Turn to Darkness (Offspring 5.6) (14 page)

I frowned. “That seems tame for him.”

“I was a little fish in his very big pond.”

I nodded. “And what do you think about the pond now?”

He looked down at his briefcase and measured his words, seeming to roll them around in his mouth before he spoke. “I’ve been told you appreciate honesty.”

“Above almost all else.”

Delmont cleared his throat. “Dallas isn’t better, just different. There are still holes that need to be filled, and if they aren’t, I predict there will be chaos.”

I was glad for the charm around my neck that helped keep my power reined in, because it also helped me hide when my emotions made my power jump, as now. His comment had just made my whole being tense in fear. What could he know that I didn’t know?

I took a sip of my drink to buy some time for my answer. The coffee soothed my frazzled nerves. The sheer power of him was making me fray by the second. “Chaos is a strong word, Mister Delmont.”

His blue eyes were brave enough to look straight into mine. “It is an accurate word, Miss Jordan. You may have secured the affections of the shapeshifters in Dallas, but what of the witches and the vampires and the elementals, some of whom are still nursing their wounds from six weeks ago?”

“They can’t all be treading on the dark side. I watched them fight against Carlisle’s men. They helped us defeat him.”

“That just means they didn’t want him to rule things.”

I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. It was a habit I’d picked up from no less than three men in my life. “None of them have made a move to try to challenge me.”

He began to pinch the flesh of his pinkie finger as his hands lay in his lap. “They might not see a need to. The shifters have their own way of doing things, other breeds have theirs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the elementals were naming their Akasha as we speak.”

I would have let the sentiment go as a concern, but the fidgeting of his hands got me. Little things, like the fall of a shoulder and the pinch of a pinkie, had greater meaning to a person who had spent most of her adult life watching from the outside than a string of words put into a sentence. “You’re not telling me everything.”

His eyes darted down to his hands, and he spread them wide on his thighs. He knew I’d caught his tell.

I was right. He was keeping things from me. Dangerous things about the others in the city. I could force him to tell me, literally pull the information from him, but then where would I be? Connected to an embittered pack member? Not the best way to start out this whole leader thing.

“The other breeds have not made a move. Dallas has been quiet. I’d rather focus my efforts on my pack, making them feel safe, protected. I don’t know what you knew of Haverty’s methods, but given the stories I’ve heard in the past month, these people need healing, and I won’t use them as pawns in another war.”

“For now,” he said.

I straightened, looking into the deep blue eyes I knew to be almost silver when he shifted. “Excuse me?”

“To protect them, you will need to use them, their strengths and their weaknesses.”

“And how are you so sure about that?”

Delmont took in an unnervingly calm breath. His long fingers traced the edge of his briefcase. “This is not my first pack. Been in one or another my whole life, Miss Jordan. It will happen.”

I licked my suddenly very dry lips. “If you knew this, then why choose me? Why bind yourself at all?”

Delmont opened his mouth. A sliver of cold wavered around him and pushed against my own radiating power. He shut his mouth just as a cold, stony look covered his face, and he hid behind his borders for the first time in our conversation, creating a void before me. He was nothing like the confident man who had strode through the place, power out all willy-nilly.

I knew in an instant there was a story here, a painful memory he shut away with his steel trap border. Those bound to me were like books, and stories like that are best served willingly. Just like the information that I would need to get from him about the others in the city. Mother always said you catch more flies with honey.

I took in a breath and exhaled, again formulating the right words to use. “Unfortunately, I will need to use your legal skills. And if you happen to see a little of that chaos, I might want a heads-up.”

Delmont nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

I grimaced at the title but went on with the same speech that I had given all of my new wards. “I want you to feel safe. I want you to live your life. But I do expect you to be at the next full moon.”

“I’ll have my secretary put it on my calendar.”

I smiled. I doubted he could resist the full moon. It was just a line to make him feel more important, probably said out of habit more than necessity. “I’ll get her the information.”

He moved again to stand, and I nodded. He rose, buttoned his suit coat, and picked up his briefcase. He turned to me and paused.

