Vengeance: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 3 (41 page)

“Look at me,” Zerachiel commanded.

I looked up, knowing what he saw. The brokenness of spirit that left me shattered like tempered glass—physically whole yet completely unstable—had to be reflected in my eyes.

“Faith.” He laid his hand on Hellion’s head and bowed his own. His wings folded in tight. Then he began to pray. A soft glow from his palm grew brighter, outlining his hand against Hellion’s skin.
 

My heart stuttered in my chest only to take up a rabbit-y rhythm. I reached out a shaking hand, laying it over Zerachiel’s.
 

Hellion shuddered.
 

“Oh, God, please,” I murmured.

Zerachiel turned his head toward me with preternatural slowness. When he opened his eyes, they were fathomless depths of knowledge, ancient wisdom, hearts broken and mended, souls won and lost, faith lost and then found. His voice was otherworldly when he finally spoke.
 

“I return him to you one time. It is all I can offer. Cherish him, Madeline Niteclif.”

Tears formed twin tributaries that tracked down my cheeks as I wordlessly nodded and clutched Hellion’s hand.

“Be well, Maddy.” Zerachiel leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Love well.”

Then he was gone. Not “poof,” just gone between the tic and tock of the second hand.
 

Hellion turned his head toward me. “Maddy?” His hoarse whisper was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

“Here. Right here.” I stroked his face, unable to stop touching him.
 

Vampires flooded out of the house, moving like shadows across the grounds as night finally fell. The crescent moon provided just enough light for me to see Hellion staring at me with those beautiful, expressive black eyes.
 

Stearns limped over with his medic’s bag, unzipping it with trembling hands. “I saw what happened.” He looked at me with wide eyes.

“What? What happened?” Hellion asked, groaning as his aches and pains came back online.

“You went to Valhalla, sir.” The awe in his voice was hindered by residual ash and foul air, but it wasn’t lost. “And came back.”

“Valhalla.” Hellion’s weak surprise still translated.

I held his hand. “We made it.”

Darius picked through the dead, both offense and defense, his face drawn. “
Mia cara
, I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head, stroking Hellion’s forehead as Stearns set about tending his copious wounds. “It’s going to be fine.”

Micah balanced on the balls of his feet nearby. “I’m sorry too, Maddy.”

Looking over, I felt my gaze cool. “Your faith, your issue.” Then I drew a deep breath and let it out with a short choke. “But thank you for fighting with us.”

“I could have done more.” Sincere shame seemed to draw his features tight.

“Next time.”
 

Darius knelt beside Hellion. A faintly pink tear rolled down his cheek with painstaking gravity. “Hellion. Valhalla?”

“Apparently.” Stearns moved his arm and Hellion cried out.
 

The medic looked at me. “He needs the hospital.”

“It’s too far.” Hellion panted through the pain, eyes glazed.

“What of Darach?” Darius looked around.

“No idea. He never showed.” I couldn’t concern myself with him at the moment.
 

Bahlin was settled beside Hellion.
 

I turned, never letting go of Hellion, and took the dragon shifter’s hand, holding both to my cheeks. Eyes closed, I reveled in the reality we’d all made it. Looking at Bahlin, though, it was clear it had been close. “I’m so sorry.”

“Enough apologies for the night,” he grumbled. “Everything hurts. Do me a favor and find Hellion’s best whiskey, then be good lass and bring it out.”

Stearns drew a flask from his bag. “I’d be a poor Irishman if I wasn’t prepared for the worst, sir.”

Bahlin tried to grin, but his lip, split in several places, pulled and made him wince. Still, he took a swig, gasping at the burn. “Great Grenla, that’s good.”

“Pass it over.” Hellion took a long swallow, mirroring the face and sound Bahlin had made. “He got the good stuff, all right.”

Hellion looked at me, pale and sweating. “We were to be married tonight.”

Bahlin stilled, only the slight tightening of his hand giving away his tension.

I swallowed and gently pulled free from both men’s grasps.

