Bond of Darkness (28 page)

"That's not an answer."

"Best one you're going to get."

She sniffed. He might look like an old-fashioned cowboy in his Western shirt, jeans, and fancy boots. But he didn't have to be just as laconic.

He suddenly stepped onto the pavement and watched a gleaming black and chrome motorcycle stop for the light. Steve immediately joined him, caught by his intensity.

"That's a fine Road Star," she commented.

"Top of the line." Ethan's gaze never wavered from the bike. The man and woman aboard were hidden behind motorcycle leathers and full face masks, and golden hair could be glimpsed beneath the woman's mask. She pressed herself against her companion, graceful as a cat, while he gently caressed her leg.

"Do we need to worry?" Steve asked.

The woman ran her hand gently over the man's chest, anticipating and yet also somehow amazed.

Steve swallowed, fighting down jealousy.

Ethan lifted his hand and the male rider waggled two fingers in response.

"Your friend." Steve turned away. What would it be like, to find such joy with a lover?

"My oldest hermano," Ethan said flatly. He lowered his voice. "The first vampiro my creador sired, as you would say, and truly my brother."

The light changed again, bidding the Road Star and its lovers good-bye.

A woman who was confident with a vampiro? If Steve could quickly pull off similar unspoken communication with Ethan, like a well-trained team, they could try another ambush. Setting up sentries and marching around cities wasn't going to work. They might be having fewer attacks but the ferocity was growing far worse.

"What if—" She stopped, tripping over her tongue, but tried again. "What if we tried another ambush? Instead of guarding hunting grounds and searching out likely 'nesting' places?"

"What are you talking about?" He stared at her.

She firmed her jaw and took a deep breath, prepared to argue for as long as she needed to.

He glanced around, obviously concluding they needed privacy, and guided her into an alley, finding a jagged corner between buildings.

"Go on." His tone was barely civilized.

"Suppose you and I worked together as a team? You know, where we've trained together so long each of us knows what the other will do before they do it?"

"Steve, there's no time for that much practice." His voice was much gentler. "I'll work with you and nobody else. Hell, I'm the only vampiro who'll do that much. But—"

Good, she had the first crack in his armor.

"Can't your vampiro biology help us?"

"Huh?"

"Speed things up so our bodies communicate better? Like something in the movies, maybe?" She waited hopefully. The alley was quiet, with the street far away like a distant curtain.

"Ah, Jesus." He pulled his hat off and slapped it against his leg, rubbing his hand over his mouth. "Movies—and books—lie, honey. Or at least they tell so little truth it might as well all be false."

"Explain it to me then." Something whimpered inside her heart. But she wasn't giving up, not that easily. "Well, skipping over the vampira option…"

For a moment, his eyes blazed with green fire and his fangs flashed. Her chest tightened, sending treacherous heat diving into her pussy. She gulped and hurried on. "Isn't there an option where I could remain a Ranger?"

His expression shifted into an icily polite mask and she found herself mourning the loss of her heated lover. "No, only becoming my hija or cónyuge—my life mate—would give me the access you're talking about."

"Hija?"

"If you became a vampira and I was your creador." He could have been discussing a library cataloguing system, except for the muscle throbbing in his cheek.

Drink blood for the rest of her life? Live in darkness? Give up the Rangers? Uh, no. "What about the cónyuge option?"

"The conyugal bond is one of complete trust and can exist between a vampiro and anyone—a prosaico, a compañero, or another vampiro." He swallowed hard.

A prosaico? Somebody like her? That sounded promising. She trusted Ethan a lot. "How can we make this happen?"

"We can't." He laughed but it provided no mirth. "The conyugal bond can never be forced. It usually takes a long time to form."

"Months?" Maybe if they worked at it?

"Years or decades." He tipped his hat back onto his head.

"Shit."

He nodded, the lines in his face deeper than she remembered. "It's extremely rare, Steve. There are two pairs of cónyuges living in Texas, which is astonishing."

"But surely if you like somebody enough…" She struggled, trying to find a path for developing this all-important bond.

