A Touch of Crimson

  And he’d been right, just not in the way he’d expected.

  Moving back toward the other members of Adrian’s pack, he found them eyeing him with defiance and determination.

  Rachel stepped forward and hissed. “Do you think you’re one of them?”

  “You’re a smart girl, Rach. You know they’re playing you and me both. They’re playing all of us.”

  Jonas stepped closer. “You’re Alpha, Elijah. What are you going to do about it?”

  The impetuous young lycan gestured at the thirty-foot-high log fence around them. “If I were Alpha, I’d tear this place apart.”

  “And go where?” Elijah challenged.

  Rachel’s eyes glittered. “I don’t know what you’re afraid of, El. But you’re going to have to make a decision about which side you’re standing with. Don’t let Micah’s death be in vain.”

  “You can’t put that on me.”

  “It’s all on you,” she said coldly. “More than you know.”

  He opened his mouth to retort, but she shifted and howled. The rest of the pack altered their forms en masse, circling him in a blatant show of subservience. The Sentinels nearby unfurled their wings, their eyes aflame.

  Jason stepped closer, with his wings curled forward in the familiar battle-ready pose. “Elijah—”

  The pack responded to the implied threat to their Alpha—a threat they’d instigated—by lunging forward in a writhing sea of multicolored fur.

  Shouts shattered the mountain’s tranquility. Angels took to the air. Lycans in lupine form poured from splintered doorways and shattered windows in an endless wave. Shots rang out and howls rent the air.

  Elijah stood in the middle of utter chaos, watching everything he knew crumbling into pools of blood and fur and feathers. Screams reverberated through him, echoing in his horrified mind.

  A bullet pierced his shoulder, the tiny bit of silver in it sizzling his flesh like acid. The lycans grew more frenzied and ferocious in reaction to the smell of his blood. With the choice taken from him, Elijah shifted and leaped into the fray, hoping to save as many lives as he could.

  Adrian looked out of Syre’s office windows at the town below. His blood had gone cold with trepidation. With every second that passed, he felt himself spiraling deeper into a primal state of rage.

  His cell phone vibrated on the desktop. He felt Raven’s wary eyes on him as he lifted it to his ear. “Mitchell.”

  “Adrian.”

  His breath exploded from his chest. “Lindsay! Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  “Would you prefer to call me tzel?” she asked softly.

  He sank into Syre’s chair. “What did he tell you?”

  “A long story, but the gist is that I carry the woman you love inside me. Is that true?”

  He hesitated a moment, feeling the underlying pain in her voice. “You carry Shadoe’s soul in you, yes.”

  Raven watched him avidly from the chair in the corner, her eyes sparkling with malicious glee.

  “That’s why you came up to me in the airport.”

  “At first it was for her,” he admitted. “But that changed. What’s grown between us since then is because of you, Lindsay.”

  “In a few short weeks you got over the woman you’ve loved for ages and fell for me?” She made a choked noise, a sound so agonized his heart broke at the sound of it. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

  “I can prove it to you. Tell me where you are, how to find you. If I take Syre down, Shadoe’s soul will be freed. It will just be you and me.”

  “But you said good-bye to me yesterday, Adrian. Not in so many words, but it was the end all the same. Is this why?”

  “No, damn it.” His hand fisted around a pen on the desktop. “It’s because once I kill Syre, your body and soul will be your own. You won’t feel evil around you anymore. You won’t sense beings that aren’t human. You won’t have physical attributes that you’ll have to hide. You can be normal. Lead a normal life. Enjoy all the precious mortal things you haven’t had time for.”

  There was a long silence filled only with the sounds of their mutual labored breathing. He heard a door close on her end of the line. “Syre says he can fix this. He can make it right.”

  Adrian leaned forward. “Don’t listen to him. He’ll tell you whatever he has to in order to get what he wants.”

  “He says if he completes the Change, you can have Shadoe back. Forever this time. Immortally.”

  “Fuck no.” The room spun around him. “That’s not what I want.”

