Raven Walks (26 page)

Constantine gulped back the heartache he
still felt for his lost love. “I could have killed him before he
turned into this beast.”

Raven just shook his head. “You’d have been
the one to turn him into what he is now. It’s not easy to kill your
children, even when you despise what they become. Trust me. I
know.”

Constantine looked into Raven’s eyes. Years
of animosity still lingered between them, but it was true. Their
connection was strong. Which is why they always ended up together.
Soulless soul mates.

“Fine. So how do we handle this thing
now?”

Raven took a deep breath as he stared into
the fire that Hunter had started to warm Abi’s near dead skin. “I
don’t know,” he admitted.

“What about this Gina?” Constantine offered.
“She’s a huntress.”

“She’s still human.”

Constantine shook his head. “She’s not like
any human I’ve ever known. Or you. She’s got to be the key.”

“Then I guess that means we have to find
her,” he countered. “She can’t do it alone.”

“You can’t save everyone, Raven,” Constantine
warned. “If she has decided to sacrifice herself to defeat this
thing, we can’t stop her.”

“Then explain why I feel I have to,” Raven
said.

Constantine just chuckled. “Because you let
humans get under your skin. You always did.” Then, with more
sincerity than Raven thought he could muster, Constantine told his
master, “Don’t let that be your downfall.”

Raven said nothing as he watched Constantine
head off to his room.

The sun was almost up.

After the vampires had retired to their
quarters, Hunter carried Abi to his room and laid her down on his
bed under the covers. He cradled her in his arms, stroked her skin
and kissed her hair, willing her back to life.

He felt sick. Everything had gone to hell.
He’d come to defeat that sick creature and instead he was knocked
flat first blow. He hadn’t saved Abi, a vampire had... using his
very own weapons against it.

He wasn’t thinking when that monster climbed
on top of Abi. It reminded him of another vampire making love to
another woman he loved, and his first reaction was blind anger.

Walter had warned against that, but he had
completely reacted out of impulse rather than think it through.

At least Gina would think things through, he
thought to himself as he cuddled Abi close. Otherwise he’d have to
make an impossible choice between the two sisters he loved.
Eventually he’d have to choose, and no doubt he’d choose the woman
he held in his arms, but until then he had to protect them
both.

Because he loved them both.

Right or wrong.

He had just started to doze when she woke up
from a nightmare, screaming and thrashing with renewed strength. He
held her tightly and spoke to her softly, and soon she realized
where she was and who she was with – and thankfully it wasn’t that
horrible creature from before.

“Hunter,” was her grateful gasp as she
wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “You came
back.”

“I’ll always come back, Red,” he told her
gently.

Her eyes met his with an unspoken question.
He’d never said the words, and suddenly she never needed to hear
them more.

“I love you,” he said, low but firm.

A tear chased down her face as she cupped his
face in her hands. She reached up to kiss him tenderly on the
mouth, and he pulled her as close as he could without hurting her
bruises or injuries. She was broken, and she was his to repair.

All she needed was Hunter and for him to say
those three words she’d waited entirely too long to hear. “Tell me
again,” she asked.

“I love you,” he said without reservation. “I
love you, I love you, I love you.”

He didn’t give her sister a second
thought.

***

Thankfully Gina was doing enough thinking for
the both of them. She used the wee daylight hours to investigate
Sebastian’s club, trying to dig up any clue to figure out what
exactly this Creature was that she was tracking. It was quiet
during the day, as most of the revelers were night dwellers who
couldn’t be caught out in the sun.

She took full advantage of their deep,
deathly sleep and crept around their sleeping chambers to gather
any evidence she could find. And it was in Sebastian’s room that
she found exactly what she was looking for.

She prowled around his body until she found
the leather-bound journal that was tucked just under his pillow.
She pulled it free and then stowed it in her backpack where she had
begun to stow many of the things she’d collected for what she
intended to be the first and only showdown with the Creature.

