Bring Me to Life (15 page)

It never came. A heartbeat later there was a crash on the other side of the room and Wraith was swearing.

“Whoa,” young Vincent said. “We need to get out of here.” His arm hooked around her, and he managed to get them outside and put her down. “Who are you? And if we get on my bike, I think we can make it to the police station.”

Her face crumpled. “They can’t help you. He’s…he’s a dead assassin. I’m not sure we’ll be able to save you.”

“Dead?” His tone was unbelieving. “Lady, I think—oh shit.” His hand clamped down around hers as he jerked her into a run across the uneven, gravely parking lot. She stumbled, and young Vincent picked her up by her belt loops to keep her upright and moving, but by the time they got to the bike, Wraith was already there.

No, he was not going to do this. Wraith was not going to make it so they never met! She jerked away from the kid, planted both of her hands on Wraith’s chest, and pulsed with just enough energy to stop him, not kill him. He went flying backward and crashed into a wrecked car sitting on the lot.

“I’m sorry,” she wailed and then ran to him. Oh damn. She’d knocked him out. She dropped down to her knees next to him. The kid was safe for the moment. It wasn’t like Wraith wouldn’t be able to anticipate all of his own moves, especially ones from a kid version of himself. She lightly stroked a hand down his chest as she turned to look up at the younger version of the man she loved. This was pickles-and-peanut-butter not good.

“I’m going to call the police.”

She thought for a moment. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. He won’t kill you if innocent people are watching.”

She’d figure out how to deal with them once they got here. In all probability, Wraith would blink them someplace else to try to kill himself again. The damn idiot. Not meeting each other wasn’t going to fix this.

“Innocent? What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t do anything wrong.” He had all the bluster and touchiness youth could bring.

“No,” she agreed softly and was glad for the darkness to keep her identity hidden from him. “You’re a wonderful kid, and you’ll make some girl very happy someday.” Tears blurred her eyes.

“Lady, you should get away from him. He’s dangerous.”

She looked down at the crowbar in Wraith’s hand. She couldn’t believe it. He was willing to savagely kill the younger version of himself to make her life better, but she didn’t think it was true. Draven would have still done whatever it was he was trying to do that night. Only, there wouldn’t have been a Vincent there to fight for her.

“Yes,” she agreed with his assessment of his older self. “But not for me. Are you going to call those cops?”

“Yeah. I don’t think I should leave you out here alone with him.”

Her body tensed when Wraith moved. Shit. He was waking up. “You need to get out…of…here.” She felt that tiny bit of dread, and then she was on her feet in front of Vincent as she frantically tried to find where the threat was coming from.

*

Wraith groaned. He shook his head and he felt it. Damn. Vampire. What the hell! He staggered up to his feet. “I need to get you out of here.”

But Bryna wasn’t paying any attention to him. She was fighting with his young self in a comical rendition. She kept moving in front of him, and he kept pulling her back behind him.

“Damn it, woman. Stay behind me! I’m like two times bigger than you. I’ll take a hit a hell of a lot—”

There was a clapping as a dark figure emerged from the darkness. “Well done,” Draven said. “I would have never thought to come and kill you before you met her. That is an angle I hadn’t considered yet.”

Wraith was on his feet in the next second. He was still trying to throw off the effects of Bryna’s pulse. “Stay away from them.”

Draven laughed. Then his face contorted into the hideous undead demon trapped inside. He lunged forward, right for young Vincent.

Wraith moved, but before he was able to get there, Bryna’s tiny body connected with Draven.

“You will not kill him,” she screamed.

“But I can kill you,” Draven snarled. He overpowered her easily, pinned her down, yanked her head back, and ripped into her throat.

Wraith used the crowbar in his hand to impale the vampire from the back. He twisted, jerked to the side, and scooped out the heart. The monster burst into a cloud of dust. He turned and slammed a fist into his younger self. The kid reeled over backward and landed flat on his back in the dirt. Good. The only memory he had of this event was the pondering of how he’d gotten outside and who’d slipped what into his drink for this crazy psychotic dream.

