Embrace the Night (3 page)

“Plan to. I’m not a complete gremlin’s ass.”

“No, that you’re not.”

He signed off and grabbed the clasp that now hung at the back of his head, tugging it out in stages. He had an impossible mane of hair, kept long as was the Guardsman’s tradition. Thank the elf lords for the invention of crème rinse.

He rose from the chair, lifting his arms to re-clasp his hair, then turned toward Hannah.

She looked odd, though, pressing a hand to her throat. Her gaze tracked the lines of his raised arms and his chest, gradually moving over his hips and down his heavily muscled thighs.

This was one of those moments when he was glad he worked out as much as he did. He knew what he looked like, the raw physical power he exuded because of his size.

And the room suddenly smelled of roses and seashells.

His body heated up something fierce in response because of her perfume. In another minute, if things went on this way, the snug fit of his battle leathers wouldn’t be hiding his desire for her.

Securing the woven clasp at the back of his head, he moved toward her. She leaned against the doorjamb, her hands at her sides. “What’s going on, Hannah? Why the sudden interest in me?”

“It’s not sudden,” she whispered, meeting his gaze in that steady way of hers.

“You know this would never work.” He drifted his fingers through her hair, still not understanding what had changed that he now wanted Hannah as much as he did.

“I know. You don’t do long-term.”

“I don’t. And your bar is everything to you.”

She smiled faintly. “I don’t date vampires anyway, you know that. Just humans.”

Jude sighed. “Gotta go. I’ve got a wraith-pair to take down and dawn’s about fifteen minutes away.”

~ ~ ~

Hannah didn’t want to be so completely hooked into Jude right now, but the way he’d talked to Longeness had done something to her. Jude wasn’t a simple man by any stretch. She might have been able to shove her interest in him aside if he showed indifference to those around him. Instead, he’d asked about Longeness’s very pregnant wife.

She also knew that a long time ago, over a hundred years now, Jude had been married. He’d even had a daughter, but both had died in an Invictus attack. Her email loop had given her a lot of information she wouldn’t have had otherwise. She knew they’d perished in his peach orchard on Castle Island, next to the house the couple had built together. Her throat grew tight every time she thought about his loss.

But Jude had never remarried and from that time, he’d kept his relationships on a love-em-and-leave-em basis, yet one more reason she needed to keep her distance and ignore what had become a fairly relentless drive toward him.

Jude made a move to slip past her into the hall, but she caught his arm. “Jude?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

He smiled. “I always am.”

Was she imagining things, or had he leaned toward her as if to kiss her.

And she would have let him.

Yep, she had it bad.

But he huffed a quick sigh, and turned up the hall, heading toward the bar. The daytime communication staff would arrive in about three hours, and her staff had already cleaned up and gone home for the night.

She signed off on the loop and added an auto-responder to her email that any emergency communication could be routed through her cell phone. Usually, Sandy came in at this hour to take over, but she had a dentist’s appointment so Hannah would be on call until about ten. But like hell she wasn’t going to walk down to the nearby dock and watch Jude launch into the air. She was worried now because something didn’t feel right.

Moving up the hall toward the bar, she pressed a hand to her chest. She was more anxious about things than she realized because right now her heart felt squeezed tight. She hurried past the horse-shoe shaped bar and a couple dozen tables and chairs toward the entrance. Once there, she stared through the large, stained glass, front door but couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

Jude hadn’t reached the Sound at all, but fought a wraith-pair not fifty feet from the Gold Rush near the dock.

And the strangest thing of all was that she suddenly felt an overwhelming need to help him. Yet, Jude was one of the most powerful men in all of the Nine Realms, so in what possible situation would he ever need
her
help?

Chapter Two

Flashes of blue battle energy left Jude’s palms in steady pulses as the Invictus pair answered with their red strikes.

Hannah had never seen a wraith before or a full-on battle. She’d visited Kellcasse a number of times, but the Invictus, thank God, hadn’t shown up.

Her body felt oddly flushed as she watched. Her skin was warm and her hands tingled, as though she was getting ready for something, but for what she had no idea. And strangely, she felt an inexplicable connection to Jude because of these sensations.

