he and I talked. He explained that Laurence Armstrong told you we were all dead. He told me what you'd been subjected to and what Armstrong was after.” He sighed, the sound heavy in the quiet room. “And he told me that you kissed and how he feels about you. He assured me that he knew you were in love with me.”
I wiped my palms across my cheeks, brushing away the tears. “You're not angry?”
“No, I'm not angry.” Lucas's voice was reassuring, his expression neutral. “Jealous, definitely. But not angry, with you or Conal, not after everything you've been through.” He leaned forward, his cool lips brushing fleetingly across my own. “I love you, Charlotte. I thought I'd lost you and I nearly went out of my mind, trying to find you.”
“Is Conal okay?” I asked cautiously. The last time I'd seen him, he'd been badly beaten and struggling to maintain his human form.
“He's almost fully recovered. Werewolves are remarkably adept at recovering from serious injury. We assisted him to release his pack from Armstrong's men after you were retrieved safely.”
“You hate one another,” I pointed out. “Conal told me vampires and werewolves are enemies.”
“That's true,” he conceded. “But it doesn't mean we can't help one another if a situation arises. After what he did to keep you safe, I hold Conal in high regard. He did everything in his power to keep you alive. I owe him.”
“Is everyone else okay?” I'd seen William, Gwynn, Ripley, and Ben. “Did you all come down to New Orleans?”
“Yes, and we are all fine. Of Nick's pack, young Marco has a broken arm, but Jerome has set it and he'll be fine in a couple of days. In fact, we have all come out of this relatively unscathed, in direct contrast to you.”
“What happened to Armstrong?” I trembled violently, remembering him hitting me relentlessly in the past week.
“Dead. Conal tore him to pieces. So are all his men.” Lucas's voice was cold, lacking any distinguishable emotion. “There was a mysterious fire at his compound. We have covered our tracks so the residents of New Orleans can rest easy in their beds at night.”
The trembling morphed into full-blown shakes and Lucas gathered me into his arms, his movements slow and careful as he attempted to do it without hurting me. He held me against his chest and I savored being in the security of his arms.
I snuggled against his chest, feeling the hard muscle beneath my hands. “How did you know where I was?”
Lucas kissed my forehead. “It wasn't easy, Ripley heard your message about Gerard DuBonet, and that's all we had to begin with. We tracked your movements through the woods, but lost you when they switched to vehicles. We started with what we had, traced Gerard DuBonet and discovered he lived down here in Mississippi.” His voice grew colder again. “It took some convincing before he would talk, but he eventually figured out it would be less painful for him if he told us who he worked for.”
“Is he dead?”
Lucas nodded. “He deserved it. He was looking to make a fast buck and he didn't give a damn who got hurt while he was doing it. Armstrong apparently offered him a sizeable reward to visit us in Puckhaber and find out about you. Stupid fool, he didn't realize he was opening vampires up to a war with the shifters, if Armstrong had succeeded in getting what he wanted.”
“I wish I'd told you about him. He introduced himself to me on the morning of the wedding. I thought he might be a vampire, his hand was cold when he touched mine, but then I saw him carting bags of ice around and I assumed that was why his hands were so cold.”
“What I don't understand,” Lucas said carefully, his gaze focused on mine, “is why you had no warning from the spirits.”
I cringed, biting my lip anxiously. “I had them shut away.”
Lucas sounded incredulous when he responded. “Why would you do that?”
“It was so peaceful, not having to listen to them all the time and I guess I got comfortable with the silence. It seemed easier to keep them shut in the box, once I'd learned how, than to deal with them constantly yammering at me.”
Lucas sighed heavily and there was a note of frustration in his voice when he spoke. “Charlotte, that was a very dangerous thing to do. You have the ability to provide yourself with warnings of danger – you should be using it all the time.”
“I know,” I agreed miserably. He wasn't telling me anything I hadn't already beaten myself up about repetitively.
“You do realize, if you'd kept your lines of communication open, this might not have happened,” he continued. I couldn't blame him for being annoyed, what'd I'd done was stupid and I knew it. The knowledge didn't make me feel any better and tears dripped down my cheeks silently.
Lucas was immediately remorseful. “Oh, Charlotte,” he breathed against my hair as he held me close. “Don't cry. Please don't cry.”
“You're angry with me,” I sobbed.
“No, no. Not angry. I'm frustrated, because we may have been able to save you this pain if you'd used the incredible gift you've been given,” he explained. He kissed my lips softly. “Please, promise me you won't shut them away again.”
“I promise.” Lucas rubbed his hands over my back as I composed myself, his touch tender against the bruising. “What happened after you got the information from DuBonet?”
“We had intelligence a few days ago, suggesting that Armstrong was holding you, but we couldn't find him. We split up into groups, working our way through every group of vampires and werewolves in the southern states, trying to figure out where you were being held. Nobody could tell us anything. Ripley, Thut, and I were in Mississippi, we'd been advised of the Tremaine pack, but when we arrived there, we discovered the whole pack was missing.”
“Thutmose is here?” I'd met Egyptian vampire, Thutmose Bustani just before the wedding, along with his Kiss, which comprised three beautiful young Egyptian women. Like Lucas and his Kiss, the Bustani group relied on animal blood to survive, and when I'd met them, I'd had an amusing mental picture of them hunting camels in the Egyptian desert, which, needless to say, I hadn't shared. Thut was officially the oldest vampire I'd met to date – he really was in Egypt during the time of the pharaohs. A man of regal bearing, he was tall and almost emaciated-looking, with dark curly hair cropped closely to his skull. He had a strong beak of a nose and black eyes lying beneath beetle-black eyebrows. Softly spoken, he had an accent that he'd no doubt retained since he was created in 3000BC. Yep, that's right, before Christ.
“The Bustani Kiss offered to help us search for you, as did Nick, and our friends from New York.”
Luca
s's friends from New York were another small Kiss of four members - Harley Fitzgerald and his partner, Ethan Underwood, their friend Alexander Ellis and his wife, Imogen Sparks. All four were young, in terms of vampires, with Harley being created in 1920 and he was the oldest of the group.
“You didn't want them to know about me.”
Lucas smiled wryly. “After you were kidnapped, there wasn't much point in keeping anything from them. They were naturally curious as to why anyone would be interested in kidnapping you. Besides which, Amunet had been picking up traces of your spirit friends for days and she saw your mother trip the waiter, knew that she was a spirit and was wondering how she'd materialized in the middle of the wedding.”
Amunet was one of the women in Thut's Kiss – with dark wavy hair and a quick smile; her pretty features were marred by copious scars from when she'd contracted smallpox, shortly before her creation. Lucas had explained it was unusual for a vampire to carry scars after they rose, but Amunet did and nobody appeared to know why. Amunet didn't let the disfiguration bother her, and with a voluptuous figure and a happy personality, you quickly forgot about it. Besides being a powerful telekinetic, able to lift furniture in the air and gently place it in another position, Amunet had been able to see the dead for many years, although she was unable to contact them. She used complicated herbal potions to help lay their spirits to rest and she and Acenith had spent many hours talking together about their shared interest in medicinal herbs. Of course, my particular talent had been kept secret by Lucas and the others but I'd found it fascinating to hear Amunet discuss her ability. “Traces of my spirits?”
“Apparently in the days before the wedding, Amunet could see traces of ghostly images, trailing around you. She thought they were spirits who had attached themselves to you for some reason and she was going to ask about it after the wedding, to see if I wanted her to remove them for you. When she discovered what you are able to do, she was very impressed and she can't wait to speak to you about the ability.”
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