Blood Web

  Keitaro’s censuring glare became a piercing, paternal warning. “It means one more ignorant word, and I’m going to come out of this pond and kick your carefree ass. Have a care that it doesn’t happen, Marquis.”

  Marquis blanched at the insult, his features growing hard. “You mad at me, Dad?” Before Keitaro could reply, he released Zayda’s hand, bowed his head, and lowered his bulky mass down on one knee. He crossed his right fist over his heart in the traditional gesture of a formal apology. “Apologies, Father.” Only he didn’t wait for Keitaro to give him permission to speak. He stood right back up, furrowed his brows, and grumbled, “Can I go now?”

  What kind of half-ass apology was that?

  Keitaro shook his head. “Yes, Marquis, you can—”

  The warrior had already vanished.

  Well, damn. Keitaro would have to have a word with his eldest son, later.

  That boy was getting more unruly by the day…

  Zayda shrugged her slender shoulders, drawing attention to the narrow straps of her bright yellow summer top and the way it bunched up at the waistband of her shorts. “I don’t think he likes me.” She didn’t sound concerned. She padded to the edge of the pond, kicked off her shoes, and sat down leisurely, staring at Keitaro, while dangling her feet in the water.

  Reluctantly, Keitaro swam forward to meet her, stopping a few feet shy of the bank and treading water. “Is everything okay, Zayda? Did something spook you? Did Marquis upset you? Was there some reason you didn’t wish to wait at the house?”

  To his surprise, she laughed aloud. “He was right when he said I was batshit crazy, although who puts a human being on the couch and tells her to sit and stay?” She smirked. “I’m surprised he didn’t toss a blanket over my head and command me to roll over. Toss a handful of bacon bits on the cushions.”

  Keitaro winced and glanced away.

  When he finally looked back, she had linked her hands in her lap and she was kicking her feet playfully in the water. “I am sorry that I interrupted you, Keitaro, but sheesh! One more minute with Marquis, and I really would have turned into a fruitcake, not just played one all afternoon to try to get off the sofa.” She scrunched her features into a severe, brawny cast and drew back her soft, feline lips, trying to make them taut. “Zayda, stay!” She did her best Marquis imitation, shaking her finger in the air and pointing. “Do not get up from this couch. Sit down, Zayda. Silence! Stay.” She switched back to her normal voice. “You would be batshit crazy, too.”

  Keitaro stared at his wild ward like she had just morphed into a unicorn and grown a horn on her head.

  Wow…

  Okay…

  So Zayda actually had a sense of humor.

  Damn…who knew?

  She really had come a long way.

  Not only was she conversing in a somewhat normal fashion, but she was also displaying appropriate wit and commensurate affect. Maybe he hadn’t seen the transformation because he was always in her company, but this—this playful, easy nature, and even calculating how to get out of the house—it was progress to be sure, albeit a bit strange. But then, Zayda was always a bit strange. “Marquis can be a bit brusque,” he offered. “His social skills are a little…rusty. You can’t take it personally.”

  She batted her faery-princess eyes playfully, the obscenely long, dark lashes fluttering in the sunshine. “Marquis can be an ass.”

  Keitaro barked in laughter. “That too.”

  Silence settled all around them, the moment being strange and unfamiliar.

  And as the sun beat down on Keitaro’s brow, and the waterfall pumped ambient white noise behind him, he wasn’t sure what he should do. Climb out of the pond, dry off, and take her back to the homestead, or ask her to join him? She didn’t have a suit! Continue swimming while she sat there watching?

  He was honestly caught off guard.

  And Zayda must have sensed it because she began to study his face in earnest, those otherworldly eyes measuring each of his features, one at a time, before dropping down to survey his unclad chest, stare longingly at his broad shoulders, and examine the striations in his arms. She absently licked her lower lip, and her heart beat faster in her chest, the smooth, unmarred skin rising and falling in quick little pitter-patter motions.

  Her eyes drifted lower, as if of their own accord, and even though she was looking through the prism of the water, they seemed to settle on his abs…and then his belly button…and then they drifted lower, still…

  Okay…

  That was quite enough.

