A Mermaid's Ransom

  "Sadness," she murmured. "Different from anger and hatred. Sadness is . . . a feeling of loss, like you lost something, and you won't get it back."

  "Yes," he said slowly. "It feels that way."

  "Oh, Dante." Squeezing his hand harder, she pushed away anything but the desire to help him understand his own emotions, as foreign to him as a new language in truth. "This is working wonderfully, but why don't we take a break for a little bit? I am really hungry and tired. It's hard to run around all day with a guy who doesn't eat. Well, not like the rest of us do."

  Of course, the reminder of when he had last eaten and how brought a flush to her face. Dante cocked his head at her, and a little tug happened at that right corner again, a very sexy almost-smile that caught her breath. "Is it my turn to read your emotions?"

  "No," she said firmly. She angled her head down the path. "I'll race you there. No vampire cheating. You have to run like a human."

  "As tired as you are, perhaps I should run on my knees? That should be slow enough."

  "Okay, that was definitely a smart-ass thing to say." Stepping into him to put him off balance, she took off.

  He caught her in seconds, of course. When he captured her about the waist, she ducked under his hold and managed to slip by him to take another few steps. Then he caught the hem of her shirt and swung her around into his arms, such that she was laughing breathlessly.

  "You're cheating," she informed him. "Racing means whoever can run the fastest, not grabbing hold of the other person to slow them down."

  "I was distracted," he said. When he lifted her under her arms, she settled her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. "When you run, it's a challenge. I feel I must catch you."

  He's a predator . . . The meaning didn't feel sinister now, though it wasn't safe, either. That pleasurable ripple low in her belly intensified as he gripped her buttocks in a firm, kneading hold. "If you don't let me eat, I'll be no good to you at all," she complained.

  "A hungry servant is more motivated to please her Master."

  Cold fear returned. Not because of his words and what Mina had told her about vampires. This was like what she'd felt behind the diner. Sharp and sudden, like a gunshot in the back.

  She didn't have to tell Dante. Almost as soon as she registered it, he'd dropped her to her feet and thrust her behind him to face the threat.

  The man watching them was crouched in a tree, comfortably as a bird, despite the fact he was at least Dante's size. He looked about forty years old, but Alexis assumed that was deceptive, since he was a vampire. Handsome, with styled blond hair and cold green eyes.

  "You're new in this territory. I'm Terence." His eyes glinted. "Like your servant, I'm hungry. I expect you to share her with me."

  It was like a scene from National Geographic, two males fighting for the same helpless gazelle. Jonah's words came back to her. All you have to do is call . . .

  No. Dante's mental voice was a sharp, undeniable command. I will handle this.

  "Your expectations mean nothing to me," Dante responded. Glancing at Alexis, he jerked his head toward a large tree behind him, wide enough to protect her back. Go and stay there until I tell you to do otherwise.

  She wanted to argue, wanted to suggest something that might avoid a fight, but his glance and the commanding power behind the words forestalled any thought. If servants were what Lyssa and Mina had implied, her arguing with the vampire Terence considered her Master would be viewed as a sign of Dante's weakness. Thank goodness she'd learned a lot about animal behavior at the Conservancy, though the same behavior seemed far too often to apply to human males. She couldn't find humor in the thought, though, for Terence's eyes were following her movements closely. His hunger was palpable, and not just for blood. Mindful of Dante's earlier words, she didn't run, trying to avoid the appearance of frightened prey.

  It didn't matter. As soon as the blond vampire's eyes left Dante to follow her, her vampire leaped. A cry escaped her lips when Terence launched himself from the branch--toward Alexis.

  Dante intercepted him. She only knew that because Terence didn't reach her. She wasn't human, but she wasn't equipped with accelerated sight to track their movements. The evidence of their struggle was all around her though, the heat of it blasting her, the sound of snarls. Tree limbs, thick as her arm, snapped off when they hit. The earth plowed up in gouged furrows as they thudded into it and rolled, leaves and dirt spraying up and showering her. She yelped as she was slammed hard into her tree, so her breath left her and her teeth snapped down on her tongue. When she fell to the ground, dazed, she realized they'd run into her in their fight. They were a few feet down the trail, grappling. Terence had Dante down, his back to her.

