Bound by Night

  The only reply was a bloodthirsty growl. Riker should hate the vampire, should want to rip him apart with his bare hands for what he’d done to Terese and countless other females. Instead, Riker felt only pity. This male was as much a victim of Daedalus’s cruelty as Terese had been.

  With lightning speed, he slipped behind the vampire and snapped his neck. When he stepped out of the cell, he found Nicole staring at him.

  “You killed him.”

  “I put him out of his misery.” The kid was still sitting where Riker had left him, his eyes glazed. Maybe it would be best to put him down, too.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Nicole snapped. “Where’s Neriya?”

  “Dead.”

  Nicole fumbled the lighter in her hand but caught it before it hit the floor. When she looked up, her eyes were liquid with regret. But they both knew there was no time for mourning or useless apologies.

  “Pick up the kid.” She flicked the lighter mechanism and lit the corner of a paper as he threw the skinny male over his shoulder.

  With one last look around, she dropped the flaming sheet and grabbed the garbage bag full of files. The place went up in a flash. Searing heat licked at their backs as they fled the building through a rear exit.

  Once outside, Nicole stopped on a grassy knoll at the edge of the property. The clan’s beat-up Jeep was parked within sight, but Nicole didn’t even look in its direction. Despite the blare of sirens bearing down on them, she very slowly swung around and stared at the flames engulfing the lab. He expected to see grief in her face. Or pain. Or even anger. Anything but what he saw reflecting in her eyes.

  Acceptance.

  Nicole had just willfully destroyed part of her life, and now she was watching the remains burn to ash. Her strength humbled him, and when she finally turned her back to the crumbling skeleton that had belonged to her family, she did it with a finality that astonished him.

  They didn’t look back again.

  NICOLE WASN’T SURE how far they’d run with Riker carrying the kid over his shoulder after they parked the Jeep on property discreetly owned by MoonBound. But every time she faltered, tripping over branches or stumbling from exhaustion, Riker would catch her. It hadn’t taken long for VAST to swarm the forest, and the sounds of pursuit kept her moving. Now, with the shouting voices practically upon them, her panic made her even clumsier.

  “It’s okay,” Riker said, steadying her with a hand around her biceps. “Clan warriors are attacking our pursuers.”

  She sucked in a panting breath. “You could have told me earlier.”

  “Didn’t want to ruin the surprise.”

  “In the future, keep in mind that I don’t like surprises,” she muttered.

  They continued on, thankfully at a slower pace, and after a few minutes, the boy came around, his groggy gaze unfocused and confused.

  “Hey, kid,” Riker said. “We’re almost home.” He lowered the boy to the ground.

  Standing, the male was at least six feet tall, but he probably weighed no more than Nicole. His shaggy black hair fell in a mop to his jaw, and he had to push it out of his face to see. He wobbled as he looked around, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.

  “Where are we?” The boy’s strained voice was barely audible. “What is this?”

  “We’re in the forest outside of Seattle,” Riker said. “We’re safe. The humans can’t touch you here.”

  The boy backed away from them in a panicked scramble, and when he bumped into a tree trunk, he yelped and leaped away as if he’d been bitten. He sucked air in huge gulps, his gaze darting everywhere at once, as if he was looking for somewhere to run.

  “You’re okay,” she said, in a low, steady voice. He reminded Nicole of a stray kitten she’d once coaxed out from underneath a bush. “You’re safe now. Where are you from?”

  The question seemed to stump him. “From?”

  “Yes.” Reaching out, she took his hand. It was cold and bony, and her heart broke. “Where did you live before you were captured by humans? Where’s home?”

  The boy frowned. “The lab is my home.”

  “Are you saying you were born there?” Riker asked, incredulous.

  A crow cawed nearby, and the kid gave a start. “I-I was born in a human house. But the lab is all I remember.”

  The lab was all he knew? Jesus. “Where are your parents?”

  “I don’t know who my sire is.” The boy’s voice was so quiet she had to strain to hear. “My mother is dead.”

