Vamped Up (29 page)

Without another word, she was out of sight.

Ruan caught Eve’s chin with his fingers and kissed her, hurriedly at first, then more gently when he must’ve realized, as she did, that they had all the time in the world. He slid his hand along the gentle slope of her neck, settled over her heart to feel its heavy pounding, and moaned against her lips. Even though Eve felt Ruan’s heart and soul behind their kiss, she could almost hear his head reel.

“You’re dying to know what maware you have, aren’t you?” she asked with a little smile, a breath away from his mouth.

“We have time to figure all the details out later. All that matters is that you know how much I love you. With everything I am.” He kissed her again, more gently, sparking a desire in her core that could never be squelched.

As stars faded from the sky and the golden California sun breached the horizon, Ruan didn’t shield his eyes. For the first time since he’d transitioned into a vampire, he met the sunrise head on. Eve had a sneaking suspicion that’s how they were going to be meeting a lot of things in the months to come.

“If I die tomorrow,” she sighed, basking in the warmth of Ruan’s love. “It’ll be because I love—”

He shushed her by kissing her forehead, the tip of her nose, her cheek. “There’ll be no more talk of death.” He settled into her mouth and languidly worked her lips. “From now on we focus on the life ahead of us.”

“I love you so much.” Eve rested her head on his shoulder. Her heart lulled into a peaceful, steady rhythm. “More than life itself.”

“Clearly.” With the softest of touches, Ruan brushed a strand of honey-blonde hair over her shoulder. He growled possessively, the tips of his fangs gleaming in the first rays of dawn, then grazed them against the side of her throat. “After all we’ve been though you’re still with me, aren’t you?”

Oh God yes.
“Forever.” Eve’s eyes fluttered closed as she tilted her head, allowing him everything he desired. She shivered beneath his touch. Fought for air in his arms.

“Forever then.” He dipped his fangs just beneath her skin and moaned. As he pulled the first stream of blood through his lips, the connection between them spiked. Passion unleashed in her core. She quivered with each erotic draw from his mouth, each aching tug of her heart against her rib cage. Just as smoothly as he dipped into her vein, Ruan pulled back, letting the long stroke of his fangs massage her skin on their way out. His restraint seemed effortless. “Though I doubt forever’s going to be long enough.”

Her breath hitched as his thumb stroked small circles beneath her chin. “Long enough for what?”

“To pleasure you the way you deserve.” He licked a slow, thick line beneath her jaw and nipped at her ear, scattering chills to her toes. “Because from now on that’s all I’m living for.”

“What about your pleasure?” she asked, and brushed over the love marks that had begun to tingle on her neck. She swiped two blood-tipped fingers across her lips, leaving a glossed trail of crimson behind.

“The elders who wrote the scrolls were wrong, you know,” Ruan said, his emerald eyes boring into hers. “The best things don’t await us in heaven.”

“No?”

“No.” He kissed her, slow and tender, sucked her lower lip into his mouth and licked off the blood. Eve shivered, though she felt her skin flush. “Heaven is here,” Ruan whispered against her lips. “Right here, with you in my arms.”

As he squeezed her tightly, cradling her in the warmth and safety of his embrace, Eve realized that for the first time in her life, she didn’t care about the past or the future. Now was all she had.

And now was absolutely perfect.

Epilogue

“W
ELL, THIS IS it.” Slade propped himself on the edge of Dylan’s desk and pawed at the hard line of his jaw. He looked like he’d aged a hundred years since returning from the haven not twenty minutes ago. He needed a shave. His skin looked rougher. His eyes blacker than black. “I brought as much of your stuff as I could carry, but there’s still a ton I had to leave behind. There just wasn’t time to snatch everything.”

Dylan swiveled in her chair, her usual all-business frown painted on her face. She unzipped the duffel he’d tossed at her feet and began digging through it. “You brought all my research,” she said flatly, though still managing to show gratitude. “Thanks, love.”

“You’re welcome.” He kissed her forehead. “Everything’s going to be okay, you know. We can rebuild the haven to what it was before.”

