Stealing Time (26 page)

“So it’s going to rain. What’s the big deal?” Gage asked.

I snorted. “You haven’t seen a Texas thunderstorm before or you wouldn’t ask.”

James and I sat on my front porch swing, watching the trees thrash in the high wind as the storm bore down on us. The sky was a deadly black with a wall of clouds rising high into the sky, their bottoms seeming to touch the flat earth.

He was deep in thought and, courtesy of our bond, I knew from his emotional state that he couldn’t be thinking about anything pleasant. To distract him, I said with a deliberate drawl, “We Texans take perverse pride in the violence of our storms.”

“Mmm.”

“We like to be creative in how we describe them. For instance, looking at the weather now, I might say that it’s fixin’ to commence to deluge.”

His lips twitched only slightly.

I traced his cheek with a fingertip. James took a deep breath and turned to look down at me.

“Here and now, love,” I murmured, quoting him. I wished I could soothe him through our bond, but didn’t have the hang of extending my emotions yet, and trying to felt like whacking my head against a brick wall.

James took my hand and kissed it, his eyes lighting with humor. “Here and now.”

I wrapped his arm around my shoulder and snugged up against his side. “I’m feeling pretty selfish at the moment.”

He startled. “Selfish? Why?”

Resting my head against his shoulder, I let my gaze wander to the wind-blown trees. “Because I too easily forget that you have your own worries. That you had a life before me, a very long one. That not all of it was great.”

He tightened his arm around me. “You’re not selfish. It is just that my past seems a lot closer at the moment and I find its effect on our lives together…disquieting.”

“Philippe?”

He nodded. “I’ve been trying to understand his hatred.” Scrubbing at his face with his other hand, he swore. “A wasted effort, trying to comprehend a madman.”

I looked up at him. “I know that Philippe changed you, but I don’t know the details. Would it help you to talk about it?”

His anger stirred and I began to apologize, but he shook his head. “I’m not angry with you, love.” He sighed. “The night of my thirtieth birthday, there was a knock at the door. It was well after midnight, but I was still awake and went to answer it. Standing on my front step was Philippe.”

“You recognized him?”

“Yes. I’d grown up with a portrait of him hanging over the mantelpiece. I was born the year he disappeared and yet thirty years later, he was unchanged and instantly recognizable.”

“I’m guessing it was not a pleasant reunion.”

James laughed without humor. “No. And it ended with him taking my hand in his and crushing every bone in it. Even as the agony hit me, he lifted my arm and bit it.”

“That sonuvabitch…” I snarled as rage turned my vision red. James winced and I did my best to block my reaction. “Sorry!”

“I felt much the same but was in no position to do anything about it,” he said ruefully. “Anyway, you can imagine the rest. The change took me and, when I returned to myself, everything was very different.”

“Philippe left you?”

“Yes, for which I am now immensely grateful.”

“Any idea why he did it? I mean, to show up like that, after all those years…”

“All he said was,
Joyeux anniversaire. Bienvenue à la famille.”
At my expression, he translated. “Happy birthday. Welcome to the family.”

“That’s just freaking weird.”

“Indeed.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

“Not until the Gathering, but I’ve kept track of him through my contacts.” James looked down at me and the sparkle had returned to his eyes. “Let’s hope it’s another century or two before we again cross paths.”

An ear-shattering explosion seemed to rip open the sky, rattling the windows and setting off a couple of car alarms down the street. Even James flinched.

“Welcome to Texas.” I chuckled as the thunder’s blast echoed through the heavens.

The swollen clouds opened up and a torrent of fat raindrops scoured the front lawn. The wind blew so hard that it carried rain sideways onto the porch where we sat. This would have been uncomfortable for humans as the temperature dropped over twenty degrees with the approaching storm. But the chill didn’t bother either of us—if anything, the astonishing force of nature was exciting and the more extreme it was, the more we enjoyed it.

Lightning streaked across the clouds, creating a wild strobe effect as thunder crashed repeatedly. Even in the midst of nature’s theatrics, my acute hearing detected the bicycle as my neighbor’s high school-age son turned the far corner onto our street.

