Harlequin Nocturne September 2014 Bundle: Beyond the Moon\Immortal Obsession (48 page)

Chapter 25

T
he horrid, twisted creature holding her had let go. Scrambling sideways, Madison knew better than to run to any of the beings here for assistance. There wasn't a mortal among them.

“Stewart,” she said.

Her brother didn't respond, or look her way. Stewart's face, free of the shadows that had hidden it, told her all she needed to know.

Stewart was parchment-pale, and gaunt to the point of starvation. His face was sharp, cold and soberly intent. He wore a dark shirt, partially tattered, and an old pair of jeans, torn at the knees. His hair was disheveled, with long streaks of gray running through the red-auburn color.

He didn't look strong, or completely alive. Yet Stewart had again arrived when needed, as though he had been keeping watch over her all this time.

With a snap of her head, she swept her gaze to St. John, who had also become someone else. Some
thing
else. Bigger. Painfully beautiful. Altered both in shape and content, he radiated power that was visible as it crossed his skin, as if power were waves of moving muscle.

He was the personification of the knights of old, and radiated with the glory of angels. A human made more than human. A being apart from the rules governing reality.

Madison could hardly look at him, and yet couldn't make herself look away. She had heard the conversation between him and Monteforte, and the old vampire's accusations: something about St. John being able to rule the world if he wanted to.

His half-naked body gleamed with the luster of a south-sea pearl as he met the wiry, black-eyed monster rushing at him. The dichotomy of the twisted flesh of the monster meeting with St. John's fierce, deadly light, was breathtaking.

The impact of their bodies hitting was loud in the quiet of the night. The monster moved with incredible speed, but it was clear from the start that the beast had no chance against its superior counterpart.

St. John reeked of power. The air had become electrified with it.

And he had purposefully left the gray-haired vampire he had called Monteforte for Stewart to deal with—which suggested to Madison that Stewart had met the velvet-clad monster before.

This was the Ancient that St. John had said was the wrong one for Stewart to have found, and was the creep in the Germand's lobby. Simon Monteforte was the beast that had betrayed her twin's confidence.

Madison didn't know where to look, or what to do. The fighting had started in two places, and her attention remained glued to her lover.

On his back, covering an expansive space from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, a fiery design burned in the night as if it were a live flame. The tattoos looked like a blaze of wings about to unfurl. Unearthly. Beautiful. Angry. Unlike anything else in existence.

He had told her there was no other like him.

Shaking off her stupor, Madison finally tore her gaze from him to see that her brother had circled the old gray-haired vampire. In Stewart's gloved hand a knife glinted wickedly in the moonlight. Silver. Metal for killing vampires, if the aim was true.

The vampire St. John had addressed as Monteforte wore a feral expression of sly cunning. Her brother's face remained dangerously expressionless, as if emotion had been stripped from him, along with parts of his former life.

Monteforte was wild, and frightening. He seemed to her a deadly foe in the sheer length of his existence alone. Still, her twin moved as though that didn't matter. Sustained by vampire blood passed to him through the savage bites of Monteforte's vampires, and therefore maybe even Monteforte himself, her twin, because of his heritage and his destiny, had beat the odds of death's two-fisted knock.

It was too damn incredible an event to go unnoticed on a public street. Alerted to movement in the shadows, Madison jumped sideways to meet it. Through their bond, she shared St. John's awareness of another monster, not too distant, on its way.

She didn't have time to confront that oncoming shadow. Another shadow beside it pushed her out of the way and stood in her place.

Madison held her breath.

If this was another Nosferatu, the good guys here, no matter how strong they were, would be outnumbered.

Uncertain now as to where to look, fearing for her brother, wanting to watch St. John, she felt her chest begin to ache from the riotous beating of her heart.

She had to do something.

Madison flung herself at Simon Monteforte, ramming into him with every ounce of strength she possessed. Monteforte tilted sideways. Recovering quickly, he rounded back to Stewart.

