The Dark-Hunters (267 page)

He might need her, but in the end, she needed them a lot more. He was used to surviving alone. She wasn’t.

He wasn’t cruel enough to ask her to choose the impossible when the impossible would cost her everything she held dear.

Chapter 13

The next two weeks were truly hell on earth after dark. It seemed as if the Daimons lived only to play with and torment them.

No one was safe. The city had even tried to implement a curfew at Acheron’s behest, but since New Orleans was a twenty-four-hour party town, they hadn’t been able to enforce it.

The body count was unlike anything Tabitha had ever heard of outside of a Hollywood Movie, and the Squire’s Council and Acheron were having a hard time hiding all the deaths from the police and news agencies. But what scared her most was the fact that what few Daimons they caught were damn near impossible to kill.

Every night she came back to Valerius’s house in pain from the abuse to her body. She knew he didn’t want her to go out with him to patrol and yet he never said anything.

Valerius merely spent an hour or two after they returned home massaging Icy Hot into her pains and bandaging up her wounds.

It was unfair that he never had aches and pains, and what few scuffs his body suffered were always gone after a few hours.

Tabitha now lay naked in the shelter of his arms. He was asleep and yet he held her firmly tucked in beside him as if he were afraid of losing her.

That warmed her more than anything else ever had. She should have gotten up hours ago. It was already after four in the afternoon, but since she’d moved in with Valerius she’d become a certified night owl.

Her head lay against his biceps and his right arm was thrown over her waist. She ran her hand over his forearm as she studied that tawny masculine skin.

Valerius had beautiful hands. Long and tapered, they were strong and well-shaped. These last few weeks they had given her so much comfort and pleasure that she could barely breathe from the happiness that consumed her whenever she thought of him.

Her phone rang.

Tabitha scooted out from under him to answer it.

It was Amanda.

“Hey, sis,” she said a little hesitantly. Over the last two weeks, there had been a major strain on their relationship.

“Hi, Tabby, I was wondering if I could come over for a little while and talk to you.”

Tabitha rolled her eyes at the idea. “I don’t need another lecture, Mandy.”

“I swear it’s not a lecture. It’s one sister to another. Please.”

“Okay,” she said quietly after a brief internal debate, then gave Val’s address.

“I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Tabitha hung up the phone, then crept toward the bed. Valerius lay on his side with his hair fanned out around him. Stubble shadowed his face and yet he looked almost boyish as he lay there.

Even asleep the muscles of his body were evident and defined. Dark hairs lightly dusted every perfect dip and curve, making the terrain of his skin all the more masculine and alluring.

But it wasn’t just his handsomeness that appealed to her. It was his heart. The way he could take care of her without taking over her. She knew he didn’t like it when she fought beside him and yet he never said one word against it. He merely stood by and let her fight her own battles. The only time he interfered was whenever she was in over her head.

Then he would charge in and save her without making her feel incompetent or weak.

Tabitha smiled at the sleeping image of him.

How could someone come to mean so much to her in such a short period of time?

Shaking her head, she reached to dress and thought about the first time Valerius had seen the tattoo on the small of her back, a small Celtic triangle.

“Why would you mark yourself intentionally?” he’d asked as if aghast at the very idea.

“It’s sexy.”

He’d curled his lip at that and yet now he took a great deal of pleasure kissing and massaging the tattoo in the mornings when they returned from their patrols.

Impulsively, she picked up his black silk shirt from the floor and put it on. She loved the way his spicy male scent clung to the fabric. The way it clung to her skin.

She pulled on her pants, then went downstairs to wait for Amanda.

“Hey, Tab.”

She turned to the left at the bottom of the stairs to spy Otto using the computer in Valerius’s study. It was the only piece of technology she’d been able to find in Val’s entire house except for the massive DVD collection that he kept hidden in a vault in his office, which explained his knowledge of pop culture.

“Hey, Otto, whatcha working on?”

“Trying to track the Daimon menace as always. I’m using Brax’s program to see if there’s a pattern we can follow to predict where they might be tonight.”

She nodded. Otto had slowly warmed up to her, and since the Daimon attacks had started, he’d reverted to his basic black wardrobe.

