“Yes, Syre.”
Yes, Syre.
Elijah was determined to hear her cede to him as thoroughly…while she was beneath him, taking hard, deep thrusts of his aching cock. That he could want her and want to kill her at the same time was fucking with his head. Rachel’s pain was a vice around his chest…Lindsay had lost her mother to Vashti’s viciousness…yet still he craved the vampress with a ferocity that shook him.
She squeezed his shoulders with a vampire’s strength, which just happened to be the exact pressure he most enjoyed. Her hands ran down either side of his spine, kneading, before reaching his ass and palming it. Her tongue peeped out and slid over her full lower lip.
“You can’t have Lindsay, you know. She’s brain-dead over Adrian. Gave up her life for him.”
He fought the seductive lure she was trying to wrap him with. “What—exactly—did you do to her, Vashti?”
“You’ve been a Sentinel dog for years. Bet you’ve never seen Adrian look twice at a woman. Why her? What’s special about her?”
“Get to your point.”
“She’s—well, she
was
—Syre’s daughter.”
Elijah froze, his fingers going slack with shock. “Impossible.”
None of the vampires could procreate—soulless creatures couldn’t create a being with a soul. But…Lindsay had shown anomalous traits almost from the beginning.
“She was born with another soul inside her. The reincarnated soul of Syre’s naphil daughter, created before he fell.”
“What did you do, Vashti?” he repeated.
“What had to be done for one soul to overcome the other.”
Rage burned through his blood like fire, tightening his hands around her throat. In that moment, he was a breath away from separating her head from her neck.
“Did you Change her?” he snarled, fighting off the shift rippling just beneath his skin. “Did you kill her spirit? Is Lindsay gone?”
For the first time, fear shadowed her eyes and whitened her lips. As his claws extended and pierced through her pale skin, blood slid over the upper curve of her breasts in crimson tendrils. “She’s still Lindsay.
Shadoe’s soul was lost when Syre finished the Change. And he wasn’t lying—Lindsay wanted it.”
“Bullshit. She hated vampires because of you. Because you killed her mother. She would never become one willingly.”
A frown marred the space between Vash’s brows. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Two decades back. A pretty little blond five-year-old and her mother, having a nice picnic in the park…until a pack of vamps decided to have a snack.”
“No.” The confusion cleared. Her gaze bored into his. “Not my style. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask her. She must’ve figured it out when she gnawed these holes in my neck and dug into my blood memories. She had me down and pinned with a sharp piece of wood nearby; she could’ve vanquished me, but she let me go.”
Needing definitive answers, he pushed away from her plush, pliant body. He derided himself for wanting to believe her. “I need to know she’s okay. Make it happen.”
“You’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
He staked her to the tree with a fierce glance. “
Now
, Vashti.”
Cursing under her breath, she retrieved her phone from the ground and riffled through her contacts. A moment later, ringing came over the phone, followed by the clipped greeting of a receptionist at Mitchell Aeronautics. “Adrian Mitchell, please. Tell him Vashti is calling.”
Elijah’s arms crossed as he waited, his mind
spinning from the fact that the vampires had once had Lindsay in their clutches and had let her go back to Adrian, effectively forfeiting the Sentinel leader’s only weakness. Why?
“Vash.”
Adrian’s richly sonorous voice flowed through the phone’s speaker, sans video.
“How’s the new love of your life, Adrian?” Vash’s mouth curved bitterly. “Did she make it?”
“She’s exceptionally well. How’s your neck?”
“Still holding my head and body together.”
“You continue to have vicious rogues in your numbers, Vashti.” Despite the harshness of his words, the Sentinel leader’s tone remained as even and smooth as always. “We’ll be hunting them.”
All of the Sentinels displayed that steely control and neutrality of emotion, but Elijah had heard Adrian speaking with Lindsay and he knew the angel’s still waters ran deep.
She snorted. “Not everyone in your ranks is toeing the line either, I hear.”
“You’ll stay away from Lindsay. She’s no longer any concern of yours or Syre’s.”
Vash looked at Elijah. “She’s a vampire, Adrian. That makes her one of us.”
“She’s my mate; that makes her mine. Forgetting that will see your neck no longer serving its purpose.”