Her brother had been prepared. He swung himself off-balance as Monteforte struck with both hands, and righted himself with a graceful lunge. Stewart's arm came down in an arc, slashing at shadows, his silver knife coming up red with the old vampire's blood. But the knife hadn't hit its mark. It had been impossible to see, let alone find Monteforte's chest, in his flurry of seemingly effortless moves.

Nevertheless, Monteforte had been struck. And that one thing created a lucky gap in the fight.

Scenting the blood, St. John's ravenous Nosferatu made a sharp turn. An error in judgment that allowed St. John's strong fingers to find its throat.

With the force of a whirlwind, St. John yanked the beast backward. The monster fell back, writhing against its capture, too energetic and focused on the scent of blood in the air to be held for long.

But St. John hung on to it, his muscles corded, and a look of defiance on his face. It was a terrible dance of power. And it gave Madison the courage she needed.

She lunged again at the monster keeping pace with her brother, and who was flinging blood from his wounds in all directions.

Tossing herself at the old vampire a second time, she knocked him into her brother. Stewart moved with a practiced precision, whirling in place, raising the knife, bringing it down.

More blood tinted the blade of his knife, but the old vampire continued to move.

God, how she hated vampires!

Stewart didn't register the slightest bit of fear. Madison was terrified. Across her overworked, inflamed nerve fibers, she sensed the imminent approach of the newcomer. Not only one newcomer, she sensed, but two.

Fueled by fear and a surge of adrenaline that shot through her, she hurled herself at Monteforte, who appeared suddenly to her right. Instead of connecting with anything solid, two strong hands caught her and flung her aside.

Rebounding from the wall, ready to go at it again, Madison hesitated when she recognized one of the newcomers on the scene. He stood on the outskirts of the area of fighting wearing an expression of disgust on his lined, familiar face.

That newcomer was D.I. Crane.

* * *

St. John threw the Nosferatu to the ground, aware of the bloodlust that had overcome its instructions to take a Blood Knight down.

The scent of its own master's blood was driving the creature mad. If he let the Nosferatu loose, it would go after the source of that blood, potentially helping to solve everyone's immediate problems. But his thought was for Madison, who didn't need to witness what a frenzied vampire could do. Or what he, himself, would have to do to stop the monster.

With the beast trapped between his foot and the pavement, he threw a calm look over his shoulder at the tall figure that had come late to the party.
That damned detective.

Too late now for excuses or disguises. The cat was very obviously out of the bag. And though he didn't need help, Stewart Chase might. He had given Stewart a chance to take his own revenge out on Monteforte, but a second pair of hands when dealing with an aged entity like Monteforte was probably always welcome.

Especially when Detective Inspector Ellis Crane was so much more than a second pair of hands.

St. John glanced up at the moon, then down at Crane, who stood beneath the overhang of the buildings.

“Wrong party for you,” he said to the detective.

“Every party in this city is my party,” the detective snarled in reply.

St. John shrugged, and nodded to the detective. “Want to get your hands dirty?”

“I'd like nothing better,” Crane said, tossing a revolver to Madison with the harsh directive, “Silver bullets,” and “Watch your aim.” Then Detective Inspector Crane began to let his own beast out.

The wet, flesh-morphing, bone-cracking sounds of a man shifting into another shape made Madison cringe. What was happening to the detective went flagrantly against nature.

The detective's shoulders widened. He grew taller, as if the moon overhead was stretching him closer to it. Muscle built upon muscle, as if someone had just poured more onto his frame.

His face lengthened. More bones cracked and heaved. He tipped forward from the waist, as if the whole process hurt him greatly. And when he stood up again, seconds later, a creature that was half man, half beast looked out of big black eyes from a feral-featured face above a body covered by a brown fur pelt.

* * *

It was official, Madison thought. She had entered another dimension.

The detective's gun felt cool in her hand, and heavier than she'd have expected. She knew what silver bullets were for. Killing monsters of all kinds.

The good detective was a goddamn
werewolf,
and had come prepared because of the full moon and the antics he'd said ran amok beneath it.

