Diamond (Rare Gems Series) (6 page)

“
I was hurt in that car accident and she healed me.” Thad stood up to pace as he tried to think. “She licked it and I healed. Blair said she took my blood and we have a bond.”

“
She’s hurt. Badly, I would say, by the way you fell over.” He stopped packing to wait for her to explain. “You have a connection, and I’m not one hundred percent sure why you felt her pain without mating, but you did. She’s hurt.”

“
And what happens if I don’t take her as my mate? You started to tell me, what is it?” Her phone started to ring, but neither of them moved to answer it. He waited, knowing that whatever it was, it was going to be bad.

“
She’ll turn rogue and will need to be put down if it gets bad enough. All of us have the potential to turn at some point in our lives. Boredom mostly. But only because we have no one to share our lives with, to help us, and be there for us or, sadly, the loss of our mates. If we can’t find a way to overcome it, we…we start to turn bad, kill for fun and pleasure. Most vampires meet the sun when their mates die, others like me try to cope.”

“
You lost your mate?” Jane nodded again. “Was he human? Did you have a human as your mate?”

“
Yes, and she was the light of my life, and all I wanted to live for. But before she died, she told me that I was to live on for her, do things that she was no longer able to do.” Jane shrugged. “So I have to the best of my ability. For the past four hundred years I’ve been alone, and every day I wake to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to just simply let myself go. But as a half-vamp, I don’t have a lot of options to end my life without trusting someone to do it for me, and quickly.”

He sat on the conference table because it was the closest thing to him without falling to the floor.
Jane stood there and watched him for several seconds before she turned and left his office, closing the door softly behind her. Thad was still sitting there when she returned a few minutes later.

“
Diamond has been shot. And worse yet, with a silver bullet. Someone named Ruby removed it, but she won’t shift.” He waited for her to continue. “If she doesn’t shift to remove the poison from her system, she’ll die. Not quickly, either, with the silver removed. I’m surprised her alpha hasn’t pulled her wolf.”

“
Blair. He told me he was alpha and that he ruled…how would he pull her wolf?” She handed him a thick book, and he looked at the cover. It was old and leather bound. It had a circle of wolves chasing one another, and in the center of the circle was a single word.
Lupine.

“
That was given to me by someone a very long time ago. When I first smelled the wolves after you came back, I had thought that you’d found a woman and had no idea what you’d…never mind. I brought it to work in the event you had known what you smelled like. Then I met the Hensons and knew. Again, I thought you’d ask for more information on them, but you didn’t.” She took the book back and searched through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Thad took it back from her and read the title.
“Human and Wolf Mating Rituals”

“
I would read that first since you’re well beyond anything previous in the book.” She handed him his coat as she continued. “Your car is downstairs, and the plane is ready to go. If you have any questions, just call me. I don’t sleep.”

Thad was in the limo when he realized that he
had nothing to wear once he got there, and started to ask the driver when his phone signaled he had a message. Opening the file, he laughed at the message from Jane.

“
Clothes are easy to buy, so get something less stiff and something more befitting a man, not a billionaire. I have made arrangements with Blair’s office to set up an appointment, but since he is working from home for now, you’ll have to see him there. Don’t fuck this up. If you do, I’ll drain you. Have a good day.”

“
Christ,” he thought out loud. He was headed to Ohio to see to a woman who may or may not eat him for dinner, to talk to a man who would most assuredly kill him if he didn’t have answers, and literally into a den of wolves who had been hurt by him. Yeah, this was going to go well.

Chapter 6

Blair was sitting at his desk when the door opened.
He’d been trying to concentrate on business, but his heart just wasn’t in it. He looked up at Annabelle when she came fully into the room.

“
You have a visitor. Thad Galloway is here. I put him in the living room.” Blair started to tell her to get him the hell out, but she raised her hand up to continue. “He looks like you do.”

“
And what is that?” Blair knew what he looked like. Sapphire had told him this morning that she was glad he wasn’t at his office. He would scare most of his staff and probably have them all quit if he barked at them like he was her.

“
Like you’ve lost something very dear to you.” She stood up and moved to the door but turned to speak again. “He asked me about Diamond. I told him that she was…coping. I wanted to tell him that she’s dying, but I can’t say that to anyone.”

Blair had never hated
anyone as much as he did Thad. The man had sent a fucking gun there to keep him in line, and now he was sitting in the house as if nothing had happened. Blair didn’t want to see him, not now, not ever, but he knew that if he threw him out of the house he’d just find Diamond other ways. Blair looked up at the ceiling, thinking of the woman who was up there and how much he loved her.

Thad knocked on the open door
, and Blair was shocked at how badly he did look. And if he looked like that, he was glad now that he’d not left the house. Christ, the man looked like he’d been shot.