  Seizing a broken limb, she scrambled to wobbly legs and rushed forward, taking a swing at the blond vampire's head. The solid thwack was heartening, but Terence turned into the blow, knocking the weapon from her hand. She had a brief impression of Dante's crimson eyes before everything accelerated.

  Stars exploded in her brain as Terence hit her. With her body hurtling through the air, she tried to shift, reach for her wings, but she was moving too fast and a tree met her too quickly. She slammed into it ten feet off the ground and landed hard, her ankle giving way beneath her.

  There was a guttural bellow, like a creature chained in the bowels of Hell, raging for more souls to eat. A blast of energy caught her in its maelstrom, the turbulent nebula one pure illuminated killing rage, so devoted in its purpose she was overwhelmed by its weight, thrust to the ground by its intentions. Choking smoke, electrical energy and a roaring gripped her heart in terror. It was the Dark One world, all over again, come to reclaim her.

  Dante. She hadn't realized how well she'd blocked the aftermath of her fear until the terrible winds of that place surrounded her again, intending to take her back. Only this time Dante wouldn't be there, and she'd be alone, subjected to the grasping talons and fetid bodies of the Dark Ones, pushing in on her, wanting to feed on her pain . . .

  "Alexis." Alexis. The second command was sharp, resonating through her mind, but it was the worry behind it that made her turn her mind outward, summon the courage to focus on her surroundings.

  "Oh, Goddess. Oh, thank the Lord and Lady." She was lying on the jogging path, earth and leaves clutched in shaking hands. There was dirt on her face where she'd pressed her cheek to the ground to stay beneath the wall of flame. Smoke assailed her nostrils, and when she lifted her head, she saw the nearest trees were charred, the branches gone, trunks blackened. A larger pile of ash was scattered across the pathway. Ash with bits of chalk in them. Not chalk. Bone, like a cremated body.

  She jerked her attention from that to her companion. She couldn't look beyond his gaze, windows to a hellfire furnace, but he seemed fine, for he lifted her so she was cradled in his arms, held against his chest. His voice was gruff, tense. "I am going to spank you for not listening to me. I'll take you back to your home."

  She nodded, keeping her arms folded against herself. Despite the overwhelming heat before, now she was shivering from a place so deep inside her there wasn't enough hot chocolate, warm robes or fuzzy slippers in the world to make her warm.

  She must have passed out, for the next thing she knew, he was laying her on her bed. Glancing down, she saw her shirt looked like it had been scorched in the dryer. One section of skirt hem was blackened, crumbling at her touch, though the rest was intact.

  "Should we call your mother . . . or father?"

  Some part of her wanted to, the terrible fear of being sucked back into the Dark One world far too close, but another part of her warned against it.

  "If that is what you need, you should call them," he said, and there was fury in his voice. She couldn't handle anger right now. She wasn't sure what she could handle. She was so cold.

  "I am not angry with you." He was, of course, but he was struggling not to be.

  "What was all that?" she rasped, and put her hand to her throat.

&nb
sp; "I took care of him. He is gone."

  "But . . . how?" She saw now he was also marked with ash. The poet's shirt she'd liked so much was done for. Slashes in the shirt and bloodstains suggested the skin beneath had suffered open wounds, though none were visible now.

  "Later. What do you need? There is a bath. And clothes. Are you hurt?"

  "I don't know, I'm just . . . I'm so cold." Her teeth were chattering and she still had her arms folded around herself.

  Muttering a curse, he drew a blanket off the trunk she had at the foot of the bed and wrapped her in it, and then the coverlet around that, so she was cocooned in both. Then he went into the bathroom and started the water in the tub, running it so hot she could see the steam rising, billowing out toward her. But still she shook. There was no amount of fabric that would be warm enough.

  Turning off the tub, he came back out. Stripping off the remains of his shirt, leaving on the jeans, he unrolled her. She thought he was going to take her to the tub, but then he slid onto the bed, bringing her up against his chest before he rewrapped her, throwing the blanket ends loosely over his own body as he folded his arms around her.