“I love it when you talk dirty,” she purred. “Give my regards to Lindsay.” She ended the call, then redialed. The video activated and Syre’s face appeared. “Lindsay’s okay. And Adrian threatened me over her, so he’s still protecting her. She’s in loving hands, Samyaza.”
Elijah stepped closer, his gaze riveted to the vampire leader’s haunted eyes. A long moment later, Syre swallowed and a deep exhale escaped him. “
Todah
, Vashti.”
“You’re welcome.” Her face and voice softened. “I should have checked sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.”
Silent understanding passed between the two vampires. The instinctive exchange bespoke of a long relationship and deep compassion. Elijah was contemplating his own changing perceptions about Vashti—most especially his absorption of her as a person who had a soft heart beneath the hard exterior—when she ended the call and faced him.
She arched a brow. “Feel better?”
“Enough for now.” He wouldn’t feel totally settled until he spoke with Lindsay himself, but at least he knew she was with Adrian, who would die for her. His friend was safe for now.
“Less inclined to kill me now?”
He bared his teeth in a smile.
She shrugged. “Worth a shot.”
A
s Vash opened the rear hatch of her Jeep, she felt Elijah’s stare move down her back.
Something had shifted between them a moment ago. She’d felt it, even if she couldn’t define it.
“What are you doing?” His rough, rumbling voice at her shoulder prompted a deep, cleansing breath, and she closed her eyes.
The hardest transition from Watcher to Fallen hadn’t been the loss of her wings; it had been the surge of emotion that shattered her previously inviolate equanimity. Since Charron, the only blessing she’d received was the numbness of all-encompassing fury. That a lycan—one of the very creatures who’d made her what she was today—should be the one to break through her shell and rattle her was the most heinous irony.
“These are surveillance cameras.” She pulled out one of the long rods that had a camera on top of it. “You’ll want to get some of your men to place them
around the perimeter in widening circles. Then station a team on the surface to monitor the feed.”
Stepping back, she let him see that the rear seat had been laid flat, expanding the cargo area to hold dozens of cameras.
“Jumping in with both feet,” he said, glancing at her with those brilliantly verdant eyes.
She set the tip of the camera pod on the ground and leaned her weight into it. Syre didn’t want the lycans to know just how much they were needed, but there’d been too many skeletons popping out of closets already. Considering who they both were—hunters of the highest caliber for their respective factions—there would certainly be more transgressions they’d hate each other for. Neither of them could afford to hold back from this point forward, just as they couldn’t delve too deeply into their pasts. Theirs was a merger of necessity. Regardless of the things they’d done previously, they needed each other now. Digging up secrets would only make the going more difficult; it couldn’t change the route.
Vash met his gaze. “What choice do we have?”
“Right.” But the line of his mouth softened.
“These are just a temporary precaution. We’ll start moving your people out of here in the morning. I know you’ll want to be near rural areas, but we need a command center with easy transportation access. I’ve got specs on some properties that meld the two needs. Money isn’t a concern.”
He shifted his stance, and his irises took on a preternatural glow. Her hackles rose. She spun around before
she heard the rustle behind her, kicking herself inwardly for being caught unawares, another sign that Elijah had knocked her off her game.
A slender woman stepped into the clearing. Dressed in a simple sleeveless floral dress with buttons down the front, she looked fresh and innocent except for her eyes, which were narrowed and hot with hatred.
Rachel. The mate of the lycan Vash had tortured in an effort to find Elijah, whose blood had been left at the scene of Nikki’s abduction.
“Back off, Rachel,” Elijah warned.
“She’s mine, El.”
Vash moved subtly, firming her stance and preparing to unsheathe the blades on her back. She commiserated with Rachel’s loss and she didn’t disagree with the lycan’s right to challenge her—after all, revenge for a murdered mate was a goal they shared—but damned if she’d go down for anyone without fight.
“No, Rachel,” he growled softly. “She’s
mine
.”
“You owe me this. He died protecting you.”
“He didn’t give me up. I won’t deny that.” He moved closer, stepping in front of Vash, acting as a shield. “But Micah set me up in the first place. He planted my blood, and that lured Vash to hunt me.”
Rachel’s mouth curved, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “How would he do that? Only Sentinels have access to the cryogenic storage facilities.”
“The same Sentinel or Sentinels who took Lindsay from Angels’ Point?”
