Her Vampire Mate (13 page)

“You’re smart,” Grace finally said. “The mob just threatened me. They said they’d pay me but it was clear it was going to be as little as they could get away with.”

“The shifters alliance can afford to pay you handsomely,” Jennalynn said. “And during your time working for us, we’ll give you comfortable housing and protection against other factions—although it sounds like you don’t need protection.”

“I wouldn’t mind having it,” Grace said.

“The vampires offer the same,” Antonio said. His eyes met Jennalynn’s.

“Seems like you two mated types need to talk a few things out.” Grace stood. “You want something to drink? I’m going to go get a pop.”

“I’ll have one, too, thanks.” Jennalynn kept her gaze on Antonio.

This was where the fantasy ended.

Chapter 12

Antonio had known it would come to this. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to do. He’d thrown out his offer because he knew he was supposed to. The Vampire Council would kill him for sure if he didn’t at least try to secure the world-walker for them.

Shifting on the couch, Jennalynn faced him. “How are we going to resolve this?”

“I would let you have her, except my life is on the line.”

“We can protect you.”

He must have made a face; he wasn’t sure.

“You don’t believe me? You know who I am. I can secure protection for you at the highest levels.” She put her hand on his thigh. “It was going to come to this anyway.”

“How do you mean?”

“We’re mated. We’d have to pick one faction over the other and unless I’ve been misunderstanding everything you’d said, I definitely want to stick with the wolves.”

“They won’t accept me. You said it yourself.”

She nodded, moving slightly closer to him. “We’ll have troubles, sure. No doubt about that. They won’t trust you. I’ll have to move and lose my rank. But we’ll work it out. There are mixed groups we could join—I’m not the only wolf who got an out-of-the-ordinary mating.”

“And you think we’d be safe in such a group.”

“My brothers love me. They’ll give us whatever protection and support we need.” She squeezed his leg.

She was right. He couldn’t imagine taking her back to the vampires. He’d been an outcast ever since he was turned; he didn’t want her to be an outcast too. “There’s just one problem. I have a very long life expectancy and you don’t. Because of that, vampire’s soulmates are usually turned.”

She stilled, not even breathing. “You want me to be a vampire?”

“If you don’t, you’ll eventually die and I’ll have to live on without you.”

“I…” She slipped her hand off his leg, the other arm sliding around her waist. “What about pups?”

“I’m a vampire. I can’t have children.” He’d have slain any foe in order to heal the pain in her eyes. “I’ve heard rumors about a new process where they suck the DNA out of a vampire’s cells and are able to fertilize a woman’s egg with it. Maybe we can make it work.”

“But not if I’m a vampire. Do I have to be turned right away?”

“Of course not. But you’ll continue to age.”

“Werewolves age slowly. I’ll look thirty when I’m sixty. I’ve heard rumors, too. Rumors that say when a werewolf is turned, their wolf sometimes dies. I think I might die too, if I lost my wolf.”

He grabbed her hand. “We can wait. As long as you want.”

“We probably shouldn’t be discussing this now. What have we decided about her?” She nodded toward the kitchen.

He could still sense Grace in there; he knew she hadn’t escaped during their somewhat lengthy talk. “You’re right. We should align with the wolves.”

Jennalynn leaned forward and kissed him. “Thank you.”

Grace walked into the room. “Well, now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk numbers.” She placed a soda in front of Jennalynn.

“Thank you. How did you know right when to come back?” Jennalynn said.

“Didn’t you know? World-walkers have enhanced hearing. God only knows why. Your little talk was very touching.” She sat down. “So, how much money is ‘a lot?’”

***

While Jennalynn got on a conference call with her brother and negotiated terms with Grace, Antonio went into the kitchen to call his contact on the Vampire Council. He at least needed to try to smooth things over with them, even if he didn’t think it would work.

“Antonio,” said the smooth-talking bastard, Lucius. More than any other vampire, Lucius reminded him of the stereotypical Dracula, all the way down to the accent. “So nice of you to check in. We have been worried about you.”

“I’ve been tracking down this world-walker.” He paused for a heartfelt sigh. “I didn’t make it. The werewolves got to her first. I’ll return your deposit. I feel like shit about this.”

Lucius tsked. “Do not worry. We have already removed it from your account. Do you think we do not know you are fucking the werewolf slut? You have one last chance to live. Give us the world-walker. Otherwise, you will be executed.”

Insults raced through Antonio’s head while he battled with his inability to reach through the phone and rip Lucius’s head off for calling Jennalynn a slut. No words were good enough, so he finally settled for, “If you ever talk about my soulmate like that again, it’s your days that will be numbered.” He hung up.

So much for that.

***

Antonio helped Jennalynn out of the cab at the werewolves’ Chicago safe house. He’d followed the taxi on his motorcycle and had to hurry to get to the car before the women opened the door themselves. He was all for women being thought of as equal but that didn’t mean he couldn’t treat them like princesses.

Jennalynn seemed surprised when he offered his hand to help her out but Grace accepted as though she was used to it. He paid for the cab while Jennalynn strode toward a small door in between two shops, Grace right behind her.

He had just started to follow them when he saw something moving quick as lightning toward them. He raced toward Jennalynn and Grace, pushing them out of the way. A body slammed into him and they both hit the ground and skidded several feet.

“Antonio!” Jennalynn’s voice sounded far away.

“Run!” He crashed his fist into the head of the man on top of him, while kicking to get out from under him.

The man groaned and struggled, trying to grab Antonio and rise to his feet at the same time. Antonio didn’t let him, kicking him in the stomach and pushing him back enough to stand. Once Antonio was on his feet he kicked the man again.

