Obfuscate (23 page)

Khaldon’s lips were smooth and inviting. He was no slouch in the lip-works department. Most guys either choked you with their tongues, or painted-by-numbers with drool, but not Khaldon. He had the fine art of kissing down to a perfect science with a gentle nibble here, a tongue teaser there.

The best part was how tightly bound he held me. As though he didn’t intend to allow the very air to escape from between us. His transfixed attention confirmed in my heart that I was the center of his universe and nothing else mattered to him at this moment. My heart knew I would never have to put up with another guy who kissed me with his eyes open watching a sports game.

Nothing would take his attention from me. Tonight it was us, and only us.

Our feverish pace picked up and instead of apprehension and embarrassment at my own clumsiness, I stepped up and pulled out all the stops determined to choreograph a night we would cherish forever. We threw ourselves into one another, and I reveled at the weight of his body next to mine.

“I hoped, perhaps, after tonight, you’d always stay with me. I can’t tell you how long I’ve fantasized waking up with you in my arms.” Khaldon nuzzled my neck, continuously kissing up my hairline with every breath.

Speechless, I swallowed down the emotion stuck in my throat.

Khaldon urged me to open the little box again.

I stole a glance up at his face and his features seemed to mimic my own emotions.

Is he biting his lip? Am I?

I took a deep breath and pulled the white satin ribbon. It was real satin fabric, not that cheapie stuff you get at the holidays. Taking the ribbon from me, he then tied it around a lock of my hair.

I paused and then looked in his eyes.

“It’s all right, it won’t bite.” He urged me onward. “No spiders, I promise.”

Opening the lid revealed an antique, ornate ring garnished in gems and hieroglyphs.

Khaldon’s voice shook with emotion while he gently took my free hand and said, “Cheyenne, I have known you for two years, eight months, four days, twenty-two hours, sixteen minutes and…” He looked at his watch. “Eight seconds.”

I swallowed hard to move that ever-growing lump at what might come next.

“During this time spent with you, I’ve been the happiest man, even as we have surmounted the challenges and tragedies we’ve faced. I want to get to know who you are in this reality, Cheyenne, as well as I knew who you were as Lady Cazenove in our virtual world. This recent time apart has convinced me of this. I never want to be away from you again. Ever.”

The whisper touch of his hand sent electricity through me as the very breath in my chest escaped. Khaldon removed the ring from the box and knelt on one knee in front of me.

“Cheyenne Madeline O’Cuinn, I am asking you to share both my worlds and be mine for as long as we both shall live. Will you honor me and become my wife? Will you sleep beside me for the rest of our lives?”

In an instant, millions of memories flashed through my mind. Ones from when I was a little girl and dreamed about the man whom I would marry in a castle up in the clouds. Was I ready to make a marital commitment? Was Khaldon the man I knew to be the only man I would ever want in my life?

The heat in my face blossomed a red flush as my hands shook while I tried to cradle his face.

I wanted him. I wanted his soul. I wanted to know him more intimately than he knew himself.

“Yes—Khaldon—I would be honored to be your wife!”

Khaldon slid the gem-encrusted ring onto my left ring finger. His muscular strength picked me up and twirled me around as though I were a little girl running into her parent’s arms after her first day of kindergarten. I squealed with excitement, at what our engagement meant between us, and the fact that my head hit an overhead branch. He lowered me onto his lips and kissed me most tenderly. He lovingly caressed the place on my head where the branch had made contact.

The kiss of a lifetime of coupling. Together we agreed to make our lives one until death do us part, and for Vampyre, our agreement truly meant forever.

“This was my mother’s ring passed to her from our ancestor Sekhmet. This ring was the engagement gift from Ptah, Sekhmet’s husband, and this ring has been passed down each generation since.”

I gawked at him. “You mean
the
Sekhmet, the warrior goddess?”

He nodded. “Yes, Ptah had this ring commissioned for her in his everlasting love. She wore it until the day she died and told her son, Maahes, that one day he would find the love of his life and he should honor and laud her with this ring.” Khaldon kissed my hand. “The ring has been bequeathed to me, and you will honor us all if you would wear it as my truest love.”

I had so many words I wanted to say, to do, to express—but all I could muster without ruining the moment was, “I love you, Khaldon. Thank you for celebrating us.”

I reached up and pulled him closer, kissing him again.

The energy between us solidified. Comfortable. Settled. Majestic.

