Sweet Last Drop (4 page)

I smiled, but
my
expression certainly felt forced. “All good things, I hope.”

Walker leaned in threateningly. “Let it go, Bex.”

“You were Walker’s partner while he was in the city, is that right?” Bex asked, her glowing, unearthly eyes trained on me.

“Unofficially, yes, I suppose you could call us partners. I covered his back, and he covered mine on numerous occasions.”

Bex nodded. “I’d like to extend my gratitude. The rule of New York City’s coven is collapsing, and bless your heart, I’m grateful that my night blood had someone to rely on in my stead.”

“Your night blood?” Walker asked. His voice was low and growled from somewhere deep and ugly inside of him.

I winced from Bex’s opinion of the city. “I’m not sure ‘collapsing’ is an accurate assessment of Dominic’s rule.”

“I am.”

“You’re wrong,” I stated, and the depth of my feelings surprised me. It almost felt like loyalty. “Once Dominic survives the Leveling, the coven will once again be under his full reign.”

Walker looked at me like I’d sprouted a wholly unwelcome second head.

Bex raised her delicate, carefully sculpted eyebrows. “
If
he survives.”

“When,” I corrected.

“You sound so certain of Lysander’s abilities.”

“And my own,” I said, nodding. I had my issues with Dominic, but he’d saved my human life when he could have easily taken advantage of my injuries and unconsciousness to have his way and transform me into a vampire. But knowing my preference to remain human, he hadn’t. For that, despite my misgivings, he’d earned a sliver of my trust. “We’ll weather the storm.”

“We,” Bex murmured. “Your attitude is refreshing.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help my reaction. It bubbled up from my gut in a swift burst.

Bex narrowed her eyes.

I raised a hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just that not many people qualify my attitude as ‘refreshing.’ I’m usually a little too outspoken for most people’s tastes.”

Bex smiled, and this time, she let her fangs slip from between her lips. “I like the taste of you just fine.”

“That’s enough,” Walker snapped. His face was boiling red, and it took me a moment to realize that he was embarrassed, like Bex had exposed something private. “Why did you stop us?”

Her fangs were longer than any other vampire’s fangs I’d ever seen while still in human form, even longer than Dominic’s. Like a snake’s retractable bite, her fangs must slip into sockets in her lower gums. Otherwise, they couldn’t fit in her mouth.

“To say hello, of course. It’d be rude to cross paths with y’all and not acknowledge one another,” Bex said, her fangs tucked neatly away, once again the dime-a-dozen country sweetheart.

“Hello. So we’re done here then,” Walker said. He ushered me back toward the truck. “Have a good evening.”

“But now that we’re all acquainted, it’d be rude not to extend an invitation. You protected Ian with your life, and I would be remiss not to extend my gratitude to such a loyal partner. Are you free tomorrow evening for dinner?”

Walker snorted. “When was the last time you extended an invitation to Ronnie?”

Bex’s eyes shifted like two lasers to target Walker. “Bring her as well.”

Walker snapped his mouth shut. The muscles in his jaw flexed convulsively, and I wondered if he was chewing on his tongue.

I cleared my throat. “Tomorrow evening works for me.”

“No it doesn’t,” Walker growled.

I glared at him. “Then you don’t have to come.”

Walker stared at me, his eyes wide and searching, like he was desperate to find something he’d lost.

I turned to face Bex again, and she was much closer, less than two feet away. The setting sun had begun to cast a longer shadow in the five minutes while we talked, and Bex had inched along its growing path toward us. This close, even wearing her human façade, she couldn’t pass as anything but the creature she truelly was. Her skin was too flawless, her features too sculpted, and her eyes, those glowing yellow-green swirling orbs, too animal. Looking into her eyes, I knew that her brain didn’t feel like ours. She had goals and desires, but when her motivations boiled down to their core, I suspected that she and Dominic and all the rest of the vampires, although capable of love or the memories of love from their human existence, now acted primarily on instinct.

Bex lifted her hand up to my face, and I realized that the overpass angled toward me. I was centimeters shy of its shadow. She ran her fingertips down the line of sunlight between us, mere inches away, and I froze. A thin, rotting stream of twirling steam hissed from the pad of her pointer finger. I stared at that finger as it boiled, the skin beginning to bubble and ooze scant millimeters from touching my hair.

