Kiss of a Dark Moon (15 page)

But he had. He'd come through it all and managed to hold on to a scrap of hope, to retain some compassion and faith in humanity.

But this…
Kit.

This was different.

He would never be the same if he lost her.

S
ecuring Kit carefully in the passenger seat, Rafe vaulted over the hood of the vehicle. Once behind the steering wheel, he gunned out of the parking lot in a screech of burning tires.

Recalling a hospital he had passed several exits back, he floored the accelerator and zipped onto the highway.

He had no choice. He had to take her there. He would risk exposure before risking her dying on him. The police would interrogate him, as they would Kit, when she regained consciousness.
If
she did…

He squeezed his eyes in a tight blink. Not if.
When.

A sharp, sudden rattle of breath escaped her, more like a shocked gasp, as if she could not breathe and just realized it, as if she were choking on her own blood.

Reaching over, he pressed a hand against her wound. A thick flow of blood congealed over his fingers like warm syrup, swamping him with sick dread.

The erratic rasp of her breathing filled the inside of the vehicle, the sounds growing more desperate. She fought for every breath, the sound rattling on the air.

He pounded the steering wheel with the palm of one hand. “Damn! Why did you run? Why?”

Because you didn't tell her,
an insidious little voice whispered across his mind.
You couldn't bring your self to tell her the truth. Because you couldn't stand the thought of her looking at you with loathing
.

“Selfish bastard,” he muttered to himself, nostrils flaring against the overwhelming odor of her blood. What did it matter how she looked at him? What mattered was keeping her alive.

Turning off the highway and onto the feeder road, he weaved through traffic and toward the hospital looming ahead. He darted a quick glance at Kit's face. Gunmetal gray. Her head lolled to the side of the headrest, facing him. The sight of those pale, bloodless lips sent a bolt of fear through him.

“Kit,” he called, staring into her bottle-green eyes. They looked at him, but didn't see him. Didn't see anything.

He reached over and pressed fingers to the pulse at her neck. Nothing. He pressed harder, determined to find it, to
feel
life in her. She coughed, spraying blood on his arm.

Cursing, he dropped his hand from her neck. Driving with one hand on the wheel, he pressed his palm over the bullet wound.

In that moment, he knew what he had to do. Born of instinct. Wild, brute impulse seized him.

He pulled off the feeder, careening through a shopping center. Maneuvering the vehicle to the back of the sprawling parking lot, where no cars were parked, he jerked to a hard stop on an empty stretch of asphalt.

They weren't going to make it to the hospital in time. The realization settled like a dead weight in the pit of his stomach.

Knowing this, he vaulted from the vehicle. With a vicious yank, he opened the passenger door, scooped her into his arms, and carried her to the backseat.

Heart hammering like a drum against his chest, he ripped her tank top, severing the fabric in his hands. The bullet wound was a dark, jagged hole in her stomach. Slipping a hand beneath her neck, he lifted her off the seat, bringing her closer. She hung in his arms, a dead weight. Her head lolled limply, eyes at half mast, the green of her gaze peering out dully, the color fading with every breath she struggled to take.

“Kit,” he whispered, swiping a palm over the hole in her stomach, attempting to wipe it clean of blood. Impossible. The blood kept coming. As soon as he wiped at the wound, more came, constant as a river.

He splayed a hand against the small of her back, bringing her closer yet. Her flesh beneath his hand felt waxy.
Empty of life
.

An impulse came to him. Sudden and savage. A burning in his veins. Fed by desperation, an urge born of intuition.

Hardly aware of himself, of what he was doing, he brought her closer, his face hovering an inch over hers.

“I'm sorry, Kit,” he breathed over her wound, the odor of her death, of the ebbing life, making him sick. “I'm so sorry.” And he was.

Sorry if it worked. Sorry if it did not.

Ignoring the voice of logic that warned that this was wrong, he moistened his lips. Only one thing was for certain—being right, safe, normal…
human
—would not keep her alive.

And she had to live. There really was no choice. Not for him. Not for her. He was determined to keep her alive. Even if she never forgave him for it. Even if unleashing his power pushed at the boundaries of right and wrong, good and evil. All his mother had warned against. He didn't care.

