Deliver Me from Darkness: A Novel of the Paladin Warriors (29 page)

Huh. This bond thing was going to take some getting used to. It was deeper than anything she’d ever experienced before. In comparison, her ability to sense someone’s intent through touch seemed like a baby’s first gibbering attempt at true language. Even now, as she pulled back from the dreamlike ebb and flow of his sleep-thoughts, she felt more of a connection with him than any other person she’d ever tried to read. Or ever loved.

“I love Roland.” She tried the words out, letting them settle into her conscious. What was between them had happened so fast that she hadn’t really thought of it in those terms yet. He was Roland. Her mate. The other half of her soul—or at least the man who was made for her soul. Love was a happy bonus. She did love him too. The way he would tenderly caress the hair back from her cheek, the way his eyes glowed like deep embers when he looked at her with longing, the way he would give anything of himself if it meant keeping her safe, keeping her happy.

She both loved and resented the bond. It made it so his happiness was directly linked to hers and vice versa. And because of that her little morning ritual would never hold the same sort of peace for her. But he was right. She did need the sun. For her it meant warmth, safety, joy.

She poured her coffee, adding a heap of sugar, and moved over to the back door. There was a small deck but she’d promised Roland she wouldn’t leave. Instead she opened the door wide, letting the crisp morning air greet her.

Nope. Definitely not going to get her sunrise. At least not for a while. The fog here was dense and would take hours to burn off. Some people might find the soft haze on the world, the feeling of isolation, to be peaceful. Not Karissa. She was a city girl, and to her the shifting mist created an eerie landscape for dangers to hide in.

Something shifted in the fog. She straightened, squinted her eyes. Some animal or something. But whatever it was moved toward the cabin, its movements purposeful but staggering.

Karissa started to step back into the safety of the cabin, her hand on the door, when a glimpse of red hair stopped her. She took a step forward to get a better look and the figure popped out of the worst of the fog.

The alley. The girl who’d tried to warn them. She was hobbling, and half her face looked beaten. Not beaten but burned; in fact, the blisters were still spreading.
Because
she’s a vampire
. And if she didn’t get out of the light soon she was going to die.

Karissa scrambled across the small deck and down the two steps to the ground, running forward.

The girl threw out her arm, her face contorting past the pain of her injuries. “Why did you come out?…warn Roland.” She mumbled something else incoherent. Hurt ear?

Karissa ignored the hand meant to fend her off, wrapping her arm around her. The girl had come to warn Roland. She was not the enemy, though it was obvious she had knowledge of the enemy and was willing to risk everything to try and help them. “We need to get you inside.”

The girl groaned under her touch but gave way to her shaking limbs and fell into Karissa’s side. Karissa tried to shield her as much as possible from the natural light of day. Cloud cover or not, this slip of a girl was burning to death…slowly.

Urgency nipped at their heels. Though only a hundred feet or so, the cabin seemed miles away. She couldn’t jump unless she abandoned the girl. Roland had survived the light there, but his reaction to the little adventure told her all she needed to know. It wasn’t safe there for a vampire. If this girl still had ties to the enemy, then she doubted this girl was as strong as Roland.

“Leave me,” the girl gasped. “Tell Roland.”

“Tell Roland what?”

The girl stiffened, moaning out her despair. Her words finally registered.
They’re here.

It was a trap.

Karissa’s gut clenched. She twisted her head around, looking for the threat. Somewhere there rose the sound of laughter.

Oh God.

Roland! Help me!

***

His
body
was
on
fire. Nothing mattered except the acid burning through his veins, the sizzling poison filling his muscles and organs, the blistering disease that boiled up from under his skin.

He
writhed
on
the
floor, twisting and convulsing as agony took over his body, held prisoner his breath, stole his very life. It was in the moment of his death that the pain shattered, falling away as if it had merely been some sort of shawl enshrouding him. Then laughter.

He
pried
open
his
eyelids, turning his head on the hard marble. A man, tall and
GQ
handsome, leaned against the scalloped post at the end of the banister. Laughing, clapping.

“Good performance.” He pushed off the post, striding like a monarch through his court across the large foyer. “Now, Paladin, I have a show for you.”

The
man’s lips curled back, revealing fangs. Roland’s eyes narrowed. If he had any energy left he’d leap up and cut that superior smile off the vampire’s face. Just had to get his knife from the sheath on his thigh and…

A
woman
screamed. Roland’s head snapped up. Down the hall, half dragged, half carried by two other vampires was, fuck no, his sister.

“Angeline!” He tried to push up, made it halfway before something brutal and suffocating clamped down on his will. For long seconds he fought for control before crashing back down onto the hard floor to lie there, gasping.

“Roland. What have they done to you?” His sister was sobbing, tears streaming down her face to land with large splats upon her distended belly.

