Dark Guardian (30 page)

He bent his head to brush a kiss on the top of Jaxon's head. "I am going to take Jaxon home. It is nearly dawn, and she is exhausted. She can return this evening to finish her report. The doctors have said it is imperative she rest, so I can do no other than to see that she obeys. I am sure your captain will understand."

There were a few derisive snorts over that. "Don't count on it," one of the detectives said. "He's never what you call understanding."

Lucian smiled appropriately, but his eyes had gone flat and cold when his gaze turned away from Jaxon and rested on the speaker. "He will have to be."

Harold Dawkins stared defiantly at Lucian. "Jaxon, I need to talk to you in private for just a minute. You understand, Mr. Daratrazanoff—police business."

Lucian shrugged casually, a small smile curving the edge of his mouth. Instead of softening the touch of cruelty there, however, the smile only served to make him look more imperious, more dangerous than ever. A warrior of old, untamed and savage.

Jaxon reluctantly left the shelter of Lucian's body to follow Dawkins across the room. "What is it, Harold? I'm exhausted, and if the captain doesn't understand that, too bad." Harold Dawkins had worked with her for several years. He was nearing retirement and always looked upon Jaxon as a daughter.

"Who is this guy? What do you know about him? He isn't even from this country. I think he's dangerous, Jaxx. It's in the way he moves, the way he holds himself. You don't see through all that European charm. He could take you off to some foreign land and hide you away where no one could ever help you. There's been too many cases of that kind of thing."

"Seriously, Harold, I don't think that's going to happen." Jaxon tried not to laugh as she patted the older man's arm affectionately. Lucian did rather look the type to secret her away in a harem. "I'm not some sweet victim who can't defend herself. As it is, Lucian thinks I'm a bit of a lunatic. He says I own an arsenal."

"I wish you'd listen to me, Jaxx. Don't rush into anything. Take some time before you commit yourself. This guy is…"

"My fiance, Harold. He only looks scary. He's really a teddy bear," she lied. Lucian reminded her more of a huge wolf, lean and mean and highly intelligent. Except with her. He was always unfailingly gentle with her. She wanted to defend Lucian. He had saved Barry. He had protected the human race for centuries. But she couldn't say that, couldn't explain to Harry that Lucian had dedicated his life to the safety of others.

She turned back to Lucian, who immediately walked across the room to her side. He enveloped her small hand in his, bringing her palm to his chest to hold it over his heart as they walked out of the station house together.

Chapter Eleven

"You are very easy in the company of men."

Jaxon glanced up at Lucian's face. His voice was velvet soft, with no inflection whatsoever. His features were free of expression, yet as harsh and relentless as the wind, carved in granite, yet so sensual he took her breath away. For some reason butterfly wings brushed insistently at her stomach, and she was instantly nervous. She made herself shrug casually, annoyed that she would react so to his simple statement. "I work with men all the time. I trained with them. Grew up around them. I don't even know very many women." Now she was irritated because she sounded like a defiant child. She had no reason to feel guilty. She hadn't done anything wrong. He was the one acting like a jealous husband.

She bit at her lip. He hadn't exactly
acted
that way; he was just so intimidating. Power clung to him, and he looked dangerous. So much so that sweet Harold had thought to warn her against him. Maybe Lucian didn't mean anything by it, maybe it was merely his accent that made his words sound so frightening. Or his lack of expression. She glanced up at him again as they moved together to the waiting car. Antonio was holding the door, open, and, for once, he wasn't smiling. He was shaking his head at her as if she had committed some grave sin.

"What?" she burst out, glaring from one man to the other. "What?"

Lucian's hand came down on the nape of her neck, exerting enough pressure that she automatically climbed into the limousine.

"She is trouble, this one," Antonio whispered loudly enough for her to hear.

Jaxon waited until Antonio was behind the wheel of the car and they were moving swiftly toward their home. "I am not. What does that mean? Those men are my friends, my colleagues. I work with them."

"That is why the older gentleman took such care to tell you I was a dangerous man, one you had no business being with? I heard him quite clearly warning you away from me." Again there was no inflection in his voice, only that soft, velvet whisper of trouble.