  This needed to stop.

  Right now.

  “Can I ask you something, Keitaro?” Her voice was absent of crazy…or guile.

  He nodded hesitantly, feeling suddenly trapped.

  “Why don’t you ever touch me?”

  And just like that, the light-hearted, companionable moment was gone.

  Maybe she wasn’t so healthy after all, Keitaro thought. He had a momentary flashback of those first two months: the day he had first brought her home from Xavier’s high-rise prison, the way she had groped at his groin and her X-rated language, the vulgar way she had been trained to act—and he did not want to experience a repeat performance.

  Calming his nerves, he deliberately chose not to read too much into it: Zayda was nothing if she wasn’t direct. Yet, for having lived such a tainted life, she had maintained an uncommon honesty—her words, however disturbing, were almost innocent in their purity and truth. “I do touch you, Zayda.” He spoke in a fatherly tone. “I’ve held your hand. I’ve given you a hug. I’ve even helped you put on your shoes.”

  I’ve even helped you put on your shoes?

  He cringed inwardly.

  What the bumbling hell, Keitaro?

  Maybe she would just accept it and move on.

  She smiled then, but her eyes looked sad. “Is it because I’m so broken and damaged? Because of my past? You must look at me and see the most disgusting girl…”

  Keitaro felt his face flush in horror, and he had to bite down, hard, to stifle a gasp. “Where is this coming from, Zayda?” The look on her face was breaking his heart. “Sweeting…I didn’t bring you to my home to use you.”

  “Why did you bring me?” she asked. “I mean, are you not still a man? A male vampire?”

  Something inside him recoiled. “No, not that kind of male, Zayda.”

  “Ah,” she said, “so you don’t see me as a woman?”

  Keitaro was well and truly flummoxed. “Zayda, I am well aware of your gender. However, I am also over twenty-three hundred years old, and you just turned twenty-one. I think there is a very wide gap between us.”

  Zayda appeared to be thinking that over. “I don’t see why that should matter, Keitaro. Immortal is immortal, right? And while I’m not quite that…fully immortal…I am a somewhat rare find for your species. I mean, I will live much, much longer than a human, and I’m definitely infertile—the life I was forced to live has confirmed that—and isn’t that the biggest threat to your kind? I mean, pregnancy, that is?” She gnawed on her bottom lip as if chewing the possibilities over. “One would think I’d be better than nothing.”

  Keitaro took a slow, deep breath. He wanted to dip under the water, sink to the bottom of the pond, and stay there for the next millennia –what the hell had gotten into Zayda?

  She rose from her perch on the bank of the pond and began to pace rather nervously. “It’s just…it’s just…no one has ever treated me the way you do, or talked to me in such a nice, gentle voice. No one has ever taken care of me before, or even cared about my needs. You’re so different from other men, Keitaro. You’re loving. You really are. And I love you. I do. At least as much as I know how.”

  He gulped and swam a few feet back, putting some distance between them.

  What. The. Devil.

  Seemingly undaunted, or perhaps unaware of his distress, the girl pressed on. “See, the thing is this: I know that you’re lonely, and you still miss your wife. But I don
’t want you to make me go away. I’ve seen the way other women look at you, other vampire women who have lost their mates, like Katia, Kagen’s nurse, and even humans too, like Shelly Winters, that pretty blonde who’s always offering to feed you.”

  Keitaro held up one hand. He had to make her stop rambling. “I prefer to hunt my prey,” he countered. “It’s an old-school thing, I guess.” Okay, that was random, disjointed, and totally irrelevant comeback number two, but just like rejoinder number one, it would have to do.

