Born to Bite (20 page)

“He’s fine. He’s sleeping,” Leigh assured her quickly and then hesitated before asking, “You don’t remember the fire?”

“What fire?” she asked blankly.

“She slept right through it all,” Leigh marveled, glancing to Lucian with amazement.

“She was unconscious. They’d just had sex,” he pointed out dryly.

“Yes, but I didn’t realize we were completely knocked out afterward. I always thought it was just a faint or something.”

“So did I,” Bricker said quietly, and then shook his head and muttered. “God, they’re lucky Armand woke up.”

Lucian grunted, and glanced to Eshe. She peered back silently, waiting. Her mind was a mass of questions but she didn’t ask any of them. She’d been asking questions since opening her eyes and they hadn’t answered any of them yet. She’d learned more by simply listening to them talk to each other than from anything they’d actually said to her. She was apparently under the influence of drugs at the moment and there had been a fire, she
thought,
in the shed where she and Armand had taken shelter from the storm. From what they’d said, Armand had woken and gotten them out, but guessing by the fact that she was flat on her back in bed and he was apparently in his own bed, no doubt in the same state, they’d both been injured and were healing.

“That’s about the long and short of it,” Lucian said, still rooting around inside her head. “He got you out, but then apparently passed out again. Bricker went looking for the two of you at dawn and found you lying out in the sunshine. He called me, brought you both inside, and I couldn’t get away right away so sent Anders down with IVs, blood, and drugs to keep you both under until I could get here.”

“Which was a good thing since Armand woke up right after Anders got here and we got the IVs in place,” Bricker muttered.

Eshe’s head shifted on the pillow as she looked for the IV. Spotting it and seeing the steady but slow drip of blood seeping out of the bag into the IV tube, she grimaced. The nanos’ ability to heal would be just as slow as the speed with which they were getting the blood they needed to make the repairs. It would have been faster had they slapped the bags to her fangs and let her body soak in what it needed. She’d probably be on her feet and walking around by now if they had.

“Your fangs wouldn’t come down,” Lucian informed her. “We think your nostrils were damaged breathing in the hot, smoky air. The smell of blood didn’t bring on your fangs. The IV was the best Bricker could do until you awoke.”

“I’m awake now,” she muttered, and boy was she. Drugs didn’t work long on immortals and hers were apparently starting to wear off. Her damaged nerve endings were coming back to life with a vengeance.

“Get her several bags,” Lucian ordered at once. “Her fangs should produce themselves the moment she sees the blood now that her eyes are open.”

When Anders nodded and headed for the door, Lucian glanced to Bricker. “Go check on Armand. He may be coming around now too if you gave them the drug at the same time.”

“What do I tell him if he’s awake?” Bricker asked, moving toward the door now as well.

Lucian’s mouth tightened. “Nothing. Just put him under again. I want to talk to you and Eshe before I decide what to do about him.”

“What do you mean, what to do about him?” Leigh asked with a frown, and Eshe nodded in her bed. She was wondering the same thing herself and relieved she didn’t have to ask the question now that the drugs were wearing off.

Lucian scowled briefly. He did hate explaining himself, Eshe knew. But apparently would do so when Leigh asked a question because after a pause he ran a hand through his hair and said, “I’ve been trying to keep Armand from knowing what was going on here. About the investigation, I mean.”

“Why?” Leigh asked with surprise, and Eshe could have kissed her for it. It saved her doing more damage to a throat she could now feel was in bad shape.

Besides, it was obvious the woman was actually the only one he’d bother to answer, Eshe decided as Lucian sat down in a chair beside the bed and actually began to speak, stringing words together to make whole sentences and sentences together to make what was from him a long speech as he said, “Armand was an active member of the family before Rosamund’s death. He still kept to himself quite a bit, but he would visit the boys, and join family functions and so on. After Rosamund’s death, however, he dumped Jeanne Louise on Marguerite’s door and shut everyone out. I thought he just needed time to heal and left him alone. I would have eventually got around to kicking his ass and getting him back into the family given another century or so, but after Nicholas turned himself in and we learned that Annie had been looking into Armand’s wives’ deaths when she’d died herself, I began to wonder.”

