Blood Ecstasy (Blood Curse Series Book 8) (25 page)

She pulled them away and tucked them beneath her thighs.
 

“
Ș
oarec micu
ț
,” he murmured, “I know. I do. But you’ve seen these letters.” He gestured toward the pile of crumpled envelopes scattered about the floor by her feet, and he frowned. “The bottom line is this: Ian is gunning for me, angel. And he’s not going to stop, not until one of us is dead.” He rocked back on his heels, and his vivid gray eyes clouded with emotion. “I’m not trying to scare you, and the gods know, I wouldn’t ask this of you now if it wasn’t imperative; but Becca, if something happens to me—”

“Nothing will,” she interrupted frantically, withdrawing her hands from beneath her and wringing them together in her lap. “I mean, you’re a warrior.”

“So is he,” Julien said sternly.
 

“But you’re a tracker…a vampire…you’re lethal.”

Julien appeared to swallow a curse, and then he rolled his shoulders to release some tension. “So is he, angel.”
 

Rebecca blinked several times to clear her vision.
What was the vampire saying?
“You don’t think you can beat him, do you?”

At this, Julien chuckled, deep, low, and sinister. “Oh,
iubito
, my darling; I am going to beat him. I am going to
end
him.”

She shivered at the ice in his words. “Then, maybe…maybe we can wait?”

Julien shook his head. “No. Too dangerous, angel. Nothing about this can wait.” He rose, rotated his massive body, and took a seat next to her on the couch. Despite the fact that she shied away, he placed his arm around her shoulders and drew her close to his heart. “As much as I want you with me, as much as this Blood Moon demands that you be with me, I need to take you to the king’s manse until all of this is settled. You’ll have the greatest protection imaginable at Napolean’s compound, and I need to convert you
today
.”

As if a sudden tide of panic had just swept through the room, washed over the sofa, and dragged Rebecca into its dangerous undertow, she flung his arm off her shoulder, leaped from the couch, and began to run toward the staircase.
 

She had no idea where she was going.
 

She knew, intuitively, that she could never outrun him—hell, he could just freeze her in place with the sweep of his hand—yet and still, everything in her told her to run.

Julien rose from his perch on the sofa, but he didn’t pursue her, at least not right away. And he didn’t command her body to freeze. “Becca,” he called in a no-nonsense tone. “Angel, please…
stop
.”

She made it halfway up the first set of stairs and spun around on the landing. “Don’t do this, Julien. Please. I can’t…I’m not…just don’t.”

In an instant, he was there, dematerializing from the great room and transporting within inches of her trembling frame. “Baby, please. You read the letters. You know the history. This monster took my father. This monster killed my mother. This monster has eluded me for over nine hundred years.” He cupped her face in his hands, his touch far too gentle for a male his size, and burrowed his fingers in her hair. “You’ve seen me. You know how I cope—
how I don’t cope
—with the fallout. Can you even imagine what would happen to me, to this valley, to the earth all around us, if Ian were to somehow get to you, if I had to live with the fact that I had left you defenseless?”

Rebecca covered his large hands in hers and squeezed, mostly out of fear and anxiety. “I don’t have…” Her voice trailed off and she averted her eyes in a regretful admission of shame. “I don’t have the kind of love or commitment that can sustain that level of pain, a conversion. If you hurt me now, I just…I just…”

“You just?” His voice was hollow and void of emotion.
 

“I just think there would be no future. For us.”

He nodded slowly, allowing her words to linger, and then he locked his moonstone gaze with hers, his pupils dark with conviction. “Analise and Evangeline,” he whispered in a husky tone. “We—you and me—we have a past, and we will have a future. It may be rocky, and the gods know, I’m about the least worthy bastard any female could ever want to be saddled with, but angel of mine—
destiny
of mine—know this: I am loyal, all the way down to my broken core. I fight for what is mine, and I’m a survivor. If nothing else, I will fight for you, and I will fight for us. I promise you, little mouse, from this day forward, from this moment forward, from the second the conversion ends, no one is going to stalk you; no one is going to deny you anything;
nothing
in heaven or on earth is going to keep me from protecting you, from protecting us, from cherishing our mating. Rebecca Louise Johnston, you will have my fealty, the same as my king. You will have my heart, for as long as I live. You will have my body, my mind, and my soul, such as it is.” He drew back and chuckled, insincerely. “I know you don’t want it—at least not now—and maybe you never will. But don’t decide our
forever
based on this one critical, necessary event. Forever is a very long time.”

