Beloved Vampire (6 page)

“That’s as tight a fit as a young girl’s bum, that is.”

Jessica stiffened and raised her head. Mel wriggled free and dropped into the chamber, giving her his ugly grin. “Well, darling, we didn’t believe it was all about some dusty rock almost as big as my dick, and we were right, weren’t we?”

Shoving aside her jumbled thoughts, she rose on trembling legs, bracing herself on the side of the sarcophagus. When Mel’s gaze went to it, his eyes widened. “Hell’s bells, look at that, Harry.”

She wanted to shift in front of it, cover Farida from his sight. Then she realized he’d ignored the phenomenon in the center of the room for the treasures on the floor behind her. But as he started forward, Harry caught his arm, his self-preservation instinct greater. “What’s going on here?” he asked sharply.

Her last act on this Earth was going to be bringing grave robbers to Farida’s resting place. As if the horrific possibility whirling through her mind wasn’t enough to handle.

“Your death,” she rasped out. “This woman is guarded by the spirit of the man who loved her. You touch one thing, and you won’t leave this chamber alive.”

“More of your fanciful rubbish. You’re mad, old girl. We’re about to be bloody rich beyond anything ever,” Mel said. “That’s all that’s happening. And even dead, that girl’s a lot prettier than your sick heap of bones. I say we wake her up and take her along.”

One man might have sacrificed his heart and soul to ensure this place would remain pure in memory forever. She had to believe that, hope for it, no matter what other terrible alternative existed.

Jessica drew the knife from beneath her clothes, the one she’d almost gotten Harry with in their early travels. Perhaps because her movements were feeble, they didn’t think to stop her, but they didn’t know a Hell-based rage was burning deep in her breast, bolstered by her fear of betrayal and the threat of utter hopelessness.
Please, let me die before I learn the truth.

“You don’t belong here,” she said, her voice rough and strange to her own ears. “You can’t touch these things. These are his gifts to her. That he’s still bringing her.” How could they not see it? The fresh flower petals, the orchid, three hundred years of offerings?

Or was she dreaming again, meshing the reality of their presence with the illusion of what she wanted this chamber to look like? No, she’d imagined dried bones, had even been comforted by that idea. Everything here was real, particularly their threat.

“Miss Anna,” Harry said quietly, “none of us will keep you from staying here. Mel doesn’t want anything to do with that woman.

But you have no use for these treasures. What does it matter if we take a few?”

“Because they’re
hers
. Because something has to matter enough that we don’t take from it.” From their startled looks, she suspected they could see that fire welling in her eyes, hear the raw, despairing fury in her hoarse voice. She was getting dizzy, a gray haze at the edges of her vision, but she defied it, brandishing the knife. “
Something
has to be sacred.”

“Well, you go on and worship all you like, you crazy old witch,” Mel growled. “I’m plundering to my heart’s content.”

“No, you are not.” She swung the knife as he moved forward. Surprised, Mel leaped back as the tip snagged and ripped his sleeve. “You will not touch anything here as long as I have breath to fight you.”

“Fair enough,” he retorted, and drew a knife of his own, the blade catching the torchlight.

“Mel,” Harry snapped. “No call for that, now. We’ll just knock her out. She couldn’t fight off a baby.”

“Why can’t you leave her be? Why can’t any of you . . .” As she choked on the pain of it, her head swam, the floor tilting. She wished Lord Mason had thought to bespell this chamber like they did in the movies, so that in the presence of grave robbers, cracks would run across the ceiling and the walls would crumble in, burying them all, preserving it forever. But then the chamber would disappear, as if it had never been, a figment of her imagination. No, it
was
here. She could see it, could see all of it. “You won’t take from her, damn it.”

“Jesus, Harry. She’ll die here anyway. Might as well hasten the old bat along.”

“I’m not old,” she snarled. “I am twenty-nine years old.”

That caught the men off guard, bought her a minute. Why not? She was tired of having it all bottled up inside of her. She’d endured months, years even, of trusting no one, talking little, even to Raithe, because most times speaking wasn’t the primary use he had for her mouth. Even knowing they would think her crazy, she would confess it here and now, because it was all right. She could tell Farida, so she would hear it, before they killed her at the foot of her sarcophagus.

“I am Jessica Tyson, not Anna Wyatt. I was the servant of a vampire for five years. A vampire who killed my fiancé. That vampire did this to me”—she gestured at the wasted flesh of her face—“but I survived. To do this. To come to this woman’s grave, to someone who understood . . . that life is the most horrible thing in the world, and the most marvelous.”

Tears were running freely down her face now, though Jess was surprised her dried-up heart, pounding so erratically, had any left to give. “I beg you, if you have any scrap of decency, do
not
defile this place.”

But she knew when it came to these men and decency, threats worked better. “If you refuse and kill me”—she pinned them both under her gaze—“I swear, no matter what deal I must make from the grave, I’ll curse you for the rest of your days. You will know Hell on Earth, until you bang on the devil’s door and beg him to let you in. She was Farida, daughter of Sheikh Asim, the lion, and wife and beloved of Lord Mason, the desert tiger. She chose to abandon everything for his love, and she died for him. You will
not
dishonor that.”

“She’s turned the corner, Harry,” Mel muttered, though his face had lost some color. “A vampire. Jesus Christ.”

Jess kept her eyes on Harry. His avarice warred with something that might be conscience, but unfortunately she suspected it was just fear. And fear wasn’t enough.

Reluctantly, he drew his gun. “Best to end your suffering, darling,” he said gruffly. “I’m sorry for it.”

Mel chuckled, a harsh sound, recovering some of his brass. “If I was going to defile it, I’d take a piss on her, love,” he said.