I expected him to simply say goodbye, but as of late, I wasn’t about to assume anything about anyone. Nearly cost me my life last time.

He spoke slowly—and with a little hope, if I was reading his tone correctly. “This was an interesting conversation, Miss Jordan. I’d like to do this again.”

I was in a state of shock for a moment. “Well, I do have some papers to sign for you.”

“Thank you.” He nodded and walked across the coffee shop, leaving a small bit of sandalwood in his wake.

As his exit from the shop sent the bells on the door into fits, my entire body relaxed. I was exhausted. The others had been easy. Mothers, students, hermits. No one had set me on edge like Delmont, testing me like he did. And no one else had as much of the information I desperately needed to maintain this peace.

An Excerpt from

by Kristin Miller

Kristin Miller’s Vampires of Crimson Bay are back and facing their most dangerous fight yet. Dante, not quite a vampire, not quite a shifter, stumbles onto a secret vampire hideout—and its sexy protector, Ariana—just in time for war to break out. True love is put to the test as Dante and Ariana fight to save their lives . . . and their love.

D
ante threw up his hand to guard against another one of
her
attacks. “You finished yet?”

She thwacked him again, right across the shoulder. And again, upside the back of the head, for good measure. She couldn’t have thought she was actually hurting him. “I wasn’t ready to leave, dammit, take me back!”

“That’s not happening.” He shooed her with an annoyed wave of his hand, glad the shakes and chills had finally subsided. “Now just calm down, would you?”

After glaring at him for a few moments, she planted her hands on her hips like a pissed-off little teapot. At least she wasn’t hitting him. He supposed it was progress. To think, not twenty minutes ago, at the elder black market, Dante had wanted her hands all over him. Ask and ye shall receive, right?

Stifling a laugh, Dante sat forward on his haunches, rubbed his aching head, and tried to slow her words down.
Take me back.
“Why on earth would you want to go back there?”

“Why on earth would you think I needed your rescuing?” She mocked him, a stubborn yet downright adorable pout pushing out her heart-shaped lips.

The elder black market wasn’t exactly the slime-slathered gutters of San Francisco, but it was a far cry from the Hilton. She’d been captured. Bound. Restricted from using her mawares. That bastard Juan Carlos was beating her around. She’d been
sold
, for Christ’s sake!

He’d saved her.

Only as Dante looked around from his position squatting in a mound of wet, muddy earth, spotted an unfamiliar forest and a woman who looked like she’d rather kill him than thank him for removing her from that place, Dante realized he looked more like the one who needed saving.

To hell with that.

Mustering all his strength, Dante tested his legs by shooting one out from beneath him, kneeling on it, then following suit with the other. He crouched in the mud, listening to the elder take sharp, quick breaths over him. When he finally got to his feet, he regained his balance by grasping a thick Douglas fir tree on his right. Teleporting always wiped him physically, but this time his head felt painfully muddled. Like he would’ve chopped off his left leg for an adrenaline drip.

Dante looked around. They were in some sort of tiny clearing, surrounded by fir trees with a hollowed-out mud pit in the middle. From where they stood, the forest went uphill in every direction until the land crested just out of sight, no doubt leading to hundreds of other tree rings and mud pits. Thick trunks popped up like daisies through moss-clotted earth. No city sounds buzzed on the cool midnight air. Was that salt he picked up on the breeze? Ocean? They were far from San Francisco, Dante figured out that much right away. But the ocean? How far had he traveled? Pain seared through his temples. Disorientation must’ve been fucking with his head.

Although teleporting wasn’t an exact science, he’d have liked to think that over his fifty years on this earth he’d learned a thing or two about it. But he’d never, not once, teleported to a place he hadn’t been before. And for the life of him, he couldn’t remember his head ever hurting so damn much.

“Hel-lo?” she asked, leaning into his line of sight to catch his eye. Her long braid swung to and fro like one of those freaky pendulums in psychologists’ offices. His mundane parents had insisted on taking him to dozens of those places throughout his childhood to figure out why he wasn’t “normal” like the rest of the kids.
Why doesn’t he sleep? Why doesn’t he ever eat?
That had been before he’d realized being abnormal wasn’t always a bad thing.

