I Am Lightning (Laurel Defense Series) (12 page)

We stood in the middle of his bedroom and kissed for a long time, and I fell in love again.  Eventually he pulled away from our kiss, only to pull me gently with him to the bed.  He lay and waited for me to climb over his body, letting me take over and show him what it meant to make love.  This was new to me too.  I wanted to have sex with him, but not in a frenzied hurry to reach a climax.  I wanted to show him with my body that I was his, that I loved him, and that he was mine and I would never hurt him again.

Robert’s hands ran over my skin slowly.  He watched my every move intensely, as if memorizing the moment.  The only sound was my deep breathing as I reached between us and maneuvered him under me, ready to take him inside me.  I paused, waiting for permission, biting my lower lip in doubt.

“Take me,” he said, echoing my words in his deep soft voice.  I thought I would melt as I moved over him, watching as his mouth went slack and his eyes closed from pleasure.  His hands held my waist, tightening their hold the further down I went until I couldn’t go anymore.  He picked the rhythm of the meeting of our bodies, pulling me up over him and bringing me slowly back down.  I threw my own head back, moaning softly as my own pleasure swept through my body.

When I looked back at my beloved, his eyes were shining in that way that told me he was about to rock my world.  I opened up my energy core and channeled the current through our bodies, intensifying our pleasure for a long moment until it became too much and I had to let it go.  The shock paired with the delight of making love sent us both into an upward spiral of ecstasy.  His voice and mine echoed in the nearly empty bedroom as he moved me faster over him, my wings beating furiously and threatening to lift me.  I held on to his wrists as he held my waist until my body felt like it burst into a million pieces from pleasure.  I closed my eyes at the same time that Robert stilled inside me, moaning loudly, until he moved his hips under me and let out a roar of spent need.

Immediately I moved to kiss him, at the same time that he sat up to kiss me, and we came together in an awkward hug because of my wings, but it felt so right to be in each other’s arms, however we managed it.  We kissed over and over, still moving our hips slowly and making our moment last a little longer.

“You didn’t bite me,” I said into his mouth and he smiled in response but didn’t say anything.  “Vampires always bite,” I said again, wondering if anything that I’d learned about vampires even applied to Robert.

He chuckled.  “Not me, although I want to,” he said and moved his kisses to my neck, sometimes scraping his canines against my skin.  “You taste so good, my darling,” he whispered in my ear and gave me a new round of goose bumps.

The words I wanted to say at that moment got stuck in my throat.  I wanted to tell him I loved him.  I wasn’t just in love; I loved him with all my heart.  I was his darling, and he was my beloved.  Before I could gather enough courage to tell him how I felt, his cell phone rang and the moment was lost.

CHAPTER 11

Robert watched my wings as I carefully retracted them into my back.  He was making sure none of the tears reopened as I rolled them back inside me.  Usually this was a speedy process, but speed was not my friend at that moment.

“Do they hurt?” Robert asked, caressing the middle of my back and looking at my face in the mirror.  We were in his bathroom, with him standing behind me still naked and glorious.  Our moment was gone but I kept hoping for another soon.  In the meantime I had to settle for the soft kisses he planted on random parts of my body as we got ready to leave.

“They’re still sore, but I can deal with that,” I answered, hoping that I wouldn’t have to use my wings anytime soon.  It would be painful to fly, if I could even do it.

We were to meet Rhiannon at the alley where I’d gotten attacked the night before.  She said the portal at the end of the alley was no longer being watched and if we were going to get a chance to see what was on the other side, tonight was the night to do it.  Several team members had worked throughout the day to make sure the portal was visible and usable, but that could change at any moment.

Rhiannon knew that
I wasn’t allowed on the mission anymore, but she also knew that I wasn’t going to keep away from saving Mark.  Now that I was almost completely healed, I needed to go search for him.  Besides, I was feeling mighty guilty for making love to Robert while Mark was who-knew-where.

I put on a regular pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.  My usual leather suit had been ripped to shreds by the elementals the night before, and my spare was in my locker at headquarters.  The last thing I wanted was to go to the office and have to explain why I needed my leather suit while I’d been taken off our main case.  Besides, Ifan would find out and he was a great wizard.  I’m sure imprisoning me for my own good was well within the scope of his abilities.

Robert dressed in a similar fashion as me and we headed outside.  I’d never seen Ifan’s house, where Robert’s basement apartment was located.  It was a very tasteful Colonial, way bigger than my own, painted white with black shutters.  We were not in Laurel, but in College Park near the University of Maryland.  That meant our trip into the city had been shortened by about twenty minutes.  We got in Robert’s Mustang at the same time I got a shiver.  This time it had nothing to do with the cold or even with my proximity to my vampire.  This time I was scared for what we would find once we made it through the portal, if we even made it through.

