The Dark-Hunters (225 page)

“Did I hurt you, Amanda?” Vane asked without taking his eyes off his mate.

“It wasn’t exactly comfortable,” Amanda said. “You could have warned me before you yanked.”

“I’m sorry. There wasn’t time.”

“What just happened?” Bride asked quietly. She sat on the couch as if she were in a daze. “What is going on here?”

Vane exchanged an uncomfortable look with Amanda and Kyrian. How was he going to explain this to her?

Kyrian picked up his daughter, who didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the fact that a demon had just visited them. Then again, she had played dolls with one earlier. To Marissa such things were probably every-other-day occurrences.

Kyrian went to Amanda and Tabitha. “I think we should go to the kitchen and put some ice on Tabby’s hard head.”

“Lay off me, Geritol, or you’re going to need some ice for your groin,” Tabitha said as she led the way toward the kitchen.

Vane waited until he was alone with Bride.

This had to be the most awkward moment of his entire life. He didn’t even know where to begin. But at least she wasn’t afraid of him at the moment.

That was something, anyway.

Bride sat there in stunned disbelief as she tried to make sense of … of … She didn’t even know what to call it.

She wasn’t sure what she had just seen. Everything had happened way too fast. The knock on the door, followed by a bleeding man who had just vanished into nothingness.

She felt bewildered, and in the back of her mind, she thought she might be on the
Scare Tactics
show.
Candid Camera?
Did they even do
Candid Camera
anymore?

Maybe this was some other new reality show.

How to Make You Lose Your Mind in One Afternoon.

Her thoughts rambled as she struggled to come to grips with these bizarre events.

“Kyrian said you weren’t a psycho serial killer.” That sounded stupid even to her, but she didn’t know what else to say to him.

“No,” he said quietly as he came to stand in front of her. “But I’m not human, exactly.”

Tabitha’s angry voice echoed from the kitchen. “What do you mean, he’s a friggin’ dog?”

They both turned as Tabitha rushed into the room.

“You’re a dog?” she asked Vane.

“Wolf,” Vane corrected.

Bride got up and put the couch between herself and Vane. This wasn’t real.

No. This was a dream. She’d hit her head. Something.

“Jeez,” Tabitha sneered. “I should have known it that night you were outside the restaurant. I thought you looked too smart for the average beastie.”

Kyrian came into the room and tried to pull Tabitha back to the kitchen.

Tabitha shrugged off his hand. “Bride needs me. She’s not used to you loons.”

“I need to go home,” Bride said as a strange lucidity came over her. It was as if her mind were rejecting everything she’d heard.

Vane a dog …

Yeah, right. Well, most men were dogs, but that was only figuratively speaking.

No. This was some weird dream. Vane had drugged her during lunch and she was now hallucinating. Whenever she woke up, she was definitely calling the cops on him.

She moved to the door only to have Vane materialize in front of her. “You can’t leave.”

“Oh, yes I can,” she snapped angrily. “This is my bad psychotic delusion and I can do anything I want to in it. Just watch. I’m going to turn into a bird now…”

Okay, she didn’t.

Bride waited for a full minute. “Why am I not a bird? I want to be a bird.”

“Because you’re not dreaming,” Vane said, placing his hands on her arms. “This is real, Bride. In a very fucked-up sort of way.”

“No, no, no,” she insisted. “This isn’t real. I reject it all. I have—” Bride stopped mid-sentence as she looked past Kyrian to see his daughter. Marissa was crawling into the room. The baby stopped near the couch, and sat up, laughing.

She held her tiny arm out and her sippee cup on the coffin-shaped coffee table flew into her outstretched hand. “Rissa, cup, Daddy,” she said happily even though the baby was too young to speak.

“Yeah,” Bride said while Marissa sipped her juice and Kyrian picked his daughter up from the floor. “I am definitely one oar short on the boat.”

She started past Vane only to have him pull her to a stop.

“Please, Bride, you have to listen because your life is in danger, but not from me.”

She looked into those magnetic hazel-green eyes and wondered if his image was part of her hallucination, too.

Maybe none of this had ever happened. Maybe she was still in bed with Taylor and all this had been one very long, odd dream.

