The Vampire's Redemption, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #3) (7 page)

“Did you know that Jackson has been riding Messenger?”

I turned and stared at Nelly, my mouth open.

She grinned and picked up her reading glasses before beginning her nightly crossword puzzle.

“Why would he do that?” I sputtered.

Nelly chuckled lightly. “He’s a cowboy, honey. He probably missed riding every day.”

“Well, he could have had the decency to at least ask me first. She’s
my
horse.”

Messenger definitely did belong to me. But I had never ridden her. As far as I knew, Jackson was the only person who had been up on her since she came to the farm. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to ride a horse. I was just a chicken shit.

When my Dad’s cancer diagnosis was first made, something changed inside me. I tried to ride Lenny a few times but found that I was terrified of moving beyond a walk with him. I kept imagining myself falling and hurting myself. I was sure that Lenny would shy at any little thing and that I would hit the ground hard. Hard enough to make me useless. I couldn’t stand the thought of not being able to physically do my job and take care of Dad during his illness. It made me sick to my stomach to imagine Katie having to drop out of school and come home to take care of her injured sister and the father who had always been our rock.

The fear of falling didn’t go away when Dad brought Messenger home. I loved her dearly. But her energy was twice as frightening to me as Lenny’s. She was ten years younger than he was and black as coal all over. She had an amazing mane that draped down to her shoulders and gleamed like the night sky. As stunningly beautiful as she was, I still couldn’t gather the courage I needed to climb up onto her back.

To know that Jackson had made that leap before me made me feel sad instead of angry. Nelly let me think it over instead of calling me on it. It was one of the many things I appreciated about her. But before I left the room, she did say something that caught me by surprise.

“That boy is the
real deal
, Sarah.”

“What do you mean?”

She had that look on her face that she sometimes got when she was absolutely positive about her opinion. From experience, I knew to take it seriously. She’d had a bad feeling about Trevor Kincaid when she first met him. And that time, her instincts had been right on the nose.

Her eyes were twinkling. “He has a place here. He was meant to come here. You’ll see what I mean before long.”

She went back to her puzzle. I contemplated her words and thought about the night Jackson had played Dad’s old records. I remembered how hard it was to look away from him and how irritated I’d been when my sister and Michael had walked in. My feelings for him were entirely different than anything I’d felt before. He made me feel safe.

As I was making my way out to the barn to check on Lenny, the cell phone in my coat pocket rang.

“You’ve managed to create quite a stir inside the Council, my dear.”

“Doctor Fleming?” I pulled open the barn door and found that the lights were already on. I heard Jackson murmuring something to one of the horses and saw him inside Lenny’s stall, stroking the gelding’s long neck.

“Letting Michael out of the containment zone was a mistake. I don’t know what happened, but the Council is determined to capture him and bring him back.” The doctor’s voice sounded unusually stern. “I just heard about it this afternoon. What is going on out there, Sarah?”

Pausing by the tack room door, I nodded once at Jackson and rolled my eyes at the phone.

“We had a disagreement and I asked him to leave the property.”

“You didn’t have the authority to do such a thing. The Council…”

“Doctor Fleming, you know what? I don’t give a shit about the Council. They don’t own this land and they can’t tell me what to do.” This whole thing was really starting to piss me off. What right did they have to dictate to me?

“There was an agreement, Sarah. Between your father and the Council.” He was trying to be patient with me because he understood that I was fairly close to the boiling point. Dr. Fleming had seen my temper first hand more than a few times, so he knew what he was dealing with.

“An agreement between them that was signed and was to be upheld after my father died?”

He hesitated for a few seconds. I watched Jackson come out of Lenny’s stall and approach with a concerned tightness around his full mouth. He reached out one hand and touched my upper arm. When the doctor continued talking, I found myself reaching for Jackson and threading the fingers of my free hand through his.

“There was no signed contract. It was a verbal agreement that your father would keep Michael within the containment field until the Council deemed that his punishment was over.”

