Midnight Ash (A Blushing Death Novel) (19 page)

“She tried to put me in an institution. She was certain I was crazy. You were with me. You’ve seen it for yourself what I can do. Even you can’t convince her that I’m not . . .” I paused, struggling for the right word, “unbalanced. I don’t have the patience to pretend anymore. Just promise me you won’t let her change anything,” I repeated, pleading with him. The resignation showed on his face as his entire body slumped. He’d given it his best shot but like my mother, I was stubborn.

He nodded and held my hand against his cheek. He brushed a kissed across my palm, his face warm and familiar beneath my touch. In that instant, I wished that so many things had been different. But, they weren’t. I had to deal with the hand I’d been dealt.

I bent down and took him in my arms and this time he hugged me back like he wouldn’t let go.

I stepped back and let him go, turning to the doors, and stopping in the center aisle. I locked eyes with Dean who was standing just inside the door, watching me. His arms were folded over his large, muscular chest. He waited a heartbeat before shoving off the wall and opened the door. He held it for me. I swallowed, and it sounded incredibly loud in my ears. I lifted my chin, and closed the distance between us.

“Wait,” Brennan yelled from the pew. He jogged up the aisle to Dean and shot him an evaluating glance. Dean didn’t appear very forgiving but Brennan didn’t seem intimidated by the larger man, either. He handed Dean his card and met the hard stare Dean wore like a badge of honor.

“If what she fears happens, make sure someone calls me,” he said with panic quivering voice.

Dean, in his
the-less-said-the-better
attitude, nodded in answer to that.

“I have some holy water stored up for you in the back. You shouldn’t leave without taking that,” he said, hesitating as he glanced at me. He clutched my hand, tight, as if apprehensive to let me go.

I couldn’t blame him. If the roles were reversed, I would’ve locked him up in my basement until it was all over just to keep him safe. He didn’t have it in him to keep me locked up. I guess that’s the downfall of being a good person. I would’ve done what was necessary in a heartbeat.

Once we were safely on the interstate, I turned toward the passenger side window and watched the trees and farmland pass us by.

“Does Danny know?” he asked, finally breaking the silence between us.

“Know what?” I asked and found that my voice was distant and hoarse with emotion. I cleared my throat and tried to focus my mind on anything but the dark depths where all the pain and guilt lived.

“Why you don’t talk to your parents,” he asked as nonchalantly as if we were discussing the likelihood of settlements on the moon.

“No,” I answered. I turned back toward the window. “No one knows any of it except for Brennan and he only knows a little.” My gut tightened at the thought of having to confess everything to Danny or Patrick. How do you tell someone you care about that you’re broken?

“Why does the priest know?” he asked. His voice was softer, his power a soothing warmth all around me. I hadn’t noticed the shift in his demeanor or that he wasn’t angry with me anymore. I debated whether to give him any answer at all.

He’ll protect us
, she whispered in a hush through my mind, and in my gut, I knew she was right.

“Brennan . . .” I started but I choked on the words. It had been so long since I’d trusted anyone. I didn’t know why I trusted Dean. There was no good reason for it, except her voice in my head and the surety I felt in my bones. I cleared my throat and started again. “Brennan was almost my first everything; first friend in a new town, first love, first kiss . . . first trauma.” A single tear welled up in my eye and trailed a hot line down my cheek. I didn’t know why I was telling Dean, but I couldn’t stop once I’d started.

“I was almost 17 and he was 18. He thought he was being funny, trying to scare me when he took me to that cemetery.” I glanced at Dean with a sad smile tugging my lips up at the corners. I needed to defend Brennan. He hadn’t known. No one had known.

“You know how teenage boys can be.” I shrugged as I brushed the tear from my cheek. “He was trying to set the mood for other things.” I hoped he understood.

“Anyway, he brought a bunch of black candles and some snacks and put on a little show for me. I’ve seen the dead my entire life but the activity in that cemetery was overwhelming
without
his help.” I took a shaking breath and glanced at Dean. He was listening to me with an attention that I hadn’t expected. Almost as if he cared.

“He tried to open those damned cookies and couldn’t so he pulled out his knife. When I touched him . . .” My voice quivered and shook over the words. “He could see all those spirits around him, too, which means he probably has some sensitivity too.”

I couldn’t help but close my eyes. I was right back there again, seeing the look of horror on Brennan’s face, the screaming all around us, the cold, unearthly wind turning my skin to gooseflesh. “I’d never had that happen to me before. So when he panicked, I held him tighter.” I flinched at the memory. “He jerked, catching my arm with the knife. He cut me and blood oozed out everywhere.” I swallowed and forced myself to continue.

