Alex walked along the beach, her shoes dangling from her fingertips, forgotten. A stiff wind off the ocean swirled her white cotton gypsy skirt around her calves. The matching camisole was no barrier for the oncoming storm, and she shivered as the cool wind rushed against her bare arms, drying the tears on her cheeks as they fell.
Her golden hair streamed out behind her, twisting and tangling as the current of air grew in intensity like a mournful ghost haunting the shoreline. She didn’t feel much better.
Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing fit, and she’d never been so alone. As the first chilly drops of rain began to pelt her skin, she slowly dragged herself up the lawn toward the dark shadow of her home. For once, the structure held no welcome for her, offered no comfort. Alex crossed the deck and pushed the patio door open, stepping inside.
Unease tingled along her spine. Something wasn’t right. She reached for the light, but the switch only clicked hollowly in the room. The darkness remained. Frowning, she moved across the living room, pale flashes of lightning in the distance giving her fleeting glimpses of shadow as she navigated around the furniture.
Goosebumps raced down her arms as she reached for the lamp beside the sofa. She stepped on something slippery and crinkly as she switched the light on and glanced down with a curious frown.
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Ambient light poured over the sofa and the floor around her, and Alex’s eyes grew wide with confusion and alarm. Everywhere she looked—the floor, the walls, covering the furniture—were photos. Alex bent slowly and picked one up, her eyes glued to the glossy surface with slowly mounting horror.
It was an image of Cole carrying her across his drive. Hesitantly, she reached out and snagged a snapshot off the sofa, lifting it to the light. Another picture of her, this time jogging by the stream on Cole’s estate. She let it drift to the floor, mystified, as she reached for yet another.
The sharp black and white was of her and Cole kissing on the beach—on her beach—and bright red marker scribbled across their entwined bodies. The room began to spin as she reached for another photograph, and Alex let out a tiny, terrified gasp as the same scribbled words finally penetrated her overwhelmed brain.
Mortals die.
Over and over, the number
14
. Fourteen?
Why fourteen? It made no sense.
Alex glanced to the patio doors, standing wide open, the sheer panels billowing in the stiff breeze, stark against the inky darkness outside.
Terror clutched tightly inside her chest, and she struggled to draw breath, fiercely resisted the urge to panic.
The phone. Where’s the phone?
Her frightened gaze flew around the room, to the hallway and the doors of the bedrooms, to the kitchen. The shadows shifted with every flash of heat lightning, striking fear into her very blood.
The car… Her phone was in her car. And her car meant escape. She rushed to the table in the entry and froze.
God, where were the keys?
The slight, metallic jingle by her ear made 300
Alex jump, then freeze in horror. In that moment true fear raked its razor-sharp claws across her soul. The whisper of icy breath on the back of her neck sent gooseflesh racing over her skin. Her own breath sawed in and out of her lungs in short panicky bursts.
A smooth, deep voice whispered against her ear, “Looking for these,
Human
?” Alex lunged for the door, a shrill scream ripped from her throat. But strong arms snaked around her, easily subduing her, and a white square of cotton dropped in front of her face. She sucked in a sharp bre
ath and held it as long as she could, fighting madly against the
extraordinary strength holding her firm, struggled desperately against inhaling any more of the cloying fumes soaking the cotton.
Darkness began to creep in around the edges of her vision, and still she fought. With one last desperate act, trapped as she was in the brutally tight arms of her attacker, Alex lifted both feet and kicked at the wall in front of her, slamming herself back against her assailant. They crashed into the wall, rebounding off the small table. She twisted and turned, fighting like a wildcat, and for one brief moment, she got a flashing glimpse of a pale, hauntingly attractive face in the ornate, entry mirror. Glowing, golden bedroom eyes and deadly, gleaming fangs leered back at her.
Then the darkness won.
****
Cole reached Alex’s front steps at a dead sprint. He tried the doorknob, but it refused to budge. Fisting his hands, he pounded on the door and bellowed loud enough for his voice to echo several blocks away. “Alexandra, open this door! I’m not leaving until we talk.” No reply.
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He paused, forcing himself to calm down, forcing himself to focus on the door and any sound on the other side. He couldn’t hear anything, but he could smell the lingering scent of her there, just on the other side of the door. He was just about to start pounding again—or rip it from its hinges—when his super-tuned sense of smell picked up another scent.
The trace scent of Vampyre.
Fear ripped through him. Fear and disbelief.
In one effortless motion, Cole thrust his shoulder against the door, shattering the lock and splintering wood. He rushed into the house, panic tearing through his chest. His wild-eyed gaze immediately came to rest on the table just inside her entry, toppled now with a splintered leg. Her meticulously sorted mail littered the floor. The silver gleam of keys lying among the clutter caught his eyes.
With a hoarse curse, Cole rushed into the living room. Any further sound died in his throat as he surveyed the pictures littering the floor, papering the walls.
Horror struck him anew, and Cole roared his rage.
He tipped his head back and dragged air into his lungs, air and scent. There was Alex’s scent, fresh and innocently seductive, and filled with fear. The crisp bite of the oncoming rain blowing in through the open patio door came to him. Then he caught it, masked as it was by the cloying scent of chloroform…the scent he’d caught on her front step.
Vampyre.
It was too soon, his mind rebelled. It was only the ninth. Cole couldn’t comfort himself with that fact. The Vamp might not kill her before the eleventh. But gods, there were other, equally 302
terrifying things he could do to her in two, long days…
Cole’s heart raced, pounding against his ribs in a warrior’s cadence. He raced through the house, following the scent trail onto the back deck and across the lawn toward the beach, cursing the rain as it began washing the scent from the air. His feet kicked up sand as his legs pumped with superhuman speed along the waterline. He strained to catch the glimmer of scent hanging persistently in the air, focusing on it, forcing himself to greater speed than he’d ever attempted, pushed by the need to find her before he lost the trail completely.