Rhiannon, Tandy, and
Brenton were waiting for us at the mouth of the alley, ready with weapons and spells that would keep them safe should they get attacked once they crossed.  Since Robert and I weren’t supposed to be there, we would have to depend on ourselves if we got attacked.

“We’re not entirely sure where the portal will take us,” Rhiannon commented, handing me a holster with a gun and a knife.  It wasn’t my own, but it would do in a pinch.  At least I had something other than lightning
, since some creatures would feed off my power instead of getting electrocuted.

“I know it’s a house, but I’m not sure of its location,”
Brenton said looking straight at the end of the alley.  We knew the portal was there, but it was so dark that nothing could be seen.  He shined a flashlight at it and there was a shimmer in the air that announced its exact location.  The feeling of dread was strong, so I knew someone had reinforced the area to make sure no humans would want to wander in.  Since the feeling was not overwhelming, I’d have to guess it had been Tandy’s handiwork.  She must have done it the night before to keep the area as safe as possible until we figured out what to do.  Nobody in the Laurel Defense wanted to close the portal if there was any chance of saving Mark and Briony the water sprite.

“Did you go through the portal?” Robert asked
Brenton, putting on his own weapons and making sure they were within his easy reach.

“I was able to see through it.  Whoever made this portal used a type of magic similar to my own, just like those elementals,”
Brenton answered, and Robert nodded knowingly.  So far the portal and the elementals had a touch of demonic energy.

As a demon,
Brenton could wield certain types of magic, usually of the destructive kind.  He could also open portals to his home in Hell if he wanted to, something that came in handy whenever we had apprehended a demon that needed to return to the pit.

We stood facing the portal, weapons at the ready.  Robert grabbed me by the waist and held me tight against him.  I wasn’t about to balk at the gesture, not at that particular moment, however chauvinistic or possessive it would have seemed to me at any other time.  My heart was pounding in my throat in fear of what we would find on the other side of the portal, and I felt comfort in the fact that Robert was beside me.  We all watched as
Brenton went first, closely followed by Tandy.  We waited two seconds and Robert jumped in, pulling me with him.  I’d seldom gone through portals.  It was a strange experience.  Going through portals is like being inside nothing for just a split second, and before you get a chance to get used to feeling that new environment, you get spit back out the other side where it can be warmer, colder, sunnier, or darker than where you started from.

Robert steadied me when our feet touched the ground once more.  Rhiannon came through the portal a moment later, and Robert grabbed her too to make sure she didn’t do a face plant.  We all blinked a couple of times to get our eyes used to our new surroundings.

We were in the middle of a field.  The air was damp and cold, and it felt like it would snow at any moment.  We couldn’t see the sky past the canopy of low thick clouds, so I knew we weren’t in the DC metropolitan area anymore.  Brenton whipped out his company-provided iPhone and tried to ascertain our current location, but the darned thing was acting up.  I took out my own regular phone and pressed the GPS button.  In two seconds we found our location.

“New York?” I asked bewildered, but there it was on my screen.  We were in Upstate New York, a few miles away from Seneca Lake.  There was a large population of water sprites near Oneida Lake, but that’s as much as I knew about Upstate New York.  “Is Briony from here?”

“Yes she is,” answered Rhiannon looking around just like everyone else.  We were out in the open and very visible from a nearby house, even in the low light, and particularly to supernaturals like Robert who had the better night vision.

“It strikes fear into the other sprites that the one who left her enclave was the one who was abducted,”
Brenton said in a very low voice.

“I thought she left to be with her fiancé,” I interjected, not quite understanding.  I thought Briony had been taken from her house by her future husband, just like Mark had done with me.  Never did I imagine she had left on her own.

Brenton shook his head.  “She left to be with an elf.  But my question is who wants to make the sprites fearful of leaving their home and why?”

I heard sniffing from my right and turned to find Robert with his nose in the air.  Just as I was about to ask him what he was doing he growled low and long, the sound making my body vibrate and my hair stand on end as close as I was to him.  Before any of us could ask him what was up, he was gone vampire fast.  The only clue we had as to where he’d gone was the trail he left on the short grass covering the field where we were standing.

We ran as fast as we could to catch up to him.  As soon as we reached the house we could all smell what had attracted him to the house.  The penny-like smell of blood saturated the air and made my heart and stomach sink.  Was Mark here?  Was he still alive?  Was that his blood I smelled?

Before I let my panic take over and render me useless to my colleagues, I started reading the electric signatures of beings inside the house.  Besides
Brenton, Tandy, and Rhiannon, there were only two other energies and a void.  The void was Robert, and he was in the uppermost part of the house.  The other two were in the basement and were very weak.  I told the rest of the group and we set out for the kitchen area in the house.

