Darkest Hour (New Adult Paranormal Romance) (6 page)

“So I was just another plaything
in her eyes. A shiny bauble for her collection.”

“I only brought you to her for
protection.” There was a note of desperation in Elsbeth’s voice as she spread
her hands beseechingly. “You have to know that, Thomas. Malachi would have
killed you long ago had I secreted you away instead of bringing you to her
attention immediately. I wish he had left us alone, to give us more time for
you to grow stronger… to come into your powers more fully.”

“And now we are out of time.”
Thomas bit out. “Instead of the happily ever we should have gotten, I am now
wanted by both sides. If I had to hazard a guess as to my situation, the
Lyrians will be out for my blood for killing their members, and your Seethe
will be after my head in order to put it on a pike so as to appease the Lyrians
and keep the peace treaty from crashing about your pale, bloodless ears. Never
mind that I am the wronged party, and that I killed out of self-defense.” He
laughed bitterly.

“Thomas.” Elsbeth took a step
forward, reaching for him. “I am so sorry.”

“Why didn’t you warn me about any
of this? If you had told me sooner about half breeds, about your Mistress’s
intentions toward me, about the Lyrian clan, I would have been on guard, ready
to expect trouble. Instead you molly-coddled me and allowed me to think I was
safe. Instead, I face a death sentence on both sides.” His expression was ice.
“And you stand here, perfectly safe, the consequences of your actions having no
bearing upon your future.”

“How can you say that?” Elsbeth’s
dark eyes shimmered in the candlelight, and Thomas’s heart clenched as a tear
slipped down one of her lily-white cheeks. “I have done everything I could to
keep you safe, to atone for the mistake I made by allowing myself to get close
to you. I’ve exposed myself in ways that you cannot imagine by harboring you in
my home, and by choosing to stand by your side instead of stepping aside to
allow you to deal with your fate. If I didn’t love you, didn’t care about you,
didn’t have your best interests in my heart, do you think I would be telling
you all of this now? Don’t you think it would have been much easier to simply
hand you over to my Mistress? To keep my house and the protection of my
Seethe?”

Elsbeth turned away, unable to
bear this conversation anymore, but Thomas stopped her in her tracks with a
gentle touch on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly, turning her and
pulling her into the warmth of his body. “I’m allowing my anger and
helplessness at the situation to cloud my judgment. I have no right to be so
selfish, not when you’ve done so much for me. I love you, Elsbeth.”

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” she cried
into his chest, her fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt as she held
him tight. The terrible news she’d given him had swelled his heart with rage,
but it was her sobs that broke it, that made him feel like the lowest of men,
worse even than Malachi. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen to you. It’s
all my fault.”

“Shh,” he soothed, rubbing his
hand up and down her back. “It’s all right, Elsbeth. I don’t blame you. It’s my
own shortsightedness that led me into Malachi’s trap. If I had listened to you,
if I had been more careful, none of this would be happening right now.”

He held her for a long time,
burying his face in her hair and inhaling her sweet scent as he allowed her to
pour her grief out through her tears. When she had finally stopped trembling,
he lifted her chin and kissed her gently.

“It’s time to go now,” he said,
pulling away.

She nodded. “Let me get my
things.”

He shook his head. “I will go
alone. There is no need for you to make an enemy of yourself to the Seethe, and
put yourself in all this danger. I am strong enough to fend for myself.”

“After everything I’ve said and
done, after everything that has happened, do you really think I could allow you
to go off on your own again?” she demanded, and Thomas was taken aback by the
fierceness in her tone and eyes. “I have no desire to stay with a Seethe that
considers the love of my life to be an enemy.”

Thomas’s heart swelled at her
words despite knowing that by refusing to heed his suggestion, she was putting
herself in far more danger than she deserved to be in. He opened his mouth, a
compelling argument on the tip of his tongue that would make her stay, but all
that came out was, “Are you sure?”

She lifted her chin. “I’m coming
with you, and nothing you can say or do is going to stop me.”

Thomas lifted a brow. “Do you
have an idea of where we should go?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

* * *

They headed out immediately, and
Thomas was thankful that tonight was a new moon—it not only meant that
the Lyrians would not be at full strength, but it would also provide them more cover,
as they would be harder to spot in their dark clothing. They traveled at a dead
run with Elsbeth in the lead, knowing they had only but a handful of hours
until first light. They stuck to the paths on the outskirts of the forest when
they could, and traveled on the dirt road when they couldn’t. Thomas wasn’t
sure which was more dangerous—sticking to the forest, where the
werewolves lived, or traveling on the open road where anyone could spot them.
Elsbeth insisted that they were far from werewolf territory, but Thomas wasn’t
sure that guaranteed their safety. From what she had told him, it didn’t seem
like the werewolves would wait very long before sending out a manhunt of their
own for him.

Elsbeth told him that some miles
from here, in mountain country, lived an old vampire named Xander who had
served as a mentor to her when she was first turned, before her maker had come
to claim her. He had taught her the basics, had introduced her to life as a
vampire, and even after she went to live with her maker she still came to him
often for advice or simple companionship.

Thomas was leery of going to
another vampire for help after the way he’d been treated so far by the others.
But the way Elsbeth’s face had lit up when she was talking about Xander made
him think that perhaps this vampire was different than the others. The feelings
he saw in her for this Xander went beyond the respect she had for the Seethe
Mistress to affection, perhaps even love.

In any case, Thomas was in no
position to refuse the only option that seemed available to them. He had no
allies of his own, after all.

They traveled for hours without
seeing anyone, but their luck did not hold. Shortly after they’d started one of
their forays into the forest, Elsbeth came to a dead stop, and Thomas nearly
ran into her.

