COLD FILLED MY chest the moment we arrived on the quiet street lined with large older homes. Though not a vampire was in sight, I knew immediately that there were at least three dozen of them nearby, and my improved radar told me exactly where they were. So many vampires working together was almost unheard of, and no Mohiri team could expect to defeat that many at once.
“Do you feel them?” I asked Eldeorin.
“I sense demons, but I have trouble telling the Mohiri and the vampires apart.”
I looked up and down the street. I couldn’t sense Nikolas, but I told myself that was just because he wasn’t close enough. He’s okay. If anyone is okay, it’s him.
“I can’t do this alone. There are too many.”
“We’ll do it together.” He waved a hand, and I found myself dressed in black again, this time with two silver blades strapped to my thighs.
Seconds later, a male vampire ran from between two houses. I knew Eldeorin had made us – or at least me – visible when the vampire stopped and stared at me across the well-lit street. Indecision showed clearly on his face, and he looked up the street before his gaze came back to me.
I saw it the moment he made up his mind, and I was ready when he attacked. He was fast and his fangs were already extended when he reached me. He grabbed my shoulders in an iron grip and pulled me against him.
My hand came up between us, and he let out a small scream and staggered back when the first blast of power ripped through him. I don’t think he knew what was happening until I pressed my glowing hand to his chest a second time. Shock and fear filled his face as he crumpled to the pavement.
I stepped around the body in the direction he had been looking. “This way.”
Two houses down we encountered two vampires feeding on an older man. I leapt on one of them and took him out quickly, leaving Eldeorin to handle the other one. There was nothing we could do for the man, so we moved on.
The need to find Nikolas burned through me, dampening my fear and lending speed to my movements. Methodically, I located vampires, and Eldeorin helped me kill them as we made our way up the street to a large white house where I sensed the largest concentration of vampires.
But no Nikolas. “Why can’t I feel him?” The possible answer to that was something I refused to consider. If I did, I’d fall to pieces.
“My glamour prevents your demons from sensing each other,” Eldeorin said. “It is the only way to shield you from detection.”
“Oh thank God.”
I didn’t need to feel Nikolas to know he was in the white house that was crawling with vampires. “There are way too many vampires in there. We have to draw them out and give Nikolas and the others a chance.”
Eldeorin studied the large house. “How would you like to do that?”
It occurred to me then that he was letting me make all the tactical decisions. I didn’t care if he was turning this into another training session as long as we helped Nikolas and Chris.
“Nikolas won’t recognize me, right?”
“Not unless you want him to.”
The urge to laugh eased some of the tension coiled in my body. “Let’s save that drama for another day.” Putting my fingers to my lips, I let out a piercing whistle. “Hey, suckers, fresh meat.”
Eldeorin shook his head as the front door crashed open. “I see we are going with the direct approach.”
I should have been terrified to see six vampires spill from the house, but I felt strangely calm. Maybe it was the powerful faerie standing beside me or the result of our training sessions. Or maybe it was the knowledge that every vampire I drew out of the house gave Nikolas a better chance at survival.
“You are awfully young to be a hunter,” drawled one of the vampires as they advanced slowly on us.
One of his companions laughed. “But not too young to die.”
“I heard young Mohiri blood is very sweet,” the first one said. “I get first drink.”
Another vampire spoke up. “Hey, why do you get first drink? We all saw her at the same time.”
“Because I’m the oldest and I say so, that’s why.”
“Are you guys for real?” Were they actually arguing over my blood in front of me?
They stopped bickering to stare at me.
“Before you draw straws to see who gets the first taste, you might want to ask yourselves one question.”
The six of them formed a semicircle in front of us. The fact that they never looked at Eldeorin told me he was invisible again. These guys had no clue what was in store for them.
“What question?” asked the vampire who acted like their leader.
“You gotta ask why a defenseless girl would walk up to a house full of blood suckers.” I watched their eyes go round as blue sparks rolled over my skin and lifted my hair from my shoulders. A thrill shot through me, and I knew how a hunter felt when they sighted their prey.
Six pairs of eyes suddenly shifted to my right as Eldeorin made his entrance. I used their surprise to my advantage, and I attacked before they knew what was happening. A few months ago, my power would have given a baby vampire a very painful but otherwise harmless shock. Not so anymore.
