Holiday with a Vampire 4 (6 page)

“Don’t ever do that again,” she snapped.

“Not even if you ask me?”

“Don’t count on it.” Without another word, she turned on her heel and left the Nightsiders to wait out the day, thinking to herself that she would be glad to shoot Kane if he forgot her warning.

Who are you kidding?
she thought as the sky began to cloud over again. She would far rather shoot herself. Even if he kissed her a thousand times. Even if they lay together and shared everything their bodies had to give.

But that would be all they would share. Even assuming they both survived, there could never be anything else.

* * *

Kane woke to the moan of the wind.

The tarp flapped above him, one corner beginning to work loose from its anchor on a low tree branch. Sleet gathered in the tarp’s folds and melted almost immediately. In a few hours, when the sun went down, the slow drip of water would turn to ice.

“Alfie,” Kane said, pushing at the broad back turned away from him. “Have you seen Fiona?”

Alfie rolled over, blinking heavy-lidded eyes.

“She’s gone?” he asked, sitting up and running blunt fingers through his sparse blond hair.

“I think you heard our discussion,” Kane said.

With a false expression of chagrin, Alfie peered at the sky. “Been about six ’ours, ain’t it?”

Six hours,
Kane thought. She should have been back long since. “I should never have let her go,” he said grimly.

“That lass ’as a mind ’o ’er own,” Alfie said. “You woulda ’ad ta tie ’er up ta get ’er ta stay once she got the notion ta go.”

But that didn’t give Kane any comfort. Either she was in some kind of trouble, or...

Or he had driven her to stay away as long as possible. He hadn’t intended to kiss her, and he had known as soon as he’d started that he had to put an end to it or he wouldn’t be able to stop.

Neither would she. She might fight it with every fiber of her being, but he knew now that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. In every way.

“Don’t worry just yet, guv,” Alfie said, heaving himself to his feet. “Still got about three hours o’ daylight left. She’ll turn up.”

“I’m going after her.”

Alfie grunted. “Sure ya is,” he said. “Go on ’n’ get yerself a nice suntan while yer at it.”

Kane held out his hand. “Give me your jacket.”

“Yer mad,” Alfie said, his face darkening with real anger. “Ya know our fatigues ain’t much use against sunlight.”

“Your jacket, Alfie. And your shirt.”

“Can’t let ya,” Alfie said. “It’ll be sure death.” But even as he spoke, the Englishman was pulling off his jacket and passing it to Kane. “The lass is prob’ly fine,” he said. “Ye think she’ll thank ya fer gettin’ yerself kilt?”

“If rogues have her—”

“Ya think she’d be fool enough ta let ’em catch ’er in the shadows?”

“And if she’s run into Opiri scouts?” Kane said, arranging Alfie’s jacket over his head and tying the wide sleeves around his shoulders. “The new daysuits remove any advantage she has.”

“If they have ’em,” Alfie said, his long face giving the lie to his hopeful words. “I care about the lass, too. Let
me
go.”

Kane draped the tail of Alfie’s shirt over his forehead for extra protection. “You know
I
have to do it, my friend. I need you to stay here, in case she returns.”

“’Eroes,” Alfie grumbled. “They gets tiresome sometimes.”

“I’m no hero.”

“But ya care for ’er.”

“Now you’re the mad one.”

“I tol’ the lass no one fools ol’ Alfie,” the Brit said, wrapping his huge arms around Kane. “Ya bloody well better not get yerself kilt, ’ear me?”

Kane stepped back and grinned. “Trust me, Alfie. I’ve found I have something to live for.”

Alfie turned his face away. “Yer not back ’ere by sunset with that woman o’ yers, ye’ll ’ave me ta answer to.”

Knowing there was nothing left to say, Kane plunged into the sunlight. Not that there was much light; the thinner patches of cloud cover were beginning to fill in with a heavier gray. That gave him a small advantage as he picked up Fiona’s faint tracks and headed across the empty brown fields toward the base.

Dim as they had seemed at first, the sun’s diffuse rays began to penetrate Alfie’s jacket before Kane had gone more than a hundred yards. By the time he had come to the end of his second mile, his fatigues and Alfie’s jacket were no longer providing much protection. His skin had begun to burn, though at first it felt no worse than the kind of sunburn he had occasionally suffered in the trenches.

Ignoring the pain, he focused on the long runways and low buildings that rose up from the fields approximately three miles to the north. He was staggering when he reached the perimeter of the base and pushed through the fallen fence, his boots tracing a crooked path across the broken surface of the runway with its handful of abandoned aircraft. He had found no trace of Fiona, nor any sign of Opiri troops. He didn’t dare call out for her, though every instinct told him that she was in trouble.

