Chaos and Moonlight (Order of the Nines Book 1) (21 page)

“I will tell you everything, Sarah. Anything and everything you want to know.” He licked his lips and then brought them down to meet hers, ever so softly. “I need to shower first, and then whatever you ask of me, it is yours.”

He gently turned her and walked her to the door. Once in the bedroom, he swept her up into his arms and carefully placed her in bed, covering her to the chin with the warm goose down.

Sarah couldn’t speak. She simply nodded and watched him grab the shirt at the center of his back and swiftly pull it over his head as he walked to the bathroom. It was then she noticed that in addition to the star tattoo between his shoulder blades, he had three linear scars stretched diagonally from one side of his back to the other. It made her heart sink. He was covered with scars. His forearm, his back. Even the strange scar she’d noticed behind his ear, all of them had a story to tell. And she wanted to hear them.

* * *

“Judah, buddy, where you headed?”

Judah stopped at the door, duffel bag in hand. He turned to see Achan leaning against the railing of the stairway landing.

“Cut off camo shorts and a T-shirt aren’t exactly high fashion,” Judah smirked, staring up at Achan who was in what he referred to as his “lounge attire.” To Achan, this loosely translated to offensive novelty shirts and pants that would have been better used as rags for washing cars.

“Don’t deflect. It makes you seem sneaky and conniving,” Achan shot back with a smile as he bounded down the stairs two at a time. “Seriously, where you going? You need to patch your shoulder up.”

“Planning on it,” Judah said as he turned the knob and pulled the door open. “I can deal with the scars, but my vascular system is a bit dry.”

“Still doesn’t explain the bag.”

The moment Judah’s eyes met his, Achan knew where he was going and what he was doing. It was an unspoken understanding between them, something that they never talked about. None of the others knew what Judah did. They didn’t need to. Rhiannon, it would just terrify, and she would hover over him like a Freudian mother hen, and Zillah… Well, Zillah, in her current state of mind, would probably kill him.

“You know you don’t have to keep this up, Jude. This could all be solved with a sit-down and a heart-to-heart.”

“No, it can’t, and you know it. It’s gone on this long, and it hasn’t killed anyone. What makes you think it’s going to change now?”

“Judah, all I’m saying is that maybe you need to rethink this whole silence deal.”

“Don’t piss on my coping mechanisms, okay?”

Judah flung open the door and slammed it shut before Achan could say another word to him. All he could do was shake his head and get comfortable. He’d kept this vigil for Judah before. Many times. Judah was always an emotional nightmare when he came back from something like this, and when he dragged himself in tomorrow morning, he would be all the more worse for wear.

Achan sucked in a deep breath and walked into the Man Room. He retrieved the old, and now full, bottle of whisky that was sitting on the sideboard.

“Well, looks like it’s just you, me, and
The Empire Strikes Back
,” he said to the bottle as he made his way out of the room and up the stairs. Once on the landing, he cast another glance at the door, hoping that Judah would come walking back through it with a different plan of attack. No such luck.

* * *

Sarah had to force her hands to stop fidgeting. She was nervous. What she had to be nervous about was anyone’s guess, really, but she couldn’t stop her fingers from toying with the pattern on the comforter while she listened to the water hit the floor in the shower stall. She didn’t know if it was the revelation to come that had her completely on edge or if it was the fact that Taris was just a few feet away from her with zero clothes on.

It was pointless trying to hide her attraction to him anymore. There were no barriers—well, save for a huge one: the whole reason he’d saved her in the first place. But aside from that, she had no wall to hide behind. Everyone had seen it. From Judah, to Rhiannon, to the always-observant Nick, who’d whispered “He wants you” during one of his brief moments of lucidity while in the back of the van.

The intimate touches between them had been blatant, and a blind man would have been able to see the sparks that flew when they were in a room together.

“Animal attraction,” she muttered to herself. “It’s just plain and simple: animal attraction. You see it all the time. People want each other, but they know it’s a mistake. I want him, he wants me, that doesn’t mean anything has to happen. I should just do the job and be done with it. That’s it.”

“What’s it?”

She’d been talking to herself out loud. Holy shit! How much had he heard? She sucked in a deep breath and tried to play it off, but any semblance of speech was abruptly cut off when she looked up at him.

