Master of Darkness (24 page)

“Give me that!”

“What?” the blond guy in glasses asked. He was standing with his back to the fireplace, holding the weapon up, taking very careful aim, but hesitating with his shots.

“That's not the way to do it. Give me the gun.”

He pointed the gun at her. “Who are you?”

“Something you're not—a pro. Give me.”

“Duck.”

She did. He fired. The vampire that had been coming up behind her let out a very satisfying scream. Silver bullets, she supposed, or garlic embedded in the shells.

“Good work,” she acknowledged, and snatched the weapon from his hands. In turn she tossed him the chair leg she'd been using as a club.

“Hey!” he called, but she was already moving away. The gun was warm, heavy, and reassuring in her hands. She had plans for this mother.

“You can't kill me.”

“Wanna bet?” Laurent answered.

Justinian was panting hard, bruised and bloody, reeling from exhaustion and suffering the effects of the zapper. But he wouldn't stop. And Laurent was frightened that the old Prime might be right. As hard as he tried, as many chances as he got, he kept pulling the killing blow.

The worst part was that Laurent was certain it had nothing to do with the way Justinian had conditioned him. But pity nagged at him. It didn't feel like weakness, but it was stupid.

He took another swing at Justinian, this time
raking bloody gouges across his throat. Justinian's head was thrown back. This gave Laurent a quick view past Justinian's shoulder. He saw Eden running toward him, with a gun in her hand. She was intent on him, not aware of the Prime rushing up on her.

“Behind you!” Laurent shouted.

But she reacted an instant too slowly. The Prime tackled her. The gun flew from her hand. Laurent instantly forgot Justinian. He rushed to help Eden. Laurent scooped up the gun and fired without hesitation.

Eden gave Laurent a grateful look. She was grinning, and her eyes were shining. Such fierceness was a good thing in a vampire's mate.

She started to say something as she pushed out from under the dead vampire.

“Antonia!”

Justinian's tortured shout drowned out everything else in the world. He looked up, just as Justinian rushed past him.

Then Laurent caught sight of the woman in the center of the room, and his jaw dropped. She was as beautiful as silver in the moonlight. So beautiful it was painful to look at her. A vision. A memory.

“Antonia?” He could barely speak for the joyous pain.

“Laurent!” Eden shouted in his ear. She shook his shoulder. “Do something!”

In an instant Laurent came to the real world. He raised the gun and fired. Three rounds. One in the head. Two in the back. He hoped to hell he hit the bastard's heart. At any rate, he felt Justinian die. It was as if a dark weight lifted off the universe.

He had no idea if the shout of joy that went up was from Eden, Sid, or himself. The chaos around them was quieting down, but he didn't care. The zapper stopped shrieking into his brain, and he hardly noticed. Laurent's interest in that moment was only on Antonia.

He had to step across Justinian's lifeless body to reach her. It was only when they were close that he noticed that her lips were drawn back, and her fangs were out. There was a part of him that had forgotten she was a vampire.

“You're beautiful.”

“You've grown,” was her reply as she looked up to meet his gaze.

“So, Sid, how you doing?” Joe said, coming up to his partner.

He was back in human form after jumping outside to turn off the zapper. He'd paused long enough to pull on his stashed clothing and
a pair of sandals. The room was strewn with the bodies of the vampires who hadn't run away. The good guys were the only ones left standing.

“You don't look any worse for wear,” he added. “You do know we had to take time off from some important cases to find you.” He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Of course, if a missing-person's agency can't find one of its own people …”

“I detect a certain amount of annoyance in your tone,” she answered. “Do you want me to look worse for wear?”

“No.” He grabbed her and hugged her. “I was terrified for you.”

“Aw,” she said, and grazed her fangs gently across his shoulder before she stepped back. A sign of affection from a vampire to a werewolf. “Thanks for the rescue. I knew you'd figure it out.”

Cathy was sitting on her haunches at Sid's side. Sid's telepathy was the only thing that could calm the bitten werewolf during the full-moon seizures. Now that the fighting was over, Cathy certainly needed to be controlled.

Joe glanced over his shoulder at the reunion taking place in the center of the room. So far Lady Antonia and Laurent were just looking at
each other. “What's he doing here?” Joe asked, not trying to conceal his hostility.

“Same thing you are. Rescuing the fair maidens.”

She stepped closer to Antonia and Laurent, and Joe followed, confused. Daniel came up to put his arm around Sid's shoulder. The vampire hunter joined them but without sparing a glance for anyone but Laurent.

Eden didn't know why, but she was more frightened for Laurent at this moment than she had been when he was fighting Justinian.

Don't reject him,
she thought at Antonia.
Don't you dare
.

“I…” Where to start? What to say? “I looked for you,” Laurent finally told Antonia. “I called but—”

“I couldn't have answered.” She glanced disdainfully at Justinian's corpse. “He saw to that.” She put a hand on his arm. “It was years before I could look for you.” This time she looked toward Sid. “We looked for you.”

“Sidonie told me.”

“We have a lot to talk about, Laurent.”

“Let's get out of here, first.”

She nodded. Then her expression turned
stern. The look in Antonia's eyes was pure steel as she looked him over from head to toe, then looked him in the eye. “Choose.”

Her tone was pure steel as well. The voice of Lady Antonia, head of House Antonia of Clan Wolf. Laurent wasn't confused for a moment about what she meant.