Rebecca’s eyes filled with tears, and despite her incessant trembling, she lowered her gaze, leaned forward, and rested her forehead on the vampire’s chest. He immediately enfolded her in his powerful arms, and despite the maddening, terrifying situation they were both facing, she actually felt safe for the very first time in as long as she could remember. “I’m scared,” she mumbled into his breast.
 

“I know,” he whispered. “So am I.”

At that, she drew back and peeked up at him. “You?
Why?
Of what?”

The corners of his eyes creased, and he swept his tongue over his bottom lip in an atypical, nervous gesture. “I don’t want to hurt you, Becca. I don’t want to pull you into this nightmare that is my waking life. And I don’t want to damage the fragile trust we are just beginning to forge. I’m not afraid of Ian. Hell, I’m not even afraid of dying. But I am afraid of hurting you, doing anything to damage our delicate bond.”

“But you’re determined to do it anyway,” she said.
 

He nodded, slowly. “Yes.”

“And there’s nothing I can say?”

He measured her carefully, studying her features, gazing into her eyes like she was the most beautiful—and innocent—woman in the world. “You can say anything, baby. You can say everything. But at the end of the day, I’m a male vampire. I’m going to protect you, first. I’m going to make you stronger.”

She swallowed her protest and stifled a frown—it wouldn’t do any good. “Can I at least take a minute, have a moment to myself? I don’t know, take a shower and think, maybe process a little, try to get…prepared?”

Julien placed two fingers beneath her chin and lifted her jaw to force her tentative gaze. “I know you don’t believe this, and this situation certainly doesn’t demonstrate it, but there is nothing I would deny you,
ș
oarec micu
ț
. There is nothing I will deny you for the rest of your life. Just meet me halfway…on this…in this awful, difficult circumstance, and know that when you come through on the other side, you will be emerging into a whole new world. A world where you are stronger, faster, and safe…with me.”

Rebecca worried her bottom lip. How could she say that
being safe with him
was exactly what she was afraid of: being tied to Julien Lacusta, the fearsome tracker for the house of Jadon…forever? How could she explain that there was no going back, that she hadn’t even had a chance to catch her breath, to process this new reality, or to welcome him into her heart? How could she express that she actually feared
him
more than Ian, despite their burgeoning connection?

It didn’t matter.

Even if she could express it.

The tracker’s mind was made up, and she was, indeed, a
little mouse
caught in the ultimate trap, in the clutches of a primitive lion, a snare she could never escape. She could only hope and pray that his words were true, that he had meant everything he promised, because like it or not, Rebecca Johnston was about to become a vampire.
 

She was about to become his.
 

“Okay,” she whispered, reluctantly nodding her head. “Give me half an hour.”

Julien breathed an audible sigh of relief. He took a generous step backward and tried to appear less domineering—it just didn’t work. He gestured toward the curved, wooden staircase, flanked by so much iron, and spoke in an unusually tender voice: “I’ll be in the great room…when you’re ready.”

Rebecca nodded, and then she quickly sidled past him and bounded down the stairs.
 

twenty-three

The next morning

Julien Lacusta stepped outside onto the wide-plank floor of his rustic front porch and took a deep, cleansing breath of fresh mountain air. Rebecca’s conversion had lasted five long, harrowing hours, and as much as he had wanted to meet with the sentinels right away, switch his attention to the immediate threat at hand—the missive his dark twin had sent to Braden Bratianu, asking the youngster to meet him at the creek later that night—he had known better.

Rebecca had needed his full attention and support.
 

