Broken Heart 01 I'm the Vampire, That's Why (21 page)

"No!"Nara 's arm went up, her open palm swinging toward my cheek, but Patrick grabbed her wrist and flung it away.

"You cannot have him. He is mine!"

"No, he's mine," I said. "Fuck off."

Realizing she'd lost this round, she screamed in fury then… sparkled away.

"What a bitch!"

"Jessica…" He shook his head, smiling. "You are impudent."

"It's a gift."

"You are the gift."

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"Patrick, you're twisting me into knots. You're all smoochy and lovey and saving-my-life one second and all brooding and dark and driving-me-crazy the next. I don't know what to do with you."

"I could think of several things you could do with me."

"Yeah. Tell me about it." I nibbled my lower lip. "So…Nara … you, uh, were married to her."

"It was more blackmail than marriage."

His eyes went distant and I could feel him go back through the centuries. "She was beautiful. Seductive.

Yet the only reason I agreed to the binding was because she had my father's swords."

"What?"

He nodded. "The swords had been stolen from my father—no one knew what had happened to them.

Then, seven hundred years ago,Nara showed up and bartered with me. If I would bind with her, she'd give me the Ruadan swords. It's tradition with vampire bindings for the couple to exchange gifts—usually these objects have great emotional value."

"What did you give her?"

Patrick's jaw clenched. "Narawould settle for nothing less than the coin made from Dairine's
fede
. She hoped to force me into another binding to regain the coin."

I thought about the
Legend of Ruadan the First
and I realized whyNara would try to blackmail Patrick into marriage. "You and Lor are the sons of the first vampire. You said the vampires had a class system.

So, she wanted the power and prestige that was part and parcel of being your mate."

I really didn't like her. She had taken advantage of Patrick. She was vindictive, greedy, and coldhearted.

I sooooo wanted to hurt her.

"I can't undo the past," said Patrick. "I spent a hundred years in hell… I wouldn't giveNara another hundred, not even for the last reminder I had of my life with Dairine." He cupped my face and looked into my eyes. "I am connected to you. You are the one I want. You are
mo chroí
. My heart."

In the depths of silver, I saw the truth of his emotions for me. What I saw there scared the crap out of me. It was like gazing into eternity and knowing that I had a place in it. That I would never be alone and always be loved.

"Holy shit."

"Yeah. Holy shit." He kissed me lightly, silencing my questions. "Let's go meet Lor."

"Okay."

We broke apart, and holding hands again, rose into the air.

"Lor?" called Patrick. "Lor!"

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"He didn't respond the other forty times," I said. "I don't think shouting it another forty will get you different results."

"How many times have you tried to connect with him?"

"Way more than forty… with the same results. My mental mojo is failing. Or he's ignoring me."

We circled the golf course of Putt 'Er There for the second time. Even with the tall grass, overgrowth, and untrimmed trees, it would be hard to miss a seven-foot-tall hairball.

At the broken windmill, we paused in our searching.

Maybe Patrick felt what I did, which was seriously creeped out. It seemed unnaturally quiet, the silence not even broken by the singing of crickets or the flitter of bird wings. The air was thick with moisture and heat, and heavy with the scent of honeysuckle from bushes that half-rimmed the small pond to our left. I looked at the water, the cool, strange calm of it, and saw the glimmer of something round and pale.

"What's in the water?" I asked as I leaned over the gray murk. I grasped a primitive understanding of the shape and size of it, but I wasn't ready to give name to what I saw lurking below the depths.

Patrick waded knee-deep into the water and reached in to grab the body. He pulled it out by the arms, and dragged it away from its iniquitous grave, until it flopped against the weeds and untamed grass of the golf course. I watched, my tears mute, as he knelt down and gently, lovingly pulled down the pink muumuu to cover the chubby white knees.

He wasn't thinking. Couldn't be thinking. Why cover her legs when her torso was ravaged, the dress hanging in shreds around the ugly gashes?

Like Emily, her face had been untouched. Her pretty, round face tinged blue, her eyes open and filmy, and… God. Oh God. Her neck was pristine, as white and strong and beautiful as I remembered. And below that perfect column of flesh lay blood and gore and ruin.

I felt sick and dizzy and sank to my knees next to her, my hand drifting over her leaf-strewn red hair. I stroked away the strands clinging to her cheeks and murmured, "Oh,Sharon ."

Patrick used his cell phone to call Stan. He told him to bring Damian to the golf course and to take care ofSharon . He also made Stan promise not to tell anyone about her death until we awoke and could handle the fallout.

"My kids," I said. "Are they okay?"

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Patrick covered the mouthpiece. "Yes. Damian put extra guards around the outside of the house. Drake and Darrius will guardBryan and Jenny's doors. I swear to you, nothing will get to your
clann
, Jessica."

