I’m tired of running
, she thought wearily.
Tired of hiding
. She eyed the bed again. So far there was only one problem with it.
Maddox.
But trust, as fragile and tenuous as it might be, had to begin somewhere.
Maddox raised his head as Jesse settled on the bed beside him and started to take off her boots. The whiskey had definitely done its work. His brain felt wrapped in gauze, his senses pleasantly fuzzed. She could kill him after he fell asleep and he doubted he would care. His life had been a long one, the passage of time wearing down his spirit the way a mountain stream eroded the earth.
He’d fought almost two centuries against the Telave. Rest would be well deserved, perhaps more than a little bit welcome. No man should have to watch those he loved perish even as he himself was forced to endure day after endless day.
“Ankle still bothering you?” he asked.
Untying the laces of her other boot, Jesse nodded. “It hurts a little. I’m hoping it’ll be better tomorrow.”
He stifled a yawn. Though tired, he doubted he could fall asleep now. “It’s already tomorrow.”
Jesse let the shoe slip through her fingers. “I suppose it is.” She peered over one shoulder. “You going to make room for me there, or do I have to make do with this sliver of edge?”
“Oh. Sorry.” Maddox moved over a few inches to give her more room. He’d been a rude pig, taking up the middle of the bed. The least he could do was allow her a little more space.
“Long day. You should try and get some rest.”
Moving with the greatest of care, Jesse gingerly stretched out beside him. Clasping her hands across her stomach, she lay still and straight as a board.
“Comfortable enough for you?”
“Yeah. It’s okay.” Her nose wrinkled. “I don’t mean to offend, but you really stink.”
“None taken.” He made a show of taking a deep sniff of her. “Though I must say you don’t exactly smell like a daisy yourself.”
She grimaced. “Sorry. I haven’t gotten down to the YWCA to catch a shower lately.”
As one who lived with running water, Maddox didn’t have an excuse. He was single, a man, and a natural pig. Just managing to get in the shower more than a few times a week was a trial. It wasn’t as if he had to smell like Old Spice to kill Telave.
“Wash up tomorrow.” He eyed her threadbare clothing. “I’ll try to find you something clean to wear, too.”
Jesse shifted a little, letting her body relax. “That would be great. Thanks.”
“Don’t you have family in New Orleans? Your parents?” He couldn’t help asking. Why was this girl all alone?
She rolled her head toward him. A don’t-ask look crossed her face. She quickly wiped it away. “No.”
Her answer didn’t quite ring true. “What happened to them?”
Her mouth drew down in a frown.
“That’s a long story.”
“I’ve got time to listen.”
She dragged in a breath. “It started about a year ago, before Katrina. I don’t have to tell you how Amanda and I became infected, except to say that after the Telave dumped us, we both began to show signs of the infection. You know how people are out of it, as if they’ve been hit with a super case of rabies.”
“Right.”
Her jaw tightened. “The cops who picked us up took us straight to the Emergency Room. It didn’t do much good, though. Amanda died less than an hour later.”
“Then the officers recognized you were showing signs of the infection?” he asked, cutting into her narrative.
Jesse nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t as if you could miss the warnings in the news to stay away from stray cats and dogs.”
“The authorities always think those bites come from rabid animals.” Maddox shook his head. “Very few people make the connection to vampires. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence, people cling to their ignorance. And the Telave are so well hidden in our society.”
Jesse nodded. “Anyway, I was still in the hospital when Katrina hit,” she explained. “They managed to evacuate some of us, and I was sent to a facility in Texas. The flood took the house and most everything we owned, so we moved to San Fernando to start over. My dad’s parents live there, and we stayed with them awhile.”
“California’s a long way from Louisiana. Why didn’t you stay there with your family?”
It would have been a wiser choice, maybe even safer
, he thought. But he didn’t say it out loud.
“I couldn’t.” Freeing a hand, she tapped her index finger against her temple. “Not with all the strange things going on in my head. I was afraid I’d hurt them, so I left.”
