Dark Guardian (17 page)

Chapter Six

Jaxon tilted her head to assess exactly what it would take to climb the wall. Not much. She sighed. What would she be able to see of the house from the top of the wall? She was studying the best way up, seeking finger and footholds, when a cold wind whirled leaves and twigs around her legs. In the midst of the wild blast Lucian loomed up directly behind her, his large frame so close, Jaxon was trapped between his body and the high wall.

She swung around with a low cry of alarm, trying to bring up her hand with the knife in it. Lucian's fingers curled around her fragile wrist, easily holding her still. He leaned into her, pressing her small frame right into the wall. His mouth touched her ear. "You are not waiting at home for me."

Her heart was pounding. She wasn't certain if it was from the proximity of his body or the suddenness of his appearance. "Technically, I think I could get away with saying I'm on the property. Sort of. Just checking things out a bit." She made an attempt to face up to him, feeling very vulnerable locked between the wall and his muscular frame. He had removed the knife from her hand, but she was still shackled to him, his fingers tight around her wrist.

"You are definitely not on the property where I left you, honey," Lucian whispered into her ear, his warm breath stirring tendrils of hair at her neck, stirring unwanted excitement in her body. He pulled the hood from her head to reveal the silky blond hair spilling wildly in all directions.

She wasn't cold anymore. He had managed to heat her up with a few simple words. "Things didn't go well on your little to-do list?" she asked sweetly.

His hand slipped around her throat so that her pulse was beating into his palm. His thumb stroked a caress along the delicate line of her jaw. "He has been here before you, angel. You have needlessly placed yourself in danger." Lucian spoke in his most gentle voice, yet she recognized a note of reprimand. More than that. A warning, perhaps.

"It isn't needless. You just aren't getting it. He's probably watching us right now." Realizing it might be so, she made every attempt to swing them around, to somehow cover his big body with her own.

Lucian could easily pick her intentions out of her mind. She was frantic to protect him from Drake. "Be still, Jaxon," he breathed, his voice a soothing balm, filling her mind with warmth. He held her close to his body with his enormous strength. Sheltering her. Savoring her. "He is not close at this time. I have scanned the area. Had he been near, I would not be so gentle with you. There is no need for you to protect me. Tyler Drake cannot harm me."

His hand on her throat was warm and possessive, his thumb inducing molten heat in her veins where once there had been only blood. "I don't know what you mean by 'scanned the area,' but I scouted it. I found evidence of him at two sites. We can protect ourselves from one of them easily enough, but this is impossible."

Lucian bent his head to hers. "You do not listen well." He appeared not to be paying much attention to the conversation, distracted by other things. "Hold still, Jaxon," he murmured.

She went perfectly still. Jaxon didn't know how, but she felt heat inside her where her wounds were throbbing. His fingers splayed wide across her abdomen. He did nothing else, simply laid his palm over her, but she felt him inside her. At once the pain disappeared. Lucian turned her into his arms. "Do not do this again. You are needlessly tired and cold." He was framing her face between his palms.

Jaxon watched his eyes go from black ice to burning possessiveness as he lowered his head to hers. Mesmerized, she stood waiting for the touch of his mouth. She felt his breath, the heat, the beckoning. She felt him touch her mind, gentle and warm. His mouth moved over hers, coaxing, tasting. The world fell away from her. There was only silken heat, molten fire. She closed her eyes, willing to give herself up to pure feeling. Sensation. Dark fires.

He gathered her close, lifted her slight body into the hard strength of his arms, and whispered to her. She didn't hear, couldn't hear. His mouth was perfect. He drove out every sane thought, every responsibility, and replaced it with a burning magic. The earth dropped away, and the wind rushed past. She felt it in her hair, on her face. The dizzy sensation of a roller coaster. But his mouth was all that really mattered.

When Lucian lifted his head, Jaxon felt dazzled and had to blink several times to focus on her surroundings. At once she gasped and pushed him away. He set her down on legs that were rubbery, but sheer shock held her up. They were at the house, right at the kitchen door. Her teeth bit deep into her lower lip, drawing a tiny dot of blood. She could taste the bead welling up.