“There was so much blood for such a little cut. Something came out from over the hill and attacked me. I tried to get away but it was faster than I was and it grabbed onto my arm and bit down hard. A gaggle of them came running from the edge of the wood and I knew we were in trouble.” I shivered at the thought of that damned ghoul sinking its disgusting, saliva-drenched teeth into my skin. “It drank my blood. Thankfully, once I’d let go of Brennan, he didn’t see all the spirits flying around him anymore. He ripped the ghoul from my arm and we ran to the car.” The words tumbled out so quickly that I had to catch my breath.

I opened my eyes again and peered out the window at the nondescript scenery passing us by. My breathing was shallow and erratic. I clutched my knees so hard that my fingernails dug into my skin through my jeans.

“It’s all right,” Dean said, sliding his hand over of mine still gripping my knee with white knuckle force. His touch felt warm and comforting. “It’s over now.”

“No,” I said, regaining my composure and pushing all of that anger, pain, and disappointment back down into myself so that I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I was tired of feeling helpless and betrayed.

“I tried to explain where the wound had come from but my mother didn’t believe me. She was convinced I was hurting myself and suicidal,” I said in a flat, unemotional tone. I’d shut down. I needed a minute to finish it. The thought of what happened still made my blood boil and gave me nightmares. “They decided not to keep me in the psych ward after a few days. That’s as much as Brennan knows. My mother decided to take me to a psychiatrist who liked to use electroshock therapy. It was . . . unpleasant,” I whispered as my bottom lip trembled. The memory of singed hair, burning flesh, and the pain of the adhesive tearing my skin was too fresh. My voice was cold and disjoined as if it had happened to someone else. It was the only way I could think about it, like it happened to someone else.

Dean turned to me as his hands gripped the steering wheel. His white knuckles twisted over the steering wheel absently as if he was wringing someone’s neck.

“That night helped Brennan find a purpose,” I said with a half-smile. I wasn’t upset about Brennan’s decision to join the priesthood, not anymore. I had loved Brennan. I understood now that he never would’ve fit in my world or what I’d had to do. He would never approve of what I’d become.

I turned back to stare out the window and away from Dean’s deep olive-green, all-too-understanding eyes. We rode the rest of the way home in a more comfortable and less strained silence.

Dean stalked through the door, intense and silent. I followed into the upstairs, Damsel office. Patrick and Danny were waiting for us. Danny wrapped me in his arms as Patrick came around the desk. I felt at home between the warm heartbeat of Danny and the quiet cool stillness of Patrick. I breathed in the scent of both men and felt safer than I had in the past week.

Dean stood in the doorway like a mountain as he motioned with a quick jerk of his head for Nova and Kurt to leave. They obeyed without question, filing out and shutting the door behind them. After the last 24 hours, I understood more why he was Alpha and why Danny never would be. Dean met my gaze and turned away as he cleared his throat.

“You’re absolutely correct, Dean,” Patrick said, stepping away from me. “We do have business to discuss.” Patrick returned to the chair behind his desk and sat back down. His gait was easy, light and he seemed as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

I hopped up on the edge of the desk. Dean took position on the black velvet couch closest to the door and Danny on the matching black velvet couch on the opposite wall.

“So, who would like to begin?” Patrick asked while everyone got situated.

“It’s Darshan all right,” I blurted as I glanced at Dean. I always go first.

“There was trouble,” Dean offered with a reservation in his tone and a stiff line across his broad shoulders that spoke volumes if you knew what to look for. I was learning.

“A lot of trouble actually,” I added with as little emotion as I could. I was still a bit raw. I kept thinking,
he knows . . . he knows about you . . . run . . . run away before he tells them how broken you are.

“Dahlia, what did you do?” Patrick asked, exasperation making his tone heavy.

I turned on him, snapping my head around to glare at the very frustrated vampire behind me. “What? Why do you think I did it?”

“Because I know you.”

“
We
killed two vamps,” Dean said. I appreciated that he used the collective
we
. It took some of the heat off of me, as he’d intended.

“One was Darshan’s third,” I said.

“They don’t know that it was my envoy that’s responsible, do they?” Patrick asked with a lilt of clarification in his voice.

“No,” I said. “There is something I want to talk about, though.” I paused. “When we entered the bar, it was different,” I said without a real idea of how to explain what I’d felt.

“What do you mean?” Danny asked with the same confusion that echoed in my head.

“She collapsed,” Dean offered.

“What?” Danny shouted.

“I don’t understand,” Patrick added with an eerie calm edge to his voice. He shook his head, folded his arms over his chest, then leaned back in his chair. His dark eyes bore into me looking for answers to questions I couldn’t fathom.