Then he was next to Bryna. He was on the ground next to her, and pulling her into his lap. He needed to heal the savage wound and get her the hell out of here. He gently wrapped his hands around her throat, and projected out the energy needed to heal a vampire’s bite. It refused to heal.

“Bryna,” he gritted out between his teeth. “Stop fighting me.”

“I’m not,” she said.

His head snapped up. Then he looked down at the body in his arms, and looked up again. “No deal, Bryna, get back in your body right now!”

“Oh damn,” she said in a small voice. “Vincent, I didn’t mean to die.”

He thought his chest was going to explode there was so much pressure. She wasn’t dead. He hadn’t brought her back here to die. He hadn’t. Then why was her body lifeless in his arms, while she looked at him from a few feet away? He went to put her body down, and it became a battle with himself to get her body onto the ground. He was up in the next second. Even though she was just a few strides away, he flashed.

“Really, Vincent, I don’t think you needed to do that,” she said when he was right in front of her.

Horror filled his words. “You’re dead.”

“I didn’t mean to, but if Draven would have killed you, and I didn’t get to meet you, I’d be dead anyway.”

“How do you figure,” he yelled at her.

“Draven would have killed me.”

“He came back to kill me, and now you’re dead!”

She winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just didn’t want you to die.”

“I’m already dead!” he roared.

“But you weren’t supposed to be.” she snapped at him and pointed to his younger, unconscious self. “Do you have any idea what my life was like without you? Do you have any idea how much better you made my life with you in it for such a short time?”

Vincent felt the repulsive vibration just before the thing appeared. It was huge and hideous, and about a billion times too large for him to even think about killing, but what the fuck? He was dead. Bryna was dead, and he had nothing to lose. He grabbed her and pulled her back as the black, burning, and charred demon pulsed. Bryna screamed as the wave hit her and what was left after death faded. He watched the ripple of power inch toward him as he tried to hang on to her. Vincent rushed forward, and then he was in Felix’s white with gold trim office.

Bryna was gone. Completely, one hundred percent gone. He spun in a frantic circle trying to figure out where the hell she went. “Bryna!” he bellowed. No. That wasn’t his voice. He never sounded that desperate or afraid. He clamped his hands around his head to try to get the desperate pounding to stop. “Where is she? Felix, you son of a bitch, what did you do with her?” He lunged forward to find himself pinned down to the floor in the older man’s grip.

Grey eyes assessed him with a stern expression. “You have a new assignment. I suggest you check your sheet.”

Confusion reigned, but one didn’t disobey Felix if one didn’t want to find himself on the wrong side of a judgment. If that happened, he’d never be able to save Bryna. Besides, he couldn’t time walk with Felix sitting on his chest. He struggled for a moment before his body went slack. Felix stood up. Vincent shoved up so that he was seated on the floor. He jammed his fist into his pocket to pull out the crumpled paper. He looked down at it. Hope burned his insides. “I get to go back with your blessing?”

Felix went back to his desk and started writing on the one sheet of paper that was forever empty, but always filled as he occasionally looked at the clear file next to him.

He didn’t ask any more questions. He hopped up to his feet and was walking as the image formed in his mind.

Draven’s stance became nervous. “Please, Bryna, you don’t know what’s after you. He will hunt you down until you are dead.”

“But that makes no sense,” she whispered. She hadn’t done anything to deserve to be hunted and killed like a vampire. It wasn’t her fault Shawn wrote a book based on the things she’d told him in confidence. “I didn’t write the book, and it’s out in public now. There isn’t a way I can take it back. How are people going to know—”

He reached out and clamped a powerful hand around her wrist. “We have to go now!”

Wrong!

Whoever this man was, he felt all wrong. She knew way too much about this world to let some stranger carry her off into the night. She jerked back. “Let me go.”

“He’ll kill you.”

“Who?” she demanded as she still jerked to get her arm back.

“The Wraith.”

The Wraith? Oh shit.
He was a nightmare, but more than that, he was the ultimate killer. Demons, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, hellhounds—you name the creature, and the Wraith was supposed to be able to kill it no matter how large the horde. According to Andy, there was no way to survive him once his sights were set. The Wraith wasn’t supposed to go after humans, but she supposed there was a first time for everything.

