Darkness Bred (22 page)

The wolves’ howls rose, unearthly, terrified, but the vampires acted first. They levitated into the air, one after the other, jostling together in their haste. But Sean moved quickly; he shook a stream of liquid from the jug over the closest vampire.

The creature gave a terrible howl. He screamed and tore at his clothes, swung onto his back above the ground, and writhed in uncontrolled spasms.

Coughing, choking, he wrapped his cloak about him and flew slowly into the darkness, rolling over and over, making sounds only a dying thing would make.

The rest scrambled to get height in the sky and then they were gone like streaks of smoke through the sky and the wolves raced, yipping and howling, for the forest.

B
efore he had left, taking unconscious Gabriel with him to care for, Saul insisted the vessel disguised as silver, and its contents, be placed in the wide ring of light that shone from above the front door onto the porch. Its very presence would guard the little house, he told them. Neither he nor Sean thought their enemies would return soon, particularly since the night’s hours were numbered.

The men seemed almost disinterested in Sally and the brother and sister who had disappeared.

When they were alone, Elin said, “You don’t think we should look for Sally?”

“My guess is that she’s with Tarhazian,” Sean said. “This may be her opportunity to find favor with that woman. We have bigger problems to deal with.”

“But they won’t give up, will they?” Elin said, and immediately regretted her words. “Quitus? And the ones who came here? At least, they might not give up.”

Sean had retrieved his jeans but he remained bare-chested and barefoot. He moved restlessly around the perimeter of the room, glancing at her frequently, his jaw set and his eyes stark with rage.

“Let me get you something hot to drink,” she said, wanting to comfort him.

“It’s not cocoa I need,” he said, barely moving his lips.

“Go up and sleep,” she told him. “I’ll keep watch.”

Sean laughed and the sound raised goose bumps on Elin’s arms.

“No need to watch now,” he said. “Damn them. They won’t come after you the same way twice. Right now they’re with Quitus. When he stops punishing them for their failure, he’ll plan the next move.”

She swallowed and said in a small voice, “Then we should make a move first.”

“What do you think I’m doing?” he asked, shoving a palm toward her. “I’m trying to decide the best course and I know we can’t move too quickly. First we must be sure they’re all together. Then we have to have a plan of attack. It will be a long day. The coming night will probably seem too short.”

Elin could smell soot and smoke on herself. She combed her fingers through her hair and they came away even blacker.

“I’m going to shower,” she told Sean. “Please call out if I need to come.”

His laughter was humorless.

Elin ran up the ladder to the loft and gathered clean clothes. There would be no comfortable sleep in comfortable nighties until this was all over—which meant she might never sleep in comfort again.

When she climbed back down the ladder and went swiftly to the bathroom, Sean didn’t as much as look at her. Inside, with the door shut, she couldn’t deny that she hoped he would come to her.

Through a small, pebbled glass skylight, she saw how the night weakened and cold, winter stars began to fade. Then steam from the hot water coated everything and she luxuriated in the heat.

She didn’t know Sean had come in until she felt his presence. The bathroom door was already closed and he stood outside the shower doors, watching her.

Elin knew he saw her shadow, her face raised to allow water to splash, the way she shampooed her hair, winding it into heavy, lathered swirls on her head.

If he wanted to be excited, she would do her best. Sliding her hands up her slick thighs, she let her head drop back and turned to face away from the shower head. Over her belly and her ribs and up to cup her breasts, her hands moved naturally. This was how she always showered. But she didn’t always pinch and tug on her own nipples while her hair fell in a long, heavy, wet sheath. And she didn’t always slip a hand between her thighs and slide it into the folds of her sex to send a dart of pleasure through her, and buckle her own knees.

Elin smiled and eased open one of the shower doors. He would have to be unconscious not to see the invitation.

The man who joined her in the small shower stall, who planted his fists on his hips and allowed his arousal to sway before her, was an intoxicating stranger.

Water plastered his hair back and spiked his eyelashes, but his eyes were the deepest gold and they skewered her.

Sean shot an arm around her waist and hauled her onto a raised thigh. He kissed her, open-mouthed, tonguing his way across the insides of her mouth to her throat, and Elin’s body pulsed while she strained to get closer.

He slid fingers between her labia and rubbed with such force, she almost cried out. Just as quickly, he released and stood her on the tile again.

His next kiss was softer but just as deep. The fingers that pinched and rolled her nipples were gentle, but Elin just wanted more and more of him. She caught up the soap and lathered his back while their bodies slid together. His buttocks were hard beneath her hands and he jutted his hips toward her each time she swept arcs over the firm flesh.