Done? Other than tried to kill him? He’d gone there to warn them. His vision. The blood. He’d arrived and…

It
was
all
a
blank
fog
after
that. What happened between then and his waking to agony? He didn’t know. Didn’t matter. He had to save his sister. He would not allow her to die like she had in his vision.

He
reached
for
his
knife
but
again
was
met
with
the
searing
agony
of
something, or someone, snuffing out his will.

“Nuh-uh-uh.” The
GQ
vampire crouched down in front of him, waving his index finger back and forth.

“What…” he gasped, unable to continue speaking past his raw throat. He licked his lips, tried to swallow. His tongue, swollen, scraped across something sharp in his mouth. Tentatively he thrust his tongue out again. A line of blood welled on the thick muscle, dripping down his parched throat. The taste of the sweet coppery liquid had his heart racing, his body clenching in need. Alarmed, he looked up toward his sister. Only it wasn’t his sister. It was Karissa. Their eyes latched for but a moment before she turned her face away, unable to even meet his gaze.

Vampire. Monster. She
should
reject
him.

“Kill her.” The order was given negligently, as if the life of the woman the man had ordered dead didn’t matter.

“You bastard!” Roland roared, lunging for the man before him. He made it to his knees before his master’s will slashed like a knife into his brain and sent him sprawling, again.

Karissa. Not Karissa too.

A
hand
touched
his
shoulder, forcing him onto his back.

Roland
glared
at
the
man
with
all
of
his
hatred
in
his
eyes, even as his treacherous body gave up, sinking like a pool of mercury into the floor.

“That’s right, Paladin. I own you now.”

…I own you now.

I own you.

…
own
you.

***

Roland woke on a defiant roar. No. It was not true. He’d broken that bond. His sister was dead, but Karissa wasn’t. Karissa was out in the kitchen having her breakfast and to prove it all he had to do was reach out with his mind and…nothing. He bolted upright in the bed. Why couldn’t he feel her? Possibly because the bond was so new?

He threw off the tangled blankets and charged for the door. Belatedly he remembered that Karissa had wanted to open the blinds. He spun around, grabbing up his pants and yanking out another T-shirt from the drawer. His cloak was out in the main roam, but he’d be all right as long as it was only a quick peek.

He moved back to the door, cracked it open. “Karissa?”

No answer. The cabin was dim despite the open blinds. The blinds weren’t the only thing open. Through the back door that was swung all the way open on its hinges he could see the morning steeped in fog.

Karissa must have gone out on the back deck. Shit. He’d told her to stay in the cabin.

With his gut clenched up in a ball, he jerked his cloak off the hook by the front door and raced out the back door. Even through the fog he could feel the singe of the morning sun, but he didn’t let that stop him from barreling down the steps into the yard.

Karissa’s signature of passage was an even brighter burn. He felt the residual path of her concerned flight toward the woods, the spark of confusion, and then, here, he crouched down to touch the dewy grass, an ugly stain of fear. The fear is where her path ended. There was nothing after that last powerful emotion. It was as if she had disappeared, or…No. He would not think like that. He’d know if she were dead. He’d feel the ripping out of their bond. She had, however, stopped here. And wherever she was now, she was unconscious.

Forcing down his panic, he stood, spinning around as he scanned the woods. What, or who, had drawn her past the safety of the cabin? As much as he wanted to kill whoever it was who’d tricked her and taken her from him, he was sincerely hoping it was that bastard Valin.

A twig snapped behind him. Roland spun back around, his slim hope vaporizing at the sight of the creature that stepped out of the woods.

***

Gabriella lay on the floor of the van, her burnt cheek pressed tight against the rubber mats on the floor and her eyes squeezed as tight as she could get them. She hurt. God, she hurt. She wasn’t powerful enough to withstand daylight, even clouded daylight, and she hadn’t been given nearly enough blood before to allow her body to regenerate with any sort of speed now.

<>
Christos’s voice was another violation within the vaults of her mind.
<is
but
a
bite
away.>>

She screamed, trying to drive him out. Christos thought he was so fucking funny. The moment Ganelon’s merkers had tossed her and Roland’s woman into the van, Christos had gone all parental on her: clucking his tongue, smoothing back her hair from her burnt face. And then he dragged the woman closer, sliced a shallow slit in her wrist, and raised it to Gabriella’s mouth.

“Drink. My gift to you for a job well done. You will be the first to drink of the prophesied one’s blood and break the bonds of dark and light.”

Yeah, not happening. One, Gabriella didn’t know what he was talking about with all that prophecy crap. And two, she hadn’t drunk directly from a vein yet and wasn’t about to start now. If Christos wanted her to drink from Roland’s woman, he was going to have to take the woman’s blood and pump it into her directly.

“My, my, Gabriella.” A thick finger coated in blood tapped her nose, then traced a path around the edges of her split and cracked mouth. “What splendid ideas you have.”