She’d had lots of questions and concerns, and frankly, she had just needed to rest, to take a moment and adjust to all the changes and fluctuations that were coming at her, faster than a speeding train: Her senses were changed. Her reality was altered. And her entire world had been turned upside down. She just needed a few hours to process.

Now, as she slept in, curled up in an adorable little ball in Julien’s iron bed, his senses were hyper-acute, and his sense of urgency was enormous. In a couple of hours, he would take his newly changed
destiny
to Napolean Mondragon’s manse, and that’s where she would remain until the crisis with Ian was over. Just the same, the clock was ticking on their Blood Moon, and he knew he had to get this perilous ball rolling.
 

Ian could be anywhere.

He could be out there right now…watching… waiting…ready to pounce.
 

He could be planning virtually anything.
 

Squatting down beside the terra-cotta pot where Ian had left the maniacal birthday cards, Julien closed his eyes and tried to gather his wits, to control his wayward thoughts, to call upon his inner warrior: the valley’s best tracker.
 

He took a slow, even breath through his nose, allowing his nostrils to flare, even as he recorded the vast palette of scents that lingered in the air: pine, juniper, fresh earth, wood, moisture, and a hint, just a hint, of something distinctly acrid, Ian Lacusta’s aroma.
 

He recorded it in his mental database.

And then he opened his eyes and stared at the dust on the porch, followed it down the small series of steps to the unkempt vegetation, the ungroomed xeriscape, just off to the side, and he took a psychic-photo of a faint but noticeable impression: a singular set of footprints. Rising to meander in the direction of the tracks, he began to analyze what he was seeing at amazing rates of speed: There was a slight depression in the left heel print, which meant that Ian walked with a notable gait, actually, a swagger; there was a small, almost indiscernible circle between the third row of tread in the bottom right track, which meant that Ian had a small stone or a pebble wedged between the sole of his boots. And he did wear boots. In fact, based on the size and depth of the footprints, however faint, Julien’s wicked brother had grown to be about six-foot-four, the same height as Julien, but he carried about thirty fewer pounds on his frame. As a vampire, he would be strong and muscular, but his physique would be far more lean and sinewy in nature.
 

Julien took several steps back and zeroed in on the front porch once more, this time studying the almost nonexistent patterns of dust—they were subtle, undetectable to the human eye, but Julien knew what to look for. Ian had taken two to three steps on the porch before he squatted down to plant the cards, and those steps revealed a two-and-one-half-foot stride. Based on where he stopped, where he stooped, he was still right-handed, which meant that any weapon he wielded would be thrust or brandished from that advantage—it would be more advantageous to attack him from his left.
 

His handwriting on the garish birthday cards had already revealed plenty: The male was arrogant and drunk with bravado, but he was also anxious, uncertain, and enormously paranoid, all things that could be used against him. The vibration that hung in the air, wrapped itself around the leaves and the planter, confirmed the same thing: His energy was dark and malevolent, focused so strongly that it almost swirled in a quantum hologram, but it was chaotic and desperate.

Julien sighed, even as a feral growl rose, inadvertently, in his throat.
 

This, too, could be a tactical advantage.

Somehow, Julien had to remain calm, evenly focused, and deliberate in all of his actions and choices.

He repressed the desire to snatch the pot and toss it about a mile down the road, realizing that anyone could be in its trajectory, and he focused, instead, on Ian’s retreat. The male had taken exactly one and a half steps backward before transporting into flight, and then, in less than a ten-foot expanse he had shifted into mist. Julien knew this because the nearby pine trees, those precisely ten feet away, had a subtle, but distinctly different quality to their needles—he could both smell and see the impact of dew on the branches, the added pliability to the tines. They were just an infinitesimal shade darker, greener.
Holy mother of Hercules
, he thought,
that would take the skill of a magician.
Julien snarled, and his fangs pressed against his gums. For some reason, that knowledge didn’t really come as a surprise: Ian had mastered so many techniques in his youth, trying to hide his darkness from Harietta, struggling to contain a psychic force that was inbred in his very DNA, learning to adapt at a cellular level. It was no wonder he had the virtual powers of a wizard.