  Nicole wanted to hug him. Losing a parent was awful enough, but then to be raised in a lab . . . She couldn’t even begin to imagine that kind of nightmare. “Did she die during childbirth? How did Daedalus get you?”

  “She was a servant. A wild vampire broke onto the grounds and killed her. Humans cut me out of her belly before I died.” He gave her such an honest, innocent look that her eyes stung. “They saved me.”

  Good God, he was actually grateful for how Daedalus had treated him. She cut a glance at Riker . . . and gooseflesh erupted from her scalp to her toes.

  Riker had lost all the color in his face and was staring at the boy, his jaw clenched, his throat working on swallow after swallow. Something was very, very wrong.

  “Riker?”

  He didn’t acknowledge that she’d spoken. He kept his gaze fixed on the boy. “How old are you, kid?” The boy blinked, as if not understanding the question. “How old?” Riker barked.

  The boy made a noise of distress and shrank away from them both, lifting one skinny arm over his face.

  “Nice,” she snapped at Riker. “Well done.” She eased close to the kid again, speaking in soothing tones. “We’re not going to hurt you. I promise. You can tell us. When were you born?”

  The boy eyed Riker warily. “The lab people do tests on me every June. They say it’s my birthday. Last time, there were a lot of tests because they said it was twenty years.”

  “Oh, God.” Riker’s voice grew constricted. “Terese . . . she died twenty years ago last June.”

  It took several moments for Nicole to process what Riker was saying, and when she did, she clamped her hand over her mouth in stunned silence. This gaunt vampire kid, who looked to be no more than sixteen or seventeen, was Terese’s son.

  Nicole studied his face, mapped the curve of his jaw, the color of his eyes, and even the shape of his lips. He’d inherited it all from his mother.

  Riker was still staring, shell-shocked and maybe a little apprehensive and lost. Nicole had to pull herself together to help him. To help them both.

  She squeezed the boy’s hand. “What’s your name?”

  “Subject One.”

  “That’s what they call you?”

  He nodded.

  Nicole’s gut crash-landed in her feet, and she was very glad when Riker swore, several nasty, choice words that perfectly expressed her feelings right now.

  “Riker?” She moderated her voice, going for calm and quiet, knowing her next question was a sensitive one, and it could go over very, very badly. “What was Terese going to name the baby?”

  “I wanted Sebastien,” he croaked. “Bastien, after my brother.” Riker stood still as a blade, his eyes closed. As the breeze picked up and ruffled his hair and the leaves overhead, he lifted his lids and gave Nicole the briefest nod of permission.

  Memories of Terese swirled in Nicole’s head. She remembered Terese’s gentleness, her warm embraces, her soft voice. She remembered a woman who had made more of an impact on Nicole’s life than her own mother had. The pain of losing Terese had stayed with Nicole, but now it was as if a piece of her was back. No matter how horribly wrong today had gone, something good had come out of it.

  Nicole’s eyes stung as she took both of the boy’s hands in hers and smiled. “From now on, you’ll be known as Bastien. Is that okay?”

  He tested the name on his tongue, saying it over and over until he finally gave her a fragile smile. “I think it’s okay.”

  SHIT.


  Of all the millions of words that could be running through Riker’s head right now, shit was the one that kept repeating itself over and over. Somehow he’d kept the presence of mind to take Nicole and Bastien—holy shit, Bastien—straight to the clan’s lab to have them checked out before he lost his shit.

  Yeah, there was a whole lot of shit going on.

  So while Nicole and Bastien—unfuckingbelievable—were getting a medical once-over, Riker was jogging down the hallway leading to Hunter’s chambers as if his feet were on fire. He’d needed to get away from Bastien, to outrun his own feelings.

  His own guilt.

  Already he regretted the way he’d treated Bastien. He’d yelled at the poor kid, then stared at him, speechless. He’d been immobilized by shock, rendered helpless by his own disbelief. He’d let Nicole comfort the boy while Riker tried to untie himself from the knot of emotions that had been strangling him.

  Had Bastien even understood what Nicole and Riker had been talking about? Did Bastien know that he was, for all intents and purposes, Riker’s son?

