Twilight Guardians

Even knowing that at any second, he might be discovered, Killian couldn’t leave. If Charlie saw the marks on her neck, if she told her grandmother and the authorities, then whatever. He couldn’t leave until he knew.

  After two hours had passed, he started to hope that she hadn’t made that discovery at all. Maybe she’d gone straight to bed and fallen asleep. Maybe the marks would be healed, erased by the arrival of dawn, long before she woke again. Maybe he would have another chance to explain himself before she found out what he was and jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

  But then he heard the unmistakable sound of a car’s engine starting up. The sound came from the woods somewhere beyond the small cabin, which made no sense whatsoever. That was the opposite direction from the nearest road.

  There was something else too, some kind of dread taking root deep in the pit of his stomach. Something that made him move quickly toward the sound. He ran at vampiric speed, his instincts guiding him around and between trees, beneath limbs, over fallen logs. He had perfect night vision, but that wouldn’t help when racing full tilt through a forest. It was all about reflexes, all about focus. He reached a small clearing in time to see a magnificent car, a vintage powder blue Mustang, just rumbling away over a barely discernible track through the forest, with Charlie behind the wheel. Keeping up wasn’t a problem. He jogged behind the car, wondering what to do. Shoot around it and spring out in front of her to stop her? Force her to give him a chance to explain that, yes, he was a vampire, but not a monster.

  To her, he realized, the two were one and the same.

  The car burst out of the woods onto that deserted stretch of road he’d been traveling what seemed like a lifetime ago. She cranked the wheel hard to the left and hit the gas. Tires spun, squealing and leaving black rubber on the road and the stench of it in the air. And then she was off like a rocket, speeding until she was out of sight around a curve.

  But she wasn’t beyond the reach of sound. Not to a vampire. So he heard the squealing tires, the crunching metal, the breaking glass. Her pain-filled scream was like a dagger in his soul.

  Charlie had tears in her eyes as she sped away from her grandmother’s hideaway. She told herself that it made no sense to cry. She didn’t even know Killian. He was a stranger and not worth crying over. Everything she thought she felt for him had been fake. Vampires could do that, couldn’t they? Mess with peoples’ minds. He’d been stalking her, hiding in the woods and waiting for a chance to...to drink her blood. God!

  And yet it had felt so good. The sex, the release, the gentle suction of his mouth against her throat. It had felt so incredibly, intensely good, it had damn near melted her brain. But that was how it was with vampires, wasn’t it? They charmed you, they tricked you, they screwed with your head and made you think it was pleasant to be drained and left lying there, an empty husk. Dead.

  But he didn’t kill me. Why didn’t he kill me?

  She was stupid to have let herself be swept away by him. Stupid to have seduced him into having sex with her. Stupid to have believed anything he’d said, ever. It shouldn’t hurt this much. She barely knew him.

  God, then why did it feel like her heart had been torn right out of her chest? Why did it feel like the love of her life had betrayed her?

  She’d pressed down harder on the accelerator, knuckling a tear from her check with one hand as she rounded a sharp curve. Then her heart froze when she saw an overturned truck and flashing lights. There was no fucking way she could stop in time.

  She jammed the brakes, jerked the wheel left, and the car skidded, squealed, and then flipped over....and over and over.

  The alarm went off and startled Roxy awake. She was a sound sleeper, something that had always bothered her, which was why she’d set so many alarms around the place in preparation for her granddaughter.

  This particular alert was coming from the cell phone she kept beside her bed, and the indicator light showed that someone had crossed the boundary between the hidden access road and the highway.

  Flinging back the covers, she sprang from the bed, grabbed a handgun from under her mattress, and ran to Charlotte’s room. Two perfunctory taps, then she flung open the door. “Charlotte, get up. Someone’s here.”

  No response from the rumpled bedding. Roxy flicked on the light, her heart in her throat, and saw why. Charlotte was gone.

  “Oh, hell, no. Charlotte! Charlotte!” She went through the cabin, calling for the girl, but her backpack was gone, and the basement door was open. Roxy raced down the stairs, to see that the safe room door was open too, as was the secret entry to the escape tunnel. She ran through the tunnel in her night clothes, bare feet smacking over damp, hard-packed earth, goose bumps rising on her arms from the chill of it. The trap door at the far end had been flipped open, and as Roxy climbed out, she saw that the Mustang was gone.

  Charlotte had taken the car and run away. Hell.

