by Moira Rogers
“A powder.” William slid his hand up into her hair and clenched his fingers tight enough to make her eyes water. “A substitute for blood.”
With his mouth so close to her throat she almost didn’t want to ask the question, but she had to know. “Why would you need such a thing?”
“Besides the convenience of it? They say the dust changes a vampire’s blood chemistry.” He pulled her hair harder, tilting her head to the side. “Makes them more human.”
Was that his secret desire? Grace stared at the wall and fought the animal urge to struggle, to escape the fangs she could already feel, though they had yet to touch her. Fear sped her pulse, turned her breathing ragged, and every breath dragged the scent of decaying flesh into her lungs.
Ghouls. Hell, William might not kill her before Archer arrived, but he could drink enough to bind her. He could turn her into a ghoul, a puppet bound to his will, her own mind shredded beyond repair.
The thought made her whimper.
His fangs grazed her skin.
“There were vials in the basement,” she gasped, trying to twist away. “On the shelves and tables. Dozens of them.”
William laughed and shoved her so hard she almost stumbled off the top step. “If you didn’t see the carnage your hound wreaked, what were you doing in the cellar?”
A novice mistake. Grace caught her balance with one hand on the doorframe and turned. William watched her, his eyes sharp with anticipation and amusement. They were playing a game, all right, but he wasn’t swallowing her lies. Maybe he hadn’t believed a single one from the very start, and who could blame him? She’d lost her taste for deception, and probably her skill for it too.
If she was going to die now of her own stupidity, at least she could die as herself. “If you’d been a little bit stupider, this would have worked splendidly.”
“I’m sure it would have, love.” William’s eyes gleamed. They glowed. “Do you think he’ll be coming for you, if only you keep me talking long enough?”
She shrugged. “You can’t blame a girl for hoping, can you? We could wait together and see if he does.”
“I almost hope he does, now. Just so he can see.”
He wanted her to ask, and she didn’t want to know. But she needed to know. “What will he see?”
William moved—fast, so fast. He jerked her wrist to his mouth, and pain pierced her consciousness along with his teeth in her skin. He held her fast when she slammed her free hand into the side of his head and raked her nails down his cheek, and when he finally lifted his head, her blood painted his lips. “The end.”
The world swam out of focus for a terrifying moment, the silence so complete that she heard a drop of her blood splash to the wooden floor.
Pain wiped away any hint of higher reason, leaving behind instinct and the foggy memory of a broken-down old pugilist who’d run with Clyde Howland’s gang. They expect a knee to the groin, he’d growled at her once, loquacious as only liquor made him. Most bastards have been kneed at least once. But if you slam them hard enough in the nose, it’ll sting like a bitch and make their eyes water. Then you run like hell, sweetheart.
There was nowhere to run, not with his vampires blocking the door. Nowhere but into the basement, where her derringer still sat on an out-of-the-way shelf. A modest two rounds, but maybe one of the other bodies would have a weapon. Such a thin hope…
Thin hopes were all she had. She slammed the heel of her hand up into William’s nose and wrenched free when he stumbled back. As soon as he’d cleared the door she dragged it shut behind her and fumbled for the light switch, her aversion to the overpowering stench of the cellar buried in sheer adrenaline. She groped for the key, but it slipped out of her numb fingers and clinked down the stairs.
She had to hike her skirts to her knees to get to the bottom of the steps without tumbling down and breaking her neck. The carnage was even worse than she’d recalled, the floor sticky with gore and blood. Finding the key was an impossibility, but she spotted a revolver on the floor next to an open hand and swooped to pick it up before she realized the arm wasn’t attached to a body.
Part of her brain recoiled in shock. She pushed that part away and retrieved the weapon. Darting to put her back against the wall, she slid under the stairs as the door rattled and creaked open.
Moving as silently as she could, she checked the weapon. Four rounds. Four rounds for five vampires, and that was assuming they lined up and waited patiently for her to kill them, and assuming that one plain lead bullet could kill a vampire to begin with.
