Tempest of Vengeance (23 page)

Good for you, I almost said, but I was having
trouble forming words. The wine was in full force now, and it was
hard to think coherently.

“Were you trying to kill yourself?” Devlin
whispered in my ear, gripping me hard. “Danial would’ve drained
you. And even after, he wouldn’t have awakened, and been how he
was.”

“I need to save him,” I said stubbornly. Then
I was screaming, trying to shove him away from me, almost flailing.
“I need to save him! I didn’t save him! I can’t save him!”

“You can’t save him,” Devlin said firmly,
holding me close even as I fought his attempts to restrain me. “But
I will, Sar. I promise you that, no matter how long it might take,
I’ll do it. Have faith in me.”

“I do,” I said softly, slurring my words a
little and calming somewhat. “I do.”

“You need to come with me now,” Devlin said.
“Teleport us to Davy’s.”

I knew why instantly. “No,” I said, trying to
walk away and getting nowhere. “I don’t want to see him.”

“I don’t care what you want,” Devlin said
forcefully. “You are taking us there, and making up with him.”

“Fuck you, I’m not!” I yelled.

Devlin shook me hard, making my teeth rattle.
“Listen, you bitch!” he growled. “Ulysses challenged me for my
territory an hour ago. I need to fight him in a week. And I need
you and Lash focused, because you need to help me prepare.”

I was quiet now, listening to his words and
trying to process them.

“Teleport us there now,” Devlin said
stridently. “Then just tell him you love him—”

“He doesn’t love me!” I screamed.

Devlin ignored me, and kept talking. “—and
that you want him back.”

“You’re just like him, you know?” I said
viciously. “Always trying to make me give another chance to someone
who doesn’t deserve one!”

Devlin stared at me, looking so hurt I
trailed off into silence. “You came back to me because he asked you
to?” he whispered. “Not because you wanted to?”

Chapter
Eight

I was too drunk to make a quick save. But I
was good enough even drunk to pull a quick diversion. “Yes,” I
admitted. “But the truth is I’d have come back to you anyway,
because I needed your protection, Dev. I found out I can have
children again. The demon blood healed me.”

Devlin went from being hurt and sad to
looking hopeful and ecstatic in the space of two seconds. He pulled
me close, and ran his hand over my stomach possessively. “This is
wonderful,” he purred, his molten gold eyes filled with joy, and
more than a little excitement. “That means we can have another
child someday, Sar. I’d love that.”

“Dev, truthfully, I don’t know if I’d want
to,” I said brokenly. “Devon...” I dissolved into tears.

“Shh, we don’t have to right away,” Devlin
said softly, stroking my back with his hand. “Don’t cry, Sar. It’s
enough that you can, that we have that choice again. And we have
decades to think about it, now that I can begin giving you my blood
to keep you young. I’m so excited, and Danial will be overjoyed,
too, when he wakes up. If things go as I plan, he’ll be waking up
very soon, Love. Don’t cry anymore. Shh.”

I hugged him to me, and slowly gained control
of myself, deep shame descending on me. I’d broken my promise to
Lash, and I’d hurt the one man who’d stood by me this past month
from hell, no matter that he was telling me now that it didn’t
matter. “I’m sorry,” I said tearfully, when I could talk again.
“I’m such a bitch! I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I always suspected it,” Devlin said, kissing
me gently. “It was too pat, how you showed up right after Theo had
his fight with Robert, after months of not seeing me or wanting to
be around me, and suddenly told me you’d let me back into your
life. But I wanted you enough that I didn’t care.”

“I do love you, Dev,” I said, slurring my
words a little. “Tell me you know I mean it! That I feel it, really
feel it? I don’t want you to feel like you did in the spring, when
I thought I loved you, and I didn’t! This time it isn’t the blood,
it isn’t—!”

“I know it,” he said, hugging me. “And it’s
okay, because I want you any way I can get you. I don’t care if you
were coerced into coming to me. I only care that you came, and that
you’re here now with me willingly—”

“I’m here with you willingly,” I exclaimed,
passionate in my drunkenness. “I want you, and I love you!”

Devlin drew back to look at me, grinning at
my enthusiasm. “I know it, but it’s always good to hear you say the
words, Love, even drunk as you are. And we are going to Davy’s now,
where you are going to tell Lash that, too. He needs to hear it as
well.”

“Devlin, he doesn’t love me!”

“He’s devoted to you, Sar. He’s never cared
for a woman like he does for you, not ever. Don’t deny him your
love because he can’t bring himself to tell you he loves you.”