“
I’ve been trying to get here for five days. If it wasn’t the weather, it was the car I rented. Then I got a bout of food poisoning and was…it doesn’t matter. I’ve come to see Diamond please. I’d like to talk to her.”

“
She won’t see you. Not just you, but none of us. She’s in her room.” Blair wanted to beg him to take her as his mate, but because of the promises he’d made Diamond, he couldn’t do anything like that. “I’d very much like it if you got the hell out of my life. I don’t want you here.”

“
According to what I’ve read, you can pull her wolf to make her shift. Why haven’t you done that?” Blair was shocked that Thad had bothered to find out any information on them, but he continued before Blair could say anything. “There have been incidents where the she-wolf is strong enough to resist the alpha, but not if she’s hurt badly. Also, it says that you can heal her if she won’t do it herself.”

“
She’s been shot, did you know that? And by one of your men you sent out here to take care of us. Did you know that he had everything all written out and what to do to harm this family?” Blair was shaking his head at him. “You’re saying you didn’t mean for him to shoot us in cold blood?”

“
I didn’t send him out here.” Blair sat back in his chair as Thad continued. “I didn’t know until…when she was hurt, so was I. Jane told me that it wasn’t possible since we didn’t mate, but I felt her shot in the belly.”

Blair
had to think, but his thoughts weren’t going in any direction that made sense to him. Then something occurred to him. It had been Morton. He didn’t know why he knew it, but he looked at Thad and asked him.

“
Morton sent them out here to stop this deal from happening, didn’t he?” Thad nodded. “Why? Does he think that we were going to…I don’t know, roll over and let you fuck us up over this?”

“
I don’t know what he thought, and as of almost a week ago, he’s dead.” Blair started to ask what happened when Thad stood, pacing. “She wouldn’t tell me what she did, and I really didn’t want to know. Jane, I mean. Did you know she was a vampire? I didn’t. Apparently, more than half the people working for me are some sort of paranormal. But she went to his office, and no one has heard or seen him since. She simply told me to hire someone else.”

Blair knew she was a vampire, not a full blooded one but close enough. He also knew that she was a great deal older than she looked.
Maybe as much as five hundred years more than she looked. But he let Thad pace and mumble while he reached for Sapphire.

“
Thad is here in my office, and he’s had a great shock. He’s also more bonded with Diamond than we’d thought. He felt her pain when she was hurt.”
Blair knew his wife was at her office and wondered for a second if she was getting any work done either.

“
Are you going to let him see her? I don’t know if I would or not. She needs something to pull her out of this even if she were to shift to kill him.”
Blair laughed a little, and Thad stared at him before continuing on his trek across his carpet.
“I’d let her see him, I think. Just to see if she has any feelings for him.”

“
Do you think she does
?” He’d tried talking to her several times over the past week, but all she’d done was tell him to go away. Then yesterday she’d told him that if they all didn’t stop bothering her, she’d go to New York now and not contact them at all. If she did that, he knew she’d let herself go and die without anyone knowing until it was too late.

“
I think if she didn’t have feelings for him, she’d have shifted and been on her way to recovering by now. And if it’s simply hatred and she kills him, well, I can live with that too.”

Blair watched Thad pace
, and when he finally sat down, he put a book on his desk. Every part of him froze when he saw the title and he looked up at the man to ask him where the hell he’d gotten it when he answered his unspoken question.

“
Jane said that someone gave it to her years and years ago. I didn’t ask her where, but she told me to read it. When I was hospitalized, I had to do something since I didn’t have the strength to do much else, so I read it. From cover to cover, making notes on some of the things I didn’t understand.” He pulled out a tattered notebook and opened it. “Like this part about changing your mate to a wolf. It says that she has to cause me a mortal wound. Why?”

“
So that her essences enter your body quickly. Sometimes the human dies when this happens, but for the most part, in a few days to a week the human lives because he’s been changed to wolf.” Blair picked up the book with trembling hands. “Do you know what this book could do for my kind if it were to fall into the wrong hands?”

“
They would hunt you down and kill you all. I would imagine that over the years someone had gotten this book. There’s a whole section at the end of it that’s been added by hand. They told of the massacre in which thousands of your kind were killed and a great many humans that they thought werewolf just to get rid of you.” Thad looked at his notes. “I would never say a word to anyone, and I want you to have the book. Jane said I was to do with it what I wanted. You are the only person I trust with it.”

Blair felt oddly honored and terrified.
To have such a book was an honor. Also to have it was scary. The book in the wrong hands could do so much more than what Thad thought it could. It would quite literally end the existence of all weres everywhere.

“
She’s dying.” Thad looked up at him when he spoke. “She won’t shift and because of a promise I made her last summer, I can’t command her to do anything like this. At the time I thought it was because she didn’t care for going to the pack meetings and she didn’t want to have to shift because of what happened to her before with her other pack. But she sort of has me at a hold. No matter how much I command her to shift, she won’t. I think she wants to die.”

