Dark Destiny (29 page)

"What if Jerome finds me?" Sam asked anxiously.

"Is Jerome your father?" Father Mulligan inquired.

Sam shook his head adamantly. "He moved in with us a couple of years ago. I don't have a father. It's just me and my mom."

Destiny felt shaken. She had had a mother and a father. She remembered her mother's face. Her smile. Her scent. She remembered her father tossing her high into the air so that she squealed and laughed and begged him for more. The memory was vivid and tore at the carefully built locks on the doors in her mind.

Why is this happening? I put all this away
. She turned to Nicolae, the one person she believed in.

How could you not identify with this child? He had a decent life with his mother until a monster found them. It matters little that the monster was human. The monster found them, and the child could do nothing to change the outcome. He blames himself for something he had no control over. You look at him and you see yourself.

It was only the complete calm in his voice that steadied her. There was far too much truth in Nicolae's observations. "You'll be okay, Sam. Father Mulligan will look after you, and I'll come often to see how you're doing. Please do talk with the priest Father Mulligan has waiting for you, and tell the police officers exactly what happened." She couldn't help giving him another little boost to help him accept the priest's aid.

Sam lifted his chin bravely. Destiny ruffled his hair. "I will come back, Sam, I promise. Tonight, there are some things I must do. I want you to get some sleep after you talk with the police." She wanted to turn back time and save Sam the years of fighting for his life and sanity in a world that a monster had turned upside down. "I'll come back," she whispered again.

"I'll take good care of him," Father Mulligan assured her. "There's no need to worry, my dear."

Destiny nodded, biting her lip as she turned away. She could feel Sam watching her as she walked away, so she smiled at him over her shoulder and lifted her hand. She felt her mind tuning itself to Nicolae as it seemed to do every few minutes. Her need to know that he was alive and well was a further annoyance to her. She valued her independence highly, and it didn't sit well that she had to continually reach for him.

She chose to walk down the street, needing the normalcy of human life. The time it took to walk would help her gather her thoughts. She had promised Velda and Inez and Helena she would help John Paul. She needed to investigate further. It was difficult to force her thoughts away from Sam. She hadn't really thought that there were human monsters in the world. She had focused so completely on vampires, she hadn't given a thought to other kinds of threats.

Deep in thought, she barely registered the change in the wind as it shifted direction, blowing away from her, stirring dirt in the street. A streetlight blinked, faltered and abruptly went out in a shower of sparks. She lifted her head alertly, looking around her warily. John Paul was just entering The Tavern, his head down and his feet shuffling along the walkway, his body posture betraying his despondency. Farther down the street, a second streetlight shattered as if hit by a rock, raining glass on the ground.

John Paul hesitated as he went to pull open the bar door, looking up at the streetlight with a small frown. He glanced down the street at the other shattered light on the corner near Destiny. John Paul allowed the door to close as he shuffled along the street toward Destiny. He was looking not at her but at the shattered glass. He seemed drawn to the pieces of the large lamp.

Destiny observed him, the way he seemed drawn to the glittering pieces. His expression was blank, his eyes slightly glazed. He stood over the glass, his great shoulders shaking, his chest heaving with every breath as if he'd run a race. His hamlike hands were opening and closing into tight fists.

She searched the skies. The skies were darkening as gray threads spun wildly to spawn larger, more ominous clouds. Small dust devils spun in the street, dissipating as cars roared by. A fog bank began to seep onto the street, hovering a foot above the ground. First streamers, just tails of vapor that thickened quickly into a murky soup.

John Paul continued to stare down at the glass, his gaze narrowing as he studied the sharp pieces scattered on the sidewalk as if they held some deep fascination for him. Destiny glided closer, scanning while she kept a wary eye on the hulk of a man. Something wasn't right, but she couldn't detect a surge of power. The storm had come in a little too fast to be a legitimate weather front. There was no movement in the whirling, darkening clouds. The blanket of stars disappeared beneath the storm. Black clouds moved across the moon to completely obliterate it, a lacy black shawl wrapping the orb in a thin dark fringe.