  “Isn’t it? All those centuries . . . all those incarnations . . . You’ve found her and loved her. And lost her—over and over again. Now there’s a chance to stop all that.”

  “He’s wrong, Lindsay.” Adrian heard the hoarseness of his voice, the brutal desperation, and wondered why she couldn’t. “He thinks Shadoe’s naphil soul—a soul that’s part angel—is stronger than yours. When she was alive, perhaps that was true. But she’s not. She’s a stowaway in your body. Your soul has a stronger hold on your physical form than hers does. You’re not like the other incarnations of her. You feel her impulses, but you can ignore them. You have always been you since the moment we met. If you let Syre finish the Change, her soul will be freed, yours will die, and what will be left is a bloodsucking vampire. You don’t want that. I don’t want that for you.”

  He heard a soft sob.

  “Lindsay.” His eyes burned. His lungs were on fire. “Please. Please don’t do this. Let me come to you, talk to you. You’ve been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. You’re reeling from your father’s death—justifiably so. You need time to think. Time to heal. Let me be there for you, as you’ve been there for me.”

  “I don’t need to think about this. No matter which way things go with the Change, you’ll finally be free. Whether you’re free with her or without her, this horrible cycle you’ve suffered through will finally be over.”

  The pen snapped in his hand. Black ink burst across the desk. “I can do the same thing by killing Syre. He started the Change; he’s the only one who can finish it. Let me do it my way. Let me take care of this.”

  “Adrian—”

  “I love you, Lindsay. You. Not her. I did love her once, but not anymore. Not like I used to. Not for a long time, I realized last night. And never like I love you. I’m begging you . . . with everything I am—with everything that belongs to you—don’t do this.”

  “I believe you love me,” she whispered, so quietly he barely heard her. “As much as you’re able. But that’s just another reason to finish this. As long as I’m out there somewhere, you’re never going to be able to let me go—I can hear it in your voice. You’re going to bash yourself against the rocks over and over until you’re completely broken. I can’t let you do it. At least once I’ve Changed, you’ll let me go. You won’t want me as a vampire.”

  Adrian shoved to his feet, his BlackBerry cracking under the strain of his grip. “Lindsay!”

  “I love you, Adrian. Good-bye.”

  Lindsay stepped out of the bedroom, freshly showered and feeling cleansed inside and out. Syre waited patiently at the dining table. She had the feeling he was the type of man who could sit absolutely still for hours, waiting, his patience infinite and unyielding. So much control and power—it radiated from him as it did from Adrian. Adrian, whose beautiful voice had slashed and whipped with the force of his emotions. She was making him more human by the day, weakening him when he needed to be the strongest. Seeing Syre face-to-face proved that to her more than anything else. The vampire leader was a formidable force to be reckoned with, and his second was a homicidal manic. In the days ahead, Adrian would have to be at the top of his game in order to survive.

  “Are you ready?” He stood in a display of sleek fluidity and grace.

  She nodded. “Yes. I’m ready.”

  He gestured for her to return to the bedroom.

  “Can you tell me what’s going to happen?” she ask
ed, lying on the bed as directed. Her heart was racing so violently she thought she might have a heart attack.

  The vampire leader sat on the bed beside her and took her hand in his. He met her gaze directly, his perfect features soft with affection. Just looking at him told her what a stunner Shadoe must have been. An exotic beauty whose love had enslaved Adrian forever.

  “I’m going to drink from you.” His voice was as warm and intoxicating as heated brandy. “I’m going to drain you to the brink of death. Then I’m going to fill you back up with the blood from my veins and it’s going to Change you.”

  “My soul will die.”

  He looked for a moment like he might lie to her. Then he nodded. “Mortal souls don’t survive the Change. But if it’s any consolation, I think Shadoe will have absorbed some of you over the time you two have been together. You might continue to exist in that way. I don’t think you’ll be completely lost.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “No,” he agreed. “You are unique.”