Slowly, she opened the door. Jude fought both the wraith and the vampire at the same time – a bonded wraith-pair – levitating, then flying back and forth in quick slashes to avoid being struck. He had some kind of blue shield in front of him as well. It moved with him as he whipped through the air.

The vampire wore battle leathers like Jude’s but short boots. His black hair jerked around in lank, beaded strands, and he had a heavy scruff on his face. He held a dagger in his left hand, as if hoping for an opening.

The wraith was a wispy-looking creature, a woman, who wore what looked like a gown of floating red strips of gauze-like fabric. Her limbs appeared elongated, her lips dark, the whites of her eyes yellow.

But it was the shrieking that distressed Hannah the most, a piercing cry that made her cover her ears. The wraith’s mate was Guard-sized but still not as big as Jude, but then few Guardsmen she’d met could compete with his mass.

The wraith suddenly flew straight up, then met Hannah’s gaze. In a swift streak of movement, she headed straight for Hannah with an intense expression that made Hannah think the wraith had come for her. Why would that ever be true?

Dread assaulted her.

She didn’t have time to think or to do anything.

And in that horrible moment, Hannah knew that death had found her.

But just as the wraith would have reached her, a streak of blue struck the wraith’s back. She arched in the air, shrieked, then fell hard not five feet from Hannah. She was dead, her back obliterated.

Hannah put her hand to her mouth. The smell of burned flesh nauseated her.

Hannah’s gaze moved past the wraith and back to Jude. And as if time had slowed, she watched in horror as Jude fell to the earth as well, the front of his shirt smoking. The mated-vampire, thank God, faltered as well, then hit the pavement with a thud, rolled once and fell unconscious.

She ran to Jude, not caring what happened to either the wraith or her bonded vampire-mate

Jude lay ten feet from the dock, breathing hard, his stomach sliced open, blood pouring from the wound. The same rancid smell of burned flesh caused her to weave on her feet.

His eyes were closed, and he breathed in small pants.

“Jude.” She knelt beside him, wanting to touch and comfort him but afraid anything she did right now would cause him pain. She rubbed his arm. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m fine. I’m healing as we speak, but thank the Goddess you’re okay. The wraith?” He tried to look around but she could tell each movement hurt.

Hannah twisted to look behind her. “She’s dead.”

“Good. If her mate isn’t gone as well, he will be soon.”

Hannah glanced at the prone vampire who had one leg bent at a strange angle. “He’s still breathing, but not moving.” She knew that once either part of a wraith-pair died, the remaining mate often followed, especially if wounded in battle as the vampire had been.

Jude winced. “Hannah, listen, I’m in trouble here. I need you to call Longeness. I won’t be able to move by myself and the sun’s coming up.”

To her eye, it was pitch black out, but she’d been around both the light sensitive fae and vampires from the time she could remember and knew that they had internal clocks that counted down the rising sun to the split-second. A vampire caught in the light, even a faint and very distant dawn, would end up burned and blistered. She’d seen the results more than once and it wasn’t pretty.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and glanced toward the street. Familiar lights flashed from a Port Townsend police car. The wraith’s shrieking had probably prompted some of her neighbors to make a complaint and she couldn’t blame them.

Hannah made her call and when Longeness answered, she spoke quietly. “Jude’s been hurt and there’s a dead wraith nearby and a vampire on his way out as well. The police have shown up, which is never good, and I’ll deal with them, but I need to get Jude inside before the sun comes up and I don’t know what to do. His Guardsmen have long since returned to Kellcasse.”

“Hannah, don’t worry. I called for Fleet support as soon as I heard that a wraith-pair had breached the access point. You should be seeing them any second.” Kellcasse had a large boat-based policing fleet that patrolled the hundreds of waterways in the realm but which also worked the access point and often entered Sound waters when needed.

“Oh, thank God, and yes, I see the ship now. They’re moving at a fast clip.”

Jude gripped her hand. “How we doin’? What did Longeness say?”

Hannah had never seen him look so pale. She could feel by the way he held her hand just how much pain he endured. “The Kellcasse Coast Guard is here.”