"John Paul," Destiny said softly. She didn't want him exposed out on the street. He made far too big a target.

John Paul whirled around, silent and deadly, impossibly fast for a man of his size. Her shocked astonishment held her motionless for the few seconds it took him to attack her. It felt like the hit of a charging rhino, his body slamming into hers with terrific force, driving her to the ground. As she hit the sidewalk, the air rushed out of her lungs. A part of her wanted to laugh as his body landed on top of her, slamming her body into the sidewalk.

Destiny fought vampires, creatures of immense power and strength. It was ludicrous to think a human had managed to knock her off her feet. The fog was swirling heavily around the two of them, as if it had suddenly been given life. The vapor streamed over and around them like jungle vines.

John Paul sat on her stomach, his giant hands around her throat, his face a grim mask as he began to squeeze. His fingers dug into her windpipe, cutting off her air, crushing her throat.

Destiny hit him hard, her palms flat, carefully positioned high on his shoulders to keep from injuring him even as her enormous strength sent him flying backward. "Get off, you oaf! Sheesh! You weigh a ton." She leapt to her feet, landing lightly, hands up, her eyes glittering with warning. "Back off, John Paul. Do you even know what you're doing?"

John Paul had landed on his backside. He sat on the sidewalk, stunned, shaking his head to clear it. Destiny watched him carefully, aware he was not in his right mind. She could only read the need for violence in him, violence aimed at her. She wasn't certain she had been the original target, but he seemed a puppet doing someone else's bidding. There were no blank spots in his mind to indicate a vampire, but she didn't believe John Paul was aware of what he was doing.

A wisp of fog swirled around her neck, tugged at her ankles, bit deep like tiny teeth. She felt a fiery pain lancing unexpectedly through her leg. She looked down and saw tiny drops of ruby-red blood. The air left her lungs in a rush of shock as she attempted to dissolve into mist, but the vapor held her fast. She was locked in the mysterious circles as surely as if they were shackles.

Her heart broke into a thudding rhythm, but she blocked out the pain and fear, concentrating on her imprisoned ankle where the white tails of vapor were solidifying into tiny wires with serrated edges, digging deeper and deeper into her flesh. Her ankle and foot contorted, thinned so that the coils slipped off.

She looked up just as John Paul attacked again, slamming her to the ground with the force of a human freight train. Destiny didn't give him much thought other than as a nuisance. She could handle John Paul, but her unseen enemy was another matter. The fog was alive with tendrils, little wormlike creatures rushing toward her, alive with teeth and seething with hatred. Again she tried dissolving, but the holding spell she was caught in could not be broken.

The worms ignored John Paul, rushing at her with ravenous appetites for her blood.
As if her blood drew them to her
. The answer hit her hard. Her tainted blood was once again betraying her. Worse, they reminded her of the microscopic creatures she occasionally caught glimpses of in her own blood. They sickened her. She hissed her defiance at her enemies, hastily throwing up a barrier between her body and the wriggling worms. Some had already gotten through, biting at her arms and legs viciously.

John Paul swung his hammer like fist at her face. Before he could connect, he was jerked backward, his huge body tossed through the air as if he weighed no more than a child. Nicolae's grim features stared down at her.

"You look as if you could use some help." He pulled her to her feet, ignoring the worms slithering around her.

"Don't flatter yourself, hotshot," she snapped, yanking one of the creatures and hurling it off of her. She kicked another as it tried to crawl up her leg. "I am perfectly capable of handling these things."

"Hmm, I can see that," he said, one eyebrow arcing as he lifted his hand toward the sky. At once the dark clouds swirling overhead lit up with veins of white-hot lightning. "A little out of sorts this evening?"

"You'd be cranky too with these
things
sinking their teeth into you." The truth was, the ugly creatures turned her stomach. Shuddering, she pulled viciously at two more, hurling them away. The fog was flowing around the barrier she had erected, the worms erupting into a frenzy as they tried to get to her. "They're disgusting." The white worms boiled up out of the fog, writhing ferociously, smashing into the invisible wall, their teeth tearing at it.

