The Renegade Hunter (28 page)

wasn't America anymore when we stopped. It was hot, the people all spoke gobbledy-gook, and the signs were all in Mexican or something."

"South America then, probably," Jo murmured. If that's where Ernie's father was it meant a long drive to get there. Days even. She might get an opportunity to escape, she thought, and then glanced up as Dee continued.

"Ernie was nice to me." When Jo's eyebrows rose in surprise at the suggestion, Dee scowled and said, "He was. He'd bite us, but he didn't do those other things."

Afraid the girl would get angry and shut up, Jo smoothed out her expression and nodded quickly.

Dee relaxed a little and continued, her voice grim. "When he said he was heading out on a trip, his father gave me to him 'for the road.' I think he thought Ernie would only get another meal out of me and be dumping me on the side of the road somewhere, but Ernie didn't feed on me. He fed me and got me healthy again. He took care of me and fed on others like that cop, and only once I was strong again did he start feeding on me again.

I'm his now and he looks after me."

"And your sister?" Jo asked quietly.

"She died before we left," Dee said dully.

"I'm sorry," Jo repeated on a sigh. She was silent for a moment, considering what she'd learned, and then asked, "So was Ernie the only brother there who had fangs?"

Dee nodded. "The rest of them had to cut us... except Basha."

Something in Dee's voice made Jo peer at her more closely as she asked,

"Basha?"

"She's like Ernie, she has fangs," Dee said, her voice sounding admiring.

"She's not crazy like the rest of them. Basha's beautiful with this long, gorgeous, icy blond hair and these cold eyes... and she's powerful, icy cold and so strong... None of the boys mess with her. The second day we were there, one of them said something to anger her, and she threw him through a wall."

Jo frowned as she recognized the hero worship in the other woman's voice.

"What did he say?"

"I'm not sure. They were in the next room and he suddenly came crashing through the wall and fell at my feet, and then

she stepped through the hole his body left and glared down at him and said,

'Remember to watch your tongue around

me or you'll be tongueless as well as

fangless.' And then she stormed off." Dee sighed with very definite admiration, and then added, "Even Ernie's father listens to her. She's the one who convinced him to lie low for a while and stay out of Canada until things blew over.

Ernie's father really is a cruel bastard," Dee told her, and almost managed to look pityingly on Jo. "He's going to hurt you bad when Ernie gives you to him."

Jo stared at her silently and then sat forward in her seat, ignoring the pain it sent shooting through her arms as she said a little desperately, "You could help me escape. We could both go. I know people who could keep us safe."

"Like they kept Ernie from taking you?" she asked dryly, and shook her head. "Oh no. I'm his. I'm not betraying him and giving him a reason to kill me. I want to be strong and powerful like Basha. I want to be turned, and if I'm loyal he'll turn me," she said with certainty.

Jo sat back wearily and shook her head. "He's not going to turn you, Dee. He sees us both as little more than cattle. He'll use you up for as long as it pleases him and then he will dump you at the side of the road like his father expected."

"No," she said at once, almost desperately. "He took care of me when we left his father. He cares about me."

"Yeah, that bandage on your throat and the way he's treated you since I got here show a whole lot of caring," Jo said grimly.

"He was angry. It was your fault," Dee said at once.

Jo stared at her silently, wondering why Ernie would have bothered nursing the girl back to health. She didn't think for a minute he cared for the girl, but... "Who did the driving on the way up here?"

"He did at first, but after the first couple of days when I was feeling better, he slept during the day and I drove, and then I slept at night and he drove," she said proudly. "He trusted me."

"He needed you," Jo corrected firmly. "Feeding you a couple of meals and not raping you was enough to get you to feel so grateful you took over the day driving. It cut the journey in half for him."

Dee merely glared at her.

"Why didn't he fly?" Jo asked abruptly.

"What?" Dee asked with confusion.

"Why did he drive all the way here rather than fly? He could have saved himself a lot of time," she pointed out.

"He doesn't like flying," Dee said coldly, and then added almost reluctantly, "His father and brothers teased him about

that, said it was another sign of his inferiority, that a nofanger wouldn't be afraid of flying. But they're the ones who are inferior. They don't have fangs and have to cut to feed, and Basha has fangs and she's the smartest and strongest of all of them."