If Vash hadn’t been watching so closely, she might’ve missed the shiver of fear that raised the hairs on
Rachel’s arms. As it was, Vash felt a grudging admiration for the Alpha, who was so swiftly piecing together a picture of double-crosses and fractured loyalties.
Rachel ripped open the front of her dress and shifted, and Vash whipped out her blades. Elijah darted forward in human form, catching the snarling she-wolf in the air and deflecting her.
If Vash had harbored any doubts that he was an Alpha, they would have been completely dispelled. She’d never heard of a lycan able to resist a shift while under attack. Never thought she’d see it.
“Stop it,” Elijah barked, his words cracking like a whip.
But Rachel was beyond caring. She hunkered low and came at Vash again. Vash leaped to the roof of the Jeep to gain the high ground and prepared to slice back, but Elijah pivoted with a roar, grabbing Rachel and crushing her spine to his chest. Standing on her hind legs in lupine form, the female was bigger than he was. She clawed at the air with her forepaws, her jaws snapping over her shoulder.
“Cut it out.” His bare feet skidded on the ground as he wrestled her writhing body. “Don’t make me hurt you, Rach. Don’t— Damn it.”
Rachel’s back paw scraped his calf, eliciting a bellow of pain and fresh gushing of blood as his injury from the day before rent anew. The potent scent of his blood filled Vash’s nostrils. Her fangs descended; her body tightened with hunger. She crouched, her gaze shooting to the mouth of the cave. A witness would be helpful, but she saw none forthcoming.
Elijah hurled the wolf aside again and tore open his button fly. In a split second, he’d shifted into a pony-sized wolf with rich chocolate fur and a lupine face as majestic as his human one was gorgeous. He howled, the sound echoing off the red rock and rolling like thunder through the canyon.
Rachel slinked across the dusty ground, her lips pulled back in a snarling display of wickedly sharp teeth. Elijah stalked her, growling low and deep with unmistakable menace. Vash’s breathing quickened. She smelled the third lycan before she saw him.
In human form, Stephan leaped onto the rooftop beside her and landed nimbly on his feet. “Jesus,” the Beta hissed. “This is the last thing we need.”
“You’re my witness,” she said, before diving off the SUV with her blades leading the charge, her body stretched to its full length.
The she-wolf pounced with a bark, meeting her halfway. Her katanas were a mere inch from fur-covered flesh and muscle when Elijah tackled Rachel from the side, slamming her out of the way. Vash’s blades sank into the ground where the she-wolf had been a mere second before. Using the anchored swords as leverage, she held the hilts and flipped, her legs arcing over her head and landing on the other side. She hit the ground in a crouch, her boots pounding into the dirt. The sickening crunch of broken bone sounded behind her.
“Fuckin’ A,” she cursed, knowing death when she heard it.
* * *
Elijah shifted forms, the power of his lycan sight diminishing into that of a human’s, then blurring with tears. He stared down at the lycan lying at his feet, watching fur melt into flesh as life flowed out of Rachel’s body from the punctures in her broken neck. Dropping heavily to his knees, he threw his head back and howled his grief.
“Damn it,” Vash snapped at his back. “You should’ve let me do it. It would have been self-defense. The others would’ve accepted that easier than they will you killing a lycan while protecting a vamp.”
A growl at his back alerted him to Stephan’s presence behind him. Bracing for the agony of a bite he wouldn’t defend himself against, he was startled when the expected attack didn’t come and Vashti spoke instead.
“I’m not going to hit him while he’s down, Beta,” she said drily. “You don’t have to protect him from me, even if he does need a smack upside the head for jumping in when I can protect myself.”
“I didn’t do it for you.” Gathering himself, Elijah stood and collected his jeans, yanking them on. “I can’t afford disobedience now. Letting you two get to each other after I ordered Rachel away would only prove that my word isn’t law, and it needs to be.”
His chest heaving, he swiped his tears away and fought down the rising bile in his throat. An icy lump had settled in his gut, guilt eating through him like acid. He’d killed the woman he had promised to protect from harm, the widow of his closest friend. While her death had been certain from the moment Micah
died—lycans couldn’t live long after the loss of their mate—he’d never imagined the nightmare of being the hand that dealt the fatal blow.