"Women." Casually Nicolae lifted his arm to direct the whips of lightning to the fog. Black ashes burst from the spinning vapor, and a foul odor permeated the air. Destiny plugged her nose against the stench.

Nicolae could barely look at her. She was seething with anger—justifiably so, after such an attack. She hadn't called him to her. His heart was still trying to recover. The sight of her, covered in tiny pinpoints of blood, sickened him. He could feel the demon in him roaring for release, fighting for supremacy, needing to protect her, needing to destroy anything that dared to jeopardize her safety. He kept his face carefully turned from hers, knowing his eyes would betray his inner struggle.

She was his lifemate, and more than any other thing, her health, happiness and protection mattered to him. Yet securing her happiness and protecting her seemed to be dramatically opposed to each other.

Destiny scanned the area, searching for her enemy. "Coward," she spat, into the wind. "A woman defeats you and you hide. There is no greatness in you. Slink away. Be gone. You are not worth the time to hunt you down." She waved her hand, a gesture of disgust, of disparagement, pure scorn in her voice and manner. She sent the wind out over the city, into every hole and every cemetery, into any place the undead might choose to call his lair.

Nicolae reacted immediately, stilling the wind, calming the fog, his glittering gaze capturing hers, allowing her to see the fierce flames burning there. The depth of his displeasure. "Enough! You will not challenge this vampire. You will not, Destiny."

Her chin lifted belligerently. "I'm a hunter. That's what I do. I find them any way I can, and I destroy them. You taught me that, Nicolae."

She was bleeding from countless bite wounds, tiny gashes and gouges from razor-sharp teeth. There were lines of strain around her mouth. Her eyes were more wary than angry. She tilted her head to one side so that her long, thick braid fell over one shoulder as she studied his set jaw.

He looked intimidating. Ruthless. And she was right in thinking him far more powerful than he had ever shown her before. A trembling started somewhere deep inside her. Even her mouth went dry. She feared him more than the vampire she hunted. Nicolae could hurt her so easily. Destroy her with the wrong word.

"Do not!" He spoke harshly, his voice, always so unfailingly gentle, was completely different now. "I will not hear your meager excuses. You were heedless of the danger. If you hunt the undead, you must not do so with half your attention. I did not teach you to be careless or scattered. And I did not teach you to be foolish. You have skills and you have a brain. I counted on you to use both."

Her fingers curled into fists at the reprimand. Color stained her cheeks. "I would have handled it. I didn't ask for your help, and I didn't need it."

"You sound like a defiant child. You're a grown woman, a hunter of skill." He turned away from her, striding over to John Paul, his quick, fluid movements betraying the anger still seething deep within him. He glanced at her, his features set and harsh. "You should have called me to you immediately. You know you should have. You were being childish, angry because the lifemate you thought your equal in strength turned out to be more than you bargained for. That is no reason to place our lives in danger."

Nicolae reached down and caught John Paul by the back of his shirt, jerking him to his feet and waving a hand almost carelessly to still any protest.

Destiny stood in the street, watching warily. "I didn't think it necessary, Nicolae. I'm telling you that in my judgment, it wasn't necessary."

The full force of his glittering gaze hit her as he turned back to face her. "Are you so foolish as to think those creatures were the actual attack on you? Why would a vampire waste his energy?"

The disgust in his voice brought tears burning behind her eyes. "Of course I didn't believe that. I knew he was trying to weaken me. He used a holding spell to keep me there. He would have shown himself if you hadn't arrived." He had always respected her, respected her abilities. His words had hurt more than the teeth biting into her flesh.

"He poisoned you, Destiny." He spat the words out. The wind rushed down the street in a gust of rage. "You let him poison you."

Her heart stuttered. "My blood's already tainted, Nicolae. It doesn't matter what he does to my blood." There was a strange mumbling in her ears. Words she couldn't catch, but the voice was tearing at her insides like sharp talons.

Nicolae yanked John Paul around, looked deep into his mind, into his memories, shook him in sheer frustration. "He has no memory of what led up to this. We have no time for this. Go home, man, and sleep this off. I will attend to you later." Much later. His mind was consumed with the immediate problem.