“No.” Cade stared coldly into his sire’s eyes. “Because I’d have killed you for it.”
“You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.” Ridgemont grinned darkly. “But I’m sure you would have made it a very entertaining five minutes.”
Cade returned the cruel smile with his own. “Maybe I’d have made it a little too entertaining.”
“Don’t overestimate yourself, gunslinger.” The ancient’s power slammed against his mental shields like a fist. “You wouldn’t be the first of my spawn I’ve killed for forgetting his place.”
Cade stared into those reptilian eyes, refusing to yield to the brutal psychic power his enemy had built over most of a millennium. There was a certain cold pleasure in his ability to resist. Even five years ago, Ridgemont could have driven him to his knees.
No more. He was free now. It had taken him decades of struggle, but he was no longer a slave. The need boiled in him to strike out, to watch the bastard’s blood fly under his fist, to get some payback for fourteen decades of abuse. He fought the impulse down. What he had planned wasn’t as satisfying, but it would have to do.
Ridgemont’s cold eyes narrowed. “You should watch that stiff neck, gunslinger. I’d hate to have to break it for you.” Yet oddly, there was a hint of something in his gaze that was less frustrated than… pleased? He turned away abruptly and headed for the stairs. “Come. I’m hungry, and my lovely meal is waiting.”
This is it. Cade felt his muscles coil in anticipation. Involuntarily, his mind began a countdown of the last seconds of his life.
“Speaking of meals,” Ridgemont said as the three of them descended the staircase to the sprawling ballroom, “you’ll need to pick Valerie up tomorrow at La Guardia. She’ll be on the midnight flight.”
“Unless those Kith instincts warn her she’s walking into a trap.”
The ancient laughed in a short, nasty boom. “If they do, she’ll ignore them. I’m offering her a great deal of money to ghostwrite my memoirs. She’d be a fool to turn me down.” He flashed his fangs. “Particularly after losing her job.”
As Ridgemont, of course, had personally arranged. Last week the ancient had flown to Atlanta for a meeting with Valerie’s publisher, supposedly to discuss investing in the newspaper. Instead, he’d psychically altered the man’s memories. Now the entire staff of The Atlanta Daily Independent believed their star reporter had been caught making up a story. He’d also ordered that none of them tell her anything about it, ensuring she’d be unable to mount a defense against the trumped-up charges.
And since she’d never met her mysterious “benefactor,” Val had no idea he was the same man who’d orchestrated her parents’ murder seventeen years before. Cade meant to make sure she’d never find out.
The three vampires strode through Ridgemont’s silent mansion. It was almost midnight; the servants and assistants who attended the ancient’s business had gone home. To keep his heartbeat from betraying him to his sire’s exceptional hearing, Cade concentrated on the decor -- the original Rembrandt hanging on one wall, the Ming vase precisely positioned on the Chinese Chippendale table. All very beautiful, but he doubted the ancient noticed. Ridgemont was more interested in a lavish display of ostentatious wealth than anything else.
In the foyer, Cade strode ahead, boots clicking on the marble floor. He opened the door for his enemies with mocking subservience. They swept past him into the fragrant evening air. He locked up and followed them down the mansion’s front steps to the limousine he’d parked at the curb.
Ridgemont stopped beside the car and waited. Knowing when he was being put in his place, Cade reached out and opened the limo’s rear door, touching the bill of his chauffeur’s cap in a taunting salute. Ignoring the gesture, the ancient ducked into the car.
Hirsch was already in the front passenger seat as Cade slid behind the wheel.
Looking into the rearview mirror, Cade met Ridgemont’s cold gaze through the back seat partition. His heart pounded in long, slow beats. Time slowed to a crawl. He slid the key into the ignition.
But before he could turn it, the car was flooded with the sweet, biting scent of peppermint.
Oh dammit, it was Abigail! She was trying to…
“No!” Ridgemont’s telepathic command blasted through the car. “Hirsch! DON’T LET HIM START THE CAR!”
The German lunged at him as Cade started to turn the key. He let go of it just long enough to slam an elbow into Hirsch’s face. His foe still managed to shatter the ignition housing with a blow of one big fist.
