“And how am I supposed to convince any of them I actually know you, if I do get within a hundred feet of them?” she inquired.
“None of them are like that; they don’t keep themselves away from people or vampires. You’ll get close to them.”
“And will they believe me?”
“Tell them I sent you and tell them I said, the banquet tree. Not many know about it, but they all do.”
She folded her hands over her chest. “What does that mean?”
“It’s an apple tree we used to go to as children; it would keep our bellies full for weeks. It meant a lot to us, and it has a different meaning for Braith and Aria. If you tell them that, they’ll know I sent you.”
Tempest tucked the patch into the inside of her cloak. “Sounds like it was a special place for you.”
“It still is.”
She didn’t say anything more; he adjusted the cloaks on the ground before kneeling across from her and placing one of the saddlebags down as a pillow. He hesitated for a minute before opening his arms to her. He had to hold her again tonight, to smell her and feel her against him once more.
She hesitated for long enough that he almost dropped his arms, but then she crawled forward to lay beside him. Her delicate hand rested on his chest; her head tucked neatly under his chin again.
- CHAPTER 18 -
Tempest stirred but didn’t open her eyes. She already knew William wasn’t beside her; she didn’t have to know anything more than that. A strange scraping noise pierced through to her. She tried to ignore it, but then she recalled exactly where they were and those things out there. She bolted upright; her eyes shot wildly around the cave before finding William standing by the water trickling down the cave wall.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“I heard a… ah…” her voice trailed off when she spotted his bare cheek and the lower half of his jaw. Her mouth parted, then closed again when she saw the knife in his hand. “What are you doing?”
He grinned at her before dipping the knife he held into the water and lifting it to his cheek again. Across from him was a small piece of metal he was using as a mirror. While she watched, patches of hair from his beard fell away to land on the cave floor. “I’m making myself more presentable, since it’s impossible to make myself more handsome.”
A small smile curved her mouth at his unabashed confidence. A teasing gleam lit his eyes when he looked at her in the surface of the metal. He shook the blade of the knife off before dipping it into the water again.
“But why your beard?” She’d liked the way it tickled as it rubbed against her skin when they were kissing. You’re not supposed to kiss him anymore, an inner voice admonished her.
“The last time Kane saw me, I had a full beard. He may have stabbed me in the back, but he’d still recognize a redhead with a beard.”
Her smile vanished at his words; a chill slid down her spine. The calculation and intent behind the removal of his beard made her stomach turn. What would happen when they got into town? What would happen when he saw the man who ended his mortal life?
“I’m hoping he won’t recognize me now.” William placed the knife on a rock outcropping and lifted a rag to his face. He wiped away the water from his cheeks before turning to her. “What do you think?”
He looked about five years younger without the beard shadowing his face, maybe early twenties despite the lines crinkling around his vibrant eyes when he smiled at her. She didn’t think he looked more handsome. He’d been right, that was impossible, but he definitely looked more approachable.
Something within her heart swelled; she longed to run her fingers over his freshly smooth skin. At the same time something within her withered. She couldn’t stand it if his cocky grin was stomped out, and she was extremely afraid it would be if they continued on to Badwin. He’d become kinder toward her since they’d first met each other in the snow, and even though they had some sort of relationship between them, there was still one main thing driving him forward. Revenge.
“You look nice,” she murmured.
“You’re not much of an ego boost.”
“I don’t think you need one.”
His jovial laugh resonated through the rocks surrounding them. The lively sound of it did nothing to melt the ice encasing her heart. “Maybe not,” he replied. “But it’s still bolstering to hear something better than nice. I’ve gathered some dirt for us.”
“For what?” she inquired.
“To darken our hair. Not much as we don’t want to look obvious, but if we get close enough to your town, we can’t be recognizable and your hair and mine tend to stand out.”
“Are you going to go for Kane as soon as we get there?” she blurted before she could stop herself.
He froze in the middle of bending over to grab something off the floor. Slowly, he rose back to his full height and stood before her, somehow more alluring than he’d been before. Or maybe not more alluring; maybe she simply just yearned to touch him again.
“No.” His voice sounded as detached as it had the first time she’d met him. “We’ll see what is going on, and I’ll let my family know about it before I confront Kane.”
She wasn’t so sure she believed him. There was no way he could hide his volatile reaction every time she mentioned Kane’s name. “I’m frightened that if you see him, nothing will stop you from going after him. I can’t be the one who leads you there only to have you end up getting hurt, or worse, killed for good this time.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” he said as he bent and scooped some dirt from the pile she hadn’t noticed by his feet.
“And why not?” she demanded. “You may be immortal but you’re not impenetrable.”
He came toward her with the dirt in his hand, a smile playing across his mouth as he stared at her. “Because I’m not leaving you unprotected.”
“How do you know you won’t react when you see him? The mere mention of his name makes you angry. What is the sight of him going to do to you?”
She tilted her head back to look up at him when he stopped before her. “I may have a temper, I admit it, but I can control myself. Sometimes,” he added in a teasing tone of voice as he winked at her.