Taris’ large frame leaned against the doorway, the width of his shoulders taking up almost the entire space. His chest was bare and smooth, and his defined abs tapered down to a set of narrow hips that were gloriously hugged by the frayed waistband of a pair of faded jeans. He was drying his hair with a towel, and she’d never really noticed how gorgeous his hair was before. In the light of the bathroom, it showed subtle glints of gold and crimson red mixed in with deep, dark brown. The way the shoulder-length shag fell around his face brought out his amber eyes and highlighted his rugged bone structure.

“Sorry,” Sarah cleared her throat as she watched him aimlessly rub the towel over his wet hair. “I was just talking to myself about the, um, the project tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Taris said as he tossed the towel onto the bathroom floor. “Sorry I took so long. I had to patch up the foot.”

Sarah looked down at the top of his bare foot, which had been almost split in two. Where once there was a raw gash, there was now just a pink mark. An image popped into her head, and she pursed her lips, trying hard not to laugh aloud.

“What?” Taris cocked an eyebrow and made his way to the bed. “Why are you laughing?”

“You didn’t lick your own foot, did you?”

“No, I didn’t lick my own foot. I used the tried-and-true tongue-on-the-rag routine.”

He couldn’t help but let a laugh slip out when he thought about it. It was a ridiculous idea, the thought of him sitting in the bathtub, pretzeling his leg so he could lick the top of his own foot.

“Can a person even do that?” he asked, not even trying to fight the grin.

“I’d like to see you try it,” Sarah giggled back.

“Yeah right,” he laughed even harder. “I’d dislocate my back or break a hip or something.”

Sarah’s face instantly sobered, and she stared him dead in the eyes. “I can see why breaking your hip would be a concern. I mean, you are really old.” The smartass comment sent them both into another chorus of laughter. It dawned on her that it was the first time she’d actually seen him smile. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh, too, and the echo of it was beautiful. It put her completely at ease. It didn’t negate the warm tingle she’d had when she saw him in the doorway, wearing nothing but old jeans and a smile, but it did serve as a bit of a sobering device.

Taris chuckled again and cleared his throat, watching the smile fade from her face. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Almost out of habit, he ran his tongue over the sharp fang under his lip.

“I don’t know where to start,” he spit out suddenly. It caught them both off guard and he struggled to recover. “I mean, I don’t know what you want me to say first. It’s a very long story with so many twists that I don’t know in what order I should tell them to you.”

Sarah licked her lips and leaned forward, placing a soft hand on his. “Just start from the beginning, I guess. And you don’t have to tell me everything, Taris. Just tell me what I need to know.”

“Well, you need to know everything.” He paused. “I
want
you to know everything.”

Taris sucked in another deep breath. He’d spent the better part of half an hour underneath a blazing-hot shower trying to come up with just the right words. There was so much to tell her, and it wasn’t like she had an eternity to sit there and listen to him. How on earth was he going to get her up to speed with the last two hundred plus years in just a matter of minutes? Both she and Nick had been exceptionally gracious about accepting the existence of vampires—although he had a slightly underhanded approach to forcing her belief—so maybe she would take it all in stride. She already knew the ending to this story.
She
was the ending.

But Taris couldn’t help but worry about how she’d react when he got to the middle of it.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered. He took her hands in his and looked down at them before he started to speak.

“It was about three hundred fifty years ago that we first noticed the problems. There had been a lot of mixing over the centuries and…”

“Wait, mixing?”

“Yeah, um, human and vampire. Mixing. It got to the point where there were so few of us left who were pure-blooded. They were either killed or chose to die.”

“Okay, hold the phone,” Sarah squeezed his hand and leaned forward. “
Chose
to die?”

Taris’ lip lifted in a half smile. “Who’s telling the story?” Sarah nodded and leaned back and he continued.

“Our genetic makeup is so similar to yours and yet so different. Our cells don’t really die unless they are forced to do so. So, like I said, either we are killed or we can choose not to feed, which will lead to our deaths.

