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Sean felt death’s cold touch upon him. Fingers of ice, caressing him, squeezing around his heart.
He was falling through light and shadow. Death was coming. He saw it, felt it, tasted it. Oddly, death seemed to take so long.
Yet, then he felt a gentle touch. He found himself cradled in tender arms, and as he looked up, he thought himself already dead. Because she was with him. His dear precious Meg. Eyes burning with a strange fire. Shedding a rain of tears. Her touch was so infinitely tender. Her beautiful face was twisted in anguish.
“My love. Oh, God, Sean, I must get a surgeon—”
“No surgeon. Ah, love, too late for a surgeon, Meg, my God, you must flee, save yourself. Damn me for a fool, I cannot protect you—”
“I’m safe—”
“No, there’s another killer here—”
“No, Sean, I’m safe, I must get a surgeon—”
“No. Hold me. Hold me against the cold. Tell me you love me. Tell me you would have married me. Tell me that you‘ll love me for all time. ”
“Oh, God, Sean, I love you, for all time, yes, for all time, you can’t be dying, I can—”
“I love you,” he told her. “So much. Oh, God, I love you. I love you. I would die for you, time and time again. ”
“Sean, no. . . oh, God, I will kiss you with life. Give warmth to your lips . . . ” Desperately, she leaned over him. Kissed him.
But too late. For life was gone.
She let out a cry of the greatest grief. She had come too late, too late. Too late to even offer up a last kiss . . .
She held him, sobbing. The dead lay strewn around her. She heard voices in the far distance; the men in Sean’s medical party were seeking out his lead to find the wounded. There were so many, it would take the doctors and orderlies a very long time to cross the field.
Exhausted, she was shaking as she looked to where Wynn lay fallen in a pool of blood. The old man had been tainted. She looked further. And there he was. Despite Sean’s blow, he was standing again, staring at her in triumph.
Aaron Carter.
He strode to her. To where she held her beloved Sean.
“You bastard!” she raged, and tenderly set Sean aside to rise to her feet.
“I told you that I would have you. We are one and the same. You will come to understand—”
“I despise you and loathe you and I will find a way to rip you to shreds! I told you to leave, and you took that innocent girl. You killed her slowly, and when her father was insane with his grief, you added to his madness by taking just a little of his blood. You gave him greater strength, and caused him to mete out his justice on men innocent of the murder you committed. ”
“I seduced an innocent! Dear me! Yes, my sweet, that is the nature of the beast, mademoiselle!” He was smug, amused.
“I will kill you!” she raged, and she flew at him with tremendous strength. Even he was startled by her power, his smugness gone as he raised his arms to defend himself. All she could feel was her grief and hatred. She tore into him with such force and power that she ripped flesh from his bones, tearing into his face, his throat, doing real damage.
“Bitch!” he roared.
The wind seemed suddenly to roar, to rage between them. She stepped back, spent, acknowledging the higher power that was coming between them. Heedless of all else, she fell to her knees beside her lover once again.
Oh, God . . . oh, God, she had meant to watch over him! She had hovered too far in the distance, and she hadn‘t seen what was happening, she hadn’t realized that. . .
Carter. Aaron Carter. She ‘d thought him gone. He ’d played his game subtly. And taken his revenge.
She eased back against the bullet-riddled trunk of a thick old oak that had somehow survived the battle. She closed her eyes, in agony. She would gladly tear Aaron Carter from limb to limb, and yet she was horrified, wishing that by closing her eyes she could vanish what lay before her— the blood of war, and the blood she had wrought herself. She wished she could make death itself disappear.
Either that. . .
Or know its embrace.
But there was a miasma to death as well. Death had a stench. Even with her eyes closed, she could smell death.
Then she heard the wind again, an angry sound, a rustling against the trees, a thunder in her soul.
Judgment was coming.
She opened her eyes. Lucian was there, standing in the midst of the field of strewn corpses, staring down at the body of Confederate Colonel Elijah Wynn. Looking from her— to Aaron Carter.
“What have we here?” Lucian demanded.
“A traitor to our kind! She has mauled me! She must be made to pay. She doesn‘t understand that there are rules, that we abide by our own laws. She is dangerous, she must be taught. She will get our kind killed again and again. ”
“Ah!” Lucian murmured, studying the damage Meg had done to Aaron.
“You are the ruler; you owe me justice. Give her to me. I will mete out the right punishment. ” Lucian looked at Meg, arching a brow. Momentarily, he appeared amused. “Well, well, well!” he said, and his eyes had a touch of fire, and his mouth was curved into a smile. “How intriguing.