Khaldon lowered us down onto the aromatic bed of soft pine needles. Our mouths and hands couldn’t stop. Nothing was holding us back as the snow fell harder and our passion grew higher.

I wanted him.

I wanted to consume him on every level. It was as if another whole creature leeched out of my skin and I experienced a fever-pitch of need I’d never known before.

The heat of our bodies created a sort of steam vapor under the tree, and my world, my vision, was clouded over in complete submission and domination. Khaldon took me, and I took him. We rocked the rhythm of the silence until we could no longer breathe. Until we could no longer feel the difference between his skin and mine.

We were one.

At the height of our consummation, instinct plunged my fangs into his neck at the same moment his teeth punctured my own throat. The coupling—the bonding by me drinking of him and his consumption of me, became a symbiotic exchange of biblical proportions.

We shared our life-force energy. We were one in every sense of the word.

Completely lost within his empowering energy, my insides quaked, filling with every inch of him. Our bodies entangled in a web of arms and legs. I struggled to get closer to him. Simply to become him.

A dammed gateway burst open, and detailed memories of his childhood showcased in my mind. I watched his life’s fondest memories through his eyes. A young Khaldon playing in the reeds near a pyramid, teenage Khaldon carving his a hieroglyph into a stone. Fast forwarding through the memory show revealed images of his computer monitor while he watched our avatars dancing on the bow of the Titanic, horseback-riding across Irish glades, spelunking in underground caves, and making love whenever we could.

I watched his mind movies as he meticulously oil painted the portrait of the two of us, which now hung above his fireplace mantel. Lovingly written in his own script with a feathered fountain pen, his letters scrolled out to me—ones he had never sent but which spilled forth in his prose of love. I drank him in on every pull of his blood’s life force and shared my memories with him so he could also experience the undying love I held for him. Everything I knew, loved, and craved to know about him, was mine for the taking. Our union was complete.

We were bonded for eternity.

Instead of relaxing into a climatic sleep into one another’s arms, the realization of a branch sticking into my side and the hard, sharp bark of pine cones scraped my skin. My hands were sticky with resinous sap.

A pang of uneasiness slithered through me as images of my nightmare undulated behind my eyelids. I didn’t want to share those dark moments from my rogue attack, but they kept coming stronger, rolling in with more detailed violence than I remembered.

Khaldon and I both tried to pull away from one another’s embrace, but our mouths refused to release as though we were fused to one another’s skin. The suction on our blood bondage would not unlock. Images of my vicious violation deluged my mind.

So many people dead.

The mermaid and her boyfriend … consumed. I saw myself standing there in scraps of a bloodied mummy costume, bent over, crouched with a phone in my hand, surrounded by the thick, noxious fog. The severed hand holding on to the phone fell away and splattered against my foot and onto the floor. I slammed down the window panes to those horrific images in my mind, desperately struggling not to share my darkest moment with Khaldon.

The Red Man called out to me, “Please, help me!”

I tried to open my eyes, to break away from this nightmare before Khaldon learned too much, but inevitably we were bound to see it through. I watched his movie as I saw my pulse, hammering through my carotid and re-lived the same excruciating pain from when that monster savaged my throat.

Unholy hell! Am I reliving the attack … through Khaldon’s eyes?! How is this possible?

A muffled scream escaped my mouth as I struggled to pull away. My mind registered that I was consuming the very same blood, right now, at this very moment, from when I bit into the rogue vampire’s hand flooding my mouth with his vampyric DNA.

I threw open my eyes and thrashed at Khaldon’s chest. I pounded feverishly, breaking the hypnotic enthrall, and I pulled away as he pushed me at the same time, getting me as far away from himself as possible.

My fangs ripped through the muscle in his neck, leaving a double rake of torn flesh as the union between us was utterly shattered. An overwhelming, horrifying understanding came over me.

I relived the lust in his eyes.

His eyes—those haunting eyes. No, it can’t be!

I shook my head. Rivers of blood ran down my neck and dripped off my breasts. Tears followed with the anguish of Khaldon’s exposed knowledge.

My voice went raw with denial, “
No!
You? This—just—I can’t believe—” I held my hands over my mouth and stared at him. “It was you?!”

His face seemed as aghast as mine and searched for what looked like an explanation. Khaldon stood wordless, shaking his head, one hand over his heart, and the other reaching out for me.