Jo was silent for a minute. The girl definitely had a hang-up about this Basha woman. Sighing, she leaned forward and tried again to reason with her, "You're fooling yourself if you think he's going to turn you, Dee. You aren't going to be like Basha. You're just as dead as I am when we get back there. Once we're there, he won't need you to drive anymore and he'll hand you off to his brothers to finish what they started on the first journey down south."

"Shut up," Dee snarled, her hand tightening on the gun and raising it just as a knock sounded at the door.

"The food's here," Jo murmured, eyeing Dee warily. The girl was obviously unstable after all she'd been through, which was to be expected. Unfortunately, Jo didn't think she was going to be able to help her see that there was no future for her with Ernie. At least not before it was too late. Dee seemed to be so grateful that he'd let her live and wasn't raping her that she saw his cold, heartless treatment of her as some sort of caring...

and that was going to get her killed. The

question was whether Jo would be there with her when it happened... or die here in this room, she thought as Dee stared at her, the gun pointed at her chest and quavering slightly.

"The food," Jo said again, her stomach beginning to churn with tension as she considered her death might be imminent after all.

Dee cursed under her breath and stood up, slipping the gun into the waistband at the back of her leather pants as she moved to the door. She then pulled a wad of cash out of her back pocket with one hand as she opened the door with the other. The moment Dee started to open it, the door crashed open, slamming into her and knocking her backward.

Jo sucked in a quick breath as Dee tumbled back over the chair, relief like she'd never known slamming through her as Nicholas stepped into the room. He wore the clothes she'd last seen him in, but now had a long jacket over them. She understood the reason for the long coat when he pulled a crossbow from under it as he took in the scene. His gaze found her, flickered with relief, then slid to Dee sitting up on the floor next to the table, peering at him blankly, and finally to Ernie rearing up on the bed. He aimed at Ernie and pulled the trigger.

Jo never saw the arrow hit Ernie, her gaze was already swinging to Dee as she released a cry of animal pain and pulled out the gun she'd tucked in her jeans.

Jo didn't think in that moment, she merely reacted. Her ankles were bound, her wrists tied behind her back, so she did the only thing she could do. Screaming "No," she did her best imitation of a dolphin leaping out of the water and threw herself out of the chair at Dee. She soared through the air to land on the other woman-and the gun-as it went off.

The impact of the shot was like a punch, and Jo gasped for air that suddenly seemed absent. She was vaguely aware of Nicholas shouting her name and then he was there, lifting her away from Dee. He gathered her in his arms, his face panicked as he peered over her.

"Jo. Jesus, you're hit," he muttered, standing to carry her to the bed.

"Dee," she gasped anxiously, afraid the girl would shoot him in the back.

Nicholas paused to whirl back, just in time for both of them to see the girl flee the room. Nicholas growled deep in his throat as she disappeared through the still-open door, but didn't try to stop her. Instead, he turned back to continue on to the bed.

"The gun," Jo breathed as he set her down next to the prone Ernie. "She could come back."

"The gun's empty," Nicholas growled, and she supposed he'd read that information from Dee's mind.

Jo glanced down as he jerked up her shirt to get a look at her wound, and silently echoed the voluble curse that he issued. It was bad. She was no doctor, but it was real bad. The hole itself wasn't that big on this side, but blood was gushing out of it like a water hose at half pressure. That didn't seem good to her.

"Hungry?" she asked with a forced smile.

The look Nicholas turned on her should have singed her eyebrows off.

"Sorry," Jo muttered, and then closed her eyes as he turned and rushed into the bathroom. She supposed it had been a poor attempt at humor, but really, she wasn't feeling well. Actually, that was kind of an understatement. She felt horrible.

It was getting harder to breathe, and she was growing weak.

"Stay with me, Jo."

She forced her eyes open at that growl to see that Nicholas had grabbed a towel from the bathroom and was pressing it down on her chest. Jo watched him, thinking that it should probably hurt, but it didn't. That probably wasn't good either, she thought a little hazily, and peered at his face. He looked frantic, but his eyes were flaming silver as they did when they made love and she mumbled, "Your mood eyes are reading horny again."