"You must trust them completely if they are to communicate with you body and soul, on a level below speech or even telepathy. For example, since I became a vampiro, I've only slept with one lover who I trusted enough to sleep through their rising."

"Well, that's promising!" she encouraged.

"I was lucky with my creador. Not every vampiro can trust theirs."

Shit. She shivered at the ugly images that conjured up, if a vampiro had to obey somebody they didn't have complete confidence in.

He rubbed his hands up and down her arms. "It's okay, Steve. He's always done the best for me."

He'd misread her misgivings. Had there been incidents where his creador mistreated him?

"Your scars. The son of a bitch!" She spat and spun on her heel. If she could track Ethan down, she could find his boss, too.

"Hey, Steve, calm down." He caught her by the shoulders.

"How can you defend him?" She stared at him, her heart in her throat. Good lord, she'd seen many dysfunctional families and studied a lot more. But she'd never thought Ethan came from one.

"The whip scars are a constant reminder of the destructive fool I once was," he said flatly. "Like a tattoo, in some ways."

"Ethan!"

"He healed all my other wounds, Steve. Have you ever seen a gunshot scar on me? Or a knife scar?"

"Well, no, but still—"

"Nothing else would have reached me. Don't judge us and our world, Steve, until you've walked in it."

"A world of darkness."

"We keep you—and them"—he jerked his head toward the chattering tourists milling along the sidewalk—"safe, while we live in the night."

"Never to see the sun." She could barely force the words out.

"If a vampiro is lucky and survives two centuries, he can walk in twilight. Three centuries and he'll enjoy high noon again." He shrugged. "It's a pretty good deal."

Protecting people for centuries, at the risk of his own life? How much recreation did he ever get, especially when killers like Devol started running wild?

She shook her head, letting her hair conceal her blurry eyes before she was thought weak. Best to change the subject. This conversation was going nowhere and it was time to talk about something else. Surely their relief must have showed up by now, ready to keep Devol's men away from the Austin tourists.

"Hey, cowboy, care for a ride?" she crooned and managed a flirtatious wiggle of her hips.

He blinked and started to grin. "Why, ma'am, I thought you'd never ask." He swept her up against him and headed out of the alley at a trot, snarling at a traffic light that dared to delay them.

Steve chuckled and stuck her tongue out at him when he shot her a mock glare.

A lifetime with him might be worthwhile, however long.

VALENCIA, THE NEXT NIGHT

Ethan jumped down out of Steve's Expedition, controlling the urge to shake himself like a dog. The big truck's interior had suddenly shrunk with a woman at the wheel, even though she was a damn good driver.

Steve closed the hatch and met him, now openly carrying a Remington 11-87 shotgun in its tactical sling.

His eyebrows flew up. "Do you think we'll need that? This is a ghost town being turned into a high-class golf resort."

"Pattern's wrong here. Can't you feel it?"

Too many ripples were pattering over his skin for him to argue.

"Yeah. Just testing you, honey."

She sniffed and turned slowly, considering their surroundings. He grabbed his Benelli M2 tactical shotgun from the backseat and joined her.

"And you call me paranoid," she muttered.

"At least mine doesn't sound like a car crash going off next to your head," he pointed out.

She gave him the finger and went back to studying the quiet landscape. He concealed a smile but slipped an extra speed-loader for his Benelli into his belt. At least she was wearing full tactical gear, including her Kevlar vest and a well-equipped weapons belt.

"If you need to shoot, go for head or heart. Anything else will only give you a short delay."

"Head or heart? Do you mean I've got to immediately stop the brain or the blood flow in order to have a chance?" She didn't bother to look at him, the concept clearly being so foreign to her training as to be not worth talking about.

"Exactly." It was that simple and that serious.

His answer's flatness brought her swiveling around to test its truth in his eyes.

"Gotcha," she agreed, her face a little white as the implications sank in. He didn't blame her for quickly stepping out to study the old town.