I hit the leader with a palm heel strike that sent him flying backward with flames sprouting from his chest. My leg swept another vampire off his feet. I grabbed his arm and shot power into him as a third vampire jumped on my back. The one on my back screamed and tried to get away from me as soon as he got a taste of my power. I flipped him over my shoulder and grabbed his throat before he hit the ground. After spending the last month killing older vampires, fighting a bunch of baby vamps was almost too easy. In less than two minutes, I killed four of them, while Eldeorin took care of the last two.
“That worked well.”
I barely heard Eldeorin because I was listening to the sounds of fighting coming from inside the house. By my count we had killed about fifteen vampires so far. That still left twenty or so, and I knew they weren’t all young or Nikolas and his team would have taken care of them already.
“There are still too many of them.” I ran toward the house, but instead of going to the front door, I went around to the back. The door was wide open and I could see movement inside. I took a deep breath and prepared to call out again, hoping to trick a few more vampires into leaving the house.
Before I could open my mouth, my eyes were drawn to a movement above. A figure dove through a window and rolled across the roof of the back porch. Nimbly she came to her feet and jumped off the porch, landing silently in the grass. Shock immobilized me when I saw her hair gleaming like white gold in the moonlight.
“Madeline!”
She glanced at me in surprise, then she began to sprint away.
“Mother!”
Madeline stopped running, and her head swung in my direction again. At first she looked confused, and then I saw recognition in her eyes. I knew Eldeorin had lifted my glamour so she could see the real me. Shock and something I could not define passed over her face as we stared at each other for several seconds. I waited for her to say something to the daughter she hadn’t seen in sixteen years.
She ran instead.
I didn’t try to chase her, as much as I wanted to, because I could never catch her on foot. I watched as she raced toward the tall fence at the back of the yard and vaulted over it without once looking back.
Vampire screams drew my attention back to the house. There was no time to dwell on the fact that I’d finally caught up to Madeline and let her slip away. Or to question what kind of mother leaves her daughter – even an estranged one – behind with a vampire horde. Right now, my only concern was the vampire that had run outside at the sound of my voice. He wasn’t young like the ones out front, and I barely had time to recover from my shock about Madeline before he was on me.
Eldeorin materialized and ripped the vampire away from me. I don’t think I ever fully grasped the extent of my mentor’s power until I saw a mature vampire almost disintegrate in his hands. Would I ever be that powerful? The prospect excited and frightened me at the same time.
A male shouted inside the house, and he was answered by another. Nikolas!
I was almost to the open door when three figures flew through it. The two vampires snarled and rounded on the blond warrior as he raised his long thin sword. I knew Chris could handle them. I wasn’t so sure about the two more vampires sneaking up behind him.
I pulled out one of the knives I hadn’t needed until now. It wasn’t a throwing knife in my hand, but I knew from practice how to hold it and make it behave like one. I didn’t hesitate as I drew back my arm and let the knife fly straight into the chest of one of the advancing vampires.
The vampire’s strangled cry alerted Chris to the threat behind him and drew everyone’s attention to me. Chris frowned, and his expression told me he was surprised to see someone else there. His lack of recognition told me Eldeorin had glamoured me again.
One of the vampires split away to come after me, and the others attacked Chris. I had my other knife out and my power ready before the vampire reached me. He lunged at me, but his eyes were on the blade in my right hand instead of my glowing left hand. I let him grab me before I brought my hand up between us. Shock registered on his face, and he shuddered violently as my power found its mark. I threw him away from me, and he twitched on the ground in his death throes.
My attention turned back to Chris, who had killed one vampire and was quickly dispatching the other. His opponent fell and he immediately scanned the yard for other dangers. His eyes fell on me, and he gave a slight nod before he raced back into the house again. I heard more shouts and screams and the sound of metal sliding through flesh. When two more vampires fled from the house with fear written plainly on their faces, I knew the battle had turned in our favor. I let Eldeorin have the pleasure of killing the vampires before they could escape.
A vampire crashed through a lower window and another ran out the back door. I was moving to intercept them when a warrior sped through the doorway and cut one down with one of his swords. He spun away from the dying vampire to impale the one that had gone through the window before it had a chance to stand.
My knees grew weak and relief washed over me as I watched Nikolas fight. He was magnificent. And he was safe. All I wanted to do was run to him, but I remembered in time that he couldn’t know I was here.
His eyes swept the yard and settled on me. It was hard to read his expression, and I wondered what I looked like to him, or if he connected me with the vigilante whose movements they had been following.
“Who are you?”
My voice refused to work for several seconds. “A friend,” I managed to say.
“That doesn’t answer my question.” He waved a hand at the bodies littering the yard. “No human could do this. What are you and how did you find us?”
