Kaitlin shook her head. This was non-negotiable. “I want you out of my life. Our lives.”
“Do you think you have a choice here?”
“I think...” She paused, taking a moment to process everything she’d just learned. The things that had turned her world upside down. “You were willing to let the hunters raise Jay to keep him away from Xavier,” she said with dawning realization. “You didn’t think I would leave, or get Alexander’s secrets. You wanted Jay away from Xavier.”
Jason stilled, not speaking.
“If you want help with Xavier now, stay away from us.”
“I’m your only chance of staying alive,” Jason said softly, but with unmistakable menace.
“You saw the e-mail I sent to Cassie. I’m willing to die to keep him away from you.”
Jason’s eyes grew slightly yellow. Luckily, Kaitlin was already on the ground so her shaking wasn’t as apparent as it otherwise would have been.
“Fine.” Jason turned away for a moment, and when he looked back the yellow had gone. “I’ll leave him alone until he becomes a hunter. And you know he will. It’s in his soul.”
Kaitlin flinched, but she knew he spoke the truth. At least he wouldn’t be after her child. She’d have years to protect and prepare him.
“Why do you want Xavier dead?” Kaitlin asked before she sealed the deal. She had to know why, or she couldn’t trust him.
“He’s an evil monster.”
“Yes, but so are you.”
Jason looked away. “Probably.”
Again, she thought she almost saw a vulnerability in him, but she dismissed the idea almost immediately. “What do you want me to do?”
Jason looked back at her, suddenly all business. “Xavier’s going to try to convince Matthew to form an alliance. He knows about Hideyuki. He knows about the blood. He knows Matthew is in the best position he’s ever been in to take real power in the magical world. He’ll offer an alliance, and I want Matthew to pretend to consider it.”
Kaitlin shuddered. “He might really consider it.”
“He’d be a fool not to. Xavier could be a real asset. But I want you to convince Matthew he’d be better off forming the alliance with me, after Xavier is gone.”
“Would he be better off with you?”
“I don’t have control over the other vampires the way Xavier does.”
“He’s not an easy man to lie to,” Kaitlin said. “And even if he goes along with it, how does it help?”
“Xavier is a mind mage. If I ever hope to defeat him, I need one of my own.”
Kaitlin stared at Jason for a long moment, watching and wondering. Her entire world had been flipped upside down in the past few minutes; everything she thought she knew was wrong. Or was it? What was Jason? And how far could she trust him?
“Xavier will never give up,” Jason said.. “If he doesn’t die, you will, or you’ll be enslaved to him.”
“I don’t know how to trust you.”
“You don’t have to trust me,” Jason said. “You have no other choice.”
Chapter 28
JASON WATCHED KAITLIN RUN BACK TO Matthew like a frightened rabbit. The woman couldn’t run to save her life, not that proper form would save her if he intended to follow tonight.
She hated him. Of course she did; he’d spent half a year making sure of it. A few minutes of conversation and a confession that some part of him still wanted his flesh child wasn’t going to change that. But if she thought he would simply back away until the flesh child reached maturity, she truly was naive.
What would she do? He settled in to listen from a post outside the stables, but Matthew’s telepathy kept too much of the conversation quiet.
Shortly after sundown, Sara came to crouch beside him. Damn. Her presence meant Xavier knew where he was and by extension, would know where they were.
“Xavier lost the others,” Sara said, sounding as pleased as he felt. “But he’s expecting a report on those two.”
“Phones are all dead,” Jason said. “Couldn’t report in.”
“Uh huh. Is that really the story you’re going to use on Xavier?”
Jason stared at the stables, listening keenly. “You know, I think they might be lovers.”
Sara pulled back. “Why do you care?”
He glanced at her and almost laughed – almost. It wasn’t something he’d done much since he’d turned and thought maybe vampires couldn’t do. “Are you jealous?”
“No,” she lied, turning stiffly away.
“Yes you are.” He tugged on her ponytail until she turned to face him.
“Fine, maybe a little. But she didn’t love you. She was afraid of you. She told me so.”
“I know. I didn’t love her either.”
“Oh.” Sara’s face went blank. “So what are you doing?”
Jason shook his head. “I won’t get you involved. If my plan fails – and it probably will – you won’t have anything to do with it.”
“If your plan, whatever it is, fails, you’ll die?” She made it a question.
Jason nodded, then shrugged. “Probably.”
“That’s easy then. I’m helping.”
“No.”
“Are you trying to get them on your side?” She nodded at the stables.
“More or less.”
She listened for a moment, probably hearing the same thing he was. But unlike him, she smiled. “Give them tonight.”
“Why?”
“Trust me. It’ll help.” She paused. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
“No.” Then he thought about it, actually thought about it. “No. I think he’s strangely good for her.”
“Then give them tonight. Or at least a few more hours.”
Xavier would be so thrilled when Jason brought him Matthew and Kaitlin that he probably wouldn’t think to be upset at first. And Jason’s plan – an idea more than a plan – would succeed or fail within a few hours.