She shook her head at Vane. “I can’t accept what I’ve just seen. It’s not possible.”

He held up his palm with the same tattoo as hers. “I don’t know how to help you accept this. The unbelievable has been part of my life since the moment I was born. I…”

Vane sighed, dropped his hands from her arms and pulled his cell phone out again and dialed it.

He was making a call? Now?

Yeah, why not? That made as much sense as the rest of this.

What had she eaten for dinner? It must have been a doozy. She better make a note not to eat it again.

Vane’s gaze stayed on her. “Acheron, I need a favor from you. I don’t care what it costs. I’m at Kyrian’s house with my mate and I need you here to guard her for me until she’s freed.”

“Mate?” she repeated. “As in ‘friend’?”

“As in ‘wife,’” Tabitha said.

Bride gaped. “I’m not married.”

Vane hung up the phone. “No, you’re not, Bride.” He cupped her cheek with one warm hand and gave her a look of sad longing. “No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, okay?”

He stroked her cheekbone with his thumb. “Stay here, where things are mostly normal and where you’ll be safe for the next two weeks, and I won’t bother you ever again. I swear it. Just be safe for me.”

It was hard to be afraid of a man who looked at her the way Vane did just now. With that sincerity burning deep in his gaze. With such a look of yearning and need.

She was uncertain.

Scared.

“What are you?” she asked.

He looked down, took a deep breath, then lifted his head up.

Bride gasped as she saw that one-half of his face was covered with a deep red tattoo similar to the one on her palm.

“I’m human,” he said in a tormented tone. “And I’m not.” He dropped his hand to her shoulder. “I never knew softness,” he breathed. “Not until the moment you touched me in your store. My life is violent and dangerous. It’s dark and twisted and no place for someone like you. I have more people wanting me dead than I can count. They will stop at nothing, and you…” He ground his teeth before he spoke again. “You’ll never want again for anything in your life. I swear it on what little bit of human soul I have left.”

He stepped back and headed for the door. “Take care of her for me, Kyrian.”

Then he was gone.

Bride felt drained by his sudden absence, and for reasons unknown, her heart ached.

She looked over at Tabitha, who had tears in her eyes. “Dog or no dog,” Tabitha said. “That was…” She rushed to Bride’s side and urged her toward the door. “Don’t let him leave, Bride. Go get him.”

She didn’t have to say those words; Bride was already headed for the door.

“Vane!” she called, looking for him.

There was no sign of him anyplace.

“Vane!” she tried again, even louder this time.

Only the damp, cool air answered her.

Her heart breaking, she stepped back into the house and collided with Tabitha. “I can’t believe I let him go.”

“I can’t believe the idiot went.”

Bride panicked as she heard that voice. It wasn’t Tabitha’s. It was the demon’s.

In the blink of an eye, everything went black.

*   *   *

Vane walked down the street away from Kyrian’s house, doing his best to ignore Bride’s call. His heart was breaking into pieces at the thought of losing her.

He had done the right thing. He’d let her go. So why did it hurt so much?

And it did hurt. It ached and burned deep inside his heart until he was sure he couldn’t bear it.

It was for the best.

She was human and he …

He was the wolf who loved her. Vane cursed at the reality of that statement. He wanted desperately to deny it and he couldn’t. She was everything to him.

There was nothing about her he would change. He loved the way she looked at him as if he were crazy. The way she hummed quietly to herself while she dusted her shelves. The way she always made sure to split her food with him.

The way she felt in his arms as she came for him, and the sound of her breathless voice as she said his name while in the throes of her orgasms.

Hell, he even liked the way she hogged the covers.

“Oh, fuck this,” he snarled. He wasn’t going to just let her go.

He loved her and he wasn’t going to just up and leave. Not without a fight and not without at least telling her.

He turned and headed back toward the house.

“Vane! Come quick.”

He paused at Kyrian’s deep voice. At the urgency he heard in the former Dark-Hunter’s tone.

Flashing back to the house, Vane materialized in the foyer to find Kyrian there with his daughter and Tabitha. Bride was nowhere to be seen.

A bad feeling consumed him. “Where’s Bride?”

“The demon took her,” Tabitha said.