Antonio made the mistake of looking to see where Jennalynn was. In the second it took to look, another vampire raced toward him from the side and swung at Antonio’s head. Antonio raised his arm and just barely managed to deflect the blow, which he felt all the way to his shoulder.

Jennalynn had been struggling with the door, vampires headed her way. He had to get to her.

Antonio thrust the vampire off him and sped toward Jennalynn. Time slowed down. The vampire reached her and grabbed for her head but missed because she darted out of the way. Grace turned and looked at Jennalynn.

“No!” Jennalynn screamed.

The world-walker winked out of their dimension.

Jennalynn elbowed the vampire in the nose and followed that up with a punch to the stomach. Behind her, another vampire raised an ax and aimed for her head.

Antonio skidded across the pavement, narrowly missing another vampire who came hurtling toward him. He tackled the vamp with the ax just as it swung toward Jennalynn. He couldn’t be sure it hadn’t grazed her but before he could check, he needed to get the ax.

The vampire underneath him punched him hard in the gut, struggling to get away. Antonio hung on with everything he had.

Then the vampire rolled him over and sat on him. Antonio punched at him but the vampire raised the ax over his head and swung it downward toward Antonio’s neck.

A swift kick to the shoulder toppled him. The ax fell, grazing Antonio’s ear and clattering to the ground. Jennalynn hauled Antonio to his feet.

“Motorcycle.” Her voice sounded raspy, out of breath.

As they catapulted toward his bike, he said, “Grace.”

“Walked.”

He was about to jump on the motorcycle when he saw a vampire down the street raise a gun and point it at Jennalynn. The man fired. Antonio saw the bullet coming straight for her and did the only thing he could. He stepped in front of her.

The bullet hit him square in the chest and the impact thrust him backward into Jennalynn. Everything became blurry, slow and sped up at the same time.

Jennalynn screamed and grabbed him about the waist. She shoved him onto the motorcycle, getting on behind him and pushing him forward so she could reach the handlebars. When they moved, the bike felt uneven, the weight distributed wrong. They wobbled down the street.

***

Vicenzo climbed out of his car and sped toward the spot where Antonio had been hit but his progeny had left on his motorcycle before Vicenzo could get there.

The hit squad had forced him to stay in the car. If he’d been on the street with them, Antonio would be dead by now. “After them!”

The squad was already in motion and paid Vicenzo’s words no heed, which bothered him. He should be in charge here. He outranked all of them. Yet they pushed him around and didn’t listen to his orders.

Fine, he wouldn’t listen to them, either.

He rushed toward the nearest car, intending to get behind the wheel and follow Antonio, but another vampire beat him there. So he climbed into the back and just barely got the door closed before the driver squealed away from the curb. The would-be inhabitants of the second vehicle were still writhing on the sidewalk.

“Get him,” Vicenzo said.

The other vampires in the car didn’t answer.

Screw them. Nothing else mattered as long as Vicenzo saw Antonio dead.

***

Antonio wasn’t sure how long they rode but as the trip wore on, pain started to blossom in his chest. He had been numb at first; no longer.

When Jennalynn stopped, they were along the side of a bare strip of undeveloped land. She hauled him off the motorcycle and laid him on the ground. With no ceremony at all, she shoved her wrist against his mouth.

“We’ve got to stop doing this,” she said.

He bit, drank.

She brushed hair away from his face with her free hand. “Thank you for saving me. Now live, damn it. If you die, I’ll kill you.”

He struggled not to laugh, knowing the blood would end up going down the wrong way. This time, he couldn’t take what he needed to heal completely—doing so would drain her dry. The wound had been bad; he could feel it slowly knitting itself together again. When he finished drinking, he licked her wounds to help them heal. “You’re going to feel a little woozy,” he said. “I took a lot.”

“As long as you’re all right.”

He sat up, holding his wound with his hand. “I’ll be all right with enough time. Right now we need to get as far away from here as we can.”

“How did they find us?”

How did they find them? Antonio sure as hell hadn’t told anyone where they were going; Jennalynn hadn’t even given him the address. “Could they have put a tracker on one of us?”

She patted herself down and then did the same to him. He tried to ignore how good it felt to have her touch him all over.

“Nothing.”

“The motorcycle,” he said.

She stood, wobbling a little, and made her way to his bike. After a couple of minutes, she said, “Does this piece belong here?”

No way could he stand right now, much less walk. “How easily does it come off?”

A second later she straightened with a small black box in her hand. “Pretty easily.” She dropped it to the ground and stomped on it a few times until it broke apart. “We need to get out of here. Now.”

A black sedan raced down the road.

Shit. He couldn’t even stand.

“I can do this,” Jennalynn said under her breath. She tightened her hands into fists for a split second and then began to tear her clothes off.

He shouldn’t have taken so much of her blood. She was their best hope at fighting the vampires and now she could barely walk straight.

By the time the car screeched to a halt beside them, she was kicking her pants off, nearly naked.

Antonio knew enough about wolves to know that her change would do two things at once—take energy and heal. It wouldn’t alleviate the blood loss but it would accelerate the healing of all the rest of her wounds.

More importantly, any energy expended in order to change would be more than made up for by her increased ability to fight. As good as Jennalynn was at fighting in human form, she’d be that much better as a wolf.

A vamp raced out of the driver side door toward Jennalynn before she could shift. She stepped to the side and held out her arm, letting him run right into her fist. The vamp crashed to the ground beside Antonio but the impact of the hit jolted Jennalynn enough that she stumbled backward against the motorcycle.