He looked at Sara, at the girl-next-door looks that had never been to his taste in his mortal form, but that called to him now. And suddenly he knew exactly how he wanted to spend the next few hours, especially if they would be his last.
“I want you too,” he said.
Chapter 29
IT WAS ALL MATTHEW COULD DO not to chase after Kaitlin when she fled from him, hurt and confused. He wished he knew if he’d helped her draw out pain that had been eating her alive or if he’d made things worse.
She had to come back. They only had each other now. Between them, they had her resistance to mind magic (which he wasn’t always sure was a good thing), his telepathy, and his gradually reflickering magic. Maybe tomorrow he’d be able to use it. Or the day after. Better to wait for the day after, to be on the safe side.
He got to his feet and paced the length of the loft. There were no windows up here, and the heat was becoming stifling. He wished he could find them another place to hide, but feared they might end up walking in circles.
Alexander hadn’t found them. That was a good thing. The vampires hadn’t found them either, although Matthew found that more unbelievable than encouraging. They had Kaitlin’s blood. He couldn’t shield her. With her blood and a halfway decent scrying spell, they could find her in two seconds. So why hadn’t they come for her?
They were up to something. But what?
With nothing better to do, Matthew sat on a bale of hay and thought. He thought mostly about Kaitlin, and how her presence in his life had grown in such a short time. He thought about their escape, and how brave she had been. But mostly, he thought about her immunity to mind magic, which he had been forcing himself not to dwell upon because it made him feel impotent.
He’d used mind magic on her before. He knew of at least three specific case
s, right off the top of his head, twice one-on-one with her and once when he’d put a spell on the entire town. She had succumbed as beautifully as any normal mortal would. What had changed?
The vampires.
She had been under their control, their thrall, for the better part of a year. Then she’d run away. How had she even been able to wake from that thrall in the first place?
He was still mulling over impossible-to-answer questions when he heard the soft sound of footfalls below and then the gentle scrape of the ladder as someone climbed. He held his breath, but he sensed it was Kaitlin before she came into telepathic range. And when she did...
“What happened?” Matthew demanded.
Images flickered past, rapid-fire: A tree. Clutching it for support. Jason. Circling her. Mocking her. Scaring her. Threatening her. Jason wanted their son. Jason had lied to her. Scared her. Still scared her.
“Slow down,” Matthew urged. “Take some deep breaths. I can’t separate it all.”
“Me neither,” Kaitlin admitted. “He was there. In the woods. He knows exactly where we are.”
Matthew flinched, but he wasn’t truly surprised. He had already determined that the vampires knew and were up to something. “What does he want?”
“Your help.”
Haltingly, Kaitlin told and showed Matthew everything that had happened to her after she’d left him only half an hour ago, making him wish he had gone after her – though there would have been nothing he could do. She might have come away from the encounter better off for being on her own, but that was a hard thing for him to admit.
Harder still would be admitting to her that he wasn’t sure he could fight Xavier’s mind magic at the moment. If the vampires would kindly consent to wait for two days, he had a chance, but as it was he had no idea how he would survive the encounter in one piece.
“What are you thinking?” Kaitlin asked. “It’s not fair that you get to know everything going on inside my mind and I know nothing that’s happening in yours.”
“Not fair at all,” Matthew agreed. Then something occurred to him. “Did Jason say when he’d be back?”
“No.” I should have asked.
“Don’t start blaming yourself. He might not have said. I bet they want to keep us guessing. Unnerve us.”
“It’s working.” Kaitlin hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms.
“Will you...” Matthew paused. He had already demanded so much of her today. How could he demand anything else? The woman looked ready to shatter before his eyes.
“What?” Kaitlin asked.
“Never mind.”
“I can handle it. I told you, it’s not fair that I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
“I agreed with that.” Matthew smiled, briefly. “All right, Kaitlin. I’d like to know about your time with the vampires. All of it. Nothing held back.”
She shuddered, but she wasn’t surprised. I was afraid of that. And she was willing to tell him; she just wanted his arms around her.
He hesitated before he moved closer to her, making sure he wasn’t misinterpreting desires that she hadn’t formed into words, not even mental words. She shuddered again, and he knew that her greatest need right now was to feel close to someone. Like she was a part of the human race. He didn’t deserve to be the person who comforted her now, after the way he’d hurt her earlier, but he was there.
Slowly, giving her time to change her mind, he sat beside her on the bale of hay she’d chosen. She relaxed into him, resting her head against his shoulder, feeling the peace of his presence.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Matthew reminded her. “Just show me.”
She took a deep breath, let her mind begin to drift, and found her starting point: The prospect of single motherhood hadn’t been easy for her, especially since she’d sworn she wouldn’t end up like her mother – pregnant and alone at barely twenty. She used to ask her mom about her father, but after a while she decided it didn’t matter who he was; his only significance in her life was his absence.
