To Love and Serve (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

Diego opened the door wide to let Ryder in, his features carefully schooled.

“What’s happened?” Ryder asked.

“Jeremy’s flight got diverted to Iceland. He won’t be able to make the parlay tonight. Stacia’s still in Florida with her new husband, and it’s too late to call her.”

Which would leave only three of their own Council to face the Slayer Council. “How many members are there in the slayer contingent?”

Diego shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant, but he was obviously nervous. “No fewer than six. Plus they usually bring one or two of their up and coming slayers for extra muscle.”

Ryder considered the odds. Eight to three. Not good. “If you need me, I’ll have your back.”

Diego smiled in relief. He clapped Ryder on the shoulder. “Thanks. We should be going, then. The meet is on the Lower East Side.”

And they were uptown. “Let’s do it.”

With a nod, Diego released his vampire and flew out the door. Ryder followed. With the freedom of the late hour, they sped along the streets of their residential areas and Central Park with little human contact.

The business areas of Midtown along Third Avenue were virtually deserted until they reached the edges of the Lower East Side and the Hudson River. Here and there, workers lingered along the docks and small warehouses.

As they came to a halt in front of one, Ryder had a disturbing sense of déjà vu. He’d been tortured in a warehouse just like this one. If not for Diana, he would be dead at the hands of a serial killer. Thank God she’d found him.

She’d saved him in more ways than one.

“Are you okay?” Diego stared at him hard.

“I’m fine,” he replied, just as a series of powerful vibrations, like the beat of massive wings, registered in his brain. With a swoop, Hadrian and Maximilian landed beside them.

Hadrian had lost the investment banker look in exchange for warrior leathers and denim. Beneath his leather jacket, a tight T-shirt showed off impressive muscles, and his heavy boots would come in handy if someone needed to be stomped.

Maximilian had not taken a cue from his elder friend. His shirt boasted a tropical motif of flowers on a teal-blue background. His skinny jeans were in a matching teal and led down to sneakers in hot pink.

Ryder shook hands with Hadrian, who rolled his eyes at Ryder’s bemused expression. “Don’t let the outfit fool you. Max is ready and able to kick some slayer ass.”

The colorful designer extended his hand and said with a purr, “If she won’t have you, I will.”

Ryder jerked his hand away, reminded of just how powerful the elders were, and how much they could see with vampire senses honed through the centuries.

“Mind your manners, Max. He hasn’t given you permission to read him,” Hadrian scolded.

Maximilian pouted like a small child.

“Spoilsport.”

Diego gestured to the door of the warehouse. “Shall we?”

Hadrian nodded, and Diego glanced at Ryder. “It’s normally youngest first. But I’ll go first this time.”

Ryder respected Diego’s desire to protect him, and while he did not want to be the sacrificial lamb, he also had no wish to break the rules. He waved off Diego and approached the door.

“I can handle this.”

Reaching deep inside to tap the anger he’d felt earlier, Ryder brought his demon to the surface, and with it, all the vampire power he possessed. Even before he grabbed the doorknob, he perceived several humans inside—the slayers—along with another presence. Not quite human, since he detected the pulsing beat of vampire power. Woven through those energies was something else. A low steady hum, like electricity singing along a wire.

The group was a distance from the door, but he was still able to hear their soft whispers.

“We want no trouble tonight,” said a female, and the others echoed agreement.

With that small measure of comfort, Ryder opened the door, keeping his vampire leashed but ready for action.

As they entered, the humans formed a line, the two younger ones at either side stepping in front, as if to offer protection. They were all armed, holding an assortment of crosses, stakes, knives, and swords. The two younger slayers also carried small crossbows. The arrows—silver, no doubt—were nocked, ready to be fired.

As the three vampire elders filed in and took their places beside him, Ryder peered at one youngster, a twenty-something female. She had dark, nearly midnight-black hair that fell in choppy layers against her attractive face. Her shockingly blue eyes were alert and keen, radiating extreme intelligence. He’d seen her before. That intense color was unmistakable.

He also realized, as he picked up on that pulsing beat again, that she was not what she seemed. Not fully human.

The black leather jacket she wore fit tightly against her body, accentuating both her slimness and small stature. Despite her size, the material lovingly detailed the muscle beneath.

A warrior, like Diana. Her gaze met his and softened. She recognized him, too.

The voice he’d heard from outside broke the uncomfortable silence between the opposing Councils. “You asked for this parlay, so why don’t you begin?”

Ryder dragged his attention to the woman who had spoken. Tall, black, and beautiful, she was definitely not someone to toy with. Her long, wiry body was roped with muscle, and along one arm, an angry row of slash marks were badges of courage from battle. She also bore a series of small, circular wounds on one shoulder.
Vampire bites
.