“If he’d killed them?” Eshe growled, and immediately regretted speaking. Damn, she must have been swallowing flames for her throat to be so sore, she thought with a sigh.

“Don’t talk,” Lucian snapped, and then turned to Leigh and said, “I didn’t really think he would have killed his own life mate. Or Althea and Rosamund, for that matter, but it was a possibility that had to be investigated. What I really began to suspect was that he’d shut himself off from the family in an effort to keep everyone safe. That perhaps he himself suspected with Rosamund that it was just one accident too many, and something besides bad luck was behind the deaths of his wives.”

“But it was only his wives who have died,” Leigh pointed out. “Why would he think anyone else might be in peril?”

“If they were murdered, as it’s looking, it could have been because they were his wives, but they were also the females in his life that he cared for. You have to remember that Althea and Rosamund weren’t life mates, just females he held affection for.”

“You think he was worried for Jeanne Louise,” Leigh realized with dismay. “That he feared without a wife to concentrate on the killer might have harmed her.”

“It was a possibility,” Lucian murmured.

“Apparently a good possibility, since it’s looking more and more like Annie, another female in his close family, was murdered as well,” Leigh murmured, and then frowned and pointed out, “But he never met her, did he? I thought they said he refused to come to the wedding or allow them to visit.”

“Yes,” Lucian said dryly. “But if Annie was asking family members about the murders, I doubt she stopped there. Nicholas was away a lot working for me. She could have driven down here to speak to him.”

“Did you ask him?”

Lucian nodded. “He said he’d never met her and I can’t read him so couldn’t tell if that was true or not.”

“You think he’d lie to you?” Leigh asked with surprise.

“Well, I only asked the question in passing. I couldn’t very well tell him why I was asking or explain that it was important.”

“Why not?” Leigh asked, and Eshe was grateful for being saved the bother herself.

“Because he can’t know Nicholas is locked up in the enforcer house. He’d do something stupid. And then there’s Eshe here. I only got her here under the pretext that I needed a safe house for her. I’m pretty sure he’s thinking he will only give himself this short time with her and after the two weeks I told him she’d be here are up, he will send her away for her own safety. If he knew she was here actively looking for whoever was behind all these deaths, he’d have sent her away at once.”

“He wouldn’t send Eshe away,” Leigh protested quickly, and Eshe was starting to think the woman was reading her mind and asking the questions and saying the things she wanted to say herself as Leigh added, “They’re life mates. You don’t send life mates away.”

Lucian turned to Eshe and arched an eyebrow. “Has he spoken about a future with you, or what the two of you will do after the two weeks is up?”

Eshe’s eyes slowly widened as she realized that no, he hadn’t. In fact, she recalled the time he’d mentioned her leaving in two weeks, and her upset about it at the time. But she’d thought that was just a slip or something.

Lucian grunted and nodded as he read the answer from her. “That’s why I wouldn’t let you tell him the real reason you were here when you called me the other night; he’d have hustled you into his pickup and driven you straight to my doorstep in Toronto. No doubt he then would have bought a new farm and kept the address to himself so you couldn’t find him again. Or maybe even moved to Europe or something to try to keep you safe. He’s already lost one life mate. I guarantee he won’t risk jeopardizing another.”

Why, the dirty bastard
, Eshe thought with dismay. Lucian was right. Armand thought he could send her away after the two weeks were up like some cheap vacation romance.
Well
, she thought grimly,
that man had another think coming
.

The bedroom door opened then and Eshe was relieved to see Anders returning with half a dozen bags of blood. While the IV bag hadn’t done it when she’d spotted it, the sight of these bags that she knew were meant for her to drink were enough to bring on her teeth. She ground her teeth against the pain she was experiencing and managed to lift herself up somewhat, then simply opened her mouth. Lucian stepped out of the way as Anders approached, but it was Leigh who took one of the bags from him and turned to slap it to Eshe’s mouth.

“Sorry,” she murmured as Eshe winced at the sting of the bag against her damaged face, but Eshe couldn’t respond to tell her it was all right, so hoped she read it from her mind as she let her teeth do their work.

“Are you all right?” Leigh asked once the bag was empty and she pulled it from her teeth for her.

