Books by Maggie Shayne (151 page)

“You don’t know the half of what you can do. This is a short hop for you, now. You’re strong. Stronger than ten of them,” he said, nodding toward the men below.

“I’m not.”

“You are,” he insisted. “You want to know our best-kept secret, Angel?”

She stared into his eyes, obviously frightened. “Yes,” she said.

“The truly ancient ones…can even fly.”

She shook her head. Then stopped, stared at him, and her eyes went even rounder.

“They’ll laugh us out of immortality if we can’t make this little leap. Come on, Angel. Trust me, I’ve been around vampires all my life.” He took her hand, led her back to the other side. “We run, and we jump. Don’t hesitate, or you’ll put us both in some pretty intense misery.”

“The fall would kill us.”

“No. But it would probably hurt like hell.”

She looked doubtful. He squeezed her hand. “Our baby is safe. She’s not in their filthy hands anymore, Angelica. Doesn’t that make you feel like you could fly?”

She nodded, still shaky though.

“If we don’t get out of here, we won’t get her back. For her, Angel. For our Amber Lily.”

The fear in those violet eyes vanished. She nodded once, firmly. “All right.”

“Good girl.” Clinging to her hand, Jameson ran, and she matched him, step for step. She didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate, poured every bit of her effort into it. As one they pushed off, and as one they sailed into the night, arching high. He felt the rush he’d felt each time Roland had challenged him to push his abilities to their limits, only to find they truly had none. The wind whistling in his ears, riffling through his hair. And then they landed, hard, on the next building, and he pulled her close to him on impact to keep her from falling forward and smashing her face.

His arms linked around her waist, her body pressed to his, he looked down to see her…smiling. Her eyes glittering up at him. “We did it!”

“I told you.” That smile of hers. That was what got to him. Seeing her smile, when she’d been in such agony such a short time ago. An agony they’d shared. There was hope now. Real hope, and they were sharing that as well. He lowered his head, and he kissed her. And it was lunacy. Madness. But her lips were full and moist and chilled from the night air. And they felt good beneath his, ripe and succulent, and he drew on them, traced them with his tongue, parted them and slipped his tongue between them.

The lust hit him hard, like a freight train, and he felt it running her down as well. She shuddered and clung to him, parted her lips and tipped her head back. He bowed over her, and plunged his tongue deep into her mouth, and thought about plunging himself deeply into her body.

A thought he forgot to guard.

She heard it loud and clear, and went stiff. Then gently, she pulled free of him and turned away. She was breathless. And so was he.

“I’m…” He pushed a hand through his hair. Christ, he’d just kissed the hell out of an almost nun. And thought about doing one hell of a lot more to her. Which was nothing new, and nothing she hadn’t been thinking as well. But… “I’m sorry.”

“We have to go, Vampire,” she said, but her voice was coarse and shaky. “They’ll find us here soon enough.”

“Yeah.” He let her lead this time, and he followed, wondering what the hell kind of insanity had just had hold of him.

When we reached the ground again, Jameson and I crept through the shadows of the night. I could hear very clearly the crackling of their radios as they spoke to one another. As they searched for us. It was obvious that we were a high priority to them. No, that wasn’t exactly right. It was our daughter they wanted. A tiny babe who didn’t even know why so many people should be hunting for her.

And I would die before I would let them have her.

I looked sideways at the man who stood close to me, and I realized that he would likely do the same. Give his life to protect the baby. Already, he’d risked it, and more than once. Perhaps… he was not exactly the monster I’d believed him to be.

Or perhaps he was. I’d seen the rage in his eyes. I’d watched him stand over a helpless man, perfectly willing to take his life. No hesitation. No compunction. No morality. Perhaps it was only in regard to his child that he showed any sense of honor or nobility. Perhaps.

He had kissed me.

I still marveled over how that had come about. But it was easy enough to understand. We’d both been exhilarated at the knowledge that perhaps our child was safe, somewhere. Carried away in the moment. He’d never have laid a finger on me otherwise, I had no doubts about that. He hated me. Had told me as much. Even blamed me for this entire predicament. Held me solely responsible for the danger Amber Lily was in right now. And yet I responded to him like a lust-starved lover. And I did not understand why.

