Adam (2 page)

Bella and Jacob squared off to face the traitorous Demon Ruth, who had become a powerful enemy as she’d added potent necromancer magic to her already vast repertoire of ability as an Elder Mind Demon. It was she who had betrayed and Summoned the Transformed Demons Jacob and Isabella had left up above them, layers of earth and rock away.

Worse yet was the presence of the Vampire named Nicodemous, who now shared her power, just as he seemed to share her black magic abilities. Ruth had caused devastating death and destruction when she had defected, first with her daughter, and then, upon her daughter’s death, on her own. Now, mated to a Vampire of such age and avaricious might, she was an unfathomable force of evil.

They both were.

The only small thing in the Enforcers’ favor was that Ruth’s Transformed minions couldn’t immediately come to her aid. That wouldn’t last long, however. Ruth only needed a moment of concentration before she could begin teleporting them down to her side a bucketful at a time.

Isabella refused to give her the advantage. The Druid released the tight rein she always kept on her ability to dampen the power of any Nightwalker. This was by far her most powerful ability, and it was also the most unpredictable and dangerous to her personally. She even forced herself to acknowledge the unknown damage it could do to the delicate fetus she carried. But she didn’t see that she had a choice with the lives of the rest of her family at stake. Even with Jasmine on her way to back them up, the female Vampire was only one person, and it would take an army to defeat these two evil creatures if their powers remained intact. They had learned much about how to use them over these past few years. And it was only going to get worse. Bella and Jacob had to strike now, while they had a chance.

And besides, the traitorous bitch was coming after
her
child. Bella would see to it Ruth paid for even daring to think about touching Leah. Damn the painful consequences she might suffer. If Bella didn’t do something, they all would die anyway.

Clearly Jacob felt the same, or he would have volubly protested her impending actions through the telepathic link they shared with one another. He knew what potential harm there was to his wife, but while he’d argued against it in the past on many occasions, there was no time to argue now.

And so she opened herself to the dangerous unknown and drew it into her vulnerable mind and body. Bella had absorbed the power of a female Mind Demon before, but nothing like this blackness of soul. It was sucked harshly into her like acrid ammonia. She
had
taken the power of a corrupted Vampire before. He had stolen the lives of other Nightwalkers, gathering their power into himself through the drinking of their blood. But she knew instantly that
this
Vampire was tainted well beyond that, the stain of necromancer magic on his soul as well. It was like imbibing a double dose of pure, liquid evil. She felt the cloying blackness of dual channels of power from the twin sources; they seeped into her like thick oil and tar. The evil twisted together inside her, suffocating her from the inside out. Her eyes, normally a beautiful violet color, blacked over and she looked down at herself to see pitch liquid oozing out of her skin. She did not realize the vision was only in her own mind.

Jacob felt his mate scream in horror long before she actually found the voice for it. He saw what she saw, just as he knew her every waking thought every moment of the day. He knew she was seeing a hallucination, and he couldn’t help the instinct that had him leaping into her mind to convince her of what was real and what was not. He whirled around to catch her in a single strong arm as she lurched in a back-arching seizure.

Leah watched with wide, frightened eyes as her mother was flung backward by an unseen force. Her young heart leapt into her throat as her father spun to catch her mother, the long brown-black tail of his hair whipping like that of an agitated horse. She felt her heart seize fitfully with incomprehension as she watched him quickly ease 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.

It was the Vampire that moved. Leah watched, paralyzed with shock and fear as he reached with blinding speed into his long, dark coat, grabbing for something that looked sharp and deadly. Even Leah’s immature Demon senses could smell the sudden tang of rusted iron, the poisonous metal that was deadly to Demons. A moment later the Vampire leapt onto her father’s turned back and drove the iron spike between rear ribs and shoulder blade.

Leah watched as if through someone else’s eyes as the spike burst through her father’s chest, spearing him straight through the heart. The inconceivable sight of her sire’s blood exploding out of his chest was nothing compared to seeing him fall to his knees in total shock, his face full of outrage and a clear frustration that only those who loved him would understand. Jacob looked up into his little girl’s violet eyes, so like her mother’s, and felt his failure to protect his family so sharply that the last sound to leave him was a keening cry of utter remorse.

