Adam (19 page)

“You killed Nico,” she said a bit breathlessly. And there was something primeval in her understanding of that. The way she met his eyes, Adam could almost taste the arousal and excitement the information sent spinning through her. It was as though he could read her mind, rather than the reverse. But surely his own addled brain was making it up. Why would she take pleasure in the death of her own? Then again, who could ever understand what drove a Vampire?

“I ran him through the brain stem. Last I checked, next to beheading, that is the quickest method of killing a Vampire.”

And why did he think the fact that he knew more ways to kill her kind than most turned her on a little? It couldn’t possibly be because of that little smile she was giving him, could it?

“Well, he’s quite dead, then,” she agreed. “I confess I am impressed, Adam. Even your King shied from going head-to-head with Nico or Ruth. I don’t know whether to consider you brave or incredibly foolhardy.”

“I would do anything to save my brother’s life. And as Enforcer I would not hesitate to hunt the perverted Demon female either. It is a wonder Jacob has not already managed her.” Adam pressed his lips together to keep from speaking his theories on that. It was clear Jacob was too distracted by his wife and child to be doing his job effectively. There was a reason Enforcers resigned if they became Imprinted. In his opinion, this situation illustrated that reason.

“As Enforcer? You?”

Jasmine realized a moment after she laughed that it was a bad idea to scoff about this particular notion. The Demon’s lip curled and his big body bristled in offense.

Jasmine held up her palms and shrugged a shoulder, trying to ward off whatever faux pas she’d made. Normally she couldn’t care less who she ticked off, but she wasn’t really all that eager to ruffle this Demon’s feathers. When he got ruffled, he started doing things to her that ended up ruffling her. And she hadn’t decided yet if she liked that or not.

She didn’t think she ought to.

But then again ... her body was still humming with his last attack on her senses, her mouth still feeling full of his flavor and his heat. She felt as though she had been branded in a way. It took her back four hundred years to the first time they had met, when he had become water and attacked her body in its entirety. She had never forgotten that moment, that incredible sensation. She had never forgotten it because no one since had ever lived up to its potential. It had been an unfulfilled promise, had lasted less than a minute, to be sure, and yet no sexual escapade she could dream up or dabble in had struck her quite as powerfully.

Not that she would ever admit that to him.

“There are two Enforcers, and you are not one of them.”

Chapter 7

“Ouch,” Jasmine whispered a bit loudly as she turned to look at the Enforcer she was more familiar with. Jacob walked deeper into the Great Hall, looking like he’d been dragged through the bowels of hell and was none too steady for it. Noah moved toward Jacob with concern etched in his features, but Jacob held up a hand to keep him at bay.

“I need to attend to my wife and child, but they are safe for now and this is more pressing,” Jacob said as he advanced on his brother, standing toe-to-toe with him for the first time in centuries. “You are not an illusion. You are not some figment of magic sent to trick us. I can see that. I can sense that in my soul. You
are
my brother. And yet ...” He looked at Noah. “I would never raise my daughter to act in a manner that could have so much potential for harm and negative consequences. I held her and touched her, I looked into her eyes, and it
was
Leah ... but how could I have so failed her as a parent that she would think this was an acceptable thing to do? To steal someone out of his life like this? To rob him of his own Destiny and to alter the Destiny of so many others in the process?”

“Maybe you did not,” Noah said softly. “Jacob, have you considered what would have happened to you and Bella and Leah if Adam had not shown up in that cavern when he did?”

Jacob did consider it now. He blanched as Noah’s point sank in.

“But if that is the truth, if Nico would have killed me, how would Leah ever survive when Isabella was incapacitated?”

“Maybe Ruth would have let them live, Jacob. Contemplate, for a minute, what that would mean. You die, but she lets Bella survive. Lets Leah survive.”

“Bella could not survive without me. You know that.”

“So does Ruth. And forcing Leah to bear witness would make it all the worse. You and I both know that sick bitch is more than capable of it.”