Hadrian stepped forward, his demon face on and a slight swagger in his step. “Always good to see you, Evangeline.”

“I wish I could say the same, Hadrian. Rumor has it you’ve bred?” A sneer marred her face and she touched the stake at her waist, caressing it lovingly.

“My wife and I have a baby. The wife I saved from a piece of human scum who’d mortally wounded her.”

So much for keeping things friendly.

Diego laid a hand on Hadrian’s shoulder, cautiously urged him back, then took the lead. “We came here to keep the peace, Evangeline.”

One of the slayer men stepped up to her, whispered something in her ear, and she nodded. “There have been two kills, but we had nothing to do with them.”

“You didn’t sanction them?” Diego shot a quick look at the vamp contingent.

“Should we have?” asked the man who had just spoken to Evangeline.

Diego bowed his head respectfully at the man. “They were both young and harmless, Benjamin. Maybe that’s why they were so easily duped by a slayer.”

“Why do you insist it was one of us?” asked the familiar female.

Evangeline glared at her. “Silence, Michaela. Do not make me regret that we tolerate you.”

Interesting choice of words. Michaela visibly vibrated with anger, but restrained herself, in total control. Ryder’s respect for her went up a few notches. He was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been so calm, considering the other woman’s obnoxious attitude.

Diego addressed his answer to Benjamin, who seemed friendlier than the tall woman. “Both vampires had their throats slashed and were impaled with stakes bearing the St. Andrew’s cross. The wounds across their throats bore traces of silver nitrate.”

Benjamin was a handsome young man with deep brown hair that fell smoothly around a boyish face. His sharp blue eyes sized them up, but unlike Evangeline, his hands were loose at his sides. Ryder suspected he’d be instantly ready if it came down to a fight. The lack of scars on his body showed his skill as a warrior.

“All the evidence points to the fact that a slayer did this,” Hadrian said firmly.

A third man broke from the slayer pack and joined Evangeline and Benjamin. He was older and slightly hunched, with an anemic and perpetually worried look about him. “Or it could be a copycat. That is also a possibility.”

Hadrian stepped forward again. With an exasperated snort, he said, “You slayers guard your secrets too well for that, Xander. Do you really think an ordinary human, one without slayer training, would know your rituals this well? The penalty for revealing your secrets is death. The penalty for an unsanctioned kill is death.”

“You ask too much, vampire!” Evangeline’s muscles quivered with barely controlled rage.

Diego spread his hands placatingly before him, struggling to keep things civil. “All we ask is that you put a stop to these murders, and keep the peace both our Councils swore to uphold. How you do that is up to you.”

Chapter Twelve

“I can’t
believe
the balls on her.” Hadrian strode back and forth in the parlor of Diego’s home, his steps short and on the verge of violent. “All they offer us is some piss-ass slayer-in-training poking around!”

“A full slayer,” Diego corrected.

“That’s not possible. She’s way too young.”

“She’s different than the others. Half human and half vampire,” Ryder said.

Diego nodded. “She’s a dhampir, and a full slayer, Hadrian. Did you let your fear unbalance you so much you didn’t register the undead energy in her?”

Maximilian, who had been silent during the entire parlay and on the return trip to Diego’s, finally spoke.

“Why don’t you understand that he has the most to lose? Again?” He went to Hadrian and laid a hand on his shoulder, which calmed him somewhat.

“I understand, Max,” Diego conceded. “Which is why I say let the little dhampir do as her Council has commanded. She might be young, but she seems competent. And Benjamin will be working with her. In the meantime, we’ll find out what we can on our own.”

Hadrian clenched his fists. Behind gritted teeth, he said, “I need to get home to my family. My
family
, do you get that?”

Ryder inclined his head. “I do, Hadrian. You’re a lucky man to have what you have.”

What Diana had probably also wanted at one time…and had sacrificed to be with him.

Hadrian stalked out of the apartment and Maximilian hurried after him.

The door closed with a slam like a gunshot that had Ryder flinching. He’d heard the real version once too often.

“It’s time I go,” he told Diego, and headed out the door. He wanted to be home. Hadrian’s emotional outburst had reminded him of the emptiness of his own life before Diana. Of what his days and nights were like now.

Loving. Full. Complicated.

So damned complicated. He flew through Central Park toward his condo on the East Side. Even with his speed and the late night, he saw scattered silhouettes of people walking along the pathways. Singles. Couples.

Lots of couples.

He went straight up to the bedroom and found her tucked in bed. A stain of color warmed her cheeks. A healthy blush, he noted with pleasure, but that quickly faded as he perceived something else. She wasn’t asleep. Again. With rising annoyance, he waited for her to avoid him again. But to his surprise, he got a sleepy smile and a shift of her hand to pat the empty space beside her.