  The warmth of a living body. Yes. That was what she needed. It permeated her flesh where the blanket had been unable to do so, and her shivering became a jerking that seemed worse but wasn't. The warmth stealing in seemed to activate nerves that had become numb.

  "I don't think . . . I handled b-being in the Dark One world . . . as well as I thought. I was so . . . s-scared we were going b-back there. That we were b-back there."

  "It was the magic." He had his jaw pressed against the side of her head. She realized he was rubbing her back with both hands, soothing and yet probing at once, and wondered if he was checking for broken bones. She thought she was fine. The slam against the tree and Terence's punch in the face had been the worst, but thank goodness she wasn't human, not beneath the skin. She was far more resilient. And now she was a human servant as well, and Dante had said they were hard to kill.

  "More primate than human," she mumbled. "Did you know monkeys can fall out of trees thirty feet high and their skulls won't crack? Not usually."

  "That explains why you are so hardheaded. I told you to stay by the tree."

  "I didn't want him to hurt you."

  "He was not going to hurt me." The derision in the tone, the arrogance, eased something in her chest further.

  "Ten feet tall and bulletproof, hmm?" She felt logy all of a sudden, the warmth making her tongue thick, no energy left in her body. "Well, I didn't know. Didn't get the memo." She let out a little snort. "Bet you don't know what any of that means."

  "No, I don't." His lips touched her temple and she jerked again. Her throat hurt, with smoke or unshed tears, she didn't know. Oh, God, don't let me fly apart.

  His arms tightened, teetering her on the edge of hysteria. "You are safe." But there was something bubbling beneath the surface and it disturbed her, told her everything wasn't all right.

  "You are all right." He tipped her chin so she would meet his eyes. But when she did, the emotion she was sensing erupted from him. "I am still . . . angry. I told you to stay put."

  His snarl would have sent her skittering from the bed if she had the energy, but the expostulation knocked her receptors back into active mode. Of course, she didn't really need them. From a wealth of childhood mischief, she'd seen this reaction from her father plenty of times. Another kind of warmth stole into her chest, helping her even more than the blankets.

  "I'm all right. Nothing a bath, a bottle of wine and a half gallon of ice cream won't fix. Really." She attempted a smile, but instead her eyes filled with tears and she started to shake again. "I'm sorry. Can you please just keep holding me?"

  Putting her head down on his chest, she let herself cry. Though she wasn't sure what his reaction would be, he embraced her uncertainly, then with more confidence as she clung harder. He began to rub her back in circles again, slowly fondle her nape. Stroking the side of her wet face with his knuckles, he held her so close to his warm body she felt almost like he'd pull her inside of him if he could.

  Her hands crept up his chest, her fingers whispering along the silver band around his throat. The way he'd accepted her putting that collar on him had felt like a declaration that he was hers. He would give her his trust. As misguided as she knew that belief was, she held on to it as a comfort for right now.

  Time passed, for when her eyes opened next she saw it was just past midnight. He was still holding and stroking her, murmuring to her, fragments of sentences. Amazed, she realized he was trying to sing to her, broken pieces of a lullaby. Something revived from his memories of his mother?

  Tilting back her head, she looked into his face. He'd loosed his hair from the braid she'd made, and it brushed her hand as she raised it to twine in the strands. He watched her, eyes like embers of starlight in the waning dark, his sensual lips firm. The light showed him as beautiful, but it was in shadows that his face became too mesmerizing to look away, everything perfect about it etched by the mysteries of the darkness. It made her wonder if the truth of what Dante truly wanted lay somewhere between Mina's cynicism and Alexis's optimism.

  "Everyone keeps asking me this question: 'What do I want to do here?'" Dante took his gaze to the window. "I know the answer to the question, but I will not give it to them."

  "Will you give it to me?"

  He looked down at her. "Perhaps. But for right now . . . I've never had anything I wanted to take care of. I want to take care of you, keep you safe. Touch your face, know you are well." When he furrowed his brow, examining his own thoughts, she closed her hand over his, her throat thick from more than smoke. "I like that humming noise," he added.

