Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3 (3 page)

His dark chuckle was the only answer I received, but he didn’t stop.
 

The silence grew heavy between us and I knew something bothered him. I wanted to ask and had slowly worked up the nerve when he broached the topic on his own, his deep baritone seemingly softened by the low lights and rich ambience of the room itself.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened this morning, Maddy, and I want to ask you how you’d feel about lodging a formal complaint against Bahlin through the appropriate Council channels.”

I pulled my feet from his lap and sat up, rubbing my forehead.
 

“Enough of an answer, I suppose.”

“No, not really,” I muttered, impressed he hadn’t walked out when the non-answer I gave him obviously wasn’t what he wanted from me. Sighing, I scooted closer to him and rested my cheek on his unyielding shoulder. “Look, sweetheart,” I began, and he physically softened.

“Sweetheart?” His voice was full of some emotion I couldn’t identify.

“Are you laughing at me?” I was stunned.
I’d kill the—

“No. No, I’m not laughing. Smiling? Yes. But definitely not laughing. It’s the first time you’ve used an affectionate nickname for me.” Turning to face me, I found his eyes lit up and a truly joyous smile on his face.

Over a pet name?
Obviously I had been a little uptight with him. “If you’d prefer I didn’t—”

“No,” he exclaimed again, shaking his head in emphasis. “I’m quite fond of it, actually.”
 

He reached for me, the joy evolving into something darker, more sensual, and I shivered as I moved toward him.

A brisk knock at the door made us both pause, and he sucked in the air to yell.
 

I clapped a hand over his mouth and called out, “Just a minute, Mark!” Dropping my hand, I turned to Hellion, incredulous. “Does he have some type of mental alarm that alerts him every time we want to bump uglies?” I demanded.

Hellion grinned behind my hand, pulling his head back, so I could see his dimples flash as he lowered his lips to mine. “‘Bump uglies?’” he asked, his lips a soft coercion.

“American slang. It means…oh hell, you know what it means.” I was blushing as Hellion stood to adjust himself in his trousers. Sitting again, he crossed one ankle over his knee and did the best he could to hide the arousal that punched out from his groin.

“Sweetheart,” I said with emphasis and not a little teasing, “you could lay a king-sized quilt over that battering ram and it’s still not going to hide the whole thing.” I strolled toward the door, amused at the look of pride on Hellion’s face at my left-handed compliment of his junk. He might be a supe, but he was still a man.

I swung the door open and found Mark pacing. The butler turned and nearly leapt at me, taking my hand and pulling me toward the stairs. “Apparently we’re in a hurry?” I asked, being dragged after him.

My free hand automatically clamped to my aching side and I couldn’t help but limp slightly on my still-battered leg. Twisting, my stitches strained against skin as we turned a corner, and I pulled on Mark’s hand.

He didn’t slow down.

“Mark? Mark,” I yelled, pulling harder, but still the guy hauled me forward.
 

Hellion cursed behind me. The slap of his bare feet on the hardwood sounded as he raced after us.

“I’m sorry, Maddy.” The young man pounded down the stairs two at a time. I nearly fell as I tried to keep up.
 

His anxiety was bleeding all over me, and I began to feel the footholds of panic setting in. When we hit the parlor, I realized the reason for his rush. While his panic had been bleeding all over me, our visitor had been bleeding all over the Oriental carpet.

Shit.

Chapter Two

I stumbled to a halt and the warm patch under my hand let me know I’d ripped some stitches loose. But my wound was nothing compared to the bloody mass of man lying on the carpet. He appeared to be breathing. I wasn’t sure he’d count that as an advantage at the moment.

“Get Stearns.” I hardly heard my voice over the thundering of my heart. I knew Stearns could help. Stearns, the footman and driver, was a middle-aged magus with serious talents in the healing department. He’d been a medic in the Gulf War, and his skills and magical abilities made him an invaluable asset to Hellion’s staff and coven. Considering all the times he’d patched me up and the fact that I was now a permanent member of the household, he needed to be considered for both hazard pay and a serious raise.