  She exhaled a shaky breath. “Okay. I’m ready.”

  Syre brushed the hair back from her forehead. “You really love him. I wish I understood why. Every time you come back, you love him all over again.”

  Her eyes closed. “Please. Just get this over with.”

  She felt the humidity of his spice-scented breath against her wrist, then the sharp sting of his bite.

  Lindsay floated in an oddly warm miasma. Like a swimmer on her back, she drifted languidly, all sense of time and urgency gone.

  Around her, waves of memories rose and crested. Some were hers; most were not. She sifted through them with a lush fascination, watching reels of events like movies. So many versions of herself, as if she were the only actress in an endless play with multiple characters, settings, and time periods.

  In the back of her mind, she registered a distant burning. Around her, smoke and fire licked along the shores of her memories, making the water boil until it was uncomfortable against her bare flesh. She tried to twist away, then to dip beneath the waters, but below the surface there was no bottom. There was only an endless void and the tickling sensation of that abyss suckling at her toes, luring her downward.

  She broke the surface and returned to her horizontal position, keeping her legs away from the seductive pull below.

  There was no escaping the growing heat.

  “It’ll go away soon.”

  Turning her head in search of the speaker, Lindsay discovered a woman floating nearby. An exotic and breathtaking woman. A woman whose rich beauty would make a stunning pairing with Adrian’s dark magnificence.

  “Shadoe.”

  Shadoe’s mouth curved. “Hello, Lindsay.”

  She reached out and they linked fingers. A swift rush of cooling relief raced up Lindsay’s arm from the contact. Her mind filled with images of Syre and a beautiful Asian woman. They were laughing. Playing. Chasing two young giggling children through a field of tall grasses. Syre had wings. Great, magnificent wings of azure blue that perfectly matched the color of his irises. They spread and stretched in a visible manifestation of his joy. He lifted the little girl high and kissed her forehead. Lindsay felt the press of those lips against her own skin, felt the rush of paternal love that accompanied it as if it were for her.

  Syre set Shadoe down and chased his son, an adorable boy with chubby arms and legs. Shadoe moved to where her mother was laying out a picnic. She sat on the edge of the blanket and tossed small pieces of some kind of vegetable near the edge of the clearing, where the grasses began their domination of the landscape.

  A small rabbitlike creature appeared, soft, fluffy, and white. It followed the vegetable trail to Shadoe, who stroked its trusting head with her fingertips. When the creature grew bolder and reared up to set its front paws on Shadoe’s thigh, she laughed with delight and scooped it up like Syre had done to her only moments before. She nuzzled her freckled nose against the sweet animal’s, then buried her face in its neck.

  The creature’s scream startled Lindsay so violently she jerked and sank beneath the waves. The memory slid away from her, getting caught in the churning surf near the burning shoreline, but not before Lindsay caught the ripe smell of blood and the beauty of crimson soaking into pristine white. Like Adrian’s wings.

  She kicked her way back up to the surface, gasping with a mixture of fear, fascination, and building hunger. The scent of the creature’s blood drove her wild. Her mouth watered with the desire to drink it greedily the way Shadoe had.

  Shadoe smiled at Lindsay’s sputtering breaths. The naphil floated gracefully on her back with her hands tucked behind her head. Her dark hair fanned outward, as did the transparent gauzy skirts of her dress. She looked like a nymph, beautiful and seductive.

  “You were already a vampire,” Lindsay accused.

  “No. The nephalim thirsted for blood before the Watchers fell. Our angel halves needed the energy found in the life force of others.” There was no horror or remorse in the woman’s voice. No shame or embarrassment.

  Lindsay struggled to make sense of it all. The raging heat was slowly fading and languidness returned to her. She felt like taking a nap, like sinking into the silken embrace of the memories around her.

  “He’s loved me forever,” Shadoe said casually. “Obsessively.”

  “I know.”

