Forbidden Days (The Firsts) (38 page)

“Marcus, could you let them know we have arrived, but that it is not safe to leave the building at this time.  Show them to the waiting area, if you would.”

The copilot woke the passengers and led them out of the hangar, down some stairs, and into elegantly decorated rooms, a lounge area, a small kitchen, several small sleeping chambers arranged around the main room.

“Philippe says to tell you they are secure, and he will let you know when it is safe to leave.”

Cherise spoke to him in French to thank him and acknowledge the information.  “Eillia is a thoughtful woman,” she said to the others.  “Her guests could never

complain about her accommodations.  If you are tired, just choose any bed.  If you are hungry, I guarantee there’s a feast in the kitchen.”  She closed her eyes and then opened them again.  “So, I will be in the last room to the right if anyone needs me.”  She moved gracefully, but quickly, across the floor and was gone behind a closed door.

No one was feeling hungry at the moment, so they all took either a bed or a couch, chair, even the floor, and rested.  It was daylight, and they couldn’t help but feel drained.  They’d arrived safely in spite of the sabotage to the plane and right now, they all said a little prayer that they still breathed.

Park wondered how things were going back in Vancouver as she fell deeply to sleep and didn’t open her eyes again for a very long time.

Alvin had been angry for a lot of years.  It had nothing on how pissed he was now…since his obscenely paid mercenary that had been famous for results, had betrayed him.  He didn’t see that coming.  Well.  Fuck.  If you can’t even trust the bad guys to be bad…  Best laid plans.

And they had been excellent plans.   Bas or any of his vampire buddies had never discovered his subterfuge.  He had been successful in the attack.  Except that the beheadings hadn’t happened.  Well, one…  According to a text message he’d received after the attack had started stating that the man he’d hired, Daniel Gitzinger, had belayed his beheading order.   The text asked for the client’s advice.  To which he’d responded to get the hell out of there.   He’d sent up some aerial surveillance this afternoon…there were a lot of dead men dressed in camouflage.  They were his hires.  Yep.  The vampires were still alive.

He shook his head.   Well, Bas was good to have been able to take them all with the level of weaponry he had provided.   That actually really surprised him.  Oh, well, anyway.   Time to get out of Dodge.  Live to fight another day.  Rock and fucking roll.  He knew Sebastian would be coming for him.  His only grace…he was still a mystery to the vampires.  No one yet had any idea who was behind these attacks.  And they wouldn’t until he
wanted them to
.   And he would…when it was time.  Sebastian was one of the ones he
wanted
to know…so it was probably a good thing he made it through.  This gave him another chance to get it right. 

Still, had to get out of town for a while until things calmed down enough to regroup and re-plan.    First, he had to kill the vampires he’d had Shanks make.  And of course, Shanks himself.    He’d moved them all to a large cabin isolated in the deep woods east of the compound.  That’s where they were now, waiting for him to come and send them on their mission.  Hmm.  He’d swing by, wrap this up, and be off the continent by the next night.

Eillia woke suddenly, sharply aware something was horribly wrong.  She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t see.  A crushing weight pressed her down, kept her from fully opening her eyes.  There was something around her face.  It smelled of earth and man and a little like whiskey.  She gagged and tried to draw air and couldn’t.   She knew she wouldn’t die…she couldn’t suffocate to death…but she could suffer from lack of oxygen.  It was painful to not be able to breathe.  So she pushed hard, her vampire strength kicking in.    She felt the weight rolling aside and she tried to sit up, to move up, to crawl up…and finally made it…her hands reaching air first, her face next.  She was outside, she could tell that, and she’d been buried beneath the ground.  Thankfully, the cool air rushed into her burning lungs, filling her back up and staying the coughing jags she’d started.  As soon as she could open her eyes, she realized it was day, and from the light level, likely early morning. 

A large evergreen tree stood between her and the newborn sun, or she would have begun to burn, too.   As it was, she searched around frantically, hoping to find somewhere to go that was safe.  But it appeared she was in the middle of the woods, and exposed when the sun moved higher.  She had no choice…she had to go back underground.  She powered her way back, pulling dark dry soil over her, and used the garment that had been around her head to create a tunnel to allow air to filter down to her.   The sun would crest on the opposite side and would not penetrate to touch her skin.  She was breathing heavily once she finished her earth covering and air channel.   Her head hurt enormously and her mind was fuzzy.  What…how had she come to be here?