With trembling hands, Madison raised the gun, thinking she should fire on them all—all of London's monsters. Narrowing her focus, squeezing the trigger, she went for Monteforte, who was clinging to Stewart with fingers like talons.

Kicked back slightly by the force of the shot, she heard nothing from the old vampire. Seconds later, a great howl split the night. God, had she missed, and hit the werewolf instead?

No, not the detective. He growled deep in his throat with a sound that was scary as hell.

Madison spun in place in time to see him leap toward the shadows on the curb, where another impossibly frightening, twisted creature had appeared. Setting her stance, she again used both hands to hoist the gun. Aiming at the quick-moving Monteforte, she fired.

Her brother suddenly stopped wrestling. The shadows dancing with him coagulated, showing an angry Monteforte holding his chest.

St. John let loose of the monster he'd been holding down, and in a blurred instant was at Madison's side, taking the gun from her, pressing her out of the way, his wide shoulders hiding the view of creatures killing creatures in a last-second turnaround.

But anyone for miles could have heard the terrible noises these beasts were making, Madison thought. The night rang with gut-wrenching nightmarish sounds of flesh tearing and gluttonous beasts ravaging each other.

St. John, beside her, tried to disguise those terrible sounds. “Good shot, my lovely, beautiful Madison,” he whispered to her. “It's almost over, my love.”

An explosion rocked the area. Then another, followed by a third. Three explosions, after which a rain of thick gray ash began to fall, appearing like snow, smelling foul. The ash of the final death of three vampire abominations obliterated everything in the area, other than the moonlight.

A hand appeared on St. John's shoulder, pushing him aside. Stewart's face peered into hers, tense, white, skeletal.

“I'm sorry,” she said to her twin. “I didn't know.”

She started over, feeling sobs choke her throat.

“I'm sorry for ruining your revenge with that gun. And for what happened to you. And for what you are.”

Throwing her arms around him, she hugged her brother tight. He didn't immediately respond. It took him a minute to hug her back. When he finally closed his arms around her, it felt as though she had found that missing piece of herself again. It felt like heaven. She had her brother back.

But Stewart pulled back and stepped away. Mutely, he turned to go.

“Wait! Stewart, wait!” she cried. “It's okay. I swear it's okay.”

Could she blame him for being wary, though, when Stewart knew he had become another kind of demon?

“We're going to go home,” she told him. “We're going to be together, no matter what. We'll both see to that, and whatever it takes.”

She turned to the werewolf, who thankfully had changed back into a bare-chested detective glowing with sweat. She had to find her voice. “My brother didn't harm that girl. He will swear to that.”

“Then I'm sure he will tell me everything he knows about it,” Crane said, his voice gruff. “But I believe we have found the killers, thanks to your tip. St. John may have to do a bit of complying on his own, as to how to take care of that in a world where none of us are welcome. We'll have to spin the tale of that one girl's death into something believable—not to make light of it, you understand, but to protect the public.”

“You went to the Germand?” St. John asked Crane.

Madison looked to her lover to find him St. John again. Merely that, on the surface, anyway, though his skin still seemed lit from within.

“The Germand. Disgusting place,” Crane said. “No offense.”

“You found the other girls?” St. John asked.

“All of them. Seems everyone wants to meet a vampire, and the girls were enticed by the prospect until they were actually faced with reality.”

The detective paused for a grimace. “I don't get that. Blood is ugly. It tastes like hell. But we're lucky we found them. Janis Blake had escaped once, and they'd caught up with her. The girls were hysterical when we found them.”

All eyes shifted to Stewart, who nodded. His voice emerged roughly, as though he hadn't used it lately.

“I found that dead girl,” he said.

“Yes, well, your DNA, taken from your sister's hands, will be of no use, of course. The lab will cop to making a mistake, since the sample will be all messed up. The good news is that there is nothing to tie you to that murder. Nothing at all.”

Crane turned to St. John. “The girls have fang marks on them. Some bastard bloodsucker had been snacking on them. Will this mean they also will be hungry eventually?”