The Bloodline War (22 page)

Or maybe…the man he could be…with the right woman.

Yes, excellent
. That was exactly what she needed to be thinking right now.

Oh, for Pete’s sake
. A girl didn’t get together with a man in order to save him. A woman fell for a guy who truly understood her on a soul-deep level…a guy who called her things like “whack job” and “nagging shrew” because he knew she wasn’t perfect and was totally fine with it. A girl flipped over a man she trusted to do something really sweet like show up in her room with a thermos of juice, even if he’d blown it the first time around, a guy who made her feel safe, even when he looked a little lost himself.

A girl fell in love with a man whose mere presence did a whole lot of saving her.

Fall in love
…Oh, God
.
She pressed a hand to her forehead and moaned. She was in real trouble here.

“Hey, Toni,” Vinz set a gentle palm on her shoulder. “You all right?”

She stopped walking. “Yes, I, um, was just thinking….” About what it’d felt like to have Jaċken stroke her hair. His touch had been inexpert and unsure, clumsy. In a word,
perfect
.

“Are you having flashbacks about what happened with Lørke?” Vinz’s brow furrowed. “I don’t want you to worry about that, okay. The men and I aren’t going to let anything happen to you. Just stick with us.”

Yes, well, that’d been the main stipulation for her to be allowed outside of the mansion again: no more escaping her Protection Team, definitely no more going back into Stânga Town. “Thank you, Vinz.” She smiled faintly. “I know.”

They continued on to the hospital.

Once inside, Gábor, Jeddin, and Breen took up posts around the building while Vinz led her to Dev’s room. Toni stopped in the doorway, shock bringing her up short.

The patient looked remarkably good.

Dev was sitting up in bed and chatting with his sister, Luvera, that sweet-natured waitress from Garwald’s, his dark flannel pajama top doing wonders to emphasize his robust frame and healthy complexion. There wasn’t a cannula in his nose to give him extra oxygen or even an IV line.

Toni frowned. How bizarre. She’d had a close-up view of the severity of Dev’s wound, and he shouldn’t be looking this good only three days after his injury. The punch she’d taken to her jaw, as bad as it’d been, had been way less debilitating than Dev’s injury, yet he looked a hundred times better than she did.

“Hey!” Dev’s eyes brightened when he saw her in the doorway. “Come on in, Toni. Have you met my sister, Luvera?”

Luvera turned to smile at her, her eyes the same dazzling silver as Dev’s and her hair a similar rich black. The woman was stunning, even dressed in a baggy sweatshirt and a long, shapeless skirt.
Sheesh
, spend enough time in Ţărână and a normally pretty girl would start feeling like the Thing that had crawled out from under a bridge.

“Yes, we’ve met. Hi, Luvera.” Toni walked forward, stopping at the side of Dev’s bed. “She’s been campaigning for you.”

“Has she?” Dev flashed his sister an affectionate look. “That’s cool. Did she mention I can—Whoa.” Dev’s brows soared. “You smell different.”

“Ah, yes, I’m wearing some kind of gross mud now.” She hadn’t been thrilled about having to slap on that nasty stuff behind her ears. It was both sticky and tingly, but that had been Stipulation Two for going outside the mansion. “Here, I brought you this.” She held up the coffee she’d purchased with some credits at Aunt Ælsi’s. “A Mocha Frappuccino.”

“Hey, thanks.” Dev’s expression turned wry as he accepted the to-go cup. “I…look like a Mocha Frappuccino guy, do I?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I just wanted to do something to thank you for saving my can.”

Dev chuckled. “Well, it’s such a nice can….” He took a sip. His eyebrows shot up. “This is straight black coffee.”

She smiled warmly. “Is it?”

He chuckled again, the sound resonant and smoky. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you check out my wound, Doc, and give me a thumbs up for getting out of here.” He set his coffee cup on the tray attached to his bed. “Then you and I can go someplace private.”

