Not Quite Dead (A NightHunter Novel) (30 page)

The noise grew louder, whispers cajoling him to let them in. She felt the boy's hunger gnawing at his belly, hunger not for food, but for blood. She saw the images they placed in his mind, those of a winged creature of the night, streaking against a black sky, hunting for prey. She watched the creature swoop down, claws extended, to a small figure below. It was too far for her to make out clearly, and then as it got closer, she saw it was a young woman running through a cornfield. Her brown hair streamed behind her, and her breath was rasping in her chest as she pushed herself. She looked over her shoulder at the creature flying at her, her face stark with terror.

The creature grew closer, and the thirst for her blood became stronger, until it was almost there—

"Eric!" Another boy grabbed the huddled youth, shattering the image of the girl and the bird. Like the young man, Jordyn was ripped from the illusion and jerked back into the reality of Eric's memory. The spirits swirled violently around the newcomer, trying to shake him loose. She recognized Tristan immediately. He wasn't nearly as thin as Eric, but he was just as filthy, two brothers on the run together.

Tristan grabbed Eric around the shoulders. "Come on! I found a place!"

Eric stumbled to his feet, letting Tristan drag him upward. As he stood, she caught her first glimpse of his face. His cheeks were sunken, and his face was gray, as if he were already dead. His eyes were empty, a bottomless abyss of suffering. "I have to feed, Tris. I can feel it."

"No, you don't." Tristan threw Eric's arm over his shoulder and began to drag him down the alley. "I found a graveyard. A woman is buried there who was a healer. Her spirit is still strong. I can bring it up. She'll help."

"No." Eric jerked his arm off Tristan, and then fell. "Don't resurrect anyone. It will take you too close to the edge. You don't want to be like me."

"I won't. Come on!" Tristan grabbed him. "We're in this together, Eric. I won't resurrect her. I'll just bring up part of her energy, okay?"

"Swear?" Eric stumbled again, all his weight heavy on his brother.

"Blood swear." The two boys disappeared out of sight around the ramshackle building, but Jordyn could hear their bare feet shuffling as they hurried away from the whispers that were still calling to them.

Eric pulled out of her mind, and she was suddenly back in the present, with tears trickling down her cheeks. There he was in front of her, the boy from his memories, now a man. His cheekbones were strong and defined, his body rippling with muscle, but she could see in there that same gaping wound in his soul that had been there before. "Eric." She put her hand on his face, almost surprised to feel his skin was warm.

He pressed a kiss to her palm. "Tristan's gone vampire," he said. "He can't anchor me, and I can't anchor him. We're both lost. I started hearing the whispers again a year ago, and my guess is that's when Tristan became a vampire." He met her gaze. "I've concluded he anchored himself to you to protect us. He was succumbing to the whispers as well, even before he was bitten. He needed an anchor for both of us. He always knew how to find something to save us, a spirit that was strong enough to hold us a little longer, until we drained its supply of good. He must have chosen you to save us."

She shook her head, unable to pull away from him when all she wanted to do was cradle him in her arms and take away the suffering he'd endured for so many centuries. "How could I possibly save you?"

 He brought her hand to his lips, tracing a kiss over each knuckle. "It's not your job. I love my brother, but he was a bastard for tying you to us. He's never anchored us to a living person before. He's always chosen spirits of the dead with a strong benevolent presence. I don't know why he selected you." His eyes were haunted. "I would never have brought you into this hell, and I'll find a way to free you from him. Got it?" Contrary to his words, however, he didn't release her hand. He just kept pressing kisses to it. "I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry beyond words that you were brought into this nightmare, and I'm sorry that you're my salvation. I didn't realize it until a few minutes ago, when I felt how badly I needed you to be mine." He shook his head. "I wasn't joking about that, and that's when I realized what had happened. But your role is finished, and I'm releasing you—"

She put her hand over his lips, silencing him. "Shut up."

His eyebrows shot up. "Shut up? You only say that when I'm trying to get you in bed, not when I'm setting you free."

