Bound by the Vampire Queen (50 page)

And right next to it was a dried-up rose bush, the sun glittering off the red stone only half buried beneath it.

Her serpent monster had turned out to be a blessing in disguise. In its twisting arc through the sky, it had probably carried her several miles toward her destination, closing that last gap.

Blessings do exist here. In their usual, quite ironic way.

At the entrance to the desert portal, Keldwyn swung off his horse, gesturing to Jacob to draw close as he unhooked a saddle bag, tossed it to him. “More weapons, water.” Pulling a pendant from his neck, he dropped it over his head. “This makes a ten foot perimeter of invisibility around you, so you will not be slowed down by enemies. It’s a limited enchantment, a small magic that won’t last much longer than a day or two. I don’t suspect you'll require more than that, however. Either your mind connection will bring you quickly to her side to help her finish the quest within the proscribed time period, or you will be dead.” He then pul ed out a seal that, as he chanted several words, started to glow red hot. “To get in, you must have the brand of the desert prisoner. It is tailored for Fae blood only, so after I mark you with it, you need to make all haste down that tunnel, because, being vampire, you will heal it rapidly.”

“And to get out?”

“That requires an executor on the outside. When Lyssa has what Rhoswen wants, that door will open.

Her possession of Reghan’s soul essence will allow her to exit. The lack of the brand should allow you to do so, if you maintain contact with her.”

“Should?”

Keldwyn lifted a shoulder. “Take your chances, vampire. Unless you are suffering a sudden attack of faintheartedness.”

In answer, Jacob extended his hand. His skin was crawling, tingling, every muscle quivering with the need to go, to get through that tunnel and find her.

She needed him, now. Actually, she’d needed him now an hour ago. “Do it.”

“I will bide here for a time, and leave runners when I must go, in case you need assistance when you emerge with her.”

“I still don’t trust you,” Jacob said, locking gazes with him. “But thank you.”

“I’m sure you are aware that thanking a Fae is an insult.”

When Jacob merely showed fangs, Keldwyn’s lips quirked. “You are correct not to trust me, vampire. It’s best not to trust anyone.” Gripping his wrist to steady the canvas he was about to mark, Keldwyn jammed the brand against the top of Jacob’s hand.

Jacob shuddered, clenching the hand holding the saddlebag and his own pack. It was urgency more than pain, as well as a spurt of rage that they’d done this to his lady. When Keldwyn lifted the brand, he bolted for that darkness.

He couldn’t see, an unusual thing for a vampire, but he still ran full tilt forward, assuming that the desert world was hungry for its victims and wouldn’t trip him up. It didn’t, not until the end, when he stumbled, rolled out of pitch darkness and into blinding day, right into the base of a cactus.

“Ow, fuck.” Yanking the needles free that had driven into his side, he pul ed out the cowled robe Keldwyn had packed for him. Though it was brutally hot, the sun reflecting the white and ecru landscape like a mirror flashing in his eyes, he wasn’t bursting into flames. So far, so good. He squinted, pul ed the hood farther over his brow to help cut the glare, then took a closer look at that cactus.

The twisted, distorted shape was eerily familiar. It looked as if it had once been a different being, something humanlike, now forever caught inside the succulent. Two others near it had the same look. He bared his fangs in a savage grin. His lady had been here alright. But that same thought sobered him.

She’d had to hit the ground fighting. He studied the landscape, turning slowly to make sure tricks of the light and reflected sand didn’t make him miss anything. There. He saw a blot that might have been another set of cacti, then farther on, something like a pile of sticks. A staggering but distinct line of direction, stretching away to the horizon.

Fuck.
Panic gripped him as he realized he still couldn’t hear her. More than that, he wasn’t feeling that buzz of connection that should have been there.

Lyssa? Lyssa, where are you? Help me find you.

Nothing. Tightening his jaw, he started moving, following her battle remains. Mindlinks with servants had a range of a few thousand miles. In this odd world, where it was possible that many magical fault lines existed, he might be in the wrong quadrant to hear her. But she’d left him a trail. Increasing his speed, he focused his energy on that. He was grudgingly grateful for Keldwyn’s pendant, keeping him invisible from whatever these things were that had attacked her. Because he sure as hell couldn’t waste time hiding. Not that there were a great many options for concealment.