"Well, what do you expect when you stand there looking all intimidating and scary like a Mafia enforcer or a hit man or something? You need to look more… I don't know, more something."

"Foppish?" he supplied softly, a hint of compassion escaping into his voice.

"What kind of word is
foppish
? Antonio, have you ever heard of
foppish
?"

"Antonio cannot hear us," Lucian pointed out.

Jaxon was busy stabbing at various buttons. "Which one of these things makes it so he can? You use mind control so easily, Lucian. Are you controlling me, too?"

Very gently Lucian laid a hand over hers to still her frantic fingers. "Be calm, Jaxon. You are suffering needlessly. I do not control your mind. If I did so, you would not be placing yourself in danger at every opportunity. Believe it or not, I am working at finding a balance with your nature. Carpathian males are not easy with other men around their women. That is a simple fact. There is no need to fear what is natural. My emotions are new and raw, but I would never harm you or someone you care for."

"Well, I am not Carpathian, so you'll just have to get used to it," she muttered rebelliously. "And I'm not afraid of you." In the close confines of the car, with his hand covering hers, his thumb sliding back and forth in a caress over her wrist, it was difficult to think of anything but Lucian. "I'm a cop. Those men are my partners. We watch each other's backs. It's how I live, how we all survive." In spite of her determination not to, she found herself explaining.

"I knew there was a reason I did not want you to continue in your chosen profession," Lucian said without expression. He leaned down to her, his palm finding her chin to force her head up. "I do not like to see you in danger. It is more than my heart can stand. Add your sorrow and the guilt you heap upon yourself, and my heart knows what it feels like to break. If another man, human or not, decides to look upon you with desire and then places his hands on you, I have a wish to lose my control for just a few minutes."

Jaxon found herself managing a small smile at his complete sincerity. "Did you make Tom think I looked like a wrinkled old crone or something?"

"It was a temptation." His hand slipped to the nape of her neck and found several tendrils of hair to caress. "I had a primitive urge to discourage him from coveting you."

She blinked up at him suspiciously. "I don't want to know what you mean, so don't bother to explain."

A slow smile warmed the black ice of his eyes. "You are beginning to know me."

"Thank you for saving Barry. The glimpse I caught of him, he looked to be in bad shape. I know it must have been difficult destroying the ghoul there, helping me, and working on him all at the same time." She could feel his exhaustion. It didn't show on his face, but it was in his mind. He was extremely tired. He had used tremendous energy tonight. Even someone as powerful as Lucian could get tired.

She was certain she was tired, too, but it manifested itself more as sorrow. It was almost too much to comprehend the loss of so many of the people she knew and cared about. For a moment the reality of it all touched her mind, and she couldn't breathe, her lungs refusing to work properly. "If the man at the apartments wasn't Drake, and the one at the station house wasn't him either, who were they, and how did they know exactly what Drake did to his victims? How would they know whom to kill? And why would they even want to kill them, Lucian?"

"There is only one answer, angel." Lucian's voice was more expressionless than ever. It made Jaxon glance up at him in apprehension. "There must be a vampire involved here, a master vampire, one of the ancients. It is a creature capable of such things."

"It has Drake? Is he dead?" There was almost a hopeful note in her voice.

Lucian shook his head. "More than likely Drake is still out there somewhere, probably puzzled by these murders. The vampire has read your mind, picked the details out of your head, and that is why you knew something was wrong. The details were not exactly Drake. The vampire created his ghouls and sent them out with orders to kill whoever had fond memories of you."

Jaxon's fingers twisted together, and her stomach burned, a hard knot of pain. "Why? What would he accomplish?"

Lucian's black gaze moved over her, fathomless, moody, possessive. "Precisely what he did. Pain. Vampires thrive on other people's pain. He must have caught you out in the open, away from the protected property, and read your memories. He could not have hidden his taint of power from me had I been close."