Her confession carried enormous weight. Maddox comprehended better than anyone the terror behind the physical changes her body was undergoing. “And you’ve been on your own ever since?”
She nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. I figured if I kept moving, whoever did this to me wouldn’t find me again.”
“You think they’re looking for you?”
“Yeah, I do,” she answered without hesitation. “To finish what they started. And now I find out people like you want me dead.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Shit. I can’t win for losing.”
He grunted. “Coming back to New Orleans doesn’t seem like the smartest thing to do, then.”
“I’m tired of running,” she answered with simple honesty. “Tired of hiding. It was time to come back, and bring the fight to them.” She paused to watch the effects of her words ripple over him.
Maddox thought a moment. She did have a point. Then he remembered her ineffective attempts earlier in the cemetery. She was so scrawny, she probably didn’t have the strength to swat a fly. Determination was no match for brute strength. And he had the latter in spades.
“You’re still so far from ready. It’ll take months to get you into shape—if ever.”
Her voice floated into his ears. “I want this,” she insisted. “My life is nothing. If I die fighting, maybe I can take a few of them with me.”
He grunted. “Let’s not talk about death. First we rest. Then we fight. Best thing to do now is get some sleep.”
“I’m not tired.” Jesse went silent as he turned to face the wall, but it didn’t last ten minutes. Just as Maddox closed his eyes, she said, “Can I ask you something?”
The notion that he’d get any sleep tonight fled. “No guarantee I’ll answer,” he grumbled.
“When were you taken?”
Maddox’s throat involuntarily tightened. The life he’d been born into flickered in his mind’s eye like a distant mirage. It was hard to believe how much the world had changed since the days of his mortality. At the time he’d been a mere youth, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the North American colonies founded by the French and British. Then, he was a trader, traveling the east-west routes from New Orleans and from Missouri.
His mouth suddenly felt as dry as the Sahara. “In 1763.” The date rolling off his tongue sounded utterly alien. It was unbelievable, even to his own ears.
Jesse sat bolt upright. “No shit,” she exclaimed. “That’s not possible.”
He’d hoped she hadn’t heard him. “I wish,” he mumbled, thinking now would be a good time to be struck not only deaf but dumb. Then he wouldn’t have to remember.
But his brain defied him. Bits and pieces of the hazy event floated back into his mind. Back then, his captors had been a strange brew of European, Native American, and Creole. The queen they served was a dark-haired, coppery-skinned demoness known as Amonate. As one of the Fallen who followed Xaphan out of heaven, or the Sacred Haven, as his people called it, she held a high post in the demonic hierarchy.
Maddox willed the memories to go away, but he couldn’t prevent the images from crowding into his mind and taking over his thoughts. As much as he hated to admit it, he’d enjoyed being taken by the Telave. Their ritual of feeding was an erotic one, whether the victim was male or female.
Mouth agape, Jesse used her fingers for some quick figuring. “Shit, that makes you like two hundred and forty-three years old.”
“Two hundred and seventy.”
Studying his face, she arched a brow sardonically. “You don’t look that old.”
“No cellular degeneration.” His extraordinary genetic structure ensured he wouldn’t fall to the ravages of human frailty. Most wounds that weren’t instantly fatal also healed without leaving a mark. The scars he presently wore were inflicted before he’d crossed over, transformed from a man of flesh and blood into something beyond imagination.
“Forever young,” she mused.
Forever damned
, he countered silently. At this point in his life, he’d come to regard death not as the enemy, but as a mercy.
If prophecy were to be believed—and he did believe—the future looming ahead promised only chaos and pain. Civilization would continue to erode, crumbling under the crush of cultic forces.
Since being cast down, the Telave had spread their disease among mankind. The roots of evil ran deep and fed well.
Reading his thoughts as clearly as if they were spelled out on his face, Jesse lifted her hand toward his neck. She stroked the vulnerable pulse beneath his skin. It was the first willing touch she’d given him. “At night when I’m alone, the demon whispers in my head. It tells me about all the things I could have.”