The animal inside him snapped and snarled with vengeance. He reached out and found nothing in the air. No scent, no trace.

It didn’t matter. Alastor had taken his mate.

Vane would find her, and when he did, there would be one less demon in the universe.

*   *   *

Bride wanted to scream, but couldn’t. Her vocal cords seemed to be paralyzed.

Sight came back to her so suddenly that it hurt her eyes.

She blinked to find herself inside what appeared to be an old cabin or house of some sort. It was long and narrow with an old-fashioned fire blazing out in the open with no fireplace or real confinement.

“Don’t be afraid,” the demon said, releasing her.

He stepped around her. Instead of the good-looking blond he had been earlier, he was now hideous. His skin was a deep, dark purple shade and he had flaming red hair and eyes.

His feet were twisted and looked more like overgrown clubs. He limped as he walked toward the door and opened it.

“Bryani!” he called out, then he looked back at her and sniffed like an animal. His large teeth were too big for his mouth, and when he spoke he lisped. “No one is going to hurt you,
bobbin.
”

Bride was getting seriously tired of people telling her that. “Where am I?”

He wiped at his nose. “Don’t worry yourself,
bobbin.
You’re safe here.”

“I was safe where I was.” Sort of, anyway.

What kind of screwed-up delusion was this? If she was going to lose her mind, she much preferred losing it with Vane than with an ugly monster thing who could barely speak.

The demon stepped back to make way for a beautiful woman who reminded Bride of a young Grace Kelly, only this woman had three vicious scars on her face and neck that made a mockery of Tabitha’s.

Underneath the scars, the woman bore a red tattoo very similar in design to Vane’s.

She looked to be no older than her mid-twenties and yet the woman carried herself with the bearing of a regal queen. She entered the room as if she owned it and dared anyone to question her authority.

Blond braids were wrapped around her head in an elegant design that was held in place by a gold circlet decorated with what appeared to be very large diamonds, rubies, and sapphires.

Bride frowned at the woman’s clothes. She wore what appeared to be something out of an episode of
Xena.
It was gold body armor that covered her torso, but left her arms bare, except for gold arm- and wristbands. Her vibrant red and dark green plaid skirt was voluminous and many-layered.

Most impressive, the woman had a sword, bow, and quiver of arrows strapped to her back.

Oh yeah, Bride was definitely nuts, she decided. Her mind had snapped completely. Maybe she was even dead.

Right now, she was game for just about any explanation.

Grace Kelly, or Bryani as the demon had called her, scrutinized Bride. “Has he hurt you, child?”

Bride looked at the demon. “Define ‘hurt’? I mean, I didn’t really want to be brought here, wherever
here
is.”

“Not Alastor,” Bryani snapped in an accent unlike anything Bride had ever heard. “The other one. The bastard wolf. Did he hurt you?”

Bride was twice as confused. “You mean my pet wolf or my boyfriend who thinks he’s a wolf?”

Bryani grabbed her hand and held it up to her face. “The one whose hand matches yours. Did he rape you?”

“No,” Bride said emphatically as she wrested her arm from the woman’s grasp. “He didn’t do anything.”

Bryani let out a relieved breath, then nodded at the demon. “You got to her in time. Thank you, Alastor.”

The demon inclined his head to Bryani. “We are done now.” He vanished instantly and left them alone.

Bryani didn’t seem the least bit concerned by the oddity of that action.

She held her hand out to Bride. “Come, child. I would have you at the hall where we can all protect you while you bear the mating mark.”

Her first instinct was to pull away, but Bride forced herself to take the woman’s hand. What the hell? She’d already lost her mind. The least she could do was see where this psychotic episode was going to take her.

Hopefully it would be someplace nicer and warmer than this spartan room.

Bride laughed at the thought. “Have you ever seen that episode of
Buffy
where Sarah Michelle Gellar flashes between the insane asylum and her life in Sunnydale as the Slayer?”

Bryani cocked her head. “What is Buffy? Is she a Lykos too or another kind of Katagaria?”

Bride was a bit miffed that her conjured escort had no idea who Buffy was. “Never mind. Obviously this is my Sunnydale version and I’ll be waking up real soon in my padded cell.”