In the Dark (32 page)

I’m
scared. This isn’t how this should have happened.

How what should
have happened? Turning my little sister? That “shouldn’t
have” happened at all.

Little late
to worry about it now, isn’t it?

I sighed. Yeah.

Shaking my head,
I trudged up the stairs.

S
ebastian
opened his eyes on his darkened room and opened his senses to it
entirely. If anyone had tracked him home, followed him to his
sanctuary . . .

But he heard no
one in his room, nor in the rooms beyond. Only the normal sounds of
the apartment.

He got up,
dressed, and went to the practice room. His injuries had healed, but
the anger that threatened to scorch him had not. In the practice room
he picked up his staff, swung it around once, and caught himself in
the mirror.

His face was
pulled back into a wolfish snarl that surprised him when he saw it.
It did not look like himself.

In the next
second the mirror was gone, cascading down the wall in a waterfall of
glass. Then the one next to it. And the one beside that, until every
mirror in the practice room lay at his feet, so many shards of
silver.

His left hand
had shattered as well – the impact from his staff against the
mirrors had fractured it. He swung the staff around again, a growl
that turned into a cry of rage escaping him. Mounted swords and
knives crashed to the floor, beams and bars for balancing and
strength came down under the staff, until Sebastian swung his eyes
around once more and found nothing left to attack.

He screamed once
and launched into the practice dance with such fury, such vehemence,
that he finished in moments. He started over. Again. And again.

“
And if
you do not, you will share her fate, which shall be neither quick,
nor painless.”

He longed for
Specter’s perfect face to be what he shattered, ached to pound
his staff into Specter’s body until he lay limp and dead.
Unmoving. Gone.

Damn. Damn.

“
Damn!”

In the living
room, the phone rang.

Sebastian
stopped. It rang again.

He wrenched the
practice room door off its hinges, stalked through his apartment to
the living room and grabbed up the phone. The lobby attendant. He
spoke, but Sebastian heard only the news that someone had come.

“I’ll
send the car,” he snapped into the phone and slammed it down.

They had
followed him after all. If they thought they could come sauntering
into his home, walk in through the front door and take him in his own
territory, they were wrong. He wanted nothing better than to show
them
how
wrong. A smile broke across his face. He punched the
call button hard enough to crack it, then stepped back to wait.

The elevator
hummed to a stop on his floor. He flexed the arm holding the staff.
The one that Specter had ruined last night. It was fit and strong
tonight, healed in his sleep.

The doors slid
open. He tensed.

Josephine.
Alone. A frown on her rich red lips. His disappointment lasted less
than an eye blink. The scent of her blood called to him, the thick,
cold blood of another vampire. He imagined his fangs sinking into her
flesh, felt the desperate need to
do
something –

She stepped off
the elevator. The doors closed. Her frown deepened. “Are you –”

Sebastian flung
the staff aside and leaped, taking the full distance between them in
that leap. Her expression registered her shock as he did.

He took her
shoulders in his hands, gripped them tight . . . and paused. Her
shoulders were thin and small in his hands. Her posture open and
undefensive, not fighting him. She was not the pack. Not Specter. To
kill her would be purest murder.

He loosened his
hold on her, but before he could release her, her expression changed.
She lifted her hands to place them on his arms, her face soft.
Mistaking the nature of his grip on her.

He opened his
mouth to explain, to apologize, to send her away so that he could
scream and beat things. She stopped him with one word.

“Sebastian.”

He paused. More
because of the tone than the word – it sounded so familiar –

Sarah,
pressed close to him, sweating, reaching for him, moving with him –

“Donal.”

Suddenly his
grip on her was no longer a mistake. He stared at his hands on her
shoulders while an entirely different need took him, with as much
intensity.

She kissed him.

Something hot
raced through him, a shudder, a desire – he returned the kiss,
pressing tight into her, felt her fangs slide into his lower lip. His
fangs found her skin, sliced it wide. He sucked at the wound, dizzy
with the scent of her, the taste of her. She gasped, whispered his
name. Clutched her nails deeply into his back.

He had been
about to kill her, some dim part of him remembered. Murder her.
Because of frustration.

He would have
regretted that. Would have hated himself for it. This . . .

He did not know
if he would regret it.

But he would not
hate himself for it.

She kissed him
again and in that instant, he let himself give up caring.

“
A
s
I was saying.” Josephine leaned close to murmur into his ear.
“Are you all right?”

Sebastian opened
his eyes to look at her. Her face lingered close to his, curious.
That question again.
How are you?
Asking so much and so little
in the same sentence.

“I am
healthy.” He realized that wasn’t entirely true and
added, “my hand is broken.” He flexed it once
automatically. Bone rubbed against bone. Broken.

“Oh.”
Josephine reached out to touch it lightly. “How did that
happen?”

He took his hand
away from her. He didn’t want to answer. From a rational state
of mind, his tantrum seemed ridiculous. Acting on his base emotions
and doing . . . doing damage. To his home, to himself, and very
nearly to someone he had begun to care for.

“I broke
it in the same fit of rage in which I took you.” He turned his
face away from hers. The same sort of fit which had brought him so
close to attacking Ian.

He levered
himself up off the floor. Avoiding her eyes didn’t help. There
were other things for him to see. Her nudity, and his. Their clothing
scattered across the living room floor. Reminders that he had lost
control of himself. He picked up her blouse, her slacks, and handed
them to her, meeting her face as he did. She smiled, took her
clothing and kept his hand.

“In case
you hadn’t noticed, I wasn’t exactly an unwilling
victim.”

He took his hand
back. “It is not something I would have done in a stable state
of mind,” he said, and pulled his own pants back on.

She made no move
to dress herself. He rather wished she would. He found her nudity
thoroughly distracting. Instead, she tilted her head. “That
makes me sad.”