“When I walked in the door, I felt every vampire in the building and their power. It was like each one of them was moving around in a giant plastic bubble. The stronger they were, the bigger and more solid the bubble,” I tried to explain. I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth as the feeling of being bashed back and forth between power bubbles made my muscles ache in memory. “It hurt, like being punched in the gut when one of those bubbles slammed into me.”

“You don’t feel that here?” Patrick asked as he leaned his elbows on the desk.

“Yes and no. I can feel your power but it’s more fluid. It doesn’t hit me in the face like a brick wall. It’s more airy. Less tangible, I guess.”

“Were they forced to restrain their powers?” Patrick had a quizzical and entertained twinkle in his dark eyes.

“The concentration of power explains why I got beat around all night long but it doesn’t explain your grin,” I said, glaring at him.

“He forces them to contain their power, Dahlia. He’s not strong enough to keep them or rule them without it,” he said. “That’s the only reason I can think of that a Liege wouldn’t want their children to flourish.”

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” I asked. I didn’t like the glint in his eyes. It was too ambitious by half.

“Nothing, really. It does explain why he’d hire Midnight Ash, though.”

“It does?”

“Yes, and you already know why, don’t you?” he asked with a proud little smirk on his face. “You felt that vampire’s power. You understand how big a threat he was, didn’t you?” he asked. The upturn at the corners of his mouth was a devilish sight, showing more fang than he usually did around company.

I nodded, pursing my lips and fighting the smirk that was tugging at the corners of my mouth.

“They can’t take us, can they?” he asked, standing and sliding his right hand over my left cheek.

“Not on their own,” I said.

He pressed his cool full lips against my brow and sending a shiver up my spine. He lingered for a long moment, taking in my scent. “I think with a little more practice, you’ll be able to harness powers you had no idea were even there,” he whispered against my brow. He gazed down into my eyes as if we were the only two people in the room.

My heart fluttered and my breasts grew heavy in arousal. His power stroked me as if he ran his hand up my thigh. A scorching burning power pressed against my skin, setting my skin on fire and I was reminded that we weren’t alone.

I glanced over at Dean. I couldn’t explain the guilty feeling that sunk in the pit of my stomach as I met his eyes.

“There’s something else,” Dean bit out, interrupting us. “I spoke with Garret.”

“What did he say?” Patrick asked, sitting back down in his chair behind the desk.

“They’ll side with your
Blushing Death
.” He emphasized the name as he pointed to me.

“They know about that, huh?” Danny asked with a soft chuckle.

I whipped around and gave him a dirty look that would stop most men in their tracks. Danny, however, had seen it before. He knew I wouldn’t hurt him, well, I wouldn’t kill him, so it had no effect.

“The Blushing Death,” Patrick reiterated with a smile to himself. There was a joke somewhere in that statement I wasn’t getting.

“Word gets around,” Dean said, glancing first at Patrick and then at me with a teasing grin lighting his eyes.

To my infinite surprise, I didn’t mind him teasing me. After my confession that afternoon, I was more comfortable around him even if I didn’t know the first thing about
him
.

“You do blush when you kill,” Patrick said, smiling. “I find it intoxicating.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said with a sarcastic snip.

“It’s the power you exude. You draw from somewhere I cannot fathom when you kill. It exudes the loveliest shade of soft red in your aura just before you kill,” Patrick offered once he saw my annoyed expression.

“Always?”

“Since the first time,” he said with a smile and a hint of that same inside joke.

“When was that?” I snapped. I wasn’t sure what he was hiding but I knew his very careful phrasing made me nervous. He met my gaze with a blank, innocent expression and then turned the same blank expression to Dean.

All right, I give
. I knew when I wasn’t getting anything out of him. That didn’t mean that I wouldn’t try again later.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We make sure we’re strong at home first,” Patrick said, confident and coy.

Dean cleared his throat.

“Jackson needs dealt with. You’re a witness.” It wasn’t a question and he’d left little room for me to maneuver out of it.

“Can you guarantee her safety?” Patrick asked with an edge to his voice that was unusual.

“The entire Pack will be there,” Danny said, rolling his eyes.

I had the feeling that Patrick was looking for something else. As I watched Dean, I was sure of it. He met Patrick’s gaze in a silent test of wills. An understanding passed between them only longtime friends who respected each other, and trusted each other would possess.

“I give my oath as Gaoh that no harm will come to her under
my
protection.” His voice was strong and sure.

I wondered what he had given up with that pledge.

Patrick breathed a sigh of relief and nodded his head in agreement. I didn’t like the way this was going. I wanted to argue but the faster all of this business with Jackson was over, the sooner I could go to sleep.