“You’re saying he does?” I said softly,
sobering up a little just thinking of it.

“I’m saying he’s done a lot for you, to be
with you,” Devlin said, grinning down at me. “It’s a pretty good
imitation of love he’s been doing practically this whole year, if
he doesn’t. But he loves differently than Danial or I do. He’s been
hurt a lot in his life, because of how he used to look, what he
was, and who he is. He’s never had a serious girlfriend, Sar, not
that I ever knew about. He’s probably afraid to love you, afraid
you’d do what you did today, and tell him to leave you alone.”

“Dev, he’s been coming to me all week, and
fucking me, and then leaving me right after!” I said crossly. “I’m
sore, I’m feeling used, and I don’t like the feeling.”

“He needs to have sex as a snake,” Devlin
said bluntly. “Are you going to do it for him or not, Sarelle?
Because if not, tell me right now and I will make arrangements with
Lyssa.”

I couldn’t stand the thought of Lash being
with anyone else. I especially couldn’t stand the thought of him
and Lyssa; it felt like a dagger in my heart. I could feel the pain
radiating inside me, as I imagined him making love to her, wrapping
his body around hers. “Terian’s making the potion,” I said very
loudly. “It’s going to be ready tomorrow!”

“Did you tell Lash that?” Devlin said
probingly, folding his arms over his chest.

“I thought you told him! I thought he was
doing what he was doing because he was trying to wait for me.”

“He told me that he’d gotten Titus to make
one for you, Sar. It’s ready, and has been for days, ever since you
spent that first night with him. Lash was only waiting for you to
tell him you’d do it, and he was going to go to Titus and bring it
to you himself, so he could walk you through the change. I told him
to tell you what he’d done, to ask you to do it, and he said you
already knew he needed that, that he wasn’t going to ask you for
it. That I was to say nothing to you about it. That he’d hold off
as long as he could to give you time to come around to the idea.
And then he’d go to Lyssa, if you couldn’t make yourself do
it.”

“I was going to do it! Terian said it would
take a week to make it!”

“Why not tell Lash that?” Devlin said with
narrowed eyes. “He’d have told you he couldn’t wait any longer, and
that you didn’t have to wait, anyway.”

I looked at him and licked my lips, and then
I looked away, feeling like a coward. “I wanted it to be a
surprise.”

“It wasn’t that you wanted to give yourself a
way out, if you decided you couldn’t do it?”

“Maybe,” I shrugged. “I’m a little afraid. I
remember how scary he looked, as snake. It’s one thing to hold him
in my arms as a human and another to imagine him—”

“There’s no time for your fear! Tell me now
you’ll do it, or I’ll call Lyssa tonight, and have her drive there
to Davy’s. I know she came here to see him after he got out of
jail, and that she still wants to be his lover. Once he sees her in
snake form, he won’t even fight his urges. Though when that part is
over, he’ll probably be with her as a human, too.”

I imagined Lash holding her as hard to his
body as he’d always held me, stroking her with his hands gently,
crying out her name as he came inside her. “I’ll do it!” I shouted.
“I’ll tell him tonight! I’ll do it!”

“Good. Teleport us there now,” Devlin
commanded.

I did, grabbing hold of him as the walls of
Hayden melted away to be replaced by the parking lot at Davy’s.

I’d initially wondered how Devlin knew where
Lash was. But it was obvious that Gary most likely had called Dev.
Lash’s Hummer was crashed through the front door and partway inside
the building, and inside, every single chair and table was broken,
most of the whiskey bottles were smashed glass behind the bar.
There were bullet holes in the clock, in the mirror behind the bar,
and Lash had spelled out his name in them on the interior wall.
There were unconscious bodies scattered here and there, amidst the
debris. At least, I hoped they were unconscious.

“Don’t worry, they’re werebears, brown and
black mostly,” Devlin said with a sigh, looking around. “Lash
wouldn’t fight a human, because even in the mood he’s in, he
doesn’t want to go back to jail. He just broke their necks. But
I’ll be needing to replace everything.”

It looked like a hurricane had hit in here,
one that I was betting was sitting in the back room drinking. The
jukebox was playing Thoroughgood’s “I Drink Alone.”

“I wonder why he’s listening to that?” Devlin
said, surveying the damage. “It’s appropo, but he usually prefers
‘Bad to the Bone’.”

I hazarded a guess, remembering our shared
sexy dance to the latter song, but said nothing.

