The Thorndykes 1: Dispossessed (24 page)

Jay had to ask. “How do you know about us?”

“I was a friend of her father’s. We played chess every Thursday, and one day he slipped and fell. I saw fangs. Then we spent Thursdays watching vampire movies and laughing at them. Better than the chess. When he left I looked everywhere for him. I knew he wouldn’t leave his kids like that. Is he dead? Is that what all the fuss at the Wheeler place has been about?”

Jay nodded. “The Wheelers have been murdering Talents for years. Calling them abominations and suchlike.”

“First time the sheriff’s had to use his weapon in anger.” Harold stopped when Lucille moaned, more like a whimper, and turned her head. He went with her, letting his fingers grip tightly. With his other hand, he was pressing down on what Jay presumed was a pressure point to help lessen the flow. “He nicked the carotid. Thank God he didn’t go right in.”

A death sentence right there. If he had anything to do with it, Jay would be lying dead next to her. Because what was the point? He’d seen a lot, done a lot, and finally found the happiness he’d yearned for all his life. It didn’t get better.

He held her mind in his, so he felt the decline in activity. “No, baby, don’t go.” He wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud until the doctor’s head jerked up, and he stared at him.

“Are you using telepathy?”

Miserably, he nodded. “She can’t communicate, she’s too weak. But I have her.”

“Then hold her. Tell her how much you need her, and keep doing it. How strong is she?”

Jay tried to keep his emotions on track. She required him to maintain a cool head. “She’s barely holding on. We’re communicating at a deeper level than usual because—” He paused. No holding back now. He had to be open. “Because I love her.”

“Does she love you?” The way the doctor said it, it sounded normal, everyday, not the miracle Jay believed it to be.

“Yes.” She did. Of course she did. That knowledge filled him with guilt, but not now. That was a lifeline, and he didn’t require the doctor to tell him so. He sent that message through to her.
“You don’t want me unhappy, do you, sweetheart? Stay for my sake. I want you. I need you. Don’t go.”
He repeated the words like a mantra, varying them and pushing through scenes they’d shared together.

Remembering what they’d gone through in such a short time, he went through the falling-in-love process from start to finish. No, not the finish. Just today.

Then he did it again. And again, reminding of times they’d shared, all they’d been through.

Oblivious to anything else, he nearly lashed out when someone touched him gently on the shoulder, and a mind contacted his.
“I’m here. Tell me if you need anything. I’m going to insist that you eat.”

Food? Right on cue his stomach growled. Blindly he reached out, and Nathan put something in his hand. He bit into the burger, kept eating until it had gone, and then drank whatever fluid Nathan had pressed into his hand to replace it. Drank again. His inner soldier had kicked in, reminding him that food was fuel. He needed to stock up before nightfall, when his nature changed and he wouldn’t be able to eat normal food. Vampires needed both kinds of nourishment, a particular weakness that had been exploited by their enemies in the past.

Vampires were, in some respects, weaker than humans. The woman stretched out on the examining table was as weak as anyone could get without actually dying.

He didn’t know what time it was when he got a response, but the soft stirring shocked him. Immediately he moved in her mind, showed her she wasn’t alone, and then she turned her hand so she could take his.

Warmly embracing her, he felt her response and knew she would recover.

Chapter Fourteen

“You can’t go with her,” Harold said.

After she half woke and fed, Harold offered to sit with her while she slept. “She’ll sleep for a few days, on and off,” he told them. “When she wakes, feed her, blood or food, whichever is appropriate. Sad you people can’t take transfusions during the night.”

Their bodies rejected any blood that didn’t come straight from a mortal, or at a pinch, a vertebrate. Only non-vampire blood sustained them completely, an ironic twist of fate created by nature to torture both vampires and mortals. She needed fresh nourishment, and they found it for her. Jay took a little, more out of necessity than desire. He needed to restore his strength. For her.

“You can’t have her,” Nathan said.

Now he listened to Nathan’s outrageous comment with what he considered admirable self-control, although he wanted to grab the man’s throat and make sure he never spoke again.

“She wants me. I want her. I’d say that was enough,” Jay said.

