Afterglow (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #2) (12 page)

“
Uncle. They called me Uncle.”

My blood chilled.

When we returned Lucian to his family, we didn’t go inside with him. We waited with hesitation and anxiety for the shouts of joy and tears of welcome.

After they came, we stood outside in the cold, relieved and listening under the window by the butcher shop, as Lucian explained to Uta that he was a vampire, but that he would never hurt her, nor the children. Not ever.

“What will you eat?” came her worried question.

“
Animal blood. It’s not that hard, Uta. We own a butcher shop, a sausage-making operation. We’ll be open nights now, though.”

His wife laughed.

Apparently, she believed him and said his name over and over, and with so much happiness. I couldn’t imagine anyone but an experienced vampire hunter putting up with being married to a vampire.

Now we knew two vampires who had kids. It was crazy!

I stepped back with Ambra and we saw the silhouette of Lucian and Uta embracing behind the curtains. It was as if she had, all of these months, readied herself for that eventuality and accepted him, even though he had returned to her as a vampire.

Lucian would not hurt his family. I believed him. Ambra believed him.

Uta apparently got the older kids out of bed and they screamed what must have been “Daddy! Daddy!” in their native tongue.

I thought:
There is a God.

Lucian said their names and wept with joy and so did Uta. It was a noisy and happy homecoming.

“I’ve heard enough,” I said.

“
Me, too,” Ambra said. “Our work here is done.”

Ambra and I took our leave of Romania on Lucian’s trusty electric motorbike, with her driving, because she really liked bikes and wanted to drive. I let her.

When I could get a cell signal, and speeding along a paved highway on the back of a motorbike with Ambra driving crazy, finally, I texted Samantha Moon our prearranged code that meant that Vlad was dead:
Ding dong, the witch is dead!

She texted back:
Holy crap!

Chapter Fourteen

Ambra and I received a heroes’ welcome home dinner in our honor as our vampire hunter brothers and sisters celebrated our triumphant return after the killing of Vlad the Impaler and some of his henchmen and we also celebrated the freeing of the captives.

Apparently, it had been all over international news that people kidnapped and held in the Raven Citadel ruins had been set free, due to a tip from a hiker who had stumbled on the place and then vanished before she could be questioned.

The authorities were still trying to sort out who all of the kids belonged to, and how to counsel them after their traumatic captivity.

Ambra and I shared our adventure in front of the roaring fire in the great hall, though everyone knew from the internet and television that children and adults alike had been freed from a horrible fate of a madman who thought he was a vampire and actually drank people’s blood. The twisted perv. For everyone knew, in the media, that vampires were fictional.

Our tale was pretty much the same as the news reports, except for our battle against the vampires. And except that Ambra said she couldn’t have done it without me and I said I couldn’t have done it without her. We both insisted that we couldn’t have done it without a vampire named Lucian, who had helped us to defeat Vlad and some of the other vampire henchmen.

They all wanted to know his last seconds on Earth.

I said, “Finally, Vlad took his well-deserved dirt nap in the form of a plume of stinky smoke. Really, I am so traumatized by seeing what the captives lived through that I can barely take glee in his death and give you the gory details.”

Ambra said, “It’s more like a relief and we are just glad it’s over. Please don’t make us re-live it, at least not right now. Let us decompress.”

Their celebration at our victory took on a more somber tone.

It was not without trepidation that I interrupted the festivities to broach the topic of putting Lucian on our Do Not Kill list. At first, there was concern, but Ambra strongly backed me and so, under vampire children, and under Samantha Moon’s name, and under the unknown cop in Southern California, the name of Lucian from Bran was added to our Do Not Kill list.

Ambra and I were completely bushed. After we ate, drank, and told the others numerous times in very brief details about our terrifying adventures in Vlad’s ruined castle. We answered dozens of questions, but I asked if we could rest and talk later. Ambra concurred. Both of us had had enough.

Lucas let us go, while everyone else stayed in the great hall to eat, drink and celebrate the Earthly departure of Vlad the Impaler and some of his evil ilk. Yes, some of them had gotten away. It was the way of vampire hunting.

Ambra and I were emotionally exhausted from what we had seen. Her eyes were so haunted. I was afraid to look at myself in the mirror.

But there were good things that came out of that trip, besides killing Vlad.

Somehow, on that road trip back—from Romania to Switzerland—in that freezing weather on an electric motorbike that we had to stop every night and plug in somewhere, Ambra and I had gotten physically closer. We had hugged, held hands, and slept curled up together in the same bed in hostels and hotels and bed and breakfast places.

Maybe it was that we had hunted together and had beaten the odds and survived against the vampires. Or maybe it was because we were so alike. Or maybe it was proximity and convenience. Or maybe it was because she could kick my ass in training, and didn’t hesitate to do so. But Ambra had my back in battle and I had hers. It was more than that, though. I chose to believe that we were somehow meant for each other, that there was some grand plan by destiny to throw us together and give us a chance to love someone again. And be loved back.

We walked up the stairs of Blackstone Castle to the bedchambers, hand in hand, and I didn’t care who saw us with our fingers interlaced. We walked down the corridor where her bedchamber was within shouting distance of mine. She stopped in front of her door and threw her arms around me and lifted her face to mine. We were nearly the same height, but somehow, when she lifted her chin, her lips were right there and I only had to dip my head a fraction of an inch to kiss her.

So I did.

And then, she kissed me.