“He must be soaked,” James remarked as we watched the boy struggle against the wind, riding into the full force of the storm.

“He’s almost home.” Tilting my head, I indicated a house two doors down. “That’s where he lives.”

With a deafening blast, a bolt of lightning speared a tree across the street. I found myself at the edge of the porch, staring out into the storm and searching for the teenager. There was a moment’s relief when I spotted him, lying flat with his bike a few feet away…and then I saw that the lightning strike had split the tree in two, and one half was toppling across the power lines that ran down our street. The lines held a brief moment before parting in a cascade of sparks and the sound of a million enraged snakes, as the severed electrical wires began to fall to the ground. The boy’s unmoving form lay directly beneath.

I saw all of this—observed and reasoned and decided—in a fraction of a second and launched myself off the porch into the torrential rain.

“Evie!” James shouted, but I reacted so quickly that I was already in the street, grabbing the fallen boy under his arms and hurling him onto a neighbor’s yard, hoping the grass would soften his fall enough.

I sensed the descending arc of electricity, felt my skin crawling and my hair standing on end, even as I collected myself and leaped to clear the pavement before the wires made contact.

I was almost fast enough.

My feet left the ground in time, but because of the rain, I was soaked to the skin. Seventy-six hundred volts of electricity followed the water and slammed into me, catapulting me through the air. I didn’t even feel the ground when I crashed back to earth thirty feet away.

Sensation returned and I was lying on my back, gasping like a beached fish. Every part of my body ached and pulsed to an odd, disjointed rhythm. Every muscle fired in response to the electrical shock and I convulsed on the grass, my chest heaving uselessly.

“Breathe, Evie!” James commanded and I felt his mouth on mine as he fought to re-inflate my struggling lungs. His anxiety filled my head even as his breath filled my chest.

The blessed air whistled down my throat and a fit of coughing doubled me up. I curled onto my side, knees hugged to my chest as deep coughs tried to tear me apart. I was vaguely aware that my clothes were smoking, even in the downpour.

James knelt beside me, brushing my soaked hair out of my face. “Evie, are you all right? Say something, love.” His voice was frantic.

As the paroxysms eased, I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes, just concentrating on the sweet relief of air in my lungs. While vampires could die only if their hearts stopped beating, that didn’t mean it was any fun being unable to breathe. It was, in fact, extraordinarily uncomfortable.

Rain poured down on my face, pooling against my closed eyelids. The after-image of light strobed across my retinas in time with my heartbeat and, finally, the muscle spasms eased and my jaw muscles unlocked.

“Evie? Please say something.”

I hated the fear in James’s voice and tried to draw enough air into my lungs to speak. “Ow,” I croaked, setting off another coughing fit.

His breath caught. “Ow?” he said, incredulous. “
Ow?
”

I reached a shaky hand to wipe the rain from my face and tried to sit up, but didn’t have enough control of my body yet.

Seeing my intent, he put his arm around my shoulders and helped me into a seated position. The world swooped and only his support kept me upright. Swearing under his breath, he lifted me into his arms, and carried me up the porch steps and into the living room. His shoes squelched across the floor and we couldn’t have been more wet if we’d jumped into a pool fully clothed. When he started toward the sofa, I managed to rasp, “Not there!”

He snorted. “You’re worried about the furniture?”

I had to clear my throat. “It was Gran’s. She’d have had a fit.”

Shaking his head, he muttered, “Your grandmother passed how many years ago?” But he dutifully turned, and carried me down the hall and through my bedroom. He pushed open the door to the bathroom and hesitated for a moment, indecisive, before setting me on the counter. The change in position messed with my balance again and James steadied me before I could fall over.

“Evie,” he said, his voice hushed. “Why did you do that? You could have been killed.”

I shook my head to clear it and the room slowly stopped moving. When the multiple Jameses standing before me resolved into just one of him, I said, “I thought I could only die if my heart was destroyed.”

He frowned. “Evie, theoretically, enough electricity could destroy it.”

“Theoretically?”

His breath huffed out of him. “Well, yes,
theoretically.
” I could see and hear his angry turmoil but, strangely, our connection didn’t flare. “It’s not like anybody is going to test it out to see what happens!”

