Deliver Me from Darkness: A Novel of the Paladin Warriors (18 page)

Karissa gulped down a golf ball sized lump of unease and tried to squeeze closer to the steel door at her back even as she desperately sought a way to escape. There were enough streetlamps—even if they were far spaced—that she could manage a sizable jump. The question was, which way?

“It’s dangerous out here at night,” he said, as if he read her mind and knew she was about to bolt.

“I’ll take my chances, thanks anyway,” she said, slipping a half-step to the left.

He chuckled, then began to saunter across the empty street toward her. Stalking, really, like he was the predator and she the prey.

Left
it
is
, she thought and shifted into the netherplane.

A flash of brilliant white and a split second later she was smashing back into reality, her feet stumbling on the pitted pavement beneath the streetlight she’d targeted. She tried to right herself, couldn’t seem to stop the slant of the road under her legs, and went down, her palms smashing into the unforgiving asphalt. Damn, that hurt.

She wasted precious seconds as she tried to heave herself up, fighting the nausea that ripped at her stomach, twisting against the spinning world that seemed determined to play havoc on her balance. She felt like she’d just stumbled away from one of those crazy twirling teacup rides at the firemen’s field days. And that wasn’t even mentioning the anvil that must have fallen on her head. She didn’t have many more jumps left in her. Not after the night she’d had.

Still on her hands and knees, Karissa glanced over her shoulder. Maybe Valin didn’t see where she’d popped off to. But there he was, a half block away and striding down the faded center line of the road.

She needed to put more distance between them. Fast.

Battling back the brain-ripping headache, she forced her gaze forward. There. A jerk, a gut-wrenching twist, and she was another hundred yards away under another flickering streetlamp. Karissa didn’t even give herself time to register the tsunami rolling around in her stomach, didn’t pay any homage to the deafening dial tone ringing in her ears, just looked down the street, picked her point, and popped.

***

That’s it. I can’t go any farther.

Karissa half staggered, half fell to the mouth of a nearby alley where she leaned against the wall of a brick building badly in need of repointing. By her estimation, she managed to gain a good mile or more on her pursuer. Unless he could fly—fat chance—then she should be safe…from him.

South Bronx. Her gut said she was in the Bronx. There was something in the way the buildings seemed to sag against each other, the desperation in the air she was sucking down. Now, if only she knew where in the Bronx. She was more of a Brooklyn girl. Still, if she could figure out approximately where she was, she should be able to make her way from here. The question was, to where?

She looked to where the alley spilled out onto the main street, if the narrow two-way road could be called a main street, that is. A street sign would have been too much to ask for, it seemed.

She took a couple sagging steps forward, her hand braced against the brick as if it were her lifeline. It very well might be. She’d probably collapse if it wasn’t there.

Her sight distance was limited to the small pools of light cast by towering overhead streetlamps. At least she seemed to be out of the warehouse district. The area had turned into a highly commercialized zone, even if it was struggling. The good news was that the typical night sounds of the city were starting to reinsert themselves, just not here. Here, it seemed, most people were too smart to wander around at this time of night. Except, yeah, that hooker on the next corner.

Karissa took a couple jerky steps toward her. Karissa didn’t have any money, but maybe she could play the girl-to-girl card and extract a location out of her. The girl absently glanced over her shoulder, then looked away, obviously writing Karissa off as unprofitable. Karissa hesitated, not because she cared a wit about her inability to barter, but because of the glimpse she’d gotten of the girl’s face, and she did mean girl. The redhead strutting her stuff in those five-inch stilettos barely looked old enough to wear a training bra, let alone the skimpy tube top she had on. Karissa’s muscles tensed to the point of vibrating. Whatever the circumstances, whoever the a-hole was who’d dragged that poor girl out on the streets deserved to have—

A shadow wafted in front of Karissa, obscuring her vision. She waved her hand over her eyes. Must be tired. The dark cloud of particles coalesced, funneling in around her and settling toward the ground.

