Dawn had passed and now the morning sun rose in the east. The soft pinkish golden glow that would have fried any other minion caressed her pale limbs and austerely beautiful face just as his lips had done mere hours ago. Behind her, their house clung to the hill with the appearance of defying gravity, its three tiers jutting out from the craggy rock, its weathered wood and rock exterior making it seem a natural part of the native Southern California landscape.
He watched and waited, his crimson-tipped wings tucked close to his back to avoid catching drag in the
wind. He admired the vampress’s bravado, even as he acknowledged the futility of it. She couldn’t take on even one of his Sentinels; three was impossible.
Crouching, she slunk across his wide deck with a slender blade in her hand. When she pounced, he appreciated her grace and agility, which nearly matched Damien’s when he turned at the last possible moment and caught the business end of her blade in his hand, proving he’d sensed her coming.
One might have thought that would be the end of it, but she surprised them all by using the Sentinel’s grip to support her weight as she kicked out spread-eagled and knocked the two Sentinels flanking Damien into the table like falling chess pieces, sending papers flying.
Adrian leaped from his perch, his wings extending to their full thirty-foot span to catch an updraft. He soared, then dove, spiraling downward, relishing the rush of air through his hair and over his feathers. He skimmed the wide deck, the tips of his wings touching the planks, before he darted upward again, using the pull of gravity to slow his momentum and pull him back to the earth.
Lowering with effortless strength, he settled into place beside his mischievous mate, landing on the balls of his feet without a sound.
She caught his wrist and squeezed, opening her mind so that her thoughts became his.
Watching you fly makes me so hot.
“Watching you hunt is similarly affecting.” His face and tone of voice revealed nothing of his feelings for
her, out of deference for his men, but the way her fingertips slid across his palm told him she knew.
Malachai and Geoffrey straightened from their ignoble sprawls.
“That’s cheating,” Malachai said, stretching and flexing wings that were the color of sunset—pale yellow that darkened into deep orange tips.
Lindsay’s smile was brilliant. “One-on-one I get my ass kicked, but I think I might be able to work with a group. Using one to distract the others.”
“That’s insane,” Geoffrey scoffed, looking disgruntled. He’d recently likened Lindsay to a troublesome cat, one who crouched under couches and swiped at anyone hapless enough to walk by. But in truth, he appreciated her ceaseless efforts to hone herself so that she wasn’t as much of a liability. While Lindsay was an expert marksman and bladesman and was working hard on her hand-to-hand combat skills, she was still a fledgling vampire newly Changed. She hadn’t yet achieved the power and resilience that would eventually come with age. In the interim, she was unbearably vulnerable and easily broken.
Damien sighed. “No, that’s Lindsay. It’s our fault we weren’t ready for her.”
The lieutenant was wary of Lindsay’s impact on Adrian and the Sentinels’ mission, but he admired her as a warrior. While Adrian’s original second and beloved friend, Phineas, had been a strategist and Phineas’s replacement, Jason, had been good for morale, Damien’s strengths were found in battle and those were the same strengths he most appreciated in others.
Lindsay slid her blade into the sheath strapped to her thigh. “I touched base with all the international packs overnight. The communication blackout is working—you still have one hundred percent containment of the overseas lycan outposts. They have no idea the North American packs revolted.”
“Thank the Creator for small favors,” Malachai muttered.
“But we can’t risk using those lycans to contain their rogue brethren,” Geoffrey said. “Even though some of them will do so willingly.”
Adrian’s gaze lifted to the building set a half mile away—the lycan barracks. Once home to his pack and now home to a mere dozen lycans who’d straggled in over the last week and a half since the outposts had begun falling like a chain of dominos. More lycans returned to him every day, and when he touched their minds, as he did Lindsay’s, he felt their fear and confusion—and their loyalty, which humbled him.
The crumbling of the order he’d worked so hard for was part of his punishment for loving Lindsay, he knew—the loss of the lycans, the guilt of knowing others were paying for his mistakes, the strain of holding on to the tenuous balance between vampires and mortals by his fingernails. Although he’d committed the same offense as the Fallen, his penalty was different; he suspected that was because he was too useful to throw away. But he was paying in other ways, every day of his endless life. He’d paid for centuries watching Shadoe die over and over again, and he would continue to pay mentally and emotionally for an
indefinite time to come. “We need to reinforce the Sentinels still holding on to their outposts, which leaves us with only a handful here in the States to pull everything back together.”