Jaxon felt as if he had punched her hard in the pit of her stomach. The feeling was so real, she actually hunched over, dropping her head into the heel of one hand. "So
I
did this. Just by going out of the house, I caused all this to happen. Basically that's what you're saying, isn't it?"

Lucian's arm slid around her slender shoulders. Her pain was radiating from her, enveloping him so that he felt almost as sick as she did. "Of course not, Jaxon. You cannot ever think you are responsible for the sick actions of others."

Jaxon ducked out from under his arm, unable to bear the contact. She was struggling just to breathe. "Lucian, have Antonio stop the car right now. I need to get out. I'll walk the rest of the way. It isn't that far."

"It is almost dawn, my love." He said the words softly, without inflection, apparently neither for nor against her decision.

"I can't breathe in here, Lucian. Stop the car." She wanted to run as fast as she could—whether from herself or from everything that had happened this night, she didn't know. She knew only that she had to be out in the open. "I need to be alone. Please just stop the car and let me walk by myself back to the house. I have to be alone."

Lucian's black gaze moved over her face once more, brooding, suspicious. His mind moved in hers. He read Jaxon's need to alone, to be in the fresh air, to be able to breathe freely. There was such chaos in her mind, she was having trouble breathing.

At once the car rolled to a stop, and Jaxon realized Lucian had commanded Antonio to come to a halt. Instantly she was out of the car and running, leaving the asphalt behind, taking to the open meadow leading to the hills and the south side of the estate. She ran parallel to the road until the car went around a bend and disappeared from sight. Instantly she switched directions and ran up the hill, away from the house and toward the bluffs. Twice she had to stop, leaning over as her body protested the terrible crimes committed simply because someone knew her. What was she? A monster magnet? Some hideous thing inside her drew out the demon in others. She didn't pay the price; some innocent bystander always did.

Jaxon had heard the conversations throughout the apartment building and in the squad room. The murmurs, the silent condemnation. Most of her friends were afraid to speak to her, none of them wanted to be seen with her, and all of them were terrified for their families, and rightly so. This latest carnage was worse than anything Drake had ever done before. This vampire was capable of mass killing in two places at one time.

She continued running as fast as she could. As the trail became steeper, she stumbled occasionally, tears streaming down her face, clouding her vision. Jaxon had no clear thought in her head; she really didn't know what she was going to do. Only that this killing couldn't continue any longer. Her father. Her mother. Her beloved little Mathew. The entire Andrews family, even poor Sabrina, just home from college on a break. Then her neighbor, Carol. Sweet Carol's big crime was watching the sunrise every morning, and she died because she enjoyed sharing the experience with her neighbor. And now all these other innocent victims.

She was sobbing as she clawed her way up the steep rock to the top of the bluff. Just as she pulled herself up, the earth rolled and bucked beneath her feet like a roller coaster. Overhead black clouds swirled and roiled, boiling like a cauldron. Lightning arced from cloud to cloud, slamming to earth in white-hot jagged bolts, the thunder nearly deafening her. She screamed as she ran for the cliff's edge. If there was no Jaxon, there would be no need for Drake to kill anyone ever again.

She tried to run with the earth rocking beneath her feet, hurtling her body toward the edge. Just as her lead foot stepped off into empty space, a thick arm caught her around her waist and lifted her completely off the ground. "Lucian." She whispered his name, clung to him, her only sanity in the madness of the world. Her slender arms circled his neck, and she buried her face in the comfort of his shoulder.

His body was trembling; she could feel it. She lifted her head and saw stark terror burning in the depths of his eyes. He lowered his head and took possession of her mouth even as the heavens opened above them and poured rain onto the earth.

"I need you, Jaxon." Each word was enunciated softly. "You cannot leave me alone in this world. I need you." Whips of lightning sizzled and danced all around them. Thunder cracked and boomed. "You cannot leave me alone."

"I know, I know," she whispered back, pressing closer, an offering in the midst of the world crashing down around them. "I don't know what happened, what I was thinking. I'm sorry, Lucian. I'm sorry."

"You do not have to say that. Never say that." His mouth was moving over hers again, hot and needy with fear and rising desire. "I have to know you are here with me."