“
Because of me.” Blair didn’t answer him. He wasn’t sure he could tell him anything other than he was correct. “Can I make her shift?”

“
No. Well, that’s not true, you more than likely could, but it would be…it would require you pissing her off so badly that her wolf would take her.” Blair started to tell him it was dangerous but he stood up and nodded.

“
Is she in her room?” Blair nodded and watched the man walk away. He wanted to go after him and tell him to not do this, but he had nothing invested in the man and everything in the woman. Diamond was a very big part of this family, as were all the others, and her being this way, dying and not really caring, he was willing to let him be hurt instead of her. And right now, he was their only hope of saving her.

~~~

Diamond moved slowly from the bathroom to the bed. She wanted to make it up, the sheets needed changing too, but she didn’t have the energy, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure she’d do it anyway. The knock at her door had her groaning. Why didn’t they simply leave her alone? When it opened, she stared at Thad for a long time before he moved into the room completely and closed the door behind him.

“
What are you doing here? I think you should leave.” She felt her wolf stir a little. “Now, before you piss me off.”

“
You look like shit.” Her entire body felt the hit of embarrassment when he said that. “Not only that, but you smell. What the hell have you been doing up here, hibernating? I’m opening a window and airing this place out.”

“
You’ll do no such thing. I said for you to get out, now.” The cool breeze from the window took her breath away. And the scents from the now open window made her wolf claw at her. Thad stood near the window and looked out over the yard. Diamond would have closed it again but he wasn’t moving.

“
You’re going to die up here, and no one will be the wiser unless you let out some of the stench in here. They’ll simply think you’ve still not bathed.” Thad turned to look at her as he continued. “Right now I’d very much like to pick you up and toss you in the shower myself, but I don’t want to reek of you.”

Her wolf stirred against her skin, hard and hot.
When Thad took a step back from her, she knew he’d felt it too. Diamond tried her best to calm her, but she wasn’t having it. She wanted to hurt the man in front of them.

“
You should leave.” Thad shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest, looking for all the world like he was ready to do battle with her. “You are pissing off my wolf, and she wants to hurt you.”

“
You think I care? I don’t. I’m not afraid of you. Other than you making me sick to my stomach. Did you really think that sitting up here in this room was going to endear you to anyone? All you’ve done is make people feel sorry for you. Big bad Diamond Erickson is so messed up from some guy that she’s willing to let herself die over him.” He snorted. “I guess you’re not half the woman they think you are. At least I will know the truth.”

Her wolf snarled at her and took her.
Pain radiated from her entire body as fur replaced skin; bones took another shape and size under her skin and made her drop to her hands. Claws sprouted from her fingers so that she looked as if she had a monster growing from her. When she felt her wolf tear at her face, elongating her chin until she had a muzzle, teeth grew along her newly formed jaw until she knew that when she bit at something she’d tear and mash, bringing blood down her throat to drink from. Diamond blinked several times, waiting for her eyes to adjust before she looked at Thad.

“
You should know that I didn’t mean anything I said to you. Before or now. I was a fool. But Blair told me that you needed to shift and this was the only way.” She moved closer to him and he didn’t run like her wolf wanted him to but stood very still. “I was more than a fool, Diamond, I was…I should have been…I’m not sure what I could have said or done that would have made things better between us.”

You don
’t want me.
He looked shocked at her, and she knew that he’d heard her.
You made me feel like I was worthless, less than human. You made me feel worse than Jeffery ever did. She wants to kill you right now.

“
I don’t know who that is but I’m assuming he’s the guy that hurt you into not wanting to shift at pack meetings.” Thad sat down on the chair and she could smell his weakness. “I know that you’ll never forgive me, and I can understand that. I was a bastard and a—”

What
’s wrong with you?
Diamond moved closer to him but not close enough that she could touch him.
You smell like…you’re sick. What’s happened to you?

“
I’m fine.” She snarled at him, and he leaned away from her when she got closer. “I was sick for a few days. I’m better now.”

You
’re not. You smell like you’re still very sick and should be in a hospital.
He didn’t move, but she did until she could put her nose on his bare arm.
You come in here acting like you can take on the world and…what if I had attacked you? How the hell would you have defended yourself against me?

Then it occurred to her that he didn
’t care if she killed him or not. When she whimpered at him, he put his hand on her head and rubbed against her fur. Leaning into him, she let him continue touching her; the wolf in her was happy with him all of a sudden.

“
I’m going to have to go soon. I’m flying out tonight.” Thad started to stand but fell back in the chair. “I’m glad that you’re going to be well from now on. I’m not sure why Blair let me in the house, but I guess he figured that having me dead and you alive was a better tradeoff for all of you. And I’m not going to fight the…did you know Jane was a vampire?”