Twilight Vendetta (24 page)

Oh, yes. He was so selfless, wasn’t he?

“I’m sorry, sir. They’re dead.”

“All of them?” Hobbs blinked as if against a flood of tears.

“Yes, sir.”

No, Devlin thought as his attention returned to the victims. Not all of them. One lived, though only barely. And Devlin’s mission changed in that moment. It became to rescue the one and only human, besides Hobbs himself, who knew what had really happened tonight. He homed in on the sense of life emanating from the dead men who lay crisscrossing each other like pick-up-sticks in the forest. He would have to be fast, silent, and accurate.

His senses picked out the one with a hint of life still left in him. He lay partially beneath a fallen log…perhaps he had thrown himself there for cover.

Devlin leapt from the tree he was perched on into another. He was up high enough that any sound he made could be attributed to the wind blowing through the needled boughs. The men were not looking up. They were searching the woods at their own level. He jumped again, and then again, until he was in a tree directly above the fallen man.

Unconscious. He had a thin face, exquisite bone structure–the cheeks, the jaw. He was very pale just now, and his eyes were closed, thick lashes resting on his white skin. There were at least three bloody holes in his torso.

Devlin moved himself around the tree until its trunk was between him and Hobbs and company. Then he shimmied down, silent, easy. He touched the ground, then dashed to the young man’s side in a blur of speed. Devlin gathered him up, and launched himself back up into the tree. The entire operation took less than two seconds. He climbed upward again until he’d reached a dizzying height, and from there, he moved through the canopy, willing the man to stay alive until he could get him some medical assistance.

“Sip this,” Sarafina said, pressing a warm mug into Emma’s hands. Emma closed her eyes and drank. Then she resumed looking around the place. It was a beautiful house, with large chandeliers, curving staircases, towering ceilings, massive windows and doors. The kind of place where the extremely wealthy would live.

She’d been taken into a bedroom, given a soft muslin nightgown to put on, and then tucked between layers of down that felt like a cloud.

“Thank you. But I don’t feel any need to rest.”

“Don’t underestimate the debilitating impact of pain and stress on the vampiric body, Emma. I know you feel better, but you won’t be completely restored until you’ve slept through a day.”

Emma set the mug on the white nightstand, admiring its gold trim and brass fixtures and wishing for a coaster. “Do you think he’ll really do it? Kill them all?”

“You know him better than I do. What do you think?”

Sitting up in the bed, Emma met the other woman’s eyes. “He hates them. And I don’t know why. I mean, sure there’s enough reason to hate them. The persecution, the murders. But I think with him there’s something else. Something more...personal.”

“I think he’ll confide in you, if you ask him.”

She shook her head. “Up till now, he hasn’t even liked me very much.”

“Up till now, you were one of them,” Sarafina said. “Now you’re one of us. What do you know of your new nature, Emma?”

She drew a breath, then smiled because she had. “I don’t have to breathe. I keep doing it out of habit, but I don’t have to.”

“True.”

“I have to drink blood to survive.”

“Yes.”

“And I can no longer tolerate food or sunlight.”

Sarafina nodded. “There are three things that can kill you now. You can bleed out, just as you could before. The sunlight will kill you. And any open flame is a danger. We are highly flammable. We have to be careful around fire.”

She sat up straighter in the bed, eager to hear more about her new nature. “What else? I want to know everything.”

“Everything, you will learn in time. The best teacher is experience, after all. But I can tell you some things. Your senses are heightened. You feel everything more keenly now, both pain and pleasure. Pain can be debilitating. Pleasure can be....” She lifted her brows and smiled a little. “Beyond anything previously imagined.”

Emma nodded. “All my senses are sharper. I can see farther and in more detail. I can smell everything that has a scent, and some things that I didn’t think did. Like rocks. They have an aroma all their own.”

“Yes, they do.”

“I’m stronger, and can run faster, jump higher–”

“And every one of these things grows over time. The longer you live, the more acutely improved you will find all of these areas. But the more susceptible you are to pain and blood loss, too.”

“I didn’t know that.”

And we can speak to each other mentally,
Sarafina added without moving her lips at all.

“That’s going to take some getting used to,” Emma said softly. She was making small talk and not getting to the questions she really wanted to ask the vampiress, though. Maybe she was almost afraid of what her answers would be.

Sarafina crooked a brow. “Go on, I can see there’s something. Good blocking by the way. What is it, Emma?”

Emma nodded. “My...mother was one of us,” she said. “She nearly died when I was born. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. She wouldn’t have made it till morning, but–”

“By the gods, you’re the daughter of Diana Benatar,” Sarafina said. “I
knew
there was something familiar about your energy.” Smiling, she seemed to drink Emma in with her huge expressive eyes. “How is your mother?”

Slowly, Emma felt her smile die. “I...was hoping you might know. She vanished when I was twelve. Neither Dad nor I have seen her since. He said the place where she used to rest by day had been torched, but of course, there were no bodies. I’ve never believed she was dead though. I never will.” She lowered her head as she said those words. “And now Dad’s a DPI prisoner. That’s why we were there, to try to get him out. Him and those two kids.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry, Emma. I haven’t seen Diana since that night. I taught her what I could about her new self in what time we had. But no, I have no idea what became of her.” She seemed awash in sadness. Was it like losing a relative, Emma wondered, when a vampire they had made passed away?

