Along Came a Spider (25 page)

Not knowing what else to do and too worried about Nicky to really do much of anything, I wandered around the mansion, peeking into various rooms and exploring as I hadn’t had a chance to do before now. The house was as lovely as I’d expected, each room impeccably decorated, but few looked lived in—and none but Nicky’s living room and his bedroom even hinted at his presence. It was very clear that this had been Juliet’s house, even if she’d hated it.

After exploring for more than an hour, I went back to the kitchen and filled Sasha’s food bowl. She appeared out of nowhere at the sound of the crunchy little bits hitting her dish and twined about my ankles a few times, purring loudly as if in apology for having been so absent. But then I was promptly forgotten in favor of her dinner. I shook my head with a little laugh and scratched behind her ears while she ate.

“Have you been busy exploring, too?” I murmured. “Quite a bit more room than my rinky-dink apartment, eh, baby?”

Her purring increased in volume in response, but that was about the best I could hope for from her at the moment. She was clearly more interested in her Friskies than anything I had to say.

My cell phone rang, startling me. I snatched it out of my pocket, hoping maybe it was Nicky calling to apologize for being such a jackass, so I was surprised to hear Lavender’s voice instead.

“Hey, Lav,” I said, frowning. “Everything okay?”

“Not exactly.”

I instantly tensed. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Tess,” she said, her voice strained. My stomach plummeted as she went on. “She started having contractions again, so Nate rushed her to the hospital.” Lavender sniffed. She’d been crying. “Something’s wrong, Trish. And no one knows what. Red hasn’t told the doctors”—her words trailed off and her voice was quieter when she continued—“about Nate’s condition. I’ve cast a spell to try to prevent her from going into labor, but I don’t know how long it will keep things at bay.”

I set my jaw, my teeth grinding, damning Nicky for storming off and leaving me stranded. I needed to be there with Red. With my friend. With our friend. And he was out hunting, tracking down vampires who might or might not be linked to Dracula in an effort to avenge the woman who’d wanted him dead.

“Send someone to get me, Lav,” I ground out, concern for Red and anger with Nicky constricting my chest until my lungs felt like they were going to pop. “Right. Now.”

Gideon released me from his hold the moment we slipped through the veil of time and space and into the hospital’s corridor. A second later, my lungs caught up with me. I bent forward to brace my hands on my knees, gulping greedily at the air.

“Sorry,” Gideon grinned. “I forgot I was popping your cherry.”

I gave him a sour look but chuckled in spite of myself. I couldn’t help but like the normally stoic bodyguard. I took another deep breath, then stood and patted his massive chest. “Thanks for the ride, big guy.”

He gave me a terse nod. “Anytime. All you have to do is call.”

Then he vanished between the dimensions, leaving a momentary void in the air that snapped closed with a quiet pop.

I hurried to the nearby nurses’ station and thought I was going to have to throw down when the nurse tried to tell me some shit about visiting hours being over. But apparently my profanity-laced threat to rip off her arms and shove them up her ass persuaded her to make an exception in my case.

I barreled into Red’s hospital room, jolting to a halt when I saw it crammed full of people—which based on the look on Red’s face was driving her more than a little crazy. My God—it looked like everyone in her life was packed tightly into the room; the only face noticeably absent was Nicky’s. And Red noticed it, too, when she saw me enter the room alone.

I squeezed by Gran and Eliza Bennet-Darcy and briefly met Al’s furious gaze—gee, glad there were no hard feelings there—before making my way to Red’s side to take her hand.

“You know,” I drawled, “if you’d wanted to get us all together, you could’ve just thrown a dinner party.”

She attempted a saucy grin, but it lacked conviction. “Since when have you ever known me to do things the easy way?”

“Thanks for coming, Trish,” Nate said from the other side of the bed, where he sat gripping Red’s hand so hard his knuckles were white and hers had to be aching. His face was haggard with concern and his eyes looked like he was ready to rip someone’s soul out just to relieve a little tension.

Time to get to work.

“So, you think we could chat for a few?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

Red nodded. “Yeah, sure. All this hovering and hand wringing is making me fucking crazy.”

“But, Tess, darling,” Gran began, “I cannot possibly leave you right now.”

Lavender stood up from where she’d been sitting on Seth’s lap and put an arm around Gran’s shoulder. “Come on, Tilly,” she said, grinning. “I’m sure Eliza and I can find you some coffee that doesn’t taste like diesel fuel somewhere in this place.”

Eliza gave Gran one of her warmest smiles, her fine dark eyes twinkling with affection. “Most assuredly so.”

“Coming, gents?” Lavender said pointedly as she and Eliza led Gran from the room. Seth immediately hopped up and followed them out, the other men filing out behind him, leaving me with just Red and Nate.

The minute they were gone, Red’s eyes welled up with tears. “What the hell is going on, Trish? The baby can’t come this soon!”

I shook my head, then placed a hand on her belly. “I don’t know, honey. But will you let me take a look?”

Red threw her arms out in frustration. “Why the hell not? Everyone else in this place has taken a look. For a while there I thought we ought to be charging for a peek at my uterus.”

I chuckled. “That’s not what I meant. I just want to look in your eyes. Maybe I can pick up on something that the doctors are missing.”

Nate smoothed Red’s hair lovingly when she looked a little nervous at the prospect of letting me into her head. “I’ll be right here, sweetheart.”

Tess nodded. “Fine,” she said with a somewhat reluctant shrug. “But be gentle with me, Trish. It’s my first time.”

I groaned at her attempt at humor, then sat down on the edge of the bed, locking onto her gaze. I felt the connection starting, but she glanced away, averting her eyes.

“You’re going to have to let me in, Tess,” I told her. “I can’t force it on the living . . . or the sane.”

