Adam (14 page)

“I said yes! Now tell me what you know!”

“I prefer to show you,” she whispered quickly.

Her hands suddenly shot out and hit his chest. The moment she made contact with him, Adam felt his entire body burst with heat. Every autonomic system contained within his skin seemed to flip into overdrive, picking up into a double-time beat before tripling again, quadrupling quickly after. He felt the stress on his systems with the sensation of impending doom. He had no time to react or act or even think beyond that.

The world around him disappeared.

Chapter 5

Samhain 2008

Isabella skidded to a halt, shoving her daughter behind herself so suddenly that Leah’s dress hit the dirt once more.

Bella and Jacob squared off to face the traitorous Demon Ruth.

Jacob knew instantly that this was the worst scenario he could ever be trapped in. His family was his one true vulnerability, even though at the same time it was his most powerful strength. Perhaps if it had only been Ruth, he would not have been so worried, but he immediately recognized the Vampire named Nicodemous, who had joined her in her destructive causes a couple of years back, tripling her access to power and advantage over those she considered her enemies.

Jacob felt Bella’s knee-jerk reactions as they flew through her mind, just as she felt his; she knew how dire he understood the situation to be. Even though their enemies’ minions were out of reach, that would not last very long if Ruth was given a moment to concentrate. She would begin to teleport them down into the caverns any second now.

We’re in trouble,
Bella thought frantically, her glance back at their vulnerable child a luxury he did not have with two such powerful enemies in front of them.

I know, little flower. But we will not fail. We cannot fail.

Jacob, I have to do it ...

The Enforcer knew what his wife meant. She intended to dampen the abilities of the Nightwalkers before them, stealing their power and making it her own on a temporary basis. The problems behind that plan rushed through him. Ruth and Nico’s powers were tainted with blackness and evil. To take something like that inside herself could destroy everything about her that he loved and knew, everything that she was. She had dampened the powers of necromancers before, but nothing like this. Nothing had ever been like this. As Isabella’s power had grown, they had realized she always took something away from her victims when she did this. A part of them would live inside her forever, plaguing her with premonitions or who knew what else. Ruth was one of a kind. So was the Vampire who had been altered because he had drunk her tainted Nightwalker blood and now shared in the blackness of her magical spell casting. In an ideal situation, Jacob would have rather done anything else than allow Bella to risk herself in such a way.

His wife, however, was just as stubborn and protective of her family as he was. Nothing he said or did would stop her once she made up her mind.

So all he could do was quietly resign himself to supporting her.

The Druid released the tight rein she always kept on her ability to dampen the power of any Nightwalker who walked the earth. Damn the painful consequences she might suffer in the future; there was no holding back when it came to her family.

Jacob felt his mate scream in horror long before she actually found the voice for it.

Purely by instinct, he whirled to catch her in a single strong arm as she lurched in a back-arching seizure. She did find voice at last, her shrill screech of pain and poisoned terror echoing off every wall of his heart, as well as the cavern. He eased his beloved wife to the ground as gently as he could, considering the violent contortions of her body.

That was all the time it took for the enemy behind him to strike.

Jacob felt overwhelmed as he realized his exposure in the next heartbeat. Before the thought could even complete itself, however, the Vampire moved with the preternatural speed that his breed had been imbued with.

Jacob heard the strike, and then felt the repercussion of it in the air around him.

He jerked around, his wife still clutched to his chest, and looked up at a long, strong male figure that no amount of time could erase from his memory. He met the eyes of a man he had not seen in over four hundred years.

Adam.

His brother was holding the wrist of the Vampire in one powerful fist, crushing it with a stunning grip until the iron spike that had been headed for Jacob’s back finally fell with a clatter to the floor.

Adam had no time to ask questions.

He had felt himself resolving back into solid form one second, and had seen the threat to his brother the next. It only took him milliseconds to focus on the image of his brother doing the inconceivable: turning his back on an enemy to catch the falling figure of a diminutive, raven-haired woman. Jacob lowered the female to the floor with no regard for the threat at his back, concern and tenderness radiating from every last inch of his being.

That left Adam to deal with the fang-flashing Vampire reaching into his jacket for what he knew without a doubt was a weapon. Jacob’s elder brother moved with the speed of evaporated water through the air, transforming into a dense mist that arrowed the remaining few yards before he could solidify and come between weapon and target. The Water Demon coalesced so suddenly that the female Demon who stood beside the Vampire gasped in shocked surprise. Adam caught the Vampire’s wrist, understanding instantly that the Gypsy had been right, there was a strength and malevolence within these two the likes of which he had never seen before.

How Jacob had ended up in this place, in this situation, with these strangers, Adam had no idea. Neither did he care. The Gypsy had spoken the truth of the matter. His brother was in danger of losing his life to this threat, and Adam was there to see it stop.

As the spike clanked to the floor, Adam met the disbelieving eyes of his younger sibling. Jacob stared up at him as if he were seeing a ghost, still clutching that little woman as if she were his one true security in life. Adam only had time to narrow his eyes on the possessive grip for a minute, understanding that the woman was human and that Jacob’s behavior was nowhere near that of an innocent savior.

That was a problem that would wait for later, Adam thought, dismissing the Enforcer within himself for the moment. He had other justice to dispense.

The Vampire reacted to Adam’s interference violently. He snarled, fangs sprouting viciously and with gnashing threat that could not be mistaken. Adam understood this threat. What he could not understand was the Demon woman who stood beside the Vampire, reaching for his arm in a clinging manner as she screamed at him to finish Adam off so they could continue with Jacob’s destruction.