She nodded slowly, her gaze not meeting his.

The night had been hard on all of them, Ruan realized, even though Slade and Dylan hadn’t come anywhere near Fort Point. From Slade’s report, it seemed the death shades wreaked total havoc on their haven. Their security was compromised. Flattened. Khissmates dead. Fled. Disappeared. And the Crimson Council was no more. Ruan wouldn’t have believed the horrors if they hadn’t come directly from Slade’s mouth.

“I figured you could replace your possessions, but these . . .” Slade nicked the strap of the duffel with the toe of his boot and lifted his chin at Ruan. “She gonna be all right?”

He meant Eve. Ruan nodded and took another sip of the O+ and bourbon Slade had poured when he walked in. It had defrosted the worry niggling in his gut, filling him instead with the warm promise for a new day. A long-awaited dawn. A promising future with Eve. Far from Savage’s evil scope. Ruan may not be able to protect all the vampires in Crimson Bay, but at least he could protect the most important woman in his life. “She’s sleeping in my office.”

Ruan eyed the door as if he could see Eve stretched out on his lounge beyond it. He wanted nothing more than to slip behind her and mold himself to her perfect body. She’d be warm. Inviting. Irresistible. But she needed rest. If he nestled next to her, sleep was the last thing she’d get.

“She’s been through a lot tonight. And she’s handling everything surprisingly well.” Dylan’s fingers flashed over the keyboard, tap-tip-tapping at lightning-quick speed. “I still can’t believe you’re an elder, Ruan. Your head must be spinning.
Damn it.
”

“What is it?” Ruan asked, stepping behind her chair.

With a sigh, Slade shifted from one leather-clad hip to the other. “Systems are down. She can’t contact any haven within a hundred mile radius. It’s like the entire network was wiped off the radar.”

Savage
.

“No, it’s worse than I thought. It’s not only their systems.” Dylan pointed to a highly detailed image of Northern California, courtesy of the U.S. Vampire Security Council’s satellites. “Take a look at this.” She copied an address from a window behind the map and pasted it into the Search field. When the map zoomed to an area Ruan used to know well—Petaluma’s haven—he leaned over the desk. Slade did the same. “It’s gone,” she whispered as if speaking solemnly over a gravestone. “Just like the others. They‘re all the same.”

Thanks to the up-to-the-minute imagery, Ruan could see the exact layout of the haven. Or, rather, the black-scorched earth where the haven used to stand. Pieces of outbuildings could be spotted behind an octagonal-shaped main hall that had its sides and roof blown off. But the rest of the land was destroyed. Nearly unrecognizable. No trees. No . . .
life
.

“Lilith was right. Savage bound the shades left in the fort to himself.” Ruan grit his teeth. “That‘s the only way he could‘ve destroyed the haven that fast. Who knows what kind of mawares he’s got flowing through his veins by now.”

“He’s making his way across the state,” Dylan said, thinking aloud.

Slade hissed, his skin paling. He knew what his damned half-brother was capable of. “How many others are gone?”

“The only way I can know for sure is to tap into the main database and count how many havens are off-line.” Dylan’s fingers went wild again. Ruan rested his hands on the narrow curve of her shoulders, feeling her go rigid beneath him. “I’ll have to make contact with each Primus individually. But right now, from the Google images alone, I’d say we’re looking at twenty havens. More or less.”

Ruan watched Slade’s hand drop to his gun. He paced around the front of Dylan’s desk, his eyes glowing blood-red beneath ReVamp’s amber lab lights. The hatred burning there matched the anger erupting in Ruan’s middle. They didn’t have to be related to the other khiss members to feel like family.

“Savage couldn’t have wiped them all out yet. There have to be hundreds . . . thousands of vamps displaced,” Slade said, once he had Dylan’s attention. “With the mawares protecting ReVamp, we’ve got shelter here, but we can’t house a massive vamp exodus. Where are those poor suckers supposed to go?”