So was he. His heart had begun to race so fast that he couldn’t catch his breath, and his muscles were cramping with such force that he could no longer stand, let alone walk. He fell to his knees on the concrete, aware that his skin was beginning to blister and crack beneath his clothing.

And his mind...his mind began playing tricks on him, replacing the modern jets with the primitive biplanes that had performed their deadly aerial dances above the battlefields of France over a hundred years ago.

Somehow he dragged himself across the runway and into the high grass on the other side, losing Alfie’s jacket in the process. If he could reach the nearest building, he might recover enough to look for Fiona again after nightfall.

He didn’t make it. The last of his strength gave out, and he lay facedown in the grass, his darkening mind oddly fixed on one irrelevant thought.

Tonight would be Christmas Eve. And he would never see Fiona again.

Chapter 6

T
he sun had nearly set when Fiona found Kane. She didn’t have to look closely to know how badly he had been burned. The only question in her mind was whether or not he was still alive. And how much she would be forced to hurt him if he was.

Let him be alive,
she prayed silently.

“Kane,” she said, lying flat on her stomach beside him. “Kane!”

His burned eyelids twitched. Offering up another prayer, this one of thanks, she rolled him onto his side, crouched and maneuvered him across her shoulders in a fireman’s carry, pushing herself to her knees and then to her feet. He was heavy, his body dense with muscle, and she knew that if she let herself think about just how heavy he was, she would collapse under his weight.

But it never occurred to her to give up. Saving him was all that mattered—more than the presence of Nightsider scouts waiting to make their move, more than the knowledge that her team’s entire mission was in danger of failing.

Far more than her own life.

The sun was sinking below the horizon by the time she got Kane into the nearest building, the hangar in which she’d set up a barricade against the bloodsuckers. She dropped to her knees behind the wall of crates near the back corner of the vast, nearly empty interior, letting him slide to the floor.

He rolled onto his back, and she examined his face. Her heart rose into her throat.

God help her.

“Fiona?”

His voice was a raw croak, as if even his vocal chords had been seared.

“I’m here,” she said. She bent over him, gently arranging his arms at his sides. He flinched but made no sound to indicate the extremity of his pain.

“They’re out there, aren’t they?” he whispered.

“I don’t know. I think there were about a dozen of them when they pinned me down. They were wearing those special suits you mentioned, and they only stopped shooting when there wasn’t enough daylight for me to get back to you.”

Speaking softly, she told him how she had run across a troop of Opiri scouts, obviously on their way to head her people off. Believing she had the advantage of daylight, she had tried to get past them and return to Kane and Alfie’s shelter before dark.

“You’re faster than me,” she said. “I knew once night fell I could send you back to warn Sandoval that they would be walking into an ambush.”

But the Nightsiders hadn’t let her get more than a few hundred feet outside the hangar where she’d taken shelter. “I don’t know why they didn’t stop me from getting you now,” she said. “Maybe because the daysuits only prolong the time Opiri can stay in the sun, not allow indefinite exposure.”

“Very likely,” he said, closing his eyes.

“Where’s Alfie?” she asked.

Kane must have heard the worry in her voice. “Safe,” he said. “But he won’t...stay where I left him. He’ll come after us.”

Of course he would, she thought. Even though he had little chance of getting past the scouts outside.

“You should go,” Kane said. “Try to...get back to your people. Maybe...I can keep them occupied.”

“How? You can’t hold a rifle, and I won’t let you die here alone.”

He reached up to touch her face, though the effort must have been agony. “Fiona...if we’d had more time...”

“I know.”

“I’ve...wanted you since the moment I saw you.”

Bending over him again, she touched her mouth to his cracked lips with infinite tenderness. “I know. Yesterday I would have said it was only the blood, the hunger. But when you kissed me, I knew it wasn’t just instinct. And I
wanted
you to bite me. I wanted you inside me, taking my blood right there under that tree.”

He shivered, and his body stirred, his erection straining under his pants in defiance of his terrible injuries. With utmost care she laid her hand over the hard ridge beneath the heavy fabric.

“Fight,” she whispered. “Fight, damn you. I won’t let you die. I want you. If you live, you can have me in every way a man can have a woman. Even if that man is a vampire.”

He tried to smile. “Is that a...promise, Fiona?”

“Yes. And I don’t break my promises.”

