EMBRACE THE DARK (The Blood Rose Novella Series) (16 page)

Abigail made her own phone call. “Hi, Meg.”

“What’s going on? I know that tone of voice.”

“I’ve got a vampire to save.”

She could feel Meg smiling. “Come back to us when you can.”

“I will. Take care of my cats?”

“You bet.”

When Derek arrived, he had blood smeared over one cheek and on both arms. She withheld a gasp and forced herself to take deep breaths. “I am sorry, Mistress Abigail.”

“It doesn’t matter. Not even a little.”

She turned to Gus. “Thank you for coming to get me. You did the right thing and I’ll do what I can to bring him back.”

She stepped into Derek, slung her arm around his neck and put her right foot on his left instep. “Take me to the castle. Now.”

She buried her face inside his shoulder and his strong Guardsman arm held her tight against him.

A moment later she was air-borne, the wind whipping by her, the smell of the Ponderosa pines sharper because of the speed.

Minutes later, Derek slowed, came to a stop, then cried out, “Oh, shit.”

He flung her to the ground to protect her since three wraiths flew in circles in the front yard of the castle. Beneath them three bonded vampires levitated a foot above the ground, all waiting.

But she opened her path to Gerrod and found him.
I’m with Derek. Three wraiths, three vampires. What do they want?

Oh, dear Goddess.

Gerrod, what do they want? You must tell me.

You. They’ve come for you. Why did you come back? They can’t breach human territory.

I came back for you.

Dear Goddess, no. I didn’t want this.

She felt his guilt and knew to prolong the conversation would only create further agony for him. She cut the communication short. Whatever she did next had to be her decision.

She reached out to Derek, pathing toward him and found his telepathic frequency.
You must leave.

Never.
He glanced at her then back, ready to battle the enemy. He had already extended the boundary of his power creating a massive shield in front of her.

“We want the human, Abigail of Flagstaff. She must come with us. If she does not, Mastyr Gerrod will die, within the hour.”

“You lie,” Derek shouted.

“They’re not lying,” Abigail said, drawing close to him. “I just pathed with Gerrod. He’s close to death, an hour, no more, unless I can get to him and save him.”

“You know what they’ll want.”

She glanced up at the wraiths.
For us to complete a symbiotic Invictus joining.

Exactly. They might even be able to force it.

If it came to that,
she pathed, meeting his gaze fully,
Gerrod and I would die first. For now, I’m his only chance at survival. Please trust in that.

He stared hard at her, holding his power steady, protecting all the castle inmates, even herself. She could stay here and survive. The wraiths and vampire companions would not dare to challenge him. He could take them all right now and they knew it.

But above all, Derek was sworn to protect his mastyr. The Invictus pairs knew that as well.

“I want to know one thing,” he said, addressing the nearest vampire. “How did you know Mistress Abigail would be here tonight.”

The wraith closest smiled. Her fangs were very yellow, her lips almost black. “One of our pairs is fae and has foreknowledge of events. This she saw.” The wraith flew and waved a hand at Abigail. “Watch what she does. She will move past your power.”

“That’s not possible.”

Oh, but it was. Abigail was half-bonded with Gerrod and felt a knowing deep inside that she could do exactly that.

She pushed past Derek’s vast field of power.

Derek kept his power steady but he cried out a powerful, ‘no’, that echoed through the forest.

Abigail knew what she had to do. She squared her shoulders. “All right, which one of you bloodsuckers is giving me a lift to the wastelands.”

The tallest and most brutish Invictus vampire moved forward, dropping to stand on the ground. His smile revealed another pair of yellowed fangs. Did Invictus vampires always have yellowish fangs like their wraith-mates?

“I am here for you,” he said. “And it will be a ride you’ll never forget.” She really didn’t like the sound of that.

When Derek tried to stop her, she turned to him and pathed,
This is our only hope. Protect the castle and I’ll do everything I can to bring Gerrod back.