  Shit. The next conversation with the boy was going to be fun. Hi, I’m your father. Well, sort of. An insane monster is really who sired you. And the humans lied when they told you your mother was killed by a vampire. She killed herself because she hated you. And then I left you to be raised in a lab like a rat in a cage. Good talk, son. We’ll toss around a ball or something later.

  Riker stumbled as emotion overcame him. He should have been there. He shouldn’t have just assumed the baby died with Terese. He’d missed what should have been twenty happy years with Bastien. Missed his first steps. His first words. The boy could have grown up safe and wanted, with a father who loved him. Instead, he’d grown up inside a box in a sterile, cold laboratory.

  Footsteps rang out in the distance. Riker pulled himself together before someone saw him in the middle of a breakdown and jogged the rest of the way to Hunter’s chamber. He burst through the heavy double doors and wasn’t surprised to see the chief standing in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back and an expectant look on his face. Behind him, a Mario Bros. game had been paused on the Nintendo.

  “From the look on your face, I’m guessing things didn’t go well,” he said, his deep voice echoing off the walls.

  “Neriya is dead.”

  Hunter’s jaw clenched. “Shit.”

  “Word of the day,” Riker muttered.

  “What about the human?” Hunter’s nonuse of Nicole’s name was intentional, Riker was sure, but he didn’t take the bait.

  “She’s with Grant. She grabbed some files from the Daedalus lab before we burned the building down.”

  One dark eyebrow cocked. “And she allowed you to do that?”

  “It was her idea.” God, she’d been magnificent. Calm and efficient. She was a warrior, as full of heart as any vampire Riker had fought side by side with in battle. Which brought him to the next subject. “But there’s a complication.”

  “Of course there is.”

  “Her bastard of a brother forced me to try to turn her with my blood. He immunized her against it, but it was a test dose.”

  Hunter’s gaze raked Riker from head to toe, as if trying to assess how Riker felt about this news. He wished his leader luck, because he wasn’t sure about it himself.

  “So you’re saying she could turn.”

  “Yeah.” Riker eyed the wet bar, wondering how many bottles of whiskey he could drink before Hunter stopped him. “There’s more.”

  Hunter held up his hand. “Wait.” Swiftly, he moved to the bar and splashed two fingers of bourbon into a glass. “You look like you need this.”

  Riker took the glass gratefully. For a long moment, he stared into the amber liquid, letting the colors swirl around inside the glass. Finally, he put the glass to his lips, inhaled, and downed the contents. The burn numbed him pleasantly, but it wasn’t going to last.

  “We freed a male. Young. Scared. Hasn’t ever been outside the lab. He was afraid of the damned trees.”

  “Did you bring him here?”

  “Yup. Straight to the Island of Misfit Toys.” Suddenly exhausted, Riker scrubbed his hand over his face. “When Terese died . . . fuck, I assumed the baby was dead, too. He wasn’t. The humans delivered him and raised him in that lab.” Saying it out loud made the liquor sour in his gut.

  Hunter wasn’t one to go slack-jawed, but with his stunned stare and slightly parted lips, he came close. “Are you telling me that the male you rescued is your son?”

  No one but Nicole knew the real story, that Terese had been impregnated by someone other than Riker. He’d always planned to raise the boy as his own, so there was never any point in telling anyone the truth when Terese was alive. Then, after she died, it seemed wrong to cast even more shadows on an already dark situation. No one needed to know what happened to Terese—she wouldn’t welcome the pity.

  “Riker? Buddy?” Hunter prompted, and Riker cleared his throat.

  “Yeah,” he croaked. “He’s mine.” Just because Terese was dead didn’t mean that Riker’s promise was no longer valid.

  “How do you want to handle it?”

  Great question. How did you deal with a twenty-year-old son you didn’t know you had and who had clearly gone through a lifetime of cruelty and neglect? Bastien was like a puppy-mill dog that had never been outside its cage to play or socialize and knew nothing but the people who abused it.

  “I’d like him to stay with me, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think it’ll be too much for him. I was hoping he could stay in the nursery with Morena.”