“William…”
Before she could say anymore, he released the handfuls of dirt and seized hold of her cheeks. She didn’t have time to react before his mouth claimed hers. A startled sound escaped her; her hands instinctively curled around his thick wrists as heat sizzled like lightning through her body.
All of her concerns faded away to nothing when his tongue slipped inside to take firm possession of her mouth. He pulled her closer, dragging her body up against him as he deepened the kiss. She gasped when he moved her against the wall and pinned her there. His powerful body pushed firmly against hers as his tongue continued to taste her in deep thrusts that left her limp. She found her legs wouldn’t support her. The cave around them faded away until he was her entire world.
His face was smooth against hers; she missed the prickle of his beard, but loved the sensation of feeling more of his flesh. One of his arms slid around her waist; his thumb stroked her cheek before he broke the kiss. Eyes the color of a sapphire blazed down at her as his mouth hovered inches from hers.
“I just can’t control myself around you,” he murmured, that teasing smile curving his mouth again. Excitement burst through her chest. She couldn’t bring herself to release him as his lips lightly grazed hers. “You can trust me around Kane, because I will make sure you stay safe. You have my word on that.”
Unexpected tears burned her eyes. Did he mean it? She wondered as she searched his face. His eyes didn’t waver as they held hers; they burned with intensity, silently imploring her to believe him, to trust him. If she did, her heart could end up smashed into so many pieces she feared she’d never be able to put it back together.
While he continued to stare at her, his hands tender against her face, she found her resolve to keep her di
stance melting away. He was a warrior, a man of his word, and he wouldn’t be saying these things to her if he didn’t mean them. He had no reason to lie to her, no reason to tell her these things. Truth be told, she’d lost all sense of restraint against this man already, and possibly her heart too.
“Tempest…”
“I believe you,” she murmured.
His eyes closed, he took a shuddery breath, something she’d come to realize was a habit left over from his human days. His eyes sparkled when they opened again; he bent and pressed a kiss on the tip of her nose. Disappointment filled her when he stepped away from her.
“We have to get going,” he said. “And as much as I don’t like it, we have to try and darken that beautiful hair of yours.”
Beautiful? Her hand instinctively flew up to her hair, a flush of pleasure slid through her at his words. He thought her hair was beautiful; she felt like a silly child, but the sweet compliment delighted her more than she’d ever believed possible. Bending, he grabbed handfuls of the dirt and approached her again. Ever so tenderly, he took hold of strands of her hair and carefully ran the dirt through it.
The pieces he dropped back down were dirty blonde in hue, but then her hair was actually streaked with dirt now, she thought with an inward giggle. Her hair might even pass as brown now, at least at night. He turned away from her and walked back over to the metal piece he’d propped against the rocks. She watched as he ran his hands carefully through his hair, taking away the reddish tones she liked so much.
When he turned back to her, he looked like a different person with his bare face and now brown hair. Even with the completely different appearance, she realized she would know him anywhere. She’d always know the smell, feel and taste of him, but more than that, she would recognize his presence anywhere.
Her admiring gaze followed his chiseled physique as he walked around the cave. Without his cloak on, she could get a good view of his powerful thighs in his loose fitting brown pants. The flaxen shirt he wore bunched over his powerful shoulders and biceps as he gathered the supplies they would need and set the feedbag up for Achilles.
He gave the horse a firm pat on his neck before swinging his cloak around his shoulders and turning to her. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she said and took the saddlebag he offered her. He helped her tie it around her waist and made sure it was cinched securely against her back.
Taking hold of the torch, she led the way back into the cave system and toward her home.
***
William peered over the top of the mountain they had climbed to the peak of, and stared down at the small town located within the valley below. Tempest settled into the snow beside him. On her lips, he could smell the coppery scent of the fox’s blood they’d captured and fed from before climbing up here.
He held his hand up, keeping her away from the edge as he crawled forward on his belly to see more of the town. She stayed a little ways behind him, but she refused to stay back completely. She crept forward to lay beside him in the snow.
Fires burned in the middle of the street, and from the hiss she released, he assumed more vampires or people had helped to fan those flames. Now their burning graves continued to light up the night sky.
He pressed himself deeper into the snow as he surveyed the town. Along the street, he spotted the patrolling vampire guards Tempest had told him about. The white cloaks they wore helped them blend in with their environment. The quaint homes lining the roads made it appear far more picturesque than it actually was, given the sinister presence of those vampires.
He’d been hesitant to believe her in the beginning, but he realized she’d told the truth shortly after she’d started talking. He’d still been hoping she’d been off on her estimation of the soldiers, but her guess about the numbers may have actually been on the low side.
Where had they all come from? Then he recalled the desolate town of Chester. There was no way to know how many towns had been traveled through and destroyed by these vampires.
The vampires below were the ones he could see. There was no way to tell how many were hiding in the mountains or camped out inside the houses. He lifted his gaze to scan the mountaintops surrounding them, but he didn’t see anyone moving about from his current vantage point.