Not a very wise assumption.
“Find her.” William’s voice, tight with anger. “Alive. I’ll use them to break one another, or I’ll die trying.”
Dust rained down from above as footsteps fell heavily on the stairs, the silent lackeys following William into battle. Grace readied the revolver and marveled at how steady her hands were. That inner, broken part of herself raged at the futile hopelessness of her situation, at how stupid it was to be ready to die for a building full of people with no claim on her.
Maybe this was how Archer felt, risking his life for people he barely knew. Again and again, and she’d be damned if anyone used her as a weapon against him.
So when William rounded the corner, his attention fixed on the vials lining the shelf on the opposite wall, she cocked the hammer and put the first bullet in the back of his head.
For one tense moment, the cellar seemed frozen. Grace stared at the hole in the back of the vampire’s skull as she groped for the hammer again, her heart plummeting toward her feet as William turned his glowing, inhuman glare on her. “Ouch.”
She put the second bullet in his left eye, and the cellar exploded in light.
He saw the explosion from the crest of the last rise, felt the concussive force in his bones.
In his gut.
Archer urged his horse faster, then slid down to the ground as the front door of the house flew open, askew on broken hinges.
Jake staggered into the chill night air, face twisted with guilt. “It wasn’t supposed to explode,” the boy shouted, undoubtedly trying to raise his voice over the ringing in his ears. “It looked like the other one. The sunlight—”
No. The boy still had the pin from the grenade clutched in one hand. Archer slapped it away and grabbed his shoulders. “Where’s Grace?”
He crumpled. “In—in the cellar. The vampires chased her down the stairs.”
“You threw it down there? With her?”
“I thought it was just sunlight. That it couldn’t hurt her.”
He’d only brought one grenade that was pure manufactured light. All the rest included other nasty surprises—razor-sharp shrapnel, metal buckshot that would rip through anything. “Wait with the horse,” he ground out, pulling free one of his revolvers. “Take this. Shoot anything that comes out of there that isn’t me or Grace. Got it?”
“I’m sorry.” His hand shook as he took the revolver. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
They could trade apologies later, when Archer’s skin wasn’t itching from the inside out. “Keep your eyes open.”
The interior of the house was dark, utterly destroyed. Floorboards had been raked up, and a ceiling beam covered the door to the cellar. Archer holstered his gun, gripped it with both hands and shoved as hard as he could. His muscles strained under the stress, burned, but the goddamn thing didn’t budge.
Fuck it.
He dropped to his knees beside the beam and clawed at one of the floorboards that had been dislodged. Digging through the dirt beneath the floor could bring the whole place down, but he didn’t care anymore. Grace was under that dirt, trapped in the cellar just as surely as if she’d been buried, and it didn’t matter if she was dead. He wouldn’t let her—
Dead. A pained cry wrenched free, a hoarse scream he couldn’t remember giving voice to. Dirt wedged under his bloodied nails as he scrabbled through the hard-packed earth, but he ignored it. Ignored everything but the f
ire in his chest.
She wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be, because he’d feel it. He’d know.
The house’s frame shifted with a groan, and the fallen beam almost crushed Archer as it tumbled to the ground. He vaulted over it and yanked open the door. “Grace!”
In the darkness below, someone coughed. “Archer?”
The bottom half of the stairs lay broken in the rubble on the cellar floor. Archer jumped down on a clear spot and began to dig again. “Grace?”
Wood scraped against stone a few feet away. Grace coughed again. “The table kept the worst of it off me, but my leg is pinned under something.”
He reached for it, but a steely hand closed around his arm and a vampire lunged over him, fingernails driving for Archer’s eyes. He swung instinctively, blocking the blow, and converted his momentum into a turning kick that sent the vampire sprawling.