Then he fell forward onto her mother, the last exhale of his breath echoing in the suddenly silent cavern.

“Daddy!”

Leah screamed for her father as the Vampire reached to yank him off her mother, baring his fangs. He hissed and then threw Jacob away so violently that Leah heard her father hit the near wall with a sickening smack.

“Dead.” A dead Demon with no heartbeat to pump his blood was of no use to a power-hungry Vampire, who could not feed from Jacob to gain one of his many powers. Nicodemous’s frustration was keen because of just how powerful a Demon Jacob had been. But he quickly turned his attention to Leah’s mother.

Leah had been frozen in terror, but seeing those pale, bony fingers reaching for her mother galvanized her into headlong action. She flung herself between those hands and her twitching, seizing mother, throwing her small body protectively over her, not quite realizing yet that her parents’ symbiotic relationship meant her mother’s death knell had already begun at the moment of her sire’s passing.

The Vampire grabbed her by the neck of her dress, ignoring her scream and easily overcoming the mighty grip she had on her mama’s clothing. He plucked her up like a fragile little flower and inspected her with a jaundiced eye.

“It’s too small to have any power. I’d much rather feast on the Druid.” He cast her aside onto her dead father’s chest, the iron spike jutting from his chest stabbing into her, skewering her through a thigh left bare and vulnerable as the skirt of her dress flew up. The iron lodged in her flesh, burning her half-Demon tissue and blood with excruciating pain. Between that and the horror of lying on the rapidly cooling remains of her father, Leah dissolved into screams.

“You idiot! We came here for the little girl! There’s nothing like her in the world!” Ruth hissed, reaching for the squalling child, who immediately shut up and found the unprecedented strength to pull herself off the spike that had speared her and scrambled away from the Demon coming after her.

“There’s nothing like the Druid in the world either,” the Vampire spat at her, “and at least her power is developed! I can only absorb from one at a time! And what is she but a swallow or two?” He scoffed at the idea of feasting on the scrawny little girl.

“Then we’ll take it with us,” Ruth mused, eyeing the child, who was wriggling her way between two boulders shaded by a natural shelf. “We’ll wait for it to grow and show its powers. Then you can eat it and kill it so no one else will have a chance at whatever power it gives you.”

Nicodemous grunted noncommittally as he yanked up Bella’s torso by her arm, forcing the seizing woman against his chest. He opened his jaws wide, flashing vicious fangs that made Leah cower deeper into her cubby. Too terrified to make any further sound, she whimpered when he stabbed those wicked-looking teeth into her mother and ripped away at her flesh so she gushed blood into his mouth in a sloppy gluttonous mess.

Ruth did the child an unintentional favor when she bent down next to Leah’s hiding place and blocked her from seeing any more of the Vampire’s cruel feeding on her mother. Ruth reached between the rocks and tried to fish for Leah, but the child wisely kept out of reach, backing up into the dark cubby as far as she could go.

“Come here, girl. Don’t make me use magic on you. I’ll turn you into a lizard, you little brat.”

But Leah knew that as long as her mother was alive and perhaps for some time after that, her attackers would be completely powerless. She knew what her mother could do,
all
the things her mother could do. The Vampire could drink all he liked, but he would only be able to earn one of her mother’s powers. For all he knew, he would earn her very benign ability to read any language she saw.

But the child didn’t realize just how deadly that could be in a world full of black magic spell books in ancient and sometimes dead languages. Spells and magic that had faded away with the language they were written in. Powerful magics that once upon an age had been seen as biblical events, and perhaps still were.

Suddenly Ruth got hold of the hem of Leah’s dress and immediately fisted the material into her fingers, pulling her toward the narrow spot between the boulders she had escaped through. Desperate and panicked, Leah did the first thing that came to her mind. She grabbed hold of Ruth’s forearm, opened her mouth, and did some biting of her own. She did it as savagely and viciously as she had seen the Vampire do, taking great satisfaction in Ruth’s surprised screech and her immediate withdrawal. Leah scrambled back into her dark corner, this time making sure her skirt was well out of reach.

