Jaded Touch (Vesper) (15 page)

Jack scoffed and tossed the remote for the lights back on his counter. He peeled back his hood, untied his bathrobe and let it slide to the floor, revealing a bare chest, a bandaged arm, and bruises everywhere. He ran his hand – his only unbandaged hand – through his short hair and half-smirked at me, but the smile didn’t touch his eyes.

“You look fucking amazing with your shirt off,” he said.

I couldn’t speak. I just stared at him, this man I loved, my heart struggling to pound through the panic in my chest.

His right arm was bandaged from top to bottom in a hard, plaster cast. He must have been careful to keep his arm turned away when I pressed against him – or I was too self-absorbed to notice it, I couldn’t be sure which. The fingers poking out from beneath the cast were so purple they were almost black, and bruising crept across his chest all the way to this other shoulder, where my fingernail marks on his arm looked worse. Infected? Or abused?

Jack let me stare without speaking. I didn’t want him to try to speak! His lips were stitched on top and bottom, and the left half of his face was black. Not purple, the bruising dark enough I was sure his skull was broken in a few places. The swelling was so severe he couldn’t open his eye.

I swallowed a mouthful of venom that surged from my fangs with that cross between hunger and fury as I stepped toward him, still disbelieving. He hadn’t been anywhere near this messed up from the train crash.

Jack sighed and wouldn’t meet my gaze. “The company is writing it off as a work accident. Don’t worry, I went to the hospital. They put my arm back together. I even have pins in the joints, so I’m more metal than I was before. Closer to a Vesper, now.” Jack smirked at me, and I couldn’t even process his humor.

“And I still get paid.” He shrugged as best he could.

I touched the center of his chest, stroking the bruises there, my cold hand feather-light on his hot skin.

“Dislocated in three places, broken in two places,” Jack said, glancing at his casted arm. “Lost three of my back teeth and broke my cheekbone. But I’m gonna be okay.” He let out a disdainful laugh. “Well, according to the hospital, anyway. The guys at the train station said goodbye to me like it was the last time, so I kind of suspect it
was
the last time.”

“Who did this to you?” I rasped, hatred fueling the frozen anger in my veins. Sychar’s territorial reaction to learning of Jack – the instantaneous way he vanished from my side when I spoke of him trying to take off my shirt – flashed into my mind.
Please don’t say Sychar. Oh, God, please don’t say Sychar!

Jack swallowed and I heard his heartbeat sprint at a manic pace. “Festus. Levi was with him, but Festus was in that mood of his, ya know. Hungry or something. And Three… they’re coming for us. Both of us. I squealed like a fucking little baby piggy when he started beating my face.” He looked away with shame.

I found my voice, mortified that he dared to feel sorry for this. “Of course you did! What else could you do? He would have killed you if you hadn’t.” As I said the soothing words, the gravity of our situation sank in: the Gents knew I was having sex with a train engineer. I hadn’t even done that with him yet! I wanted to! Would I get the chance, now?

Jack took my fingers in his. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I whispered. “What did he say after you told?”

Jack closed his eyes. “That Levi was coming for you.”

Of course he is.
“It’s not Levi’s fault, you know. He wouldn’t want to kill me if I wasn’t a female. And that’s Levitiqas’ fault.”

“Yeah, Festus seemed pretty cheerful about provoking him. Bastard.”

“Total bastard.” I squeezed his hand. “So running away now seems better than ever before.”

“What would be the point?” Jack asked. “They have Sychar. He can catch us so quickly we wouldn’t even feel them creeping up behind us.”

“Sychar won’t do that.” That fear in my chest fell colder, weighing me down. He was
so
fast. He wouldn’t do it, would he?

“Will he have a choice?”

Sychar’s youthful black eyes lingered in my memory and I grimaced, remembering his cool touch on my back. The memory seemed colder all of a sudden, as though his touch was more aged and serpentine than mine. If Sychar defended us, he risked his life
and
Samantha’s. If Sychar didn’t defend us, my best friend might be the one who delivered me to my doom.

“No,” I whispered, my voice failing behind my shock. “No, he won’t have a choice.”

Jack kissed my forehead. “Then we don’t have a choice, either. You can run. I’ll just slow you down.”