Emma slipped a hand over hers, and said, “If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have had a mother for the first twelve years of my life. I’d have no memories of her at all. Thank you for that.”

She nodded. “You’re welcome, Emma. I wish....”

“I know. So do I.”

Devlin was back. She felt him. And he was not alone.

Sarafina’s head came up too, eyes narrowing as she, no doubt, sensed the same things. “He’s got a mortal with him.”

“God, I hope he hasn’t decided to take one of them prisoner.” Emma flung back the covers and put her bare feet on the floor, pausing only briefly to relish the sensation of her toes sinking into the thick, plush carpet.

It was hard to stay focused with so much competing for her attention. But she forced herself to stop feeling and start thinking. She had to get to Devlin, to find out just what he had done.

She raced out of the room ahead of Sarafina, down the hall and quickly descended the beautiful staircase, her palm skimming the gleaming smooth hardwood bannister that smelled of walnut and polish. At the bottom of the stairway, she came to a stop at what she saw.

Willem Stone stood holding the large ornate entry door open as Devlin carried a bloody, half-dead DPI crow inside.

“Devlin, what are you thinking, bringing him here?” Sarafina shouted, pushing past Emma to race to the door.

Will was taking the man from Devlin’s arms, though, and he was the one who answered. “He’s been shot. Three times, by the looks.” He turned, “‘Fina, he needs a bed, bandages, medicine–”

“He needs a hospital,” she snapped.

“He won’t make it to one. It’s up to us.” As Willem strode through the house carrying the human, Sarafina followed. Devlin stood there, head down, the door still open behind him. Emma went to him, closed the door and, taking his arm, drew him inside. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

He shook his head.

“You didn’t shoot that man only to have second thoughts and decide to save him.”

“I didn’t shoot that man.”

She touched his chin, lifted it. “Who did?”

He swallowed hard. He looked exhausted, drained by whatever he’d been through. What he’d seen…or maybe by what he’d done. “Hobbs,” he said. “He killed all of them. All the men who were with him. It was happening as I arrived. Three men, mowing down all the rest with automatic weapons. And then Hobbs shot the three gunmen, just put a bullet into their heads, one by one. Then he put one into his own gut.”

She frowned. Her first thought was that he was making this up. She’d asked him not to kill them. Maybe he found that once he’d done it, he was too ashamed to own up to it and–

“I don’t take actions I’m ashamed of, Emma. I would’ve done it myself if Hobbs hadn’t done it first. And I would have had no guilt about it. The only difference is, I’d have killed Hobbs too.”

“Then why save one man? Why even bother trying if you would’ve killed them all anyway?”

“Because Hobbs is alive. And he’s planning to tell the world that I did this. I, and some other vampires, maybe including you. He killed his own men so that he could blame it on us, use it to convince the world we are everything he and his kind believe we are. Murderers of the innocent, predators without souls. Mindless killers who need to be vanquished if mankind is to survive.”

She lifted her head, met his eyes. “If you had done what you planned to do, isn’t that exactly what you would have been?”

He took the blow well, she thought, even though it seemed to render him speechless for a second or two. And then he nodded. “What do you want me to say? That you were right all along? I still don’t agree with you. I still believe we need to fight back.”

“I know you do. I believe it too. But we have to do it in the right way, Devlin. Wars in this country are won and lost by public opinion.”

He sighed, not agreeing, but not arguing either. “A medic told Hobbs that his men were all dead. But I could feel that one of them clung to life. He’s the only one who can tell the truth about what happened in that forest tonight.” He lifted his head and looked in the direction Sarafina and Willem Stone had taken the wounded man. “And I intend to keep him alive long enough to make sure he does just that.”

E
mma’s bedroom was lovely, and lonely. She’d rather have spent the day sleep in Devlin’s arms, but he was still tense and closed off where she was concerned. And despite the passion he’d shown upon rescuing her, she wasn’t sure if that had been anything more than relief she was alive. And anger at those who’d tortured her. He probably would have felt the same way if it had been Bell or Tavia he’d rescued. Though he might not have kissed them senseless. But that was a feeding induced sort of passion. Wasn’t it?

She was one of his kind now. He was protective of his kind. Furiously so.

She got up and headed into the adjoining bathroom to take a blissful and overdue shower, shocked to see that the marks from the defibrillator paddles had vanished completely. Amazing. After drying off and damp drying her hair, she dressed in some of the clothes she’d found stacked on the dresser in her room. Sarafina had left her a wide variety of things to choose from, but only one pair of skinny jeans. The rest were skirts and dresses. She put on the jeans, pairing them with a colorful paisley blouse in blues and greens that had draping handkerchief sleeves. She’d have chosen a T-shirt if there had been one in the pile.

When she left her room to step into the hall, she felt Devlin near, looked up and saw him, just stepping out of his own room. His hair was still damp from his shower, but pulled back and held with a band. It was, in her opinion, his sexiest look. He turned her way and almost smiled.

“Morning,” she said as her eyes wandered lower. He wore a T-shirt that fit him like a second skin and a pair of borrowed jeans.

“Morning.”

“You should see my chest.” She bit her lip after blurting the words and quickly added, “I mean, the marks are gone. I don’t even have a bruise left.”