Sebastian
buttoned his jeans, waiting for her to explain.

She tucked her
legs to her chest and folded her arms over them. “I mean, you
probably don’t want to get caught up in angry rages that make
you do things you wouldn’t normally do. But . . . I enjoyed
this. I’d like to do it again. I’d like to think it
wasn’t just the product of anger.” She laughed. “A
release of frustration.”

Sebastian
watched her, unsure what to think of that. He pulled his shirt on,
silent. The fabric still smelled of her perfume and blood. The scent
made him think of her skin against his, the taste of her filling his
mouth. He hadn’t thought he would ever touch anyone that way
again. It shamed him, how he had leaped on her, how his anger had so
utterly ruled him. But shame for letting her so close, shame for
making love to her – he did not think he could feel that.

“Perhaps,”
he said, and buttoned his shirt. He should have said “no.”
Being so vulnerably intimate with anyone should not happen again. He
should allow no chance of it, no hope of it. Knowing that did not
make refusing any easier.

She shrugged and
stood to dress. “I suppose I can live with that. I suppose I
have to.”

He found himself
watching her while she dressed. The fluidity of her motion, the soft
curves of her white body. The almost familiar heat he had felt when
she kissed him began again.

Had it been like
this? With Sarah?

He could barely
recall. He thought so. Gentler, perhaps. He could not imagine from
what little he remembered of Sarah that she would tolerate the same
treatment that Josephine had encouraged. But like this, yes.

“So,”
Josephine said, doing up the last button of her blouse. “What
had you so upset?”

Sebastian’s
warm contemplation tumbled over itself into cold. The memory tried to
come rushing back with that reminder. Specter’s mocking words,
the blade of the sword sliding through his throat, and the threat –

“
If you
do not bring her to me, I will hunt her down myself.”

Sebastian’s
fists tightened at his sides. He did not recall these attacks Kent
had supposedly made. His pack had been hunted, of course. Others had
always sought to thin their numbers. But Kent? Sebastian had often
spent years away from the pack, on missions, guarding territory.
Perhaps Kent’s attack on them could have happened during one of
those periods. But why had none of the pack said anything to him when
he returned? Why had he never known?

“Hey.”
Josephine set a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, what is it?”

Sebastian
resisted the urge to tear her hand from his shoulder, break her arm,
drink her dry. He had let her close to him. Specter would say she
must die. Pack law demanded it, and he had known nothing but the pack
for centuries.

But I left
them because I did not understand them.

He placed his
hand over Josephine’s and held it.

“I met
with the members of my pack last night,” he said, uncertain of
saying anything, equally uncertain of remaining silent. “Our
leader ordered me to bring Ian to him to face justice for crimes he
claims Kent committed against us. If I refuse, he has said that he
will hunt not only her, but myself. And that our deaths will not be
pleasant.”

She nodded while
her forehead creased in worry. “Well,” she said. Then
stopped. “Well,” she said again.

Sebastian met
her eyes. “If I resist him, he will defeat me. But I do not . .
. I do not see the point . . .”

“You don’t
want to hand Ian over,” Josephine finished for him.

He nodded, mouth
tight. He had not wanted to say it out loud. Old training, preventing
him from admitting weaknesses. The reason so many things in his life
remained unsaid.

I do not want
Ian missing from my life. If I cannot say it aloud, I will not
hesitate to act on it.

“So what
are you going to do?” Josephine’s hand was still on his
shoulder, under his.

“My only
thought is that my home offers a more defensible position than Ian’s
or yours,” he said. “At least if we gathered here, we may
have a chance of holding off an attack.”

“I can see
that.” She tilted her head at him, a little smile tugging at
the corners of her mouth. “You said ‘we.’ Does that
mean you assume I may become a target, and you wish to keep me safe
as well?”

“I do not
put it past Specter to use you against either myself or Ian.”
Sebastian watched that smile. “I would prefer if you joined
us.”

The smile went
from tugging at her mouth to consuming it. She leaned forward and
pressed her mouth to his, a soft touching of lips. A gesture –

Sarah had
done this, often, accompanied by such a smile. He had enjoyed it when
she did –

Josephine leaned
back, breaking contact, and the memory faded. But not to the oblivion
it had once occupied. Sebastian could remember Sarah doing that now.
Specific incidences. The sudden clarity of the memories startled him.
He watched Josephine, who looked back into his eyes with that slight
smile again.

“If you
think it would be safer here, we should go get Ian and Amanda,”
she said.

“Yes.”

Distracted, he
got his coat, watching Josephine get hers. She did not move like
Sarah. Did not look like Sarah. Did not act like Sarah. Where Sarah
had been earthy and coarse, Josephine was delicate and graceful.
Where Sarah had sandy blond hair that fell past her shoulders, a
square face and cloudy blue eyes, Josephine had auburn waves kept
tied up, a narrow face and eyes colored a rich golden green. Noticing
those differences dispelled a small concern – that perhaps he
would only continue this as a way to recapture Sarah.

I believe . .
. I believe I have been attracted to her. It’s been so long, I
did not know at first.

He called the
elevator and together they rode down, Josephine’s hand lightly
over his.

A
manda
came upstairs after I’d started cleaning the blood off the
walls. It came off easily enough once I got it wet, turning the water
in my cleaning bucket pink. The couch and carpet needed a shampoo. At
least I knew of a couple twenty-four hour places that would rent a
machine to me.

Mistress of
the Undead, shampooing the rug.

I bet Sebastian
never shampooed a rug in his life.

At least I was
cleaning up blood. If any thriller novelists stopped by for an
interview, I wouldn’t look entirely like a housewife.

Vampire
housewife. “I just can’t keep the blood off anything, I
swear . . .”

I giggled
inanely at that.