We walked into the back room, to see Lash was
at the back table, smoking a cigarette, and drinking what looked
like a mug of scotch. He ignored us, looking at the far wall. I saw
at least two empty whiskey bottles lying broken by his feet. As we
watched, he downed the entire mug of whiskey, and poured himself
the rest of the bottle. Then he tossed the empty bottle upwards,
and fired his silenced 9mm, shattering it while it was still in the
air. Pieces rained down.
Glad it’s not the explosive gun.
Otherwise, I’d probably have glass in my hair even at this
distance.

Devlin started for Lash, and I reluctantly
followed. The song on the jukebox ended, and then began again.
How many times did he put it on to play?

“Lash, come home,” Devlin said quietly. “We
both need you, and Sar’s sorry—”

“Fuck off, both of you,” Lash hissed, not
looking up, and taking another drag on his cigarette. “Leave me
alone.”

Devlin looked at me and made a motion with
his head for me to say something. I gritted my teeth and spoke.
“Lash, I’m sorry.”

“Fuck you, you bitch!” Lash snarled. “All the
times I could’ve fucked one of my own kind, and I said no for you!”
Lash hissed in rage, bearing his fangs, and glaring at me. He got
to his feet, and faced both of us.

How could he even stand after drinking most
of three bottles of scotch?

“Watching you simpering after that fucking
cat, after how bad he made you feel about yourself, after his
fucking morals almost killed you last year, after he left you when
you needed him most! All those months we could’ve been together,
and you going on and on about how you didn’t want to lose him—”

There was enough hate in Lash’s voice to
drown in.

“—
going on and on about how you loved
him!”

“Stop it, Lash,” I sighed, “Theo and I are
done. We—”

Lash’s tone turned low and venomous. “I
wouldn’t be surprised if he guessed I’d gotten you pregnant, and he
did something to you, Sar, something that made you lose our
baby.”

Devlin gasped, and I cringed.
Thank
God I told Devlin about my fertility before we’d come
here.

“He didn’t do anything,” I said quickly.
“Theo wouldn’t have hurt me, not to get to you. At least, he
wouldn’t have back then.”

“You were pregnant, from when you were
together in the Everglades?” Devlin asked me. “From being with him?
That’s how you knew you were healed?”

“Yes. We didn’t know I’d healed, so we didn’t
use—”

“I suspected it was possible,” Lash
hissed.

I looked at him in shock. So did Devlin.
There was only the sound of the song playing for several
seconds.

“How could you not tell me?” I whispered. “We
could’ve—”

“I wasn’t going to wear anything with you,”
Lash hissed arrogantly. “I wanted to enjoy myself, Sar. And it
wasn’t going to feel as good with you, wearing a condom.”

I just looked at him, and did a slow burn.
And I wasn’t the only one. “You took a chance on getting her
pregnant
knowingly
?” Devlin hissed, his eyes bleeding to
red. “Just so you could get off and have it feel good? You
asshole!”

Lash had the decency to look slightly
mortified. “I never meant to hurt her, for her to be hurt by what I
did,” he hissed insistently. “I just wanted to be with her, to make
love with her skin to skin like we always had before. I hadn’t been
with anyone since her, so I knew I was safe. I knew she was safe to
be with, because I knew her, knew the woman she is, that she
doesn’t sleep around. And if she got pregnant, if she was having my
baby, I knew that fucking cat would leave her, like he’s left her
every other time she needed him! It wasn’t just sex to me, I had
feelings for her. And I could see she had feelings for me.”

“You tried to use a child to get me for
yourself?” I screeched at him. “How could you, Lash? How could you
be so fucking devious?”

“I wanted you,” Lash said with a shrug. “I
wanted to be with you, for us to be lovers, and if you went back to
Theo and he forgave you, you were never going to be with me again.
But I knew he’d never forgive you having my child.” Lash looked at
me, and all of a sudden he was killing mad angry again. His next
words were shouted, though they were hard to understand because
they were half hiss, half words. He was as close to changing as I’d
ever seen him with him still having legs, scales erupting from his
hands and his face, and disappearing again as he yelled at me. “I’m
not stupid, Sarelle! I knew I didn’t matter to you, not like Theo
did! But if I was the father of your child, I would have to matter
to you, at least more than I did! I didn’t know for sure if I could
even get you pregnant, if I was fertile again, or even if you could
conceive if I was! I only knew you smelled a little different, that
the vampire scent had faded from your body, especially after you
asked me what you smelled like.”