Dylan (Bowen Boys) (23 page)

“Are you so stupid that you don’t
realize what I could and will do to you? You are nothing to my strength and age,
you ignorant female.” The cat snarled at him. “Tell him to be quiet or I’ll
tear your throat out.”

“No.” He looked at the cat, then at her
again. Was she serious? Apparently so. The cat jumped off the bed and sat at
her legs. When he laid his head on her, Lucius knew that he was her mate.

“So you’ve found yourself a panther to
fuck. Good for you. I do hope that you’ve enjoyed him. When I’m through with
you, he’ll run from you every time you enter the room. That is if I let you
live. Which I don’t think is going to happen for you.” He yanked her head back
harder and looked at the pulse beating slowly.

“You think that I’m afraid of you, don’t
you.” He nodded, confused by her lack of fear. “You’re the one who should be
afraid. I mean, what kind of idiot lets a mere slip of a girl get into his room
with a pissed off panther? Not to mention take what you stole from her in the
first place. You’re the ignorant one, you fuck-tard.”

He glanced at the panther, which hadn’t
moved. He looked…Lucius thought he looked bored, and when he closed his eyes, Lucius
was sure he’d fallen asleep. He watched her hand move toward the cat’s head and
begin to rub it. When the cat began to purr loudly, Lucius wanted to scream.

“You are trying my patience.” He felt
spittle drip from his mouth. He wasn’t sure what to do with her, or the cat. Moving
the knife deeper into her flesh, he watched as a small drop of blood beaded up
on the fresh wound. Fear of her suddenly tripled.

“You really think I would come in here
without a plan? You think that because I’m a girl that I would come in here so ill
prepared that I’d let you take me so easily?” She smiled at him and he felt
shivers, cold and frightening, run down his spine. “Cut me again and I’ll kill
you.”

Her voice had been so low, so full of
promise, that he knew she would do just as she said she would. Lucius looked at
the cat and saw that he was no longer sleeping but looking at him as well. In
that second, he knew he wasn’t leaving this room.

“If I tell you where they are, will you
let me go?” She laughed, hardy and with a great deal of humor. “I will tell you
if you let me go.”

Her hand snaked out and grabbed his, the
one with the knife, and she jerked him around so quickly that he had no choice
but to follow the flow. As soon as his back was to the floor, she was over him,
his knife at his own throat, and she was holding it.

“I know where they are. You had your
manservant take them away when there was nothing much left of them but a shell.
You tore out the daughter’s throat without feeding from her, because you were
sick of her whining. The mother you enjoyed. Her blood was spiked with fear and
anger. You killed them not an hour after you snatched them from their hotel the
first day of their vacation.”

“There is no way that you would know
that.” But there was, and she did know it, knew it all. “I demand that you give
me my due. I wish to be brought before the council of my kind. I will stand
before them in trial and not hunted and killed by you.”

She leaned down to him, the knife deep
into his skin, yet not breaking it. She looked calm, and for whatever reason,
that frightened him more. The woman was mad, he realized. Mad as a hatter. When
she kissed his forehead, he jerked from her, and the knife cut him. He didn’t
move when she pulled away.

“I’m your judge and your jury, you
fucking asshole. And we’ve gotten all I want from you, thanks to my mate.” The
knife slid along his throat to his chest, where she paused. “I’m your
executioner, too.”

The knife plunged deep. He knew the exact
moment it touched his heart. Pain tore through him, and he worked quickly to
repair the damage. It wasn’t silver, so he may survive, he thought. When she
stood up off him, he grabbed at his chest, using his energy to stop the flow of
blood and work at closing off the wound. Closing his eyes, he tried to make it
look as if he was dying. Then there was sharpness at this throat.

She stood over him, a sword in her
hands. He watched her pull it from his neck to a full arch above her body. He
couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything as his energy level was too low from loss
of blood. The silver blade came around, a work of beauty in the way that she
and the sword seemed to be one. When it sliced though his neck, he had seconds
to appreciate her strength and her aim. Few could have taken a head from a full-grown
man as smoothly as she’d done.

Chapter Seventeen

Jack sat on the deck of her home and
watched the river flow past. She’d been out there since the first rays of the
sun had touched the mountain. The unopened box that the wizard had given them
was under the chair where she sat. She looked up when the door opened behind
her and Dylan stepped out.

“You couldn’t sleep?” She shook her
head. “I’m worried about you. I thought that coming here would be good for you.
You’ve not slept a whole night in over a week.”

She’d been sleeping but not restfully. She
kept playing over and over in her head the way that the vampire had died. She
shivered when she remembered him falling apart, his skin becoming hard and
brittle as he—

“Stop that.” She looked at Dylan when he
sat near her. “You can’t keep thinking about it. You saved us and my brother. Reed
said he tried to talk to you about it again yesterday.”

“I’m not ready yet.” She kicked the box
and leaned over to pick it up. “This came today. Khan sent it, I think. That
man has the worst handwriting I’ve ever seen. And how on earth did he know the
address here? I don’t even know it.”

“I called the post office and asked
them. They said they have some of your mail there and asked if we were going to
put up a mail box. I told them I didn’t know but we’d come in and get the mail
today.” She nodded.

“I don’t want to open it. The box…I
don’t want to open it. What if it’s stuff that would be from the vampire? I
don’t want to….” She looked at the fast moving river again. “I have killed
before, but when I took his life, I took it without him being able to fight
back. I murdered him.”

She knew that he was aware of the
dreams. It would be hard for him not to know since they slept together every
night. She also knew that he was trying to help her, and she loved him for it. But
she had killed a man, killed him when he’d had no way to defend himself. She
looked over when Dylan picked up the box.