The bloodsucker scrabbled to its feet, eyes crazed. “William was going to make us more human. He was going to give us the best of all worlds. You and your lying whore ruined everything—” The last word vanished under a snarl as he flung himself at Archer in a blind fury.
Archer snatched up a piece of the stair railing, broken and splintered, sharp on one end, and drove it into the vampire’s chest. Its mouth opened wide, flashing fangs as an unholy screech echoed through the cellar.
It stumbled back, flesh melting as magic flared. Within moments clothing hung too large on an emaciated corpse that collapsed into a heap of fabric, bones and dust.
Grace was pale, her cheek smeared with blood. Archer grabbed her hand, his other already tugging at the heavy wood and detritus covering her body. “Does anything hurt?”
She laughed and winced, pain filling her eyes as she clung to his hand and finally shifted free of the weight pinning her. “Everything hurts a little, but nothing hurts too much. Except my wrist. He—he bit me.”
Rage built to a roar again. “That bastard I just ashed?”
“No, the other one. William. I shot him and then…” Her brow furrowed as her eyes unfocused. “What happened? There was an explosion.”
“Jake followed you,” he told her. “But not before he filched one of my grenades. That’s what dropped.”
“Oh, Jake.” She lifted her hand to touch Archer’s cheek. “What about the town? Did you and Diana reach them before anything happened?”
“They’re safe. They’re—”
“All going to die.” A hammer cocked somewhere behind Archer, and he barely had time to duck and cover Grace’s body with his before a bullet hit the wall beside them.
The vampire rose from the rubble. He was charred on one side of his body and missing an eye, but as Archer watched, his skin began to knit back together. He dragged his tongue over his charred lower lip with a hoarse laugh. “How fortunate I had fresh blood. She’s delicious.”
“You son of a bitch.” Archer rose, dropping one hand to rest on the butt of his revolver. “There’s not enough blood in the world to heal you up from the hurt I’m going to put on you.”
William raised his revolver and fired over Archer’s head, into the ravaged ceiling. Bits of debris rained down, and Grace cursed softly.
The entire building creaked, and William smiled. “Move carefully, hound. You and I will survive the rest of this building coming down on us. Your sweet little liar, on the other hand…”
“Won’t make it out of here anyway if I don’t take you out.” Grace was still trapped, but Archer could buy them time. “Gonna argue with that?”
Without answering, William lunged to the side and aimed his revolver at Grace.
Pulling his own gun, aiming—it all felt like one motion, his own body instead of machined metal in his hand. The trigger yielded under his finger, and the round exploded from the barrel.
Time seemed to slow as the bullet split into a dozen fragments, each burning to a bright glow as it raced toward the vampire. The first pierced his skin, then the second—light, pain. Not enough to kill, maybe.
But enough to stun.
Archer launched himself at William with a roar, lashing out with a rough kick that drove the vampire back in a wild stumble. William recovered a heartbeat slower this time, his revolver coming up in a sluggish motion. “I’ll kill you both. I’ll bury her just to spite you.”
“No, you won’t.” Another kick sent the vampire’s gun flying, and Archer grabbed him by the shirt collar and slammed him against the wall. “Because you’re too in love with the sound of your own goddamn voice.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Archer saw Grace drag herself carefully to her feet, her weight partly braced on the overturned table. “He does like to ramble on. He told me how they found out about Doc and what they were after.”
“Good.” Archer wasn’t that stupid. He snatched William up, as if he planned to slam him against the wall one more time, but grabbed his head instead. One quick snap, and the vampire let out an unearthly shriek.
He didn’t dissolve into dust or even melt into the floor like some Archer had seen. Instead, he began to vibrate.
“Oh, shit.” Archer backed toward Grace and tumbled her to the floor beneath him. The magic that sustained William in his half-life exploded outward, blowing his body into fine mist.
Underneath Archer, Grace buried her face against his throat with a whimper. “Archer?”
“I know,” he said soothingly. “I hate the ones that pop.”
