Cunningham, Pat - Legacy [Sequel to Belonging] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (31 page)

He staggered back. His face went blank for a moment. He actually started to turn away before he stopped himself. His fellows interrupted their own stalks to stare at him. Words were exchanged, of the “what the fuck?” variety. Even Jeremy chimed in. “What did you do? Can you do it again?”

“I don’t know,” she answered both questions. “How’s the weapons search going?”

Before he could reply, yet another vehicle, a van, roared up and slid to a gravel-spraying stop on the road ahead of them. Colleen’s hopes of rescue died when the driver leaped out at faster-than-human speed. Another vampire, late to the party. One of the quartet yelled an order at him. The newcomer shot him the finger.

Jeremy sat up, all senses focused on the approaching vamp. His hand clenched around Colleen’s. “Keep very still,” he whispered.

Easier said than done. The vamp she’d mind-blasted had recovered himself and wasn’t at all happy with her. His lips stretched farther than humanly possible and showed off the lengthened canines that ached to plunge into her neck.

Colleen flinched from the snarling face at her window and stared instead at the night-shrouded bat striding toward them. Because the other four were fixed on their victims, she, and not they, was the one to see Wallace pull out a stake and dive in.

The fight didn’t last long. Two bats died in abrupt bursts of ash before the other two even realized they were under attack. Wallace grappled with the third right outside Colleen’s door. She shrank from the glitter of starlight on twin sets of fangs. Intent on dodging the stake, the vamp failed to see the silver knife that appeared in Wallace’s hand like magic. He slashed at the vampire’s neck. Dark blood splashed over pallid skin. Then blood and skin alike became ash as Wallace’s stake found its target. The vampire crumbled to dust.

The fourth vamp put the Caddy between himself and Wallace and lunged for the driver’s-side door. Jeremy kicked the door open, right into the charging vamp. The bat staggered backwards. Wallace finished him off with an almost casual thrust.

A harsh wail clawed through Colleen’s mind like a vulture’s talons. She grabbed at her head, and with an effort, managed to shake it away. Wallace’s head jerked up like a hunting hound’s. He’d heard it, too. His attention fixed on the armored car, still idling several yards behind them. He started toward it.

Before he could build to a charge, however, the vehicle backed away. It picked up speed and rumbled in reverse until a curve in the road cut off their view of it.

Wallace shook ash off his stake and licked the blood from his knife before he pocketed both. “The hell?” he said, turning toward the Caddy. “I leave you alone for a couple of days, and you go and get yourselves—”

The rest of his complaint got muffled against Colleen’s shoulder when she threw herself out of the Caddy and into his powerful arms. For the first time tonight, she felt safe again. She dragged his head down to hers and kissed him, fangs and all.

“You heard me,” she murmured against his lips.

His own lips curved in that familiar, annoying, adorable smirk. “You’re a loud one, sweetheart. Better than GPS. Hey, Scarecrow. I thought I told you—” He got cut off again, this time by Jeremy’s tongue in his mouth. “Whoa,” he said once Jeremy finally had to come up for air. “I’m going to let you two get kidnapped all the time.”

“Kiss my ass,” Jeremy said. He folded his lengthy arms around the two of them. “How’d you find us?”

Wallace nodded at Colleen. “Psychic Lady here. I got home and you were gone. I knew you were southeast somewhere. I was twenty miles off when I heard her scream. Like picking up your scent in my head. I damn near went off the highway. Next time, tone it down a little, huh?”

“No next time,” Colleen said fiercely. “You’re not leaving us again.”

“Damn right,” Jeremy added. “From now on, we stay together.”

“What? You doofs get careless and let bats grab you, and now it’s all my fault? Son of a bitch. I should have just let those assholes—” He broke off the sentence himself this time. “Heartbeat. There’s another heartbeat.”

The next instant, he’d shoved both Colleen and Jeremy back at the car and whirled with a stake in his hand. The vamp leaping at them landed full on it. Her fanged, gaping mouth rounded into a startled
O
. The pointed stick she’d had aimed at Wallace’s back fell from her hand. Her red eyes dulled to brown, and then the lights went out. She fell to the road without a sound.

“Shit,” Wallace said. “Any more of you out there?” he roared at the night. He brandished his stake. “Come on!”

The night echoed his challenge back at him. Wallace lowered the stake. “Gutless bastards. Would’ve been nice to have one to question. Wish I’d thought of that before I staked those other mooks.”

“Um, Wallace?” Jeremy’s voice quivered. “She’s not going ash.”

“Huh?” Wallace bent over the woman’s body. “She’s dead,” he pronounced. “Real dead, not undead.” He picked up her arm and dragged her with no special care into the crimson glare of the Caddy’s taillights. It gave her wan, slack face a bloody cast.

“That’s not the leader,” Colleen said. “Their leader was a blonde.”

“She must have snuck out of the armored car,” Jeremy said. “Backup to the others. Hey. Hold on a minute.” He leaned closer. “That’s her. The girl who chloroformed me. The one who came to the door.”

Wallace stared at the tiny Asian girl, then at Jeremy’s hulking length. “You let
her
knock you out? You wuss.”

“She came to the door in daylight,” Jeremy said pointedly. “You just said you heard another heartbeat.”

“I did. That’s what threw me off. She doesn’t smell vampy, either.” He peeled back the dead girl’s upper lip and tugged on a fang. “These are real. So were the eyes. Fangs you can fake with implants, but not the eyes. What the hell?”

Colleen peered down at the body. Now that her features were no longer snarling, something about her face struck Colleen as vaguely familiar. She tried to imagine those features in a smile. A thin whine leaked out of her throat. She backed away.