Hellion rushed into the room and slid to a halt, glancing at me before his gaze landed on the man on his parlor floor. A faint, otherworldly light flickered around the stranger like a weak strobe. Walking past me, Hellion knelt and gently turned the man over, taking great care with an arm that was clearly broken and easing him when he groaned in pain. Hellion was an absolute genius when it came to healing as well, though he was strictly magical in talent.
 

Watching the man’s—creature’s?—arm flop about useless was nearly my stomach’s undoing, but I held firm, determined to eventually get over this squeamishness I had to blood and broken bones.

Stearns rounded the corner at a run followed closely by Mark, who carried Stearns’s medical bag. Both men came to unsteady stops, bumping first into me and then into each other. I grunted and grabbed my side, and Stearns reached for me, but I shook my head.

“Handle him first. I can wait. I’m pretty sure he can’t.”

Stearns nodded and moved to assist Hellion. The larger man was giving low commands that Mark and Stearns were following without question as I stood there wondering where I’d be the most use. Because while my stomach was pitching and rolling, I couldn’t stand the idea that this man/monster was in pain and there was nothing I could do to help.

As if he could read my mind, Hellion turned to me and said, “Maddy, fetch a few rags from the pantry and wet them in the powder room. We need to see where the blood is coming from to know how much damage is superficial versus how much is serious.”

I nodded and moved off at a fast walk. It was the best I could do after pulling the sutures loose, and I had a feeling Hellion would stop letting me help when he figured out I was bleeding. He was a bit overprotective. Hell, who was I kidding? He was domineering, but it was oddly sexy. I shook my head at my own hormonal idiocy and returned the towels to the men as quickly as I could.
 

I knew the exact moment Hellion noticed I was reinjured. Before he could order me back to bed, I held my hand up. “I’m not leaving. Focus on him and let’s worry about the rest later.”

He turned back to our mysterious, mangled guest without uttering a word.

The stranger’s lips moved and I heard the hiss of air as he tried to speak.
 

Hellion leaned over the man. “Say it again.” The man struggled to get the word out, and Hellion looked over his shoulder at me, curiosity warring with worry in his gaze. “He’s asking for you.”

I moved across the carpet toward the stranger who was now stretched out on his back and at least partially cleaned of blood. There were four primary wounds: one to the head, one to the top of his thigh and two to his abdomen. All would require stitches and probably some sort of intervention from either Stearns or Hellion in order to save his life. An indention in his side bespoke broken ribs, and his now-splinted arm was clearly broken, as were several fingers. He was missing nails on both hands. His lips, both upper and lower, were split, and his eyes would be black and blue come morning. Maybe it was the suffered violence that rolled off him that made me nervous, but I was scared to get too close. Hellion held out his hand and I went to him, kneeling by the man and leaning forward.

“Niteclif,” he breathed, and he opened his less contused eye. Intelligence and power burned in that shocking blue gaze, and I found I couldn’t look away. “Found you. Thank God,” he whispered. And then he passed out.

“Do you recognize him?” Hellion asked.

“I’ve seen roadkill that looks better. I wouldn’t be able to say for sure whether or not I know him until I see him healed. The flashing light thing is…weird.”

“Weird?” Hellion smiled absently.

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

“How did he know you were here?” This from Stearns.

“We haven’t exactly been inconspicuous,” I murmured, embarrassed. In truth, I’d made some serious enemies and, to be fair, excellent friends over the last two months. But nothing I’d done had been terribly low profile.

“Too true.” Hellion locked his hands behind his head, pulled until muscles strained and then relaxed. “Okay, let’s get him into the guest room on this floor and we’ll see what we can do for him there. Mark, get a blanket so we can move him without jostling the poor fellow too badly.”

Entirely on impulse, I reached out and gently picked up the hand that wasn’t attached to the broken arm. He squeezed weakly, but it was a definite response. That could only be good news.