“Sean,” she said tentatively, “I want you all the time.”

“You have changed me,” he said. “I am a man who used to feel complete on his own. Not anymore. I need you.”

“Is that a bad thing?” She took his penis in her hands and squeezed, stroked its length, and felt a burst of joy inside when his hips came toward her—helplessly.

“You like to control,” he said, but he didn’t sound angry. “You love the power you have over me.”

“Only because I want you, Sean. And when I feel how much you want me, it’s incredible.”

She dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth, slid her teeth gently back and forth until he shoved against her.

The sound he made was like a stifled scream in his throat and he lifted her as if she were nothing, and wrapped her legs around his waist. “This is for the lust,” he said. “Then we explore the love.”

Lust meant she fell onto him and he penetrated her in a single stroke, with a single pulse of finding each other before the wild driving, the taking of both of them, carried their bodies over the edge. Elin’s jaws ground together. She dug her fingernails into his back, meeting each of his thrusts with matching force. Sean squeezed the cheeks of her bottom and ran a finger up the cleft to spread his hand across her back and press her even closer.

They thundered together, lost, and never wanting to be found.

She smiled at the warm fluid spreading over her thighs, and mourned not being able to capture and keep it all.

She heard, “I love you,” and whispered, “And I love you so much more.”

“Not possible,” Sean said.

They stood, breast to breast, belly to belly, thigh to thigh, and the evidence of their completion still pulsed, one against the other.

Elin held him beneath his penis and weighted him, and smiled when he drew in a sharp breath. Beneath her hand he started to reawaken—and his fingers slipping between her legs made the pulsing, thrumming begin all over again.

Pretending to growl, Sean pushed her under the cooling shower and sluiced off any soap. She did the same for him, slicking the soap from his hair and body, and laughing when he almost slipped and clutched at whatever he could find—her waist—which he quickly abandoned to sweep her up into his arms.

“Turn off the water,” he ordered, his voice even lower than usual.

Elin complied.

“Are you ready for the loving, ma’am? Although I can hardly believe our recovery rate.” He kissed her ear.

“I am ready, sir.” Her very spirit bubbled. “Not too gentle, though, hmm?”

Sean smiled against her neck, and nipped a little skin between his teeth. “Be careful what you wish for.”

By the time he climbed the ladder to the loft, he had Elin draped around his shoulders and she still felt too slippery for safety.

Soon she didn’t care if she ever felt safe again.

T
he fire roared into the chimney again. Sean doubted either Elin or he had slept more than an hour at a time in the loft bed. But she wouldn’t let him leave her alone even to bank the fire.

Naked, swathed in a down blanket from the bed, they leaned against the base of an easy chair in the living room and watched the flames. Elin’s head fitted into the hollow of his shoulder, and although her arms couldn’t close around him, he engulfed her in his.

With a light hand, he stroked the side of her face and ran his thumb across her bottom lip. A small enough shift and he smoothed his fingers from her collarbone to her breast and covered it gently.

She breathed so regularly, he thought for a moment she had fallen asleep, but only until she looked up at him. “If we could remember to treasure even our shortest times together, we’d know what happiness really is,” she said.

“I already know, and I’d stopped thinking it would ever happen for me.” Longing for a life partner had turned into the hunt for a mate and somehow he had given up on finding what he had now. “You’re not the other half of me. I…you’re all of me. Where do I begin and you finish? It doesn’t happen. We make one whole.”

Elin rubbed his belly and he felt her smile when the muscles contracted. “I never expected you to be poetic,” she said.

“Just honest, and struggling my clumsy way through the words to find some that work.”

“Was there someone—a woman—before you were changed?”

He worked not to let her feel the wash of tension. “Not anyone serious. I was working my way across the country—following whatever they all said would be the next sure thing. There wasn’t time to have relationships. I wanted to be where I could help people the way my father had, and still get by. Being paid in a chicken here and a jar of jam there made for a tough go.”

“Then Aldo came along and you saved him.”

“Mmm. I would have been happy with a chicken payment that night.” He looked down on the top of her shining ebony hair. “But then I wouldn’t have met you. We wouldn’t have sealed and been together like this. Do you know what I mean when I say it’s as if there’s no beginning or ending between the two of us?”

She nodded. Her lashes were wet against his chest and tears slipped over his skin. “I’m so lucky.”

Sean tightened his grip on her. “We won’t argue about who is or isn’t lucky here. I feel you when you’re not with me, have I told you that?”

He thought she smiled again. “Sort of.”

“Is that something you do, Elin? In New Orleans, Dora talked about how powerful you are and how many talents you have.”