In an instant both Wallace and Jeremy had her secure between them. “What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked.

Chapter 17

Wallace drove them home in the rented van. He pulled over a safe several miles away to phone in an anonymous tip regarding two abandoned vehicles and a dead body on a back road. He didn’t mention vampires. Four piles of ash in the road wouldn’t mean squat to the cops.

Over the course of the drive, they had plenty of time to catch up and exchange information. By the time Wallace parked in front of their home, Colleen was too numb to speak. Jeremy helped her navigate the short walk from sidewalk to door. Her feet wouldn’t carry her two steps without stumbling. She kept her hand on Wallace’s arm as if terrified he’d dissolve into ash right in front of her, too. He returned her touch with a pat and a grin close enough to his regular smirk to act as reassurance.

Once inside, Wallace got out his cell and went into the kitchen. Colleen dropped onto the overstuffed chair with Wallace’s scent all over it. She couldn’t think. She didn’t want to think. Too many unpleasant things to think about. Jeremy said something to her that her mind failed to translate to English. She could only shake her head. Finally, she heard his footsteps retreat into the kitchen.

Bad enough her mother had been held prisoner by vampires and Colleen had been raised among them. Now she knew she’d been fathered by them, too. Her childish nickname of “the daddies” had turned out to be right on the money. Had she ever met her father, all unknowing? Had he been the silver-eyed wraith with the chilly touch, or one of the others? When she tried to shove those thoughts away, Kitsune Mori’s grown-up face loomed in her mind, which wasn’t any better. Especially with the fangs in it.

“Hey.” Jeremy returned to perch one hip on the armrest of her chair. “I think I’ve got something.” He spread a map of southern California across Colleen’s lap and tapped a spot between the Mojave Desert and Palm Springs. “I think this is where they had us. Colby. I got a look at the front of the bank before we took off. It said Colby Savings and Loan. I’ll bet their nest is somewhere around there.” He cupped her cheek with a tender hand and turned her head to face him. “Not helping?”

Colleen bit her trembling lip. She didn’t want to cry. Crying wouldn’t purge the inhuman blood from her veins. “I’m not a vampire.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“No, I’m only half.” She shuddered. “What did they do to her? How did they change her? I don’t want to end up like that.”

She reached for him. They managed a fierce embrace even with his awkward position on the arm of the chair. He kissed her nose and stroked her hair. “Wallace will find them. He’ll put an end to it. They won’t get you again. Dammit, we shouldn’t have run. We should have let them take us to their nest. Then we’d know where it is.”

“Wouldn’t’ve worked.” Wallace came in from the kitchen, chugging Sully’s blood straight out of the Mason jar. “They would have separated you for the drive. Maybe even marked you on the way over. By the time you got to the nest, you wouldn’t want to escape.” He tossed a wry look Jeremy’s way. “They probably would’ve just killed you in the car. Easier than trying to break through that training of yours. Nice work with those suckers, by the way. You bat bitch you.”

Jeremy shrugged. “You grow up in a nest, you learn things. What do we do now?”

“Well, I just brought Gus up to speed. His buddy’s still working the real estate angle. Let’s see what they can turn up on that bank. I told him about your friend from the preschool, too,” he added to Colleen. “He’ll ask around at the hospital and—and wherever.” She suspected he’d been on the verge of saying
the morgue
. “Hope Gus took notes. He sounded pretty grumpy.”

“Wallace, it’s four in the morning.”

“It is?” He glanced at the clock. “Son of a bitch. I keep forgetting not everybody’s on the night shift. How you holding up there, sweetheart?”

“Not so hot,” Colleen admitted. “Bet you can tell.”

“Yeah, the way you’re clinging to Scarecrow there, I kind of figured. Anything I can do?”

“Stop them. Just stop them.” She felt another shudder coming on and fought it back. “Will that even help? It’s not them. It’s me. It’s in my genes. Am I going to change? Will I turn into something like Kit?”

“No idea,” Wallace said. “The Preacher said that’s what they were aiming for. Humans with vampire characteristics. You’ve got the strength and the psychic shit.” He looked at her wrapped in Jeremy’s arms and grinned crookedly. “You’ve definitely got vampire allure. Yeah, I know. Not helping.”

“Your friend was still human when they took her,” Jeremy said. “Maybe the vampire traits are dormant. Maybe it takes some kind of catalyst. When you were at the commune, did they try to make you drink blood?”

“No!”

“Of course they wouldn’t,” Wallace said. He downed the last of his dinner in one quick swig. “They wanted grown-up slaves, not little kids. I’ll bet you hit it, Scarecrow. The Preacher said bat blood’s the key to everything.” He paused and sniffed the jar thoughtfully. “I’ll bet I know how they found you, too. Looks like me and Sully need to have a talk.”

“There’s our answer, then.” Jeremy smiled at Colleen. It didn’t fool her for a second. “No drinking bat blood for you.”

“Not a problem. So I’m human? I’ll stay human?”

“Mostly human,” Wallace corrected. “So was she. She had a heartbeat. Her body was still warm when I touched it. Sunlight didn’t fry her. Jesus. Like bats aren’t tough enough to kill. Lucky for us, a stake through the heart will punch almost anyone’s ticket.”

It had certainly punched Kitsune’s. A tear trickled down Colleen’s cheek in spite of her resolve.

“I’ll bet that’s why you can’t get pregnant,” Jeremy said. “Genetically you’re another species. The vampires want slaves they can breed with. Not just any vampire, either. Just the ones on bat blood.” He added wryly to Wallace, “You’d better start wearing a rubber.”