When it came to her moments later, her first thought was that she had been fatally shot many times.  And that Hamid had been murdered forever.  No wonder her head hurt…there was a fountain of tears pressing against her eyes waiting to pour out.   Hamid…handsome, wonderful, her life partner…would never be with her again.  She would never see his gorgeous face…never hear his infectious laugh, his deep timbered voice. 
Never
.  Never was a very long time for a vampire.  She waited for the tears to come…and they didn’t.  Her grief was too deep…tears would be useless and incomprehensibly small.  Hamid was irreplaceable on earth.  To her.  For the rest of her eternity, he would be gone. 

She lay there and had no choice but to let the pain take over, her body quaking, held against the warm earth, an empty hug until the sun slid down out of Vancouver’s sky.  She cloaked herself from any prying minds reading her pain…she was alone…she would be alone in this until someday she could smile again.  She knew that would be a very, very long time.

Koen awoke shaking.  He’d had a dream…that Eillia needed him…that she was in pain…and he tried to find her.  He stood and wandered around the dark basement, the only sounds were Bas’s soft breathing and a pipe tingling somewhere in the corner.  She was…was she?  He sent his mind out…she wasn’t there.  It must have been only a dream…just a nightmare on top of this nightmare of a day.  His sense told him there were several more hours before the daylight left.  So he laid back down on the pile of cheap hotel comforters and tried to return to his rest.  He thought of Park, and the joy of finding her.   He thought of Eillia and the pain of losing her.   Life did indeed fuck with you on its own terms, and
that
…that never changed.  He rolled up on his side and willed himself to sleep again.  He had important tasks tonight.

Shanks had waited as long as he was going to.  The freaking weasel had dropped them off here and told them to wait.  Told them he’d be back by the following night to begin final prep for the attack.  Two nights had come and gone.  They were as fucking ready as they ever would be, so where was the chipmunk guy?   Shanks wanted this over so he could head out.  He had plans to go to New York City tomorrow night…he
would
be on that flight.  That’s where he would party for a few days before heading to Dubai.  So Alvin had better be ready to pull the trigger on this little disaster tonight…because he was gone after that.  He looked over the pitiful little weak assed forces they’d put together.  The guys were playing soldier with each other, watching some tv, playing video games or messing with cell phones they weren’t allowed to use to call anyone with anymore.  Yeah, everyone here would be dead by tonight anyway, if the attack happened.

He heard a car door slam, and he knew it had to be Alvin.  This god forsaken cabin was in the middle of nowhere.  Peeking out the curtain, he saw Alvin standing outside the rear of the Escalade.   A security light illuminated the area quite well.  He noticed Alvin glance at the cabin, his eyes sharp.  Shanks pulled back and looked around the room at all the guys, then back out the window.  There was something…he didn’t know what…maybe the way Alvin was holding himself…taller, more confident.  A harder look on his face than he usually had.  He pulled an automatic machine gun out of the back of the car, checked it for ammo, then glanced back at the cabin, his eyes squinted.  Shanks had a really bad feeling about this.  Yeah.  He walked to the back of the cabin and opened the door.

“Gonna take a piss,” he said and booked out the door at vampire speed.  He heard the machine gun rattling away seconds after he cleared the back door.  He crested a high bluff, made a crazy wild leap over a culvert, moved out at what he thought might be his all time fastest speed…ever before and likely ever again.  He paused briefly to catch his breath, whispered “fuck me,” and continued at top speed until he couldn’t run anymore.  He had no idea where he was, but one thing he knew…he was still alive and no one else in that house was.

Koen and Bas searched for two days…the bastard rogue had left no real clues to his identity or whereabouts…or any future plans.  He was like a ghost.

“He’s smart, if nothing else.  He’s coming out of this ahead of us…and that isn’t easy.  How can such a brutal son of a bitch evade us?”  Bas finished clipping his holster to his belt.

