Vampire for Christmas (4 page)

“
You okay?” she whispered when he slowly opened his eyes and
then grimaced.

“
What happened?”

“
I don’t know. I hit it, it threw my stake right back at me,
and then I think it sneezed on us.”

Rafe
looked around. “It is gone?”

She
nodded.

Rafe
clutched his head, closed his eyes and exhaled sharply.

“
Are you sure you’re okay?” She touched the side of his head
and he winced. The light was too low for her to see what damage the
demon had done. When Rafe looked at her out of the corner of his
eye, she took her hand back and flicked globs of slime off her red
jumper. “I think we should get cleaned up.”

He nodded
and moved onto his knees. Shannon looked at the thick layer of
clear slime surrounding them. This wasn’t going to be easy. She
took hold of Rafe’s shoulder and eased herself onto her feet and
then stood very slowly. Her left foot slid backwards but she
recovered her stance and held her hand out to Rafe.

Who
stared at it.

She could
understand where he was coming from. She had never touched him
before, not with concern as she had just now, and she had never
offered to help him. She sighed and he placed his hand into hers.
He was slow to stand and she worried it was because of the head
wound rather than the slippery surface. His grip on her tightened
as he rose to his feet and she took hold of his other hand. She
tried to find her footing but lost her balance, slipped and dragged
Rafe down with her. He fell face first into the muddy
slime.

Shannon
laughed.

Rafe
growled.

She
couldn’t help it. She managed to get it down to a giggle but it
fired up again. Rafe’s scowl lightened into a smile.

“
I’m sorry... it’s just... what a night.” She got onto her
hands and knees and slowly eased her way over to him where he was
laying in the mucus. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her
shoulder, she took hold of him and pulled him up off the
ground.

Her eyes
widened when moonlight bathed the side of his face and she clearly
saw the wound there.

“
Christ,” she breathed as her gaze roamed over the jagged lines
running through his black hair and the dark blood coating his
cheek, ear and neck. “What did that thing do to you?”

Rafe got
onto his knees beside her and then tentatively touched the side of
his head. Thick black jelly caked his fingers when he brought them
away.

Shannon
grabbed the hem of her red jumper. “Keep still.”

She used
the bottom of it to carefully wipe the mucus from the wound, trying
not to disturb it, and cleaned the blood away. The voice at the
back of her mind said that she was slipping. She was showing
feeling for him and she should be letting him take care of
himself.

Rafe
closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. She slowed her movements
and looked at him. Was it pain that made him close his eyes or was
he enjoying her show of affection towards him?

Shannon
dropped her jumper and crawled across the grass away from him. The
moment she was in a clear patch, she got to her feet and ran her
hands down her legs to rid them of slime. Her shoulder ached but
she ignored it and focused on smoothing her appearance. She only
wished she could smooth out her feelings. She glanced at Rafe when
he reached her but couldn’t bring herself to maintain eye
contact.

She
grabbed her jacket and winced when her left shoulder grated in its
socket.

“
Shannon?” Rafe was beside her in an instant, one hand
supporting her arm while the other lightly touched her shoulder.
She turned to tell him that she was fine but stopped when she saw
the worry in his eyes. He stared at her shoulder. “This looks
bad.”

Shannon
craned her neck and lifted her left arm. It hurt but she managed to
get it into a position where she could see what Rafe was talking
about. The demon hadn’t only jarred her shoulder. It had cut her
too. There was a clean line slicing through both her jumper and
arm, and thick slime covered it.

She
watched, mesmerised, as Rafe gently cleared the slime from her arm
with the cuff of his shirt. The concentration on his face turned to
concern when his gaze met hers.

“
I think we should find out what this demon is,” he said and
dread settled in her stomach, weighing her down. She could read
between the lines. He thought the slime might be toxic. If it was,
he was probably immune, but she would be in trouble. “My house is
the nearest and I have the best resources. We will get you cleaned
up and get some antiseptic on that, and then I will look into the
books while you report in.”

His gaze
held hers.

He was
waiting for her to argue with him about the location he had
chosen.

She
stared at her arm.

She
couldn’t bring herself to fight him this time. He had the best
books for the job, and she wanted to get the slime off her and get
her wound fixed as soon as possible.

Her
breath trembled and her body shook.

Fear.

It had
been a long time since she had felt it sweep over her so
strongly.

Her gaze
rose shakily to Rafe’s and she searched his eyes for reassurance.
Just this once she need to hear him tell her that she was going to
be alright and that he would take care of her. Just this once she
needed to feel his arms around her, holding her close, protecting
her.

She didn’t want to die.

****

Chapter 3

Rafe
guided Shannon up the steps to the dark porch of his house. The
walk had been long and she had started to slow after a while. He
had placed his arm around her waist and helped her, and she hadn’t
pushed him away. In fact, she had leaned into him. He wasn’t sure
if it was the effects of a toxin or just the shock and her shoulder
injury that was draining her strength, but he hoped it was only the
latter. He didn’t want to lose her.

He
wouldn’t.

If the
slime were toxic, he would find an antidote for her. He knew a
thing or two about concocting them and failing that, he knew people
who could do it and who would drive through the night to bring it
to him.

He opened
the door and stepped inside. She hesitated on the
threshold.

“
You can come in. No invite necessary.” He smiled to reassure
her and turned on the light in the entrance hall. The dark decor
sucked the brightness from the light. She walked inside and went to
her right, towards the study. He caught her arm and turned her
around. She frowned at him. “Go and get showered. It is the first
door on the right at the top of the stairs. There is a bathrobe in
there you can use. Just leave your clothes on the
landing.”