As he ran, he lengthened out to his top speed, his vampire senses taking in every detail around him like the tracking radar of a missile. He saw how the shapes of the cacti changed, his grim foreboding growing when he saw how the magic dwindled, creating nightmares. The first time he detected her blood trail, he stumbled and somersaulted across the hot sand. But he forced himself to get a grip on his emotions, started running again. It wasn’t the last time he found her blood. Eventually, it was a trail even stronger than the evidence of her skirmishes. It spurred his speed and his temper. He cursed repeatedly as he thought of her here alone for nearly two days, while he’d been trapped in that upper bedroom for six hours.

He would be so fucking glad to be back in a world populated by humans and vampires, normal Greenwich time and Taco Bel's that stayed open reliably past midnight.

What seemed too many freaking hours later, he passed through another shimmer of energy. It was the second or third time he’d done so, but this time the featureless landscape was suddenly not so featureless. A haphazard arrangement of rocks lay ahead. Even more importantly, he felt his lady.

Though faint, the sense of that connection was a relief so strong it swept through him like a sudden cool shower under the punishing rays. But it was a brief respite, because she was so weak it was like a bad cell connection, a lot of static and dropped dead spots.

Drawing closer, he saw the rocks weren’t rocks at all, but bone, organs, and what appeared to be large amounts of scattered gravel. Whatever it had been, it had been very, very large.
Lyssa? My lady? Answer me.

He shouted it out loud then, as well as thinking it with such intensity that he thought he might have borrowed some of his queen’s ability to move the earth. Because after a long, heart-stopping moment, he received a response.

It wasn’t a word—merely a sound. A quiet, dying sound. But she couldn’t die. If she was dying, he would be dying, too. Because he was her servant, to hell with the changes to the marks.

Jacob ran across that landscape of broken pieces. He saw shards of a jaw with three rows of teeth, some of them like elephant tusks. A portion of a face, the six eyes staring, still eerily sentient. He was fairly certain he saw one of them blink.

When he saw her at last, he was at her side in one quick surge of movement, his hand on her face, her matted hair. “Holy Mother,” he murmured. She was impossibly bloody, her skin corpse-pale. She clutched her father’s rose, and the other hand lay on the sand next to a desiccated bush, her fingertips nearly brushing a glitter of gemstone that glowed beneath the thin covering of sand. Apparently it was responding to the rose, two splashes of vibrant red in an otherwise colorless landscape. Colorless except for her green eyes, that opened at the sight of him.

“My lady,” he greeted her, his voice thick.

She studied him. When her trembling fingertips brushed his knee, it was a touch so welcome he felt it through his whole body. “Hallucination,” she said.

“My vampire servant, here in the bright sun.”

“No. Really here, thanks to a bit of Fae magic.

Turns out you needed my help after all.” Her weak cough was so obviously painful he put his hands on her shoulders, trying to hold her together.
Actually, you’re a bit late. Could have used you earlier.

He wanted to smile, but couldn’t. “I was busy cutting my way out of tree,” he reminded her.

“You want to spend… your last moments with me saying… I told you so?”

A fist gripped his heart, squeezed. The time to avoid the truth was done. They both knew he wouldn’t die with her. When she’d nearly been taken by the Delilah virus, he couldn’t walk, the life draining from him with her. He felt none of that now, only the empty, aching sense a vampire experienced from the imminent loss of a servant. The vampire-servant mark she’d given him had in fact been broken. He couldn’t follow her into eternity.

Well, fuck that with a ketchup bottle
. It was one of his brother’s favorite expletives in high school.

I felt him, Jacob. When I touched the stone. I felt my father, as I wished to do. He sensed me, knew me.

“Good, my lady.” He swallowed. “That’s good.” Stretching out next to her, heedless of the sand’s heat, he remembered when Jess had almost died and Mason had given her his heart’s blood directly.

He lifted the sharp pruning knife that lay next to Lyssa, the only weapon other than her magic she’d had to use here. Though he didn’t want to flavor this moment with hatred, if Rhoswen suddenly appeared, he’d happily prune out her ice block of a heart, no matter what daddy issues had made her what she was.

