Oh. Dear. Lord.
She had definitely died and gone to heaven.
Kneeling beside the bathtub was the single most beautiful angel, or saint, or Elysian god her eyes had ever seen: While it was impossible to be sure with him kneeling like that, he had to be at least six-foot-two or three, with gorgeous hazel eyes the color of caramel, and pale-ash hair that was neat on the sides, wispy at the front, and elegantly tapered along a strong, masculine neck. His jaw was chiseled and angled—so was his perfect chin—and the soft, dark goatee that framed his mouth in a silken shadow was so manicured it looked pristine. His features—seriously, who looked like that?—were positively flawless. His almond-shaped eyes were wide-set beneath perfect dark brows; his nose and his cheekbones were a fine work of art; and those lips—those sensual, full, expertly sculpted lips—turned slightly out, and up, in all the right places. He oozed carnality, exuded masculinity, and radiated primal swagger.
He was quite simply the most exquisitely handsome man Kiera had ever laid eyes on.
And he was staring at her like she was the only planet in his galaxy.
He reached across the bubbles and brushed his thumb along her lower lip in a possessive, sensual gesture. “How are you feeling, iubito?”
Iubito.
She had heard that word before, but she couldn’t quite place it.
She cleared her throat to test her voice, then immediately took note of her nudity, gathering a host of clustered bubbles and sweeping them up to her neck to cover her naked breasts. He chuckled, and the sound was like music. “I’m…I’m…I’m dead, I guess,” she squeaked. “And this”—she glanced around the room; it still looked like Owen’s bathroom—“this is heaven?”
He shook his head and smiled. “No, Kiera. You are still on Earth. With me.”
She frowned. Her mind was still full of cotton. “I don’t understand,” she whispered, not sure if she wanted any answers. She just wanted to float in the water, luxuriate in the sweet-smelling salts, and lose herself in his possessive gaze.
For the first time in days, she felt safe.
Content.
Completely at peace.
He rocked back leisurely, planted his weight on his butt, and wrapped two muscular arms around his knees. “What do you remember, angel? From the last twenty-four hours?”
Kiera furrowed her brow. “Um…nothing, really.” She tried to think. “I remember…I remember dying…I remember Owen.” She shot up in sudden alarm, sending water sloshing over the rim of the tub. “Oh, God! I remember Owen…and Mike, and Jon, and Nick!” She glanced hastily around the room. “Where are they?”
Her guardian angel growled, almost like a prowling lion, and something lethal flashed through his eyes. “Mike, Jon, and Nick are no longer with us—they no longer inhabit this earth—and Owen, well, let’s just say he’s hanging out somewhere near the top of the ceiling, awaiting my devoted attention.”
Kiera gulped.
“Shh, iubitio,” the angel whispered. “There is no need for concern. I am with you, and you are safe. Nothing—and no one—will harm you.”
Kiera licked her bottom lip, trying to make sense of his words, and then the most basic of questions finally surfaced: “Who are you? What are you? Are you my guardian angel?”
He smiled, radiating warmth like the sunrise at dawn, leaned toward the tub, and gently reached for her hand. Then he kissed the center of her palm and closed his eyes, but only for a moment. “I am definitely your guardian angel, but no, that is not my species…my origin. Kiera, I am Vampyr, a member of an ancient species that has walked the earth for over twenty-eight hundred years. And my name is—”
“Saxson,” she whispered ominously, putting the pieces together. “Your name is Saxson, isn’t it?” He nodded, and her hand rose to her mouth, covering her sharp inhalation. “Then you’re real,” she mumbled into her palm. “And you were with…Kyla.”
He nodded once again. “Yes, on both counts.”
This time, she was the one who closed her eyes.
She needed a moment to think…to remember.
Kyla had given Kiera to her vampire-hunting friends, in order to take Kiera’s place…Kiera’s place with Saxson…somewhere called Dark Moon Vale. And she had gotten a tattoo—
Kyla had…
Kiera stared at her own healthy wrist, studying the markings of Cetus, the sea monster. The emblem was definitely still there. She rubbed her temples—her forehead was beginning to ache—as she strained to reassemble the scattered pieces of the mysterious puzzle.