I shook my head, counting days. When had I seen Sychar? Last night? He was fast enough to get home in that time. But would he have caught up with Festus on the way? Would he defend my right to love Jack, exposing his secret about Samantha?

“When did Festus attack you?”

“He was
very
clear that it was an interrogation, not an attack.” Jack snorted.

“When?”

“Six nights ago. Just after you left me in the street. I went to work, and he found me.”

Counting days. Six nights ago, Festus attacked Jack. That was plenty of time for him to get back to Levitiqas, receive his orders, and be well on his way here.

“Jack, we have to go!” I scrambled for my shirt, stuffed my arms into it and yanked it over my head.

Jack grabbed a hooded sweatshirt from the back of a chair and pulled it over his head, slipping one arm through and leaving the other sleeve to dangle by his hip. “Where?”

I grabbed his hand and yanked, ignoring his grunt of pain as I pulled him to the sliding glass door on the back of the house. “My Lady. I’ll confess to her, beg her forgiveness. She’s known to be more merciful than Levitiqas, and if you’re under her capture Levitiqas can’t touch you.”

“Whoa, you’re gonna walk us into your
home
full of Vespers? With one of the Original Vespers?” Jack shook his head. “Three…”

“I don’t have time to explain the subtle politics of how this works! If Vashni has you, Levitiqas can’t touch you. Leave it to me to make sure she shows you mercy!” I slid open the back door and shrieked as black eyes materialized behind the invisibility shield of glass.

“Sychar!”

He stood just a bit taller than me, his black leather Daywear fully secured barring his hood, which dangled from the back of his neck on its zipper. Jack clenched my hand with surprise. Sychar pressed a finger to his lips so briefly I hardly saw it and shook his head. Did he have our best interests in mind? Our safety: mine and Jack’s, as he’d want me to do for him?

A voice behind us. “Well, you haven’t skipped town after all!”

I whirled and slipped myself between Jack and Festus, hissing and baring my fangs. “Get back!” I stretched my arms to the sides, trusting Sychar not to make a move against us. Festus. The Vesper who broke Jack so brutally, who forced him to blow our cover. I could almost taste his flesh shredding between my fangs.

Festus clapped his hands once. “Oh, good, a fight. I was afraid you would make this boring for us.”

“We have the kill order already, Three,” Sychar said, and I spun, hoping the hurt and rage on my face cut him to bone. How dare he?!

Jack squeezed my hand, reminding me he had no choice. Sychar’s eyes tightened just a bit. Was he on our side? Would he help us at the right moment? Or would he strip Jack from my life and condemn us both to his master’s wrath, thanks to orders he couldn’t disobey? I had no way of knowing.

“Come, dear,” Festus crooned, stretching out his hand for me to take. “Come peaceably to the train station. Levi will be along shortly to deal with you.”

Levi. Oh, fuck. Whether his attitude was his fault or not, I did
not
want to fight him. I couldn’t win. Levi was six and a half feet tall, built like a tank and
so
much more experienced than I. Over six hundred years of immortality had perfected his talents, I knew, and he had a temper to match mine. Plus that natural rage he harbored against the Maids… I stood no chance.

I stiffened and glared at Festus. If he took me and Jack to my Lady’s house first, there was a chance I could convince her to ban Levi from the property. Maybe there was still hope, no matter how faint a hope. Crap, I’d wasted
so
much time brooding, when I could have been protecting Jack. Now he was hurt, and we were in serious trouble.

I glanced up at Jack, who peered down at me with expectation in his light jade gaze. He would follow my lead.

I didn’t let go of Jack, but I did reach out to take Festus’ hand.

And then Jack was gone in a blur of wind and the slam of the sliding door as Sychar vanished with him into the night. His disappearance was immediate, and I was left with one hand vacant, and the other crushed in Festus’ hateful grip.

I tugged and growled at Festus, but he restrained me and flipped me around, linking his arm through my elbows behind my back.

I remembered being restrained like this once before. I had told the tale tonight.

I screamed with all my strength, ripping my throat raw, and kicked as he yanked me back to my feet, completely incapable of escape. He laughed at my struggle and I felt his cold tongue slide along the top of my spine as he licked my scar.
He licked my fucking scar!
The saliva was like acid, burning my flesh as it chilled in the midnight air.