"Hello? Did you hear me tell you to shut up?" She shook her head when he tried to talk. "Eric, you're one of the most idiotic men I've ever met. Do you really think there is a chance I would abandon you?" Her heart softened at the look of surprise on his face. "How can I possibly abandon you to the life you've endured for so long?" She put her hand on his chest, over his heart. She felt the steady thump. "Your soul was stripped from you three hundred years ago, and yet you bleed with emotions so vivid they almost tear both of us apart. Your need for me breaks my soul, because I feel the same way for you. I won't leave you, Eric. I want to help you reclaim your soul." She couldn't quite say she wanted to be his anchor. Being forever bound to a man again was beyond what she could accept. But she would give him everything else she could.

"I can't reclaim my soul," he said. "It's gone. Believe me, we've spent three hundred years researching it. All I can do is hold on as long as I can." He slipped his fingers beneath her chin and feathered a kiss across her lips. "Every moment with you gives me more time. Every kiss heals one of the millions of fragments in my soul. Every drop of your blood assuages the hunger burning through me. You give me time, Jordyn. Time to find Tristan, to stop Cicatrice, and to inhale your scent one more time."

Tears threatened at his words. "How can you be so romantic?"

"I'm not romantic. You know that. I just like breathing you in." He pulled back. "But when I'm out of time, you must do what you promised."

She knew what he was talking about. "Kill you."

He nodded. "It's no longer simply about defending myself against the spirits. Now we know that at some point, I'm going to become a true predator, like the vampire that haunt the legends of this town, because I'm extremely powerful. Are you with me?"

She bit her lip, but she nodded. "Don't make me do it, or I'll hate you forever."

He grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "It would break my heart to have you hate me, so I'll do my best to stay on the right side of sane." He touched her neck and sighed. "Now, it's time to make some vampire plans, don't you think? We need to bring Tristan back and kill the bad vampire."

She caught his wrist as he rolled off her. "Eric."

He paused and looked back at her. "Yeah?"

"Do you truly believe you're going to turn?"

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he leaned forward until his face was inches from hers. "I swear on my life that I will do everything in my power to protect you from having to kill me. I will fight it with every last breath of my body, because if I succumb, I lose you forever, and that's not acceptable." He kissed her once, hard, and then turned away. "Time to get dressed, Jordyn. Sunset doesn't wait."

She sat up, hugging her knees to her chest as she watched Eric get dressed. His muscles were rippling, and power seemed to radiate from his nude body. He moved with swift grace and ease, with the stealthy lines of a predator, even when he was engaging in the simple act of getting dressed. She thought of how he'd suffered, of what he and Tristan had endured together. "If I said that I was yours, would that save you?"

He glanced over at her, his hands stilling on his boot. Electricity leapt between them, and the air in the room became so dense she could feel it coating her flesh. "It would take more than that," he said. "It would take a merging of our souls that would be so complete that we'd never be complete again, unless we were together. It would be like what I have with Tristan, but far more."

Heat rippled over her skin. "How do you know?"

"Because I met one vampire who'd done it."

"Did he have a soul?"

"His woman's soul had expanded and given itself to him, recovering the lost fragments of his. It wasn't complete, but it was enough."

The room was silent and tense. "Do you want that? With me? To be a part of me forever?" She could barely breathe her chest was so tight. What he described was similar to the
sheva
bond, but it was so much more. Giving up a part of her soul to him? It was terrifying, but at the same time, it felt right beyond words, as if this was the place she was supposed to be, that this moment, with Eric, was what all the paths in her life had been leading toward.

A fire of longing flared in his eyes. "You would do that?"

No. Yes. "I...I don't know."

"There was one more aspect to it." His gaze was heated, burning through her.

"What?"

"Love."

She stared at him. "Love? Well, of course there had to be love. You don't do that with someone you don't love, with someone who isn't the very air you breathe every minute of every day."

His eyes darkened. "Honey, I can't even comprehend that kind of love, let alone offer it to you. Love has to go both ways, and I have no idea how to go there."