  No choice but to go after her. Roxy jumped back into the tunnel, pulling the trapdoor closed behind her, and returned to the cabin that way, because it was the quickest route. She dressed hurriedly, tucked her handgun into her purse, and headed out to her pickup truck. She had no idea which way Charlotte would’ve gone. Much less why. Hell, she hadn’t told the girl what she knew about vampires yet, because she’d been sure Charlie would think she was crazy and take off on her. She was hoping to gain her trust before springing it on her. But after she’d apparently made love to one in the forest, Roxy had assumed the girl must already know that they were the good guys, not the bad ones. That they loved and protected The Chosen, didn’t hurt or kill them.

  So why had she run?

  And where? Back to her mother in Portland? Or the opposite direction?

  Charlie had been visited by a vampire. Maybe visited wasn’t the most accurate term, going by the bite marks on her neck. But she’d been fine. All dreamy-eyed and love-struck. Enough so that Roxy thought it wouldn’t be so hard now to explain to her that the undead were her friends.

  God, she should have sat her down and had the entire conversation right then. Should’ve called her undead Romeo out too, made him a part of the discussion. She’d screwed up, thinking it could wait until morning. Thinking she wasn’t going to tell the girl anything she hadn’t already figured out for herself.

  She’d screwed up, and royally.

  Roxy drove the pickup to the spot where the hidden escape route met the road, got out and looked at the flattened grass and tire tracks where they crossed the shoulder, and at the rubber that Mustang had left on the pavement. Left. Charlie had turned left. Getting back behind the wheel, Roxy headed the same way Charlotte had gone.

  And then she came on a scene that made her blood freeze in her veins. The Mustang was so thoroughly demolished that she didn’t recognize it at first, and there was a helicopter just lifting off from a nearby field. Skidding to a stop, Roxy jumped out of the truck and ran to the nearest cop, who met her halfway. “That’s my car! Where is my granddaughter?” she demanded.

  “She’s being airlifted to the closest trauma center–a clinic near Pendleton. I’m going to need some information from you,” the officer said.

  “Then you’ll have to meet me there,” Roxy said, and she didn’t wait for an argument, but dove back into her pickup, drove into the field to get around the wreckage and emergency vehicles, and pulled back onto the road beyond it, driving hell bent for leather toward Pendleton, an hour away.

  If they tested Charlotte’s blood, and there was no earthly reason to think they wouldn’t, they would find the antigen. All Roxy had done to protect the girl would be undone with the click of a mouse button. The minute they entered her blood type into the computer, some government pencil pusher would be alerted that what was in the system did not match what was in the girl. That she was Belladonna positive and apparently trying to hide it.

  Dammit. Dammit!

  Killian had come upon the accident too late to do much to help Charlie. The car was upside down in a field alo
ng the roadside, and the ground around it was untouched, as if the Mustang had been airborne before coming to rest where it had. It was half the size it had been before, crumpled, crushed. He couldn’t see her, and his panic kept him from feeling her, as men in uniforms swarmed around the demolished car, tugging on its door.

  There had been another accident, he gathered. He moved closer, cautious but frantic, staying out of sight, but close enough to hear the conversations of the humans on the scene, and far more focused on Charlie than his own safety. She was alive. That was something, at least.

  The overturned truck in the road must have been what caused Charlie to veer too sharply and lose control. She’d been driving too fast. Because of me, he thought over and over. All because of me. Police and an ambulance had already been on the scene due to the overturned truck. Lucky for her, they kept saying.

  Only it wasn’t. He could help her, maybe, but not with all of them lingering.

  Still, he could do something. He moved toward the opposite side of the car from where the rescuers were trying to open the door, and he knelt down to look in at Charlie. She was upside down, held to the seat by her safety belt. Her head was bleeding and her face, all cut up and illuminated by the dashboard lights that had somehow remained on. Headlights too, cutting an odd angle through the darkness.

  “That door’s impossible, son,” one of the firefighters called. “We can probably get this one open with the jaws, though. It’ll take a little while.”

  She didn’t have a little while. He could feel her life force ebbing. She was going to bleed out.

  Killian gripped the door’s handle and yanked with his full strength. The door came free, and he tumbled backward with it, then shoved it off his chest, as the firefighters ran around to his side, swearing in surprise and asking how he’d managed that.

  “It just gave,” he said, getting to his feet, brushing himself off. Several of them were leaning into the car, where Charlie was now accessible. One man maneuvered a brace onto her neck, touching her with exquisite care. The beat of a propeller, and the wind it generated, blew dirt into Killian’s eyes.

  “Get the bleeding stopped. We need a tourniquet here!”

  The medics were working on her. The gash in her arm was wrapped up tight, and the bleeding slowed.