I held my ground, determined not to flinch. Her thumbnail elongated into a claw, but her face remained beautiful. Dominic’s transformations were often a result of his emotions and maybe instinct, so when his fingernails elongated, his nose flattened, ears pointed, and brow furrowed. But Bex wasn’t losing control of her other features. She had deliberately only transformed her thumbnail.

She sliced her claw-like nail across the lock of my hair. It clipped in half and fluttered to the ground.

I stepped back into full sunlight and out of reach. Bex let my remaining lock of hair slide from between her scabbed fingers. Her hand dropped to her side.

Walker’s gaze flicked back and forth between Bex and me, and I didn’t appreciate the calculation in his expression.

“Until tomorrow,” Bex murmured.

I blinked, and she was suddenly, inconceivably gone. Her reflective, otherworldly eyes had illuminated the shadows like twin halos, rendering the darkness a little deeper in her absence.

I reached up and wearily tugged on the shortened lock of hair. Her swift departure reminded me of Dominic. Despite my growing experience with vampires, his abilities still awed me. It didn’t matter that he displayed inhuman physical and mental feats at least once a night. I doubted I’d ever consider his exceptional abilities anything but exceptional.

“Get in the truck.”

Walker pounded the gravel in three long strides to his driver’s side door. He didn’t seem awed by Bex’s abilities in the least, but I knew better than most the comfort and clarity of being downright pissed. I bit my tongue and got in the truck.

Walker kicked the ignition, and I held my breath as we drove under the overpass and into the shadows. The cab dimmed for a heart-rending moment. The roar and hiccups of Walker’s truck and the squeaking grind of its wheels crunching over the pavement was the only noise between us. Walker didn’t offer any assurances about our safety now that Bex was gone, and I wondered if, despite knowing Bex longer than I knew Dominic, or perhaps because of his better acquaintance, he didn’t trust her not to double back and attack us.

Light beamed through the windshield as we crossed over, and in the next moment, we were once again basked in the sun’s protection.

I released a shuddering breath.

“What does Dominic have on you?”

I turned to face Walker. “Excuse me?”

He wrung the steering wheel in a punishing grip. “He can’t control your mind like the rest of us, so the only way I can even
fathom
that you would consent to that circus I just witnessed a moment ago must be blackmail.” Walker turned to meet my gaze. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong,” I said flatly. “Dominic doesn’t have anything on me.”

He sighed. “I can’t help if you don’t let me in. Whatever it is, Cass, I’ll take care of it.”

A laugh burst out from the same deep, dark corner I’d stowed my agony over Nathan, so the laugh sounded sarcastic and hysterical and not funny in the least. “Oh, you’ll just—” I snapped my fingers”—take care of it.”

Walker locked his earnest, velvet brown eyes on mine; the strength and confidence in his gaze made me believe that he could take care of it, or at least, that he believed he could.

“He might have healed the injuries you sustained in his coven, but make no mistake, healing you was for his benefit, not yours.” Walker said tightly. “He wants you. He’ll use you, and when he’s done, he’ll discard you. Dominic Lysander can’t be trusted. None of them can,” he said, his expression fierce. “If you need help, place your trust in me, Cass.”

An infinitesimal blossom of hope ripened inside my chest. The feeling was just a pin-prick of light, but it was more warmth than I’d felt inside myself in weeks. I had to look away before I started believing him.

“You weren’t there when I needed you last time,” I said softly.

Walker reared back, shocked. “The hell I wasn’t.”

I nodded, feeling deflated. “We infiltrated Dominic’s coven to kill the rebel vampires, but you wanted to kill them all. We were outnumbered and losing daylight, and when I asked you to fall back, you forged ahead with your plan without me.”

Walker closed one eye on a wince and massaged his temple. “You’re twisting what really happened. When I realized we were outnumbered, I told you to leave while I finished the mission. I was protecting you.”

“You never should have finished the mission! You should have left with me because that’s what partners do, they stick together, but you were too hell-bent on killing vampires—all the vampires, not just the rebels we had agreed to kill—to recognize a suicide mission when it’s slapping you in the face. Or in your case, when it’s driving its talons into your stomach.”