“That is because I am not human. As for how I found you, I have my ways.”
His furrowed brow told me he wasn’t satisfied with my response – not that I’d expected anything else. He took a step toward me, and I suddenly realized the situation I was in. I couldn’t outrun him, and I couldn’t just disappear in front of his eyes either. That was a Fae ability, and he was too smart not to put the pieces together.
“Nikolas,” someone called from inside the house.
He didn’t take his eyes off me. “What is it, Devon?”
“We found a tablet and some other things, but she’s not here. Looks like she got away.”
Of course, she had. Madeline had done what she was best at and saved her own ass. Why would she care about the lives of people she knew, including her own daughter, when she’d never cared before?
Glass shattered loudly followed by screams, and Nikolas forgot about me to speed around to the front of the house. As soon as he was out of sight, Eldeorin appeared and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Time to go, Cousin.”
We reappeared in the kitchen, surprising the hell out of Heb who was taking a large sheet of cookies from the oven. The metal sheet clattered across the tile floor, and the noise brought Jordan running into the room.
“You’re back!” She skidded to a halt and her eyes swept over me. “You look amazing. Well, except for the blood and… is that a vampire fang in your hair?”
I thought she was kidding until I reached up and felt the sharp tooth tangled in my hair. My stomach churned and I threw the thing away from me, watching as it bounced across the kitchen floor. Wordlessly, Heb used a paper towel to pick it up and throw it in the trash.
“Say something. What happened up there? Is the team okay?”
Now that it was over and I knew Nikolas was safe, the weight of the night’s events came crashing down on me. Killing vampires didn’t bother me, but the sheer number of them that had attacked Nikolas’s team scared the hell out of me. And then there was Madeline. After all the months of searching for her, I finally find her and she gets away. After this, I wouldn’t be surprised if she fled the continent and disappeared for good.
Eldeorin waved his hand to clean me up, and then sat me at the small breakfast table. Jordan sat across from me with an expectant look on her face.
Desmund appeared in the doorway and started yelling at Eldeorin. “She looks terrible. I told you she was not up for this.”
“Desmund, I’m fine, just a bit wiped.” I smiled at Jordan. “Nikolas and the others are safe. At least I think everyone is safe. We didn’t stick around long once it was over.”
Jordan raised her hand in a high five. “I want to hear every detail.”
I told her and Desmund everything that had happened from the moment we left here to the moment we returned. Jordan was wide-eyed as I recounted each fight, especially when Eldeorin added his own embellishments.
She muttered a few obscenities when she heard about Madeline. “I thought my mother was bad. Are you sure she knew who you were?”
I remembered the recognition in Madeline’s eyes. “She knew.”
“And Nikolas had no idea who you were?”
“None.”
“What about the bond thing? Can’t he sense you like you do him?”
“Not through a faerie glamour. I couldn’t sense him either.”
A phone rang and Heb went to answer it. He reappeared a minute later with a cordless phone, which he handed to Desmund.
Desmund spoke briefly to whoever it was, then hung up and smiled at us. “Nikolas called Raoul to let him know the team is safe. The Seattle team has just arrived on site, and they are taking over the cleanup operation.”
Even though I’d been there and talked to Nikolas, it was still a huge relief to hear that the whole team had made it out. “Did he say when he’s coming back?”
“They should be here sometime tomorrow morning.”
I sagged in my chair, and Desmund laid a hand on my shoulder. “I don’t like you going into such dangerous situations, but I understand why you had to do it.” He looked at Eldeorin over my head. “Thank you for keeping her safe.”
“You do not have to thank me, warrior. Sara is stronger than you could possibly imagine. One day, she will realize that as well.”
Eldeorin spoke with such conviction it was impossible not to believe him. Training with him had shown me I was capable of more than I’d ever dreamed, but tonight had taken it to a whole new level. The whole time I was out there, my fear had been for Nikolas, not for me. When had I stopped being terrified of vampires? I still feared them, yes, but I was no longer the defenseless, frightened girl Eli had pulled into that alley.
I stood, covering a yawn with my hand. “If you guys don’t mind, I think I’ll go to bed.”
Jordan nodded. “I think you’ve earned a good night’s sleep. Too bad no one but us will know what you did tonight.”
“For now. I’m going to tell Nikolas everything when I think he can handle it.”
Laughter filled the kitchen. “Just let us know when you plan to do it so we can be far away,” Jordan quipped.
I gave them a tired smile. “Good night, guys.”