As for his judgment of me, I, for the most part, agreed with it. I’d been a fool. An utter fool. And he was right, it was my fault our child had been taken. But I hadn’t known, then, the horrors that I knew now.

I only knew that I should have listened to him as he lay on the floor near death, telling me not to go, not to trust the DPI agent who’d come for me. I should have listened.

We stood now in an alley, peering through the night at the men who surrounded the building. The vampire’s squat black car waited like a deadly spider, only a few yards away from us. But those men were only a few yards beyond it. They stood facing the building, in case we came out, no doubt. Their backs were to us.

We can make if to the car
, I heard him say. And then realized that he hadn’t
said
it at all. This silent way of speaking made me dizzy. He took my hand, an act that seemed to be becoming his habit, and led me forward. Then he opened the driver’s side door, which was nearest us, and crouching low, I crawled over his seat and into my own. When I was there, I kept my head down.

Jameson was beside me in no time at all, and he pulled the door very gently shut. And then he turned the key.

Immediately, those men spun around. Jameson jerked the shifting lever, and the car lurched into motion. But not before those men began firing their weapons at us. Such a horrific scene I’d never imagined. Men, firing guns at us. The black barrels spitting fire in the night. The window beside me shattered, and I heard Jameson swearing as he yanked hard on the wheel. Only seconds later, those other vehicles came to life, and roared in pursuit.

But the chase they gave was not my main source of concern. A searing pain, like a red-hot blade, screamed through my mind, enveloping my entire body. I’d never known such pain. The labor had torn through me like this, yes, but I’d been drugged, and it had been duller. Distant. This was immediate and agonizing. And yet it was not my own. Not my own.

“Don’t worry,” he said, maneuvering the vehicle at dizzying speeds. “They’ll never catch us. This car goes like hell, and I have the advantage. I can run without lights.” He looked toward me, and tried to keep the pain from his eyes. But when his gaze met mine, he saw the agony in my gaze. “Angelica?”

“Tell me, Vampire,” I said softly, “is it only the sun that can kill us? Or would their bullets do the job as well?” And as I spoke, I lifted my hand and laid it against his waist, and I felt the blood there, dampening my palm.

“We’ll worry about that later,” he said, but I knew he was in terrible pain. He spoke through gritted teeth, and his flesh was white, eyes sparking with anguish. “First we have to get the hell out of here.” He took a corner so fast that I was flung against him. I cried out when his pain grew worse, and he looked at me sharply.

“Angelica? You’re not hurt, too, are you?”

“No,” I whispered, staring down at the blood that pooled on the seat around him in horror. “No, it’s your pain I feel, Vampire. As if it were my own. Why? Is this normal?”

He shook his head slowly, grating his teeth. “I don’t know.”

“You’re weakening!” I said, because I knew it. “You’ll bleed to death, won’t you?”

“Put pressure on the wound,” he instructed, and he caught my hand and drew it to his side, pressing my palm to the blood-soaked injury. “Don’t let it bleed, Angel. We can bleed to death in no time flat. It’s deadly to us.” Another corner, and I did as he said, but my hand was shaking, and I was afraid my efforts were doing little to stanch the flow. But the pain began to fade as well. And then his head fell sideways, and his eyes closed.

“Stay awake, dammit,” I ordered, my voice harsh as I took the steering wheel when his hands dropped to his sides. “Don’t you die on me. Hold on!”

But I don’t think he heard me. He just lay there, and the pain went away. I steered the car off the road, pulled him out from behind the wheel and took over the driving myself. We were almost back to the house near the sea, so that was where I took us. But I was terrified. Terrified he was going to die and leave me to face this challenge alone. And though he’d called himself my captor, I found that the thought of his death gave me no pleasure. In fact, it filled me with a horrible dread. I’d become dependent on him to some extent. And I needed his help. Those things were true. But they were not the source of my anguish.

I simply didn’t want this man, this enigma I’d only begun to understand, to die. I didn’t want him to leave me. Not yet. Not like this.

And that feeling frightened me almost as much as the blood oozing from his side did.