“Come to bed,” she murmured.

Armed with hope, he undressed and slipped into bed beside her. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he drew her near, pleased when she welcomed him close.

…

Despite Diana’s earlier fears, Ryder’s presence brought her comfort. She relaxed against him, allowing herself to finally drift into sleep. She’d been tossing and turning all night, awaiting his return. Missing him, because he brought her soul peace.

But her rest was short-lived. The dream clawed its way into her brain.

It had been a long time since she’d had it.

In an instant, she was hurled back to the worst day of her life. In motion so slow that each heartbeat seemed to take forever, the car came toward her and her father, the heavy bass beat of the car stereo booming. But not loud enough to hide the load and click of gun magazines.

At the sound, her father’s head whipped toward the street. He pulled her behind him, but not before the
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire shattered the tranquillity of the morning.

Heat sizzled on her side. In front of her, his body jerked, then did a slow crumple at her feet. Tires screeched angrily against cement as the car with the shooters fishtailed, then raced away. With a cry, she dropped to her knees and cradled her father in her arms. She brought her hand to the wound in his chest and pressed hard, desperately trying to stem the blood turning the blue of his uniform to black. Trying to hold death at bay.

Her fingers were wet and warm as his life left his body. The blood seeped past her hand onto the ground, the color of it vivid scarlet in the sunlight. The smell of gunpowder was sharp and acrid in her nose, along with the odor of burning rubber from the car tires.

“
Papi, no. Por favor, Papi
,” she cried, and held him close. The noise of the world around them, the wails of the other students who had seen the shooting, and the screaming sirens all faded until it was just the two of them.

“
Niña
. So proud.” He tried to reach for her, but his arm just flopped uselessly. He was already too weak to move.

“Do the right thing,
mi’ja
. Always do…right…thing,” he said on a long exhale.

And then he was gone, his beautiful hazel eyes empty of life. Staring sightlessly into the bright Miami sun.

He was at peace in her arms, tranquil, his blood sticky on her hands. His body growing chilly even with the warmth of the early summer day.

She kissed his forehead. The fragrance of his aftershave was familiar, and she battled to remember its scent rather than the smell of death.

A hand tugged at her shoulder, trying to pull her away. The blue of a police uniform appeared, but she refused to loosen her hold on her father, still rocking him in her arms. Promising him over and over she would always do the right thing, as if that might somehow bring him back.

Another touch came, more familiar than the first, along with a gentle voice, tearfully pleading with her.

“
Hermanita
. You’re hurt,” her brother Sebastian said, despair spilling from his voice.

She met a shattered gaze filled with suffering and pain. Loneliness. He’d never really been the son her father had wanted. Not like she’d been.

She pulled Sebastian close and he put his arms around her, sharing his deep, overwhelming grief. Saying his good-bye to a father who had never understood him and now never would.

As Sebastian held her, cold gripped her, and the pain in her side she hadn’t noticed at first intensified to the point of agony.

This was different. Her conscious mind intruded into the dream. It had never been like this before.

She shifted away from her brother to look down at her side. Instead of the usual bullet wound along her ribs, she saw a long, nasty wooden stake buried deep in the flesh of her abdomen, pale white and stained with her blood. She couldn’t pull it from her belly. Her fingers plucked at it futilely, slipping in the blood along its length.

Peering upward, she realized it was no longer Sebastian crouched beside her, but her father. He was in his dress uniform, his newly won lieutenant’s bars gleaming against the dark blue fabric. He’d worked so hard for those bars. So hard, they’d barely seen him the last year of his life. It was why this morning had been so special. Not the award she was to receive, but that he would be there to see it. Finally.

Her father smiled down at her, his grin movie-star bright in the darkness that surrounded him except for a brilliant portal of light behind him.

“Do the right thing,
mi’ja
,” he said again, and offered his hand, inviting her to join him…as he had only once before—when she’d been dying that winter night of the raid.

“No,
Papi
. No, no,
no
.” She rose and backpedaled, as she had before, but winced at the pain in her abdomen. It traveled down and slid low in her belly, sinking its fangs deep into her gut.

She clutched at her midsection, battling the agony weakening her knees and the wet that dripped from her body. Warm, sticky wetness that ran down her legs and pooled in a dark glistening stain against a moonlit cobblestoned street.

Her father, his face forever youthful, laid his hands on her shoulders and pulled her toward him. Pulled her in the direction of the portal of warm, welcoming light. “Come with me, Diana. It’s the right thing to do.”

But in her heart she knew that it wasn’t. Not for her. Not now.
Maybe not ever
.

“No, no, no,” she shouted again and pushed away, but he held fast. She shoved at his arms, trying to get free. Kicking at him, her heart pounding in her chest as he called out her name.