Xavier had taken her to his lab.
He had wanted to study her blood.
He had said something about a destiny, whatever that was, and he had hurt her—dear God, how he’d hurt her.
And then that cosmic voice, that disembodied sound, it had whispered in Kiera’s mind: “Try to reach Saxson. Your bond is strong. He may be your only hope.”
She had tried.
But she had failed…
Only he was sitting here, now, right beside the bathtub. He was with her in Owen’s warehouse. Her head throbbed, the room swayed, and another memory assailed her: brutality; being carved up; Jon, Mike, and Nick, eager to defile and rape her.
The room had turned black, the music muting in the distance. Then Saxson had leaped onto the table.
He had bitten her.
He had tortured her!
She stood up in the tub, scrambling to escape another captor, and she almost careened backward, into the enclosure wall—but Saxson was there in an instant.
He caught her trembling frame and reached for a nearby bath towel. “Kiera! Slow down, baby. You’re under the influence of a sedative. Come here.” He motioned her forward, still bracing her by the shoulders. “Step over the rim…slowly…be careful.”
She obliged him on trembling legs, not knowing who—or what—to trust, but certain she couldn’t fight him.
“Okay,” he encouraged kindly, “now just stand still…lean against the counter…hang on while I dry you off.” He patted her down with the towel as best as he could, avoiding any place too intimate. Then he wrapped another towel around her recently shampooed hair and draped her in a clean terrycloth robe.
There was nothing menacing about him.
Despite what she knew, what she sort of remembered, Saxson was being gentle and caring…infinitely patient.
Kiera forced her fear aside. Right now, what she needed were answers, and she had no doubt that Saxson had them. “We need to get out of here,” she finally whispered, gesturing toward the bathroom door. “You don’t understand: The men in this warehouse—they were all vampire-hunters. Saxson, Kyla is a vampire-hunter. And their leader, their Head Hunter—he’s a man named Xavier, and as impossible as this sounds, he’s a werewolf! I know it sounds crazy, but I saw it myself. I actually watched him shift.”
“Sh…sh…sh,” Saxson murmured. “It’s okay. Everything’s all right. Just breathe, baby, I know. We’re several steps ahead of you. And we are going to get the heck out of Dodge—we only stayed because I had to convert you, and we needed to make sure you were stable. After that, I wanted to wash the blood and sweat from your hair, get the grime off your body. In the meantime, Nathaniel brought you a bottle of Valium from a nearby pharmacy, and Julien hot-wired a couple SUVs—so you and I can talk privately while we drive, and the two of them can follow. We know all about Xavier, and we’re keeping an eye out—but for now, I just need you to come with me. I promise, Kiera, everything will be explained. And I swear on the souls of my parents, you are safe.”
Kiera blinked several times, her mind shutting down from the overload: Nathaniel? Julien? They hot-wired a car? And what the hell did he mean—he converted her?
Kiera was a strong woman, and she rarely, if ever, felt faint.
Yet for some inexplicable reason, her stomach roiled, her knees buckled, and the floor shifted beneath her.
Oh, shit. She was going to pass out.
The last thing she
saw was the bathroom wall spinning as Saxson lunged forward to catch her.
Chapter Thirty-One
Saxson Olaru, one of Napolean’s sentinels, placed his destiny in Julien Lacusta’s arms, confident that the Valium would keep her under, and asked the tracker to take her to the first SUV: “Cover her in a warm blanket, and make sure her head is resting comfortably on a pillow. I still have some unfinished business.”
He immediately turned his attention to Owen’s vaulted ceiling and stared icily at the naked, unconscious human hanging from the rafters, as if on a cross. Owen’s arms were spread-eagled and pinned to the wall, pierced with a pair of bronzed candlesticks. Both shoulders had been dislocated from the drag of his weight, and his feet dangled weakly beneath him. Something like a letter opener—or was that some kind of tuning fork?—was dissecting his penis like a piercing. His mouth was oozing blood, and from the sounds of his breathing, Saxson figured Nathaniel had cut out his tongue.
The sentinel glanced over his shoulder at the stainless-steel table, the place where he had converted Kiera, and he snarled, remembering the brutality of the painful, exhausting process, how perilously close his destiny had come to dying…
More than once.