“So you are saying ... you are saying that Leah survived watching her father get murdered ... and her mother ...” He cleared the hoarseness in his throat that his thoughts caused.

“Can you imagine what that would do to a child?” Noah said. “A child who grew up with all of us living in the aftermath of something like that? The thought of it alone devastates me, Jacob. It makes so much sense that she would use her power to find a way to come back to change the past, find a way to save you both.”

“By going into the distant past to steal my brother to help her? You are telling me this is why he disappeared all those centuries ago? Because my daughter stole him away so he could come and protect me in the future? And if that is so, why did she leave? Why did she not stay and explain all of this to me?”

“You must imagine that the paradoxes are endless, Jacob. That the moment Adam saved you,
that
Leah must have ceased to exist. The future and time line that she had existed in had to come to a crashing halt, had to disintegrate, because it was all based on that one moment in time she had just changed.”

“The moment of his death,” Adam said suddenly.

“Exactly. Her actions have left you and Bella safe and alive, and Adam stranded here with no way of getting back until perhaps years from now, when Leah is old enough to control her power. But clearly she does not take him back, or you would never have noticed his absence. You would never have become Enforcer. You would never have met Bella or fathered her life. It has to end this way, and begin anew from here. Adam can never go back because if he does, Leah can never exist to take him in the first place.”

“My head hurts just listening to that explanation.” Jacob said. “But I think I am following you just the same.”

“You mean I have no choice? I must stay here in the future? Or rather, this present?”

“It is a house of cards, Adam,” Noah warned him. “If you go back, you change everything. You might destroy all chance of happiness for your brothers. For all of the Demon people. Jacob was the first to find and fall in love with a Druid. If that never happens, then I would never find my wife. Your brother Kane would never find his. Elijah—”

“My
brother
Kane?” Adam echoed incredulously.

“Kane was born after you disappeared,” Jacob informed him.

Jacob now realized he had no right to be angry with his brother for all of the things he had railed at him for earlier. All of this time Jacob had felt inexplicably abandoned, and so much had happened to change his life because of Adam’s disappearance. But now he realized it wasn’t Adam’s fault.

It was Leah’s.

I love you, Daddy.

Yes. There was no doubt in his mind that it had been Leah. His beautiful daughter, all grown up. And yet, how full of tragedy and pain that single hug had been. She had held onto him as if holding onto someone she had not seen in a long, long time; someone who had been torn away from her. When Jacob thought of what his child must have originally witnessed this day in her history, it made him want to go to her side and scoop her up, hold her so tightly to his chest that she would never need to hold him so desperately again.

Or ever.

“Jacob, how does Bella fare?”

“Legna is with her now,” Jacob said. “She is numb and all but comatose with the poison she took into herself. I fear she ...” He didn’t say what he feared, but he didn’t have to. Noah knew very well what was at stake.

“So let me be clear,” Adam said carefully. “Vampires and Demons are not at war.”

Noah shook his head.

“And Nightwalkers can use magic?” he asked.

“Those who choose to go down that dark path,” Noah agreed.

“And there are two Enforcers? A male and a female.”

“Yeah, handsome, and women have the vote, too,” Jasmine teased with a chuckle.

“Jas,” Noah scolded her. But she shrugged carelessly.

“Well, things are very different here than they were four hundred years ago, and he’d better get used to that if he’s going to be sticking around. Let’s start with the idea that none of the Nightwalkers are at war. The only exception being a few lawless Vampires. And there
are
those pesky necromancers and human hunters. But my point is, you can stop trying to kill me.”

“He tried to kill you?” Noah choked out.

“Among other things,” Jasmine said slyly, giving Adam a very naughty look over her shoulder.

Adam resisted the urge to flush with guilt, but only after a great amount of effort. He suddenly had the urge to wrap his hands back around that slender throat. War or no war, purity laws had to still be in existence. Sex with other species had to be illegal.

Didn’t it?

Adam looked at the sugar white blond human who was leaning intimately against the Demon King.