I cleared my throat. Jackson was standing very close to me, his warm dark eyes lit with curiosity and wonder. The pulse in his throat throbbed under his golden brown skin. There was an amazing, electrifying glow around him that seemed to extend towards me and into me where our hands were joined. My lips parted in surprise.

“Sarah?” The doctor’s voice was sharp against my ear.

“Hmm?”

“I realize that you’re not happy about the duty you’ve inherited, but I think your father would have wanted you to honor the agreement he made.”

“I’ll… I’ll think about it, Doc.”

Breaking my disconcerting gaze with Jackson, I hit the end button with one finger and slipped the phone back into the fleece pocket of my coat. I needed to double check the journal that my grandfather had started to see if Dad had written anything about the so-called agreement regarding Michael’s imprisonment.

Two infinitely gentle fingers touched my jaw and slid down to my chin, lifting my head.

When I looked up at him, I was stunned to see the fire in his eyes. Inside me, in the deepest part of my mind and soul, a torch flared to life. I realized, as I stood there under the hazy glow of the barn light, that the man standing before me would come to mean everything. And it was simple fear of that feeling that caused me to turn away and let go of his hand.

I moved to Lenny’s stall and put trembling fingers on the stall door latch. “Is he okay? I was coming out to check on him.”

He sighed behind me, but I couldn’t make myself turn around to look at the expression on his face.

“He’s fine. He just needs those back teeth filed down. They’re making it difficult for him to chew.”

Messenger watched us silently from the next stall, her ears forward as if she understood every word we were saying. Lenny came forward and I moved my fingers over the thick hair on his neck and then scratched behind his ears. He let out a huge sigh of pleasure and closed his eyes.

“I’ll call the vet in the morning,” I said softly.

I picked up the sound of his boots on the concrete floor as he started to walk away. But I couldn’t let him leave like that, thinking that I was just blowing him off and didn’t care. I had to say something and it had to be real.

“Jackson, I’m afraid.”

He did stop by the barn door. There was a wild storm of conflicting emotions consuming us both, and I saw it clearly on his face when I turned back to him. His beautiful eyes were full of all the things he wanted to say but couldn’t. His lips were set in a firm line, holding back the desire that was swiftly becoming something stronger than either of us could control.

“You’re not the only one who fears getting hurt, Sarah.” He let out a short breath of air and ran one hand through his dark hair, tucking one side behind his ear. “I’m in a strange place. I didn’t come here because I wanted to. I was brought against my will. None of the people that I care about know where I am. Not even my own mother.”

“I’m sorry.” It sounded like a lame apology.

He took five swift strides towards me and gripped both my upper arms. “You didn’t plan this. I understand that. But you have done something to me, whether you want to accept it or not. You know exactly what is happening between us. You feel it. You
know
it.”

I was trying desperately not to look at his face. Anywhere else. The paint chipping on the barn post next to me. Messenger’s wide, alert gaze fixed on both of us. Anything. Terror of the unknown was rising up inside me and warring with the seductive idea of at last finding a man that I could depend on to stay with me.

“No. Don’t you dare. I want you to look at my face,” he growled.

Surprised and distracted by his tone, I did exactly that. The moment I looked, his hands left my arms and settled firmly on my hips, dragging me against him so I could feel every hard muscle of him from his chest down to his thighs. The length of his erection pressed against my belly and sent shivers through my every limb.

“You want this as much as I do. It scares the shit out of you, and I get that. But I’m afraid too, Sarah. The two of us have been thrown together in this vampire thing without asking for it. If I fall for you, I’m giving them what they want.”

“It doesn’t matter what they want,” I breathed.

He slid his hands up my back and dragged in a shuddering breath of air. “They could kill us both, Sarah.”

I tried not to think about the pooling of heat between my legs. “They can’t afford to kill us.”