  "The refrigerator?"

  He nodded. "It's . . ."

  "Soothing?"

  Dante's regard on her mouth and the line of her cheek was a physical stroke. His hand tightened against her back. "Yes. Exactly."

  "Will there be other vampires, do you think?"

  "Lady Lyssa told Mina she would notify the territory overlord I am here. He was to instruct the vampires in this territory that I am to be left alone for the next thirty days. There was likely not time to . . . send the memo?"

  Her lips curved. "You learn fast."

  "Your mind is a good teacher. If they obey her, I expect we should have no further problem. Not that he was much of one. You worry too much."

  "Your confrontation management skills take some getting used to," she said, holding the smile with effort. "I think you're right though, that we won't have more trouble. After seeing her and Jacob, I can't imagine anyone going out of their way to piss them off."

  "You have your own confrontation management skills." He studied her. "You avoided one by bringing up their child, even though you placed yourself at risk by drawing their attention."

  "Sometimes people get caught up in defending their particular boundaries. Children don't care about boundaries." Her fingertips found his collarbone and caressed it, though she continued holding on to his hair, reluctant to let go. Her other hand gripped his waist.

  Dante wondered if she realized how tightly she was holding him. Even after her sleep, he could feel the struggle within her to contain her nerves, the emotions disturbed by the vampire's attack. Sliding his fingers into her curls, he began to stroke through them, following the line of her skull. When he reached her throat under her ear, she tilted her head into his touch.

  The lullaby had come from his mother. He hadn't remembered it for over two decades. It had not served him when he stopped being a scavenger and became the hunter, so he'd buried it. But wanting to ease Alexis's fears had unearthed the memory, a gentle, terrible gift waiting in his subconscious.

  Though his mother's wrists had been manacled against rings embedded in the stone, they were placed low enough that when he pressed against her leg, her fingers could touch his head. Those few times he could be near her without Dark Ones, she'd stroked him, slow, unsteady. That
song had caught in her throat, a rough music disrupted by her pain. The notes had come through, though. After she was gone, sometimes he'd curl up in whatever hole he'd found for the night, pretend the hand stroking his head was hers instead of his own, and hum that tune.

  Adjusting his back against the headboard so Alexis lay against his chest, he let her doze again. She would still want a bath, though the water was cooling. He could heat it again, using a more low level version of what she'd call his confrontation management skills. As his fingers drifted over her body, his gaze traveled her room. The stuffed animals and sheer curtains, the gleam of a parking lot light giving the panels a silken moonlight look. The softness of the mattress under him, the ticking of a clock.

  His mother had tried to offer him comfort in a world that mocked it. This world overflowed in comforts in comparison, but to him that made its dangers even more hazardous, because it was harder to see them coming.

  Hatred and rage, pain and darkness. They had those things here, but in a random dispersal, like a handful of sand thrown into the wind. Whereas they'd been the air of his world. He'd been suckled on them for over sixty years. It wasn't a new thought, but for the first time, he did wonder if his soul was still trapped there, on the other side of the portal. Alexis had pulled his body across, but he wasn't all the way in. She seemed determined to hold on to him, though, no matter what it cost her.

  That feels good.

  Something low in his gut tightened at the sleepy thought. He'd ask her what emotion he was feeling later, maybe after they washed off the ash and blood, the smell of the magic he'd unleashed. Or perhaps he'd do it, take the washcloth and soap to make her skin slick and fragrant, turn lingering shadows of fear in her gaze to desire.

  At least he understood that feeling. Or he thought he had. In the Dark One world it hadn't been a feeling but a physical compulsion, a need no different from eating or relieving oneself. With her, it was a way to go beyond confusion and decision, something clean, simple, right. But he was finding she gave him that even when he wasn't inside her body.

  She projected peace, safety, warmth, things he'd never had but somehow understood when he felt them from her. She'd helped him from the beginning. Not just with the painting and sculpture, but how she'd stood up to her father's will.