Eshe merely grunted and gestured for her to bring on the next bag. It was Lucian who took another bag from Anders, handed it over, and said, “Don’t stop. Feed them to her one right after another.” He then took the other bags from Anders and said, “Go get the drugs I sent down with you. As soon as she’s had the last bag, you’ll need to put her out.”

“Why?” Leigh asked with surprise as she slapped the second bag to Eshe’s mouth.

“She’s taken enough damage that this is going to be almost as bad as a turn,” he explained grimly. “Better she doesn’t stay awake for it.”

Leigh looked horrified at the possibility, but Eshe wasn’t surprised. She’d lived a long time. This was hardly the first time she’d been hurt. The worse the damage, the worse the healing was, and she could already feel her body beginning to buzz as the nanos set to work. Right now it felt like she was being stung by a million bees that had somehow gotten into her veins, but by the last bag she suspected it would feel like she was being eaten alive from the inside out. However, she needed to heal. She needed to get back on her feet and find whoever had set that shed on fire. She was
not
going to be pushed from Armand’s life for her own good, and she wasn’t risking his getting killed in an attempt on her life as had apparently almost happened with this fire. But she suspected she was going to have a fight on her hands when Armand woke up.

Eshe needed to heal quickly and regain her strength to win that battle. She was Armand’s life mate, and he’d better get used to it because she wasn’t going anywhere.

Eleven

The sound of the door opening stirred Armand
from sleep. Blinking his eyes open, he peered toward it, a relieved smile claiming his lips when he saw Eshe entering. She wore jeans and one of the new T-shirts they’d purchased on their shopping expedition. She looked good. Better than good, she looked like nothing had ever happened.

His smile faded the moment the next person walked in though, and Armand scowled at his brother with disgust. “Get out, Lucian. I don’t want to talk to you.”

Eshe’s eyebrows rose, her head swiveling to peer at the man behind her and then back to Armand in question, and he shifted restlessly on the bed, and then explained, “He had me drugged.”

“It was so you’d sleep through the healing,” Lucian said with a shrug, moving out of the way as Leigh, Bricker, and Anders followed him into the room.

It was getting damned crowded in his room, Armand thought with disgust, but said, “It wasn’t for healing the last time. The healing was mostly done by then.”

“Mostly,” he agreed. “But Eshe’s wasn’t and you were trying to get up and go to her.”

“She was screaming her head off,” he pointed out grimly. “You’re damned right I was going to her. Wouldn’t you have gone to Leigh if the situation had been reversed?”

“Of course,” Lucian said calmly. “That’s why I had Anders drug you again. You needed your rest and there was nothing you could have done for her.”

Armand snorted with disgust. “God, you are such an arrogant ass.”

“I try,” Lucian said with unconcern, ushering Leigh to the chair beside his bed as Eshe moved toward the bed itself.

Armand scowled at his brother for another moment and then glanced to Eshe as she settled on the side of the bed. He managed a smile for her, and asked, “How are you?”

“Alive. Thanks to you,” she murmured, and leaned forward to kiss him, then whispered, “Thank you.”

Armand sighed unhappily, knowing that if he hadn’t bitten her the last time they’d made love, both of them probably would have woken sooner. In effect, he’d damned near killed them with that stunt. Forcing a smile for her benefit, he squeezed her hand when she slid it into his, and then glanced to the others in his room. “So what’s all this about?”

“Time to talk,” Lucian announced quietly.

Armand grimaced at the words. He’d hoped to have a moment alone with Eshe before this conversation, but supposed it was better just to get it done and over with. Kind of like ripping a bandage off in one swoop and suffering a quick sharp pain, rather than suffering the long, drawn-out effort of feeling each little pull of hair as it was slowly worked off.

“Fine,” he said at last. “Obviously Leonius II has found out where Eshe is and she needs to be moved to a safer location.”

The response to that was decidedly strange. Everyone in the room turned to Lucian, deferring to him…except Eshe. She was peering down at their entwined hands, but she was obviously attuned to Lucian, as were the others. The moment he started to speak, she cut him off by saying, “There is no Leonius to have to hide me from.”