Untamed (Vampire Awakenings, Book 3) (23 page)

Emma's shoulder had been wrenched when Mandy
went down, Jill groaned on the other side of her as they were both
almost pulled over with Mandy but they somehow managed to remain on
their feet. Emma's lungs were on fire, there wasn't enough oxygen
in the air as she panted heavily in an attempt to get more of it
into her body. The woman with red eyes that had been pursuing them
was getting closer and from the shadows of a cropping of palm trees
another man emerged. She bit back a scream and released Mandy's arm
to snag a brick sized rock off the ground.

"Get inside!" Ethan's bellow echoed through
the night. "
Emma
,
get
in
the
house
!"

There wasn't enough time for that though as
Jill managed to get Mandy onto her feet and the woman jumped at
her. Panic for her friends and herself took over, acting on
instinct alone she kept hold of the rock as she swung her arm up
and smashed it off the side of the woman's head. The force of the
blow jolted her arm and knocked the rock from her hand, but it also
sliced the side of the woman's face open. Blood poured from the
gash that revealed her cheek all the way to the bone.

Jill had Mandy's arm around her shoulders as
they stumbled past her, but the woman was already recovering from
the blow and coming back toward her. "Key! Key! Key!" Jill shouted
frantically as Mandy scrambled for the key in her pocket and Emma
stumbled back and fell against the side of the house.

Her heart leapt into her throat as the
woman's lips peeled back to reveal two lethal looking fangs hanging
over her bottom lip. The world seemed to come to a screeching halt
as her mind spun in circles faster than the earth spun on its axis.
There was no way to completely process what it was that was coming
at her. Even as every sane part of her screamed that it couldn't
possibly be real, that this must be some sort of nightmare, or
alcohol induced hallucination, the rest of her knew there was no
way to deny the events of this night and everything that it had
revealed to her.

"Holy shit," Jill said as Mandy swung a fist
at the man that had emerged from the palm trees and was bearing
down on Emma.

Emma threw her hands up against the man's
chest, he was as solid as a rock and just as unbending as her
pushing, and Mandy's fist in his chin, did nothing to deter him.
The rattling
ting
of the key
falling from Mandy's hand onto the stone walkway was
extraordinarily loud, and condemning, in the night. This was how
she was going to die, Emma realized as she felt the man's breath
against her neck and then the cool press of his fangs on her skin.
At first she thought she was screaming as an echoing bellow tore
through the air but her mouth remained closed while she fought to
keep the man off of her.

A loud crack reverberated through the air,
Ethan appeared behind the man whose neck was now twisted at an
unnatural angle that would have killed a human; it only caused this
monstrosity to stumble around awkwardly. Behind Ethan, she spotted
the woman, Tristan, and four others coming at them in the night.
Ethan grabbed hold of the awkwardly stumbling vampire and shoved
him at the others, knocking them back.

"The door!" he shouted.

"I dropped the key!" Mandy's cry was full of
distress as Jill knelt to search for the key.

A frustrated sound escaped Ethan as he spun
back around. Jill rose to her feet as he wrapped his arm around
Emma's waist and before she could protest or respond in anyway, he
lifted her firmly against his side. Pushing through Mandy and Jill,
he raised his free hand and smashed it against the door handle.
Wood splintered as the handle gave way and he banged his hand
against the door. It flew open and crashed against the wall with
enough force to crack the plaster.

Jill had been leaning against the doorframe;
she fell ungracefully through the open door and sprawled in a heap
upon the tile in the entranceway. Ethan grabbed Mandy's arm, pushed
her through, and followed swiftly behind with her still pressed
against his side.

"The door!" Jill gasped as she tried to
scramble back to her feet.

Ethan remained unmoving in the living room
with Emma in his arms. He could feel the tension in her body, the
way that she held herself away from him, and smell the sour scent
of fear upon her. Her hands didn't curl into him but remained flat
against his chest. The brisk beat of her heart could be felt
against his arm as she tried to catch her breath.

"They can't come in here," he said.

Even as he spoke, Tristan appeared in the
doorway with the woman at his side. They were both leering at them
as they rested their hands against the frame. Though blood still
trickled from the wound that Emma had inflicted on the woman, she
could no longer see the bone. She thought she should be surprised
or horrified by that fact, but after the events of this night she
didn't think anything would surprise her again.

Ethan had seen four of Tristan's cohorts, but
he sensed at least two more hidden somewhere in the night. A low
growl escaped Ethan; he stepped forward and slammed the broken door
closed just as Tristan blew a kiss at Emma. The only sound in the
dark house was the rapid breaths of the women surrounding him.

Emma was uncertain how to react now that they
were safe from Tristan. A part of her wanted to cling to Ethan, to
curl up against him and cry. The other part wanted to shove off of
him, grab her friends and flee from here as fast as they could. He
may have saved them, but he was one of those
things
. What was he going to do with them now?

"What was that? No never mind
don't
answer that," Jill muttered.

Emma couldn't see anything in the shadows
that enshrouded the house. Her heart was still racing faster than
the winning horse of the Kentucky Derby and there was no way that
she was ever going to breathe normal again.

The shuffling of feet and a low curse from
Jill accompanied a thud. As light burst into the room Emma realized
that she couldn't live in denial, that what had just happened had
actually
happened. Ethan turned
toward her; those eyes that had just been the color of rubies were
back to the emerald that she had come to know so well.

She saw the hesitation in his eyes, the
wariness and sadness in the face staring back at her. She'd come to
love that face, but how could she love him when she realized now
that she didn't even know who, or
what,
he was? There was no way to love someone
when there was no trust, and the trust she'd had in him had been
stomped beneath the events that had just transpired. She didn't
even know if he was going to kill her now that she knew there
wasn't something entirely human about him.