His words made her heart freeze, and all the thoughts and emotions that had been pounding through her congealed into a solid lump of pain. She realized, too late, much, much too late, that she'd fallen for him. Did she love him? She didn't want to. Oh, God, she didn't want to. Love brought so much pain and terrible decisions. "Okay," she whispered. "That's fine."

He walked across the room to her, and leaned on the bed so his hands were flanking her hips. "But I'll tell you one thing, Jordyn. If there was any chance that I could be that guy and feel that emotion, you're the woman I'd do that for. No one else. Just you." He pressed a hard, fierce kiss to her mouth that tore at her heart.

Before she could respond, he broke the kiss, and walked out the door.

Eric leaned on the kitchen counter, his fingers digging into the Formica as he listened to the sounds of Jordyn getting dressed in her room. The urge to haul ass back up the stairs and take her up on the offer she'd almost made was so strong that he didn't dare take even a step away from the counter, fearing it would lead him right back into her room.

He hadn't meant to revisit his memories, and he sure as hell hadn't meant to drag Jordyn into them. It had just happened, an automatic pull toward the past, toward the unending taint that had become increasingly virulent in his mind. There was no way he was going to trap Jordyn in his downward spiral, no matter how tempting it was for both of them.

But, he had to admit, the moment when she'd looked at him, and he'd realized she was actually thinking about it…damn. It had been the best moment of his life to have her look at him like that. It was enough to make a man want to be more than he was capable of being. How the hell had Tristan been amoral enough to trap her the way he had?

But hell, he'd almost been willing to do it back there, himself. He'd never do it, but the thought of being bound to her filled him with relentless need. She was a light in the darkness that had beat at him for so long. She was his anchor, not because of Tristan, but because she was funny, irreverent, brave, and vulnerable. She was able to see through all the shit he dished out. She made him feel alive, like a human being, in a way that he could barely remember feeling. He was used to being the monster, and more recently, too damn close to being a vampire.

Vampire? Really? He ran his tongue over his teeth, but they were flat again. Did they emerge only for Jordyn? Grimly, he stared out the window at the yard, contemplating exactly how deep he might drag Jordyn if he took her with him. The grass was patched and worn, as if David never bothered to notice he had a lawn, let alone take care of it. Just beyond the tired lawn were the thick woods of the swamp. The edges of the woods were lit by the rising sun, but ten feet inward was untouched by the light, a haven for vampires that was protected from the sun by trees too thick to penetrate.

He could see the path his brother had taken as he'd fled from the house. His footprints were invisible to everyone, except to him. It was easy for Eric to discern the traces of energy Tristan had left behind. He stirred, moving closer to the window. Would he be able to track him? Could he find him before he even awoke? Adrenaline raced through him. Yes, he could do it—

He noticed a ray of sunlight drifting across the countertop toward him and stopped inching toward the door. He watched it for a long moment. Sun had never bothered him before. Had that changed? He slowly slid his hand across the counter toward it, his index finger extended. He paused with the tip of his finger at the edge of the sunlight, then moved his hand into the sun.

Pain exploded through him, and he jerked his hand back. His skin was blistered and red. He let out a breath, then flicked his finger at the wound. Green mist swirled from his hand and wrapped around his injury like a glove. Green light glowed, then sank into his flesh, leaving behind no trace of the burn.

It was as if it had never happened...but he knew it had. There was no way to deny it anymore. The inner vampire he'd been denying for three hundred years had finally begun its inexorable creep of possession.

What next? Would he eventually have to go to ground during daylight hours, buried deep in the earth like a monster while Jordyn thrived and flourished in the sunshine, on the surface of the earth? How the hell could he ask her to merge with him, to bind herself forever to a man who was trapped in the shell of the dead?

He wouldn't ask her.

Not that it would work anyway. Love was something he had no concept of. There wasn't a forever for him. There was only a never.

He swept a protective coating of green mist around his hand, and then slid his finger into the sunlight again. The heat prickled, but the protection he'd woven kept his skin from burning. He held it there, counting the seconds as the temperature rose and his skin began to hurt. The blisters started at forty-two seconds. Swearing, he jerked his hand back. He could protect himself from the sun for less than a minute?