  “Where are they taking her?” He asked, torn between shouldering his way nearer, just to touch her, and keeping his distance from the mortals who could not, must not learn what he was.

  “There’s a trauma center near Pendleton,” a paramedic told him. “It’s the closest one. Are you family?”

  “Just a bystander.”

  They were wedging a back-brace underneath her, men on either side holding her body to keep her from twisting. They were careful. They had better be. The chopper had landed nearby, lights blazing, prop beating, dust flying. Killian backed away, but no eyes were on him. Once he’d achieved the cover of the forest, he ran. It was forty-five miles to Pendleton. He could make it almost as fast as the chopper could. An older vampire could have beat it there.

  Killian ran, he poured on speed he shouldn’t have even had. He wasn’t at his strongest. Animal blood was not the healthiest diet for a vampire, and he’d tasted precious little of Charlie’s. But emotion drove him, in spite of that. And he arrived at the small trauma center where the chopper had already landed. His heart in his throat, he tried to calm himself, to listen and to feel and to find her. Slowly, he walked the building’s perimeter from the outside, opening his mind to the riotous noise of human thoughts pouring from within.

  He came through the surgery fine. lt was very minor, and he’ll be okay....

  I’m so sorry. We did everything we could, but....

  Patient in three is pressing his call button again. Jeeze, does she think we’re nurses or waitresses?

  She’s lost too much blood. Where the hell is the blood I ordered?

  That one, that thought. He homed in on it, closing out all the other noise as best he could, and let his senses guide him to where she was. Ground floor, east side. A room with a single window. Closer now, closer, and finally he could see her.

  Charlie was lying, still and pale, in a bed, barely any evidence of life emanating from her. But she was alive. Her heartbeat was weak and erratic, but she was alive.

  People were all around her.

  “Doctor, the patient is Belladonna positive,” a nurse was saying. “We’re looking, but so far, we haven’t found anything to give her.”

  “Did she have any ID on her? Maybe she banked some, knowing–”

  “Charlotte O’Malley, twenty. She’s unregistered. Her records say A Positive.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “We’ve triple checked it, Doctor.”

  Killian felt the man’s thoughts, then. She’ll die without a transfusion. Belladonna positive, she can’t even tolerate O-neg. Where the hell are we going to find a match for her this time of the night? In time?

  “Family?” he asked.

  “We’ve phoned her mother in Portland, who says she was staying with a grandmother who might be a match.”

  “Did that show up in her records?”

  “No, Doctor. The only grandmother listed in her government file is also listed as A positive.”

  “Have we reached her yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  There was silence. Then the doctor said, “All right, we’ve stopped the bleeding. Keep the fluids going and wait for the family to arrive. That’s it. That’s all we can do.”

  Killian closed his eyes, aiming his thoughts at the doctor. Leave her alone. Just leave her alone. Just for a minute, that’s all I need. He sent his will with every bit of power he could muster behind it. He’d barely ever tried the trick of manipulating humans to do what he wanted them to do. It was not his strongest skill.

  It took a while, but eventually it worked. The staff left Charlie alone and weak, barely clinging to life in her hospital bed. Killian went to the window, exerting his will again, this time to turn the lock from the inside without touching it, and then he slid the window open, and climbed inside.

  Roxy ran through the trauma center’s double Emergency Room doors with dread driving her. Let her be okay, she thought desperately. Let me be in time, and let them not have run her blood type yet.

  “Thank God.”

  The voice was her daughter-in-law’s. Roxy came to a stumbling halt, her eyes wide and searching the area behind and around Trish O’Malley. “How the hell did you beat me here? Where is Charlotte? Which room? Is she alive–?”

  The slap across the face took Roxy by surprise. Her head rocked to one side with the impact, but she straightened up again, pressing her palm to her stinging cheek.

  “I trusted you!” Charlotte’s mother shouted. “You couldn’t even keep her safe for two days? What was she doing in that car, Roxy?”

  “Running away, Trish,” she shot back, not missing a beat. “And not just from me, but from you, too. She was heading away from Portland, not toward it. So fuck you. Now where the hell is she?”

  “Excuse me, are you Charlotte’s grandmother?” a nurse asked from behind her.

  Roxy turned, met the woman’s eyes. “Yes.”

  “She needs blood desperately, and we can’t find a match because–”

  “I know. I’m a match. Did you change her type in the system yet? Because if you didn’t, then don’t. I forbid it.”

  The nurse looked extremely confused. “Of course we did. We’re required by law to correct mistakes like that. It could save a life.”

  Hell. The minute they had entered the information that an unregistered Belladonna positive patient whose records had been tampered with, had been admitted, Roxy knew that somewhere, an alarm had gone off. People had been notified. Teams had been dispatched. She knew how DPI worked.