The flesh across his chest and abdomen tightened. “What does it tell you?”
She dipped her head toward his. Her mouth was just inches from his and close enough that he felt the rasp of her breath scorch his cheek. “That I could walk among the weak humans, tearing their flesh under my nails before glutting myself on the blood of their hearts. They would tremble as I drank of their souls and grew stronger.” Her words were spoken in a low, portentous tone.
Rather than being horrified, Maddox found himself strangely spellbound by her narrative. He wondered if he would have been so strong had their positions been reversed. Could he have resisted the call of damnation?
The answer hovered in the darker recesses of his mind.
No
, a distant voice murmured from deep inside his skull.
You could not.
“And you want that power, don’t you?” he asked with genuine curiosity. “To hold their fear in the palm of your hand before you crush them like insects beneath your heel.”
He fell silent, waiting for her reply.
Jesse’s gaze grew vague, distant. “I lied when I said I wasn’t lured,” she murmured, pressing the tips of her fingers into his vein. “Every day that passes, I think about what I’d have if only I’d feed its hunger.”
Maddox’s breath caught.
Oh, heaven above.
His mind eagerly recalled the painful sensation of fangs sinking into his skin—followed by the exquisite pleasure of warm lips suckling his aching flesh. Instead of being repulsed by this, he’d been intrigued.
Quashing a shiver, Maddox forced himself to slip out of the shadows webbing his thoughts. “Why don’t you?” he rasped in a voice thickened by whiskey and regret.
“My sister,” she said softly, her chin quivering with barely suppressed emotion. “If it had just been me, I would have given in a long time ago. But she—she didn’t have a chance.” A single tear trekked down her cheek.
Maddox caught her trembling hand. “She didn’t deserve to die the way she did.”
The brief heat of intimacy between them scorched, searing through his skin all the way to the bone.
But the moment didn’t last.
Jesse pulled her hand out of his, swiping her palm across her dirt-smudged face. “Promise me something,” she said unexpectedly.
Still a bit dazed by the momentary surge of heat between them, he nodded. “Anything.”
The expression on her face turned deadly serious. “If I fall,” she said quietly, her words cutting into his skin like razors, “promise you’ll kill me. Don’t let me become one of those things.”
Maddox clenched a fist against the desire to immediately reject her tearful plea. When he’d first learned she was infected, he’d believed himself capable of doing the deed without blinking an eye.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
Chapter 4
J
esse slept through hours uncounted without so much as moving a muscle. The cocoon of warmth surrounding her had totally driven away her fears, allowing her a night of untroubled rest. For the first time she felt safe—protected.
She awoke with a groggy, thick sensation rolling through her mind. The temptation to lower her head to the pillow and slip back into peaceful oblivion might have persisted had she not become aware of the warm male body pressed against hers.
Opening sand-filled eyes, Jesse suffered a mildly disconcerting shock as she realized two muscular arms had her bracketed in a tight embrace. But that wasn’t all. One of Maddox’s sleekly muscled legs had worked its way between hers.
She attempted to shift her body away from his—not the wisest move she could have made. The hard ridge pressed up between her thighs, applying suggestive pressure against her aching sex. Her muscles tightened when an unfamiliar sensation flared deep inside her core. A gasp half of pleasure, half of surprise slipped past her lips.
Maddox’s arms tightened around her. The brush of his lips against the nape of her neck scorched her skin. “Damn, you feel good,” he murmured in a gravelly voice.
While instinct would have her jerk out of his hold, Jesse found herself unable to pull away from him. At the moment she was melting, on fire from the flames his touch had accidentally ignited.
She was tempted to give in to the carnal needs she’d forced herself to suppress since she’d become one of the walking infected.
Maddox moved the arm overlapping her waist, his hand settling over the aching tautness of one breast.
An indistinguishable sound scraped through Jesse’s throat when his fingers brushed over the tip of her distended nipple.
He drew small circles around the hard little bead. The thin material of her T-shirt did nothing to lessen the sensations.