Oh, hell. Cade grabbed Hirsch by the collar and heaved him headfirst into the windshield. Safety glass exploded, showering them all with glittering fragments. Ignoring the German’s curses, Cade flung open the door and lunged out to meet Ridgemont, who’d thrown himself from the limousine.
Ducking the ancient’s first roundhouse, Cade buried a fist in Ridgemont’s belly with all his supernatural strength. The vampire retaliated with a backhand blow that sent stars shooting through his skull. “What did you do to the car, gunslinger? I saw my death when you put your hand on that key.”
“A half pound of C-4 wired to the ignition.” Cade spat blood into the grass and gave him a vicious grin, mentally cursing Abigail. Ridgemont wasn’t precognitive; she must have sent him that vision. “The cops wouldn’t have found anything but a crater.”
The ancient’s glacial blue eyes widened. “And you would have turned the switch.” He coiled into a crouch. The right sleeves of both his suit and shirt had ripped, revealing thick muscle bunching underneath. “You’d have blown us all to hell.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cade snarled back as they began to circle. “Best place for us.”
Ridgemont’s fist shot toward his face. Cade threw up a forearm block, deflecting it the inch that saved his skull. Even the glancing blow was like being hit by a coal train. He went flying, tucking into a roll as he hit the ground. His momentum tumbled him a dozen yards before he got his feet under him again. Reeling upright, he shook his head to clear it. His ears were ringing. God, that bastard could punch.
Hirsch charged toward him, blood streaming from the dozen cuts marring his too-handsome face. Ridgemont closed on him from the other direction, his speed inhuman. Snarling, knowing he was screwed, Cade leaped to meet them both.
He blocked the first few punches and got in some of his own, but then Ridgemont landed a right to the jaw that damn near finished him. As he shook off a wave of blackness, Hirsch plowed his fist into Cade’s ribs. Something cracked and flared into agony. He ignored it, ramming a kick into Ridgemont’s thigh. The vampire went down.
Before Cade could follow up, Hirsch was there, keeping him so busy with a flurry of punches, Ridgemont had time to get to his feet and wade in again.
Every time Cade blocked one of his opponents’ blows, the other would streak a fist or a foot through his guard. He fought on, ignoring the impacts even as his body blazed with pain and blood slicked his skin from a dozen cuts.
This is it. I’m fucked. He could take Hirsch, but he couldn’t take Ridgemont. He’d lost too many fights with his sire to have any doubts on that score. And he certainly had no chance against them both. They’d kill him and go right on terrorizing anybody they chose. Including Valerie, who’d suffer for centuries -- if Ridgemont let her live that long.
Snarling, Cade drove a fist into the ancient’s smirking face. He had time for an instant’s victory before his head detonated with a red starburst of pain as Hirsch’s knuckles plowed into it. Staggering back, he blinked away blood.
Both vampires were grinning now, hunger hot in their eyes. They’d feed on him once they got him down. Then somebody would get a sword and hack off his head or cut out his heart, and he’d be finished.
He took a deep breath, smelling the stink of blood and sweat -- and the cool, sweet scent of peppermint.
From the corner of one rapidly swelling eye, Cade glimpsed Abigail hovering nearby, watching the fight with panic on her translucent face. R
ealizing he’d spotted her, she pointed urgently toward the fence circling Ridgemont’s property a hundred yards away. “Run, Cade!”
“I’m sick of running,” he told her, mind to mind. “I’m done with this.”
“If you die, who’ll save Valerie?”
Cade ducked a punch and swore under his breath. He wanted it over. He was sick of this game he could never win with an opponent he could never defeat. But damn it, Abigail was right. He couldn’t allow Ridgemont to take Val.
Whirling, Cade sprinted toward the fence. It was fifteen feet tall and topped with foot-long spikes, but he threw himself into a leap. Clearing the barrier with a foot to spare, he hit the ground running. Blood rolled down his face and broken bones shifted and burned in his chest, but he didn’t stop.
“Coward!” Hirsch started to charge after him.
“Let him go,” Ridgemont growled, and the German felt his muscles freeze in the grip of his sire’s will.
Unable to move, Hirsch rolled his eyes to stare at the ancient, so furious he forgot himself. “Are you mad? He almost killed us!”
