Something Witchy (Mystics & Mayhem) (20 page)

When Nathan came back to the car with a bag full of stuff and what looked like the gas station’s first aid kit tucked under his arm, I was crying again.  This time out of self-pity. 

“Are you in pain, Em?” Nathan said, immediately reaching for me when he saw the tears streaming down my cheeks.

I should have, but I didn’t fight him when he pulled me across the console and into his lap.  Instead, I just tucked my face against his chest and bawled all over him.  I didn’t even have it in me to worry about getting snot on him. 

“It’s okay, Em,” he crooned, rocking me like a child while I cried. 

“N-no it’s n-not,” I sobbed, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shirt.  I looked like I had been half deep fried.  In what world was that okay?  “I need to go to the hospital. 
Look at my leg
!”

“I know it looks bad, but it’s just a flesh wound, Em,” he said, causing me to look at him like he was nuts.  He winced.  “I’ll take care of it, don’t worry.”

Pressing a kiss to my forehead, Nathan set about trying to make me feel better—physically if not mentally.  I watched as his long fingers gently rubbed burn cream over my leg before wrapping it in a thick layer of gauze.  It really didn’t do much for the burning agony making me wonder if my leg wasn’t still in flames, but his touch distracted me enough that I didn’t mind.

I looked up to thank him, and the words stuck in my throat.  The way he was looking down at me was so beautiful that I felt tears burning my eyes again.  He reached up and gently wiped the tears lingering on my cheeks away with the pad of his thumb.  Without my permission, my eyes dropped to his lips, and I found myself remembering my dreams.

“We should get going,” Nathan murmured, tearing me out of my fantasies.  He lifted me out of his lap and back into my seat, and I felt like I’d been abandoned. 

“Here, this will help a little with the pain,” he continued, not quite meeting my eyes when I turned to look at him.  He was holding out a packet of ibuprofen and an ice-cold bottle of water.  I took them without commenting.

“How did he do that?” I asked as Nathan got us back on the road, pretending he hadn’t just lured me into his seductive little web only to reject me again.  At least he hadn’t been cruel about it this time.  That was a silver lining, right?

I couldn’t figure him out.  One minute, he was all sweet and seductive.  The next, he was cold and remote.  He could set my hormones to raging with a look, but he pushed me away every time I thought about giving in to them.  He kept changing the game on me and I didn’t know which way to turn because of it.

“I don’t know, and that worries me,” he answered, his eyebrows drawing down in a frown.  “I thought I had his game down, but he’s picked up some new tricks since last time.”

Last time?  Oh, right.  The amazing cat woman who kept dying and coming back so she could get more
enlightened
about how much the world sucked.  The way things were looking, I was going to get to ask her if she was getting any closer to figuring it out very soon.  Nathan wasn’t going to take me home, and Jack or the demon or whoever was running the show wasn’t going to take no for an answer.  If I had any doubts about that, all I had to do was look down at my burning, throbbing leg.

I shuddered at the thought of another round of burning at the stake and opted for staring out the window at the landscape flying by in a multi-colored blur.  Fall was my favorite time of year.  I loved watching as the trees traded in their deep green wardrobes for shades of red, rust, and gold as Mother Nature did her thing, liked the chill in the air.  But, suddenly, all I saw when I looked at them was that sinister stage and the tree I’d been tied to.  All I could think about was how totally screwed I was.

And Jack.  Now that I was safe, the loss of my friend hit me hard.  Had it hurt, when the demon killed him?  Had it been quick or slow and agonizing?  I hoped it had been quick.  The idea that he had suffered was too much for me to bear.

“Was what he said true?  Is my friend dead?” I asked Nathan as fresh tears started sliding down my cheeks. 

“Yeah, Em, I’m afraid he is,” he said sadly, wincing when I started to really break down.  “I’m sorry, baby.  I truly am.”

“Why is this happening to me?” I asked between sobs.  “What did I ever do to attract a demon?”

Instead of answering me, Nathan just reached for my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.  I clung to him, trying to make myself accept the unacceptable.  That demon was after me.  Jack was dead because of
me.