She stopped struggling and looked to where the dark figure in a black cloak and hood strolled out of the darkness. The dark figure walked directly at them. He pushed aside the dark material as he pulled out a wickedly curved knife right there in front of the store.

“Now!” Draven yelled and started to pull her into the parking lot.

The man Bryna could only assume to be the Wraith jammed the stunned vampire in the chest with the metal blade, jerked it up, and twisted. Bryna covered her face with her hands. No matter how many times she saw a vampire turned into dust, it was still very disturbing. There was the hiss and then the rapid burning of flesh and bone.

She shuddered when a group of people standing around them started clapping. She dropped her hands to stare up at the hooded figure looking at her with glowing eyes. Peanut butter and pickles! Everyone thought this was some show because of Shawn’s book. Her hands fisted at her sides, and she gave her best rendition of a sweet smile to the man she was assuming was Wraith, but hadn’t actually confirmed yet. “I’ll be right back.”

She marched herself back into the book store and snatched a book up off one of the tables. She was going to find out what that idiot put into this book. Then she was going to make him tell everyone he’d stolen the idea and was a fraud. She wasn’t exactly sure what she’d be able to threaten him with, but since she had this newly dark figure looming over her—one who hadn’t killed her, but the freaky vampire trying to enthrall her. She might be able to figure something out. She shook her head and focused on not focusing on the massive figure following her up to the cash register. She needed to get this little issue of Shawn’s latest book out of the way before she went into critical core meltdown tomorrow afternoon.

She wasn’t going to acknowledge the figure next to her. She wasn’t. He was supposed to kill vampires and then fade away. Damn it, why wasn’t he fading? She shuddered again when he brushed up against her in the line, because he had this feeling of safety. That was bad.

She didn’t deserve to feel safe. Not after the way she’d killed Vincent, and she would take it to the grave with her, if she could ever actually get herself there.

“He’s cool,” the cashier said. She was a pretty little blonde who looked so innocent and sweet it made Bryna’s chest hurt. She used to be that girl, a lifetime ago. Instead of snapping at the girl, she forced another smile. “Yeah, he’s just a little too involved in Shawn Duke’s vampire world. This is his birthday present,” she added as an afterthought. She paid the woman and then briskly walked out of the store. She stepped around the pile of dust that was slowly blowing into the parking lot. Eww. Vampire guts would be all over this place soon. She wouldn’t be able to shop here again until after it rained.

When she got to her car, the Wraith opened the driver’s side door for her with an eloquent bow of his hooded head and hand gesture.

“You’re not coming with me. You’re supposed to vanish after you kill vampires, I thought.”

“Only when the vampire I killed is the only threat an innocent faces,” he murmured in a deep bone-warming tone that was so familiar it had tears stinging her eyes, and yet, she couldn’t quite place it.

“I’m not an innocent.”

He leaned down so that his concealed face was close to the side of hers. “You are. More than you realize.”

She jerked back and dropped the book. He stooped down and picked it up for her. Heat tingled in her fingers and spread upward when his hand brushed against hers. “Th-thank you,” she stammered. “But I can make it home on my own from here.”

*

“You are not safe, Bryna,” Vincent murmured. Part of him wanted to throw back his hood and let her see his scarred face, but he didn’t think she’d appreciate having this happen in a very open and very public place. She deserved a hell of a lot from him. Dragging her emotions up and spilling them out for the world to see wasn’t any way for him to behave after what he’d done to her the last time.

“That’s nothing unusual,” she muttered as she maneuvered around the door so it was between them.

He gritted his teeth together. He wasn’t sure he was going to survive her guilt a second time around, when this time he knew she was so far from guilty it made his bones ache. “I am supposed to convince you of the importance of your life.”

She snorted hard. “I didn’t think—whatever you are—played practical jokes on people.”

“This is no joke, sunshine. I will not hurt you.”

Her little body went rigid. “Keep your endearments to yourself. I don’t need them.” Her words were laced with bitterness. “Go home.”

“Think of it as a free chance to sleep without nightmares,” he offered.