Hot Decadent Rising (Breath of Darkness) (6 page)

“You’re just going to leave me?” she
asked.

Pleased that she understood, he nodded.
“For now.”

“How long do think I’ll be waiting here
for you?” Her voice elevated as if in anger. He knew she couldn’t possibly have
any animosity for him, because he was protecting her. It had to be his
imagination. Yes, that was it. Leaving her wasn’t easy after all.

“Until I can trust myself to do no harm
to you.” He shifted away before he couldn’t find the strength to leave. He
returned to the tunnel to look for Demetri. He planned to kill the other demon,
and to kill Mary.

***

Nikolas had a tendency of being a difficult demon to deal with.
Eli wasn’t sure he would listen to him since Eli’s pack had experienced a
pretty bad falling out with another demon, Joseph Payne, over a female not long
ago.

Eli had believed the female
Lycan, Mia Harte, was his mate. He’d spent thirty years searching for her after
her family was murdered by vampires. Eventually, he learned she wasn’t his
mate. She belonged to Joseph. He was sickened by the thought of a pure blood
Lycan being with a demon, but he couldn’t change it. He wouldn’t let the
dispute stop him from doing what needed to be done to protect his kind. Doing
so wasn’t a new concept.

It was expected. Lycans and
demons usually put up with each other, but they never formed personal
relationships, though they fought side-by-side in many battles against impure
vampires and other creatures of darkness that created chaos among immortals and
murdered mankind.
Putting
aside their differences and joining forces to find Zack was imperative.

Mary, in cahoots with corrupted
vampires, had found a way to harvest and use Zack’s blood, to make tainted
vampires stronger and faster. Sooner or later, if they failed to stop Mary, the
vampires could potentially be as powerful as demons. They would be unstoppable.
Humans would eventually become extinct, and immortals would suffer many
casualties.

“What do you want, Eli?” Nikolas asked.

“I have some information regarding
Zack.”

“What?”

“It possible he’s being kept in the
tunnels beneath Portland.”

“I’ve searched them several times. He
isn’t there,” Nikolas explained.

“Perhaps like Demetri you’ve missed
something,” Eli said.

“What do you mean?”

“Demetri claimed that he doesn’t know
where Zack is, but he assumes he’s somewhere in the tunnels. He has been
searching for him with a young woman named Emily.”

“How do you know about this?”

“I heard Emily telling her friend about
it. Apparently, Emily believes Demetri isn’t all that bad. She actually
believes he’s protecting her as a father would.”

“She’s a young human. Demetri could
easily deceive her into believing anything. He wouldn’t even need to use his
power to control her mind. The question I have is why is he bothering with her
at all? What use is she to him?”

Eli shrugged. “You would know that
better than I would.”

“Unfortunately, you’re right. I think I
know what’s motivating Demetri to keep her close. He’s using her to find Zack.”

“I agree. But it doesn’t make sense. We
know they have him. They’re using his blood to make themselves stronger.”

“I didn’t say Mary doesn’t have him.”

“Mary couldn’t possibly keep Zack
without Demetri’s help, could she?”

“I don’t know but it’s time to figure it
out. Come with me to the tunnels.”

~Three~

FROM
TIME TO time life had brought about unexpected happenings. The cold hard truth,
sitting in the backseat of a car with her hands cuffed behind her back wasn’t
an unforeseeable affair. She knew she was in trouble the moment she saw Tom,
her husband, at the gas station. She’d come close to begging Eli for help, but
guilt stopped her. She knew Tom wasn’t alone. Her father’s men were sure to be
close by to make sure she didn’t get away. She couldn’t be the reason an
innocent man was shot dead. That’s exactly what would’ve happened. Kara’s
father, a formidable and downright evil drug smuggler, had put a hit out on
her. While learning that her own father wanted her dead was bad, it wasn’t the
worst thing that had come to light. The most awful reality she was forced to
face was that he had convinced Tom Borden, the father of her unborn baby, to
get it done.

Tom glanced over his shoulder at her.
“What’s the man’s name?”

“I don’t know. I just met him.”

“You’re lying.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I’ll find him. Thanks to you he’s a
dead man. In the meantime let’s focus on you. I’ve good news. After we make a
quick stop in the city I’m taking you to a special little area that isn’t far
from your most favorite place in the whole wide world. I’ll take the Scenic
Highway. You just sit back, relax and enjoy the sites you love so much for the
last time.”

It was slap in the face like no other.
Why had she ever shared anything about herself with him? The answer irritated the
hell out her. She’d fallen in love with him. She stewed on her ignorance for a
few minutes before she realized it wasn’t all bad that she’d trusted him enough
share her love of the place with him.

At least she knew he was taking her to
Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge near Multnomah Falls. Being an avid hiker she
knew the area well. He didn’t. If she managed to get away from him at some
point she had a good chance of surviving. And that’s when she realized she was
wearing flip flops. She was going to die. No matter how well she knew the area
she couldn’t survive the rugged terrain and frigid autumn nighttime
temperatures in a sundress and flip flops.     

She had to do something. “Please, Tom.
Pull the car over and let me go.”

“I would never consider doing anything
to disappoint your father. After all he has done for me, and all that you’ve
put him through killing you is the least I can do for him.”

“I’ll disappear. He’ll never see me
again. As far as he’ll ever know I’ll be dead. And you'll be the one who killed
me.”

“I would never deceive him. He has seen
fit to give his trust to me. I won’t do anything to cause him to doubt my
loyalty to him.”

“He would never know you let me get
away.”

“But I would know.”

“You can’t kill me. I know you can’t.”
Deep down she knew he was capable of doing it. Though begging was a waste of
time she had to try. It was the only option left to her.