They were outnumbered by a fatalistic margin. He had a firm hold on the Jasper and Juarez outposts, but the others were lost. He looked at the beautiful vampress beside him, once the vessel that carried Shadoe’s soul and now the woman who carried his heart in her hands. Her vampirism offered her a better chance of survival than she’d had as a mere mortal, but she was still weak and in need of frequent feeding. And Adrian’s powerful Sentinel blood was all she would drink, which afforded her the ability to withstand sunlight but also meant he couldn’t be separated from her for too long. As fragile as she yet was, that made her a terrible disadvantage for him.
His hands fisted against the need to touch her, a display of affection she wouldn’t welcome, not in front of his Sentinels. She was ever careful to keep from flaunting the love that consumed them both, knowing the risks he’d taken to claim her as his own. Angels weren’t supposed to crave or need another to complete them. They were meant to be above the failings of mortals, but he wasn’t so perfect. He hungered and ached for Lindsay with a ferocity he couldn’t control, and he couldn’t regret his trespass because it would belittle what he felt for her. He couldn’t profess his love for Lindsay in one breath, then beg forgiveness for it with the other without rendering both pledges worthless. And he couldn’t walk away or turn his back to her. She
was the very air he breathed, his reason for waking and fighting and persisting against the odds.
Inhaling deeply, he looked to the sky for answers and found none. “We don’t have the resources to hunt both lycans and vampires. We have to choose. We know what we’re dealing with on the latter front. The lycans, however, are a mystery.”
“They could expose us to mortals,” Damien said.
“They could hunt us to neutralize the risk we present to them,” Malachai suggested.
“They could ally with the vampires,” Geoffrey threw in. “I wouldn’t put it past Syre.”
Adrian nodded, knowing Syre was hurting now, having lost his daughter forever when Lindsay had exorcised Shadoe’s reincarnated soul from her body. “That’s the most likely scenario of the three.”
The three Sentinels didn’t know what it was like to lose a piece of one’s heart—they hadn’t been compromised by human emotions as Adrian and Syre had been. Adrian didn’t doubt that the vampire leader wanted to strike out in his grief, and the lycan revolt would give Syre the perfect means to that end.
Lindsay’s eyes lost their brightness. She shook her head vehemently. “I can’t see that happening. Elijah lives to hunt vamps, and he wants Vashti’s head on a platter for what she did to Micah.”
“And Syre, Torque, and Vashti want his because of Nikki’s abduction,” Adrian said, “but vengeance can be postponed with the right incentive.” He softened his voice, knowing she considered the lycan a friend. “You never thought he would revolt and he did.”
She bit her lower lip, her eyes reflecting her concern. Even now she worried about the Alpha.
Adrian brushed across her mind, a gentle caress to calm her, because he couldn’t bear to see her troubled. It wasn’t just Elijah’s fate making her anxious, but Syre’s, too. She wasn’t the vampire leader’s daughter by blood, but carrying Shadoe’s soul inside her had left a mark—she’d been exposed to Shadoe’s memories of Syre: fond, sweet recollections of a daughter’s love for her father. While they weren’t her memories, Lindsay felt the emotion of them as if they had been, and she grieved their loss.
She shot him a warning look, reminding him of her demand that he not “mess” with her mind. His head tilted in acknowledgment, but he didn’t cease soothing her because he didn’t perceive that as messing with her. At least not to his way of thinking.
Lindsay caught his wrist and imagined sticking her tongue out at him, the thought entering his mind with vivid clarity. He felt a silent laugh move through him. She was so full of vitality and humor despite the many blows life had dealt her. He was so different from her, having been created to punish and imprison, to maim and kill. But she was teaching him a different way, changing him in slow degrees, bringing her light into his darkness. And he made a concerted effort to learn and grow, to be the sort of man who could bring a smile to her face and happiness to her life. Because she was his soul. Who was he if not the man who loved her beyond all reason and self-preservation?