Their luck seemed to be nothing but bad. Dammit, the bastards had shot him. He shouldn’t have risked it. Should have just left the damned car and taken off on foot. He’d been an idiot, thinking like a mortal, a habit he’d thought Rhiannon’s constant chiding had cured him of.

As he blinked his eyes clear of the pain-induced haze, he realized Angelica was driving. She’d pulled him from behind the wheel at some point—though he had no memory of it—and now she was speeding over the highway as if the devil were on her tail. He hadn’t even realized she knew how to drive. Had never bothered to ask her. But she was driving, and burning the pavement right off the damned roads in her wake.

Only several miles and hair-raising turns later, when she apparently thought she’d lost her pursuers, did she slow down. Her gaze kept dancing over him, and her violet eyes were alive with worry. Glancing nervously into the mirror first, she pulled the car off the road, and turned to him where he lay slumped in the seat, clinging to consciousness with everything in him. He’d passed out once or twice already. He was sorely afraid that if he did it again, he wouldn’t wake up.

Her pretty eyes widened when he thought that. “You’re getting better at it,” he managed. “Reading my thoughts.”

“You’re too weak to prevent it,” she said, and she tore his shirt open, and he recalled dreaming of her doing something very similar. Only under radically different circumstances.

She sucked air through her teeth, and that made him look down. The wound was a jagged tear in his side, an inch or so above his hipbone, which pulsed with blood at an alarming rate. A flesh wound that would barely threaten a mortal.

“Why does it bleed like that?” Angelica whispered. “It isn’t that bad. Why won’t it stop?” And as she spoke she began searching the car, looking in the glove compartment and leaning over into the back seat.

“Any wound can kill a vampire,” he told her. Her teacher, that’s what he’d become. Someone older and wiser, whom she needed in order to survive. And that was why she was so worried about him right now. Wouldn’t do to let himself go thinking anything else. “We tend to bleed like hemophiliacs when our flesh is torn deeply. I’m afraid, sweet Angel, that I’ll be dead within minutes unless we can stop the flow.”

Apparently, Angelica had already reached the same conclusion. Because before he finished speaking, she yanked his shirt off him, tearing the fabric in the process. She tore off a sleeve with her teeth, and balled it up, pressing it into the wound. The rest of the shirt, she twisted into one long band, then wrapped it around his middle, so tightly he could barely inhale. She pulled it hard to apply pressure to the wound, and he moaned. Pain. She was causing him intense pain, and she knew that. And she was feeling it, too, an oddity he still hadn’t figured out. Maybe Roland could explain it.

As for the pain, it couldn’t be helped. Though he had thought she’d be a bit more squeamish about inflicting it on him. She hadn’t been, though. Hadn’t even flinched, and it was probably a good thing. He’d die otherwise. When she’d finished the job, she waited, watching the makeshift bandage.

“Don’t bleed,” she muttered, half to herself and half to the wound in his side. “Don’t bleed, don’t bleed, don’t bleed…”

“It doesn’t dare,” he told her. Then he leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.

“Don’t leave me,” she told him.

He looked at her, frowning. But she said no more. She started the car again without looking at him—at his face, anyway. The wound, she perused often. She popped the clutch, then, and sped back to Eric’s house as fast as Jameson’s high-performance engine could take her there. And then she put her luscious arms around him, and struggled to pull him from the car. He tried to help her, even got his feet out the door and onto the ground. She anchored one of his arms over her shoulders, and helped him inside. No doubt she could have carried him if she’d had to. She had the strength, though he wasn’t certain she was aware of it yet. Still, he hadn’t been a vampire long enough not to feel a bit odd at the prospect of being picked up and carried by a female, so he told her he could walk, and then he managed to do so. Barely. She took him down through the passage, and then inside, and she activated the locks after she closed the door.

“Jesus, Angel,” he said, pausing for a few shallow breaths before going on. “That was stupid.” She eased him into the bedroom, and then gently onto the bed.

“What was?”

“The locks. You don’t know the code. How the hell will you get out if I die?”

“You’ll just have to stay alive, Vampire. If you don’t, I’ll be stuck. So buck up and tell me what to do.” And then, as he felt himself starting to slip away, she was leaning over him, shaking his shoulders. “Dammit, Jameson, what should I do?” And he saw tears standing in her eyes.