"What?" He peered at her face with confusion and then frowned at whatever he saw there. Taking one hand off her chest, he reached for her face, his eyes burning into hers as he touched her cheek and said harshly, "You have to stay with me, Jo."

"I'm here," Jo mumbled, and then opened her eyes and said, "I love you."

She didn't know where that had come from.

She hadn't planned on saying it, but knew it was true. She did love the big lug. He was handsome, and smart, and so built... and he had more honor in his pinky finger than most men had in their whole body. Nicholas had been born to help people, to save them, as he had saved her over and over. Jo was certain of that. She was also certain she wasn't going to be around to help him with it, which was a shame, because she really wished she could be.

Jo wished a lot of things, that she could help him solve the mystery of the past so he could stop running and settle down to enjoy life, preferably with her. She wished they could have a life together full of love and squabbles and making up.

She wished she could have his babies and...

Jo closed her eyes wearily, but forced them open again to get one more look at him, because as the darkness crept up the sides of her vision, she knew she would have none of what she wished for.

"Jo?" Nicholas said anxiously when she closed her eyes again. He reached up to slap her face lightly and then shook her a bit in an effort to wake her up, but it wasn't working. Cursing, he glanced around wildly and then back to her chest wound. He had been trying to stanch the blood, but it still seeped out around his fingers, and he cursed with frustration, wishing she was immortal. The nanos would stop the bleeding at once if she had any, he thought, and then froze as his mind suddenly cleared.

He had to turn her. It was that simple. The moment the thought struck his brain, Nicholas raised his wrist to his mouth, bit in, tearing away a flap of skin, and then forced Jo's mouth open and placed his wrist over it. He watched silently as his blood gushed over her lips, instinctively lifting her head up with his other arm so that the blood would run down her throat. When the bleeding slowed and then stopped, he eased her back onto the bed and ripped open another patch of skin on the same arm. This one he let bleed into her wound until it too slowed and stopped.

Nicholas glanced to her face then, holding his breath as he waited for some sign that he hadn't been too late. He knew he should have turned her right away rather than trying to stop her bleeding, but he hadn't exactly been thinking clearly. In truth, he hadn't been thinking clearly from the moment he'd seen Ernie pass him in a car and realized it was Jo in the passenger seat beside him.

Nicholas's gaze slid to Ernie. The man was as still as death, the arrow protruding from his heart ensuring he wouldn't be getting up again. At least not until the arrow was removed. Of course, the female who had escaped was a problem that would have to be dealt with later... preferably by someone else. If he was left to deal with it, Nicholas would probably wring the little bitch's neck for shooting Jo, and he didn't care that she'd actually been aiming at him and Jo had thrown herself on the weapon.

Jo moaned, and Nicholas leaned eagerly closer, watching her face.

A second moan came from Jo as she turned her head weakly. He closed his eyes and whispered, "Thank you, God," as he realized she was turning. He hadn't been too late.

His eyes opened again on the third moan, however, and Nicholas frowned with a new worry. The turning was excruciating to both the body and mind. It was known to bring on nightmares and hallucinations so horrible that turnees could be driven mad by it. Nicholas wasn't willing to risk it. There were drugs and tricks to help her through it, and he was going to make damned sure she got them.

Standing abruptly, he glanced around the room and then back to Jo and finally to Ernie. He wanted to leave the rogue behind, but couldn't risk that the mortal girl who had shot Jo might not return, remove the arrow presently incapacitating Ernie, and help him escape. Turning, he headed out of the room, pulling the door not quite closed so that it wouldn't lock behind him.

He then quickly crossed the parking lot to his van, jumped in, started it up, and moved it over to back it up to the motel room door.

Back inside the room, he took a moment to tug Jo's T-shirt back down, untie her, tie up Ernie with those ropes, and then make sure the arrow was still planted firmly in his chest. Nicholas then carted Ernie out to the van. He tossed him inside, satisfied by the thud of his body hitting the metal floor, and then hurried back inside to collect Jo as well. He started to pick her up, but paused as he noted the bloodstain on her shirt from the gunshot wound. He planned to set her in the front seat, and the bloodstain would draw more attention than he wanted to deal with at that moment.