“Which I’m likely to do, once I bag up some of these baubles, because it was quite a hike getting here. It’s a goddamned miracle you made it, sick as you are.”

“You will leave here,” she retorted. “Or you will be eternally sorry.”

When the air currents shifted behind her, she registered it a moment before the gazes of the two men did. In the space of one of her struggling heartbeats, the disbelief and lack of fear they had shown in the face of her meager threat transformed into something entirely different.

She didn’t look behind her. Instead, her gaze strayed to the fresh orchid in the vase, clung to it. Before all this happened, she’d been a brilliant student, with an exceptional mind. Her professors had told her so, but she’d realized a person didn’t know how brilliant she was until she endured things so horrible her mind was able to perform mitosis, splitting into two parts to survive. The academic side of her knew the psychology of that, just as her soul knew it wouldn’t survive the impact of bringing reality and fantasy back together to face what was behind her.

It was the final insult, and would snap a mind frayed for so long it should have completely unraveled by now. Maybe it had, as Mel had implied. There was comfort in that. Perhaps she was in a dream, and could turn it in the direction she wanted. She could die right now, never knowing, and go into oblivion clinging to what she’d wanted this moment to be.

As Harry’s eyes widened and Mel’s face went satisfyingly pale, Jessica felt her body shudder, caught between terror and heartbreak. One inch at a time, she forced herself to turn her head, until she was looking at what had stepped from the shadows.

Though illness had shriveled her to a hunched state in comparison, he was still a tall man. Every bit as beautiful as Farida had described him. A man with the soul of a desert tiger, shining through his preternatural amber eyes, and copper hair that shimmered like the cat’s hide in the firelight. Those eyes turned to her now. They made a thorough assessment of her expression, even the state

of her body, in the space of a heartbeat. And she knew. Dear God, she knew.

He was a bloody, goddamned vampire.

5

“
W
HAT did you do to Dawud?” she rasped, turning back to Harry. The man was too busy assessing this new threat to answer, but Lord Mason did, in a velvet, dangerous voice that was a fluid blend of European and Arab accents, edged with an animal’s growl.

“They slit the boy’s throat when he tried to keep them from coming after you.”

No. Oh God, no.
Jessica’s knees gave out on her then, and she fell into the petals. Oddly, the impact of bony kneecaps on stone didn’t hurt, because he’d moved, putting his hand under her elbow to ease her down in a swift movement. The unexpected touch was gone before she could react to it. Mel rushed for the stranger. Harry was smarter, trying to scramble back up into the tunnel. It wouldn’t help. A human couldn’t escape a vampire.

Mel started firing, and the other torch dropped, dimming the chamber. Lord Mason leaped for him, but she was more concerned about the bullets. Lunging to her feet, she covered Farida, screamed in pain as one of the stray bullets punched into her.
Don’t let
her body be harmed. She’s perfect . . . Let her stay perfect.

010

Raithe had stolen her life, binding her to him with two marks. The first mark had allowed him to locate her wherever she was, and the second let him into her head, where he could read every thought she had, invade at any time to speak and command her there.

Despite that, she’d tried to escape, again and again. Failed every time, been punished every time. Eventually, she’d realized he let her try only to give himself the pleasure of extinguishing her hope, indulging his fascination with whether she had the fortitude to strike it back to life again.

When she was befriended by two women in his household, she thought she was being offered comfort from fellow inmates. They asked about her life before, about Jack, her fiancé. It was the last time she made the mistake of trusting anyone. At first she wondered why he didn’t lift the information from her mind, but later she realized it was more of his games, intended to underscore how alone she was now.

After her sixth escape attempt, Raithe told her she would not fully accept his ownership until she realized her old life was gone to her. So he found, captured and killed her fiancé in front of her. He broke Jack’s spine, crushed his rib cage so it punctured his lungs, his heart, then wouldn’t allow her to touch him as he wheezed his last. His uncomprehending eyes clung to her, his numb hand outstretched, trying to reach hers.

As Jack’s body had been dragged away, Raithe told her if she tried to kill herself, he’d find her family and do the same to each one of them, only make it last longer. When he deemed her training complete, her mind malleable enough, he intended to give her the third mark. As she curled in a ball of grief on the floor at his feet, he explained in a gentle, even tone that this would be a gift. An honor. She’d be his fully bonded servant then, with the privilege of an enhanced mortal life span, perhaps as much as three hundred years, give or take a decade.

So life went on. It took a while for her to be as malleable as he demanded. Then, the night he finally decided to do it, vampire hunters attacked. Before he could complete her third mark, one hunter wounded him severely, but Raithe managed to get away, dragging her with him. When they reached a narrow dark alley, he’d stumbled, fallen, overcome by his wounds. Since he was still grasping her wrist, refusing to let go, it drove her to her knees. Her hand landed on a sharpened survey stake, discarded with construction trash.

For so long, she’d been numb, her mind beaten into complete submission, a cringing dog who had no thoughts other than what her Master would next inflict upon her and how to endure or avoid it. In hindsight, she knew that had been her best protection, because deep down where neither Raithe nor even she could go, the part of her that had waited for this one rare moment of vulnerability had hovered, beyond his reach. When the roaring compulsion came slamming back into her body, she reacted on instinct.

Now.

She seized his hair, yanked him off the ground and drove the stake into him. Wounded and dazed as he was, he didn’t have a chance. There’d been countless times she’d huddled on the floor during his daylight sleep, chained to the foot of his bed, and felt her own ribs, figuring out exactly where the heart was located. Figuring out the angle she’d have to use, how strong she’d have to be. Whenever he heard such thoughts, the punishments were brutal, but that night, the knowledge came surging up, as if that unconscious part of her had been practicing, over and over. She did it as smoothly as a veteran vampire hunter, and his aborted third mark gave her the necessary surge of strength.