They let me go.

Turning on my knees. I cupped Hellion’s battered face in my hands. “We were. The priest is still here, baby. Nothing says we can’t still have the ceremony performed.”

Hellion closed his eyes. “I want to see you walk through the gardens and come to me under the pergola. A white dress, silk—” He grunted, sweat sheening his chest as Stearns continued to work on his broken body. “White silk,” he repeated.

“I’ll wear whatever you want.” I stroked his forehead. Leaning forward, I brushed my lips against his and he sighed, his mouth relaxing a bit under my tender ministrations. “I love you, Hellion.”

“And I you, Maddy.” He reached for my face and ended up grabbing my shoulder when Stearns anesthetized his leg with a big-ass needle filled with something clear. The low moan that rumbled from his chest worried me, but as the drug worked and his grip eased, I began to breathe again.

I couldn’t stop touching him, my hands roaming over his face and body. I did my best to keep from bumping open wounds or the myriad blossoming bruises or the evidently broken bones. Then I came to his hands. The image of the dark magic, oily and thick, seeping out of the very hands that had loved and protected me… I knew without a doubt that I’d fight harder than ever to keep him from crossing so far into the dark that the light in him was lost.
 

Instead of bringing it up, though, I lifted his good hand and rested it against my cheek. “Do you want to marry me?”

“More than anything,
mo shíorghrá
.” He closed his eyes, leaning his cheek into my thumb where it stroked back and forth along his cheekbone. “I think, if it’s all the same to you, it’d be best if we wait until I can stand, aye? I’d come to ye as a whole man on our wedding night.”

“Until you can stand, then, and not a moment longer.” I laid my lips to the palm of his hand. “In the meantime…” My eyes narrowed. Someone was slinking through the gardens carrying— “Gun!”

Darius spun and launched himself in the direction of the offender. The
rat-tat-tat
of automatic weapon fire shattered the night. Vampires swarmed in that direction. More gunfire preceded deafening silence.
 

Darius stood slowly, turning toward me. He’d taken two direct hits—one to his abdomen and one to his chest, forty-five degrees apart. With a short nod of acknowledgment, he went to his knees before face-planting it in the dirt.

Even from my vantage point, I could see blood soaking the ground beneath the wounded vampire.

Efien made it to Darius’s side before I reached my feet.
 

“I hate getting shot,” he groaned.

Hellion’s eyes sought out his friend and second. “How bad is it?”

Efien answered. “His heart beats. He’ll be faster to heal now, so long as it wasn’t hit.”

“It wasn’t.” Darius’s words, while reassuring, were slow and drunken.

“He needs blood.”
 

Micah knelt beside them, rolling his shirtsleeve up. “I believe he’s rather fond of this vintage.”

Darius sank his fangs into Micah’s wrist at the same time I turned back to Hellion.

Efien’s hand on my arm stopped me. “The shooter.”

“Is undoubtedly dead,” I responded.

“By my own hand.” He knelt at my side. “He wore this.”

Efien handed me a pin that had been ripped off a jacket of heavy, dark canvas. “What is it?” I squinted, unable to make out details.

“It is the traditional double-headed eagle sitting beneath a crown and atop a sword and sash. The sash says ‘God and My Right’.”

My blood became sluggish as the rest of me as I lifted my face to the tall vampire’s. “What does it mean?” My words sounded tinny and far away.

“He was a Rosicrucian assassin. They’ve found us.”

Oh, shit.

About the Author

Denise Tompkins lives in the heart of the South where the neighbors still know your name, all food forms are considered fry-able and bugs die only to be reincarnated in aggressive, blood-craving triplicate. Thrilled to finally live somewhere that can boast 3 ½ seasons (winter’s only noticeable because the trees are naked), her favorite season is definitely fall. It’s the time of year when the gardens are just about to pass into winter’s brief silence, and the leaves are out to prove that nature is the most brilliant artist of all.