The house itself was in disarray, but I couldn’t see any blood anywhere.  There was a tattered couch blocking the entrance to the living room, and a scratched wooden dining chair in the middle of the hallway that led to the back of the house and the kitchen.  The power had been shut off, so I immediately set about to restoring it, borrowing
just a few kilowatts to turn on a few lights.  That was easy enough for me to do by merely manipulating the electricity around me.  We found the door to the basement wide open and quickly made our way downstairs.  The smell of blood was almost too much to bear as we descended, but what met our eyes when we reached the bottom was almost beyond description.

My eyes went first to the woman on a metal table, the blue shock of hair on her head letting me know that this was the water sprite we’d all been searching for: Briony.  Her blood, what was left inside her, was draining from the table directly onto the floor.  Her eyes were open but she wasn’t looking at anything.  I knew she was alive, but I just didn’t know
how much longer she had.  Tandy ran to her and picked her up easily, almost too easy.  The poor woman was almost completely drained of blood, judging only by how horribly pale she looked; her skin was almost as blue as her hair.  Tandy touched the medallion at her neck and in the blink of an eye they were gone.

“Abby!” called Rhiannon from another part of the basement.  I was almost too numb to move, but my legs carried me to where I needed to be.  Rhiannon was crying and trying to hold up the limp body of my cousin, who was suspended from his wrists tied to the ceiling.  Somebody had tried to drain him too.  There was a pool of blood on the floor directly under his body.  Somebody had tried to kill him.

I had no voice, and my movements were automatic as we tended to Mark.  Brenton held him up while Rhiannon and I worked the ropes off.  Every part of his naked body was covered in blood, some of it brown and old, some of it bright red and new.  When I moved around him I lost my air as if somebody had punched me in the gut.  He’d been handed the most terrible punishment any of our kind can get: his wings had been cut off.  I remained frozen where I stood until the sound of my own name made it through my consciousness.

“Abby!”
Brenton bellowed, trying to snap me into concentrating on the task at hand.  “If you don’t burn these blood vessels he will bleed to death before I can get him to Ifan,” he explained slowly, pointing at Mark’s back where I could already see fresh streams of red.

Rhiannon took me by the elbow and guided me closer to his back.  Just a short zap with enough heat would cauterize the vessels that had once carried
blood to Mark’s wings.  I did it quickly without thinking it too much, and before I’d had a chance to blink, Brenton had already taken Mark back to headquarters using his medallion.

“Come, let’s find Robert and get out of here,” Rhiannon said, tapping my shoulder to get my attention.

I nodded, still in a daze.  Who had hurt Mark so horribly?  And Briony wasn’t any better off.  I didn’t remember seeing her wings either, but Tandy had taken her too fast for me to see whether she still had them or not.

We made our way upstairs to the main floor.  It was obvious that whoever had committed such atrocities was no longer in the house nor did they have any plans to return.  The kitchen looked clean and empty, but the living room looked as if several people had made use of its furnishings as beds, even the couch that wasn’t in the right place.  I looked at all the windows and they had been boarded up from the inside.  Surely the rooms were light-tight.

“Vampires,” I said under my breath, hearing my own vampire stomping upstairs.  Whatever he was doing sounded like vengeance, like this house had done something unforgivable to him.  I swallowed a lump.  The horrors of the night were not over.  I looked up at the ceiling, following the void of energy that marked Robert as a vampire.

Rhiannon stood by me when Robert started making his way downstairs.  He was pure wrath, a nightmarish
specter come to life.  I’d never imagined what a bloodthirsty vampire would look like in the throes of a rage, and what I saw in Robert made me rethink everything I thought I knew about him.  His skin was beyond pale, and his muscles were tensed around his neck and jaw.  He bared his teeth with his canines drawn-out far longer than I’d ever seen them before, at the same time that a low growl emanated from his chest whenever he exhaled.  His whole body looked bigger the way he was standing, taking advantage of his full height.  I knew better than to shrink from him, but that was exactly what I wanted to do at that moment.

Robert spat on the floor twice, and uttered words that made the earth shake beneath us.  I was sure he’d just condemned the house to the pits of Hell.  Both Rhiannon and I remained motionless, ready to defend ourselves if Robert’s fury turned on us.  But that didn’t happen at all.  Instead, he looked all around the house and offered just two words by way of explanation: “My maker.”

“I’m sorry,” Robert said as we drove from DC back to Laurel.  We were stuck in traffic on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, which was standard for the area.  I’d been riveted to the view outside the passenger side window until Robert spoke and startled me.