Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (19 page)

The thought of Sarah made his heart pound, and he sprinted out the door. He needed to be by her, to be with her and to make sure she was okay. He needed to run his hands over her and make sure she hadn’t been nicked, or gashed, or hit with some stray bullet. They needed to get back to the house so he could put her to bed and tell her everything was going to be all right.

But first things first. His fist had a date with Achan’s face.

“Ow, damn. I knew you were gonna hit me, but did you have to do it so hard?”

Taris stared at Achan for a minute before cracking a smile and pulling him in for a huge hug.

“The diversion was great, but next time, try to keep your tongue out of her mouth.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Achan pulled away and ran around to the driver’s side, his booted foot on the gas before Taris was even completely in the seat.

“Everyone okay?” Taris turned in his seat to survey the passengers. “Judah, how’s your arm?”

“Shit, I forgot about that,” he muttered. One by one, Judah began pulling knives out of his Kevlar vest. He let them hit the floorboard. The straps that latched the Kevlar around his midsection clanked together while he carefully unbuckled them. When the vest was completely loose, he pulled the heavy piece over his head, the pain in his shoulder causing him to grit his teeth. “Two in the same spot in the same evening. I guess Murphy’s Law made me its bitch tonight.”

Try as he may, Judah couldn’t manage to lift his arm enough to take off his shirt without splitting the wounds open again.

“Hope you don’t freak out easy,” Judah said as he shifted his eyes to look in the seat behind him. Sarah was cradling Nick’s passed-out head. “That’s probably for the best right now,” he muttered as he opened his mouth and elongated his fangs. In one quick motion, he twisted his head and sank his teeth into the bloody fabric, pulling it off in shreds. Once all of the matted cotton was out of the way, Judah flipped on the dome light and surveyed the wound. His initial bullet graze from earlier that night seemed to have been a ready-made target. The skin of his shoulder was now a demilitarized zone, the blood beginning to congeal around a quarter-sized wound.

“Damn it!”

“No healing that one,” Zillah said.

“No, I suppose not.” Judah licked his thumb and ran it over the edges of the hole in his shoulder. He felt a tingle as the skin tried to knit itself together. If he paid too much attention to it, he would focus on the pain again, and that was something he didn’t want to do at the moment. He needed to feed. He could feel the ache beginning to well up in his stomach. The subtle spasms in his arms alerted him to the fact that his veins were running dry. He had been able to shrug off the first hit. This one was a completely different story.

“I know who that man was, but who was that woman?”

Rhiannon turned around to look at Sarah. She had removed her overcoat and managed to wrap it around the leaking wound on Nick’s ear.
Maybe she’s afraid of the blood
. But after taking a deep inhale, her eyes closed, Rhiannon knew it wasn’t the fact he was bleeding that Sarah was afraid of. It was that he was bleeding in a vehicle full of vampires.

She was about to answer Sarah’s question but was cut off before she drew in the first breath.

“A ghost from youthful indiscretions past,” Taris said curtly.

“Okay, I have had just about enough of your cryptic bullshit, all of you!” Sarah met his eyes in the mirror. “I know so much about this whole situation and yet so little, and unlike you assholes, I don’t have centuries to spend figuring out what the hell you mean when you say shit like that. So one of you, start talking. Now!”

We will talk when we get to the house. I promise
.

Taris’ voice swirled around in her head. She’d forgotten that he could do that, and the intrusion jarred her a bit. She compensated for the uneasiness by stroking Nick’s hand.

Will he be okay?

“I don’t know,” Sarah whispered

Zillah turned around to face Sarah. “Don’t know what?”

“Oh,” she cleared her throat. “Nothing, I was just thinking.”

Zillah nodded and turned her attention back toward the front of the van.

When we have you both safe, I will tell you everything. Just please, be patient. Trust me
.

“Okay,” she muttered.

On impulse, Taris flipped the visor back down and stared at Sarah. Her gaze was fixed on the world outside of the van. The subtle breeze coming through the slightly open window played with her hair, gently letting it lick around her face. With the night surrounding her, in her soft blue silk and her chocolate curls, she looked like a dream.