“Thank the Goddess.”

The sound of boots on the pavement, coming from the direction of the street, forced Hannah to lift her gaze. A light shined in her face and a scowling policeman stared down at her. “Well, this is a fine mess, Hannah. We’ve got plenty of people who don’t like
their kind
in our town. And now this, a bloody air battle. You’re not helping your reputation by sheltering these assholes.”

Hannah had gone to school with this idiot who now shined his light at Jude’s head. She let go of Jude’s hand and rose to her feet. “You know what, Brett,” she said, keeping her voice low. “If you don’t cut the attitude, I’ll tell everyone what you did in your patrol car. Remember?”

His forehead pulled back and his lips formed a thin, tight line, but he didn’t say anything else. He shifted his gaze out into the Sound. “Well I can see that Mastyr Jude has a crew coming in. Just make sure they get rid of the bodies. I don’t want to have to take any of this slime to my morgue.”

He didn’t wait for her to respond but turned on his heel and started barking orders at his partner and rounding up the civilians, sending them on their way.

She dropped down beside Jude again. He wore a half-smile and said, “Blackmail. I like it.”

“That’s all
his kind
deserves.”

“What is it you hold over him?” He hissed after getting this sentence out.

“He has a thing for the pros. I was headed home one night, and he’d parked on my street, getting it on in the back seat with a working girl. I may not know all the city rules but I’m pretty sure that was against the law on more than one level.”

Jude started to laugh, then groaned.

She shifted her gaze to the dock. The boat was still a ways off, but coming in fast. “Your crew is about half-a-minute away.”

“Good.”

She glanced at the dying vampire and realized that he’d moved. She lifted up, and saw that his hand, with a red glow in the center of his palm, was aimed in her direction. Oh, God, no!

Without thinking, she threw herself on top of Jude. At the same time, she felt a wave of heat flowing through her that seemed to come from deep within her own body, but had to have come from Jude. She tingled all over as the wave left her. She heard the vampire shout, but she didn’t feel any pain. Had his hand-blast struck her in a way that she couldn’t feel the damage?

She sat up, aware that she’d just caused Jude a mountain of pain by landing on him. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath, and he’d arched his neck. Maybe the vampire had hit his lower extremities with his blast.

She checked Jude, but his legs and boots were fine. So that was good. Glancing back at the vampire, she saw that he looked really strange now and writhed, flipping back and forth, moaning. She rose to her shaky feet and crossed to him. When she drew near, his eyes rolled in his head and his body fell still. Half his clothes were burned off and anywhere his skin showed, she saw ugly blisters. He wouldn’t be hurting anyone ever again, but what had caused the burns?

When she returned to Jude, his eyes were closed and his lips compressed.

She heard orders shouted from a small launch that had tied up at the pier. Four trolls leaped onto the dock and started running in her direction.

Trolls had no problem with sunlight and were perfect for rescue missions at dawn or at any time during the day. From the patrol craft, a second boat hit the water shortly after, then a third.

She leaned close to Jude. “Your troops have arrived.”

He nodded, just enough, but his eyes were still closed.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.”

At that, he turned toward her and squinted up at her. She could tell he wanted to ask her something, but suddenly, the trolls were there. They moved fast on their feet.

“Mastyr, we’re here to help.”

Jude grunted and tried to move, but she pressed on his shoulder with her hand. She knew he wouldn’t like showing weakness of any kind.

“Patience, Hercules,” she said, as the trolls got busy with a stretcher. “Even half-gods like you need time to heal when they’ve gotten a blast wound stretching all the way across the abdomen. And yes, I know how much you hate being laid out like this.”

“You got that right.” The words were followed with another pained hiss, but she kept her hand on his shoulder, offering resistance the second he tried to move.

“Just concentrate on healing and let these men do their work.”

When the lead officer drew close, Jude issued his orders through clenched teeth. He made it clear he was staying at the Gold Rush through the day and that he wanted the coast guard to remain on patrol near the access point until further notice. “Keep Longeness and his crew informed of your movements.” He winced as he spoke.