"Thank you." I kissed his cheek and nuzzled his jaw. "Thank you."

He pressed his lips to my forehead and I wandered away so he could finish the phone call.

Everyone would think Lorcan killedSharon . Though I didn't want to, I wondered… did he? Not even Brigid had believed me when I said there'd been two creatures. Had Lor implanted a memory to fool me? Had he invited me and Patrick to the golf course to show us his latest kill? I didn't know.

I couldn't help it. No matter where I put my gaze—on the sky, on the windmill, on Patrick… it was always drawn back toSharon . I found myself reluctantly kneeling next to her again. My stomach felt queasy, but I managed to push down her eyelids. It made me feel better, as if she'd gone to sleep instead of dying so horribly. Had she known her killer? Had she fought? Or had she succumbed to glamour before getting mauled?

I stood up and hurried away. Patrick leaned against the windmill, watching me. He was still on the phone with Stan. I smiled and waved away his concern. I needed some space, but I wouldn't go out of his sight.

Fear chilled me. Maybe as a vampire I should've felt brave and invulnerable, but I was scared shitless.

It was appalling to face the mortality of someone I knew. It wasn't the first time I'd seen a dead human body. BeforeSharon , I had seen Emily, and before her… Rich.

Going to the morgue that night had been like walking into hell. After I got the phone call, the one that shattered a world already fragmented, I dropped off my kids at Linda's and drove to the square-bricked, two-story hospital. The coroner was one of three physicians who worked in Broken Heart—the other two rotated between other towns, but Doc Wallis was permanent and changed professional hats when needed. Our little town had one or two deaths a year, and none from murder. No one had died from homicide—that we knew about—for at least twenty years.

I trudged into the small room where autopsies were done. It didn't have big picture windows or TV

monitors—devices used to distance the living from the dead. It smelled strongly of lemon-scented cleaner, but not even industrial-strength 409 had the ability to mask the underlying miasma.

Nausea crowded my throat; grief sat in my stomach like a bag filled with sharp stones. But I tucked in those emotions, wrapped them tight inside me, as I watched Doc Wallis open a square metal door and roll out my husband.

Rich's skin was waxen and pale. He didn't look asleep. He looked dead. I couldn't remember the last words we'd said to each other, but we'd done nothing but argue—about alimony and child support, visitation rights, whether to sell the house or fight over who got to live in it. We'd gotten to the point where every conversation ended with, "Talk to my lawyer." And yet, here I was, still his wife, completing the final, awful duty that befell me as his legal spouse.

I identified his body.

I didn't cry until I had gotten into my car.

Rich's death offered no closure. Death never did, did it? I wasn't finished being angry with him. Just because he'd died didn't mean I could automatically and easily release my hurt or let go of the depth of
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the betrayal I felt.

And yet, not even I, who had relished every petty satisfaction derived from hurting him, wanted him to die.

I had been too swathed in my pain, my anger, and my cowardice to tell Charlene that her lover was gone.

She labored two floors above the morgue to have that baby, unaware that she'd never lay eyes on Rich again, and I walked out without checking on her. I asked Doc Wallis to drop the bomb after Charlene had recovered sufficiently from giving birth.

That was bitchy of me. Guilt still pricked me with sharp edges that I hadn't made the noble gesture. It was cruel to not build a temporary bridge to Charlene and her child—to acknowledge her right to grieve Rich's loss.

The divorce proceedings had been a slow and painful process and hadn't been close to completion.

Instead of becoming Rich's ex-wife, I became his widow. And so, Charlene didn't get the casseroles and sympathy cards and daily help.

I did.

While Charlene learned the weary tasks of caring for an infant, I planned Rich's funeral. While she struggled to find a job to support herself and her baby, I collected his health insurance and sold his business. While she endured the censure of my friends and family, I enjoyed empathy and companionship.

Oh, I sucked. On a grand scale. For a long time, I hadn't had the emotional space to think about Charlene as a human being. She was the Other Woman. At some point, there had to be healing and forgiveness and getting-the-hell over myself.

All these revelations spun in my head while Patrick paced and talked to Stan and I paced and tried to avoid looking atSharon 's violated body.

The click of Patrick's phone snapping shut pulled me out of the memories. We looked at each other, both of us feeling the weight ofSharon 's death, feeling how it enchained us to other deaths, to other losses.

"Is this what it means to be a vampire—witnessing these horrors over and over?" I asked.

"I wish I could tell you something comforting that would not be a lie."

"Yeah. Me, too."

The sun would rise soon. I knew this not because of the changing colors of sky, but because of the weird malaise squeezing me into unconsciousness.

Patrick scooped me into his arms. "C'mon, love. I know you're tired."

We had to leaveSharon , alone and ravaged, beneath the broken wood shards of the windmill. It felt like a final indignity to her, to abandon the one who'd been friend to Patrick and might've been friend to me.