At that moment she almost said words that shouldn’t be possible between a human and a Nightsider. But she swallowed them down, more afraid of those three syllables than of a whole army of bloodsuckers.

“Sleep now,” she said, bringing her face as close to Kane’s as she dared. “Sleep will help you get better. If you heal enough to walk, maybe we can make it out. Together.”

Kane closed his eyes, too exhausted to argue. The last feeble rays of the sun striped the floor of the hangar, then vanished. Fiona could almost feel the Nightsider forces preparing to come in after her.

“Human!”

The slightly accented voice was amplified, carrying easily across the distance to the hangar from the building where the Opiri had waited out the day.

Fiona shifted position to rest her rifle on top of the highest crate, aiming between the abandoned refuelers and tractors that no longer served any purpose save to give her a slightly better chance of holding the bloodsuckers at bay. Thick snowflakes began to fall like a curtain across the open door.

Strange, Fiona thought, that such a feeling of peace could come over her now.

“I’m here!” she called back.

“Give yourself up,” the voice said. “We won’t harm you.”

“You won’t harm me?” she said. “Isn’t that what your kind do to us when you take our blood?”

“You know that is not why we are here. If you cooperate, at least your ambassador and his escort can live.”

His response told her all she needed to know. They were here to stop the mission.

“You’ll let us live?” she asked. “As serfs? Vassals?”

“You cannot stop us. We will take you
and
them,” the voice said. “But we will permit you to offer your people the chance to surrender without bloodshed.”

Surrender? That was something her team would
never
do. Giving herself up wouldn’t change a thing.

“Forget it,” she said.

“We know you have a vassal in there with you. Send him out.”

Fiona tightened her grip on the rifle. They
had
seen her rescue Kane. Did they think she was holding him hostage, or did something more sinister lie behind the demand? Was it possible that Kane’s Bloodmaster was actively hunting him and these scouts had been able to identify him before she’d dragged him into the hangar?

“There is no vassal here,” she called. “Only a free man. And he’s ready to fight to stay free.”

The only response was a brief laugh. “Why are you protecting him, human? Why did you save the life of an Opir when we are your enemies?”

“We all act according to our natures,” she said. “Human or otherwise. Your nature is to seek blood by any means possible, and ours is to trust those who have proven themselves our friends.”

“You place your trust foolishly, human. Do you think he won’t turn on you if
he
has need of blood?”

“He’s already taken what he needs.”

“But he has been badly burned. He will require more blood to heal, and you are the only human there.”

Fiona cursed. They knew how badly Kane was injured, how little help he could be to her in a fight. It was only a matter of time now until the first Nightsider soldiers came charging into the hangar.

If they wanted Kane, they would have to get past her first.

“Listen to me, human,” the Nightsider said. “We will give you two hours to surrender before we come after you.”

Two hours. Two
centuries
wouldn’t make her change her mind, but at least she could be with Kane a little longer. Even if he didn’t know it.

Every sense alert for the first sign of attack, she settled in to wait. When she heard the sound of scratching and the creaking of bending metal behind her, she spun around, ready to fire.

Alfie pushed his head through the opening he had punched through the hangar wall, his fingertips bloody and his face split in a wide grin. “Would’ve been easier with a can opener,” he said.

Fiona lowered the rifle and spoke softly. “Alfie, how did you make it through?”

“Kane ’n’ me, we learned in the Great War ’ow ta move across battle lines without bein’ seen. We di’n’t lose them skills when we was converted.” He glanced down at Kane, and his grin vanished. “Bloody idjit. ’E ’ad to get ta ya, knowin’ ’e’d kill ’imself doin’ it.”

“He’ll get better,” Fiona said fiercely. “Right now you have to get back to the house and warn the others. Just remember that Goodman will try to kill you, and be careful. If they’ve already moved on, I know you can find them.”

Releasing an explosive sigh, Alfie pushed the metal flap back into place and sat against it. “Can’t go now. Them scouts’re patrollin’ the area, ’n’ I’m gonna have ta wait a bit.”

“How many are there?” she asked.

“’Round ten, I think. Usual scout patrol.” He looked toward the hangar door. “Prettiest snowfall I ever seen. Snowed sometimes in Lunnon, but never so nice. Peaceful. Like Christmas should be.”

Fiona resumed her position at the barrier. “How did you and Kane meet?”

“Kane joined up early. Not too many Yanks enlisted back when it started in the summer of ’14. Adventurous, ’e was, and one o’ the most ’onorable men I ever known. He joined me Division, ’n’ we went over ta France ta fight the Hun. The Germans.”