She was, once again, the woman he could not hate. The woman who needed him. He’d always had a weak spot for women in need. Tamara, first. He remembered trying once to take on a grown man in a bare-knuckle right when he’d been no more than a scrawny twelve-year-old, to protect her. Even Rhiannon, the strongest woman he’d ever known, had her weak moments, and Jameson would have taken on the world to protect her.

And now, this one. This dark angel who seemed to need him more than any of them ever had. He didn’t want to feel protective of her, but it was unavoidable. He felt it. He couldn’t do otherwise. Even though he was the one lying here at death’s very door, he felt her need. He wasn’t going to drop dead and leave her on her own. He was going to fight, so that he could stay alive. He wanted to be with her when they found their daughter again. He wanted to see those violet eyes when they were alight with joy. He never had.

Hell, he was actually beginning to like the woman.

He stroked her hair away from her beautiful face. “Any wound will heal during the day sleep,” he told her. “All you have to do is keep me alive until then.”

“How?”

He tried to smile. “Stop the bleeding. Replace what I’ve lost. You manage that, I’ll be just fine.” He struggled to keep his eyes open.

She blinked. “What if I can’t?”

“Look in the bathroom, Angel. There should be some supplies in there for…this sort of emergency.”

She touched his face, checked the wound and then, biting her lip, went into the bathroom in search of supplies. Jameson had no doubt she’d find what she needed there. Eric kept this place stocked with everything anyone might conceivably need. And his friend didn’t let him down. Angelica returned with an armful of bandages, and even needles and silk thread. The bandages would have to do. No way was he lying still while she stuck that needle into him. And she wouldn’t have time, anyway. It would be dawn soon.

She returned to the bed, removed his makeshift tourniquet and watched with horror in her eyes as the bleeding began all over again. With one hand pressed to the wound, she tore strips of bandage with the other, and her teeth. Pinching the jagged edges of his torn flesh together, she taped them there. Bit by bit, closing the wound. And when she finished, and blood still seeped through, she made a clean, new bandage from a roll of gauze, knotting it tightly around his middle. And then she sighed in relief, nodding. He assumed that meant the bleeding had stopped.

While he lay there, thinking this was going to be all right after all, the woman picked up a needle and some of that silk thread.

“No,” he said, his voice a raw whisper. “That’s not necessary.”

“I didn’t think so either, at first,” she told him, unerringly spearing the needle’s eye with her thread. “But I see now that I was wrong. If you so much as move the bleeding is going to start again,” she told him. “You could die, Vampire.” She finished threading the needle, and loosened his bandages again. “Hold on,” she told him. “This is going to hurt like hell.”

He passed out from the intense pain when I sewed up the gash in his side. That and the blood loss. I hadn’t realized pain was different in all of us, not just in me. Everything that hurt me, hurt me more since the change. Now I knew it was part of this new nature of mine. Pain was magnified, just as every other sensation was. And for some reason, I could feel his pain. I hadn’t felt the pain of those other vampires, who’d been held captive in the cells alongside my own. Nor that of my maker, when I’d set him afire and watched him burn. But I felt Jameson’s pain.

It didn’t seem so odd. The man was in my blood, in my soul. He was like a virus I could not cure. Slowly growing stronger and spreading throughout my system, until he affected my every thought and feeling.

In a very short time, I’d somehow become quite attached to this man who claimed to be my captor. It had begun, of course, with the physical sensations I’d experienced when I’d taken him. And then the longing. The craving for more of that. It had deepened, I believed, because of the child we’d shared. I’d carried his very flesh and blood within me for months, nurtured it. Loved it.

How could I not be attached to him? Even…even fond of him, despite his being an unrepentant monster, and despite his violent hatred for DPI. He’d spared the man’s life tonight. Because I asked it of him, he’d spared it. Surely, he was not quite as horrible as I’d believed him to be at first. Certainly not the same as the beast who made me. No, I’d been wrong about that as well. Jameson would never force himself on me that way.