  “The nursery? Isn’t he an adult?”

  “He’s twenty, but I doubt he was given an education in either human or vampire life. All he knew was a cage inside a lab. He’s going to need a slow, nonthreatening introduction to our world, like Morena did with Lucy. He seems to have bonded with Nicole, so she might be able to help him adjust.”

  “Nicole.” Hunter said her name with a distinct wariness. “Do you really want her around your son? It was her company that did all of this to him.”

  “Nicole isn’t the enemy.” Riker ignored Hunter’s dubious snort and poured himself another drink. “She saved my life, Hunt. She volunteered to be turned into a vampire in order to save Neriya’s life—”

  “Which didn’t go so well, did it?”

  “Not because of Nicole.” Riker threw back the shot he’d poured and filled the glass again. “It was her idea to break into the lab to save Neriya, and it was her idea to destroy the lab. She turned against her brother and fought to free us all.”

  “So what are you saying? That you’re fine with having a human running around loose in our home? That you’re totally okay with everything she’s done for Daedalus?” Hunter regarded Riker with shrewd eyes. “Are you thinking with your dick?”

  Riker breathed deeply in an attempt to keep from lashing out at his leader. “When have you ever known me to think with my dick?”

  “Isn’t that what you were doing in her quarters yesterday?”

  If he’d been thinking with his dick, he’d have been able to finish what they’d started instead of backing off like some kind of traumatized idiot.

  “What we were doing is none of your business.”

  As silent and fast as a serpent, Hunter uncoiled in a lethal blur, backing Riker against the wall with a hand around his throat. “Everything that happens inside these walls is my business. You get that, right?”

  Oh, hey, he was still holding his glass all nice and proper. Didn’t lose a drop. Very deliberately, he put the glass to his lips and drank, even though Hunter was so in his face that the bottom of the glass brushed his nose.

  When Riker had downed the last drop, he ground out, “And you get that I have followed every order you’ve given me, without question, for the last twenty years, right? Have I ever screwed up or given you reason to doubt my judgment?”

  Hunter idly tapped his thumb on Riker’s throat
. “How did we get from me asking the questions to you asking?”

  “Maybe I didn’t like your question.” Brittle tension winged through the air between them, and yeah, this could go critical real fast.

  “Maybe I don’t like your attitude.” Hunter paused, letting the tension stew a little before pushing away. “If this is what fucking a human does to you, then you need to get back to eating them instead.”

  “With Nicole, I can do both,” Riker said, knowing it was stupid to poke a vampire with a stick but doing it anyway.

  “I’m going to give you a day to cool off. Settle in with your son. And get your head out of your ass. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “I’m not killing her.” Riker locked gazes with Hunter as he opened the door. “And I won’t let you do it, either.”

  He slammed the door behind him, shutting out the male who had picked up the pieces of Riker that had been broken after Terese died.

  NICOLE HAD NEVER enjoyed a shower as much as she was loving the one she was taking right now.

  For the first time in not just days but months, maybe even years, she was able to relax and just let the hot water sluice over her body, washing away dirt, blood, sweat, stress, and fear. All that remained was gratitude that she was alive and that Riker had gotten the son he’d been so desperate for.

  There was something tragic in watching Bastien, so timid and afraid, jump at everything as she and Riker had walked him to Grant’s lab. But the second he stepped inside, it was as if he had arrived home.

  Riker had clearly been rattled, so she’d promised to watch after Bastien while he met with Hunter. Mostly, all she’d had to do was stay with Bastien while he wandered around the lab, touching equipment like they were old friends.

  It had broken her heart.

  Food had arrived a short time later, and she’d left Bastien to eat while she and Grant went through the bag filled with files and meds, which included the drugs she needed to manage her medical condition. They’d also discussed both Bastien and her own experience at the Daedalus facility. Grant hadn’t appeared concerned that the vaccine she’d been given would fail, but then, to him, turning into a vampire could only be a good thing. Nevertheless, he’d taken blood, saliva, and cell samples for study.