“You can stop fighting it anytime, you know,” Achan whispered over to Taris.

“I don’t plan on doing it again. It’s just, this was important.”

Achan laughed just loud enough for Taris to hear. “That’s not what I meant, brother, and you know it.”

Taris looked in the mirror at Sarah one more time before flipping it back up. “I can’t.”

“Let me tell you something. Man to man. I know you’ve had your rough go of things. Hell, there isn’t a one of us who hasn’t met with heartache before, and you well know that, but Taris, you’ve got to let yourself feel something sometime. It’s obvious you want her. And she wants you, too, so you should just go for it.”

“I can’t let her get distracted, and I can’t let her distract me.” Taris began to fumble with the Kevlar, fingering one of the buckles at the front. “We both have too much work to do.”

“So work together, man. Work together.” Achan smiled at him. “There are a few things in this life I can actually be an expert on. Star Wars, reality television, sarcasm, and the treacherous art of love. I know it when I see it, brother, and she makes you sweat like a hooker in church. Don’t fight it. Let it happen.”

Taris stared at him for a brief moment and then reared back his fist, sending it into the meat of Achan’s shoulder. The remaining occupants of the van were so battle worn that they didn’t even look up.

“Geez, man! Ease up on the kisses, will ya!”

They both smirked and rode the rest of the way home in silence. As much as Taris didn’t want to admit it, it was pointless for him to fight his need for Sarah anymore. The internal war he had waged with himself since he caught the first hint of her scent was a useless endeavor. He’d tried his best to be rude and pushy and to hold her at arm’s length, when all he really wanted to do was pull her closer to him and never let her go. Why he felt that way, he wasn’t sure, but he knew that if he didn’t earn her respect and her trust, his heart would be crushed. He wasn’t about to admit that he was beginning to fall for her, but he wanted her bad enough that he was willing to set aside over two hundred years of stoic ambivalence to potentially see where it could take him.

Once they were back at the house and she’d had time to get comfortable, he would set her down and talk to her. Then, things would be different.

* * *

The inside of the house was dead quiet. Considering the fact that it was now technically early morning, it didn’t surprise Taris that Kalin was already in bed, which completely and totally sucked because he was going to have to sew up Nick himself, which meant it would take longer for him to get back to Sarah, which meant their looming heart-to-heart would be put off even longer. Damn.

It was probably better he didn’t wake Kalin for this. If ever there was a sensitive person on the planet, it was she. The minute she came into contact with Nick, she would instantly play therapist, trying to help him work through his issues, letting him know that life, no matter how bad it got, was worth living. Better off not letting them meet.

“I am going to grab a quick shower,” Taris said to Nick. He pointed to the wet bar. “You can hang in there. The bar is stocked, and the remote for the wide-screen is on the table. It’s pretty easy to operate. Just make yourself at home, and I’ll fix your ear in a minute.”

Nick’s eyes darted up from the floor and fixed on Taris. “
You’re
going to fix my ear? You?”

Taris thrust his hands into the pockets of his leathers. “Well, yeah, my sister is sleeping right now, so I’m about the closest thing you’re going to get to a good deal.”

Nick surveyed him again. Surely this couldn’t be the same guy who, just an hour or so ago, managed to take a guy’s head off with just his forearm. Where did someone learn a skill like that? Or better yet, where did one have a weapon like that made without drawing attention from the damned Feds? Besides the fact that he was apparently someone who had no qualms about systematic decapitation—and apparently neither did any of his comrades—he could feel tension between them. This guy was throwing off man vibes like a full-blast furnace threw off heat.

“Sarah told you to be nice to me, didn’t she?”

“Not in so many words.”

Nick smiled at him. “I get it, and honestly, you have no worries. She’s like my sister. Never touched her.”

“Good to know,” Taris said. “Have a drink. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Thanks,” Nick said. He was about to step into the bar before he stopped Taris. “Hey, um, I know this seems a little relaxed considering the circumstances, you know, with all the bodies and the gunfire and that weird drag queen guy in my house, but, um, how in the name of fuck did Sarah end up knowing you guys?”

“All in due time, pal. Now let me shower.”