“I know you’d like to kill me for saying that,” Nathan said, “but someone has to. Every Talent who’s been here today has thought it, but few have said anything.”

Nathan leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. They were in the nurse’s office, sitting on the two chairs in the room. Uncomfortable, too close with the air-conditioning off, but who the fuck cared?

“Talk, and then get out. I appreciate what you’ve done, but I don’t want to see you again.” Nothing and nobody would take him away from her.

“You’re no good for her. You can’t take away what she has.”

Jay leaned back, his face a mask, his mind closed to his erstwhile friend. “And that is?”

“Her life. She’s too young, Jay. Give her a few years to find herself, to know what she really wants.”

The problem troubled him, but there was nothing he could do about that. “She’s thirty. Old enough.”

“No, she isn’t, and you know it.” Nathan seemed unperturbed by Jay’s closing down to him. He had to be expecting it. Jay stared at the corkboard above Nathan’s head. “Have you told her of your sins?”

“Like what?”

“The desertions, the killings, the betrayals?”

He shrugged. “I was a soldier. I couldn’t stay forever young, could I?” Realizing he’d been tricked into defending himself, he shut his mouth. No sense digging a hole. “Have you been perfect?”

“I’m not planning to shack up with a young woman who deserves more. I know what you’ve done because I’ve done it too. Much the same. In our youth I shared it with you, in case you’ve forgotten. We’ve seen too much, done too much to be any good for a young one. Let her find someone better suited. Don’t claim her.”

Jay watched him coldly, but Nathan had made him think. All the memories flooded back, the ones he’d suppressed for her sake. Of course the man was fucking right. Jay knew that as well as Nathan, but one thing remained. She wanted him. The first person she’d looked for when she opened her eyes was him, and then she’d reached for his hand, clung to him. Her wound would have hurt her as it healed, but she didn’t give a word of complaint, and allowed him to share her pain. A privilege. “I can stop worse happening to her.”

“You can. You can keep the people she should be with away. She’s had no life. Her father kept her apart from everybody. It’s time for that to stop.”

“Why?” Jay understood why, but with Ryan’s death, the pressure had eased. He’d come after them instead of going to the other cell. They’d wiped out two PHR cells, so this part of Texas could be safer.

“Because we don’t fucking know if the word’s been passed on. Once the news breaks, and for all we know it’s started, others will come. They’ll make you a target, Jay.”

He got that. “We’re both moving on.”

Nathan ran his hand through his near black hair, raising the cut to a tousled mess. He got up and shoved his hands in his pockets, strode around the room. “For Christ’s sake, man, let her spread her wings. Give her that, at least.”

Everything he said was true, but it broke Jay’s heart to even consider it. The idea of pulling apart from her killed him. The fucking bastard was right, so right. About it all. Nobody else, except perhaps Cristos, would have talked to him about it. But he’d seen it for himself.

Someone had to bring him back to earth.

“You know what?” Nathan came to stand in front of him, lifting his chin as if inviting Jay’s uppercut. “It happened before. Her parents. Her mother’s an old soul. Older than we are. She hurt Lucille’s father first by declaring undying love and then by leaving him. She said to me, ‘Did he really expect it to last forever?’ That was before I connected Lucille and her mother. He was twenty-five when they met, and by what I’m hearing since I arrived here, he never got over her leaving.”

“That’s true,” someone new said. How the fuck had the doctor surprised them? His mind in turmoil, Jay turned his head to confront the man. He stood, gnarled hand curled around a stethoscope, glaring at them. “She’s asking for you. And for what it’s worth, he’s right.” He jerked his head to indicate Nathan. “Lucille’s father lost any desire to live. If she’d died, it would have been better, he told me once. She was out there with someone else, and it killed him. He’d thought that forever meant just that, but it doesn’t with you people, does it?”

Sometimes it did. Jay could think of a few people it happened to. Not him, though. And never with anyone so young.

It would kill him to let her go.

He made up his mind, swift as always. “Okay, then you take her.” He glared at Nathan. “You come nowhere near here. Move her on; take her with you. I’ll make it right. I won’t contact her, because I can’t. In a few years, a hundred maybe, I’ll come back.” She’d have gone on by then and rightly. “Take care of her.”

“With my life,” Nathan assured him.

