Release Me When the Sun Goes Down (16 page)

“Are you trying to drive me insane?” I grumbled, trying to decide if I should follow up with a punch to the shoulder or pin him up against the wall and show him what it felt like to be on the receiving end of such torturous teasing.

“Just giving you something to think about until we can be together as I’d like.”

“Fine, but remember, turnabout is fair play.” 

“I’m counting on it,” he grinned, exposing the tips of fangs that still protruded, letting me know I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten all hot and bothered over the exchange.   I was still getting used to him with the fangs.  Was it weird that I thought it made him look even sexier than normal?  “Come on, let’s get you home.  I’ve got to get out and keep looking for Jakob.”

“Fine, but we’ll come back to this and I won’t let you go so easily.”

“No arguments from me, miss.”

“How’s Hanna holding up?”  I kept my voice pitched low in case she wasn’t asleep, kicking off my shoes in the living room.  Mason poured himself a drink, and I waved away the offer of one. 

“She’s a serious pain in the ass is what she is,” he scowled, settling his large frame into a heavy wingback chair.  “I finally had to compel her to shut up before the urge to strangle her where she stood got to be overwhelming.  I imagine Lodinn’s having himself a chuckle over that.  You should’ve let him keep her.”

“How can you say that?” I gaped.  “I know you’re frustrated, but to wish her back with that, that, that…”

“Shit, I’m sorry, Anja.  No, I know it’s for the best that we have her back, it’s just…”  His head hung low as the bitterness fled, replaced by a misery that wrung my heart.  “I want her all the way back.  That girl down there, she might look, smell and even sound like Hanna, but it’s like she’s not there when I look into her eyes.  And if you’d heard some of the shit she’s been saying.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, like what Lodinn’s going to do to me after he kills Jakob and they can be together again.  You know, fun stuff,” he said, his lips twisted into a sour version of a smirk. 

Good gravy, was it as bad as all that?  “I know he’s gotten into her head, but I didn’t expect that.  I’m sorry, Mason, I had no idea it’d be so difficult.  Thanks for sticking around, it must’ve been awful.”

He gave a one sided shrug.  “What else was I supposed to do?  Besides, in a sick way it was kind of fun to trade barbs with her, even if she was speculating way too much on the color of my entrails.  At least she’s talking to me again.”

“We’ll get our Hanna back, I promise,” I said softly.  I just had no idea how to do it.  Even if we found Jakob, there was no guarantee he’d be able to break the compulsion of another
Ellri
.  I wasn’t even sure if killing Lodinn would release her from his influence or not.   

“You know, there is one thing that might bring her back.  Not the way she was exactly, but at least it’d be our Hanna.”

Something about the way he said it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and I was almost afraid to ask.  “What do you mean?”

“I have an idea.  It’s sort of extreme, but extreme times call for extreme measures, am I right?”

My head tilted to one side as I studied him.  What kind of extreme measures could he mean?  “Why do I have a feeing I’m not going to like this idea of yours?”

His hands came up in a supplicating gesture.  “It’s
totally not that bad.  I mean it depends on how you look at it.  And it’ll keep Hanna safer and that’s the most important thing, right?”

Yep, definitely afraid to ask, but I did it anyway.  “Go ahead, tell me your brilliant idea.”

“Okay, but promise me you won’t freak out.”

“
Seriously?”  How could he expect me not to freak out by prefacing it with a statement like that?  “Would you tell me already?”

“Right,” he said, drawing in a long breath.  “So, I was thinking.  There’s
one thing that might break Lodinn’s compulsion and it has bonus side effect of making it harder to kill her.”

All at once I knew what it was.  “Oh no, definitely not.”

“It might be the only way to save her from being Lodinn’s slave.”

“Absolutely not.  Damn it, Mason.  Isn’t this part of why the two of you fought in the first place?”

“Yeah, but I’ve been thinking about that, see…”  He licked his lips, eager to continue.  “It wasn’t more than an argument, really.  Hanna and I argued all the time, it’s something we did.  It was just stinking timing that Lodinn happened to swoop in and get her to kick me to the curb.  I don’t think she would’ve broken up with me over it, not really.”

“She doesn’t want to become a vampire, she’s pretty much come out and said it to me before.”

“No, you’re right.  Maybe it wasn’t in the cards for now, but she was definitely thinking about it for the future, I know she was.  Can you honestly say that Hanna would prefer to be under Lodinn’s thumb like this?  You know she’d hate it if she was in her right mind.  She’s got to be dying on the inside over what this is doing to her.  This is the only way to set her free.”

“You don’t even know if it would work.”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take and I think she’d want me to.”

I stared at the man who knew my sister in a way I never could, but the idea didn’t sit right with me.  “I’m not.  Say we go ahead with this plan and best case scenario is that she’s able to shake off Lodinn’s compulsion – what good will it do when he can compel her again after she turns?  He
can compel any vamp he wants at any time.”

“
Not if we get her away from him.  Turn her and then I’ll take her out of here.  If Lodinn never sees her again then he can’t compel her.”

“I can’t do that, I can’t be the one to take her life.”

“Then I’ll do it,” he volunteered.  “I should be the one to do it anyway, I’m ready to take that step.” 

“Do you even know what you’re saying right now?  You’ve only known her for how long?  A few months?”
It wasn’t like going steady or even getting married.  It was a bond that lasted for an eternity.

“Six is more than a few months.  You did it for Rob and you’ve known him just as long.”

“That’s not the same thing at all.  For one thing he was dying right in front of me, and for another, that’s a different kind of commitment.”  It hurt to tell the lie, but what else could I say?  “You’re talking about a serious bond here and you’re talking about making that decision without Hanna being involved.  That sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.  How did you feel about it when you were turned?  You weren’t consulted either, were you?  Or am I wrong?”  From what he’d said about killing his Sire, I was willing to bet on it.