“Nathaniel,” he barked, “take Owen down. In fact, wake his ass up, remove the candlesticks, and let him fall to the floor.”
Nathaniel flew to the top of the ceiling, smacked the human briskly across the cheek, and breathed ice-cold swirls of air up his nostrils until he jolted awake with a start. Moving so quickly the motion was a blur, the vampire extracted both candlesticks from his palms and watched with indifference as the broken body hurled downward and crumpled against the floor.
There was a sickening crunch, several unnatural pops, and a scarlet pool of blood began to expand all around him. But thank the gods of fortune—and vengeance—the human was still alive.
Saxson glided across the room, as silent as a panther, snatched the human by the back of his neck, and placed a vial of smelling salts beneath his nose, courtesy of Nathaniel’s breaking-and-entering at the local pharmacy. He dragged Owen across the warehouse floor, flung him onto the table, and encircled his wrists with the chains, quickly moving downward to tether his flaccid ankles in the bloodstained leather loops. Then he bent down slowly, commanded the vampire-hunter’s gaze, and reveled in the visage of his terrified pupils. “Do you know who I am?” Saxson snarled savagely. Owen didn’t react quickly enough, so Saxson cuffed him, causing a perceptible ringing in the human’s ears. “Do you know who I am!” he repeated.
Owen’s body began to convulse in terror.
“I am a vampire from the house of Jadon, the species you pretend to be hunting, while you torture a helpless, innocent woman.” He flashed his fangs for effect and began to speak in a thick, Count Dracula accent: “I am the grim reaper, the creature of your nightmares, and the instrument of your death. I am the mate of the woman you tortured.”
Owen’s eyes bulged in his head, and his teeth literally chattered as he twisted and bucked in fevered urgency, trying to come off the table.
Saxson snickered: deep, low, and sinister.
“No!” he barked angrily, his accent growing thicker. “We are only getting started.” He turned his attention to Nathaniel, who was watching from a distance, standing beside a large iron candleholder with six red wax candles decorating the cups. “Vampire, toss me the two thickest candles.”
Nathaniel did as Saxson asked, and the sentinel laid them on Owen’s stomach.
Placing a finger over his lips, he furrowed his brows in concentration. “Hmm. What was it you said to my destiny? What did I find in her memories?” He smiled a lascivious grin. “Ah…yes…you wanted Jon, Mike, and Nick to all…defile her…at once.” He shrugged an apathetic shoulder, slowly scanning Owen’s naked body. “Sadly, I don’t think you can accommodate…three violations…but we’ll work with what we’ve got.”
“Mh…mh…nhh!” Owen grunted, shaking his head violently from side to side in protest.
Saxson cuffed him again.
He lifted the longest of the two thick candles and gripped it in the palm of his hand. “Relax your throat,” he snarled. And without hesitation, he shoved it into Owen’s bloody mouth, breaking his teeth as he worked it deeper…and deeper…into the human’s gullet.
Owen jack-knifed off the table and gagged as Saxson thrust the candle in and out…in and out—again and again—in a vulgar parody of copulation. “Yeah, just like that,” he parroted, taking the words from Owen’s memories. “Is it good for you, Owen? Would you like it harder?”
Owen continued to gag—and weep—even as he struggled to draw desperate, piteous breaths through his flaring nostrils.
Saxson lifted the other candle from the human’s stomach, stared at it, and winced. Leveling his glance a little lower, he grimaced. “This is just…not going to fit.” He turned to regard Nathaniel. “Brother of my house, any idea how this works? I mean, somewhere—at some time—someone must have tried it. Humans do get off on the weirdest things. Thoughts?”
Nathaniel shrugged his shoulder and frowned. “Maybe…with some lube…some Vaseline?” He cocked his head to the side at a curious angle. “Nah, not gonna work. Maybe with a shoehorn.” He shook his head and whistled a dramatic, disturbing melody. “Hell, that won’t work either. That shit is bigger than his entire left ass cheek.” His voice grew cold and indifferent. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but any way you turn it, that just defies the laws of physics.”