Dylan looked over her shoulder, shooting Ruan a sideways glance.

“Dylan?” Ruan asked, drawing out her name, not sure how to formulate his question. Something about the hard set of her mouth told him she already knew it. “Do you think he knows about the Black Moon haven?”

She shook her head slowly and drew out a long, unsure “No.”

“Is there any way you could get word to them?”

“He couldn’t know. That’s not possible.”

“They should have a monitoring system. Could you see if there’s been any kind of system bleep in Black Moon’s region?”

“Ruan . . .” It was a plea to stop.

He didn’t listen. Instead, he circled her chair and went palms-down on her desk. “It used to be a sort of vamp refugee camp. Hell, vamps could still be headed out there for hope’s sake alone. But you’ve heard the lore about that place. If he gets there . . .” He let his words fall as he thought about Savage’s plans.

Slade slanted Dylan a glance. “If this place is so damn important, why aren’t your fingers buzzing over that keyboard, looking it up like the others?”

Again, Dylan and Ruan’s eyes met.

This time Slade growled in response, breaking their connection. “Someone better tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Dylan focused on the screen again, no doubt searching for signs of Black Moon, just in case things had changed. “Slade, no one knows where the haven is . . . exactly. You have to be formally invited to glimpse it and even then you might not be where you thought you were. Some people say it‘s constantly moving, floating from place to place.”

“Or dimension to dimension,” Ruan finished.

“Sounds damn confusing,” Slade grumbled, stealing what was left of Ruan’s drink and tossing it back. Ice clunked against his teeth.

Lost in thought, Ruan absentmindedly picked up a red stress-ball from Dylan’s desk, gave it a squeeze, and walked backwards until he came to rest on the wall just behind him. He kicked his foot up, focusing far across the lab, where Eve lay quiet and sleeping behind the safety of his office door. If he listened closely, beyond the pecking of the lab clock, and Slade’s gnashing of ice chunks, he could hear Eve‘s heartbeat, strong and true. He squeezed the hell out of the ball, his fingers tensing, squishing in, then relaxing and pushing out.

“If Savage is silencing the network and destroying havens,” Ruan said. “Black Moon would be the ultimate trophy. A challenge. The vamp version of Atlantis.”

Dylan sighed. “If the lore is true, think of everything that could be lost.”

She was right. Rumors of Black Moon’s khissmates gaining eternal life, healing powers, or enhanced mawares had reached far and wide. They were documented everywhere, though most believed the stories were more fairy tale than fact. Ruan had heard that once you’re inducted into the khiss, you become forever loyal to the haven, happily giving up individual rights for the greater good. He’d heard talk of missionaries and religious fanaticism. Of angels and demons, vampires and therians, and paranormal creatures of which he could never dream.

But most of all, those things were just rumors. Because anyone who went into the haven at Black Moon never came back. Whether they were killed or simply vanished like the haven itself, its secrets had never been totally revealed. Sure, crazies claimed to have gone there and been dismissed, but they were locked away in loony bins, having gone totally mental. Some letters were found a few years back, supposedly written by a long-standing khissmate, but it was quickly destroyed and the author dropped off the planet.

“You’re right,” Ruan said, pulling his cell out of his back pocket. “There could be more to lose than we know. Savage is always thinking of everything he could gain, and in this case the possibilities really are endless. He may not be heading that way, but keep trying to touch base with them anyway. If this place keeps disappearing, we may never have a shot at getting the answers we need, but we have to try. We just have to hope it’s not too late.”

“Speaking of disappearing,” Slade piped up, his eyes darkening from red to tar-black. “Where’s that Damian fool? Thought you took off to the market with him.”

“Dante,” Ruan corrected, knowing damn well Slade remembered his name.
Prick
. He checked his cell’s
no messages
light for the umpteenth time. “I haven‘t heard from him.”

“You must be heartbroken.”

Half-laughing, Ruan stalked to his office, ignoring Slade and Dylan’s low banter the entire way. He hesitated at the door, hand to knob, glad to know that even after all they‘d been through recently, it didn‘t take more than one of Slade’s smart-ass remarks to lighten the mood.