Late in the nineteenth century, Valencia had been the center of a prosperous granite quarrying industry, high in the Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin. But when the railroad chose to bypass it in favor of carrying both cattle and granite, Valencia's citizens had speedily departed, leaving behind few residual signs of their presence.

Ethan and Steve stood on a bluff overlooking the river, babbling softly while it curved around the hill and dived toward the rickety old bridge. A gentle rise on the opposite side held the few marble placards and iron fences, which marked Boot Hill. Beyond that were acres of rolling pasture and cornfields, dotted with cedar and live oaks.

A few square blocks—of scattered buildings, tire tracks, and old gardens—showed where the residents had once lived. The town fathers had built for the ages, even in their simplest shelters, and the results proved it over a century later.

The top of the hill was crowned by Valencia's remaining glory, its courthouse and surrounding park. The park was a beautiful swath of green, bordered by elegant walks and guarded by a Confederate veteran, proudly carrying his rifle with its bronze bayonet over his shoulder.

The town had once prided itself on being the county seat and built a magnificent stone edifice to showcase its power—two full stories of exquisitely faced granite blocks plus an intricate mansard roof and an immense clock tower. Similarly sturdy construction had laughed at Hitler's best bombers for months in Malta. All of which was crowned by a golden ball which could be seen, some had said, in Austin.

Carved owls, the symbol of wisdom, hovered over the four entrances, built at every point of the compass. Balconies jutted out above them, the perfect focal point for political speech making. The dedication ceremony had taken eight hours, one of the many times Ethan had been glad he could no longer go out in daylight.

"How did you find it?" he asked more quietly, listening hard with more than his ears. Something or someone was watching them.

She shot a quick glance at him and didn't answer immediately. He didn't push her.

"I put my finger on the map, which showed possible targets. This place insisted that we come," she said slowly.

"Then we had to be here," he agreed promptly.

"You don't think I'm insane?"

"For using more than your eyes? Hardly."

"Thank you."

Companionable silence fell.

"Is there a balcony around the edge of the roof, too?" Steve asked, eyeing the great building.

"Yup. Be careful, though—the railing is no more than a foot high."

"Until they restore that, too."

"They'll probably fix the windows first," Ethan pointed out. At least one pane was broken in every window, while some of them were completely missing. The fifteen-foot-tall windows on the second floor had been magnificent in their day, when all the chandeliers were lit. He'd be glad to see them brought back to their old glory. "Who bought this?"

"El Gallinazo's holding company did, two weeks ago. Our analysts have been working to track his assets, especially the more recent acquisitions."

Ethan frowned, remembering Luis's last report. "One of the president's cronies filed the paperwork to turn this into a golf resort. Isn't the courthouse supposed to become the clubhouse?"

"Correct. But that went through a year ago, when they cleaned out the unsafe buildings and designed a championship quality course. Now they're in the first development phase."

"During which the courthouse is supposed to be readied for human occupancy." They started walking toward it.

"At least enough to permit entrance into it," she agreed, half-turning to scan the horizon, her shotgun always at the ready.

"You probably wouldn't notice a change in ownership, given all the permits and other paperwork going through."

He grunted, unable to argue with her logic. Still—"But there's nothing here. We've already searched the quarries."

"Are you sure?" She frowned, considering the half-ruined buildings. "All of them? And the town?"

"Of course. Checked with the ghosts, too." Who have just gone back to sleep in Boot Hill.

"You're joking, right?" She gaped at him.

"Hardly." His mouth twisted. "When you become a vampiro, all your senses increase, including your psychic ones. For example, my best friend as a child was a ghost but he was the only one I could hear. Now I can speak to any ghost who wants to talk to me."

"That must be fun." Oddly enough, she didn't seem to completely disbelieve him.

"We've had some interesting conversations," he admitted. Which haven't told me a damn thing about where Devol's bandolerismos are!

"I'll bet."

He stopped in front of the entrance. "Does the town still seem edgy to you?"

"Yes, but the threat isn't imminent." She blew out a breath and rotated slowly, then let her sling take her shotgun's weight. "Let's go upstairs and look around. Those balconies and that clock tower would make great dummy sniper hides."