Walker was quiet for a long moment. I didn’t expect him to agree with me. His savagery concerning vampires was an established note of contention between us, but I expected him to say something. He remained silent and continued massaging his forehead.

“Are you ok?” I asked.

“You’re right.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I left you alone and without backup because I was greedy to finish the mission and kill the vampires. We should have stuck together because, like you said, that’s what partners do. I’m sorry.”

My mouth fell open at his honesty. He was such a reasonable and intelligent man in every way except in his single-minded vendetta against vampires; still, I was shocked that he’d admit fault.

Walker stopped massaging his temple and took hold of my hand. His thumb stroked over the inside of my wrist. Shivers shot up my arm to my shoulder. “Can you forgive me, darlin’?”

I pursed my lips against the dual heat and chill his touch ignited. “I’ve already forgiven you.”

Walker narrowed his eyes. “But you don’t trust me.”

I shook my head. “I accept your apology, but it’s one thing to say you’re sorry. Even if you mean it, which I believe you do, it’s something else entirely to show me.”

“Give me the chance to prove myself.”

I released a long sigh. The crushing weight of Dominic’s situation in New York City and his approaching Leveling was my constant shadow, no matter the distance. “You can prove it to me by joining me for dinner with Bex. I need you to play nice and have my back.”

“Play nice,” Walker said quietly, nearly inaudible.

I nodded.

“With Bex.”

“Dominic needs this alliance. We—”

“I don’t care what Dominic needs! We are not visiting Bex’s coven for dinner tomorrow night.”

“Well I certainly am, with or without you.”

“Helping Dominic isn’t the answer,” Walker ground out. “Whatever he’s using as leverage over you, tell me. Let me help you.”

“I need you to be my partner and accompany me to dinner. That’s the help I need,” I pled, the argument familiar and bitter for its familiarity. “Please.”

Walker winced and covered his eyes with his hands.

I glanced at the road as we listed slightly. “Are you sure you’re ok?”

“Let Dominic mend his own alliances, and if he can’t, what do I care if they tear each other apart? Just two less vampires in the world for me to kill.”

“Right,” I said, realizing that I’d be having dinner with Bex tomorrow night on my own.

“Besides, Ronnie can’t go into that hell hole. She’d fall apart.”

I put my palms up. “You got her involved. Not me.”

A shaft of the setting sun beamed between the forest leaves and through our windshield. We swerved as Walker winced away from the light.

“Maybe you should pull over and let me drive.”

Walker glared at me from under his hand as he massaged his temples. “Why would I do that?”

“I’d imagine it’s difficult to drive when you’re fighting a migraine.”

Walker turned his gaze back to the road, but he didn’t pull over. He drove us all the way to his house, his eyes barely open and his hands wringing the steering wheel in pain, but we pulled into his driveway in one piece. If tonight was any indication, country life wasn’t much different than city life: investigating murders, dodging vampire attacks, and surviving stubborn men. Except I could do all three in boots instead of heels.

* * * *

Walker’s house was exactly what I had anticipated a house in the deep woods would look like, but even after seeing it a second time, I couldn’t believe Walker actually lived there. The house was essentially a log cabin, a beautiful, three-story log cabin with a wrap-around porch, wood-burning fireplace, and stone chimney. A porch swing was built into the house on the east side of the porch, and on the north side, a hammock was stretched between two awning posts. Gabled dormers jutted from the roof, letting light and space into the attic. The gravel driveway was outlined in heavy stonework; it extended into a wide lot at the side of the house.

When we’d dropped off my luggage earlier this afternoon, the driveway had been empty. Now, two pickup trucks in addition to Walker’s Chevy, his Harley, and a Charger were already parked in the lot as we pulled in. I climbed out of the truck gingerly—my hip protesting the movement—and stared, in awe of the sheer magnitude of Walker’s home.

“Expecting company?” I breathed.

Walker smiled. “Come on. Let’s go inside and get an icy-hot patch on your hip.”

“I’m not—”

He held up a hand. “Don’t. You were better at hiding it in the city.”

The arthritis has worsened since the last time you were in the city
, I thought. Instead of speaking my mind, I said. “An icy-hot patch isn’t going to cure anything.”