"How did we get here?" She was holding one hand up to ward him off.

Lucian ignored her hand to step close so that he could lean down and once more find her mouth, his tongue lingering along her lips, caressing, healing, savoring the taste of her. Jaxon pushed at the wall of his chest, not wanting to get caught up in his black magic.

"Answer me. How did we get here?"

He looked amused. "It is not that hard to move through—"

"Stop!" Jaxon put both hands over her ears. "Don't say anything until I think about this. Every time you say anything, you make me more nuts."

His black eyes were shamelessly laughing at her. He reached out a lazy hand to remove the rifle from her shoulder. She was wildly beautiful and incredibly appealing to him, standing there with her huge chocolate eyes and untamed hair. But her mind was struggling to find answers, and she had a penchant for violence, so the rifle had to go.

A wolf cry sounded, the note joyful in the night. "There." She waved toward the forest. "Your little friends are calling you. Go run and play with them for a while. You overwhelm me at the moment. I could use a break."

He put an arm out toward her. "Running with the wolves is truly a great joy, angel." His arm rippled with fur. Black glossy fur. His hand contorted, shifted shape.

Jaxon heard herself scream. She couldn't believe the strangled sound came from her own throat. She whirled around, jerked open the door to the kitchen, slipped inside, and slammed it shut. She locked every single dead bolt on the door before sliding to the floor. She drew her knees up and rocked herself for comfort.

This wasn't happening. It couldn't be happening.
What are you
? She cried it in her mind. What was he? What should she do? If she called the police, no one would believe her. And the alternative would be that they did believe her, and the government would put Lucian in a laboratory and dissect him. Jaxon buried her face in her hands. What was she going to do? Maybe it was another trick. Another illusion. Just because he had named that hideous creature vampire didn't mean it was true. It was an illusion. It had to be. He was a master magician. That was how he made all his money, right? Weren't all magicians billionaires? Please let them all be billionaires.

Something made her lift her head. She was very careful to keep her hands over her face and only peek out between her fingers. Through the open door leading into the hall, she saw what looked like a low bank of fog. It just seemed to hang there for a moment silently. She bit at her knuckles with her teeth. Fog. In the house. Of course there was fog in Lucian's house. Wasn't fog in everyone's house?

Then Lucian's tall elegance filled the doorway, blocking her view of the hall. His black gaze moved slowly over her face. She saw stark possessiveness in his eyes. She recognized it, when all she wanted to do was run. But she could no more have gotten to her feet than fly. "Go away, Lucian."

"I have frightened you, honey. I am sorry. I was only teasing you."

Her long eyelashes fluttered for a moment before she actually found the courage to look up at him again. Why did he have to have such presence? He exuded power. "Everyone I know can turn into a wolf. That's what you were doing, wasn't it? Turning into a wolf?" Her teeth bit down hard on her knuckles.

He crossed the room with his silent, easy stride. Her heart slammed painfully. She tried to make herself smaller. Lucian simply sank to the floor beside her, his back to the door, his body close to hers. He drew his knees up, every movement slow and deliberate so as not to frighten her any further. "I was showing off." His hand touched her hair. "Nothing else, nothing sinister, just showing off."

Jaxon winced. "Well, don't do it again. People just can't do those things, Lucian. They can't, okay? You really aren't able to do them, so stop thinking you can. It isn't possible."

His hand found her silky hair again, his fingers gently rubbing the strands together before his palm curved around the nape of her neck. He began a slow, soothing massage to ease some of the tension out of her. "Angel, we talked about this when you spoke with Barry about the wolf. You knew it was me."

She shook her head adamantly. "I didn't think you meant it literally. I thought perhaps that you had a wolf or a dog with you. You can make people think things with optical illusions. I thought you might have made Barry see an illusion, not that you were actually a wolf. That never occurred to me. You can't turn into a wolf. No one can do that."

"I am Carpathian, not human, though you persist in thinking me so. I have many abilities, and I have told you that." His voice was deliberately soft and soothing.