He tore at the packaging and then sat
there for several seconds with the smallish chest on his lap. She knew it was
heavy; when the postman handed it to her she knew that something more had been
added, a great deal more. Jack wondered if Khan had sent something else with it,
but all that was there were the chest and the wrapping. Dylan stood up.

“Come into the house with me. I’ll open
it, and you can fix us breakfast.” She took his hand when he offered it. “I
would love some waffles. The kind you made the first night we were here. And
ham. I love fried ham.”

She went to the refrigerator and started
taking out the things to make waffles, and he sat in the chair. The box sat
there in front of him, and she tried to ignore it by changing the subject. She
glanced at the calendar and asked him about school.

“When do you need to go back to class? I’m
assuming you have to go in before school actually starts to do some things.” He
said he would, yes. “I don’t even know what grade you teach.”

“Fifth. I teach fifth grade and gym on
Tuesdays all day. It’s sort of nice. I get to know a great many of the kids I
might not have being just a teacher. What are you going to do now?”

She had had offers to go back to work
for Caitlynne, but she wasn’t sure she could do that right now. She’d received
a nice bonus for solving the case against the country when she’d figured out Mann’s
last two overseas accounts. And that money was still in an uncashed check with
the one she’d gotten from the Vampire Council for taking care of Lucius. That
check was considerably bigger. But until she cashed one or both of them she had
to find a job.

“Your brother Marc offered me a job. He
might have been kidding, but I was thinking of going into that line of work if
he didn’t want me.” She tried not to think about that and moved on. “I could
open my own investigating firm, something like he has. Monica said he’s very
good.”

“He wasn’t kidding when he offered you
the job. He has asked me several times if you were ready to talk business yet.”
Dylan got up and started making a pot of tea for them. “My dad said that Mom
misses you. I think he does more; you and he got along very well.”

They had, too. He was funny and witty,
just like she’d always dreamed of a dad being. He had texted her every day
since they’d been there and had sent her pictures of the babies, all three of them,
as well.

As they sat down to eat, she tried not
to see the box. She thought about asking him to put it on the floor, but that
would be like admitting that she was afraid of it. She looked at him when he
laughed.

“I have been really good about not invading
your mind. I’ve wanted to a great deal and have just been worried enough about
you to do it anyway. But it’s your face that gives you away sometimes. When you
think you’re alone or deep in thought, you have the most telling face.” She
started to get up and toss her plate in the sink when he stopped her. “We never
have to open this box. Never. I don’t care what’s in it enough to force you to
open it, any more than I care why he gave it to us. But he did.”

“What if it’s something from the
vampire?” Once she said it she knew she had to tell him. “I’m terrified it’s
some sort of award for killing him. I don’t want anything for killing him. Nothing
at all. I murdered him because he’d taken Reed. I killed him because I didn’t
want him to hurt your family, my family. I cut off his head because I didn’t
want to have to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

“That does not make you a murderer. It
makes you human. And had you not killed him, who else do you suppose he would
have killed? My mother? My dad? Or even me? How long do you think the council
would have been able to hold him before he escaped?” He pushed the box toward
her. “We can take it to the river right now and toss it in. I don’t want you to
do anything that makes you uncomfortable.”

“And the money?” He shrugged. “So if I
told you that I want to shred the checks and not cash them, you’d be okay with
that?”

“We didn’t have it before, so not having
it now makes no difference to me.” He stood up and pulled her into his arms. “I
have all I need right here, right now. I love you, very much, and will never
leave you no matter what you decide.”

He held her so tightly that she believed
him. Burying her head in his chest, she felt the tears that she’d been hiding
from for over a week start to flow. Before long she was sobbing and clinging to
him. At some point, he picked her up and sat in the chair while she continued
to cry. Exhausted, her body began to relax and ease. The last thing she
remembered was being put to bed, and she rolled over and slept.

~~~

Dylan watched her sleep for a few
minutes before he left the bedroom and went to the kitchen. He was cleaning up
their leftovers when his cell phone rang. He smiled when he realized it was his
dad.

“She bringing you home soon?” He laughed
at his dad’s greeting. “I can’t say I miss you overly much, but your mother
does. The girl, too. We’re fixing to have a big family dinner when you and she
get your bottoms here.”

“She’s sleeping.” He heard his dad sigh.
“I’m hoping that she’ll sleep for a few hours. Then we’ll talk some more.”

“She still not sleeping, then?” He’d
talked to his parents every day since they’d gotten there. “Poor thing. That
girl has more guts and balls than most men I know of. Saved not just your
brother, but you, too. I knew she was going to be good for you.”

She was, too, and he glanced toward the
bedroom. “Dad, what if she never learns to deal with this? What if this haunts
her for the rest of her life? I don’t want her to suffer because she feels like
a failure.”

“She’s not a…. I want you to bring her
here, to home. I’ll have a good talk with her, and if that don’t work, then
I’ll take her out to the woodshed. She’ll see reason once she’s had a taste of
my switch.” Dylan grinned.

There was no switch and never had been. The
first time he’d been taken there he’d expected no less than having his legs
bleeding for a month and that he’d need massive reconstructive surgery to put
him back together. But what he’d done to him that day was much worse. His dad
had told him how disappointed he’d been in his actions, and went on to point
out that he’d let his mother down, as well. Dylan had never been back to the
shed. He’d not been perfect, but one look from his dad, that look that told him
he was getting close, was all it would take to straighten him around.

“I’ll ask her if she’s ready to come
back. But I know why she loves it here. It’s peaceful and homey.” He looked
around the kitchen after telling his dad he’d try to get her home in a few days
and hanging up.