“Diana. Wake up, darlin’. It’s me. It’s Ryder.”

She went stock-still and opened her eyes to stare at her lover as he held her, his face full of fear.

“I’m sorry. So sorry,” she said, and shook her head to drive away the remnants of her dream. Releasing her arms, he sank down beside her. “What happened?”

“A dream,” she said, and scoured her face with her hands. Hands that still felt warm and sticky as the memories clung to her. She scrubbed harder and inhaled deeply to calm the gallop of her heart.

“More like a nightmare, I’m guessing. Want to tell me about it?” he asked, and brushed some stray hair off her face.

She wasn’t quite ready to share. At least not all of it. But she knew what had triggered it.

“I know we live with death every day—”

“I’m sorry about before,” he blurted out. “About what I almost did. I know it’s not what you want.” His hand gently skimmed her cheek in apology.

“It’s not that I don’t want to stay with you, Ryder. I do. I’ve already refused heaven once to be with you,” she confessed, swallowed, then plowed on. “When my dad died, I lost it. I cared about nothing. Cared about no one, not even myself. I had only one goal: vengeance. It took me a while to find balance again. Ever since, I’ve always felt I’m just a little slip away from falling again.” She rubbed at the ridge of scar over her ribs.

He took her hand to still the nervous motion. “But you weren’t responsible for what happened the night of the raid. You couldn’t stop it.”

“I know. But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the guilt. To struggle with the promise I made my father to always do the right thing. I felt…overwhelmed. I still do sometimes.”

…

Ryder heard something in Diana’s voice he’d never heard before—the bone-deep loneliness of a young girl. That surprised him. “You weren’t alone then. You had your mom and Sebastian.”

A negligent shift of her shoulders told him otherwise, and it shocked him. She and Sebastian were so close now that he couldn’t imagine there had been a time when they hadn’t been. As for her mother, he’d believed the separation between them had been all about the physical distance between New York and Miami. Now he wondered.

He gave her a squeeze. “Want to talk about it?”

The hesitant hunch of her shoulders came again and she looked away, but he cradled her chin with his thumb and forefinger, and applied gentle pressure until she could no longer avoid looking at him.

“You know how when you’re a kid, things seem bigger? Brighter? Perfect?” she murmured, but the bitterness was hard to miss.

“Your dad?”

She nodded, and he sensed how difficult it was for her to not only share this, but finally to admit it to herself.

“You loved him.”

“I did. But…the dream tonight made me remember things. Maybe things I’ve kept buried all these years because he was dead.”

“And admitting them would be like betraying him. Betraying his memory.”

“Yes.” The word exploded from her against his chest as she rested her head there.

He ran his hands up and down her back. “I’m here for you. You know that, right?”

“I know,” she said softly, and tightened her hold on him. “And I want to be here for you. To share my life with you.”

“But you worry if you can do that,” he said, and recalled the woman he’d first met so many years ago. A loner, despite her many friends and family. A tough, hard-edged FBI agent reluctant to reveal emotion. Even more unwilling to admit that love had any place in her life. Despite all those barriers she’d built around herself, he’d discovered a crack in her wall and wedged himself into her heart.

“I won’t lie and say it’s easy being a vampire,” he said. “I wanted to die at first, and as I watched my friends and family leave me, that wish only got stronger. It wasn’t until you came into my life that it had meaning again.”

Her soft pained sigh drifted across his cheek. “I want to believe that I can handle it, but I know what’s inside me. I’ve seen what happens when all the pain and guilt takes over.”

“Together we can overcome it, darlin’. All those things you fear are what make you who you are. Make you strong and determined and loving.” He bent his head to brush a kiss along her lips. “That make me love you.” He deepened the kiss, wanting to leave no doubt in her mind about his feelings.

She clutched his shoulders and released herself to his kiss. When she shifted back, her shimmering gaze traveled over his face and a hesitant smile played about her lips. “I wish I could be as hopeful as you are.”

“Hope was the only thing that kept me going for centuries. Hope brought me you.”

…

Ryder’s words made Diana’s heart clench and her throat tighten with emotion. She wasn’t sure what she’d done in her life to deserve a man like this.

Knowing his hopes, she chose her next words carefully.

“I want to be with you, forever, but…I have to be sure of myself.”

His gaze deepened with emotion. “I know we could be happy together, but I won’t press until you’re ready.”

She leaned forward and gifted him with a kiss, sealing the unspoken promise they’d made. She nestled against his side and accepted the comfort of his arms and the quiet strength that had sustained her during the last five years.

It could be like this forever, she told herself as she drifted off, but almost chuckled aloud as an almost unbelievable realization hit her.

To become the kind of demon he could love forever, a caring vampire filled with humanity, she had to become a better human being.

Ironic much?