“My father was considered an elder. He was kind of like a makeshift king or a president, I guess. Our people went to him for wisdom and guidance and did that whole sage-in-the-woods thing. But when my mother was killed about three hundred years ago, my father lost the will to live. He felt it was his time to go, and he was confident that he was leaving a legacy to be proud of. He had Kalin, Bane, and me.”

“But Bane went bad,” Sarah whispered.

Taris squeezed her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “I’m getting to that. You see, since the beginning of time, we have existed. The “why” of it is still as much of a mystery as man’s existence. We don’t know. But we’ve shared this planet with every other creature created by God, and we’ve been relatively peaceful about it. Most of us feed without harm, and we try to contribute as much as we can. But there have always been people who knew we existed and who thought us to be evil, even though we aren’t, and they made it their mission to destroy us. Sad thing is that there are humans and vampires alike who have this mindset. It wasn’t until about four hundred years or so ago that we really saw the desperate need for a kind of military force. The internal struggles with what you would call good and bad vampires were getting ridiculous, not to mention the whole slayer BS. So, naturally, a protective group was formed to keep the vampire race safe from those who would kill us. You with me so far?”

Sarah nodded quickly, her eyes wide with anticipation. She pulled one hand away and rested her elbow on the knee that was peeking out from under the blanket.

“Okay,” Taris continued. “So this group was called The Nines for many reasons, but mainly because when we formed it, there were only nine of us.”

“Us?” Sarah narrowed her eyes.

“Yeah. Us.” Taris let go of her remaining free hand and shifted his body so she could see his back. He pointed to the star between his shoulder blades, and she took a good look at it. It had nine points. “I wasn’t always stuck in the house, you know,” he muttered as he turned back around to face her. “There was a time when I was their leader. And I was good at what I did. My mom always hated it, but my father could not have been more proud. He was the one who did my tattoos.” Taris pointed to his upper arm. “We’re marked with our family lineage so we can be identified should something happen. The star is how we find one another. See the color?” Taris shifted just enough to show her. “The tattoos are done with the other family members’ blood. We can tell when we are close because we are bonded until death. We can hone in on someone up to five miles away if the bond is strong enough.”

Sarah thought about the tattoos on Judah and Rhiannon and remembered that Taris had been able to detect Bane and Morrigan in the house.

Taris nodded. “Although if you ask the few vampires who are left, they will tell you we don’t exist. Sorry, that
they
don’t exist. It was thought that The Nines were disbanded about two hundred years ago, and up until now, it was safer that way. And as you can tell, there aren’t nine of us now. Hell, I’m not even active anymore.”

“Why not? With the way you fight!” Sarah didn’t realize her cheeks were beginning to flush. “I saw you in that house, when you saved Nick. That was like something out of a movie.”

“I still practice with Achan to stay in shape, but I’m normally not permitted to fight. I’ve been put out to pasture, as you say.”

“Why on earth?” Sarah shifted her body again, unknowingly drawing closer to him.

He shook his head, “Here’s where it gets…complicated.” He cleared his throat and took in a deep breath. “At the time, The Nines were a full group. You had me, of course. Then there was Judah, Achan, Zillah, and Rhiannon. There was also Fraser, who was Rhiannon’s husband. He was killed.”

“Oh, is that why she has the, uh…” Sarah motioned toward the ring finger on her left hand, referring to Rhiannon’s tattooed finger.

“It’s the Widow’s Mark. When one of us loses a mate, we wear it as a permanent mourning badge.”

Sarah’s eyes sank, and he could feel her emotion dipping. Her sadness hit him like a tidal wave.

“You sure you are okay? We can finish this tomorrow.”

She shook her head. “No. Go on, please.”

After another deep breath, he continued, but he took her hand from under her chin and held it in his.

“There were three more in our group, and they are the reason why I no longer fight. Roman, who took Fraser from Rhiannon, is a cold bastard, and I hope right now he’s being ass-raped with a red-hot poker in hell. He sort of acted as the ringleader for the other two. He encouraged them to rise up and join an underground movement to take over and enslave the human race. I know it sounds completely sci-fi, but it’s the truth. The other two—” Taris sucked in a deep breath. “The other two were my brother, Bane. And, Morrigan, that harpy bitch you met tonight. She, uh…she was…”