Ridgemont grinned, licking blood from his split lip. “He did, didn’t he?”
Suddenly freed, Hirsch stumbled forward, then regained his footing to whirl on his master. “Do you want to die?”
The ancient stretched his thickly muscled body and winced, putting a hand to his ribs. “I want a good fight. Terrorizing sheep holds no challenge.” He sucked in a breath at a particularly nasty twinge. “Jesu, the gunslinger has a punch like a destrier’s kick.” Shaking his head, he smiled. “I’ll kill him in my own time, Gerhard, but meanwhile he’ll give me all the challenge I could want.”
* * *
Three blocks from the mansion, Cade stumbled to a halt and reached out his mind, searching for the nearest taxi and drawing the driver to him.
When it arrived, the man almost drove by anyway, forcing Cade to send out another compulsion. Evidently his battered face and torn uniform didn’t exactly fill the cabby with confidence.
The car rolled reluctantly to a stop. He dragged open the door and collapsed across the back seat, gasping as cracked ribs shot pain through his side.
The cabdriver peered at him in the rearview mirror. “Hospital?” he asked in musically accented English.
“God, no. I’ll heal -- though I wouldn’t turn down a little morphine in the meantime.” Sucking in a breath at a particularly nasty twinge, he gritted out the Queens address of his current safe house.
By the time he got out of the cab, Cade’s head was spinning. It took real effort to extract a pair of twenties from his wallet with swollen, bloody fingers. He never used a bank card, since that would leave an electronic trail Ridgemont could follow. As the driver accepted the bills, he studied Cade’s bruise-swollen face and winced. Glancing into the man’s mind, Cade saw his own face and winced back. God, the bastards had outdone themselves this time.
Bloodied and exhausted, he turned to limp toward the aging two-story Victorian, noting that the doors of the garage he’d added were still down. With luck, nobody had made off with the Lexus while he was gone. He’d hate to have to acquire another car before the trip to the airport.
Climbing the three steps to the porch, Cade had to grit his teeth against the kettle-drum throb in his head. He suspected he had a concussion to go with the busted ribs. That hunch was confirmed when it took him endless minutes of dizzy fumbling to get the door unlocked, punch the entry code into the burglar alarm, then lock the door and rearm the alarm. It was necessary, though. No matter how deep his healing sleep, if Ridgemont came to call, the alarm should jolt him awake in time to protect himself.
He hoped.
Limping for the stairs, Cade wrapped a bloody hand around the banister and began dragging himself toward the second-floor bedroom. He knew he’d be lucky to make it there before he collapsed in his tracks.
He had never actually lived in the house, had rarely even spent the night. It was nothing more than his base of operations, a place to keep his weapons and money and organize his various campaigns. He slept, when he slept at all, at Ridgemont’s mansion. He preferred having his enemies around him when he bedded down. At least that way he knew where they were.
Like the rest of the house, his bedroom was Spartan and clean, furnished with a double bed, a ladder-back cane chair, and a bureau. None of the furniture matched, but then, decorating hadn’t exactly been a priority when he’d set up the safe house.
Wanting only to slip between the covers and heal for twelve hours straight, Cade staggered to the bed. A big gym bag was in the way, sitting in the middle of the bedspread. He picked it up and dumped it on the floor.
But as the bag thumped to the worn carpeting, an instinct for self-preservation worked its way through his haze of pain and exhaustion. Groaning, Cade gingerly lowered himself to one knee so he could unzip the bag and pull a sawed-off shotgun out of its thick nest of money.
Dracula notwithstanding, a wooden stake wouldn’t kill a vampire. It took decapitation or cutting out the heart, and the twelve-gauge could do either with one double-barreled blast. Not as cleanly as a sword, perhaps, but easier to use when coming out of a dead sleep.
Still, it was a damn good thing the gun was already loaded. The spinning in his head was picking up speed, and he doubted he had the coordination to get shells into the thing now.
Cade slid the weapon just far enough under the bed that he wouldn’t step on it if he got up to use the john, then sank down on the mattress without bothering to undress. Concentrating hard, he dragged off his boots and hauled his leaden legs into the bed. As the room revolved like a merry-go-round, he squeezed his eyes shut.