“So, the two of you were together in the war until...?”

“Until we was taken by the Bloodmaster,” Alfie said. “More ’n’ a few o’ us, though most o’ the others we never saw again.” He blinked, and Fiona saw tears in his eyes. “I don’t like ta talk ’bout them days, what the bloodsucker made us do, no matter ’ow much we tried ta fight ’im. But we’d seen most everythin’ that could ’appen on a battlefield even before then. Bad things.”

Bad things always went with war, she thought. “I’m sure you would have stopped it if you could,” she said.

He wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “Funny,” he said. “There
was
one good thing that ’appened, one day we never forgot. The day of the Christmas Truce.” He smiled, his eyes focused on something Fiona couldn’t see. “It were cold that day, too. No snow. Just ice ’n’ fog. But it weren’t like no day I ever seen, before or since.”

She looked down at Kane’s face. “Tell me,” she said.

“Christmas Eve,” Alfie said, “the Germans started out by puttin’ decorations with lights at the tops o’ their trenches, and then in the trees around ’em—them trees that still ’ad branches. They sang ‘Stille Nacht’...‘Silent Night.’

“Well, we didn’t know what ta make o’ it at first. Then someone on our side started singin’, too. Before ya knows it, we was all yellin’ ‘Happy Christmas’ ta each other, ’n’ pretty soon some o’ us was out in No Man’s Land, givin’ each other snouts—cigarettes to you Yanks—and chocolate. We gathered our dead ’n’ read verses over ’em. Not one bullet, not one cannon, was fired all that night, nor Christmas Day, neither.”

“A miracle,” Fiona whispered.

“That night, we knew all men was brothers, no matter what ’appened after.”

Men.
Not men and Nightsiders. But as she gazed over the crates at the softly falling snow, she wondered. Most of the Opiri out there had probably been human—if not recently, then sometime during the centuries when the Bloodmasters had walked the earth, preparing for the Awakening.

Would these Nightsiders recall a time like Christmas 1914, when men had remembered they were brothers?

She didn’t speak the thought aloud, and she and Alfie lapsed into a waiting silence. He cocked his head, listening to sounds she couldn’t hear. Kane lay still.

“What can I do for him, Alfie?” she asked when the stillness had grown too deep.

The Englishman met her gaze. “I think ya knows, Cap’n. But ’e’s very sick. Ya don’t know what ’e’ll do or what’ll ’appen to ya when the thing’s finished.”

“I’m not afraid. If he dies, I won’t much care what happens to me.”

“Awright.” Alfie hesitated. “’E ain’t up to doin’ it ’isself. Ya got a knife?”

Slowly Fiona pulled her knife from the sheath at her belt. Alfie touched the side of his neck, above the external jugular vein. “Right ’ere,” he said. “But ya gots ta be careful. Best let me do it.”

She held very still while he crouched beside her. “Don’t move,” he said and pressed the sharp point into her neck.

He was so gentle that she hardly felt the prick, but the blood begin to flow almost immediately.

“Now,” he said, “lean down. Yeah, like that.”

Closing her eyes, she bent over and rested the small wound against Kane’s lips. He reacted almost at once, his body jerking to life, trembling violently.

“Just stay there,” Alfie said. “Let ’im take what ’e needs.”

While she knelt over Kane, Alfie took her place at the barricade. She felt Kane’s mouth open, his lips close over the cut, his tongue slide over her skin. There was no pain, no discomfort. She lay down beside him, careful not to press him too hard.

She could not have said when she began to feel his strength returning. Perhaps it was the growing tension in his body, his muscles hardening, his mouth demanding more. His arms closed around her, holding her immobile, his fingers lacing through her hair and loosening it to fall around her shoulders.

All at once she was back under the tree where the rogues had bound her, slowly coming alive again under the caress of Kane’s lips on her throat. This was a hundred times more potent. He wasn’t saving her life. He was exchanging something incredibly precious for her blood, mingling the very essence of his being with hers.

When she lifted her head to look at his face, the burns were nearly gone. His breath was coming fast, but not because he was ill. He rolled onto his side, and she could feel the hard length of his erection against her thigh.

Her own breath quickened. They didn’t dare risk it. He wasn’t strong enough. Over an hour had passed since the Nightsider scout leader had set the deadline for her surrender. And Alfie...

Alfie was gone. He had slipped out while Kane was feeding, closing the hole in the wall behind him.

He had left her alone with Kane. He had known it would be all right.