Elin breathed in slowly, and he didn’t know if she’d answer. Her teeth closed on one of his flat nipples and he jumped. “You’re something,” he said. “Wily.”

“I do it,” she said almost under her breath. “I don’t know how or why, but after we met—after I loved you and was sure it would never stop—I just thought about you and felt your body against my hands.”

Bending forward, he raised her chin and frowned at her. “How many men can you do this with?”

“Only you, silly. It will only ever be you. One day I’ll find out more about who and what I am, and where these things came from. For now I’m going to accept the good stuff and not think too hard about it.”

“We’ll go back to New Orleans and find Dora again—and this Jude you talked about.”

She sighed. “We’ll find Dora. I know we will. But I think seeing Jude was something different. I don’t believe he lives in this world.”

Sean let that go. “We have a long journey ahead. I look forward to it with you. I don’t think I could ever have loved anyone else, but I felt something different the day we met.”

“Yes, you thought I was very different,” she said with a sniff. “I bet that was it. The waif who was all hair and eyes. People have said that about me before.”

“And you take it wrong. First, your body…darn it, Elin, you’re making me hard again.”

She laughed. “Such problems you have.”

“You’re beautiful and you know it. I don’t mind you being beautiful, but I’d still love you if you looked like a troll.”

“Hey. Watch it!”

“I mean, I love you for who you are and the gorgeous trimmings are a bonus.”

“Same here,” she said. “Although your gorgeous trimmings don’t hurt.”

They fell silent. Sean glanced toward the curtained window. Dawn pushed fingers of gray through a narrow gap at one side and stroked across the wall.

“I wish we could stop time,” Elin said.

“If you figure that one out, count me in.”

“We’ll have to go to Niles and Leigh once it’s light. Is Niles trying to reach you yet?”

Sean scooted down and nipped her shoulder. “No. I think he’ll wait for me unless we’re still not out of here by noon.”

“Let’s wait till noon then,” Elin said. “I mean it.”

“I’d like to mean it, but we need an edge today. Niles has to accept my help and he can’t do it with strings attached. I want his input, but I’ll have to lead the way to take out the wolves.”

“What about the vampires?”

He kissed the dip between her breasts. “Maybe we should stay here until someone drags us out. Or maybe we should never leave.”

“Vampires,” she prodded.

“You were with Tarhazian most of your life. Didn’t she tell you the pecking order where vampires are concerned?”

“All she said was that she didn’t ever want me near them.”

He thought about that. The Fae Queen might love her stolen child after all. “They are the strongest of us all—and the hardest to get rid of. You’re never going to forget how it felt when Colin tried to snatch you away. You couldn’t have fought him.”

“But you did.”

“We hounds are not understood by many. We are stronger than the wolves and more patient. We prefer to use more than the obvious when we’re forced to fight.” He didn’t like talking to Elin about this.

“What would that be?” she asked, as he expected her to.

“You deserve to know everything about us, and about me, but could we wait until today is past? And maybe tomorrow and the next day if that’s how long it takes to fight our way out of trouble.” He wouldn’t admit that he had doubts about how easy that would be, if it could be done at all.

“Sean, is this all because Quitus hopes to make a Bloodstone big enough, and powerful enough, to bring everyone and everything he wants under his control?”

“Yes. At least, that’s what I believe. And his master plan has gotten bent so he’s flailing and having to work on grabbing what he wants in little pieces. He doesn’t want to subdue one victim at a time. He wants this whole island and that wouldn’t be enough for him. Then he’d want more. But he’s made a hash of whatever he’s done to the elements of The Veil.”

“Red,” she said quietly. “Blood as he’s decided it is.”

“And something is making him sick and weak.”

Elin shivered. “Which is why he wants us. Aldo is part of him and Aldo knows you can renew him. Now he believes my blood and organs are essential, too.”

He would not make her frantic by admitting Aldo was still an unknown quantity to him, or that what he feared most was this unknown surrogate they spoke of. “He won’t get you. But you will have to—”

“Follow your orders?” she broke in. “I will unless I don’t agree with you.”

“Elin!”

“Yes, I mean that. You want to carry the burden for everyone and absolutely for me, but you said you couldn’t find where you ended and I began because we’re one and the same. I don’t have to tell you what that means. Please make love to me again.”

He dragged her to sit on his lap, which did nothing to help his case when he said, “There isn’t time, my love. We could easily be interrupted.”

“Sean,” she said, twisting to sit astride his thighs and teasing his penis against him. “This could be the last time. We don’t have any guarantees.”

Even if he was admitting she was right, he couldn’t make himself deny her.

He let her guide him deep inside her body, and helped stretch them out, still joined, on top of the down blanket.