Today he had on a black turtleneck, charcoal sweater, and black slacks. She had to admit he was a good-looking man when he wasn’t trying to be a tasteless slob.

He’d even given up the IROC and now drove his Jag, claiming that it was no longer fun to antagonize Valerius since the Roman was so distracted by Tabitha that he never reacted to Otto’s ribbings anymore. Nor was Gilbert there to react to him either.

She moved into the study to look over his shoulder. “Have you found anything?”

“No. There isn’t a pattern, yet. I just don’t understand what has caused this. If they want Kyrian, why haven’t they moved on him?”

She sighed irritably. “They’re playing with us. You weren’t here for Round One with Desiderius. He gets off on making us afraid of him and on toying with our heads.”

“Yeah, but I’m getting sick of the escalating body count. Ten people died last night and the Council is having a hard time hiding all this from the authorities. The public is freaking and they’ve only heard about a percentage of the actual total.”

Tabitha cringed. “How many Daimons were killed last night?”

“Only a dozen. The four you and Val took out, Ash killed five, and then Janice, Jean-Luc, and Zoe killed one each. The rest of the bastards got away.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, I don’t like being on the losing side of anything. This really sucks.”

Tabitha scowled as his list ran through her head. “You know, it’s pretty sad when I’m human and I can take out more Daimons than a Dark-Hunter.”

Otto gave her a droll stare. “You’re not out there on your own.”

She blew him a raspberry. “For the record, Valerius helps me, not the other way around.”

“Riiiight.”

Tabitha laughed at his playful scoffing until another thought occurred to her. “What about Ulric?”

“What about him?”

“How many did he kill?”

“None, why?”

None? That wasn’t right. “He didn’t kill any the night before, either, did he?”

“No.”

A bad feeling went through her. No, surely she was wrong.

It wouldn’t be possible, would it?

“Where did most of the kills occur last night?” she asked.

Otto punched a key and changed the monitor screen to a map of the French Quarter. She saw the areas highlighted in red wherever someone had died. There was a heavy concentration of red marks in the northeast quadrant.

“Who was assigned that area?”

Otto checked another screen. “Ulric.”

She went cold. “And yet he didn’t kill any Daimons?” she asked in disbelief.

Otto’s gaze narrowed. “What are you saying?”

“Desiderius needs a body … Valerius said back when all this started that if a Daimon ever took over a Dark-Hunter—”

“That’s bullshit, Tabitha. I saw Ulric last night myself and he was fine.”

“But what if I’m right? What if Desiderius has taken him over?”

“You’re wrong. Desiderius wouldn’t be able to lay a hand on him. He was a medieval warlord. If there’s one thing Ulric knows how to do, it’s protect himself.”

Maybe.

The buzzer sounded for the gate.

“It should be my sister.”

Otto swung his chair around to the small video console that showed an image of the car’s driver. It was Amanda.

He buzzed her in.

Tabitha went to meet her at the door, even though she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right with Ulric. In spite of what Otto said, she wanted proof that she was wrong.

Tonight, she’d meet the Dark-Hunter herself and decide if her fear held any validity and if it did, he would be Daimon dust.

Swinging open the door, she saw Amanda getting out of her Toyota in the driveway. She was dressed in a pair of nice black slacks, a dark green silk top, and black sweater. It was really good to see her again.

Silently, Tabitha stood in the open doorway as she waited for Amanda to draw near.

Amanda gave her a tight hug as soon as she reached her. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m only a couple of blocks away.”

“I know, but we haven’t talked much lately.”

Tabitha squeezed her back, then let her go. “I know. It’s kind of hard to talk right now.”

Amanda brushed the hair back from Tabitha’s face in a very motherly fashion and smiled. “You look happy underneath that suspiciousness; are you?”

Tabitha frowned. “You are seriously scaring me.” She looked past Amanda and scanned the street. “Has someone replaced my twin with a pod person?”

Amanda laughed. “No, goofball. It’s me. I’ve just been worried about you.”

“Well, as you can see, I’m fine. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. So what brings you here?”