Though there was, deep inside, a small part of me that wished he would. For then I would be able to experience the fulfillment I craved with him, and suffer none of the guilt of making the choice to do so.

The thought heated my face, and made me sweat. I pushed it aside and focused on the matter at hand. I sewed the wound very well, and then cleaned and wrapped it. And then I just looked at him, lying there, soaked in his own blood. The bleeding was stopped. It would stay stopped. And if what he had told me about the regenerative qualities of the day sleep were true, he would survive. Maybe.

But he needed to feed, to replenish what he’d lost. And then to rest. The wound, according to the vampire, would be healed when he woke. I needed only be sure it didn’t break open again before then.

The sweater I wore was soaked in Jameson’s blood. Ruined. The jeans, too, had absorbed a great deal of blood. His were in worse shape than my own, though. And I knew I would have to clean him up. There was no one else here to do it. And the task excited me. I know it is shameful, but there it is. I was aroused at the thought of undressing him, of bathing him.

I first shed my own clothing. What good would it do me to hold him and wash him if I were only soiling him again in the process? I dived beneath the shower spray very briefly, just long enough to rinse the blood away from my skin. I donned the robe he’d worn earlier, and hurried back to his side. All told, I wasn’t away from him for more than three minutes. And he was still all right.

Lifting him gently, I peeled what remained of his shirt over his head and dropped it to the floor. As I turned back to him, I went completely still. Naked from the waist up, he was…he was beautiful.

I had never looked upon a man’s form before. Not this way. He was firm. Muscular, yet lean, and somehow very graceful. His skin lay taut and supple and I longed to touch it. To run my hands over his chest, and flat belly, and feel him beneath my palms.

It was a foreign longing, and yet I was growing used to it. I’d never experienced such attacks of lust before. My curiosity had been answered by the sisters, who simply told me that such things were sinful and unsuitable for a young woman to be thinking about. Nothing more. I was forbidden to touch my ripening body, forbidden to explore it, and learn the secrets of its pleasure. But now, they were secrets I longed to know. Never before had I been so absorbed with physical desire. Only with him. His body held my eyes prisoner. And while I was embarrassed and ashamed, I could not stop myself from looking my fill. His chest intrigued me most, I think, with its hard nipples tempting me to touch.

I licked my lips, pulling my eyes away. But they were drawn back again. And again.

He needed my help right now, not my passion, I reminded myself. But my hands trembled as I unfastened his jeans. And my entire body shook as I stood over him, and worked the denim down over his hips, and thighs, and finally worked it free of his feet. I wouldn’t look. I told myself that I would not look at him anymore, and forcibly, I kept my gaze away from him, rushing back to the bathroom for a basin of warm water and a clean, soft cloth. But there was no helping it. I had to look at him as I gently washed the blood away. I washed his arms and his chest as my eyes feasted on the smooth taut skin of his belly. And I washed his hard, rippling abdomen, and the narrow curve of his hip as I stared down at those powerful thighs and the dark curls between them. And the root of him, at rest now, but beautiful and filled with erotic promises I couldn’t even begin to understand. Dark. Mysterious. And I wanted to touch him. To awaken that organ and see it come to life in response to my touch. I wanted to feel it, explore it. Learn the secrets of his pleasure as well as my own.

This was so unlike me, these wanton thoughts. I bit my lip, and chased them away. It was wrong, I knew, to look at him this way while he was unable to prevent it. Wrong. And it would be even more wrong to touch him while he rested. Because perhaps if he could object, he would. I knew all too well that he held no tender feelings for me. Hated me, in fact. Given all of that, he might resent my taking liberties with him.

Carefully, I washed the blood from his legs, but even this was a sensual pleasure; running my hands over him again and again, with only the soft cloth between his flesh and my own. My hands tingled where I had touched him. And I felt good. Sinfully, wantonly good.

When I finished, I was hot. I was breathing too rapidly, and beads of sweat dampened my face and my neck. My pulse fluttered in my throat, and my stomach clenched. And I knew why. I wanted him. I was hungry for him. I told myself that it was ridiculous, that I didn’t even like him. That he detested me in return. That I could very easily have been his murderess one night long ago, and that it wasn’t something a man like him was likely to forget…much less forgive.