  Dammit.

  “I have to get her out of here.” She turned to Trish. “We have to get her out of here, now.”

  “Did you no
t hear the part where she’s going to die without a blood transfusion, Roxy? What the hell is wrong with you? Bare your arm, now, bitch, or I’ll do it for you.”

  “You don’t understand–”

  “We’ll have to type and crossmatch,” a nurse said.

  “No you will not.” Roxy pinned the nurse with her eyes. “And you will not touch my computer file, because I’m not your patient and you have no reason to, do you hear me? Get a needle and a bag and come and take as much blood as she needs from me. I’ll be in with my granddaughter. Where is she?”

  “Ma’am, we can’t just–”

  Roxy leaned in close, nose to nose, but didn’t touch the woman. “Where. Is. My. Granddaughter?”

  The nurse nodded toward a closed door at the end of the hall.

  “That’s where I’ll be. Bring what you need to save her and do it fast.” She looked at Trish. “And as soon as the blood’s onboard, we have to get her out of here. We have to.”

  Killian leaned over the hospital bed and pressed his lips to Charlie’s forehead. She was near death. Not at the brink, not yet, but close enough so that he could feel Death’s presence in the room, cold and heavy...and waiting. But he also knew what to do about it. She was one of The Chosen. She could take blood from a vampire and survive it with no side effects. Well, no negative ones, anyway.

  She was so beautiful, nearly as pale as the bed sheets. Bruises were forming on her cheekbone, her jaw. She had cuts and scratches from the flying glass. Her head had been stitched up and bandaged heavily.

  She was dying. And there were people outside the room. He had to act, and act quickly. He pulled a pocketknife from his jeans, flipped open the blade, and made a small cut on his forearm. When the blood began to well up in the wound, he pressed it to her beautiful mouth, and gently teased her jaw with his free hand. “Come on, Charlie. Drink. It’ll save you. Just drink. Come on.”

  The blood filled her mouth and ran from the corners of her lips down to her neck, and dripped onto her pillow.

  “Swallow, Charlie. Please.” Then he focused his will, closed his eyes, and commanded her. Swallow. Drink. Live.

  She swallowed immediately. Exerting his will worked far faster on her than it had on the medical staff.

  Her body went rigid for an instant, and then her hands snapped around his arm, holding it to her hungry mouth as she went wild, sucking at his wounded arm, drinking all she could get from him. As his blood shot through her body, restoring it, he felt everything she did, everything she ever had or ever would. In those moments of complete connection, he experienced her as if he’d known her for her entire life. In a rush, her childhood, her adolescence, her teenage angst, all of it rushed through him in a blinding flash of brilliance that was pure Charlie.

  She drank only a little. Not enough to save her. Not yet. She needed more, he thought. But the people outside were coming closer. He felt their intent, heard their footsteps. He yanked his arm free, and Charlie fell back onto the pillows, thrashing and twisting now as the powerful vampiric blood raced through her body, rejuvenating every part of her, sending powerful energy zinging through her organs, sizzling into her cells, jolting them into action. Killian grabbed a role of adhesive tape from a nearby shelf, wrapped it around his arm and tore it free with his teeth.

  The door was opening. He couldn’t leave her now. She needed more. He gathered Charlie out of the bed and into his arms, and lunged for the window with her.

  “What the hell are you doing? Put my granddaughter down!”

  He recognized her grandmother’s voice, but didn’t slow, just poured on the speed, leaping out the window and running, carrying Charlie in his arms. She was struggling against him, but still weak, her head lolling from side to side as he ran. He had to get her away from all these mortals, had to feed her more blood to make sure she’d had enough to survive. To recover. Tearing the tape from his cut forearm, he pressed it to her lips again, and again, she drank as if dying of thirst. In a way, she was.

  Two black vans skidded to a stop in the parking lot in front of him, and men piled out of them. They had guns–rifles of some kind, and they were pointing them his way, ordering him to “Let the girl go!”

  Behind him, the girl’s crazy grandmother had apparently climbed out the window after them and was shouting, “Put my granddaughter down right now, vampire, or I’ll shoot you where you stand, I swear to God.”

  Charlie opened her eyes wide as a jolt zapped through her. She felt like she’d stuck her finger into a live socket, and every nerve ending seemed to be vibrating. She blinked her vision into focus. Everything was weird. Different. Like the world had gone hi-def. Her head was buzzing. She could feel the night air touching her skin and smell every blade of grass, every tree, every human, and every vehicle along with about a million other things.