“Oh,” I said, dumbfounded. “Well, I hadn’t thought of that.”
At least my voice sounds a bit more normal.

“You hadn’t thought of that,” he repeated, his eyes huge. “Evie, you could have died.”

I took a deep breath, let it out, and took another because it felt so good to fill my lungs. “I only thought about what would happen to the boy if he was under the wires when they fell.”

James considered me for a moment. “Do you even know his name?”

I shook my head. “But I’ve met his mother, Toni, and he’s mowed my yard all the time I’ve been gone.” I shrugged. “I kinda owed him.”

“You. Owed. Him.” James repeated the words as if trying to extract their meaning. “You
owed
him? God in heaven, Evie, he’s only mowed…” Stopping himself, he continued in a strained voice. “Send him cash and a nice ‘thank you’ note! Write a glowing letter of reference, even.
Merde,
if you must do something extravagant, buy him a nicer bike! Or, hell, a car for all I care! But do not kill yourself out of some ridiculous, insane idea that you owe him…”

I’d never seen James so close to losing it and was horrified that my actions had freaked him out. But still, there were some things we needed to get straight.

Gently, I interrupted his rant. “If I had been a second slower, you would’ve done the same thing, wouldn’t you?”

He hesitated, his eyes glittering with anger and his fear for me. It took him a moment to nod.

“But this is me and not you?” I saw the reluctance in his expression as he nodded again.

Trying to lighten the mood, I said, “At least I was moving fast—there’s no way he could have even seen me or have a clue what happened. And the grass was pretty thick where I threw him. Hopefully he didn’t get hurt when he landed.”

James’s expression was rueful. “I have no idea. I didn’t pay any attention to him after I saw the electrical line falling toward you.” He ran a trembling hand through his dripping hair. “Can you tell me how almost killing yourself absolves you of your indebtedness to the boy when he doesn’t even know it was you who saved his life?”

Brushing back a stubborn lock of hair that clung wetly to his cheek, I smiled. “Because I know it, even if he doesn’t.”

“Evie…”

“I’m okay.” Although, in truth, I felt pretty weird—there was an odd tingling in my chest that hadn’t been there before. Trying not to dwell on it, I changed the subject. “I would like to get dry, though.”

He looked as if he would say something more, but suppressed the urge. Pulling me into his arms, he held me tight against his chest. “Don’t ever do anything like that again, Evie. Please.”

“I can’t make that promise,” I said softly. Feeling him go rigid, I amended it. “But I will be more careful next time.”

He swore—his limited profanity was really getting a workout—but let it go, at least for now. I had a strong feeling we’d revisit this topic another time. “Can you even stand?”

“Umm,” I said, uncertain. I moved to the edge of the counter and stretched my feet to the floor, keeping hold of James’s supporting arms. There was a moment of vertigo, but it was mild and passed. I stood straight and let go of him. He held his hands out, ready to catch me if I started to topple. “I think I’m okay.”

He frowned, but kept his thoughts to himself. Handing me a towel he got off the rack behind him, he took down another for himself. As he pulled his soaked T-shirt off over his head, I forgot to breathe for a second. Closing the small distance between us and pleased that my balance stayed true, I ran a hand down his flawless chest. James shuddered lightly under my touch and his heart lurched in response.

“Evie,” he whispered.

I stepped closer still to nuzzle his neck and his hands pressed me into him.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked, hesitant.

“I’m fine,” I murmured against his skin.

He buried his face in my hair. “I could have lost you today, Evie. This is twice now that I’ve almost lost you. I cannot stop thinking about it.”

The force of his turmoil leaked around James’s control and I realized he’d figured out not just how to send, but also how to block. “Don’t keep me out, love.”

He looked down at me and his lips curved into a small smile. “I thought you’d taken enough of a beating without my adding to it.”

A thought set my heart pounding. “Through our connection, did you feel everything I did? When the lines fell?”

His mouth quirked. “That’s how I knew about the beating.”

“I’m so sorry, James,” I whispered, stricken.

He chuckled. “I’ll admit this wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind when I thought about ‘for better or for worse,’ but I won’t have you change who you are because of me. No matter how much I want to keep you safe.”