  She placed both hands on her hips, absently hooking her thumbs inside the loops of her stone-washed jean shorts. “You prefer to hunt your prey. You prefer to sleep alone. And you prefer to remain celibate for the rest of your life; either that, or I’m in your way.” She twirled a finger around her unruly hair, tugging the loop in a nervous fidget. “I know I was crazy at first, Keitaro, and I know I’m damaged goods. But I think I could try, for you—well, maybe—I think, with you, it wouldn’t be so bad.” To her credit, she angled her shoulders toward him and faced the conversation directly. “I just…I just know that the day is coming, and probably soon—especially once the threat from Xavier is over—that you’re going to want your life and your space back. You’re going to want to live again as a man, and then what will happen to me? Where will I go? Who would even want me? I need to do a lot more to earn my keep.”

  Keitaro had heard more than enough.

  He ran a tentative hand through his wet, thick black locks and concentrated on his answer. He could not just discard and deflect this time—he needed to hit the subject head-on. “Zayda, sex is not ever something you do to earn your keep. It isn’t something you barter as a favor. It isn’t something a male takes in exchange for giving you protection. It is something deeply personal and intimate. I brought you home because I have been in your shoes, at least in terms of the lycans and living in captivity. I brought you home because you needed a chance to heal, and no living being should ever suffer what you were enduring. But I did not—not ever—bring you home with the thought that I might one day take advantage of your body.”

  Zayda sighed, and her expression reflected her exasperation and angst. “I know that, Keitaro, and maybe my words came out all wrong.” She padded to the edge of the pond, lowered herself onto the bank, and then she slid seamlessly into the water, gliding forward like a fish. She treaded water in front of him with her feet, placed both delicate hands on his cheeks, and leaned in brazenly to kiss him.

  Keitaro froze.

  He didn’t push her away, and he didn’t kiss her back.

  He just froze for the space of three heartbeats, and then he shackled her wrists.

  A gentle shove forward, and the water accepted her weight. As the wave propelled her backward, he sought her mortified gaze. “No, Zayda.” The rebuke was too harsh, and he made a conscious effort to gentle his voice. “Just…no. This isn’t going to happen.”

  She blinked several times, and her eyes—those beautiful, hypnotic, enchanting eyes—glassed over. “I see,” she whispered, spinning in the water to swim back toward the bank. Being half-Lycan, it took very little effort to hoist herself onto dry ground, and careful to keep her back to Keitaro, she began to wring out her shirt. “That was then, Keitaro…when you first brought me home,” Zayda whispered. “I wasn’t in my right mind…then.”

  He angled his head to the side and glanced at her warily. “I’m afraid you’re not in it now, Zayda. At least not all the time. What just happened here…that’s still some old baggage.”

  “You might be right,” she said coldly. “I’m childish, I’m broken, and I’m fifty degrees of fucked up. And I have no business trying to touch you, seduce you, or even talk to you about what I’m feeling…or wanting. If anything, I should just fall on my knees and thank you.” She twisted around then, angling her body to face him. “Which I do, Keitaro; I really do thank you. The thing of it is: I also love you, even if it is just a stupid, broken girl’s love.” She searched for her shoes, took a seat in the grass, and swiftly slipped them on.

  “Zayda…”

  She didn’t reply.

  Keitaro nodded.

  So, it had come to that…so soon.

  He’d had his concerns—he wasn’t stupid. He understood the impropriety and the issues that came along with bringing a young, sexually abused woman into his home and nursing her back to physical and emotional health.

  Shit.

  Just shit.

  He still couldn’t articulate why he’d done it.

  He had just felt…so strongly compelled.

  Now, as he swam to the bank in silence and joined Zayda in the clearing, he watched—and waited—until his ward stood up.

  “Come here.” He ushered her forward with the crook of his finger, and when she didn’t oblige him, he went to her instead. Wrapping his arms loosely around her, he pressed a chaste kiss atop the crown of her head. “I want you to know that I care for you deeply, Zayda Patrone. I think you are an exceptional and singular young woman—not crazy or broken or fifty degrees of messed up. Just bruised and battered and deserving of a break.” He pulled away and gestured toward the path that led out of the clearing, away from the waterfall and the crazy encounter. “Let’s go. You need to get home and dry off.” As she shuffled in front of him, her head held low, her eyes affixed to the ground, Keitaro cleared his throat. “Zayda…”

  She glanced over her shoulder to look at him, her thick, dark lashes wet with tears.