“I want to meet Valerius.”

Tabitha couldn’t have been more stunned had her sister hit her. “Excuse me?”

“Ash said some things to me a couple of weeks ago that got me thinking. And with every day that passed without you racking this guy and moving in with me until this is over, I did more thinking. You’ve been with him night and day, haven’t you?”

Tabitha shrugged with a nonchalance she didn’t feel. “Yeah, so?”

“And yet I haven’t had a single call from my homicidal twin telling me she’s going to cut his head off and put it in a bowling bag if he says or does such-and-such one more time. Why, Tabby, I do believe that’s a record for you.”

Tabitha fidgeted guiltily. It was true. Not once in all their lives had she been with anyone that she wasn’t threatening to kill the guy every other hour for some annoying habit.

But with Valerius …

Even when he annoyed her, it wasn’t so bad. And the truth was, he very seldom annoyed her. They talked about all kinds of things and even when they didn’t agree, he respected her opinions.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Tabitha looked away.

“Oh God, Tabitha,” Amanda breathed. “You’ve never done anything the easy way, have you?”

“Don’t start on me, Amanda.”

Amanda cupped her face and turned her head until their eyes met. “I love you, Tabby. I do. Of all the men—”

“I know!” she snapped angrily. “It’s not like I woke up and said, Hmmm, who is the one man on the planet guaranteed to alienate me from my entire family for all eternity? Oh, I must go and find him immediately and fall hopelessly in love with him.”

She took a deep breath before her anger overwhelmed her. “God knows, I didn’t want to love someone like Valerius. I keep thinking that you are his perfect woman. You’re elegant, sophisticated. Hell, you actually know which fork to eat with when you go out. I’m the idiot in college who went out with you and Dad and drank out of the finger bowl because I thought it was some kind of fucked-up clear soup.”

Tabitha scoffed at her own words. “For that matter, listen to my language. I have to be horrifying to him and yet when he looks at me, I shiver.”

Over and over, the arguments of why she didn’t belong with Valerius ran through her mind. They should be completely incompatible and yet they weren’t. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t right.

Tabitha sighed. “The other night he took me to Commander’s Palace and we sat down where they had this really elegant display sitting in the middle of the table. It was made up of all these exotic veggies and fruit and looked really tasty. So, stupid me, I grabbed my butter knife and started hacking at it to eat some of it. It wasn’t until I looked up and saw the gape on the waiter’s face that I realized I’d done something completely stupid. I asked him what his problem was and he said that he had just never seen anyone actually eat the centerpiece before. I was so embarrassed I wanted to die.”

“Oh, Lord, Tabby.”

“I know. Valerius, God bless him, didn’t miss a beat. He reached over and started eating it too, then he gave one of those haughty, regal stares at the waiter, who quickly ran off. After he was gone, Val said for me not to worry about it. That he spent enough money in that place that I could eat the tablecloth next if I wanted to and if that didn’t make me happy, then he’d buy the restaurant just so I could fire the waiter.”

Amanda burst out laughing.

Tabitha had laughed too when he said it and the memory of his kindness still warmed her.

She gave her sister a sincere stare. “Don’t you think I know that I don’t belong with this man? I really, really don’t. To me fine dining is slurping down oysters and drinking beer out of a bottle. To him it’s a fifteen-course meal where people actually put the napkin in your lap for you and reset the silverware between every course.”

“And yet you’re still here.”

“And I don’t understand why.”

Amanda smiled gently. “All I ever wanted was a nice, normal life with a nice, normal man. Instead, I end up with a husband who used to be immortal who has friends that are gods, demons, and animals that can take human form. And I don’t even know how to begin to classify Nick. Let’s face it, I’m married to a man who gave me a daughter who is able to talk to animals like Doctor Dolittle and who can use her thoughts to move just about anything in the house. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t trade it for all the normality in the world. Love isn’t easy. Anyone who says differently is lying to you. But it is worth fighting for. Believe me, I know, and that’s why I’m here. I want to meet this man and see if there’s any way I can soothe over Kyrian enough to where he can at least say Valerius’s name without rupturing a vein.”