Blood Ties (31 page)

I rolled out of bed, walked over to the table and sat down. I looked through the paper’s day-old pages. It was on the fourth page.
An explosion that had been blamed on a corroded valve in an abandoned military base – no deaths reported and minimal damage incurred. Typical.

Michael walked out of the bathroom, bare-chested, drying h
is hair with a towel. I sighed. I saw him smile in the reflection in the mirror. “Should I put my shirt on?”

“Never.”

“It would be a little hard to teach classes.”

I snorted. “Can you believe we rated only the fourth page news, very tame, no horror ... typical government conspiracy cover-up?”

“At least the damage was minimal.”

It suddenly hit me why Selene and his cousins were driving down from Canada and not flying. Trying to keep my voice even, I asked, “Won’t they come looking for us? What if there is someone who knew what he was doing?”

“I doubt as much, it was unlikely he shared outside of his operation, it was his own personal obsession. And we’re two hundred miles away and I left no one alive. The blast completely destroyed the facility.”

Nice that he had reminded me he had slaughtered them all.

Something nagged at me, tugging on the edge of my subconscious.

“What time will they be here?”

“At sunset.”

I went back to reading the paper, half thinking about the elaborate lab, and Jensen and his
pharmaceutical that eliminated vampire abilities – all in the pursuit of Michael. I wondered how many vampires he had kept as lab rats for the sake of revenge. I shuddered.

“Breakfast?”

“Hmm, sure.”

“Do you mind if I order, I don’t think I could handle another repeat of yesterday.”

“No problem, order what you like,” I said not looking up from the paper, “I’ll be fine with anything as long as it’s not moving.”

I heard him pick up the phone to order pancakes.

I went back to concentrating on the paper. Michael turned on the TV and flipped through channels. He settled on one playing an X-Files marathon. I looked over when I heard him snort in disgust. “So Michael, how many X-File episodes are devoted to vampires?”

“One …,” h
e snarled. “What imbecile wrote this?”

I looked at the TV
, then back to him. He stared at the screen, not blinking. I just shook my head. He was definitely an X-Philer.

***

Breakfast came and went. I took a shower and settled next to him on my stomach with a pillow to watch the reruns. I had to admit the series ranked up there with some of my favorites, Roswell, StarGate, and of course, BattleStar Gallactica. Sometimes he would hold my hand, other times he would lean over and kiss me on the top of my head. I had almost dozed off when I heard another exclamation. It startled me and I almost fell off the bed. “Geeze Michael, you act as if you think these things really happened.”

He responded with a quirk of an eyebrow.

I didn’t want to know.

I went right back to my nap, snuggling up next to him, half dozing.

I felt as if I were being watched. I propped open one eyelid and found him lying next to me, head on his folded arms, gazing into my face.

“What? Did I have another nightmare?”

“No.”

“Is the X-Files marathon over with?”

“No.”

I waited.

“You’re just so beautiful.”

I smiled. “Come kiss me.”

He rolled me over on my back and lowered himself over me, resting his weight on one arm. He kissed me, delving deep. I gasped for breath as he moved his lips down to my neck, lightly nipping me with his teeth. It was torture. A euphoric heat spread across every inch of my skin.

“I want you,” he moaned between his ragged breaths. He slid up the edge of my t-shirt and then kissed the underside of my breast
. He slowly moved north. He tasted me with his tongue, licking, sucking, and biting.

My mind went blank.

He began unbuttoning my jeans.

“Uh
… maybe baby steps?”

He grasped the waistband and began to slide them
it down over my hips. I forgot all about baby steps and raised my hips off the bed to help him. All I could think about was how much I needed him inside me.

Suddenly my hands were above my head, my wrists locked in his. His irises and pupils had
gone spooky. I went rigid and began a mantra of happy thoughts, not wanting to let that tidal wave of fear smash into me and give my blood a boost of adrenaline. The struggle raged within him and the muscles in his face stood out as he tightly clenched his jaw. We held each other’s gaze, frozen, for several moments, neither of us breathing.

His eyes softened and he exhaled in a long breath. He sank his head down to lay it on my bare chest. I relaxed underneath him, stifling a moan,
the long, hard line of him that was so very male, pressed tightly against me, perfectly placed. I desperately wanted to grind my hips against all of that delicious weight but didn’t dare move.

He took a small breath and whispered weakly, “You’re right, baby steps are good.”

We lay there, quiet, not moving. I felt my heart beat in steady rhythmic pulses under his weight, the movement of it gently rocking us.

“I love you.”

I stroked his hair. “Je t’aime mon coeur.”

He stopped breathing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You spoke French.”

“Did not.”

“Yes you did.”

“Okay.”
Shit, had he just “whammied” me again?

“Did I really do it or did you just convince me I did.” I blinked. The sound of foreign words echoed in my
mind.

“I heard it. I just heard it again.” He raised his head a smile playing
across his lips. His face held a soft expression. “Alisé?”

I stared up at him

“Well hell,” I said.

***

He brought out the cards again. We played for hours. I was getting the hang of Texas Hold’em when the phone rang. Michael walked over to the dresser and picked it up, listening, and then said a few brief words. He put it back down on the hook. “They’re here, about thirty minutes away off-road. They’ll move in closer after sunset and then we’ll leave.”