It felt strange entering my quiet bedroom after everything that had gone down tonight. I was so overwhelmed by it all that I barely knew what I was doing as I showered and got ready for bed. I burrowed under the comforter and snuggled my pillow, exhausted but happy. Nikolas was safe, and he would be home tomorrow.
My sleep was deep and restful, unmarred by a single bad dream. Sometime around dawn I awoke to a hand touching my face and an achingly familiar caress against my mind. “Nikolas,” I said thickly, trying to come fully awake.
“Shhh. Go back to sleep.” His lips brushed my forehead. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
I felt his heat pulling away and I made a sound of protest. Reaching for him, my fingers slid through his soft hair as I tugged him back to me. My lips found his warm, full mouth and I kissed him urgently, driven by the joy of having him home and the fear of almost losing him. The intoxicating smell of him and the brush of his day-old beard against my face sent shivers racing through me. I wanted nothing else in that moment but to lose myself in him.
The bed dipped as he stretched out, half beside me, half over me. My stomach careened wildly when he whispered my name against my lips and took possession of them. His mouth was firm and demanding, yet gentle. I felt drunk from the taste of him, and my hands clung desperately to his hard arms.
My breath hitched as his hand left my shoulder to slide in a feather light caress down my ribs and rest against my bare stomach where my T-shirt had ridden up. The heat of his hand was like a brand against my skin, and a small noise escaped me.
Nikolas made a sound deep in his chest and broke the kiss, moving his head until it lay beside mine. I could feel his short warm breaths against my ear and his heart beating as hard as mine. After a minute, he lifted his head and his dark eyes peered down into mine. “I should go.”
Confusion and hurt flared in my chest. “Okay,” I whispered hoarsely.
He groaned and rested his forehead lightly against mine. “Jesus, Sara, don’t look at me like that or I’ll never be able to leave.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
“I know, but you’re also not ready for where this is headed.”
“I…” I wanted to deny it, but he was right. Getting caught up in a few heated kisses didn’t make me ready to go farther. It wasn’t that I believed you had to wait for marriage or anything. I just didn’t feel like I was ready for that level of intimacy.
He rolled away until he lay on his back beside me. I heard a deep sigh and then his hand reached for mine. “I’m sorry about what happened before I left. I didn’t handle it well and I hated leaving you upset. I know how important it is to you to find Madeline, and I should have known you’d expect to be there when we brought her in. But I’m also glad I listened to my gut and didn’t take you with us. This was a rough one.”
I know. “I was scared for you.”
I felt his face turning toward me, and I turned mine so our eyes met.
“That’s how I felt the whole time I was looking for you,” he said gruffly. “I was afraid something would hurt you before I found you.”
“I’m sorry.”
He exhaled deeply. “I wish I could explain how it feels, this need to protect you, and how crazy it makes me when you’re in danger. The bond is a part of me – us – and it’s not something I can just turn off. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I gave him a sad smile. “I’m trying to, but it’s hard. Put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel if you suddenly lost your freedom and had people telling you what to do? I don’t want to be pampered and taken care of. I’m not fragile, and I don’t break that easily.”
“I know you’re not.” He lifted our joined hands and held them to his chest. “Your spirit and independence make you who you are, Sara, and I never want to take them from you.”
I didn’t reply. How could I tell him his restrictions were slowly doing that?
“All I’ve known for a long time is how to be a warrior and how to command others. That’s worked with everything else in my life. It’s taken me a while to learn that won’t work with us.”
“You figured that out, huh?” I teased, and his answering smile lightened the mood in the room. “Do you think you’ll ever get past it, this overprotectiveness?”
He sighed again. “I’ll never stop worrying about your safety, but I think it will get easier.”
“When I prove I can defend myself, will you treat me like the other warriors?”
He laughed softly. “I can safely say I will never see you as one of the other warriors. But I will try to be less of a tyrant. And when you demonstrate you are ready for a mission, I won’t stop you from going on one. I guarantee I won’t like it, but I won’t hold you back.”
“Thank you.” It was a baby step, but one in the right direction. I wished I could tell him my secret, but I didn’t want to ruin this moment. Soon.
He unclasped our hands and held his arm above my head. I didn’t need more invitation than that, and I moved over to snuggle against his side with one arm across his chest. He stroked my hair as he often did, and I sighed blissfully.
“Do you want to talk about Vancouver?” I asked after we had been quiet for several minutes.
“Later. Right now I just want to hold you.”
My chest swelled. How could I say no to that?