Oh crap. What the hell kind of monster was this?

And there was no way she could pull another jump, not so soon.

She scrambled back, her gaze darting around for a weapon. A glass bottle she could break or maybe even a discarded hubcap she could throw at the thing. A thing that looked suspiciously like…

“Valin?” She blinked, trying to make sense of the man who’d formed in the spot previously occupied by writhing darkness. It was Valin. No doubt. But, “Oh God! You’re naked.”

His lip curled up in a sly grin. “You flatter me. Though it’s Valin, not God. He might object to such presumption.”

“Why are you naked?” There was a hysterical quality to her voice that she couldn’t seem to control. This was too much. Positively too much.

Valin continued to smile, as if that were answer enough.

Who the hell cared why he was naked? What she should be worrying about was getting the heck out of here. She couldn’t jump. Not without collapsing at the end, and if he’d managed to follow her here—how the hell had he followed her here?—then it was a futile move anyway.

“What do you want from me?” she asked as she started to edge around him. The hooker probably wouldn’t help her, but maybe if her pimp was nearby…

“I thought that obvious.”

A curl of horror slid through her system. Naked man chasing woman. Obvious indeed.

“Not going to happen.”

“You certainly have spirit. I shall enjoy looking into that head of yours.”

“My head?” Okay, that was a far cry from what she’d been thinking.

She didn’t blink, knew she hadn’t, but the next instant he was on top of her, his left arm braced around her back, clamping her right arm to her side, and circling around to hold her left wrist immobile.

“Your mind.” His free hand caressed her sore throat, circling the base in the same way Logan had back in the hall. His gaze lifted, dark brown pools of midnight sliding over her like an oil slick, threatening to suffocate. “Once my mark is upon you, I can not only find you wherever you are, but I will have great insight into your mind.”

“You can read my mind?” The question, coupled with the skin-to-skin contact, brought with it a flash of intent. No, he couldn’t read her yet, but he would be able to soon. First to mark her. Then…

Hell…“No.”

“Relax, Karissa. This won’t hurt a bit.”

For the second time that night, she was held against her will as he muttered some sort of foreign tongue like a madman. She tried to jerk away but got nowhere. She made a feeble attempt at raising her knee, but her legs were so weak all she managed to do was graze his knee with hers.

“Hush,” he murmured then picked back up the tumbling chant.

She squeaked, squirming in his surprisingly powerful grip. This was wrong. She wasn’t meant for him. He was not her mate.

Wha—? Mate? Karissa didn’t know where that strange thought had come from, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t let this happen. She shook her head; she was not beneath pleading. “Please. Don’t do this. This isn’t right.”

He seemed to hesitate, as if he too knew it was wrong. But then he shook his head, his eyes shuttering, the lines of his face etched by his determination. “You’re wrong. This is right. I am the dark, you are my complement.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes you do. I need your light,” he said, and beneath his hand her neck began to tingle.

Karissa winced as her throat began to burn. No way in hell. Nuh-uh. She wasn’t going to go through this again. Scream, head butt, then pop out. She’d take her chances in that white slate of nothingness than remain here and become a victim.

“I can’t believe this. Idiots, all of you,” a voice, feminine, said just before Karissa could let loose the scream. There was an audible huff, then, “Don’t you guys know better than to let your women out at night?”

Must be the hooker.

The burning hand lifted from her throat. Valin spun Karissa around behind him, but not before she got a good look at the girl standing beyond him. Hip thrust out, hair flipped back over her shoulder, she looked to be thirteen or fourteen at most. Except she wasn’t. She was far, far older. The proof wasn’t in the detached coldness of the eyes, nor in the husky timber of her voice. It was the fangs.

***

Roland tossed back the last of his scotch, then glared at the bottle sitting on the coffee table. Empty. There wasn’t enough liquor to burn away the taste of the blood he’d spilled.