He gestured for her to move back. Sliding over the peak, they settled onto a rock lip beneath it. He pressed his back against the mountain as he stared down at the lake a few thousand feet below them. The moon and stars reflected in the water; their twinkling lights looked like fireflies on its smooth surface from this far above.
“I think there’s more of them than there were before,” she muttered as she tugged the cloak closer around her face. “What do we do now? Can we get to the children?”
William rubbed at his chin, not at all used to feeling smooth skin beneath his touch again. It wasn’t the same without the beard, he missed it; his face missed it, as the cool air brushed against skin that had been protected from the elements for over a year now.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. She blinked away the tears that filled her eyes. “But we’ll try. I want to get closer and see if I can figure out what is going on, and who the vampire declaring herself the queen is. It will be a lot easier to get into town and try to learn something useful without Braith’s troops than it would be with them. There will also be a lot less bloodshed. Maybe there’s a way to put a stop to whatever is happening before another war starts. I’ve had enough of fighting.”
He could feel her eyes burning into him, but he didn’t look at her as he stared out at the velvet black of night. The clashing ring of steel echoed in his head, the twang of bowstring and the whistle of arrows filled his ears as memories flooded his mind. The coppery stench of blood burned into his nose while screams of agony and terror filled his head. Taking a deep breath, he ran a hand through his dirt-darkened hair, tugging at the ends of it as he grappled to block out the memories washing over him.
Taking a shaky breath, he lifted his head to look at her. Instinctively, he took hold of a strand of her hair. He hated he’d had to obscure the silvery strands, but the feel of it helped to calm him. The screams and blood faded away when his fingers trailed over her silken cheeks before brushing briefly across her lips. She somehow had a way of making the brutality of his existence better.
Reluctantly, he pulled his hand away from her. “We’re going to need a couple of those cloaks,” he told her. “If we have any shot of blending in down there.”
“Do you think it was the children?” she whispered. “Those fires?”
“No,” he answered honestly. “These vampires know it will be more upsetting to those who might come to this town after they leave, if the children are left to become mad with hunger, or if they discover their dead bodies.”
He knew her tremor had nothing to do with the wind blowing down from the mountain peaks. He took hold of her hand as he glanced at the lake again. “We have to move,” he told her.
Keeping hold of her hand, he led her down the small trail they’d traversed to the mountaintop. His boots slid in the snow, but he managed to keep his balance by leaning against the rock wall beside him. Years of living in these mountains made Tempest far more adept at traversing the trails. Her feet were more nimble than his were as she walked with far more assurance than he did.
After a few hundred feet, she tugged his hand, pulling him to a stop. He leaned against the mountain as he turned to face her. She pointed by his feet and pulling down on his hand, she knelt against the mountainside. He crouched down next to her and turned his head toward hers.
“There’s a cave here,” she told him. “We’ll have to crawl into it, but it opens up once we’re inside, and it winds down into the mountain. It will save us from having to climb down the cliff for at least part of the way.”
William watched as she flattened her stomach on the rocky trail. She squiggled through the snow on her stomach until her feet vanished within a hole he never would hav
e known was there. He didn’t want to know how she’d managed to discover its existence, but getting onto his stomach, he followed behind her. Rising up on the other side, he tried to see anything before him but the blackness was so absolute even his vampire vision couldn’t detect enough light to pick out any details.
“Stay close to me,” Tempest whispered from his right. “It’s only like this for half a mile or so, after that we’ll be able to see again.”
“You’re going to be able to find your way out of this area?”
“We may walk into a few walls in between here and there,” she said with a small chuckle. “But I’d prefer not to light another torch if we don’t have to; we need to conserve the rags.”
“Walking into walls is better than climbing down the face of the mountain,” he replied.
He’d spent a lot of time in caves, and trees, but he’d never done any mountain climbing. The climb up had been bad enough. His fingers still ached from gripping the rocks so tight, but at least he’d been able to see where he was putting his hands and feet; going back down would be nothing but a search mission for footholds.
Her hand slid into his, taking firm possession of it. William squeezed her hand tenderly before bringing it up and pressing a kiss against her delicate flesh. She moved closer to him, her arm brushing against his as they walked deeper into the blackness. He could feel the walls closing in on them as they moved; feel the space becoming more confining. The walls didn’t brush against him, not yet, but their steps became more muffled by the encroaching rocks. He could feel the chill of them against his sides, but he didn’t touch them.
William kept her close to his side as his senses strained to pick up any noise or smell out of the ordinary amongst the damp, mossy smelling rocks. He took a step to the side when the wall brushed against his right shoulder. “It doesn’t get any narrower,” Tempest said from beside him.
He nodded before he realized she couldn’t see it. Before he could speak, he began to detect little pinpoints of light ahead of them. After a few more feet, light burst into his eyes, dilating his pupils as he finally took in the world surrounding them. The light came from a crevice in the wall above them; a single sliver that allowed the rays of the moon to filter in.