After the bar room doors were shut, Taris plopped down into a chair in the foyer and began the long, arduous process of removing his boots. He struggled with the first one and then very gently removed the other, after which he pulled the sock off his right foot. He had to be careful with the left one because it was caked with dried blood and stuck to his foot. It pulled at his skin as he rolled the fabric down inch by inch until he reached the spot where his own damned knife had been stuck into his foot.

“Harpy,” he muttered as he made an executive decision and ripped the sock away. It pulled off whatever scab had begun to form and it began to bleed again.

“Damn it.” He rose and made a mad dash for his room. He didn’t need blood soaking into the hardwood. He’d have enough of a hard time explaining to Kalin about why he was limping the next day. As quietly as he could, he opened his bedroom door and flipped on the light.

And he froze.

“What the fuck?”

The center of his floor had been removed. It looked as if someone had cut a perfect square out of the marble tile at the foot of his bed. There was no more pink stain, only the tan-colored underlying subfloor.

“How in the hell did…”

Suddenly, his body jerked, and without thought or care to the fact that he was trailing blood on the floor, he took off down the hallway at a dead run. He stopped with a jolt just outside Kalin’s door.

Lying in a neat pile outside the door was a bolt of amber-colored silk fabric, on top of which lay a large medallion. Taris could barely pick it up, his hands were shaking so badly. It was Kalin’s. They were part of the funeral rites of the vampire race, given to them when they chose to join their ancestors in becoming one of the immortal lines of their family.

“Kalin!” He reached to turn the doorknob, but it was locked. Adrenaline pumped through him, and he backed away from the oak-paneled monster just enough to get a good start. With all of his might, Taris ran at the door and busted it clean out of its frame. The wood went crashing to the hardwood floor of the room’s interior, and with shaky fingers, he flipped on the light.

Kalin’s body was sprawled out across her bed. She was dressed in the funerary white muslin, and she smelled of lilacs, her favorite flower. By her feet was the box of flower petals that was supposed to be laid underneath her during her funeral. Both of her wrists had been sliced open down to the bone. She was white as a sheet. Surrounding her ink-black hair and her white skin was a pool of dark crimson.

“Oh, fuck me! Kalin!” Taris ran over to her. Underneath his fingers, he could feel the faint traces of a thready pulse. She wasn’t dead yet, but she would be very soon.

Frantically, he began smacking at her face. “Come on, girlie. Time to get up. You have to get up. You can’t do this to me, Kalin. You can’t. Come on. Get up, damn it. Get up!”

He lifted her off the bed. “Okay, honey. Time to get you better. Let’s go.”

Taris’ shuffled across the floor holding Kalin’s body and he kicked open the den door with his bloody foot.

“What the hell!”

Nick looked up from the bottle that he’d made friends with and saw Taris carrying the body of a woman into the room. She looked like a horror movie come to life. Her black hair, white skin, and the blood all over her…it was very Bela Lugosi vampire. He thought it was a joke at first, until Taris flopped her down onto the couch beside him. It was then that he got a good look at the thick gashes in her wrists.

“What did you do?”

“Give me your wrist.”

Nick sat stone still for a minute, staring at the woman. “What?”

Taris spun a white blade out of his back pocket and grabbed Nick’s arm. “I don’t have time for games. Now give me your damned wrist.”

Nick fought him, but for only a minute before he heard a menacing noise rip through the air. It sounded like a growl, and since he was still entranced by the sight of the woman next to him, he didn’t see where it was coming from. He looked up when he heard it directly in front of him, and his body locked. Taris’ face was so close to him that he could feel his hot breath on his face. His mouth was wide open, and an enormous pair of elongated fangs stared back at him.

“Open your vein and save my sister.”

“But I’m…”

“I don’t give a fuck! Open your vein, or I tear your throat out and open it for you!”

Nick nodded. It was all he could do. He stopped struggling with Taris and held his arm still. As quick as a flash, Taris pushed the tip of the sharp knife into the throbbing blue vein of his wrist and pulled it about an inch lengthwise toward Nick’s elbow. It burned like fire, but he wasn’t about to complain. Taris pulled Nick’s arm down to Kalin’s mouth and with two fingers, he pried her lips apart.