The men were as careful as they could be in transferring our guest from the floor to the blanket to the bedroom, but there were still curses from the conscious and groans from the semi-conscious as he was settled in between the thousand thread-count sheets.
 

Hellion grabbed my hand and pulled me out the door, calling over his shoulder for the other men to fetch him when the unnamed man awoke. I felt like I’d been pulled everywhere I went since we’d left the second-floor library, and I was just about to balk when the front door exploded inward in a rain of flying splinters and debris.

Hellion threw me to the side and stepped in front of me as I skidded across the marble foyer. More stitches ripped free and I left a crimson trail in my wake. Hellion raised his hands at the intruder, prepared to fight.

“Do you think your little efforts at smoke and mirrors will keep me from my mark, magus?” The man who stepped through the door smiled, effectively dismissing Hellion. “Because you’re wrong if you do.”
 

He chuckled, and I blanched at the smell of brimstone and sulfur that breathed across the room. Dressed in entirely common clothes, he was uncommonly attractive. His dark hair and pale skin mimicked that of Darius, the vampire. But unlike Darius, something in this man bespoke viciousness and brutality, maybe more, and definitely a love of both.

The air around Hellion shimmered and he held his hands out to his sides, parallel to the floor, casting a mirage between us and the stranger who was framed by the day’s fading light.

“The moment the sun is extinguished, you will not be able to hold me, and you know it.” He hissed the last and Hellion’s power stumbled for the briefest moment, but it was enough. The other man threw back his head and roared in laughter. “So you
do
remember me, then? Good, good. I’d have been so disturbed if you’d forgotten our last meeting.” The man licked his lips in an entirely sexual manner.
 

Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the doorknob on the closet and hauled myself to standing. Fear had finally helped the endorphins kick in. My right side was going to be bruised where I’d hit the floor, but that seemed the least of my worries.

Somewhere in the fracas, Mark and Stearns had come out of the bedroom behind me. Stearns raced to Hellion’s side, but Hellion moved away from all of us toward the other man. “Watch Maddy. If he gets beyond me and I’m mortally wounded, kill her.”

I gaped at him no less than Stearns and Mark did, all of us stunned into inaction.
 

“Go!” Hellion bellowed, his voice literally rattling the crystals on the chandelier overhead. I’d only heard his voice so infused with power once before and it wasn’t a good memory.

Stearns and Mark fell back to protect me, and I was hurting too much to protest. Keeping pressure on my side, I turned to find our guest stumbling out of his room. I was just about to yell at him to turn back when the man in the doorway was distracted by his appearance.
 

That distraction was all Hellion needed. He screamed, “
Lux lucis o Olympus fulsi in vos a amo mille candela quod mille magis! Adveho, lux lucis, ego dico vos, iacio sicco atrum! Adveho IAM!
”
May the light of heaven shine on you like a thousand candles and a thousand more! Come, light, I call you, cast out the dark! Come NOW!

There was a flash of light and a shriek like steel grinding against steel. The man in the doorway was rent in two, his physical shell falling away to reveal a hideous form that smoked and burned. The noise continued to erupt from around him like a call for retribution against the unholy. The very air sucked him backward, pulling him through an atmospheric hole too small for him to fit, breaking bones and ripping flesh. He was forced through the tiny invisible opening, and then he was gone. The silence left behind was deafening. We stood like unanimated, three-dimensional cutouts, too scared to look away from where that
thing
had just disappeared.

Hellion began to shake. His knees buckled as if they were made of parchment paper and Popsicle sticks. Great, shuddering breaths shook him. With his hands locked behind his head, he muttered to himself so quietly I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

I moved beyond Mark and Stearns, shaking off their hands as I passed, Hellion my only focus. I sank down slowly beside him and could finally understand him. He was saying, “I killed him,” over and over again, and I was confused. When I laid my hand gently on his back as a means of reassurance, he gasped and spun around, hands raised to either strike a blow or ward one off. Again, I wasn’t clear.