For once in his life, he would risk everything. For Kit.

Later, he would examine when and how she had become so important to him that he could do such a thing, that he could ignore the advice his mother had given him and Sebastian time and time again over the long years.

No longer thinking, he moved his blood-soaked hand to her neck, covering the beat of her pulse, monitoring her life as it ebbed, a slow thread that barely jumped against her skin. He slid his hand from her neck, leaving a trail of blood on her golden flesh until he reached her stomach. Blood swam everywhere there. He felt dizzy from the cloying scent. Clots formed around the bullet hole, but still blood flowed, a river that could not be staunched until death took its final claim.

Slowly, so slowly, he could hear the thudding beat of his own heart in the close confines of the vehicle, he lowered his head, bringing his mouth down, down…

His nostrils flared, the sweet tang of her blood a heady, intoxicating thing. Empowering. Frightening.

“Kit.” The hush of her name fell from his lips, soft as a feather stroke. “Forgive me.”

No question about it. The next time she looked at him—
if
she looked at him again—it would be with the loathing he had hoped to avoid seeing in her lovely eyes. But that he could live with. Her death he could not.

His head swooped down, lips covering the bullet hole.

He gripped her with both hands, fingers burying in the soft flare of her waist, the blood making his hold slippery.

The serrated edges of her torn skin teased his mouth, and a part of him hesitated, horrified…excited.

He pressed his lips more firmly against the wound. With several deep, catlike strokes of his tongue, he surrendered himself.

He'd always been careful about crossing the line, of putting himself in a position where his demons might get the best of him and drag him into a hell from which he might never return.

With a tiny mewl of sound, she moved beneath him, thrusting herself closer, pushing herself into his mouth as though she would crawl inside him. A dangerous mix of hunger and desire spiraled through him.

One hand rose to delve in his hair, tugging him closer, seeking survival with an instinct that matched the primal force thundering through his blood, demanding he claim her.

With a groan, he opened his mouth wider, tasting her ravaged flesh, drawing out death, taking it deep inside himself, knowing it would have little power there.

A dark need ripped through him, intoxicating, staggering. Trembling against her, he forced his hands to gentle, his mouth to soften. Rafe gave, pouring all that he was into her—and hoping it would be enough.

“God,” he sighed, letting His name—his mother's god—fall in the air between them, heavy and solemn. A benediction of sorts. A plea.

He had never been certain whether God heard his prayers, despite his mother's insistence that he and Sebastian never give up on God, that God was there for them, that their existence mattered—no matter what they were.

All hard to accept when God had not been there for her, never heard her pleas. Both as a girl, and later as an old woman.

Still, he found himself praying, staring hard at Kit and praying as he had never prayed in his life.

God, let this be enough
.

P
ulling back, Rafe swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, shoving back down the wild beastly lust burning through his veins. He dragged his gaze to her face, scanning her rock-still features, listening to the harsh sound of his breath fill the closed space.

A streak of blood marred the fragile curve of her chin, a shocking red against her tanned flesh. He ran a thumb over the stain, but it held fast. His gaze fell, surveying the damage.

The bullet hole decreased in size, growing tighter, shrinking, sealing itself before his very eyes.

Regeneration had begun. Her newly altered DNA was working quickly, just as he had hoped.

Her breathing evened, became less labored. He pressed a hand to her neck, satisfied to see that her pulse was growing stronger against the test of his fingers, no longer the light, skipping thread of moments ago.

“That's it.” He breathed, the invisible band about his chest loosening. “Good girl,” he murmured, pushing a springy blond curl off her sweat-damp forehead as he examined her.

Positioning her on her side, he tucked her legs so the car door could close. He slid out from the backseat and shut the back door. Once in the driver's seat, he gripped the leather steering wheel and dragged air into his lungs, containing himself, burying the beast back within, deliberately avoiding glancing at himself in the rearview mirror. Knowing what he would see.

The sight of his bloody hands was enough. Kit's blood. So much covered him. And her. So much that she shouldn't be alive.