A life-long voracious reader, Denise has three favorite authors. Why three? Because favorite authors are like chips: a person can’t have just one. Her little house was so overrun with books last year that her darling husband bought her an e-reader out of self-preservation. He was (legitimately) afraid she might begin throwing out pots and pans to make room for more books, and he didn’t want to starve.

You can find out more about Denise by visiting her website,
www.denise-tompkins.com
, or by following her on Twitter,
@DeniseJTompkins
.

Look for these titles by Denise Tompkins

Now Available:

The Niteclif Evolutions

Legacy

Wrath

Haunted by personal betrayal, stalked by a murderer and taunted by destiny.

Finding justice—not to mention a little faith—has never been so hard.

Wrath

© 2011 Denise Tompkins

The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2

A murderer is terrorizing the streets of London, targeting women who look suspiciously like Maddy. Under the mantle of darkness, the killer attacks his victims from behind, severing their heads with startling efficiency and single-minded brutality. A single gold coin is left at the scene of every crime, buried in the neck of each victim. Nothing adds up, and the deeper Maddy gets into the investigation, the more she learns that there are hostile eyes in every faction—some malicious, others murderous.
 

Amid her struggles to stop a seemingly unstoppable killer, Maddy learns that dreams are far too fragile to juggle. Her newfound love is crumbling around her under the burdens of guilt and blame, and where one man abandons her, another is slated by the gods to take his place. Defiant, Maddy finds her struggles with free will versus destiny have only just begun.
 

Figuring out whom she should trust, and when, will force Maddy to reassess her alliances…and reaffirm her fragile mortality.

Warning:
Contains Scottish and Irish brogues, heads that—literally—roll, seriously random acts of violence, heartbreak and hope, explicit m/f sex in a variety of locations, a voyeuristic vampire and one dinner table that will never be the same.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Wrath:

Whoa, baby.

The man was built beautifully when he was in his shirt, but out of it? He was a visual orgasm. More muscular than Bahlin, he wasn’t muscle-bound but rather seriously ripped. There wasn’t a stray hair anywhere on his chest and only the thinnest stripe from his bellybutton running into his trousers.

He caught me looking and I blushed. He didn’t laugh but came over to my side of the bed and knelt on the floor beside me. Taking my hand, he kissed each knuckle “May this body please you in any way you see fit to use it, Madeleine Niteclif, be it for sword arm, shield arm, lance, magic, or love.” He looked stunned at his own words. He scrubbed his hands over his face and muttered an unintelligible oath before getting back to business.

I pushed myself to sitting, grimacing with the movement and ignoring the unexpected oath of devotion. “What are you going to do, Hellion? Bahlin’s tried, and the fae healer did a little, but nothing’s finished the process.”

“Oh, I’ll do a bit of this and a bit of that.” He cracked his knuckles and eased me back onto the bed so I was lying flat. He lifted my shirt up so my stomach was bared. He pulled a small dirk from his boot top and, without pausing, sliced his palm open. I gasped. “Shh, you’ll distract me.” He took the knife and laid it across my stomach so it pointed north to south, then he began to drip blood around the knife. He scrubbed the wound to keep it open and, when he had enough blood gathered, he began to trace runes onto my skin, using the blood as paint. The patterns were impossible to discern. The one thing I could say with certainty was that they were interconnected. He got to the last rune at due north, and he said, “This is it, Madeleine. Do you want me to take your voice? This is going to hurt, and I can’t have you scream.”

I nodded, and he did the same thing as earlier, leaving me with a scratchy throat. He finished the last line in the rune, and my stomach lit up, the runes blazing gold and red. Black smoke seeped from around the knife and seemed to come from my skin. I screamed but it was nothing more than a hiss of air. The sheer pain was ripped straight from my gut. I cried and I thrashed, but Hellion held me immobile, pressing down on the hilt of the knife with one hand and laying his other forearm across my shoulders. He ended up nicking me, and when my blood joined his, the runes burned even more intensely for an interminable second, and then it was over.