"Well, you're just crazy, that's all. People like you don't exist in the world, Lucian, so get over it already." She rubbed her forehead. "You just can't do things like that anymore."

"You are not breathing, honey. Take a minute and listen to your body," he advised. He kept his voice soft and persuasive.

At once she was aware of her heart beating too rapidly, her lungs gasping for air. Immediately she became aware of his heartbeat, slow and steady, the air pushing easily through his lungs. Immediately her body began to tune itself to the rhythm of his. Jaxon flung up her arms to knock his hand from her neck. "See? Right there! You can't do things like this. No one can synchronize heartbeats exactly the way we do. Stop whatever you're doing right this minute. You're making me crazy."

His hand had not moved from the nape of her neck, a curiously intimate position she found rather soothing in spite of everything. Jaxon sighed and rested her head against his arm. "You're making me crazy," she murmured again tiredly.

"You think you cannot accept the things I tell you, but eventually your mind will overcome its human limitations." He said it so gently that her heart turned over.

The moment she gave in to the inevitable and relaxed against him, her heart and lungs immediately took on the slower, calming rhythm of his. Lucian pulled her into his arms and cradled her like a child so that she felt protected and safe. Jaxon stared up at his face, so still it could have been carved from stone, so beautiful he could have posed for the statues of the Greek gods.

"I don't want to feel anything for you." She traced his perfect mouth with one fingertip. "It would hurt too much to do that."

He became shadow in her mind, carefully, so she wouldn't recognize his touch, stilling the chaos of her thinking. He easily read her terrible fear for him.
For
him. Not really so much
of
him. "Listen to me, Jaxon, and this time hear what it is I am saying to you. Tyler Drake is human. He is not a vampire. He does not have supernatural powers. Drake has no chance against one such as myself. I have been in your mind, was with you as you examined the sites he chose to spy on this house. Did you think I really left you alone and unprotected? Did you really believe I would not know the moment you chose to leave this house? I will recognize his presence the moment he comes close to our property again. Tyler Drake cannot harm me in any way."

"If you knew I was out of the house and looking for Drake, didn't it worry you that I might run into him?" she challenged. A man like Lucian would have secured her protection, had he really known.

A faint smile took the edge of cruelty from his mouth. "I would have destroyed him from a distance. I am in your mind, honey. I can 'see' through your eyes. Anything I can see, I can destroy. If I connect with a person, and he hears my voice, I can destroy him. As I've said, I have certain abilities."

She lay in his arms quietly, trying to take in what he was telling her. "Lucian, how can any of this be? How can someone like you exist all this time and not one single person know about you?"

"There are some who have found us out. We originated in the Carpathian Mountains, and we refer to ourselves as Carpathian. There are humans who hunt us, who seek to murder us, There are scientists who would take us apart in a laboratory. They fear we are vampire, and, although we are few, they fear our powers."

"You scare me to death."

"No, I do not. The differences are difficult for your mind to accept. Do not confuse that with fear of me. You know I would never harm you. I am incapable of harming you. You are my heart and soul. The air I breathe. You bring light to the terrible darkness in my soul." He captured her hand and brought it to the warmth of his mouth. "There are moments when I feel you can collect all the missing pieces of my soul and put them back into place and make me whole once again."

"Is that how you really see me, Lucian?" Jaxon's large eyes looked into the dark, empty depths of his.

"It is who you are, Jaxon," he said softly. "I need you. The rest of the world does not need you the way I do. To live. To breathe. You are my laughter and, I suspect, my tears. You are my very life."

"You can't feel that way about me when you've just met me. You don't know me at all."

"I have been in your mind many times, Jaxon. How could I not know you? You have already captured my heart. I am the one who must find a way to make you love me in spite of all my sins."

"Do you have so very many?" she asked softly. He was turning her inside out with what he was admitting. He seemed so self-sufficient, how could he ever need anyone, least of all someone with all her problems?

"My soul is stained so black, my love, there is no real way to ever redeem it. I am a dark angel of death. I have carried out my duties for centuries and know no other way of life."