“I have no problem killing you.”

“You can’t kill our baby.”

“Your baby.”

“Refusing to acknowledge him as your son
doesn’t make him any less yours.” A year ago she would never have believed that
the man she’d fallen in love with and married would ever turn on her and their
unborn child to gain a chunk of her father’s money. “It won’t be as easy as you
think.”

“After catching you fucking around with
that man, I promise you that not only will it be easy, I will live out the rest
of my life with no regrets over doing it. You’re getting what you deserve. I
never loved you. I never really even liked you. I tolerated you to get close to
your father.”

“I hope you aren’t trying to tell me you
have a crush on my dad. He likes having a variety of lovers, but I’ve never
seen him show any sexual interest in men. He prefers women.”

“As do I.”  He met her gaze in the
rearview mirror. “You know that. You’re just lashing out at me because you’re
pissed off. I don’t blame you. Not really. I suppose if some bitch I’d screwed
was planning to put a bullet in my head I would be pissed off as well.”

“Did you just call yourself a bitch?”
Her stomach was twisted in knots. She couldn’t believe she’d ever had sex with
him. She felt physically ill at the thought of it. “You think you’re safe
because you’ve proved your loyalty to my father by agreeing to kill me. 
It’s only a matter of time until he turns on you. He turns on everyone whoever
steps foot in his inner circle. One day, when you least expect it, he will
simply decide you aren’t worth the risk of keeping around. He
will
kill
you.”

“That isn’t true. He loves and respects
me. I am the son he never had.”

“You’re such an idiot, Tom! He doesn’t
love
you. He doesn’t love anyone other than himself. He had my mom killed. She
was his
wife!
The only woman he ever vowed to love and cherish.”

“He loved her. He gave her everything
her heart ever desired. And how did she repay him? She stabbed him in the back.
She tried to leave him and take everything, including you, from him. She
purposely set out to humiliate him in front of his business associates. She was
screwing one of them.”

“You know that’s a lie. She was terrified
of him. She ran with the clothes on her back. She left to save my life, to save
hers. He killed her because after she left him she dared to fall in love with
another man.”

“And it was the wrong man, wasn’t it?”
he asked.

“What do you mean?” She had always known
the truth, but she never realized he’d learned about it. Max had taken off with
her mother’s body and disappeared. She never saw him again. Playing the role of
the victim, her father convinced the authorities that she’d simply run off to have
an affair with Max. They never bothered to investigate it. 

“Your father told me all about Max. It
didn’t take much to convince him to kill her because she was a worthless
whore.”

“Her only mistake was falling in love
with the wrong man.” She knew something about Max that got her placed into a
psychiatric hospital after she’d told a teacher about it. He wasn’t human. The
memory of the last time she saw her mother would forever haunt her. Max hadn’t
just killed her mother. He’d ripped her body to shreds. It was the most
terrifying, horrific sight imaginable. She’d heard her mother’s scream. By the
time she’d found her it was too late. No one could’ve saved her. Max was a
werewolf. She’d seen him turn from wolf to man and then lift her mother’s body
up into his arms.

For a few minutes Kara thought Max would
also kill her. He looked right at her. He stared at her. He looked so mad. So
evil. His eyes were shining. They were a peculiar yellowish green color. Her mother’s
blood was smeared all over his body. Kara was too afraid to scream. She opened
her mouth but she couldn’t so much as take a breath.

Shh
. Don’t be
afraid, Kara. I’m your friend, remember? Come here.
She heard his
voice in her mind, and she was so confused by it.
No one except for her
mother had ever used the secret method of communicating with her. Her mother
had told her to never tell anyone about it.

When she didn’t move he took a step in
her direction.
Come to me, Kara. Come closer to me.
She felt something
funny in her head. Like she was dizzy. She heard a strange buzzing. Against her
will, she started to move toward him. She didn’t have any control over body. It
was like everything was moving in slow motion. She knew he was going to kill
her. She tried to stop, but she couldn’t.

Just then one of her father’s guards
grabbed her from behind. Even then, at the age of six, she understood that her
father was a bad man. She was as afraid of his men as she was the man who’d
killed her mother. She knew her father didn’t love her. After that night he
told her that he cursed the day she was born.

She knew her father had something to do
with Max killing her mother. She’d always wondered why he hadn’t allowed Max to
kill her that night. She wondered if he was the one waiting to kill her in the
forest. At that moment she realized Max and Eli had the same strange mental
patterns. Eli was a werewolf. It was a set up all along. He’d kept her there to
give Tom a chance to snatch her. Maybe he was the one waiting to kill her.

“I don’t believe you can do it. Who gets
to kill me?”   

Tom stared at her in the rearview mirror
just long enough to make her hope he’d changed his mind. “It’s not going to
work this time so don’t look at me like that. This isn’t my fault. You did this
to yourself and to your baby. Just like you acted the fool and opened your
mouth and got yourself locked up for so many years in that mental hospital.”

 “Our baby.”

“You tried to trap me. I never wanted
the damned thing.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Now I get the privilege of
putting a bullet in your head.”

    She was going to die.
Her child was going to die. Tilting her head back on the seat she closed her
eyes tight to stop the tears from spilling over. She wouldn’t give him the
pleasure of seeing her cry. “I won’t let my father get away with killing my
baby. I won’t let
you
get away with it!” And she meant it. One way or
another, dead or alive, she would come after him.

“What?” he asked.

“You heard me.”

“You won’t be able to do a damn thing to
me or anyone else. You’ll be dead. Just like your double crossing slut of a
mother.”