“No, Jacob…” Her eyes tracked his movements.

“We both know… I’m almost gone. Much further than Jessica. I’ve been laying here… for hours.

Surprised no one else attacked me.”

“I think you left a very powerful message that you were not to be messed with. Plus, there seems to be some type of field around this area.” He glanced at the rose bush. “I expect because of that. Else one of the other inhabitants of this living hell would have destroyed the bush or taken the gemstone long ago.” As he spoke, he was already yanking off the cloak and the tunic he’d donned. He positioned the knife where it needed to be. As a former vampire hunter, he knew exactly where the heart was located, which ribs allowed access to spill the rich heart’s blood.

Her hand fluttered up weakly. “Jacob… it almost killed, Mason… wooden stake or no. Here . .

. there’s no protection, no help. Kane. Think of Kane.”

“With the deepest respect, my lady, shut up.” He slid the blade in, smooth as butter. The stutter of his heart was welcome in this situation, and he quickly shifted over her, tilting her head up to position it in that place as the bright, thick blood spurted forth, his left arm briefly trembling as he used it to brace himself over her.

She was so weak. He had to put his fingers in between her mouth and his body, apply pressure to slow the flow, because she didn’t have the strength to keep up with the rush. She took small, small sips.

Sometimes the pauses between them were so long he grasped at that stuttering spark of life in her mind, making sure she was still with him. Of course, that was irrational, because if her life slipped away, he would feel it, as if that monstrous creature behind him had landed on his body like a ton of bricks. He’d seen vampires lose servants before, servants with whom they had a close bond. There was no mistaking it for anything else.

His fingers were wet where blood had seeped past them, and he knew her mouth and chin were stained with it. He’d have to clean that off. His lady was very fastidious. She had meticulous table manners, didn’t believe in gulping blood down like a wolf, even if her life depended on it. He saw tears splotch down on the sand beneath him, and knew they’d squeezed out of his own eyes.

Her body was so limp, her hand lying in that loose curl on the sand. It wasn’t enough. She was right; it was too late. He was losing her. She was slipping away from him, into that numb insensibility that came with death, taking away any time for goodbyes, a final meeting of gazes.

He believed in an afterlife, knew it was selfish to deny it to his lady when she was so tired, had done so much, but damn it, he’d promised her he’d always be by her side, that she’d never have to leave him again. That oath was as sacred as a marriage—hell, it was a marriage, in every sense of the word—and he wasn’t backing away from it.

She wanted to see her son grow up. She had so much more she wanted to do. And she loved him.

For some reason, Lady Elyssa Amaterasu Yamato Wentworth, last Queen of the Far East Clan, loved him, Jacob Green, a drifter and former vampire hunter. Another man might say a gift like that for any length of time was more than he deserved.

He should be content with what he’d been given. But when it came to a treasure like that, only a madman wasn’t selfish, determined to do whatever was necessary to hold on to it as long as possible.

He thought of the stories of hunters who stole the sealskin of hauntingly beautiful selkies, to make them their wives and keep them with them. And how those same men were left bereft when their Fae wife found her skin and returned to the sea. He wasn’t going to let her drift away like that, briefly enjoyed and then given to memory.

Holding his hand on the heart wound, he pul ed her up into his arms, into a sitting position. Her eyes were half closed, but sightless. The life spark was distant. Her body had no resistance. Curling his hand in her hair, he pul ed it back, and sank his fangs into her throat.

She’d given him her vampire powers. It had been an accident, but she’d told him more than once that foreknowledge of it wouldn’t have changed her actions. He’d never tried to turn anyone. All the horror stories of what could happen when a fledgling vampire tried to turn a human rocketed through his mind.

But she wasn’t human, and she already bore three marks from him. He had more than a fledgling’s abilities, even if he only had a fledgling’s experience in handling them. He shot the silver serum directly into her carotid, a flood of acrid taste. As soon as he could no longer taste it, knew it was running through her, he began to drink. He had to drink her almost dry, because that was the way it worked. His own heart seized as she arched up in his arms with a desolate, strangled cry, but he kept pulling on that vein, gulping like a bloodstarved fledgling even as his stomach revolted, heaving.