Khaldon, Roxas, my love, my best friend, my fiancé—the man I had pledged my life to—was my rogue vampyric attacker?

I whispered, “The demon, Red Man monster who left me to die last Halloween—that beast was you?”

He stood stone still, unable to speak, his face as tear-stained as mine. Life had given and taken away everything I ever wanted within a single blip of time.

In that moment, we were forever lost and I was truly dead.

T
he drive home
was fast and silent. I jumped out of the car before it stopped moving.

“Cheyenne! Cheyenne, wait! Let’s work through this,” Khaldon implored me to speak with him while I tore my eyes away and raced through the doorway.

Beano trotted to my side and sniffed me up and down. “Good boy. Stay with Momma.”

Sheridan met me at the bedroom door with Khai in her arms. Stormy ran out of the room behind her and nuzzled Beano’s side.

“Hey, Chey?” Sheridan yawned. “Everything okay? Just gettin’ a bottle for Khai.”

Harris stopped practicing his new obsession,
singing the cups game using a pistol as accompaniment
. He pulled the bag of homemade venison jerky from a rear pants pocket. Torchy’s Labradors, Ash and Soot, sat with rapt attention, their tails wagging, just waiting for their weird-looking pack mate to drop a piece of venison jerky onto the floor.

Harris spoke through a fresh mouthful of jerky. “Whazzup? You trying to wake the whole house? Want some?” Knowing it was one of my favorite snacks, he sing-songed, swinging the bag to tempt me with Uncle Charlie’s smoked delights. “It’s Teriyaki flavored.”

Khaldon pounded through the door after me. “Cheyenne, please, wait. We can talk through this. Something’s not right.” He stood in the entry hall, his shirt half tucked and his belt unbuckled.

Torchy and Briggs stood up from the kitchen table, which they had covered in firearms in various stages of disassembly and cleaning. They held pistol magazines in their hands.

Harris raised an eyebrow and shot Torchy an
uh-oh, lover’s quarrel
expression.

Torchy reached out to Sheridan and gave her and Khai quick pecks on the forehead. He redirected his attention toward us. “Everything al’right, you two?”

Flummoxed, I decided nothing good was going to come of standing still.

I needed to move.

“No—we’re
not
all right. I need to disappear.” I left Khaldon in the hall with the guys and rushed past Sheridan into the bedroom. “Sher, can you
please
come in here?”

She followed me, but then she stepped back into the hallway and whispered, “Torchy, can you warm a bottle for Khai?”

Beano and Stormaggedon scampered behind us and into the bedroom.

“Can you close the door?” I rushed her with flapping hand movements.

“Sure, what’s going on? What in the world has you so upset?”

“I have to leave. I have to get out of here, and for your own safety we need to make Khaldon leave the ranch as soon as possible. It’s not safe for anyone as long as he’s here.”

She scrunched up her face as though she’d encountered something rotten, but that could have been Khai’s diaper. “Wait. Hold up. What’s the deal here? Are you, okay? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt.”

Even though my heart will never be the same….

I rushed back to the bedroom and locked the door. “I just found out that he…” I heaved an unsteady breath and pointed toward the door. “Khaldon is my….”

“Cheyenne? Calm down. You’re shaking like mad.” Sheridan shuffled closer in her slippers while Beano sat on my foot.

“Khaldon is my rogue vampire attacker!” Turning away from the door, I snatched a couple of tissues out of the Kleenex box atop the dresser knocking over a vase of flowers. “He’s the one who attacked and killed those people and left me for dead Halloween night!”

Sheridan’s eyes widened. “What?! Are you feckin’ kidding me?” She caught the vase and settled it with one hand while cradling Khai in the other. Her pulse quickened as she brought her hand to her mouth and rushed to my side.

Khai stirred in her arms.

Her voice quieted. “Khaldon?” She reached down and pulled Khai’s sleepy head toward her shoulder while she gently rocked him on her hip. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “How’s that possible? He loves you. Khaldon would never do anything to harm us.” She grimaced, causing her eyebrows to tighten on her forehead. “Are you sure? What makes you think it was him?”

I squinted in defeat, rubbing my temples not wanting to tell my horrific tale. Frantically, I patted my pockets for my keys and looked around the room for my suitcases.

“Oh no, did he confess it to you?”

Loud exclamations erupted from the kitchen, but the words were too muffled to understand them. Khaldon must have been telling the guys his side of the story.