I was relieved they had arrived safely, although not exactly enthused about not being with
him full-time once we got back. I went over to the bed, perched up against the headboard, and turned on the TV flipping through the cable channels. I stared at the flickering images, my mind not seeing them. That nagging thought struggled to come to the surface. What was it? I thought back over the last few days starting with me being thrown into the van, and then into that cold, white padded room.

My God, Jensen had called me Alisé. He had known who I was.

The remote was gone from my hand. He stood in front of me with a worried look on his face. I wondered how long he’d stood there, watching me flick through the channels, oblivious to anything.

“Liz, what is it?”

“How did they know about me … about us? We were very careful, making sure no one knew. We’d only been in public together once in Sydney.”

I tensed, realizing what had been tugging at my mind.

“Jensen called me Alisé.”

He went statue-still.  Anger washed across his face and his voice came out in a low growl,
“It has to be an Old One. It’s the only way we would have been discovered.”

His voice turned scathing, “He, or she, could have been able to shield their thoughts while they gathered bits of information from me, or
my family, carefully, just enough, without being noticed.

“It would have been easy
enough; my thoughts were practically screaming my happiness.” His expression softened and he sat down next to me. He trailed his fingers across my cheek. “You’re in my every thought, every minute of my endless days, my Elizabeth, my Alisé.”

“If this is true, they’d know about your position at the college, the house … Selene … your cousins …” Panic welled up. My breaths became unsteady, close together. “And the
Old One is still out there? Why help that evil sadistic man?”

He pulled me into his chest. “I will find the
one who helped him. Our ‘kind’ do not betray each other to the human world unless they are looking for a swift death.” He kissed my forehead. “There is nothing to worry about. We will take care of this.”

It
felt as if I had walked back into my nightmare. I shouldn’t worry? I shouldn’t worry when we had just escaped near death in a human lair of horror? And now, there was an ancient vampire with a strong enough reason to hate Michael and want him dead? A vampire stronger than any number of humans – perhaps stronger than Michael and his family together?

“Liz.”

“But …”

He looked at me sternly.

I felt numb as he massaged my shoulders and my arms. I said nothing in my silent terror, trying not to think of what still lurked about.

***

Sunset came and he went to check out. He returned and watched out of a slit in the curtained window to make sure the way was clear. “Let’s go,” he said.

We walked around the corner of the motel towards the back. The moon illuminated the desert landscape. Silence hung in the air. He swung me up in his arms and took off into the desert. I buried my face into his neck. After a few minutes, he slowed to a walk.

A Hummer waited for us with its lights off. He slid in with me on his lap. In the dim light of the moon, I saw Selene next to us in the backseat. Xavier was in the driver’s seat and Matt was riding shotgun.

Selene reached
for me and put her arms around me and broke down into sobs. She pressed her tearful face next to my cheek. “Liz, I’m so sorry. We were hunting up in the reserves and by the time we got Michael’s message that he had gone off to get you, it was too late. We went up and down the coast trying to catch even the smallest of a whisper, but there was nothing. We found your cells in a dumpster, we didn’t know if you two had been moved out of the vicinity or had been …” She swallowed noisily.

Michael gently squeezed me. “If it hadn’t been for her, we would have never made it out alive.”

He had it all wrong. It had been his vamp-powers that had saved us.

Selene began her inspection of my arm, peering at it in the near non-existent light.
She applied a cream to it and rewrapped it with fresh bandages, then handed me some pills and a bottle of water. I drank it down, barely jostled on Michael’s lap with the Hummer’s jerky movements across the desert.

“Why didn’t we get word about his little operation?” Xavier snarled, his hands straining on the wheel. I heard a soft growl rumble in Matt’s chest
.

Michael brushed his lips against my cheek as he explained. “There are a few of us, spread across the world, embedded into certain organizations
, monitoring activities. If someone gets too close, we take the necessary precautions.”

Michael glanced at Xavier. “There are a few possibilities. I had thought he was operating on his own, without anyone’s knowledge
. But it is evident,” he said as he looked at me, “that an Old One was helping him.”

The Hummer was filled with a round of terrifying hisses. I plastered myself up against Michael and hid in his arms. He held me, whispering soft words. Then it was quiet as we sped across the desert, weaving around obstacles and going over others. Occasionally Michael
would shake his head. Sometimes I could hear a sharp intake of air from Selene or a low hiss from the front seat as they held their silent conversations.

Suddenly the tension was stifling. Xavier sped up, his hands white knuckled on the steering wheel, his eyes meeting Michael’s in the rear
view mirror. Matt and Selene let out a hiss as Michael tightened his body around me, covering my head. They disappeared in a shower of glass.

I screamed.
“What is it … what’s going on!”

“GO … NOW!” he yelled at Xavier. The Hummer flipped into the air. That’s when my screaming started. The front windshield exploded as Xavier leapt through it. Michael buried my face into his chest, his hand on the back of my head, his body cocooned around mine. I felt the worl
d rotate as our Hummer flipped over and over on its side across the desert floor accompanied by groans of metal and exploding glass. I felt him give a powerful kick then we were outside in the cool desert air. A second later, there was a deafening explosion and a flash of light. Off in the distance, the Hummer burned furiously.

I heard myself screaming.
He clamped a hand over my mouth. “Shhh … everything’s going to be alright,” he whispered in my ear as he sat me down on my feet. I stopped screaming. He released his tight grip on my body. I fell to my knees.