His next words were spoken with lethal intensity. “If anything happens to you, I will personally put a stake in Isaiah’s heart and anybody else’s who tries to hurt you.” I felt the gentle, moist pressure of his lips at my temple and then at the ultra-sensitive spot behind my ear. “I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

I reveled in the strength of those words. I wanted to soak them up and hold the sound of it with me forever. Some barrier inside me broke apart when I realized the gravity of our situation and I found myself drawing him closer until I was pressing my mouth against his cheek, his neck and the curve of his collarbone.

When our mouths did finally meet, something primal came over me. It was an instinctual, burning, animalistic urge the likes of which I’d never experienced before. He met every kiss, every glancing touch of my tongue with equal longing and fiery passion. His hands were roving over the curves of my breasts and hips and ass like he couldn’t possibly get enough. Every stroke made me tremble, and when he pulled back I felt like I might die.

“Easy, beautiful,” he murmured gently against my ear. “As much as I can’t wait to have you, there’s no way our first time will happen in a barn.”

I nipped playfully at his ear. “In the house then…”

“What about Nelly?”

The idea of her walking in on that little scenario made me grin. “She is so
not
invited. I don’t do threesomes.”

Playing along, he tightened his grip around my waist and smiled down at me. “Damn it. Thanks for getting my hopes up.”

“Anytime.”

We walked slowly back up to the house. At the front door, he kissed me lightly on the lips and forehead.

“Soon, Sarah.”

“I wish it could be tonight,” I whispered back.

He took me as far as my bedroom door, squeezed my hand and turned away to go to his own room.

I watched him walk away. I couldn’t help it. Every inch of him was beautiful and unique. Little details overwhelmed me; the creases in his faded jeans, the dust on his boot heels, the worn leather of the belt he wore.

When I was finally able to turn away and go into my room, I felt a distinct loss because he wasn’t there. Over the next few hours, I tossed in my bed and alternately cried and trembled with fear. I couldn’t go to him. And in my head, I was still worried sick about Katie. Where was she? Had she really been involved in that woman’s murder?

I didn’t fall asleep until after midnight.

CHAPTER 12 – Michael

I hovered around the perimeter for hours after she ordered me away. Regret hung over me like a suit of rusty armor. I hardly believed the words that had escaped me in that moment on the porch. Calling to apologize seemed the logical thing to do, but the cell phone I’d been carrying around was destroyed. And my abominable pride was another deterrent.

Not having a cell phone proved to be a major inconvenience over the initial hours following my eviction from the farm. Not only did I not have a way to contact Victoria, I also did not have any bagged blood. I didn’t completely hate the idea of feeding off a live human. I’d survived that way for hundreds of years. However, I had made an effort towards reform in recent years and was reluctant to fall off the wagon.

Eventually, I moved north towards Chicago. Finding Victoria and Jones was my goal, but it seemed unlikely without the phone. But I did have a few acquaintances between Chicago and Indianapolis that I could probably draw favors from if they were properly motivated. The obvious risk would be alerting the Council to the fact that I was free. I didn’t want to consider what repercussions that might have on Sarah.

I dropped in on an old undead friend of mine in Gary. He was able to provide a very limited supply of bagged blood and a new cell phone. I was hurried on my way and had the distinct impression that he wasn’t glad that I stopped by. Hardly surprising, I suppose. I was definitely considered the black sheep of the vampire community at that time. Killing him was an option, but it would draw unwanted attention. I kept my temper and moved on.

Victoria’s phone number was one that I had punched into my old cell phone a number of times before I figured out how to save it to the address book. I have an exceedingly good memory. I had just finished sucking down my second bag of blood in an alley behind a theater in Gary when the phone rang.

“Michael?” It was Isaiah’s voice. Instantly, I regretted not having killed the fiend who’d given me the new phone.

“Isaiah. I suppose the news of my unplanned release has spread rather quickly.”

“Indeed. I suggest we have a meeting. Would you be willing to come to Dallas?”

I laughed brightly into the phone. “So you can drain me and then lock me up again? I think not.”

There was a pause and a sigh before he continued in a droll voice, “I really think you should consider the idea of turning yourself in. You wouldn’t want Sarah or her loved ones harmed on your account.”