Just to be sure, Ruan checked his phone again. No texts. No emails.
Nothing
. Since teleporting from the elder black market with that virginal elder, Ruan hadn’t heard a word from Dante. He’d disappeared . . . vanished into thin air. Literally.

Ruan couldn’t help but wonder how that teleporting gig of his worked. Where he’d end up. What he’d see. Why it took so much out of him. Which got Ruan thinking about his own maware and when he’d start to feel different. Isn’t that how it worked? He’d go to sleep one morning feeling the same as every other, then wake up the next night feeling like a changed man. Born anew. With a maware—what had Lilith said?—
that they don’t bestow upon just anyone
.

Ruan’s head thrummed with questions. But the one stuck on repeat was whether the maware surging through him would be enough to stop Savage and whatever he had planned.

As he palmed the office door and pushed it open, Eve’s soft sighs of sleep floated to him on a draft of honey-sweet air. He closed his eyes. Breathed her in. She was sleeping so peacefully, curled into a ball beneath a mocha-colored fleece blanket, her head cradled in the crook of her arm. Just how he’d pictured her from the lab. Content beyond belief to snooze in his office while the whole world outside seemed to be shaking with uncertainty.

D
ANTE THREW UP
his hand to guard against another one of
her
attacks. “You finished yet?”

She thwacked him again, right across the shoulder. And again, upside the back of the head for good measure. She couldn’t have thought she was actually hurting him. “I wasn’t ready to leave, dammit, take me back!”

“That’s not happening.” He shooed her with an annoyed wave of his hand, glad the shakes and chills had finally subsided. “Now just calm down, would you?”

After glaring at him for a few moments, she planted her hands on her hips like a pissed-off little teapot. At least she wasn’t hitting him. He supposed it was progress. To think, not twenty minutes ago at the elder black market, Dante had wanted her hands all over him. Ask and ye shall receive, right?

Stifling a laugh, Dante sat forward on his haunches, rubbed his aching head, and tried to slow her words down.
Take me back.
“Why on earth would you want to go back there?”

“Why on earth would you think I would need your rescuing?” She mocked him, a stubborn yet downright adorable pout pushing out her heart-shaped lips.

The elder black market wasn’t exactly the slime-slathered gutters of San Francisco, but it was a far cry from the Hilton. She’d been captured. Bound. Restricted from using her mawares. That bastard Juan Carlos was beating her around. She’d been
sold,
for Christ’s sake!

He’d saved her.

Only as Dante looked around from his squatted position in a mound of wet, muddy earth, spotted an unfamiliar forest and a woman who looked like she’d rather kill him than thank him for removing her from that place, Dante realized he looked more like the one who needed saving.

To hell with that.

Mustering all his strength, Dante tested his legs by shooting one out from beneath him, kneeling on it, then following suit with the other. He crouched in the mud, listening to the elder take sharp, quick breaths over him. When he finally got to his feet, he regained his balance by grasping onto a thick Douglas fir tree on his right. Teleporting always wiped him physically, but this time his head felt painfully muddled. Like he’d chop off his left leg for an adrenaline drip.

Dante looked around. They were in some sort of tiny clearing, surrounded by fir trees with a hollowed-out mud pit in the middle. From where they stood, the forest went uphill in every direction until the land crested just out of sight, no doubt leading to hundreds of other tree rings and mud pits. Thick trunks popped up like daises through moss-clotted earth. No city sounds buzzed on the cool midnight air. Was that salt he picked up on the breeze? Ocean? They were far from San Francisco, Dante figured that much right away. But the ocean? How far had he traveled? Pain seared through his temples. Disorientation must’ve been fucking with his head.

Although teleporting wasn’t an exact science, he’d like to think over his fifty years on this earth he’d learned a thing or two about it. But he’d never, not once, teleported to a place he’d never been.

And for the life of him, he couldn’t remember his head ever hurting so damn much.