“No, I witnessed it through his blood memories. None of this makes any sense. He wants to talk about it, but I’m scared to death of him.” I paced the room. “I’m afraid he’ll try to hurt me again. I’ve been haunted by that feckin’ Red Man all my life, and I can’t face that hideous creature.” I pointed to the kitchen through the wall. “He will kill me if given the chance. I just know it!”

Sheridan didn’t say anything. She frowned and rapidly blinked in confusion.

“It’s so horrific, I’ve never discussed it. I’ve never told anyone about what happened that night I was attacked. I didn’t even tell the hospital shrinks about it because I was afraid they would lock me up for a long time with paranoid delusions. The nightmares have been haunting me, and now I know why.”

“I remember how awful the Red Man dreams were when you were younger, but I’d no clue they continued to plague you as an adult.” Sheridan rocked Khai back and forth and patted his behind. “I can’t imagine the horror you must have felt to have those dreams come true.” She raised her hand to her mouth. “Oh, sweetie.” She hugged me as best she could with Khai in her arms.

“I’ve never been able to finish the dream. It’s so terrifying and I have no idea what exactly is going to come next. It’s just this steamy bathroom and it’s hot and I can’t see through the haze. Then the Red Man is suddenly there in the mirror behind me. Pouring blood all over me.” I pulled on my hair in frustration and tousled the red, unruly curls out of my face. Pine needles and small pine cones fell to the floor. “To make everything worse, we just—we just—umm….

Oh hell.

“He asked me to marry him, and I said yes. So we …
ya know
….”

Sheridan grinned at me with a knowing curl to her lip. Her eyes twinkled. “Really? You’re getting married? But what about … oh, no!”

I watched as the realization of the situation fell over her in a shroud of understanding.

“Precisely!” I fumbled in the nightstand drawer for a ponytail holder and whipped my hair up on top of my head. Massive tears rolled down my cheeks, mourning the perfect relationship gone to shit as soon as it began. “That’s just it. We exchanged blood during—”

She recoiled, hands-up, wrinkling her nose.

“Whatever. I don’t think about you and Torchy and your little dragon sex quirks.”

She pulled at her collar, covering more of her skin while clearing her throat. “This isn’t about me. What are you going to do?”

“I’ll hold you to that sister dragon sex conversation one day.” I reached into the closet and grabbed my overnight bag.

She pretended not to hear and tugged on Khai’s woobie as a distraction.

I threw the bag on the bed and opened drawers. Clothes started flying. Beano jumped onto the bed and hovered over the suitcase.

“I have to leave. I can’t stay here. I’m not safe. None of us are. We exchanged blood and that’s when I saw his memories through his eyes. It was like watching the worst horror movie—
ever!
I experienced him attacking all those other people, killing the mermaid, watching him tear hands and legs from people to bathe in their blood. Then he moved on to me, begging me for help, ravaging my throat, and draining me. Once the police sirens wailed, he dropped me to the cold floor and left me for dead. I watched him escape the park. Sheridan, he is the killer!”

“A mermaid?”

I stared at her. “I just said all that and you’re stuck on the mermaid?” I waved her question away. “Never mind, it’s complicated and gross.”

She grimaced. “This is so not good. Are you going to the main house?”

“Of course not. I can’t go to the main house. Aunt Maisie and Uncle Charlie don’t know anything about Supernaturals. That’s the last place I can go.”

Exhausted from the emotional roller coaster, I wanted nothing more than to fall into bed, cry my head off, and drift off into a reality where vampires didn’t exist. The survivor side of me, however, pushed onward. The safest act was to get the hell out of the house.

I frantically grabbed my ditty bag. “I just need to get away for a couple days and wrap my mind around this. Maybe drive down to Missoula.”

“Is there a Lord Stovall type of person up here you can go to for protection?”

“I have no idea. I’ll check it out, but bottom line, I can’t stay here. There’s no telling what Khaldon will do now that he knows I know. We have to make him leave for your own safety. What if he attacks you or the baby next?”

Her eyes widened in shock. “What the bloody hell, Cheyenne? Do you really think he’s capable of doing that?”

My mind said yes, but my heart definitely said no.

T
he guys stood staring
at me in an uncomfortable silence. They each held a look of understanding of what it’s like to be fighting with a woman.

“C’mon, let’s grab a drink.” Harris scratched behind his ears. “Lover’s spat, I presume? She’ll get over it.”