  Damn…

  Just damn.

  “This thing with Xavier, it isn’t nothing,” he said emphatically. “I have four sons, four daughters-in-law, an adopted child in Kristina, and four beautiful, precious grandchildren. I have a lot to live for and a lot to lose, yet I have picked a battle with a powerful mortal enemy, primarily for you. I will fight to protect you, Zayda, even unto my death. Trust me, sweeting, that is a form of love.”

  The wolf burrowed its snout into a pile of pine leaves, trying desperately to block out the scent of deer dung, which coated its massive fur. Rolling in the shit had been necessary if Xavier hoped to get anywhere near the valley and survey Keitaro’s homestead.

  The blasted Ancient Master Warrior and his detestable wizard-son, Nachari, had long ago placed wolf traps, some crazy, homemade brand of energetic wards, all over Dark Moon Vale, and the powerful deterrents repelled wolves like sunlight repelled the vamps from the house of Jaegar.

  It wasn’t even a choice.

  The lycans could not go near them.

  Still, the Silivasis couldn’t cover every blasted inch of every stupid mountain, meadow, and hillside in Dark Moon Vale, and Xavier had come as close as he could get to the Silivasi homestead without setting off one of the traps. When he had heard the distant sound of footsteps and smelled his familiar enemy approaching a secluded waterfall, he had known the tide had finally turned in his favor. Lady Luck had smiled on Xavier at last.

  Already covered in dung, and knowing he couldn’t approach or attack, he had crawled beneath the lower ledge of a large gray boulder and turned up his supernatural hearing, projected it forward for all he was worth…

  And damn, if he hadn’t caught an earful.

  Zayda Patrone—she was truly Zayda Matista, General Xavier Matista’s daughter—was either falling in love with Keitaro Silivasi, or true to her lykos nature, the girl was just getting horny. Maybe she was coming into some latent genetic season.

  No matter.

  It curdled Xavier’s gut.

  Yet and still, all was not lost—Xavier’s precarious trip through the portal had not been a complete waste of time. Although he now knew he could never successfully attack Keitaro’s homestead, not with any number of soldiers—alpha, beta, or otherwise—his careful explorations through the minefield of wolf wards had exposed an opportune weakness: an outdoor shower beside a private herb garden, about one-quarter mile outside the southern cliffs, beyond a raging river and an isolated bridge.

  About one-quarter mile behind
Kagen Silivasi’s clinic.

  And wasn’t that just poetic justice: ironic, hilarious, and divine…

  The fact that the quaint little shower was part of Kagen Silivasi’s herb garden, and the entire rugged outbuilding reeked of Arielle Nightsong: her body, her hair, and her skin. Her scent was all over the outdoor shower; she was likely using it daily. And there were no lycan wards in the direct vicinity, which was all the opportunity Xavier Matista would need.

  Keitaro Silivasi would never know what hit him.

  And neither would his arrogant son, the Ancient Master Healer.

  A girl for a girl…a daughter for a daughter…a life for a life.

  Yes, Keitaro Silivasi would make that trade: Arielle in exchange for Zayda.

  Xavier was absolutely certain of it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Later that night

  Natalia Giovanni sank back into the plush leather chaise longue in the long, black-and-white limousine, gawking at the extraordinary opulence: garish purple lighting; a fully stocked bar with crystal decanters; and a decadent open moon roof. The surround-sound stereo system was playing soft, mellow jazz—just how old was Oskar, anyway?—and far more disturbing, the seat at the back of the limo extended forward into a bed.

  Natalia stared fixedly out the dark tinted window.

  She was unimpressed with the opulence; she was certainly unimpressed with Oskar; and the tight, black sleeveless dress she had managed to shimmy into was hugging her curves so tight, she could hardly manage to breathe. Her soft, satin gloves concealed Santos’ mark on her left, inner wrist, but she couldn’t think of anything else.