Just what happened here?”
He reached down, plucking up Wynn by the neck. The heavy man might have been weightless.
Lucian gazed around at the other bodies, then saw the way she knelt by Sean Canady. His smile faltered for a minute, and his eyes fixed hard upon hers once again. She didn‘t care.
“Ah . . . goodness and evil both have their prices, don’t they? Everything in life— and death— has its price. A lesson learned here, I think? Meg, my poor Meg. Well, indeed, you will perhaps learn not to lose your heart to mortal lovers. You forget who you are, Meg Montgomery! What you are.
Child of dark forces, daughter of sin. ” His face hardened, and for a moment she was certain that he was being deliberately cruel, insistent on her believing that she had brought this pain on herself. “For pity’s sake! You must learn to finish your meals!” he exclaimed.
With that, he took Elijah Wynn as if he were a doll, twisted his hand, and broke Wynn’s head from his body with one powerful, clean movement. He let the man fall to the ground.
“He was not my meal!” she protested. “He was Aaron Carter’s game, his experiment in cruelty!
He killed the man’s daughter, then tainted him. He bled him, but neither killed nor gifted him. He simply destroyed human lives for the fun of it, he is the one who is dangerous, who will expose us all with his carelessness and cruelty. No hunger drove him to this! That creature,” she spat, indicating Aaron, “is a true abomination even among us!” Lucian shook his head, eyes narrowed. “That creature— as you refer to Mr. Carter— is not my doing, my dear sweet. But I’m afraid that he is one of us, and we are beasts of a like nature. And you know the rules, that you are not to kill your own kind. ”
“I didn‘t try to kill him. The bastard—”
“The gallant old colonel had a very beautiful and luscious daughter, so I’ve heard. ”
“Quite luscious,” Aaron Carter said, grinning with lascivious pleasure.
“I believe she now walks among us,” Lucian said.
“Indeed! And you allowed it—” Meg accused.
“My love, you forget yourself! It is his right, as it is yours, to choose to whom he will bestow the gift of this life. ”
“He seduced the man’s only child, and turned a mortal into a madman who went wild killing injured soldiers on a battlefield—”
“And the madman killed your precious mortal. I’m afraid there is no crime against our kind in that. The rules by which we live are for our survival, not that of mortals. We must survive, my love, and you must understand that. Ours is a harsh and brutal world. We must survive. We are all alike, we are of a kind. Do you think you can change what you are by dining only upon evi
l men?
Thank the Lord— or the devil— that the world is peopled with score upon score of vicious mortals— and that you can indeed grow fat upon them! You defy what you are, and choose not to accept the companionship that is offered you, or to make a companion of a man. My dear moral beauty, alas, just think on this! There lies your just and good Captain Canady— a man you would not taint— in mortal death. You had the power to save him. ”
“Perhaps I don’t believe that being ‘gifted’ with this life is being saved!” she choked out.
Lucian hunkered down at her side, shaking his head sadly. “What an amusing pair you might have made. You who believe so deeply in the soul! You and your ethical young man! They tell me you attend church services!” He shivered at the very concept, then smiled, an attempt at humor and even empathy, she thought. “Imagine the two of you— the newspaper headlines rising above those of battles won and lost— Heroic Spawn of Satan Join the Temperance League! Welcome our latest members to the Salvation Army effort!”
Then Lucian’s smile faded. He reached out a hand to her. “Come, Meg, with me. ” Aaron was enraged. “No! You will not forgive her and comfort her. Give her to me! She has wounded me, she must care for me, she must be mine, she owes me—”
“No! He had no right! No right! He knew that— that—” Meg choked out.
“That you loved your mortal?” Lucian voiced.
“Give her to me! It’s justice, I demand it!” Aaron persisted.
“No,” Lucian said quietly, standing, still watching Meg. “This is her place, Carter. You were wrong to come here. ”
“She has maimed me. You stand up for her because she— because she entertains you!”
“You are maimed because you coveted her yourself. Go. Time will heal your wounds. ”
“I’ll not!”
“You will. ”
“You think that you can claim her because you are king; you can do what you will—”
“Yes,” Lucian interrupted impatiently, “I can do what I wish because I am king, because I have the power, and the strength, and if I choose to find you in the wrong, I have the power to destroy you. Unless you can best me. Which you cannot do. So you will go. I have commanded it. ” Aaron Carter stared at Meg. “Lucian will not always be with you. I am powerful. I will be stronger. You have not heard the last of me. I am what I am, and I have my rights, and even our mighty king admits those rights! My beauty, you will pay in time!”