“Ember, listen to me,” Nathan said softly, hearing the thoughts going through my mind.  “Baby, this isn’t your fault.  You didn’t do anything wrong.”  When I didn’t agree with him, he took my chin in a gentle grip and turned my face so I had to look at him.  His heartbroken look was the perfect reflection of the way I felt when he almost whispered, “It’s not your fault, Em. It’s not.”

 
I was afraid we were going to have to agree to disagree on that one, but I nodded to make him happy.  With another sad smile, he let go of my chin and turned his eyes back to the road.  I watched him for a second, wondering about him.  Who was he really?  Figuring I was probably never going to know, I turned to stare blankly out the window again.

“You know, I’m
not
being very fair,” Nathan said after the first hour of uncomfortable silence between us.  I leveled a pointed ‘You think?’ look at him, and he gave me a sheepish smile.  “I know a lot about you, but all you know about me is that I’m a vampire and a piss-poor kidnapper.”

“And a pervert,” I supplied, biting my lip so I wouldn’t smile when he laughed softly. “Oh, and a stalker.”

“Aren’t you even a little curious about me?” he teased, holding his thumb and forefinger up with just a breath of space between them.  “Come on, Em.  You know you have questions.  I’ve never met a human that wasn’t curious about the undead.”

Oh, I was curious about him, but it wasn’t because he was a vampire.  It was so much more than that.  I’m not sure why, but I wanted to be able to get into his head the way he’d gotten into mine.  Since I wasn’t a mind reader, the only way I was going to manage that was to take him up on his offer to play Twenty Questions.

I put some serious thought into my first question, but there were so many that I couldn’t decide which one to pick.  I wanted to know everything about him.  I wanted to know how old he was, where he was from, how he had come to be a vampire.  I wanted to hear about the things he had seen and done. 

“I’m four hundred and twelve years old, as of last month,” he said, plucking the question out of my mind when I finally decided to start simple and go with that one.  “I was born Nathaniel Pierre Ashley Chevalier, the youngest son of a French nobleman—which put me about half a step above the peasants in my father’s opinion.  I didn’t mind, though, because it meant he ignored me most of the time, giving me a lot more freedom than my brothers and sisters had.”

“How so?” I asked, settling back and watching his expression as he talked.  If my parents had taught me anything while using me as their lab monkey, it was that you can learn a lot about people from reading their expressions.  Sometimes body language says a lot more than words.

“Well, while my brothers were being tutored in how to run an empire, I spent my days running wild with the children in our village,” he said, a wistful smile making him look younger, more innocent.  “Bastian, my oldest and dearest friend, and I were practically inseparable.  We spent our entire childhood terrorizing the villagers with all manner of pranks.  Then, when we were older and even less mature, we spent our evenings drinking and fighting and doing terribly wicked things with the tavern wenches.”

He waggled his eyebrows at me and I laughed.  That was a lot more information than I’d wanted—the part about the tavern wenches, that is—but I had to admit that it gave a little…color…to the story.  It also took some of the shock value out of the fact that he was more than four centuries old.

“What was it like, growing up in seventeenth century France?” I asked, genuinely curious.  “I mean, you were like royalty, right?  What was it like being a snotty aristocrat?”

One of my dreams in life is to travel and one of my greatest loves is History.  Listening to Nathan tell me about his childhood was kind of like getting both at the same time.  I listened, enthralled, as he told me about growing up as a member of the French aristocracy.  I could almost see the balls he described.  I could imagine in detail the women of the court, hear the flowery speech of the men.

It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that none of that had made Nathan happy.  The only time he lit up was when he talked about his best friend, Bastian, and the wild times they had together.  He didn’t mind shocking me, and in the end I found myself laughing at the messes they had gotten into.  Somehow, though, they had always managed to charm themselves out of
real
trouble.  I didn’t doubt that at all.  Nathan could probably charm his way out of Hell if he wanted to—and if Satan was a woman.

His family was also a sore subject.  I pretty much had to drag the information out of him bit by tantalizing bit.  He didn’t care to talk about his father or brothers at all, but he spoke of his mother and sisters with a great deal of love in his voice.