  Killian was holding her in his arms, and she felt him, too, more acutely and completely, she thought, than ever before. Whatever the hell that meant.

  And then she heard her grandmother say, “Put my granddaughter down, vampire....”

  Vampire!

  Frowning, she looked back. Her grandmother stood in the grass outside a building–a hospital or clinic, her mind whispered–pointing a gun at Killian.

  She looked up at him again, and then she remembered. “You lied to me. You’re a vampire.”

  He glanced down at her, and his eyes were glowing red.

  “Holy shit. Put me down!”

  “I’m only trying to help you. To save you–”

  “Put me down!” She struggled, twisting herself in his arms, pushing against his chest and eventually falling to the ground.

  “Charlotte, come to us!” a male voice shouted urgently. “We’ll keep you safe.”

  She turned her head toward the man, and saw what was apparently a SWAT team. A bunch of guys in black with vests and helmets and guns. God, what was going on here?

  “No, Charlie, don’t listen to them!” Roxy yelled. “Come to me.”

  Charlie jerked her head back Roxy’s way, then looked up at Killian again.

  He stared down into her eyes, and she could’ve sworn he spoke without saying a word. Trust me. I’m not going to let any harm come to you. You’re everything to me.

  She heard a soft hiss, and then Killian jerked, swore, looked down. There was a dart in his arm. He staggered a little. She took advantage of the moment and got to her feet. Killian dropped to his knees.

  “Charlotte, you come here right now,” Roxy said.

  But before she could answer, one of the SWAT team guys rushed forward, grabbed her by the arm, and was running with her toward the waiting vans. “There are more of them, Charlotte. We have to get you to safety.”

  “But my grandmother–”

  “She can’t protect you. That should be obvious by now.”

  She let him pull her alongside him while a thousand questions spun through her mind. Her grandmother was insane, possibly in league with vampires. And Killian had tried to feed on her. What the hell was she supposed to do?

  She looked back over her shoulder. Roxy was sprinting across the grass to the parking lot like an Olympian or something, and Killian was dragging himself toward a clump of shrubs. There was a dart sticking out of his shoulder.

  The soldier or cop or whatever he was, pushed Charlie into the back of a waiting van and jumped in beside her. The door slammed and the van jerked into motion. Then her rescuer pulled off his helmet and smiled at her. He looked like a movie star. Clean cut, thick dark brown hair, big brown eyes, a killer smile. “You’re safe now. I promise you, Charlotte. It’s okay if I call you Charlotte, isn’t it?”

  “Ch-Charlie,” she said. She tried to look out the windows behind them, but they were tinted almost black, and she couldn’t see a damn thing. They’d shot Killian with something.

  Because he was a vampire.

  And her grandmother had raced away into the night. Probably after her truck. Probably she’d be giving chase, soon. She wishe
d she could see.

  “Charlie,” her companion said. “I like that. Here. You’ve got something on your face.” He handed her a clean white handkerchief. She took it, then dabbed the spots he indicated by pointing them out on his own face. When she looked at the hanky, it was bloody and her eyes went round.

  “It’s all right. I don’t think it’s yours.”

  “Then whose?”

  He didn’t answer, just shook his head. “I’m just glad we got to you in time. I don’t imagine you even know how close you came to....” Then he stopped, bit his lip. “I’m getting ahead of myself, though.” He took back his hanky, handed it to someone in the front seat, passenger side. She couldn’t see them from her angle. “My name is Lucas,” he told her. “Lieutenant Lucas Townsend, to be specific. I’m with a special ops unit of the Division of Paranormal Investigations. DPI for short. I’m also Belladonna positive, just like you. And you can trust me. That’s the first thing. Okay?”

  She nodded and figured she had no reason not to believe him. He had just saved her from a vampire, after all. “Where are we going, Lieutenant Townsend?”

  “Somewhere safe. I promise. Then we’ll make sure you’re okay, and then...then I’ll explain to you what’s going on. You must be so confused you don’t even know which end is up right now. Am I right?”

  “I’m pretty confused.”

  He nodded, looking her over from head to toe. “Yeah, you must be. You’re looking pretty good, though for someone who was near death a little while ago. You always heal this fast?”

  She frowned and looked down at the cuts and scrapes on her arms, they looked a week old already. Then she shook her head and met the lieutenant’s eyes once more. “What the hell is happening to me?”

  “That’s what I’m going to help you find out, Charlie. You just hang in there, we’ll be at Fort Rogers soon.”

  She sighed, but settled into her seat and closed her eyes. Maybe she was going to get some answers. Finally. It was about freaking time.

  Chapter Seven