Derek seemed to settle into himself as he nodded. “Very well.”

She slowly put her arm around the Invictus vampire’s neck and planted her foot on his left instep. He levitated. She would have buried her head, but he forced it back instead and the next moment, his fangs were buried in her neck and she was moving.

It was a very strange experience to feel the blood leaving her body, and not in a happy way, as she sped through the forest. She had to close her eyes since the sight of the ponderosa canopy whipping by made her nauseous. Or maybe it was the smell of this creature who had hold of her. Or maybe it was that he sucked her blood down with a speed that matched his flying skills.

Before she reached the wastelands, she no longer held onto the vampire. She no longer could. She no longer knew anything.

*** *** ***

Gerrod sat against the brick wall. He could barely hold his head upright. His blood starvation had reached a critical point, that place in vampires that put him on the brink of death, wobbling back and forth.

His vision pared down to the still figure on the floor, her red hair fanned over the uneven gray flagstones. Her back was to him, one arm caught beneath, her hand palm up, fingers motionless.

She breathed in light breaths, high in the chest.

She was dying, almost drained of blood.

The vampire that had dumped her on the concrete floor was in a state of ecstasy. “So much blood,” he had said, laughing as he closed the cell door, locked it and headed back up the hall.

So here they were, both dying.

An Invictus wraith had come in earlier to tell him the good news that Abigail had been captured. He’d been too weak to do more than stare at the wraith, horrified. Worse followed when the terms of life for Gerrod and Abigail were established: They were to agree to form a symbiotic pair or be terminated.

“How would we become such a pair?” Gerrod had asked. “I’ve always understood that a wraith must be part of the pair.”

The wraith then explained that for the past hundred years, a very great and wise mastyr vampire, the Great Mastyr as she called him, had been doing experiments with the unique bonding properties of wraith blood. He had also steadily created a deep organization of wraiths, hand-picked for their ability to reason and to follow orders. Hence the recent attacks and the increased number of wraith pairs.

From those experiments, the Great Mastyr had interesting success when he used a human and a vampire. Once their blood was blended in a vessel and a fair amount of wraith blood added, it was as though the couple had become power-bonded like a wraith and a chosen mate. When the Great Mastyr had been informed that the Mastyr of Merhaine himself was dating a human, the rest followed.

Abigail and Gerrod would be the first of many very public experiments.

Gerrod had answered simply, “I would rather die first.”

“We hope that isn’t your choice.”

He remembered thinking there was something odd about this. “Why wouldn’t you just force us to do it?”

The wraith rolled her eyes. “For some odd reason unless the couple consents, if the act is done against the will of either, death follows. The Great Mastyr is still working to resolve this issue.”

He had one more question, since he had never spoken with an Invictus wraith before. “Why do you kill? What is it in the Invictus bonding that creates such sadism?”

The wraith merely smiled. “Killing in this way provides a tremendous rush of exhilaration and increased power. The symbiotic relationship, in which wraith and servant feed one another in a continuous loop helps sustain that power level. The whole is very addicting and pleasurable.”

So here Gerrod was, barely able to keep himself in a sitting position against the wall, with his beloved at his feet, and the only alternative for life that presented itself was becoming a wraith-based couple.

But perhaps what hurt the most was the simple, wonderful fact that Abigail had come for him, even knowing all that had happened, that the Invictus had been making a battlefield out of Merhaine, she had come for him.

He blinked, but it almost hurt to make that much effort. His eyes were wet. So were his cheeks.

The room was an oversized prison cell with a concrete floor and a glaring fluorescent light that buzzed overhead. He turned his head slowly to look out the small window, barred with a steel grate. Why the hell couldn’t he have been more like the fictional vampires and been capable of dematerializing? There were a few who could, but his DNA was just that much closer to human than the vanishing-gifted of his world.

He had speed though, but much good that would do him here, locked in a cell, near-death.