“What—” he started to ask,
but she whirled and clapped a hand over his mouth, her entire body stiff with
tension.

“Not a word,” she breathed into
his ear, so quietly that he didn’t so much as hear the words as he felt them
against the shell of his ear. He became utterly still, just as she had taught
him during their many hunting ventures, and as she turned back a slight rustle
came to his ears, followed by the sound of a booted foot being carefully placed
on the ground. The thick scent of male human wafted on the air towards Thomas’s
nostrils, and he had to fight to keep from inhaling sharply through his nose.
Despite Elsbeth’s praise of his self-control, Thomas did have his moments. It
sickened him whenever he lusted for human blood, but there was nothing to be
done. He could only take comfort in the fact that he was still revolted,
because if the day ever came where he found it appealing, he would know he was
lost.

Another rustle sounded, and then
the human stepped from the bushes—a hunter, if the skins he wore and the
quiver of arrows on his back were any indication. He held a bow loosely in one
hand, half bent over as he studied a set of what Thomas recognized as deer
tracks littering the forest floor.

Another scent crept up on him
then, and Thomas stiffened—vampire. No, not one vampire.
Several.
He sorted through the different nuances and counted five. Were they a group?

No.

He lunged forward but Elsbeth
caught his arm in an iron grip and dragged him down behind the bushes, where
they could see and not be seen. She clamped a hand over his mouth and held him
down, and though Thomas struggled with all his might, he could do nothing but
watch helplessly as the hunter unwittingly became the hunted.

The vampires materialized out of
the shadows—three male and two female— and the hunter straightened,
blinking in the dark. “Who are you?” he demanded, nocking an arrow into his bow
and pointing it at the nearest vampire.

“Oh, would you look at that,” one
of the females tittered, pressing long, curved nails to her lips. “Our food is
questioning us. How amusing.”

“Amusing?” the tallest of the
males arched a pale brow. “I think not. Silence him, will you?”

“W-what are you all talking
about?” the hunter took a step back, his bow steady despite his shaking voice.
“Is this a jest?”

“I’m afraid he’s not really the
joking type, darling.” The female pouted, her red curls swaying gently in the
breeze. “It seems that—OH!”

The redhead stumbled back as an
arrow shaft pierced her chest, directly below the collarbone. The other female
reached out and steadied her. The hunter nocked another and aimed it at another
vampire. “Stay away from me, you monsters!”

“You miserable wretch!” the
redhead shrieked. The hunter’s eyes widened as she pulled the arrow from her
chest. “You’re mine!”

She fell on him with a snarl of
outrage, knocking the bow from his hand and sinking her fangs into his neck. He
cried out, and Thomas struggled vainly in Elsbeth’s grip as he watched the
man’s face turn stark with pain, and then go slack. The other vampires joined
in, each taking a different body part and finding a vein to pierce. Thomas shut
his eyes, unable to bear watching—it was bad enough to watch one vampire
feast, but this, this was obscene. Almost like an orgy.

Eventually, he heard the rustle
of clothing as the five got to their feet. “Time to find our next meal of the
night,” one of the males remarked. “And this time, Minerva, you’d be wise to
not show mercy unless you’d like another hole in your chest.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty
little head over it,” Minerva said, her voice venomously sweet. Thomas heard a
very slight whisper that he knew meant they’d returned to the shadows, and were
even now flitting from tree to tree, looking for their next victim.

Only when the sounds faded
completely did Elsbeth release him. Thomas sprang up as soon as he was free and
dashed onto the small path, dropping to his knees beside the lifeless body. His
heart clenched with grief and pity for the man, whose eyes stared sightlessly
up at the dark canopy of leaves, his pale body riddled with fang punctures in
various places. Thomas gripped one of his wrists, searching for a pulse, but he
knew it was hopeless. The vampires wouldn’t have left until he was drained.

“Why, Elsbeth?” he choked,
forcing the words past the knot of tears and rage in his throat. “Why did you
make us sit back and do nothing?”

Elsbeth laid a hand on his
shoulder. “You know why,” she said softly, and he could hear the aching sadness
in his voice. “They would have slaughtered us all.”

Thomas bit back the slew of
bitter words sitting on his tongue and swallowed them like a foul-tasting
medicine. There was no point in arguing—Elsbeth was right. Throwing their
lives away was pointless, especially for a man they’d never even seen before.
Still, as Thomas reached over to close his eyelids, he couldn’t help but feel
sorry for the man. He’d been a true innocent, just trying to live his life.

Like he once had been.

“I’m going to bury him.” He slid
his arms underneath the body and prepared to lift it.

Elsbeth tightened her grip on his
shoulder. “He’s been drained. If you bury him, he will rise tomorrow night as a
newborn.”

Thomas froze. He’d forgotten.
“And if I leave him out here on the forest floor?”

“His body will be incinerated by
first light.”

Thomas laughed bitterly. “So, he
either rises from the grave tomorrow, cursed to drink human blood and never see
his family again, or all traces of his body are erased from the Earth so that
his family has nothing to bury. His choices are no better than mine.” He closed
his eyes a moment and said a prayer for the dead hunter. “I suppose I will just
have to leave him here. At least this way he will be able to go to the afterlife,
instead of being forced to live a life forced on him by monsters.”

He stood and turned to face
Elsbeth, then felt his heart twist with guilt at the stricken expression on her
face. “I’m not blaming you,” he said gently, cupping her cheek in his hand. “It
wasn’t your fault. But until the day comes when you and I will be able to live
in peace together, I’m not sure I’ll be able to let go of the bitterness.”

She nodded, and turned her face
into his palm so she could press a kiss against his skin. “I know.”

They stood there for a long
while, the moment oddly tender despite the dead body lying mere inches from
them, and then moved on.