Eternal Hearts (40 page)

“Ooh…do you love her?”

“Yes.”

Raze jumped and nearly dropped her coffee.
“Holy shit, Drake!
I was just kidding when I asked…but are you serious? I mean, are you like serious, serious?”

He nodded. “I really am. I’ve never met anyone like her, and truth be told, I can’t imagine…well, I shouldn’t say that because I could, but I’d rather not imagine my life without her in it.”

“Oh, Drake…” She alternated stomping her chrome-toed leather Goth boots against the pavement before she threw her arms around his neck. “I’m so happy for you! After what happened with that…that whore who shall remain nameless, I wasn’t sure you’d ever give someone else a chance.” She squeezed him even tighter. “But you did, and that’s just so awesome! You so deserve some happiness in your life.”

He smiled as he patted her back. “
Thanks,
Raze.”

“You’re welcome,” she said as she pulled away and looked up at him. “So how long have you known her? What’s her name? How old is she? What family is she from? Wait. She’s not a Mystic is she, because you know you can’t trust those bitches, right? Come on, man…details, details!”

“No, she’s not a Mystic. I’ve only known her for a few days. Her name is Toni. She’s a Fledgling. And she’s a Warrior. She’s also beautiful, smart…and more human than vampire.”

“Nice! I love it when the young ones hold on to their morals. Of course, I’d love it even more if they actually kept them when they became Elders…but that’s neither here nor there.” She tipped her head to the side and made a clicking sound with her teeth. “And you know what they say about the Warrior’s, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”
He’d heard a lot of rumors about the Warrior lineage over the years, some good, some not so much. “I suppose it depends on what ‘they’ you’re talking about.”

“Warriors fight with everything they have,” she sighed as she clutched her free hand to her chest, “and they love with just as much fervor.” She broke into another wide grin. “
Which means they’ll snap and kick your ass in a heartbeat if you piss them off, but they’ll knock your socks off between the sheets.
”

“And you know this from personal experience?”

She screwed up her face.
“Oh, hell, no.
Sleeping with the undead pretty much flies in the face of my job description, don’t cha think?”

Drake smiled at her. He really couldn’t argue her point. As a Paladin, her life’s work entailed protecting humanity from vampires and werewolves. So getting involved with one in anything more than a friendship capacity probably wasn’t the best idea for her. “You make a good point.”

“If you really pay attention, you’ll find that I often do.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She took a sip of coffee then pulled the lapels of her black, opera style long coat tighter around her neck. “So what does Odin think of Miss Toni? Has he driven her crazy like he does the rest of us yet?”

Drake shook his head.
“Nope.
He hasn’t even met her yet.”

Raze couldn’t have looked any more shocked if he’d actually tried. “What? Why not? Is something wrong? Have you not seen him lately?” She rolled her eyes and let out a loud groan. “Don’t tell me he was messing around in the Bermuda Triangle again. I swear to Aligon, Drake, I am so not gonna pull his ass
outta
there again.”

After Drake managed to finish laughing at the memory Raze had drudged up, he drew in a deep calming breath. “Don’t worry, I just saw him the other night. We were doing the pizza and beer thing downtown while we were waiting for Jake to show up with my last contract.”

“Oh, well that’s good. At least he’s probably still in one piece.” She paused for a second then cocked her head. “But that doesn’t explain why he hasn’t met her yet.”

“He hasn’t met her because I’ve been working a contract for the last two days. I haven’t exactly had time to hang out.”

She frowned. “Okay, hold up for a minute. If you’ve only known Toni for a few days and you’ve been working a contract for the last two, then when the hell did you have enough time to do so much blood sucking that you don’t smell completely like you?”

Drake slowly shook his head. “It’s a long story, but my contract was on her.” He raised his hands. “And before you even ask, it was a protection contract…nothing more.”

“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. “So he hasn’t stopped in, like even once, just to say hi to her?” Concern darkened her unnaturally vibrant eyes. “That’s not like him at all, Drake. Are you sure he isn’t trapped somewhere in the Dark Realm again?”

Drake shrugged. When it came to Odin, anything was possible. “I don’t think he is. Like I said, I just saw him Friday night. We ate some pizza, drank a few beers, then he left while Jake was in the middle of giving me the details of the contract on Toni. You know him, he’s probably back at Nelek Castle harassing someone.”

She stiffened. “What do you mean he left in the middle of Jake giving you the details of your contract on Toni?”

“I mean exactly what I said. I felt telepathy go off while Jake was talking, and then Odin left. What more do you want me to explain?”

“When you say he left…are you talking like he got bored, maybe chatted with Kerestyan for a minute, and then he left? Or did he just stop all of a sudden, get all
pissy
…then disappear?”

Drake thought about it for a minute. “Jake was talking, I sensed telepathy
go
off, Odin choked on his pizza, he told me to call him when the contract was over, and then he left.”

“I don’t suppose you remember exactly what Jake was saying right before you felt the telepathy hit?”

He tried to recall the specific order of events. “I think he said Toni’s name.” He nodded, more to himself than anything. “Yeah, because Jake thought it was weird that Odin disappeared right after he said her name. But I figured it was nothing because…well, it’s not like you need me to tell you how Odin is sometimes.”