Her gaze darted almost imperceptibly toward Nate, then back to me. She was hiding something. Shit. It had to be bad if she was keeping something from Nate. . . .

“You know,” I mused aloud, “maybe you should leave me alone with her, Nate.”

The shadows haunting him gathered in a tumultuous cloud. “No way.”

I motioned for him to join me a few feet away and turned my back to Red so I could whisper, “She’s worried about you.”

Nate frowned. “Worried about me?” he repeated. “She’s the one in the hospital bed. Why the hell would she be worried about me?”

I put my hand on his arm. “She is concerned about the pain this is causing you. She loves you so much that your pain is her pain—and she has enough to deal with right now. I need you to be strong enough to trust me and let me see if I can help her.”

Nate’s black gaze bored into me for a long moment before he finally nodded. He went to Tess and whispered lovingly into her ear before pressing a tender kiss to her lips. “I’ll be right outside.”

As soon as he left, I pegged her with a sharp look of rebuke. “So, who’s keeping secrets now?”

She glanced toward the door, her expression uncharacteristically pained. “I couldn’t let him know, Trish. He’d go through the fucking roof. I haven’t got anything concrete yet—just images and impressions that have been coming to me in dreams. But I think Vlad is coming for me. He’s pissed that I haven’t come after him in spite of all the stuff I know you and Nate have been hiding from me.”

My eyes widened. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Are you serious?” she drawled. “You’re the worst liar in the world, Trish. I’ve never seen anyone with a worse poker face. And Nate evades like nobody’s business when he’s hiding something. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what you two were up to. So I played along to see what would happen—especially after I found out I was pregnant. I might be reckless with my own life, but there’s no way I would put Nate’s child in harm’s way.”

“I’m sorry, Tess,” I said. “We should’ve given you more credit.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll chat more about you and Nate keeping all this from me later on,” she assured me. “But right now, you need to help figure out what Vlad’s up to. This shit’s getting too personal and I can’t take on that sadistic bastard on my own right now.”

I nodded. “I swear to you, I will do everything in my power to keep you and your baby safe.”

Red huffed, then pressed her lips into an angry line. “This is bullshit,” she muttered. “I’m not some goddamn damsel in distress. I should be the one doing the protecting.”

I squeezed her hand. “Tess Little, you have spent almost two hundred years protecting us. It’s time to let some of us return the favor.”

The look of gratitude she gave me was so unexpected, my lips were trembling a little when I locked onto her gaze once more. This time when the connection started, she didn’t fight it.

I plowed through her memories, blushing a little at the glimpses I caught of her most intimate moments with Nate. I was glad to see that her pregnancy hadn’t put a damper on their sex life, though. At all. Damn. I was beginning to wonder if I’d get a glimpse of anything helpful regarding the problems with the pregnancy when I suddenly found myself drifting. No, not drifting . . . floating. My entire body grew warm as love and peacefulness enveloped me. So much love. I’d never felt such contentment. Then I hiccupped.

What the hell?

I peered in deeper. It was only then I realized it was no longer Red’s thoughts I was reading but those of her unborn child. A smile tugged at my lips. He was anxious to come out and greet his parents, whose love he felt so intensely. I shuddered at the force of that love, tears coming to my eyes. He was going to be one very lucky boy.

But then there was a sudden disturbance in that perfect, all-
encompassing cocoon of love. A ripple of hatred, fear, and jealousy hit me so hard, it physically knocked me back, but I didn’t release the connection in spite of Red’s hiss as a contraction hit her hard.

“It’s all right, little one,” I cooed in my thoughts. “Don’t be afraid. You’re safe.”

“Talk to him, Tess,” I said aloud.

“Him?” she echoed. “Him, who? Vlad?”

She started to look away, but I took her face in my hands, keeping her from breaking the eye contact. “Talk to your son, Tess—he needs to hear your voice.”

“Son?” she said, her voice a little tight. “We’re having a boy?”

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head, looking a little dazed. As she began to rub her tummy and talk to her son—albeit, a little awkwardly at first—I continued searching.

Suddenly a monstrous face, twisted and distorted with fury, loomed before me, making me cry out in surprise. I clamped a hand over my mouth when I felt Tess tense so I wouldn’t alarm her further.

The face smirked and then it was no longer just a face but the whole man, his perfectly sculpted physique at odds with his hideous, batlike visage as he prowled toward me. His lips curled into a grotesque smile. It was only then that I recognized him from our encounter in the alley.

“Vlad,” I breathed. “My God.”

His smirk grew. “Beautiful, aren’t I?” he snarled. “Have you ever seen a face like mine?”

Only in my nightmares.

“What the hell happened to you?” I asked, my heart pounding with fear as he edged closer and began to circle me like a predator coming in for the kill.

“I have become a product of my environment, Beatrice,” he snapped, spreading his arms. “I am a creature of the darkness, a man denied what he needs to survive and left to become a monster!”

I shook my head, not understanding. “You brought this darkness upon yourself. You turned Red’s love into hatred by your actions.”

He snarled, snapping at me like a wild beast and beating at his chest. “My actions,” he hissed. The circle he walked around me was growing smaller with each pass. I turned with him now, careful to keep him before me. “It is not my actions that have brought me to this. I tried to protect her, tried to warn her . . . but she wouldn’t listen. They never listen. I call and no one hears!”

The guy was obviously descending into madness, his rant not making much sense. “Vlad,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “What is it you want from Red? What is it you want from me?”

He rushed me with a roar that sent me stumbling away, but not quickly enough. He grabbed me by the throat and walked me backward until we were standing in what looked like a basement or cellar. It was dark, but I didn’t need light to know we were not alone; there were others lurking in the shadows, their eager, bloodthirsty hisses making my skin prickle with fear.