Choose.

It occurred to him that he was now technically the king Prime of Tribe Manticore. Ironic as that was, he could imagine the wicked possibilities.

Then he thought about Eden and glanced sideways at her. She looked so bloody, intensely hopeful.

I love you, Laurent Wolf!

“Wolf,” he answered his mother, knowing full well every difficult thing the choice entailed. “I choose Clan Wolf.”

“A wise decision,” Antonia said. She smiled. “I think your young woman makes you better than you want to be.”

He turned to Eden, and she rushed into his embrace. Never mind everything else that had happened, was happening; he couldn't do anything but kiss her. The warmth of her, the eagerness of her response; this was the reassurance that they were alive. Everything was going to be all right.

It made him smile against Eden's lips when Sid's gang started to applaud.

When they broke the kiss, he kept his arm around Eden's waist. He turned them to face Antonia. “This is my—”

“Fiancé,” Eden piped up.

“Fiancé,” he agreed, on a rush of pleasure. Fiancé. Yeah. “Future bondmate is the term,” he told Eden.

“Well, then,” Antonia said, holding out her arms at last. “Welcome home, both of you.”

Epilogue
Seven months later

“I
don't know about this new look of yours,” Eden said, taking a step back from Laurent's embrace. From the hungry, eager way she felt you'd have thought she hadn't seen him in a year. Still, her expression was a bit dubious. “I finally get my trip to Hawaii, and I come home to find that you've cut your hair.”

While they'd spent a lot of time apart in the last months, this three weeks had been the longest time without any physical contact since Laurent entered what he thought of as Clan Boy Boot Camp. They'd only been allowed a few phone calls and e-mails.

While she'd been sunning on beaches and finally visiting her volcano, he'd been undergoing treatment at the Clans' clinic up in Los Angeles. Along with drug treatments to allow him to function in the daylight, he'd had a lot of counseling to go through.

And they'd brought in a big dog for that; old Barak of Clan Shagal to give him a lot of long, hard talking-to, and a certain amount of physical thumping as well. Tough love. That was what Elder Barak was all about.

Barak had been inside his head and out, finding the curves and quirks and phantoms that even the Wolfs' best psychic healers hadn't been able to find. Laurent came away from the experience feeling like his brain had not only been washed, it had been waxed and detailed.

“My therapist convinced me that the long hair was a connection with my Tribe past,” Laurent told Eden. “Cut the hair, sever the connection. Get it?”

She nodded. “You're going to grow it back, right?”

He grinned. “Oh, yeah.”

They couldn't take
all
the bad boy out of him. He didn't think it was likely he was ever going to be a model citizen.

“I like you a little rough around the edges,” Eden said, picking up on his intent without having to read his mind.

He liked that she could know him so well without any special psychic talents. Correction, he loved it.

She kissed him again, long and slow and thorough,
totally uncaring that they were standing on the crowded sidewalk outside the airport baggage claim area.

“I missed you,” she said when she let him up for air. “We both did.”

He touched her expanded abdomen and got a head-butt from the inside in response. He grinned. “Toni's as tough as her mama.” And unlike her mama, their daughter was already showing signs of being psychic from inside the womb. They were going to call her Antonia Sidonie Wolf.

It was a good thing they were already an official couple by the time Eden discovered she was pregnant. If not, he'd probably have had the Clan and the hunters after him for that indiscretion. Eden had been right to worry about their not using birth control the first time they'd made love. She'd pointed out then that it only took once.

So now, here they were, going to be parents.

He took her hand, and they went to the car that was waiting for them. Sid was waiting behind the wheel, totally oblivious to the traffic cop trying to wave her to move on. Once they were settled in the back seat, she turned the car out into the heavy traffic.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked him, once she'd greeted Eden.

“You'll like it,” Eden assured him, patting his hand. “I know I do. Was I missed?”

“Terribly. Even Cathy likes having Eden around,” Sid assured him.

After the scattering of the Manticores, Eden had rejoined the hunters to finish cleaning out the Dawn dealers, and he and Sid had helped with the op. For him it was a way of proving his intent to turn over a new leaf—and it hadn't hurt his emotional well-being to be there to watch Eden's back.

Then she'd finally quit the vampire hunting business. Her family had been upset with her on several counts, but at least her father and brothers were still talking to her. They'd even grudgingly showed up at the wedding.

She'd also left her job to take a position with a company that operated within her new world. Bleythin Investigations had acquired a new investigator who specialized in computer security.

Another thing he'd done to prove his Clan-worthiness was give up any right to whatever was in the Patron's computer. It was Manticore property—and he was Wolf. So much for the treasure that could have been his if he'd gotten Eden to break into the data
before
his miraculous reformation.

Now he was about to take on one more Clan Prime responsibility.

He glanced at the fresh wolf's-head tattoo on the inside of his right wrist. He hadn't been required to take the vow to protect and serve, but he'd decided to give it a shot. It had made his mother proud. And Sid. And Eden most of all.

Serving humanity had to start somewhere, so at Joe's prompting, Laurent had also taken a position with Bleythin Investigations. He was going to help find missing persons, starting as soon as they got to the office.

He looked at Eden and touched the tip of her long, elegant nose, drawing a smile from her.

“I never thought I'd have a day job,” he told her.

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