I followed Harris, Briggs, and Torchy into the kitchen. “I wish it were that simple, but I’ve got a dangerously serious issue on my hands.”

Soot’s doggie nails clicked on the tile as he sauntered from the hallway and lay down on the kitchen floor, his eyes never leaving the bag of jerky.

Briggs placed his red Solo cups on the counter and tossed an empty beer bottle into the kitchen garbage with a
clang
. His french accent always deepened after a few beers. “We’ve been working on a trio gun cups ’and-jive action. I never knew Torch ’ad a wicked voice, and ’Arris is damn good at back up. We’re gonna go on the road one day.”

I smiled, but it faded quickly. The eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room sat on it.

I stared at Briggs, my lips tight.

Briggs furrowed his brow. “Whaddya mean dangerously serious? Are dzere more cities without power?”

“No, this situation has nothing to do with the power outages and everything to do with the attack on Cheyenne at Halloween.” I pointed to the red cups scattered around the room. “That's pretty bad ass by the way. Good thing you aren’t practicing with live ammo.”

Harris snatched four beers from the fridge and doled them out. Torchy placed the pistol and plastic bullets on the counter. He reached for a bottle of prepared whole blood in the side door. I leaned against the counter, inhaled a deep, laboring breath, and stood in utter denial at how I could possibly be Cheyenne’s attacker. It was unconscionable to consider.

How could I have lost control like that? Was that really me?

“Chey Chey’s attack?” Briggs popped off the top of his beer with his teeth. “Did dzey find dze sonofabitch?”

How am I going to possibly explain this without getting lynched?

I stared down at the ornate pattern in the mosaic tile, tracing the lines, stalling, searching for a way to explain this awful situation.

I pulled a long, slow swig of beer, and finally caved to the inevitable. “I asked Cheyenne to marry me tonight.”

Torchy filled a tea kettle with water as the kitchen erupted with congratulations.

“That’s fantastic! When’s the unlucky date?” Harris jabbed.

Briggs punched me in the shoulder. “
Oui!
Rio de Janeiro bachelor party ’as our names all over it.”

“What are ye daein, ya dobber? I cannae believe you’re finally tying the knot.” Torchy put down the tea kettle and jumped over to me. He picked me off the floor and hugged me tight to his chest. “I’ve got the perfect place for your honeymoon, mate. There’s this place off the coast of—”

“Put me down, you pure wanker.” I laughed and tried to hush the guys with my hands. The looks on their faces were confused. “Shhh.” I held my finger up to my mouth. “Keep it down, fellas.” I glanced toward Cheyenne’s bedroom, praying she would come to her senses and talk to me. “Thanks, guys. But listen, something went deadly wrong.”

“What are you getting at?” Torchy lit the stove and checked the temperature of the water. “She turned you down?”

“Nah, you numpty bogger, when she said yes, we—
ya know
….” I revealed a shy half-smile and ran a hand through my hair and picked out a few pine needles. They were sticky in my hand. I threw the sap sticks into the bin and pulled hard again on the bottle, emptying it.

“We had the blood exchange.”

All eyebrows around the room went up in understanding and heads nodded.

Torchy poked his finger in the hot water to check the temperature. “How does this have anything to do wit’ Cheyenne’s attack? Did she dredge up some old memories or something?”

I stood straighter and squared my shoulders. “The blood exchange revealed hidden memories to both of us.”

The guys looked perplexed. Harris’ eyes squished up his face.

“I just relived attacking and killing all those innocents on Halloween through my
own
memories. Cheyenne was one of them.”

The guys gawked at me. Dumbfounded shock graced their expressions. Not a word was said for a long minute.

“Somehow—and I have no feckin’ way of knowing if it’s true—but it seems as if I am the rogue vampire attacker.”

The tea kettle screamed.

Ash barked at the high-pitched squeal.

“Get dze fuck outta here.” Briggs snorted into his beer.

Harris stoically stood still with an
oh shit
expression on his face.

Torchy turned the heat off from under the kettle and chugged his beer. He cocked his head sideways. “Mate? What the bloody hell did you just say?”

“I know, right? I think I’m the rogue attacker who left Cheyenne to die in that wretched room. I don’t understand how or why. I’m totally banjaxed to figure it out.” I tried to swallow down the thick, hard lump stuck in my throat, but it was lodged sideways as if tentacles where holding on to it for dear life.