In better lit bar area of the club she was
able to scour the journal. His most recent entry offered her all
the information she needed. She got a name, and it was that name
she texted to the only other person in the world who could help
her.

By nightfall he had called her back – from a
local number.

“What are you doing in New Orleans?” she
asked, stunned he’d come back to the states. He’d always felt his
mission was in Europe – where vampirism had truly taken hold of the
human race so many centuries ago.

“Where else would I be?” She could almost see
his good-humored smirk “You need me, I come.”

As she scribbled down his hotel information
she grew more anxious. For him to come meant this thing was even
scarier than any other vampire lord they’d faced before.

When he opened the door to her, she stepped
into his welcoming embrace with relief. He, like Hunter, had taken
her under his wing after she had been left heartbroken from losing
Stephen. They gave her a purpose, and it was something she
desperately needed.

She’d lost so much, it felt good to take
control over her life, to do something brave that would save others
from her fate.

To love that which they can never have.

It was painfully obvious that was the ongoing
theme of her life.

So she was grateful to be with an old friend,
a mentor, someone who had always given her everything she needed
right when she needed it...including a big, warm bear hug that
lifted her feet off of the ground.

“I’ve missed you,” he told her and she knew
he meant it. She could see it in his green eyes. His short black
hair and neatly trimmed goatee were smattered with gray now, but he
still had a boyish glint in his eyes that could always make her
smile.

“Ditto,” she responded. “I hope it doesn’t
make me sound green to say how glad I am that you’re here.”

He just chuckled. “You couldn’t sound green
if you tried. You’re just human.” Then, with a pointed look.
“Right?”

She gave him a reassuring smile. “Right.”

He invited her into the room where his
suitcase lay sprawled on the bed, and books were stacked on his
table.

“So what did you find out?”

“Technically I didn’t find anything out. I
had to leave that up to my new assistant.”

“Another one?”

“You know how it goes,” he said. “Huge
turnover rate.”

It was a nice way to describe the casualties
that came with their chosen profession. That’s why he never got
close to the people he trained to hunt. The risk was too great that
he’d lose them in the line of fire.

He glanced at her mussed red hair and her
eyes that spoke volumes about the heartache she would not voice and
he realized despite his best efforts, she had gotten in. That’s why
he was already in route before he even got her text that
morning.

Learning that Hunter had betrayed her, again,
was the only real excuse he needed.

But when his young assistant Tanner had sent
the requested information to him, he knew he had made the right
decision.

She wasn’t prepared to face a
vampire-witch.

As far as he knew, she wouldn’t have even
known something like that existed.

“So tell me,” she said as she took a seat on
his bed.

He sat in a chair by the mountain of
books.

“Apparently Argos was a warlock in Greece
around the late 1700s, when your friend Raven used to live there.
Legend has it he was in love with Constantine’s sister-in-law, a
woman named Nina, and that when he instructed her how to raise
Constantine from the dead they burned her alive at the stake.”

“But Constantine wasn’t really dead,” Gina
supplied.

“After the body of Constantine, and reported
vampire Raven Crowe, disappeared from the town, that’s when things
got very interesting. Demetri, brother of Constantine, bribed Argos
to go to Romania to find the master of all vampires to kill him and
thereby destroy the lineage for revenge.”

“What could he possibly bribe him with?”

“Nina’s ashes.”

“Super,” Gina remarked as she tried to take
it all in. What would a lovelorn warlock be able to do with some
ashes? She didn’t have the time to dwell on it.

“Well a vampire has a little safety mechanism
when someone comes to kill them. As you know.”

“Turn them so that they cannot kill you or
they risk dying themselves.”

“Bingo.”

“So he was converted to a vampire by the most
power vampire lord in Romania?”

Walter nodded. “Problem was he was already a
two hundred year old warlock.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means he’s a mutant. He wasn’t a human,
therefore doesn’t share a vampire’s human traits. He can cast
spells, he can regenerate, he can create magic that can fill in all
those evolutionary gaps in vampire DNA.”