He turned his back and left. Jay knew he wouldn’t see him again.

“I FEEL SO much better,” Lucille said. Especially now that he’d returned. He must be exhausted. Still in the doctor’s surgery, but not for much longer, Lucille was preparing to go to the ranch with Jay. Being loved gave her such happiness. Maybe it would dissipate through the years, but she couldn’t imagine that happening. Already she was anticipating their bonding.

He didn’t smile, but took her hand and stared down at her with hungry eyes as he had when he first met her. She shivered. “It’s dangerous for us to be together for a while. The cells will be hunting us. Do you understand?”

Disappointment worked its way through her, but she refused to accept it. “We have the world. We can go anywhere.”

“So do they.” His hand lay still in hers. He didn’t move to caress her or grip her tightly like he’d been doing all day. “It’s necessary.”

“How long?”

He considered her, his eyes cool. “A few years.”

“No!” Her first reaction was horror, her second terror. How could she face what was to come without him? “I don’t want to. I’ll find you.”

“You won’t, because I’ll be here.” His lips flickered in a here-and-gone smile, wry, no humor there at all. “I’m going to trap the bastards who come after me and destroy them. That will be dangerous.”

“You could die.”

He shrugged, and his lack of interest in his own fate appalled her. “I’ve lived long enough. You haven’t. What we had—it was intensified by the situation we found ourselves in. While the danger existed, you had to stay close to someone with more experience. Now that it’s over, you don’t. Understand?”

No, she understood nothing. Why was he doing this? Tears sprang to her eyes, anger and disbelief combined, but she forced them back. “I thought we were moving on together, that we were starting a new life. You said you loved me!”

If he didn’t respond to that, then she had no stronger argument. It wouldn’t stop her trying. She’d throw everything she could at him. How could he? No sooner had she been declared well by the doctor than he did this?

“I tell a lot of women I love them.” He released her. She let her empty hand fall to the blanket. More than her hand felt empty. “It means I love them then and there, nothing more. I did love you. I did feel responsible when Wheeler attacked you, but that was foolish. It wasn’t my fault he obsessed about you. Watching you and helping you recover, I realized what I was trapping—making you do. You deserve better than that. Better than me.” He went on, not allowing her to answer. “I have business here to finish, and you can’t stay. You’ll distract me, and you’ll be in too much danger.”

He’d hurt her by his words. Telling a lot of women the same thing he’d told her? She had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth, but she knew one thing. She loved him. No going back. She had to accept everything he was and had been for this relationship to work.

“So you’ll come to me when you clear everything up?” It meant more killing, she was almost sure. Hadn’t he done enough? Maybe this was just a reaction. So many things had happened recently, the Lord knew her mind was whirling with conjecture and confusion. And until about ten minutes ago, excitement. Starting a new life with him, it could be an adventure, not a frightening necessity.

“By then you’ll have made a new life, met someone else.”

“No, I won’t.” What did he take her for? “I’ll wait as long as it takes. For you.”

“Don’t. I’m not coming.” He lifted a hand, and for a moment she thought he was going to hold hers again, but he stuffed it in his pocket instead. “I won’t be there. I won’t talk to you. I won’t listen to you. You’re moving on. That means cutting all ties with your previous life. With me.”

“What about Drew?”

“I don’t know. I’m passing your case to Nathan, so he’ll deal with the details.” He smiled, easy, carefree just as he’d always done, and he broke her heart. “He’ll probably find a way to keep you in touch if you agree to go to a big city.”

“Jay, I won’t—” She broke off as he walked through the door, closing it quietly behind him.

Chapter Fifteen

Six months later

Running a coffee shop in Chicago was a lot like running a bar in Taken, Texas. With coffee instead of beer, but the principles were the same. Lucille had been managing this place for three months, and every morning she slipped into a regular routine that distanced Texas, made it recede further into the background. Or at least, that was what she was aiming for.

Jay had been right about one thing. As her brother entered, Lucille felt a familiar easing of her spirits. Here was one person she could rely on, that she could love. In this existence he was her cousin, had a different name than the one she’d been given, but he was still Andrew, and she was still Lucille. The Thorndykes were a very efficient, smooth organization.