“Demons and Druids can be mated?” he asked carefully, trying to piece together the information he was learning. “And Druids are part human?”

“Yes. In fact, Demons can be mated to any Nightwalker species now. I know this was different in your time,” Noah said. “It is relatively new to us as well, believe me.”

Faster than he would have wished, Adam felt his gaze darting swiftly to meet the mischievous mink brown of the Vampire female’s.

Jasmine. Such a beautiful name, but far too clean and innocent for someone so wicked and skilled.

“I should like some examples of what you mean,” he said a bit numbly as he tried to absorb the shock of what he was hearing. The worst part about it, though, was that it took away the rein he kept so tenuously over his restraint. It removed the wall that should be there between himself and this Vampire female. He could feel possibilities and curiosity getting the better of him, just as they had done before he had found out it was no longer illegal to indulge in them. But it should still feel wrong to him! It had been forbidden for so long, why did the idea not repulse him?

Why did
she
not repulse him?

“Here is one. Elijah, your old friend. He is the mate of the Lycanthrope Queen.”

Adam’s jaw went slack with shock. Now he knew for certain that things had changed in ways he might never fully grasp. Elijah was mated? To anyone? Never mind a female not of his species. As reality sank in further, Adam found himself desperately missing those he had left behind. Mainly his parents, who were dead. And now he had an additional sibling and one little niece. Was there more? Just how much had he missed? How impossible was it going to be to catch up?

What was more, with Jacob and his wife as Enforcers, what purpose would he serve in this modern world? He was hopelessly redundant, and painfully unnecessary.

The thought that moved through Adam’s mind was so hurtfully strong that Jasmine couldn’t help overhearing it. She felt a moment of powerful empathy for him, knowing, as a Vampire who would go to ground and awaken in a completely different era, what it felt like to find loved ones changed or missing. Granted, she had never heard of a Vampire having slept four hundred years ...

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “Your disorientation and feelings of loss are to be expected, but they will fade with time. Focus on the new blessings in your life, not on what you think you have lost.”

“What blessings?” he snapped, sounding fatalistic and cold. “I have lost my parents, whom I love, my position in this world, which made me the Demon I am, and I have no concept of right and wrong under all of these changed laws. What blessing is there in that?”

“You have lost loved ones, but you have gained others,” she insisted, holding out a hand. “A beautiful and powerful niece who was willing to sacrifice everything she knew so you could save her father. She put all of her faith in you and was richly rewarded for it. You have a brother, whom you’ve never met. His wife as well. By all means, grieve for those you loved, but do not let grief swallow you, lest you miss out on the others around you.”

She was right. The understanding that his good father and beautiful mother were gone was painful, leaving a terrible hole in his heart, but here there were others he might never have known if not for the actions of a brave young girl. And had she not asked him, more than once, if he would trade away all he knew for the chance to save Jacob’s life? Had he been lying when he had said yes?

No, Adam thought. It had not even been close to a lie. He would have given everything in that moment to spare his brother.

And he had. This was the price he had said he would pay. He had to accept that. He had to know it was worth it, even if just for the well-being of one small girl child who clearly could not bear the loss of her father. And her mother, he recalled. More than just Jacob’s life had been saved this day. He must try to remember that.

He turned warm and grateful eyes on the Vampire female before him. Jasmine. Even as she stood there in immodestly skintight clothing and with that perpetually contemplative grin on her lips, he knew she was concerned for him. He knew she understood what he must be feeling. When he had first met her, she had said something about having been asleep for a long while. She must have felt the same as he did now. Out of touch. Confused and disoriented. Behind the times.

“How do you do it?” he asked her bluntly. “How do you simply awake hundreds of years later and assimilate the changes that have gone on around you?”

“Me?” She arched a brow and smiled slyly. “I just embrace the new world around me. The clothes, the food, the smells, and the feel of it all. I want to experience everything about it.” She hugged herself as she spoke, but then cocked her head at him. “You, however, don’t seem the type. You would probably be better off with a guide.”