“So the reason that he’s all
degenerated...”

“My guess is he’s trying to overcome that
little aversion to the sun.”

“Great,” she said with a sigh and lay back on
the bed. “So how do I kill him?”

Walter got up and walked over to the bed. He
sat next to her. “You mean how do we kill him?”

She sat up again. “I wish I could say I don’t
need you,” she told him honestly.

He just gave her that famous half-smile of
his. “Wish I could say I didn’t need to be needed,” he told her.
She smiled at him and he put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m
sorry about Hunter,” he said, broaching the difficult discussion
carefully.

“Yeah, I wanted to apologize for dumping that
on you like I did. It was an impulse. I shouldn’t have – ”

He put a finger to her lips. “Shh. Don’t you
dare apologize. He’s the one who needs to apologize.”

She shook her head as she got up and began to
pace. “No, I knew coming back here was a big mistake. He’s in love
with her. He’s been in love with her for years. It was an unfair
test I knew he couldn’t pass.” She paused and looked at Walter, for
the first time in a long time being honest with herself. “And I
think deep down I didn’t want him to.”

That didn’t bode well. “What are you saying?”
She couldn’t respond and she turned away. With a sigh Walter stood
to his feet and came to face her.

“You can’t go back to the way you were,” he
warned her softly. That was the decision she made to turn her back
on the vampire life she had once dared to consider. Which is why he
made damned sure she made it. He had lost enough to those
bloodsuckers, he couldn’t see losing this strong, feisty,
independent, lovely young woman to it as well.

“Who says?” she asked, a tear hovering at the
corner of her eye. Ever since she had allowed herself to remember
Stephen and the love they shared, she had second guessed
everything.

Truthfully, from the moment Raven’s lips had
touched hers she had second guessed everything.

“They’re the enemy, honey,” he simply said.
“They steal lives, and what they don’t steal they corrupt.”

“Not all of them,” she argued softly. He
didn’t know them like she did. To him they were the thieves that
took his wife and child. Beasts. Monsters.

But they weren’t all like that – and no one
knew that better than she did.

He took her arms in his hands. “All of them,”
he insisted.

She looked up into his eyes and he brushed
away a tendril of her hair from her face. “If only you could see
what I see when I look at you,” he told her. “You’d know you’re too
precious a life for that curse.”

She had to scoff with a disbelieving laugh.
That wasn’t how she saw it at all. It made her sacrifice to take
out this Creature even more important. Everyone was set up where
they needed to be, most importantly Hunter with Abi at last.

As usual Gina was the odd piece out that
never fit anywhere.

“How do you expect to win a battle if you
don’t believe you deserve to survive it?” he asked her in that same
low voice, his hands still circling her arms, his eyes still locked
in her own.

“You tell me,” she said. “You’re the
expert.”

He couldn’t argue. He just pulled her into
his arms for another hug. “I don’t know yet. But we’ll figure it
out.”

She let him rock her in his arms, but when
she felt him stir against her she had to pull away.

She knew that Walter had always cared for her
deeply, in some ways transferring all of the feelings he had for
his dead wife and child into a person he could love safely from
afar.

And truthfully she had done the same with him
at first. He was a handsome, brave, funny, sexy man who kept it all
under a cool veneer that attracted many women who wanted to figure
him out. Gina never needed to; she understood him from the
start.

She also knew why he pushed Hunter to be with
her. So that he could deny his own attraction to her, avoid getting
close and ultimately avoid getting his heart-broken again.

Here they stood, all these years later, and
she found herself feeling the same thing.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

It was her turn to put her finger to his
lips. “Shhh. Don’t you dare apologize.”

He smiled and rested his forehead on hers.
His eyes fell to her lips and she could feel the kiss hover between
them. It was a sweet moment that was interrupted by a loud bang
against the window.