“Fine, then w
e can ask her if she’d rather live a lie in servitude or become a vampire.  That shouldn’t interfere with his compulsion and we’ll get an honest answer from her.” 

“I don’t know…”
It felt like too important an issue to skirt around.

His expression was so twisted with anguish, it hurt to look at him.  “Don’t you see, Anja
?  It’s only a matter of time before he gets bored and kills her, or turns her himself.  Either way, she ends up dead or enslaved to him.  Do you honestly want to see him as her Sire?”

Knowing full well the benefits and ties that came with having an
Ellri
for a Sire, I knew the answer to that without even having to think about it.  “Look, I heard everything you said tonight, but I don’t want to rush into anything.  Let’s go at this again tomorrow night, maybe something will break by then.  I don’t want to make things worse.” 

“Not much chance of that,” he muttered, downing his drink and stalking away.

* * *

There wasn’t any good news when Rob stumbled in a few hours later, though I was just glad to see him coming home under his own steam with Gunnar gone.  I put him to bed with a brief kiss goodnight and checked up on my sister
, who snored like a bulldozer in the middle of my bed.  Jenessa hadn’t come back from packing yet, so I headed back upstairs to get some neglected work done before dawn. 

I had an email from Marcus
. It made me feel strange opening it up, like it’d come from beyond the grave, which was ridiculous.  It was clearly time stamped much earlier in the day, probably before he’d run into Lodinn at all, and contained the background information I’d requested on Oliver Bassett.  Oliver and his wife Sylvia had a pretty hefty mortgage payment on the house they owned in Sausalito, and about fifteen thousand and change in their joint savings account. 

He pulled in a decent wage working at the morgue, but her income was hit and miss.  An elementary school teacher, Sylvia didn’t appear to have a steady position, picking up substitute shifts and supplementing by working as a barista at the local
Java Hut
.  There was a claim pending with their auto insurance company, but since it was a single car accident, the chances were it wouldn’t pay much beyond the replacement of the car and some of the funeral expenses.  He did have life insurance through his employer for twice his yearly salary.  Definitely not enough for a single mother to live on for very long.  

I had to do something more than feel bad about the situation.  Maybe money was a crass way of trying to compensate for ruining their lives, but it was the only thing I could think of.  Tired of trading emails with Felix, I dialed him direct, and he answered on the third ring.

“Yeah, boss?”

“Hey, Felix.  I hope I’m not calling too late.”

“Naw, just hanging out with my girl.  Say hi, babydoll.”

“Hey!!!” Bridget yelled on his side, bringing a smile to my lips.  I really missed having her around to hang with and hated that Felix didn’t like living in
San Francisco, but I couldn’t make them live where he didn’t want to for my own selfish reasons. 

“Hey, Bridge,” I said back, before turning my focus to Felix.  “I’ll try to keep it brief so you can get back to her.  Have you read my last email update on the situation here?”

“Sure did, boss.  It sounds rough.  Maybe you should think about bugging out for a while.  Lay low until things blow over.  I could have the jet prepped for you in less than an hour, you say the word.”

“No, something tells me the trouble would just track me down.  It’s better to face it from here where I can see what’s coming at me.”  Not that I’d done a great job at spotting it so far.  “Listen, I have a problem…”

“I know, but let me handle replacing Marcus, okay?  You’ve got more than enough on your plate right now.  I’ll have some candidates lined up for you in a jiffy.”

It wasn’t what I’d been about to say, but it was worth discussing.  “You don’t think it’ll be hard to fill the position considering what happened to the last two magistrates in this territory?”

“Hey, it’s the price of position.  The higher you rise through the ranks, the chancier it gets.  I feel confident I can find you some good options.  And I’m happy to pick up the slack on any other projects you have going for as long as you need me to.”

“Thanks, Felix, I knew I could count on you.  I sort of let the Order take over my offices for a while, and I’ve been practically living like a hermit with this Lodinn thing going on, so your help is definitely needed.”

“You want I should fly up for a while to help out?”

It was tempting, but I couldn’t risk him like that.  “No, but I’ll have to suspend my office hours for a while, at least until things settle down.  Right now we’re focusing all our efforts on finding Jakob, but the longer it goes, the more it’s starting to look like he might’ve taken off entirely.”

“Yeah, about that.  It don’t look good, him going underground like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve already heard rumblings all the way down here.  Jakob made us some pretty lofty promises about guiding the West to power and now, at the first sign of trouble he bolts.  It don’t look good is all.” 

“This isn’t your usual trouble.”  It wasn’t like he’d run scared from one of the Elders.

“Still, either he’s hurt bad, which makes him look weak, or he ditched us all to save his own skin, which makes him look weak.”

Trying to save Jakob’s reputation wasn’t my first concern, heck, it didn’t even show up on the list.  “Well, considering I never wanted him to take an active role in the West, that part doesn’t bother me in the slightest.  What bothers me is what we’ll do about Lodinn if Jakob is
completely gone.”

“What do you mean?  You can’t do squat about Lodinn on your own.  He’s an
Ellri
.  It’s the highest code in vampire society.  You don’t do nothing against the
Ellri
, no matter how bad news they are.”

“So that’s it?  We give up and live under his reign of terror?”

“It ain’t the best plan, I give you that, but what else can we do?”

“Move somewhere else…” I muttered.  I expected most of the vamps in town wouldn’t change much in their daily lives if Lodinn officially took over the territory.  But for those of us exposed to his intimate circle
, the entire fabric of our existence could change on his whim.