If he took this further, he’d claim my soul. And as the only Maid in existence bitten by male, that might be exactly what he wanted.

I screamed again, but no one was there to help me. Sychar was gone, and he took Jack with him. Where? To my Lady? Did he sweep him away from danger?

As if in answer to my thoughts, Festus laughed with sadistic glee and pulled me to the front door, away from Jack, away from my friend. I screamed again.

“Don’t worry. The Psycho will see about getting him to Levitiqas. Wouldn’t want poor Jack to watch Levi peel that ruined skin off bit by bit, would you? It’s much better he make a feast for the Original Child.”

I thrashed harder, but it did no good. Festus’ two-thousand years of experience was an even greater force than I imagined Levi’s would be. No!
Sychar, you wouldn’t! You can’t!
He said he could have loved me… and then he took Jack right out of my grasp. I whipped my head side to side, trying to throw Festus off balance, shrieking.

“Stop it, Three. You know I can kill you if you make me.”

And if I was dead, there was no way I could pick my moment, make an escape, and convince Vashni to let me run back to Jack. I needed to try and save him, and to beat Sychar into the ground for betraying me. I didn’t care that my friend had no choice. I had no choice either, but I still protected his secret, didn’t I?

I protected him. And he betrayed me… and Jack was so cold, so distant, and now he’d die because of me. There was nothing left worth fighting Levi to save, and sorrow rocked through my heart as I grasped the depth of my crime, and the penalty I faced for trying to touch love, trying to let love touch me.

Did Jack love me? How could he, after what I cost him? He never said it back to me. My heart clenched and I wanted to run after Sychar and chew through his chest to his heart so I could rip it out and make it hurt like mine. But I couldn’t catch him. No one could catch Sychar, not even when he was slowed down by Jack. Would my best friend kill my lover? Would I live long enough to know?

Raw, slicing pain bubbled up from my heart, tearing through my lips with a screech of hate. I kicked at Festus and twisted side to side, fighting frantically, and I managed to land a solid foot to his groin. Festus’ growl somehow darkened when I connected, and I aimed to do it again when he twisted me around and shoved on the backs of my knees with a foot.

I dropped to my knees.
You fucking bastard, Festus!
He had my arms still pinned together behind my back, his arm linked through the elbows, and he stooped over me so I could almost reach his throat. If I could stretch up and bite… taste that ice-cold, black blood that meant I was spilling his heartless life onto the floor…

My head snapped backward at an angle I didn’t expect as Festus snagged his other hand through my hair and wrenched. He pulled until I cried out with pain, my spine straining, all the tendons in my neck stretched, as he yanked my hair, bending me further onto him. What did he want to do to me? I fought again, but with my spine contorted, I lacked control, and each struggling motion I made only intensified his hold on me. I was stuck.

Stuck, abandoned, and doomed.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to scream, but the air wouldn’t drag through my bent esophagus, and Festus released my elbows and pinned me down on my side, his knees near my face. I couldn’t reach around him, but his cold finger parted my lips and I didn’t have the strength at this angle to snap my jaws on his hand. He kneeled on the side of my head and pressed down until my jaw unhinged, and he wrenched it open as far as he could to get access inside my body. I wrapped my fingers around his forearm as he pried my mouth open, and I heard a strangled cry escape my throat. His hand slipped in over my tongue to the knuckles, and then beyond. He pushed until his fingernails scraped the back of my throat. I tried again to kick, to fight, and I opened my eyes to see Festus’ grin of satisfaction, twisted and hateful, as he clawed at the back of my throat.

I tasted blood. I strained harder on his arm, but he was too strong for me - about two thousand years too strong. I lost my breath and it came out with a spatter of black blood, which painted the floor beside my face.

Pain cut my throat like swallowing frozen blades, and he dug harder, his expression hardening with furious determination as he carved away the flesh at the back of my throat. Reaching for my spine. Reaching for the kill.

My heart sprinted into a panic, and my legs burned with the urge to flee, to move, to something,
anything
… I wanted to go back, to change it all, to cry for the love I’d lost.

I wanted Jack. I wanted my best friend, and I wanted to live.