And smelled peppermint. “Are you angry with me?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “Why did you do it, Abigail? You would have been safe from him. And with me finally dead, you’d have been free to go to God.”
“It wasn’t worth it. Not if it meant watching you die.”
“I had to watch you die, and you suffered a hell of a lot more than I would have.”
“Cade, I stayed for you. How could you think I’d allow you to kill yourself?”
Put like that, she had a point. She’d been risking her soul for him for almost a hundred and forty years. He should have known she’d do anything to keep him alive -- even betray him.
Abigail was quiet so long he’d have thought she was gone, if not for the scent of peppermint. Finally, she asked, “Do you think they’ll come after you tonight?”
That was a damn good question. With a groan, Cade reached out his mind for another scan. He didn’t sense anything, which simply meant the two vampires were still outside his range. At least Ridgemont was. Hirsch had been immortal for less than eighty years, and his power barely registered to psychic senses. Which was why Ridgemont wouldn’t send him alone. Cade could kick Gerhard’s ass, and they all knew it.
“I think they’re probably back at the mansion,” he said at last, and winced as his ribs protested. “Hopefully nursing a few broken bones of their own. And dawn’s too close now. They won’t bother coming after me tonight.”
Though sunlight didn’t actually cause vampires to burst into flame, the burns it inflicted were nasty. Neither Hirsch nor Ridgemont would want to spend time out in all that ultraviolet searching for him. And they’d definitely have to search. He’d concealed his ownership of the house with the hard-learned paranoia of a man who’d been a slave too long.
“Just to be on the safe side, I’ll keep watch,” Abigail said. The scent of peppermint faded.
Cade sighed and shifted gingerly, trying to find a comfortable position. By the next evening, his vampire metabolism would have healed his injuries, but between them and the fight, he knew he’d be left dangerously drained. He’d have to find a woman and feed quickly tomorrow night if he meant to meet Valerie’s plane before Ridgemont did.
As to exactly how he’d spirit his lover from under his sire’s nose…
He’d cross t
hat bridge when he got to it.
Chapter Three
January 15, 2004
He crouched in a red haze. Hunger. Everywhere. Pain burning his gut, gnawing, biting, coiled like a dragon, snarling and twisting and devouring itself. He no longer knew how long he’d been locked away. Why he’d been locked away.
Enemies. Hate. Death watching him with red dragon eyes, eating him alive from the inside.
A sound.
He lifted his head like a wolf. Stared at the reinforced steel door pockmarked with dents. Someone at the door. He inhaled. BLOOD! Enemy! He knew that smell. His mouth flooded with saliva. Strength flooded his weakened body.
Animal cunning stirred. No! Play dead. He ducked his head and curled tighter on his side on the cold cement floor. Smelled blood on his own hands from battering the door. Managed not to bite.
Creak of the warped door being forced open. “Jesus, Cade, it stinks in here!” German accent. Enemy. “And what the fuck have you done to the door?”
Scrape of shoes on concrete. He coiled tighter, the Dragon’s flame searing his belly.
“Not so pretty now, are you, you bastard?” The voice sounded smug. “Guess that’ll teach you to piss off Ridgemont, you stupid --”
He exploded off the floor, slammed into the prey, took him down, forced up his head. Dove for the throat. Bit.
BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOODbloodbloodbloodblood
Didn’t feel the massive fists battering his ribs, hear the screams, too lost in the delicious sensation of hot red life in his mouth, the Dragon humming in pleasure as it gorged.
ENEMY! He knew the scent, the footsteps. He bit deeper, drank harder, ignored the rib that cracked under a desperately vicious blow from the prey’s fist.
“Get him off me!” Shriek of terror.
“Let him go, gunslinger.” Vicious power wrapped around his mind, but the Dragon was stronger. He snarled against his prey’s throat and refused to obey.
Something massive struck him a stunning blow in the side of the head. His jaws unlocked. Felt himself rising, jerked away from the life-giving flow of red. No! He twisted like a cat in the Enemy’s grip, drove for the bull neck. Glimpsed startled fury on Ridgemont’s face.
Forever Kisses Volume 1 Page 3