The phone began to ring in his office. They all heard
it despite the distance from where they stood and the glass patio door that closed off his workspace from the outdoors. Lindsay frowned and turned, still growing accustomed to her vampiric senses.
Adrian moved away, rounding the corner. The glass panel slid aside as he approached and he willed his wings away. They dissipated like fog in a stiff wind when he stepped inside, affording him comfortable movement as well as the ability to blend with mortals. The speakerphone was engaged by the third ring and his gaze held Lindsay’s as he settled into his chair.
“Mitchell,” he greeted the caller.
“Captain. Siobhán here.”
He leaned back in his chair, settling in. He’d tasked Siobhán with studying the disease ravaging the vampire ranks, and she had been working ceaselessly on that mission for weeks. It was she who’d inadvertently discovered that Sentinel blood cured the illness when a Sentinel working with her was bitten by one of the infected, resulting in the infected returning to a normal vampiric state. Considering the tens of thousands of vampires in North America alone and the less than two hundred Sentinels left in existence, it was information they couldn’t afford to have the vampires discover before an alternate cure was found. “How are you progressing?”
“Slowly but surely. I’ve got a dozen infected in stasis now. We can keep them alive with steady blood transfusions, but they have to stay anesthetized or they’re impossible to control.”
Adrian had seen the monstrosities in action
firsthand. He knew how mindlessly violent they were. “How quickly do they lose higher brain function?”
“How far do you want me to go to find out?” she asked grimly. “They’re already infected by the time I get them. If you want a play-by-play of what happens from exposure to illness, I’ll need to deliberately infect healthy subjects.”
“Do it. Our blood is a cure, so we can reverse the damage.” It was a brutal order and one he didn’t enjoy making, but the ends justified the means. When Nikki had attacked him and nearly taken his life, she’d still been cognizant enough to speak to him coherently. How recently had she been exposed? Had she been an example of someone who’d been recently contaminated? Or someone who’d been ill for a while? “Have you been able to spot any patterns in the rapidity of progression?”
Some vamps were dead within a few days, others lasted a few weeks, and still others appeared to be immune. Why?
“I think I’m onto something in that regard.” Her excitement came through in her voice. The pixielike Sentinel was ravenous for knowledge. “I’m not entirely positive yet, but it seems as if the advancement varies depending on how far removed the minion is from the Fallen heading their vampiric hierarchy. For example, Lindsay is once removed from Syre. Her infection would advance much more slowly than a minion she Changed, who would be twice removed from Syre. And so on and so on.”
He set his elbows on the armrests and steepled his fingers together. “You need to test Fallen blood.”
“It would be helpful, yes,” she conceded, certainly knowing how difficult it would be to attain. “Then I could see if it at least slows the development of the disease.”
“I’m your best chance of getting it,” Lindsay interjected. “As a vampire myself, I’d fit right in to any location where they congregate.”
Adrian’s response was immediate. “No.”
Her brows lifted. Her amber eyes challenged him—the distinctive irises of a vampire. One who could move among the others with ease, but who was still frail in many ways. His Sentinel blood would protect her from the illness, and she knew how to fight and wouldn’t hesitate to kill, but she’d still be vulnerable and he wouldn’t be close enough to protect her. And there was the fact that while most minions would have no idea who she was, some of the Fallen did because of Syre and Shadoe. She wasn’t totally anonymous.
He couldn’t risk her, couldn’t lose her. “No,” he said again, pushing the negation into her mind for emphasis.
“Stay out of my head, angel,” she growled.
Siobhán’s melodious voice floated out of the phone’s speaker. “I’m also going to need more lycan blood.”
“Not a problem.” He had plenty cryogenically stored, for identification and genetic testing purposes. “Anything else?”
“Perhaps…” She hesitated a moment. “Perhaps other angelic blood samples. From a
mal’akh
or even an archangel. Preferably both. Perhaps we Sentinels aren’t the only ones who carry the cure in our veins.”
“You don’t ask for much, do you?” Adrian said drily. Even though
malakhim
—the lowest rank of angel in the lowest sphere—were the most numerous, getting blood from one was no easy task. “I’ll see what I can do. Keep me posted.”