“
We need—”

“
What we need to do is get you cleaned up, Shannon. Get that
stuff off you.” He led her to the foot of the stairs and removed
her coat for her. She kicked her trainers off and then stared at
him, docile and confused, a trace of fear running through her. He
sighed and resisted his desire to brush his thumb across her cheek
to comfort her.

She still
stood there, silent and staring at him. Her heart beat hard against
her chest. Her soft breathing filled his ears. Something had
changed.

She had
been close before, close enough that she had let him reach out to
her and talk about things.

But she
had never been so close.

So
attainable.

If he
just reached out a little, if he showed her a little more affection
and stretched a little further than he had allowed himself to
previously, he knew he could touch her.

Her gaze
dropped to the floor and her cheeks coloured.

Did she
feel it too? Something had changed between them. It wasn’t just him
feeling it. She did too.

“
What about you?” There was a childish innocence to her
expression, a distance that stirred warmth in him when her gaze
flicked to the side of his head and then to his eyes. He could feel
her nerves running through him. Turbulent emotions filled her green
eyes as she looked at him. She curled her hands around the wooden
ball on the bottom post of the mahogany banisters and held on to it
as though it was her anchor in the storm of her
feelings.

His head
was killing him, the side of it throbbing and feeling as though it
was trying to gnaw a hole through his skull. He was a complete mess
but, right now, she was his primary concern.

Rafe
smiled for her. “I will start with the research.”

She took
the first step on the wooden stairs and then stopped and looked
back at him. Her gaze darted to the side of his head.

“
You can shower second.” With that, she walked up the stairs,
leaving him staring at her backside.

Rafe
would have given anything to have her say that he could shower with
her instead of showering second. That was never going to happen
though. At least, it wouldn’t happen yet. He stared at the empty
staircase, distant in his thoughts.

She was
changing. Not just since he had snapped at her either. Now that he
had seen that change her, he could trace back through their time
together and find other moments when she had given him strange
looks or shown a hint of concern.

The
shower switched on upstairs.

Rafe
tried not to picture her naked in a steamy white tiled bathroom but
it was difficult and his mind flitted between curling up in pain,
her in the shower, and tracing her changing feelings in order to
decipher them.

He
reminded himself that none of those things were what he should have
been doing and dragged himself away. He hung her jacket over the
bottom of the banisters, placed her trainers on the floor below it,
and then removed his long coat and boots. He put his boots near the
door and hung his coat on the rack. He sighed and went into the
study. It had been the dining room when he had moved into the house
two years ago. A large room at the front of the house with a bay
window he had since covered in layers of blackout fabric so thick
that no sunlight had a chance of penetrating the barrier. Sometimes
he woke early, before the night had set in, and had nothing better
to do than study the demons and lore of his kind. He learned a lot
in those hours and used all of it when he hunted. Tactics and
knowing the enemy made his job a lot easier and quicker. That was
something Shannon could learn. He had tried to teach her that
research was the key to identifying weak spots and learning them by
heart would give her the advantage in a fight when she could easily
recall them and put that knowledge to use, but she had complained
that she had never been a good student. She had even gone as far as
to say that she had him around, so why did she need to study when
she had a walking encyclopaedia of demons fighting with
her?

That sort
of attitude was going to get her killed.

What
would she do now that they were being separated?

He should
have made her study. There wasn’t time now. Perhaps he could leave
the best books to her and make her promise to read them through
once at least.

Rafe
walked through the study towards the kitchen at the back of the
house, rolling his black shirtsleeves up as he went. He washed his
hands in the sink, dried them, and then looked himself over. He
wasn’t too messy but the slime had soaked into his clothes and was
sticking them to his skin. The shower continued to run. His mind
drifted to picturing himself in the cubicle with Shannon and then
he shook that image away. His head ached at the motion. He pressed
his clean hands to his temples, dirtying them again, and grimaced.
His healing ability had better kick in soon or he would be
experimenting with painkillers. He wasn’t sure they would have any
positive effect, but it would be worth a try.

He washed
his hands again, splashed the water on his face, and then dried
off. He looked down at his bottom and then at the chairs in the
study. They were solid wood, without a padded seat, but he didn’t
want to get them covered in slime. He wiped the towel across his
backside to clean some of the mess away, casually tossed it into
the sink, and then went into the study.

Rafe sat
at the oval dark wooden table in the middle of his study and pulled
a stack of books towards him. Bookshelves lined the wall in front
and behind him, dark with their tomes and handwritten manuscripts.
An entire shelf was stuffed with papers he had written, notes on
demons and fights he’d had that he had needed to learn from in
order to survive another year. They were yellowing now, marking the
passing of time and reminding him that he wasn’t getting any
younger.

Not that
that was a problem for him.

Eternal
youth did have some advantages. He would never look older than he
had when he had been turned in his late thirties. Some vampires
complained about the age they had been turned at, wishing they had
been transformed earlier or later depending on their age. He was
pleased with his, and had a feeling that the woman who had turned
him had been too. She had kept him around for a while, until he had
grown stronger in his abilities and had grown restless with it. She
had given him leave then and he had taken it. Only a year after
that, hunters had attacked her home and killed all thirty vampires
residing there. The pain of losing his sire swept through him again
but he pushed it away and dragged one of the books down off the
stack. It hit the table with a thud. He flicked the thick leather
cover open and went to work.