Demon's Kiss (12 page)

There was more going on here than met the eye, Jack thought, and he wasn't naive enough not to have noticed that. Gregor wasn't just a rogue vamp bent on mindless destruction, self-gratification and amassing untold wealth. No way. He was too smart, too cunning, for that. He had a goal. Jack just wasn't sure what it was.

Gregor had been animated, almost excited, since word had come that a vampire hit man by the name of Reaper had been sent to kill him, more excited than Jack had ever seen him. He suspected Reaper's appearance was somehow related to Gregor's ultimate goal, and he was curious, but not for any other reason than that it would give him an edge. Jack was always on the winning team. Or at least, he pretended to be. In truth, he was never on anyone's side other than his own. He would always do what was best for him. Loyalty was bullshit, except when it came to being loyal to yourself. Look out for number one, because no one else is going to do it for you. Those were his mottoes, his rules.

He didn't trust anyone, didn't need anyone, didn't go out of his way for anyone. Never had, never would.

“I'm sorry, Gregor,” Briar muttered for what had to be the twentieth time. “I tried. I did. I told you, they had some kind of weapon. A dart, with some sort of…drug.”

“Yes. I'm familiar with it.” As he spoke, Gregor lifted the tiny dart Jack had plucked out of Briar's belly when he'd found her lying unconscious in the woods. Gregor hadn't even been worried when she'd failed to return from the evening hunt.

Not that Jack had. He'd simply felt like taking a walk around the grounds, mainly to get away from Gregor's ranting over the missing prisoner and dead drones in the cellar he liked to refer to as the dungeon. The guy had a flair for drama.

“What do you mean, you're familiar with it?” Briar asked. Her voice was soft now. It sickened Jack a little, not that he gave a damn, to see such a feisty, spirited woman subjugate herself to Gregor, who was far from worthy. And granted, Briar was the most heartless, cruel bitch he'd ever had the misfortune to come across. But she was also hot and strong and damn capable. In her approach to Gregor, however, she was as submissive and obedient as a mistreated lap dog.

Sickening. Not that it was any skin off Jack's nose either way.

“It's a tranquilizer, the only one known to be effective on our kind,” Gregor explained. “It was developed years ago by scientists in the employ of the now-defunct DPI.”

“DPI?” she asked.

“It's not important,” Gregor said, brushing off her curiosity. “What matters is that our enemies have it. It's good that we know in advance.”

“I don't know why you didn't just let me have this Reaper killed before he found us, Gregor,” Briar said.

“Because I need him alive. If anyone
does
kill him, even by accident, I'll have their head on a pike before dawn. Is that understood?”

She flinched at the volume of his edict, because he had all but shouted it. If anyone else shouted at Briar like that, Jack thought, she would probably drop-kick them into next week.

“Yes, Gregor,” she said meekly.

“Oh, for the love of—” Jack bit his lip, but it was too late. He'd let it out. He was slipping. His role as Gregor's lackey wasn't going to survive if he didn't get a handle on himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I just, uh—why is it you need him alive, if I may be so bold as to ask?”

“That's my concern.”

Jack frowned.

“Getting the prisoner back is yours. It's too late now. Dawn is only a few hours away. But come sundown, I want that to be your top priority. The two of you.”

“It won't be a problem,” Jack said. Though he was secretly glad the little fox had gotten away. Even a hardhearted prick like him had hated seeing her caged—especially with a zookeeper like Briar, who so enjoyed seeing her suffer. So really, he didn't intend to try overly hard to recapture her. But he would make a show of it, just to stay in Gregor's good graces. And maybe he would manage to get a look at the other side, while he was at it. Whoever they were, they were already proving to be good. Maybe a little too good.

 

Seth was hurting pretty badly as he and Reaper walked up the long curving driveway to the plantation house he was already beginning to think of as home. He was carrying Vixen, and she was in far worse shape than he was. For a vampire, pain was magnified, and apparently so was the effect of electrocution. She was semiconscious, quivering in his arms, and he wondered if she would ever be all right again.

And he wondered, too, why it felt so good to hold her, to touch her. It was different than touching any other woman had ever been.
She
was different.

He couldn't get his own pain totally out of his mind, either, and even though The Reap-man had wrapped a few strips of cloth around his more serious wounds, they kept oozing blood at regular intervals.

The gash on his thigh was bleeding now. He could feel it trickling and dampening his jeans. It worried him.

“Hey, Reap, I'm not gonna bleed out, am I?”

Reaper glanced at him, then at the wound in Seth's thigh. His jeans were torn there, thanks to whatever weapon those fucked up vamp-guards had used on him. He'd been too busy trying to stay alive to notice what it was. Reaper had tied the rag right over his jeans, so it wasn't like he could see much of the wound.

“I don't think it's bleeding that heavily,” Reaper said. “And Roxy will see to you as soon as we get inside.”

“No way. Vixen first.”

Reaper just crooked an eyebrow and kept walking.

The front door swung open as soon as they got close, Roxy and Topaz both standing there, looking alarmed and speaking at once.

“What the hell happened?”

“Who's the comatose chick?”

Seth climbed the steps, and they parted to let him pass. “Let's just get her inside. She's hurt bad. I'll explain as we go along,” he said.

“Right in here.” Roxy led the way up the stairs, flinging open a bedroom door for him.

Seth carried Vixen inside and lowered her to the bed, but her arms remained locked around his neck, and when he tried to stand up, she clung tighter.

As bad as the situation was, her holding on so tight made him smile just a little. “It's okay, it's okay,” he said, trying for a soothing tone. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“What happened to her?” Roxy asked, hurrying to the other side of the bed and bending over the beautiful redhead.