“You little bitch! Wait until I get my hands on you! I’m going to use you to beat your mother dead!”

“Lovely. That should charm her out of there,” Nico said dryly, earning a nasty look from his other half. She was a beautiful woman, tall and tan and cool blond, but her blue eyes oozed utter and exquisite madness, and when she glared at him like that she really came off quite ugly. He took it in stride. He had grown used to her rapidly fluctuating moods. And her volatility kept him from growing bored with her, something that happened easily to Vampires who were as long-lived as he. “Cast a spell to get to her,” he suggested. “Our innate abilities may be gone, but surely a spell will work.”

“And what spell do you suggest? There is no ‘Snag a Rotten Child’ spell.”

“You could be creative. Surely you can think of—”

Suddenly the Demon/Vampire team went still, both tilting their heads as they sensed the approach of another.

“We had better go,” the Vampire said, using a sleeve to wipe at his mouth. It did little good. He was saturated with the blood of Leah’s mother, and it was smeared and splashed all over his face, arms, and shirt. “We do not have any power, thanks to her.” He flicked fingers dismissively at Bella. “And as you see, it is not a good idea to fight dependent solely on our spell work.”

Ruth couldn’t argue with that. Instinct told her that whoever was coming was very, very powerful and would be fresh and not battle weary. Ruth and her Vampire were worn out from fighting the Enforcers and manipulating the Transformed minions they’d sent initially to attack Bella and Jacob.

And just like that, they abandoned Leah and the cavern.

Not without sensory abilities of her own, the child was aware of their leaving, and that the farther they went from her, the safer she was. She squeezed out of her hiding spot and raced over to her mother, using her small hands and diminutive strength to turn Bella over so she was faceup. But that was as far as she could pull her. It was as far as she dared to pull her. Every movement she made caused more blood to pump out of the torn flesh in her mother’s throat.

Leah’s eyes filled with tears. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to help. She had been born to the Enforcers, an indestructible team of strength, power, and intelligence that always knew what to do. And now it was shattered all around her, torn and broken. She ought to have been able to do something. Even at five she already had the sense that she was destined for great things, that she was one day going to be a very powerful Demon.

But right then she
was
only five, helpless and vulnerable. Right then there was nothing she could do.

Jasmine found the little girl sprawled over her mother’s chest, her tiny hands gripping at Bella’s shirtsleeves, her face buried against Bella’s breast as she keened softly in an awful sound of despair. The female Vampire was not exactly known for her sentimentality and tenderness, but she would have had to be a stone-cold bitch not to be shocked and moved by the sight that greeted her. Over the past few years as head of the Nightwalker Sensor Network, the law enforcement net that had been put in place all over the world to catch lawless Nightwalkers that slipped through the cracks of their individual race’s policing systems, Jasmine had been always two steps short of Nicodemous and Ruth. The chase had gone on long enough for her to recognize their very special brand of aftermath, and she knew that was exactly what she was seeing now.

She moved forward, stepping over the man she knew was beyond help and kneeling by Isabella’s shoulder. She gently reached out to touch the back of Leah’s head. Her brown and black hair, a mirror of her father’s, was caked with dirt and the blood of her parents, but the exceptional tenderness of the female Vampire was everything the frightened child needed. She looked up at Jasmine with wide, violet eyes filled with unshed tears and a traumatization that would no doubt last the remainder of her lifetime.

“Please help my mama,” she begged Jasmine painfully.

“Come, puss. It’s best we let your mama go,” she said as gently as she could, “else she will suffer in the long run.” Unlike Leah, Jasmine was well aware of the symbiotic relationship between the Demon and the Druid. Without Jacob’s energy to revitalize her, Bella would begin to waste away, and before two weeks were up, she would be dead. It was a long, slow, and agonizing death—especially for those who loved the Druid, those who would be forced to sit and watch it happen, knowing there was nothing they could do to help.