"Please..." she had to swallow in order to
continue. "Please put me down."

He winced a little and bowed his head toward
her, she refused to flinch away but even so he must have sensed
something as he lowered her to the ground. Emma remained unyielding
against him until he slipped his arm from her waist. She inhaled a
shaky breath of relief as she took a hasty step away from him. The
anguished look in his eyes pulled at her heart but there was
nothing she could do about that, she wasn't the one with the
secrets, she wasn't the one that wasn't
human
.

He'd also just let her go and he wasn't
making any attempt to come after her, or her friends. Her mind was
spinning, her legs felt weak, but she refused to sit down. She
didn't want him to think she was intimidated by him, or afraid of
Tristan, she wouldn't give either of them the satisfaction. Though
she was definitely more than a little intimidated and frightened of
the both of them, their eyes were freaking
red!
Or at least they had been.

Emma's gaze drifted over to Jill and Mandy.
Jill remained standing by the door, her hand on the light switch,
her face pale beneath her tan. Mandy had managed to get back to her
feet but she looked as if she was debating just sitting on the
floor again. Mandy's eyes met and held hers, Emma didn't know what
to do or say. It didn't matter if she intended to remain standing;
her legs weren't going to hold her anymore. She walked over and sat
on one of the stools at the breakfast bar.

Ethan turned to watch her, his hair was
disheveled and there was blood at the corner of his eye. Even as
she spotted the blood she realized that the cut it had come from
was already healed. "What are you?" she choked out.

His eyes were unwavering upon hers. "I didn't
plan on you finding out like this."

"Finding out what?" she demanded.

"Emma..."

"
What
are
you
?" She hated the nearly hysterical tone of her
voice but she couldn't control it.

Ethan glanced at her friends before focusing
on her again. "Now isn't the time."

"Now is the
only
time." He ran a hand through his disheveled
hair before walking toward her. She tried to jerk her hands away
when he took hold of them but he refused to release her. "Ethan,
tell me."

"Vampire. I am a vampire.
They
were vampires." The words should have been
staggering, they should have made her run screaming or laugh in
denial, but they were the words she'd been expecting him to utter,
no matter how insane or improbable they were. She also knew that
they were true. "Emma I'm sorry. It wasn't supposed to be like
this. This isn't how you were supposed to find out."

"And how was I supposed to find out?" she
croaked.

"I don't know how I was going to tell you,"
he admitted. "I'm not sure how anyone can be told this sort of
thing in a reasonable way."

"But you
were
going to tell me?"

He clasped her cheeks and tilted her head so
that she had to look up at him. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I care for you."

Some of her disbelief had begun to wear off.
She jerked her face away from his hands as a hot poker of anger
pierced her. "Lies are not the way to show someone that you care
for them."

He recoiled before reaching for her again but
she slid off the stool and took a step away from him. She simply
couldn't deal with him right now; she just couldn't, not on top of
everything else. Her ex had just tried to kill her and her friends,
her ex who was
also
a vampire. She
shook her head, was she some kind of freak magnet? First Tristan
and now Ethan. Or perhaps she was just a magnet for the undead, if
they were even undead.

Ethan's shoulders slumped; his eyes followed
her as she walked over to join her friends. Jill and Mandy were
staring at him as if he was a shark who had just climbed out of the
water and walked onto the shore. They huddled closer to Emma as she
stood with them. He hated the look of betrayal and apprehension
that shadowed Emma's eyes. Earlier she had looked at him with such
trust and love, now she was staring at him as if he were a
monster.

And if he was honest with himself he would
admit that's exactly what he was. He survived on blood, thoughts of
murder consumed him, and he had caused her to look at him like
that
.

"What are you going to do with us?" Emma
asked.

That question was like a knife through the
heart but he kept his face impassive as he watched her. "Do with
you?" he inquired.

"I assume this was something we weren't
supposed to know, or something that is supposed to be kept secret.
It's not as if it's public knowledge that vampires exist," Emma
said with far more strength than she felt.

Jill grabbed hold of her arm and Mandy bent
to pick up a small vase that was on the coffee table. Emma didn't
know what they were going to do if he came after them, she didn't
know how they were going to be able to defend themselves against
him. She'd seen some of his brutality outside and she had a feeling
that she'd only caught a glimpse of what he was capable of doing.
There were layers to this man, layers that she was terrified
of.

"I would never hurt you Emma.
Never
." Though his words were meant to be
comforting, she found that they weren't. He hadn't mentioned Mandy
and Jill either, something that wasn't lost on Jill.

"What about us?" Jill demanded.

Emma stepped forward as Ethan's gaze ran over
Jill and Mandy. She would fight him to the death before she ever
let him harm her friends. "I have to call my sister."

"That's not an answer," Emma grated through
her clenched teeth.

"No one is going to be hurt Emma, not by me
or my family. I will keep all of you safe." Though he said the
words, she didn't trust him and she sensed something more beneath
his calm exterior. Of course there was something more beneath his
exterior, there was a whole world of secrets and lies she'd never
dreamed of discovering.

"I think you should leave," she said around
the lump in her throat. She didn't know if she felt like crying or
screaming more, but she did know that she needed some space, some
time away from him to try and comprehend everything that had just
happened.

"You can't be alone Emma, they're out
there..."

"And you're in here," she whispered. "I
can't... Not right now, I just can't."

"Emma," he took a step toward her but she
held up her hand and shook her head.

"Please Ethan, I can't right now. You have to
go."

The look on his face was nearly her undoing.
He had lied to her, he had kept secrets, but she had just ripped
out his heart. It wasn't something that she wanted to do, she took
no pleasure in it, but she had to get away from him right now.
Tears slipped down her cheeks as he bowed his head and glanced at
the broken door.