Koen yawned.  They’d just awakened after an exhausting night searching before they’d take a brief rest to rise early to do some internet research.  “Brutality has its own brilliance.  Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known are some of histories most notorious.”

With a shake of his head, Bas checked his final clips.  ‘Well, we’re not accomplishing anything here now.  I want to get to Park.  Can we fly to France tonight?”

“I don’t see why not.  We’re through here.  Eillia’s gone, Hamid’s buried, there isn’t anything left of your home.  This way we both get what we want.  Not that I would have wished this disaster on anyone.  But we can all make a family together now.  We’ll get this cocksucker in time.  I’ll put a team on it when we get back to my villa, and we
will
find him.”

Bas stared at this intimidating man who was now, for all purposes, his father in law.  He was still unsure of how well this would work out.  Two alpha males used to everything their own way…in one household.  And for Bas, it was worse, because that household was not his own.  He didn’t even have squatters rights.  Park deserved for them to give it a try.  He would.  Eventually, he’d rebuild, but perhaps it would be in France so Park and his child would be near Koen too.

The airport was quiet when they entered, and with simple compels, they were on a nearly empty flight that would stop in New York overnight, then on to Paris by next daylight.

Alvin arrived in Sydney just a few hours before dawn.  No problem…he already had an apartment purchased with renovations to his specific instructions.  The construction workers thought a photographer with need for large light-tight rooms was moving in.  Australia was as far away from Bas as he could be right now.  Another day would come, if Bas had survived…and he was sure he had.  Well.  Alvin was patient and a realist.  It was fine.  As he left the airport, he compelled a lovely little Aussie girl in tight white jeans to accompany him to the new place.  He was up for a good meal, a great fuck, and a long night’s rest.  Maybe a moonlight swim.  Well, he’d see.

She’d fallen asleep again, thankfully, since she still had quite a lot of healing to do and she was trapped here anyway.  But the sun finally abandoned the sky and let the blue slip into black.  She could see when that happened, but it hadn’t been necessary.  She felt the sky change before she ever saw it.  Her body had been twisted in there for so long, everything hurt.  It didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered.  Her life was shattered.  Hamid was gone and she didn’t know how to go on without him.  She’d done it before, in past years, but he’d been with her for so long, she could not see beyond him.  It just fell apart when she tried to imagine laughing without him there, loving with anyone else.  She was glad she’d been in a hole all day…it was where she belonged.

But now the sun was gone, she knew she needed to go.  Whoever put her here might come back…might realize the job wasn’t done without taking her head.  Although…she had a sense of something…she wasn’t sure…a gentleness…had someone caressed her hair?  She couldn’t tell, but…if she didn’t want to volunteer to be beheaded, she needed to be hell and gone from here right now.

She could feel her strength respond as she summoned up the power to push from the appreciably deep hole he’d dug.  Whoever he was, he couldn’t have known what she was, or he wouldn’t have wasted his time digging such a deep hole, knowing she would only have to climb out of it soon.  It made sense that he was trying to properly lay her to rest.  Why…she couldn’t fathom.  Whatever it was…there was no time.

Eillia let the power flow and burst out of the ground to land awkwardly on the cold surface.  There was a bite in the air…early September…winter around the corner…yes.  Lovely in France this time of year.  She squeezed her eyes shut tight.  No.  No.  She couldn’t go home without him.  Couldn’t see that big four poster bed they’d made love in for centuries.  Couldn’t pretend things were all right when they never would be again.   Couldn’t face her life.  Couldn’t breathe.  She looked down at the hole she’d crawled out…and wanted to crawl back in.  That was it.  She needed to crawl away and find a hole to bury herself in until she could breathe again.

She powered across the landscape…vampire-moved…north, because it seemed there was nothing there.  Black sky, trees, occasional lakes.  There had to be a hole somewhere here.  But she kept running until she was so tired, she slowed to barely above a human run.  Okay.  She had to find shelter for the coming day.  She did, alongside a dusty dirt road, a small cabin with an unfinished dirt basement, barely different than her recent grave.  But it was below ground and light tight.  She compelled the owner, an elderly man, to go to the nearest town and get a room.