  New recollections lapped over her. She recognized some of them from her dreams. They made sense now. Every image and scene held Adrian in moments of lust and passion. Lindsay watched with a sharp, ferocious jealousy. She closed her eyes but still found no relief. The memories were in her head, her mind. Whispering. Crooning. Pleading. She was about to dive beneath the waves just to get away from them when she saw herself. She stilled her restless thrashing and took it all in, reliving the tender moments she’d shared with Adrian.

  I need you, tzel.

  Pain seared her at the understanding of what that meant: while making love to her, he’d been thinking of someone else.

  The reminiscences continued unabated, giving her no peace.

  Take me, neshama sheli.

  She cried at the heated emotion radiating from Adrian as he asked her to take everything he offered her.

  “What does that mean?” she asked Shadoe in a voice made husky by heartbreak and longing. “ ‘Neshama sheli’?”

  “It means ‘my soul.’ It’s an endearment.”

  Lindsay absorbed that. As the memories swirled around her, spinning faster and faster until a vortex formed in a downward spiral, she noted how his endearments for her changed as their relationship progressed. Toward the end, he referred to her only as his soul. Not Shadoe’s. His.

  No, tzel. I’m going to free you. I’m going to let you go...

  He’d been saying good-bye to Shadoe, not her.

  Lindsay kicked upward, fighting the voracious sucking of the whirlpool. She was screaming, shouting for help, drowning with the sudden realization of how poorly she’d interpreted her dreams the night before.

  Adrian loved her. And god knew she was crazy enough about him to die for his happiness. Which appeared to be what she was to him—the woman who made him happy.

  She wouldn’t give him up. She refused. He knew her inside and out. From the beginning, he’d allowed her to choose which direction she wanted to travel, and whichever road she chose—the hotel or the hunt, with or without him—he had made accommodations to allow her that freedom while still keeping her safe. She could be herself with him and he would love her that way. Cherish her.

  With all her might, Lindsay fought the relentless pull of the now glowing abyss below her, but the cyclonic recollections around her rose higher and higher, and the reels of images in the sky above her seemed farther and farther away.

  “Shadoe!” she yelled. “You’ll never have all of him. Never again.”

  An arm shot out and grasped her wrist. Shadoe leaned over the lip of the vortex, her long black hair hanging in a satiny curtain around her lovely f
ace.

  “Part of him belongs to me now.” Lindsay whimpered, her shoulder separating from its socket as she was pulled in two directions. “You don’t strike me as the type of woman who’s willing to share.”

  “And you are?”

  Lindsay’s jaw tightened against the pain. “I’ll take whatever I can have of him,” she bit out. “If he thinks of you sometimes, I can live with that. Can you live with him making love to my body when he’s with you?”

  Shadoe’s sloe eyes narrowed. Then her lush red lips curved in a smile. She released Lindsay’s arm, and Lindsay fell toward the radiant light below.

  “Shadoe.”

  Her rival dived into the vortex, racing past Lindsay with her arms outstretched and her hands clasped together in a narrow blade. She cut through the light and disappeared inside it. Instantly the whirlpool’s direction changed, surging upward. As the moving pictures above Lindsay rushed down to meet her, she held her breath and closed her eyes.

  She was spit out of the tempest with a gasping breath of cognizance.

  Jackknifing up, Lindsay woke in a strange bed. She blinked at finding Kent Magus sitting in a chair beside her.

  “Kent?” she queried, realizing she was drenched with sweat. So much sweat that the comforter and sheets beneath her were soaked with it, too. Something hard rattled around in her mouth. She spit it out, then another one. She winced at the sight of her two human canine teeth in her palm. “What are you doing in my dream?”

  Kent stared at her, then frowned. “Lindsay . . . ? Where’s Shadoe?”

  “You have the hots for her, too?” Her gaze narrowed. Kent’s handsome features echoed the woman’s she had just said good-bye to in her mind . . . or soul—wherever. “She’s gone. Not coming back. Off to a better place and all that.”

  “Shit,” he whispered, running his hand through hair that had become spiky from his restless fingers.