He shifted to stare at Abigail. He missed her, he needed her, he loved her. He recalled the moment at the wedding reception when Abigail had poked two fingers into him and said, ‘You need to lighten up.’

Her light green eyes had sparkled, shining with amusement.

But this was why he had wanted her to leave, this cell and her inert body, drained of precious blood, his greatest fear made manifest, that a woman, any woman, would die because of him, because she knew him or got too close.

*** *** ***

Abigail thought she was breathing but she couldn’t be sure. Did it count as breathing if you sort of puffed your air in and out of your chest? Her ribs hurt. To draw a deep breath hurt too much and yet that wasn’t the real problem. The truth was, she didn’t have the strength to draw a deep breath and her blood felt heavy again, her heart sluggish. Gerrod must be close and in need.

Gerrod
, she called out, pathing along his particular frequency.

I’m here.

Where is here?

In an Invictus prison.

Huh. A prison? They’re that organized?

It’s a new terrible night for Merhaine.

I’m so sorry.
She had another question, but it just wasn’t coming to the front of her mind. What was it that she needed to know? In fact, she’d been feeling quite desperate to have this particular question answered.

Finally she found it.
Are you dead?

Okay that came out wrong, but it was close to the question she wanted to ask.

Did she hear him chuckle?

No, I’m not dead. Close, though.

Oh.
She felt too weak to be sad. Another question worked in her mind.
Is there any way out of this mess?

Not sure. I can’t move.

Are you behind me?

Yes.

She rolled…sort of. More like scraping and pushing with a hand then her knee, maybe a foot. It was so hard to move and her ribs hurt like hell. Finally, she turned over onto her right side, but had to pant through a few more short breaths. Even then, she couldn’t see Gerrod. She couldn’t see anything. There was some kind of veil over her eyes.

With great difficulty, she lifted her hand and pushed the veil away, which turned out to be a wall made up of her hair.

Gerrod came into focus, sitting not five feet from her, and she smiled.

He was so handsome even though he looked like a bowl of cupcake flour right now, perfectly white. She chuckled, or thought she did, because he actually looked like a vampire. Gone was all that deep rich skin tone.

Okay, now she felt sad.

Gerrod. I don’t want this to be the end. We were just figuring things out.

He pathed, but a different language rippled through her mind.
English
, she murmured along that same amazing telepathic lane she’d learned to cruise so recently.

Chapter Seven

Gerrod closed his eyes. Looking at her felt like sharp glass cutting into his heart. She was right. They had just started figuring things out, like what a human was doing in his world, setting up a bakery in his lands, having the power to reach his personal frequency, why sex between them was earth-shattering.

But maybe the biggest question was why had he held back from her, resisted her so hard? Because in this moment nothing seemed more important than Abigail, this woman who had told him to ‘lighten up’, made him laugh, then took him to bed after the attack at the wedding when his heart was laden with all the unsolvable problems of his realm.

What a surprise she had been from the beginning. He had tried to get rid of her, for several reasons. Although this had been the main one, that she hadn’t been safe in his world.

Was this really to be the end? What would become of his people? Was it possible the Invictus were poised to dominate all the Nine North American Realms?

He opened his eyes once more. Abigail rested her head on her arm, breaths still shallow, eyes shut.

What came to him seemed to arrive on a golden stream of light, flooding his mind and helping him to understand the true state of his heart: Even if he should survive this moment, if Abigail perished, what joy would he ever know again? She had become this great, brilliant sun in his life, shining on everything, brightening the dullest shadow, giving ease to his heart, and great pleasure to his body. Even her blood had a special quality that…

The thought splintered and a new one was born.

Her blood.

Abigail’s blood. Her ‘blood rose’ blood. He had forgotten the unique properties of her blood, that it was impervious to wraith blood.

A plan began to form in his mind, a great deception.

Abigail
, he sent.

Hunh?
Barely there.

Would you do me the honor of becoming my blood rose?