It was not the first time someone's blood stained his hands. But it certainly was the first time the sight ever gave him pause.

He wore Kit's blood.
Mortal
blood. Not that of the lycans he felt justified in killing. He shivered, and glanced back at her stretched out on the seat. Mortal no more. Only precisely what she was—
like him?
—he had yet to learn.

It was the first time the blood of a Marshan colored his hands—if one did not count his mother.

He drove for a while, heading north, glancing over his shoulder and keeping an eye on her in the rearview mirror as he left Austin city limits. He needed to find someplace private, remote, without prying eyes. A place where they could hole up while she recovered.

He scanned the billboards lining the interstate until his gaze caught a sign for La Cantera, a lakeside resort twenty miles away boasting private, secluded cabins.

He veered off the interstate at the advertised exit and followed another sign, taking the road that led to the resort.

After forty-five minutes, he arrived in the small town. He passed a feed store with a dirt parking lot full of pickup trucks, a single grocery store, a restaurant boasting the world's largest chicken-fried steak, and a mechanic's with more boats than cars parked in its multiple garages.

He continued following signs, turning off the main drag and toward the lake and driving over a bumpy one-lane road until reaching a small wooden and red-stuccoed lodge. A quick glance back at Kit assured him she was still asleep.

He hopped out from behind the wheel. With a wary glance around him, he climbed in the back with Kit. Watching the rise and fall of her chest, he quickly changed out of his bloody clothes.

Dressed in clean clothes, he stepped out of the vehicle and sprinted inside the building. The bell over the door tinkled his arrival. Within ten minutes he had the keys and directions to a cabin the clerk vowed to be their best.

Back behind the wheel, he maneuvered the Hummer along a narrow path crowded with thick cedar and oak. Snatches of a glass-blue lake occasionally peeked through the tree line on his left. His heart rate spiked at a sudden moan from Kit. He knew Initiation could be difficult, the transition traumatic.

He accelerated, eager to reach the cabin.

“Kit,” he called, almost as though he expected her to answer him. He knew she couldn't, yet still he talked, hoping some part of her could hear him. “You're going to be okay. It will feel like you're dying…” his voice faded and he blinked once.

Idiot
. Probably not what she wanted to hear. Even if she could hear him.

The trees finally broke to reveal the lake. Sunlight glinted off its surface, bringing diamonds to life along its gentle wind-tossed swells. A few boats dotted its expanse. In the far distance, skiers chased one.

He rolled up before cabin sixteen, glad to see the considerable distance separating the single-story wood-and-rock house from its neighboring cabins dotting the lakeshore.

With a quick scan to assure himself no one was about, he swept Kit into his arms and carried her inside. Settling her on the bed, he pulled the shades shut on the cabin's large front window, robbing them of the lakefront view. Submerged in privacy, they were enveloped in cool darkness, and still he perspired. From the shock of all that had happened, he guessed. All he had done. All that would yet happen as a consequence of this day's work.

Sighing, he hurried to the air-conditioning unit against the far wall. Although cool, he knew it needed to be cooler. Knew that the fever would soon grip her. He adjusted the dial. The unit rumbled, and icy air gushed from its vents.

He lowered himself onto the single king-size bed beside Kit, the mattress releasing a slight squeak at the additional weight. Except for the wretched state of her clothes, shredded and soaked in blood, she looked like a child asleep. A little girl with her curls tousled about her head, her elfen features relaxed in slumber.

Some of the color had returned to her face. He pressed the back of his hand to her cheek, wincing at the fiery sensation of her skin. The fever had already begun.

Crouching over her, he stripped her of her ruined clothing. After several trips to the bathroom, he managed to clean most of the blood from her with several wet hand towels and washcloths, pretending not to notice the delicate curves of her body. She didn't make a sound as he worked, didn't move a muscle. No matter that the memory of her body had been playing through his mind since they made love. Had it only been a night ago? He shook his head. It seemed a lifetime had passed since he discovered her naked at that roach motel.

A lifetime
. And for him, a lifetime was truly long.

One hundred and twelve years, to be exact.