“I asked you a question,” she said, louder, with more fire behind it. “What the hell kind of right do you have to scoop me up like some knight in shining armor? Did you hear me ask for your help?”

No. He hadn’t. He couldn’t remember hearing much before this moment, actually. Although anger was pitching her tone octaves too high, causing his ears to ring, it was still the most beautifully ringing orchestra he’d ever heard. Like wind chimes blowing in a soft southern breeze. “I thought I was doing you a favor.” He heeled his boot against a tree and scraped off a clod of mud, thinking about how off-target her questions were. She should’ve been asking
how
he’d teleported. Not
why
. But he sure as hell wasn’t about to pony up any information she could use against him.

“Some favor,” she said, swiping smatters of dirt off her robe. It was so dirty that the burgundy had turned gunpowder brown. “Next time you might want to ask the damsel if she’s in distress before you stick your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

With a swish of her braid, Miss Priss hiked up the heavy swells of her robe, spun around, and high-stepped over a fallen log to the outskirts of the circle. As she made her way out of the small ring of fir trees in a very straight and determined line westward, Dante realized he had no idea where the hell he was. Or how to get back. Yet she didn’t seem to have any confusion about which way to go to get out of the thicket. She trudged uphill, in and around scattered rows of trees, with purpose.

Damn it.
He was gonna be in trouble deeper than the mud sucking at his boots if he didn’t bring this elder back to help him decipher the scrolls.
Don’t let her get away.

He scrubbed his hands over his head. “Son of a bitch.”

“Excuse me?” She whipped around, her robe flaring out in a perfect circle before wrapping around her legs. “What’d you just call me?”

“Shit.” Dante closed his eyes tight and lifted his face to the heavens. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

It wasn’t like he expected solace, at least not from the Big Guy Upstairs. But he would’ve appreciated a break every now and again. He would recover from the physical energy-suck. His brain would even shift into high gear at some point and stop grinding like a beat-up Pinto. But why did it seem like everything was a fucking battle—waged uphill, staring into the sun—against more powerful enemies using superior weapons?

He didn’t know what he’d expected when he jumped her out of the black market. Maybe some gratitude and a rewarding kiss? Certainly not this . . .

She trudged a few steps back down the hill. “A real man, if he had something to say, wouldn’t wait until a woman turned her back before letting his balls drop.”

Oh, Miss Priss has a mouth.
Small pulses of adrenaline tingled across Dante’s chest, settling in his lap. It was like the initial rush of a fight. Like an erotic kiss, drawing his mouth open in rebuttal.

Dante took a step closer, holding her mahogany eyes in his sights. “A real man, who’d saved you from certain death, wouldn’t expect a thank-you in return. He’d rescue your beautiful ass and ride off into the sunset to be virtuous for the sake of virtue.” He advanced, stepping over the same fallen log she had. Shock widened her eyes as he closed the distance between them. She retreated, her back pressing against the wide span of a fir. “A real man wouldn’t try to take advantage of the situation at hand.” She was still as stone, her chin high. Her expression like a marble statue’s, regal and poised. Her skin glowed, luminescent in the soft streams of moonlight peeking between overhead branches. Dante stepped closer still, an odd twinge in his belly humming in anticipation. “But I’m not a real man. I’m not virtuous. And not only would I appreciate a goddamn thank-you for getting you out of that mess, but something tells me you know where we are. Now you’re gonna share that with me, or we can keep going round and round all night.”

She shook her head, rubbing it against the bark behind her. Standing over her five-foot-nothin’ frame, Dante noticed how small and fragile she looked, despite the roughness of her mouth. She had a button nose. Heart-shaped lips that turned up at the edges, even without the trace of a smile. Cute, pointed chin. Looking down upon her, nothing but a breath between them, Dante could hear the flutter of her heartbeat as it pattered like a bird in the canopy above their heads.