Cole followed the fading beacon to a house overlooking a bluff less than a mile from her home. The lights were off. He could detect no movement on the grounds surrounding the isolated building. He slowed, approaching with caution, blending with the shadows, alert and prepared for a trap.
On feet silent as the wings of night, Cole slipped around the side of the house and edged up onto a patio. Peering through the glass, he reached for the handle. It wasn’t locked…as if someone had been waiting for him. He clenched his teeth. The moment the door opened, the scent of blood—freshly spilled blood—hit him like a sucker-punch to the gut.
A
lot
of blood.
Panic and grief swelled, threatening to overwhelm him. But then rational thought…or rather the lack of the distinctive flavor of the blood…pushed through the fear. This blood was heavy and salty. Unlike the honeyed-sweetness he knew to be Alex.
She was here though…as was the Rogue. The Vampyre’s scent was stronger here, distinctive.
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Familiar
. Fury ripped through him. How could he have been so gullible, so completely stupid?
Cole followed Alex’s scent trail to a door at the back of the house. He eased the door open, rage vibrating through his body, fear knotting in his stomach. Forcing himself to move with silent care, he descended the narrow stairs. The smell of damp concrete, and Alex’s sluggish fear, swamped his senses. She should be terrified right now. Adrenaline should be coursing, thick and hot, through her veins. There were little more than light traces of adrenaline in the darkness below. What was wrong with her? A thought occurred to him—something so frightening that he pushed it aside, refusing to follow that idea to conclusion lest he lose all control. He waited at the top of the steps, searching the room with his senses, searching for his nemesis.
His keen vision found her then, and he barely stopped himself from flying down the stairs to her side. Alex lay in a heap on the damp floor, chained to the wall like an animal. She moaned softly, each tiny movement seemed to tax her.
She lay silent for long moments. Only the feeble flutter of her heart reassured him she was still alive.
His vision went red, and he momentarily lost control of his senses as he turned his focus inward, forcing calm where rage and fury boiled, straining for release. Shadows and blurry shapes swam around her, slowly taking more solid forms, becoming wine bottles and wine racks. She shifted her wrists, and he cringed when the metallic clink of her restraints cracked through the room loud as a crash of thunder.
Cursing the bastard who’d done this to her, Cole struggled for rational thought. He waited for acknowledgement, waited for her captor to 304
investigate the noise she’d made. No one approached her, no one spoke. After several moments, she pushed herself to a sitting position, the motion slow and wobbling. She winced, lifting her bound hands to cradle her temples. With a soft moan, she sagged against the damp wall, her hands falling, limp, into her lap. His gaze followed the aged, iron links to a point on the wall, a point high above her head. Those bonds would snap like thread in his hands, but for her meager Human strength, they would be inescapable.
Alex’s breath was the only sound in the room, and it was too shallow, too fast. His heart twisted inside his chest. She sobbed then, a sob of fear, a sob of despair. He struggled to keep a level head.
It was the hardest battle of his life.
Gods, why was she so listless?
The obvious answer to that question was the answer he’d pushed away earlier. He couldn’t push it away so easily now, and his throat closed, an odd, unfamiliar knot formed in his belly.
The bastard had damned near drained her.
****
The air stirred somewhere nearby, and Alex froze, holding her breath. Her blurry gaze moved over the darkness. Her head swam making it difficult to register what her eyes were seeing. Her fingers dug into the chains that bound her. It was so hard to move now, so hard to think. Whatever hope she’d harbored, whatever thoughts of escape had crept into her mind, deserted her completely as the icy prickle of breath trickled over the side of her neck. The shallow rasp of razor sharp fangs against her skin sent terror clawing through her, clogging her throat. Cole had been wrong. There was nothing erotic or sensual about a Vampyre bite. She would know. The one she’d sustained earlier had 305
burned through her system like acid, leaving her weak and disoriented.
The voice that had surprised her back in her entry, deep and familiar, hissed close to her ear, making her jerk slightly. “That’s far enough, Cole.”
Alex’s brows drew together, and she blinked into the darkness, groggy and confused. Cole was here? Hope blossomed in her chest. He’d come for her. The lethal press of fangs over her jugular warned her against the urge to shake the cobwebs from her brain. She couldn’t move, not even fractionally, without risking impaling herself on those dangerous, painful points.
Though she couldn’t see him, Cole’s beautiful voice broke the silence. His fury was impossible to mistake. Every bit as lethal as the fangs hovering over her weakened pulse. “Let her go, Deacon.”
Alex’s mind reeled and she almost
flinched…almost.
Deacon?
Yes, the voice…it was Deacon. Then the glowing golden eyes and the frightening fangs in her entryway mirror flashed back through her lethargic mind. Deacon!
But why was he doing this to her?
Pain lanced through her scalp as Deacon fisted a vicious hand in her hair, yanking her head back at an excruciating angle. A whimper clawed its way out of her throat, and Alex gritted her teeth, cutting the show of weakness off before it became an all-out scream of fright.
She could see Cole now, frozen mid-step halfway down the stairs. His hand clutched the wrought iron railing hard enough to bend the metal. Fury roiled in his burning stare, hot as a thousand torches, threatening to snap his slim hold on sanity. He looked like a gilded god of fury.
A god of war. Like an agile cat, poised to spring.
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And not your average, garden-variety house cat, but a highly lethal, feral predator, the kind that slunk through the shadows of some sultry jungle, stalking its prey, poised to devour. He was breathtaking, and despite the press of Deacon’s fangs, hope not only returned. It flared bright.
****