So there she was, twenty-one years old, repeating the cycle. She’d used protection. She’d spent the first trimester railing at the fates about that, when she wasn’t about to blow herself up from the strange new energy growing within her alongside the baby.
Cassie’s family had taken her in. They’d been kind to her. But she hadn’t belonged there, not really. And Jason never even returned her calls. He’d been fighting for his life, and the life of their unborn son, at the time, but she hadn’t known that. Honestly, she didn’t even know him. One-night stands weren’t her typical style; she’d been angry at her boyfriend for cheating and she’d taken a leap, thinking again of a fairy tale. Or more specifically, a romance novel she’d recently read that had begun with a one-night stand.
Jason stepped momentarily back into her life the day Jay was born. He’d held his son. Rocked him. Whispered soothing things to him. Been a father. If only he hadn’t died less than two weeks later. If only she hadn’t fooled herself into believing that some part of him still lived.
He’d let himself become a vampire. His father had learned the power of switching souls, which worked better when using the body of one’s direct descendant. Jason was the only child he’d ever had, and he couldn’t take Jay until he was much older. Jason became a vampire so his father couldn’t take his body, and by extension his son’s. He hadn’t wanted to die, but he hadn’t wanted to risk losing the fight against his father either. He’d won, in the end, as a vampire. But it was too late for him.
Kaitlin hadn’t gotten it when he’d asked her to come away with him. All she’d gotten was that finally, someone wanted her. She’d wished for another fairy tale, this time just like the vampire romance novels she liked to read. She, Jason, and Jay could all be a family.
Her only stipulation was that she didn’t want to turn right away. It wasn’t her idea, it was Cassie’s, but there had been some kind of strange look in her best friend’s eyes when Cassie had begged her to wait, to put it off, to tell them anything to delay becoming a vampire herself. Kaitlin hadn’t understood it, but she’d held onto it, and it had saved her life.
That’s not how it had been at first, though. No, at first she had felt like she was in the middle of a wonderful dream. She could scarcely remember any details, only the feeling of perfect contentment as she’d followed Jason and Xavier around the country from safe house to safe house. For the first time in her life, she hadn’t had to clean. She hadn’t had to work. Her only responsibility had been Jay. She’d read. She’d cooked (for pleasure). She’d struggled with nursing, but at the time she hadn’t cared all that much. It had only been later that she’d connected her struggles with the fact that Jason regularly drank her blood.
The fog of pleasure hadn’t lifted all at once. It had drifted away over the course of months. The first thing she remembered intruding into her perfect new life was the final recognition that she couldn’t nurse anymore. Maybe it had been a hormonal thing, but she’d cried the last time she tried to nurse her son. She cried for days.
The next thing was Xavier. The centuries old vampire wasn’t like Jason, and probably hadn’t been even in those early days. He was intense. Hostile. Alien. When she looked at him, she often saw death in his eyes. Then had come the day when he’d torn out the throat of a teenage girl without so much as a hint of regret.
After that... a bit of this, a bit of that. Recognizing that Jason was dead had come last of all, possibly because she had wanted the fairy tale so badly. Or maybe it was because new vampires were a little more like their former selves as they adjusted to their new lives. She had no idea, she only knew that she had become clear headed enough to see the people in her lives for who and what they truly were.
Then she’d begged Cassie to take her baby from her. And when that hadn’t worked, she’d run.
/> She let all the memories wash over her – all the images, all the feelings, and all the things she hated herself for now. She didn’t hold back a thing and in a way, it felt liberating to know that for once, someone would understand it completely.
Matthew understood. He understood that if he wasn’t careful, he would be one more in a long line of men who had hurt her. One more fairy tale gone awry. And he suddenly, desperately, wanted that fairy tale – not just for her but for him. Only, he couldn’t make her love him. He couldn’t even heal her mind.
“What are you thinking?” Kaitlin asked.
Matthew tried to remember the last time anyone had asked him that. Now here was Kaitlin, asking for the third time. And she deserved to know, only he had no idea how to tell her.
“I want you,” he said finally, “but I don’t want to hurt you.”
Kaitlin lifted her head from his shoulder and looked him straight in the eyes. I’m a big girl, she thought. But she also thought about Jay and how she had no business chasing after impossible dreams anymore.
Matthew turned his body to face her fully and took both her hands in his, squeezing tightly. He had never wanted anything more in his life – nor been so afraid of messing it up. “You’re the most amazing, strongest woman I know.”
No. Kaitlin forced herself not to look over her shoulder.
“Exactly. You don’t know how amazing you are.”
“And you can’t fix me,” Kaitlin said bitterly. “Well, what about you? Maybe you’re the one who needs fixing.”
“Maybe.” Matthew couldn’t deny it, not after so many people had pointed out to him that he had no friends, only allies. “But if we give in to what we both want now, you’re going to get hurt.”
“Unless we die.” The vampires could be here any minute.
“Kaitlin.” Matthew brushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear before returning his hand to hers. “It’s not time to live like you’re dying. I’m going to find a way to get us out of this. Both of us.”
“And Jay?”
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