Raze stood quiet for a few long moments while a golden sheen rippled back and forth across her eyes. But then her head jerked up and she burst into some kind of possessed fit. “That fucking eyeless bastard!” she all but shrieked. “He just can’t leave anything alone. Him
and
his retarded skunk rival! They have to mess with everything.” She gnashed her teeth together. “I swear on my sister’s grave I’m gonna kick his ass someday. Then I’m gonna stand there and watch while everything comes crashing down around his evil ass and laugh. I’m gonna laugh and tell him it’s what he gets for being such a fucking asshole!”

Drake took a step back from her. He could only assume she was talking about Odin’s Sire, Lord Stefan Nelek, because he was the only one she regularly referred to as an “eyeless” anything. She despised the man, but to this day, she refused to explain why. He had absolutely no clue what her current rant had to do with Odin or Toni though.

He waited until she stopped her tirade to take a breath. “What are you going on about?”

She stopped all at once then spun around to face him.
“Nothing.
Forget I said anything.”

“You think I’m just going to forget an outburst like that?” He shook his head. “Not happening. So why don’t you tell me what the hell you were talking about, especially if whatever it is has anything to do with Toni.”

She sighed. “I can’t tell you anything.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell me anything, Raze?” He narrowed his eyes on her. “If Toni’s in some kind of trouble – I deserve to know!”

“I mean I can’t tell you anything,” she snapped. “It’s an Ancient thing.”

Drake fisted his hands in an attempt to not only keep the animals inside him at bay, but to keep from shaking Raze until she told him everything he wanted to know. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know, and you’re going to tell me right now.”

“Oh, no I’m not.” She stabbed a neon green fingernail in his direction. “You can punish me however you see fit, but I’m telling you right now – whatever you do won’t be anything compared to what’ll happen to me if I tell you what I know. I may not be able to die unless the man upstairs says so, but it’ll take me at least fifty years to pull the pieces of my body back together if I spill these beans. And I’m not going there again, Drake.
No way, no how.”

He splayed his fingers then squeezed his hands closed again. “Could you at least tell me something about what’s going on? Is Toni in danger? Is one of my enemies after her already?”

Raze actually laughed.
“One of your enemies…ha!
Trust me, right now the last thing any of your enemies wanna do is interrupt whatever Toni’s doing. Because if they do, they’ll be floating around the Dark Realm faster than you can say shit, wondering what the hell went so wrong.” She inhaled a deep breath as her eyes moved over him. “I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on…but I can share this piece of info. Whatever’s going on with Toni right now, it has nothing, and I mean
absolutely nothing
, to do with you. And if she’s even half as smart as you say she is, then she’ll probably be just fine when all is said and done.”

He ground his teeth together. “I hate this. I got Crypt telling me to stay away from her because he’s pissed that I broke the rules. I got Derek telling me I can’t even check in on her because she has to finish some investigation Locke put her on. And now you’re telling me she’s caught up in some
Ancient…
whatever the hell it is…but she should be fine, and I’m supposed to do what now? Stand back and hope she’ll be okay? How the fuck
am
I supposed to do that?”

She offered a sympathetic smile. “Welcome to the real world.”

He eyed her again. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, please. You know damn well the kinds of sick and twisted games the Ancients play. It’s just that this time, instead of being their smacking hand or immune to their machinations like you’ve always been…you’re just one of the innocent bystanders left with no choice but to watch it all happen to someone you love.”

Drake opened his mouth to respond, but then snapped it shut. There was nothing he could say to argue her point. She was right. He’d never really had to bear the brunt of the games, aside from dealing the final blow on an Ancient’s behalf. And he’d never had to watch someone he cared about get crushed under some Blood God’s boot heels, because the majority of his friends were so old that they weren’t easily crushed.

“It’s hard to be a spectator sometimes,” Raze said as she shook her head, sadness marking her face. “And it’s even worse when you’re supernatural too and you still can’t do anything but watch. It was a hard lesson, but I learned a long time ago that sometimes you can’t interfere once the wheels are in motion. Sometimes you just have to put all your faith in the person you love, and hope that at the end of the day they’re the smarter, stronger, and faster player.”

Drake followed suit when Raze started walking again. He’d already placed every shred of faith he owned in Toni. But whether she’d be the stronger player in whatever game she’d been unwittingly dropped into was extremely difficult to determine, especially when he didn’t even know what she was playing for.

***

Toni woke up just as the sun set, and an empty feeling settled deep in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t need to open her eyes to know she was alone in bed. The absence of the strong, warm body she’d grown rather fond of being wrapped around chilled her skin.

She wanted to be mad at Drake for not being there, but she couldn’t. To be honest, she’d almost hoped for this outcome. If he’d been here when her eyes fluttered open, there was no way she would have been able to watch him leave.

Because sometimes when they leave, they don’t come back.
She smiled in spite of the comment racing through her mind as she picked up the large t-shirt laying where Drake should have been. She held the black fabric under her nose and inhaled deep. The familiar scent alone made her ache to see him.