Ninety-four years of bloodlust. Ninety-four years of trying to hold onto his humanity. The first few had been a lesson in abject failure, the bloodlust overriding everything else. Possibly if he’d been turned by a master who cared, one who would help his new charge past the cravings and teach him how to temper his needs…but Christos was not that sort of master. He’d encouraged the mindless violence, had egged Roland on, and Roland had been more than pleased to oblige.

Until Logan. Logan had brought him back. Helped Roland to sever the master-slave bond that Christos had held over him for five seemingly eternal years. It had been eighty-nine years since Roland had killed. Yet he’d almost killed a man tonight. The blond had looked like Angeline. And in his mind it was Angeline, his sister, that Don Juan Tom had been planning to rape. Roland’s rage had been so great he’d kept drinking. Wanting to punish. Wanting to lose himself to his nature. When the bloodlust was over him there was no pain, no emotion. Empty. Void. Thoughtless creature of the night. God, the blood had tasted so good.

The phone rang.

Teeth sinking into flesh.

Another chiming burr.

Warm sweet liquid pooling on his tongue.

Brrrriiinnnggg.

Coppery taste sliding across the back of his mouth and down his throat.

With an inhuman growl, Roland grabbed up the phone, punching the talk button. “What do you want?”

“It’s Karissa. She’s run away.”

Roland’s hand tightened around the tumbler, the cut glass leaving grooves in his palm. “Are you telling me she’s outside? Alone? Before dawn?”

There was an audible swallow on the other end. “They’ve sent Valin after her.”

Roland stood, carefully clicking the off button on the phone, and dropped it in the chair. He raised the tumbler—no scotch left. He started to lower it, then, with an enraged roar, he threw the tumbler across the room where it smashed against the mantel.

“You’re going the wrong way.”

Roland spun about, his feet slipping on slate tile before his hand caught purchase on one of the decorative copper finials at the top of the peak he was currently perched upon. Gabriella, the little redheaded minx, was about fifteen feet below him, lounging on the back of a gargoyle as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Below them the dizzying lights of the pre-rush-hour traffic whizzed by, intent on their destinations and uncaring of the two vampires who hung precariously to the Jefferson Market Library clock tower a hundred and seventy-one feet above them.

“Why do you say that?” he asked, trying to keep panic out of his voice. Karissa was out there somewhere. In the dark. With Valin. Roland knew that as long as Valin was close enough he would protect Karissa from the likes of Christos, Ganelon, and Lucifer, but who in the hell would protect her from Valin? Regardless, Roland didn’t need to share his problems with Gabriella. In fact, it was better he didn’t. He thought he knew by now that Gabriella would never purposefully betray him—she hated Christos as much as he—but that didn’t mean anything he told her would remain secret. There was nothing sacred between master and slave.

He expected Gabriella to pull one of her quippy comebacks, or flip her hair and act haughty and all knowing. The girl had perfected her teenage mask. Instead she looked down at the weathered granite, letting her red hair cover her eyes. “She’s in the Bronx. South.”

He narrowed his eyes, trying to bore through her skull to see what was going on behind those pretty waves. The Bronx was where Haven was hidden, but Karissa would have naturally gravitated toward the area of the city she’d grown up in, which was Brooklyn. He’d headed south because he’d been sincerely hoping she would use her gift to hop and skip on home. Where he again hoped he could find her before Valin, or someone else, did. Was Gabriella telling the truth? Or had Christos hitched a ride and was using his pawn to try and deceive Roland?

“How do you know?” he asked, watching her reaction for deception.

She lifted her gaze, the bridge of her nose pinched with emotion. He saw nothing there but truth and remorse. He was about to ask what was wrong when she opened her mouth and then delivered from between quivering lips, “I saw her there, with Valin.” She dropped her gaze again, and he knew the next bit would be the killing blow. “Only, I wasn’t alone when I did.”