The Gypsy had warned about a Demon traitor, and by the foul smell of her, the corrupted blonde was all that and more. The whys and hows would wait for later as well. Adam was instantly drawn off his feet and into battle against the Vampire’s incredible prowess.

Nicodemous tried to throw the Demon into the stone floor with the hopes of crushing a few of the meddler’s bones in the process. To his shock, however, he found himself plunging, arms first, through water where flesh should have been. The deluge dashed to the floor, backsplash sluicing over the hostile couple even as it gathered with blinding speed into the shape of the intruding Demon. Water flew off the curling ends of the Demon’s black hair as he back-spun a kick into the dead center of the Vampire’s chest.

Adam’s metamorphosis had disoriented Nicodemous’s balance, so when the Water Demon struck, it took the Vampire clean off his feet. He crashed to the ground on his back, kicking up a cloud of dirt and dust as a satisfactory cracking of bone echoed through the cavern.

At last, Jacob left his preoccupation over the human female to join in the effort to save his own life. He flew at the female Demon with no hesitation for her sex or seeming fragility. Adam was surprised. It had always been one of Jacob’s worst weaknesses, his inability to attack a woman. When had he overcome it? The older brother had no idea. But then again, he had not known about Jacob’s apparent obsession with a human female either.

Adam took out his confusion and frustration on the Vampire, leaping onto him and beginning to beat the bastard with his bare fists with a pummeling force that could have cracked rock. Jacob’s hands were around the throat of the Demon female, but he was too late to stop the string of foreign words she spat out.

A spell.

The inconceivable idea of a Demon uttering a spell took Adam by surprise just long enough to give the Vampire an advantage. With the speed of a striking snake, fangs struck for his exposed throat.

Again, Adam was thrown off his mark. Vampires were relentless sons of bitches, but they never went for the blood of a Nightwalker. It was utterly taboo, and they were terrified of what would happen to them if they did. It was all he could do to shove his palm into the Vampire’s path, protecting his neck just in the nick of time. The fangs struck, puncturing clear through his hand.

Ruth’s spell flew into effect at the same time. The air pressure in the room was suddenly sucked away, depriving the entire area of all oxygen. The Vampire did not require breath, but the Demons and the human did. Adam jerked around to look for his brother. He knew they were underground, and there would be no hope of replacing the lost air without Jacob’s ability to drill through earth and bedrock and all other things in order to provide a vent.

Jacob was forced to release Ruth as he reared back to do exactly that. He could not waste a single second. Bella and Leah could never survive such a complete vacuum.

Jacob leapt for the cavern ceiling, his body moving like a steel drill through the cavern limestone as if it were butter. Adam had no idea how deep they were beneath the topsoil, so he had only one choice. Grabbing the dagger at his waist with his off hand, he unsheathed it and put all of his vital power into the aim he took between the gaping jaws buried in his palm and wrist. The blade nicked through the webbing of his thumb in the process, but it also sank through the Vampire’s mouth and into the back of his throat. It crushed through the soft palate, the brain stem, and the skull in one vicious movement.

Then, without a moment’s hesitation, Adam plunged off the ground as a powerful wave of water, flushing over the human female, the child behind her he had only just noticed, and the Gypsy girl, who had been watching the entire situation with wide, frantic eyes. The moment he touched them, they turned into water at his command and they all spouted upward through the tunnel Jacob was drumming through the earth.

Jacob broke surface first, gasping for breath and moving out of the way just in time to avoid the pressured geyser at his heels. The water spouted as if released from the blowhole of a gigantic whale, spraying everywhere and landing in four separate streamers. As they hit the ground, they became Isabella, Leah, Adam, and the strange figure of a young girl Jacob had never seen before.

Jacob immediately sank his hands into earth, making the ground rock and shake until the tunnel he had created collapsed in on itself. Now full of soft soil, it was a dangerous sinkhole that could trap and kill an unsuspecting traveler, so he used a moment longer to concentrate on packing and pressurizing the soil until it was almost hard enough to replace the rock he had destroyed.

“We must move!” he shouted as soon as he was through. He plunged through thickets to grab his daughter up in his arms, and watched as if seeing a dream in action as Adam scooped up Isabella. He turned to look for the strange girl. He need not have bothered. She had already leapt for him, her arms winding around his neck and throat. For a moment, he perceived it as an attack. But before he could react, he realized he was being hugged and that she was sobbing near to hysterics. He awkwardly caught her weight and juggled his daughter at the same time, completely confounded.

The mystery deepened in the next instant.

“I love you,” she wept passionately, her arms nearly stealing his breath with their desperate strength. “I love you, Daddy.”

Speechless, Jacob looked helplessly toward an equally confusing mystery. His
brother,
who should be dead, yet was now standing before him. Then the constriction around his neck and ribs released, his breath rushing back in as he tried to find answers in the girl’s eyes.

All he could see, however, was the dark violet color of her irises, and the familiarity of them warmed his senses, forcing him to recognize her on a visceral level. From one heart to another. From his father’s soul to his daughter’s.

“Leah?”

She could only nod, her fingers all over his face suddenly, mapping his features as if she were starved for them.

“Don’t be angry with me,” she begged him. “I had no choice. They had to be stopped. And I was right. I chose right.” She looked back at Adam as her whole body began to tremble. She tried to speak again, but clearly couldn’t as her trembles became quakes and then violent jerks of her body. The hands against his face suddenly lost all weight and structure, fading and passing right through him, a condition that rapidly spread through her entire body. Then he was no longer holding her, and Jacob watched as his would-be daughter dissolved away into nothingness in his hands.