“She was being held captive—kept locked in a cage like a freaking animal—by Gregor's gang.”

“You found them?” Topaz asked.

Seth nodded. “They had a shock collar on her, a fucking shock collar. There was this dark bitch of a vampires—heartless whore. She had the control, zapped her—I don't even know how many times. She was down by the time we got to her. She's been like this ever since.”

Topaz looked from Seth to Reaper. “Did you see any sign of Jack there?”

“No. But I'm sure he's with them.”

Roxy was leaning over Vixen, tucking a heavy blanket around her to warm her. Seth had pried Vixen's arms from around his neck, but he had to sit on the edge of the bed and hold her hands, instead, to keep the look of panic from coming back into her nut-brown eyes every time they opened to seek him out.

“She needs to feed,” Roxy said. “Living blood. The electricity hit her hard. She's way beyond weak—her entire system is out of whack. She's shocky. I think she'll probably rejuvenate with the day sleep, but the way she is right now, she's not very damn likely to live that long.”

“I've got it,” Seth said. He rolled back his sleeve to reveal a cut on his forearm, tore away the rag that Reaper had tied around it, and pressed it to Vixen's lips. Her eyes had been closed, but they fluttered open as her lips trembled against his skin. She met his eyes, her own full of questions and fear.

“It's all right,” he said softly. “It's okay. Drink. It'll make you better.”

Her gaze never straying from his, she closed her lips around the small cut and suckled him. The blood began to flow, and Seth was totally unprepared for the feeling that rose like a wave from the pit of his soul, bigger and more powerful with every movement of her lips, every touch of her hungry little tongue, until it engulfed him utterly. He was reeling, mouth agape, eyes wide, his entire body alive with unbearable sensation, incredible pleasure and intense desire. Vixen seemed to feel it, too, because her small hands closed around his arm, holding it hard to her as she fed more eagerly, almost desperately.

“Roxy, Seth's been wounded, too,” Reaper warned. Seth heard him as if from a distance. “Don't let her take too much.”

Even as Reaper spoke, Seth grew dizzy, and a peculiar weakness came over him. He swayed a little. And then Roxy's hand encircled his wrist. “Enough, Seth,” she whispered, and tugged his arm away.

“I'll get bandages. God, Seth, look at you.” Topaz hurried from the room, then returned only seconds later with supplies Seth didn't even know they'd had.

He sat there, stunned by the power of what he felt, unable to move or speak or take his eyes away from Vixen's as she lowered her head onto the pillows, still holding his gaze. Her eyes were wide, searching, glassy—maybe, he thought, glassy with the effects of the same powerful things he was feeling.

Roxy taped the wound in his forearm, then bandaged it. She did the same with the gash on his thigh.

“You should lie down,” she said.

He didn't. He sat there, staring at Vixen, drowning in her.

“So are you going to tell us what happened, or what?” Topaz asked.

He nodded. Vixen's big brown eyes fell closed, and he was finally able to tear his gaze away from her. “I felt her…before,” he said. “She's the one I sensed, calling out for help, the night you brought me over, Reaper. And several times since. And again tonight.”

“It's true,” Reaper said to the others. “That's how we found Gregor's band. Seth followed his sense of her, and I followed Seth. When we got there, we saw two women.”

“One woman and one tyrant, you mean,” Seth corrected. “Vixen was running, jumping, dancing in the tall grass, all while wearing a collar. The other one—dark as a demon and twice as mean—was watching her, holding that damn remote in one hand and a freaking leash in the other. When she took Vixen back inside and caged her up, she and some of the others left to go feed. Reaper decided to follow them, and I stuck with her.”

“Yes, promising not to go inside unless you were sure it was safe,” Reaper said.

Seth shrugged. “That's another thing. I tried to scan that place, and I couldn't get anything. Nothing. It was like a dead zone.”

Reaper frowned. “That would explain why I never knew you were in trouble until she told me.”

Seth nodded and continued his tale. “I couldn't just leave her there.”

“We could have gone back later, Seth. We could have returned with more backup, with a plan of action, with a rudimentary map of the place and an idea of how many guards there were, of their strengths and weaknesses and habits. You were reckless. Walking into a den of rogue vampires like that could have been suicide.”

Topaz widened her eyes in what Seth took to be sheer disbelief. “A den of them? How many were there?”

Seth grinned, more pleased with himself than was probably either wise or called for. Still, he lifted his chin a little as he spoke. “I think I took out seven or eight.”

“Five,” Reaper corrected. “I felt five deaths inside as you were closing the door.”

“You barely had a second to sense anything, Reap. I know there were at least six,” Seth went on. “Probably more. I took them out with nothing but an ax and one dart from the Noisy Cricket. You should have seen it. I was awesome.”

“You're insane!”

Seth frowned, puzzled, because Topaz sounded angry with him, rather than impressed. “What, no praise for my skills? I know you didn't think I had it in me, Tope, but I do, and I just proved it. Would it kill you to give me a little credit here?”

“You don't need credit, you need your head examined. You could have been killed, you idiot.”

The lightbulb flicked on over his head all at once. He found himself surprised, but also kind of smugly pleased, at what he saw when it did. “You really do care. Who'd have figured?”

“In your dreams, Seth.”

Seth shrugged. “Hey, I don't need you to admit it. I
know.
Thanks, Tope.”

“I should bite you.”

He grinned at her, then glanced at Reaper. Fun as it was playing with the princess, there were important things he mustn't forget about. “There was something off about those vamps who were left behind to guard the place,” he said. “Something…not quite on the bubble, you know?”

“How so?”

“I don't know. They just seemed…kind of zombified.”