“My mother was a truly amazing woman,” he said quietly, looking so sad that I wanted to reach out and hug him, when I asked him to tell me more about his mom.  “She was the gentlest woman I’ve ever had the pleasure to know, but she could be ferocious when it came to her children.  I can’t tell you how many battles she entered into with my father about the way we were raised.  Keep in mind that this was in the age when a man was perfectly within his rights to beat his wife if she defied him in any way.  That never stopped
Maman
, though.  It used to drive the old man crazy.”

“Did he beat her?” I asked, trying to imagine a time when a woman was her husband’s property.

“Hell no!” Nathan snorted, laughing.  “My brothers and I probably would have killed him if he’d tried, but he never did.  I might not have liked the old bastard, but I respected him for the way he treated my mother.  He never lifted a finger to her in anger.  He loved her.  In fact, I would go as far as to say that she was the only person he loved his whole miserable life.”

I caught my first real glimpse of the real Nathan then.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one with parent issues to deal with.  Judging by the almost violent look on Nathan’s face, he had his fair share of Daddy issues, too.

“Did your mother love him, too?” I asked, hoping talking about his mother would wipe that look off of his face.  He looked different when he was angry, less…human.  Besides, he was harder to read when he was angry, and I was only getting started on my ‘What Makes Nathan Tick’ list.

“Yes, she loved him,” Nathan said, shaking his head like he couldn’t understand it.  “She loved him madly, in fact.  He was the center of her world.  I never understood their relationship.  They were just so…different.  He was cold almost to the point of being cruel, but she was like a ray of sunlight, warming everyone she touched.  It was hard to see the attraction.”

I nodded, knowing exactly what he meant.  I had never been able to see the connection between my parents, either.  My mother was a total control freak who had to have everything her way.  My father, on the other hand, was very laid back.  As long as he had total quiet to write, he was happy.  The only time he really wanted to be the one in charge was when he was in a session with one of his patients.  Other than that, he just let my mother handle everything.

Including me.

“A wise man once said you come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly,” I offered. When he shot me a surprised look, I blushed and shrugged.  “Maybe that’s why she loved him beyond your comprehension.  It’s the same reason my father loves my mother.  They see something in that person we can’t see.  Then again, I guess we don’t always get to choose who we love, either, do we?”

“No, I guess not,” Nathan said thoughtfully, giving me a strained smile.  “But Fate always knows what’s best…even if we don’t always agree with it.”

I snorted in disdain at that.  Fate, indeed.  I wrote my own story, not some imaginary Fate.  Nathan gave me a questioning look and I waved my hand, too tired to get into a philosophical debate on the matter. 

By the time we stopped for lunch, I was starting to see a different Nathan.  There was a lot more to him than the sexy smile and great body—and the sharp, pointy teeth.  And, despite him branding me like a cow, I liked him.  I liked him as a
person
.  He was strong and capable and smart.  He was also funny and sweet and kind of sentimental.  He showed me who he really was as he talked and I really
liked
him.  If he hadn’t been my kidnapper, we might have actually been friends.   And, in a perfect world, we might have even been more.

We spent the time between lunch and dinner arguing about the best music and the worst books.  Where I liked all music—and I do mean
all
music—Nathan couldn’t stand Hip-Hop or Country.  He laughed uproariously when I told him that romance novels tended to be unrealistic because a guy would have to be an octopus to have his hands in all the different places described at once—then made me blush again with an offer to demonstrate how it could be done. 

After dinner, we moved on to politics and religion, neither of which, I was quick to learn, he had a lot of respect for.  According to him, politicians were a bunch of greedy idiots who couldn’t see further than their own pocketbooks, and most religions taught hate rather than love.  Never having been a particularly religious person, I wasn’t sure he was right about that.  I was totally with him about the politicians, though.

By the time we stopped for the night at another generic hotel, I wasn’t thinking of him as my kidnapper anymore.  He was just Nathan, full of his own issues and just as messed up as the rest of us.  And, heaven help me, despite the fact that he had kidnapped me, nearly killed some poor guy for doing nothing more than trying to help me, and then branded me so he could keep me on a leash, I was starting to think I might be one head-long dive away from falling crazy in love with him.