“Mm,” Saxson murmured, as if contemplating it further. “I think you’re right. But then, he is a big, bad vampire-hunter, correct? So, he can take it like a man. Besides, I imagine he’s watched every Dracula movie ever made, and he’s just dying to meet Vlad—the Impaler. Perhaps we should give him his wish.”
Nathaniel chuckled and turned away.
Despite the vampire’s sadistic proclivities, he clearly had no desire to witness the desecration.
As Owen grunted, groaned, and screamed around the first protruding candle, Saxson shoved the second one where the sun would never shine and twisted it back and forth for good measure, forcing it deeper…and deeper…until the wax disappeared.
“Eww.” He grimaced, shaking out his hands, then washing them in a nearby basin. “Disgusting. I think he just soiled himself, or maybe that was just…inevitable.”
Owen groaned in unspeakable pain—there was no doubt the candle had punctured his colon, and he was suffering from internal bleeding.
Saxson turned around and glided across the warehouse, retrieving Kiera’s violin. He removed it from the case, plucked a taut string to hear it vibrate, and then brought it back to the stainless-steel table. Wielding it by the neck like a club, he drew back his arm and bashed it over Owen’s head, splintering the wood into a handful of jagged pieces. He tested a particularly sharp, splintered section against the tip of his finger and nodded. As Owen grunted and squirmed, sobbed and choked, and suffocated beneath the first ghastly candle, Saxson carved all the symbols he had found in Kiera’s body deep into the human’s flesh, using the broken violin as his scalpel.
When, finally, there was nothing left but a bloody, expiring, carved-up torso, he backed away from the table. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said to Nathaniel, making his way toward the busted elevator door, planning to fly down the channel.
“Want me to clean up this mess?” Nathaniel asked.
Saxson shook his head. “No. Leave him to die on his own—it won’t be long. Besides, maybe his comrades will find him.” He froze then, dropped his head in his hand, and closed his eyes. “Shit. I almost forgot.”
“What?” Nathaniel asked, gliding up to his side.
“We need to make a stop by the hospital on the way to Dark Moon Vale. Something I pulled out of Owen’s memories.”
Nathaniel cocked his brows in question.
“Two other so-called hunters—they were here earlier, eager to participate in Kiera’s torture. A fema
le named Rachel and a male named Travis—he was one of her original captors, until she stabbed him.”
Nathaniel nodded knowingly, his dark predatory eyes gleaming with lethal shadows.
“They’re at Denver General, presumably in the ER, but this night, they will exit in body bags. I don’t want to leave my destiny’s side—not again—but I cannot let them live until morning.” Saxson curled his fingers inward and extended his arm to the side, and Nathaniel met the offering with a fist bump.
In the blink of an eye, an unspoken exchange, Saxson transferred the psychic information through the contact: a clear visual picture of Rachel Collins and Travis Landin so that the Ancient Master Warrior could not mistake them.
“Quick and easy?” Nathaniel asked.
“Slow and painful,” Saxson said.
“Done,” Nathaniel promised. “In fact, if you’re comfortable driving for a while, with Julien following behind you in the second SUV, then go ahead and hit the freeway. I’ll catch up. My father and Nachari will be here shortly—they’re going to try and find Xavier. Julien offered to track him for the house of Jadon, but…” His voice grew as dark as black satin. “I know what he did to your female, but Keitaro has claimed the right to Blood Vengeance: for himself, for Arielle, for Nikolai.” His tone lightened, marginally. “My guess? The lycan’s punk-ass is already back in Mhier.”
Saxson nodded. “Probably. He’s obviously a coward.”
“Yeah,” Nathaniel muttered. “Considering that he comes from a primordial species of vampire-hunters, and he’s an alpha male at that, he’s a real gutless wonder. But he cannot hide forever.”
There was nothing else spoken between them.
There was nothing else that needed to be said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sunrise – the next morning
“I still can’t believe she tried to stab a sleeping baby,” Kiera whispered, sitting up in Saxson’s bed and leaning against the headboard.
She had been in Dark Moon Vale for most of the night, while she and Saxson stayed up talking. Luckily—and while it may have circumvented Saxson’s original plans—she had slept all the way there, as they drove, so it wasn’t a hardship on her newly converted body.