And then, we kissed each other, standing in that drafty corridor between her bedchamber door and mine.

“
Come to my room and be with me, Ambra. It’s time.”

She gently pushed me away. “I—I must go, Rand.”

“Go? Why?”

“
There’s something I have to do right now.” I saw her eyes flicker to the window and peer into the starless darkness.

“
It’s below freezing outside. It’s about to snow again.”

“
My cloak is warm and I have gloves and boots. I need to go for a walk.”

“
I’ll come outside with you,” I offered. “There may be wolves.”
Or vampires.

She shook her head and pressed my hand to her heart. I could feel the thump of it under my palm. I watched her swallow hard as my hand curved around her breast in gentle possession.

“Beautiful Ambra. That kiss,” I said. “That kiss came from deep within you.”

“
Yes,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion.

I swallowed hard. “This is a turning point for us, Ambra.”

“Yes.”

“
Don’t run away. If there is something you need or want from me, all you have to do is ask. My heart is your servant.”

“
Oh my.
Mon Dieu
.” She paused. “I’ll be back. I have to go right now, though. I have to do something important.”

She slipped out of my arms, grabbed her fur-lined cloak and gloves from her bed and walked gracefully down the castle passageway toward the parapet. My eyes followed her and I saw that she took the secret passageway that led down to the grounds that were little used in winter.

I stood there, stunned after her kiss that had just rocked me to the core.

I could still feel the tingle of her warm lips pressed on mine.

The moisture, still evaporating from where her mouth had left a sweetness on mine, was indescribably compelling.

For the first time since my wife had died, I felt unmistakable raw desire rise up inside of me for another woman, for Ambra. It was
all
for her.

Her kiss had changed everything between us. Everything.

My man’s heart was alive again.

And now, there would be no turning back.

Chapter Fifteen

We were standing at least 0 and 2. If a woman saves your life twice, that bonds you forever through not just gratitude, but humility. That she is better at saving you than you are at saving her was of some consequence if ego took the reins, but with me, it no longer did.

I had learned that yes, there was a woman out there who was my physical equal or better and my emotional equal in many ways. She was my sexual equal—at least, I was pretty sure she would be, if she would be so kind as to come to my room and let me make love to her. No, not
to
her,
with
her.

But tonight, Ambra was not being her usual cautious warrior woman self. She had kissed me passionately and run away, upset. Her guard was down and emotion was overtaking logic and her usual
modus operandi
of self-protection.

Shit
, I realized that she was going outside the castle on a full moon. Not good.

Here be werewolves.
Or just one. I hoped Corbin was our only werewolf.

I grabbed my outdoor wear and ran out to tail her. And then, using my night-vision goggles, I followed her through the secret passageway to the frigid outdoors. Not only was it cold outside, but the air was still, and every step on the ground broke the frost with a crackling sound.

I saw, in the cloud-veiled moonlight, that she was headed for the castle’s small, somber cemetery past the chapel, where those who had been murdered by vampires had their bodies interred or, if charred, like my wife’s, their ashes—or body parts, if any—were laid to rest in the marble mausoleum which contained cinerary urn spaces.

I saw Ambra run willy-nilly through the castle’s cemetery, parkouring across the tops of the headstones and vaulting around and over stone angels and marble tables caked with snow. She was free running, without regard for any man-eating wolves on the grounds of what the public knew to be our private game preserve for an almost-extinct breed of wolves, which was the truth and a fine deterrent for anyone who was curious about what went on in the castle and the grounds.

The castle was a dry-moated fortress which the wolves had never penetrated because it had sharp rocks that hurt their feet. But the wolves were like a moat, too; our warning signs about them and our big electric fence kept out strangers and journalists who likely wondered what we really did here.

I saw several sets of amber eyes in the darkness and they darted behind the headstones and statuary of the cemetery, only pursuing her out of curiosity, at first. Obviously, they could run faster than Ambra, but they kept their distance. It might have been their confidence, or their fear that she wasn’t alone, that I, too was following her.

I closed the distance between Ambra and me, in case I had to save her. Curiosity was always the first step, with wolves, and then they would decide, if they were hungry enough, to pursue a quarry for food.
Or sport.

I knew she always wore her scythe, the large heart-shaped necklace, which, when folded in half, became a formidable weapon of the Sisterhood of the Scythe, but still, I was alert for predators, either with four legs or two. I wouldn’t have been surprised if more vampires were in the vicinity, though I hoped the hell not. I was more than tired of vampires. I was almost running on empty.

Energy and emotion were both so burned at both ends of that proverbial candle. I needed sleep and another kiss from this badass angel who had no mercy for vampires, but she did have mercy for me.

However, I knew that if I didn’t kiss her again tonight, that I likely never would. Love passes away like that, a missed chance, a moment of turning, or denial—a pretending that a kiss didn’t mean anything, just to stop oneself from opening a big can of worms.

I wanted to open that can. I was ready. More than ready.

I had almost caught up to her in the graveyard.

She knew I was there, but she vaulted and ran and leapt like a deer. She was poetry in motion, and perhaps, even more beautiful on skis, though I had never seen her ski. I made a mental note to get my ass out of bed before sunset from now on, and try to learn to ski with her and Corbin. After all, we did live in the Alps.

Ambra finally stopped to press a kiss upon the stone lips of the elaborate marble angel statue that guarded the entrance of the mausoleum of those who had died at the hands and the fangs of vampires.