Her laugh bordered on hysterical. “I need a bath, Archer. I know you’re going to yell at me, but please let me take a bath first.”
“I’ll get you out of here.” He rose and lifted her carefully. “Everything else can wait.”
She looked at the broken base of the stairs. “How are you—”
That was all he gave her time for. With her body tucked to his chest, he scrambled over debris and made the leap for the stairs as Grace gasped and hid her face against his shirt. The steps groaned under the force of his landing, but he shot up the remaining length and vaulted over the broken floorboards while Grace clung to his shoulders.
When they cleared the front door, Grace let out a sigh of relief. “You’d think it would be impossible, but somehow I keep forgetting that you’re not just a man.”
The words drilled into him like a bullet. “So long as you don’t hate me when you do remember what I am…I’ll be all right.”
“No,” she whispered, lifting her gaze to his. “I mostly just love you all of the time.”
She was hurt. Behind them was a house on the verge of collapse, filled with dead vampires. Ahead of them lay the hardest road he’d ever considered walking, and still only one thing mattered.
He shifted her weight in his arms, touched her cheek and grimaced when he smeared her skin with even more blood and dirt. “This isn’t the place, and it’s sure as hell not the time,” he muttered, “but I think I need to kiss you.”
Grace leaned in until her lips almost brushed his. “Jake’s watching.”
“Jake’s already going to get his ass whupped for tossing a grenade at your head.”
“Go easy on him. He kept me alive long enough for you to save me. Lord knows I’d botched the job.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I couldn’t convince the vampires that I hated you.”
“Good.” His arms tightened around her, and he gave her the one thing more important than a kiss—the truth. “If anything had happened to you, it would have killed me.”
She didn’t understand, not really. She smiled and stroked his cheek. “Me too.”
“I mean it.” He gripped her hand but hesitated, looking down at her ripped skirt. “Your leg?”
“Sore, but I don’t think it’s badly injured.” Her expression sobered as she studied his face. “You really do mean it, don’t you? Literally.”
Not a conversation for other ears. He cleared his throat. “Your horse, Jake?”
The boy surreptitiously wiped his cheeks. “Hidden back over the ridge.”
The tears prick
ed Archer’s conscience, though perhaps not as much as they should have. Not with Grace covered in bleeding scratches and staring up at him like she wanted to ask a million questions but couldn’t quite order her thoughts. “Go get her. We’ll wait.”
He ran off, and Archer took a deep breath. “It hurt,” he confessed finally, laying everything bare. “When I thought you might be gone. Not as much as it should have, though, which is how I knew I had to get to you. I knew you weren’t dead. I felt it.”
Her eyebrows came together. “You mean…magic?”
“I don’t know.” He never would have thought of it in such flowery terms. “The Guild calls it science, chemical reactions. But it sure feels like more.”
“Yes, it does.” Her thumb brushed across his lower lip. “I’m done being a coward. I don’t care what sort of life a bloodhound can offer, I want it. I’ll be a lady or a thief or a beggar, whatever it takes to be yours.”
At first, the surge of sheer primal satisfaction overrode everything else. Then Archer remembered the look in her eyes that first morning in the stable, the shame that had burned in them, but also the defiance as she told him she wasn’t leaving after all.
“Being alive isn’t much of a blessing if you can’t live with yourself.”
“The town,” he rasped. “You can’t leave Crystal Springs. You’ll never forgive either of us.”
“I’m damned either way, because I’d never forgive myself if I let you go.” Closing her eyes, she pressed her forehead to his chin. “I choose you.”
His hands were shaking, and he steadied them by weaving his fingers through her hair. “You’re my mate. Anything you want, it’s yours. I’ll find a way to stay here if that’s what you need.”
“I don’t know,” she said finally, her voice a quavering whisper. “Would your Guild even allow it? I won’t ask you to betray your duty. And I don’t want you in danger.”
He snorted. “I don’t give a great horned goddamn what they’ll allow. They’d toss me to the wolves if it suited them.”