She laughed outright at that.
Get out of here
. The man was delusional. “Still vying for a medical examination from me, are you, Mr. Nichita? Well, you’ve already
had
one, buddy. Three days ago. In Stânga Town.”

Dev frowned over that, then understanding lit his face. He threw back his head and whooped, his gold hoop earring catching the light. “You mean that nut-grab you pulled on me? Hell, I’d hardly call that a…now, wait just a second here…. I might be okay with that.”

The group of them laughed together just as Dr. Jess bustled into the room.

“Well, sakes alive,” the doctor’s eyes danced, “how wonderful to see everyone in such high spirits. Ah! Dr. Parthen, how are you feeling?”

“Better, thank you.”

“Excellent.” Dr. Jess smiled cheerfully. “Please, stay and observe, then. I was just going to check Devid’s injury. This will give you the opportunity to observe a vampire’s healing abilities at their finest.”

Toni blinked. A vampire’s…?

“The Nichitas have some of the purest bloodlines in the community. Their powers of restoration are truly extraordinary.” Dr. Jess wheeled over a cart full of medical paraphernalia. “Come closer, Dr. Parthen.”

“Yes, come closer,” Dev all but purred. His silver eyes latched onto her as he unbuttoned his flannel shirt and shrugged it off, baring the powerful muscles of his smooth chest.

Toni walked around the bed, suddenly feeling like she was moving in a trance, and stopped next to Dr. Jess. Every nerve in her body prickled with a strange anticipation of something huge about to happen.

Dr. Jess tugged on a pair of latex gloves.

“…gotta go,” Luvera was saying. “Mom says she’ll come by later to….”

The doctor carefully peeled the white square of bandage from Dev’s shoulder, then set the dirty gauze on the cart.

Toni sucked in a painful breath.

“You see!” Jess exclaimed triumphantly. “Most Vârcolac would need to wear their stitches for a week, but Devid’s can be taken out already.”

Toni abruptly felt as if her feet were no longer in solid contact with the floor. Dr. Jess was right; the skin was completely closed beneath Dev’s stitches. The wound was still red, yes, and somewhat swollen, but for the most part it looked like a laceration that’d been healing for two
weeks
, not three days. Toni’s heart slipped somewhere down into the environs of her feet, and she swallowed so hard her throat made a noise. This had to be a trick, some kind of super-fancy, complicated FX. She’d seen Dev’s wound, damn it, and it was a
biological impossibility
for an injury of that magnitude to have mended so quickly.

“Excuse me,” she snapped, pushing past Dr. Jess. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re trying to pull here, but it’s not going to work.” Snatching up a pair of latex gloves, she wrenched them on and bent close to Dev, exploring his shoulder with gentle fingers.

“Jesus Christ,” Dev hissed.

A disquieting unease pressed the oxygen from her lungs. Dev’s skin
was
repaired. Genuinely. Actually. No fake, no special effect. She straightened, hearing a low ringing in her ears.

And what about all of the time she’d spent with Dr. Jess in his lab three days ago? She hadn’t been able to find a single fault or error in his methods.

And the unreal glow in Dev’s eyes?

Thomal’s impossible speed? The dragon tattoo on his back made of living tissue in the form of scales?

The supernatural red light in Lørke’s eyes and his unbelievable endurance of electricity?

The palpable animal
something
that seemed to radiate off every man in this town?

She’d forced herself to ignore it all, to explain everything away as having been caused by a concussed brain, the stress of captivity, and logic. But here before her sat irrefutable scientific evidence. It was impossible to speed up the human body’s healing process, which meant that….

This was real.

Exhaling forcefully, she staggered backward a step, her gloved hands fisted at her sides. She met Dev’s eyes, liquid mercury in a bottle. Incredible.
Impossible
.

Dev smiled, showing his…his…. “Yep, you got it now, don’t you?” he said. “Finally, Toni. Gotta be some kind of record.”

“No.” She snapped off her latex gloves and threw them on the floor. “No!”

She turned and fled.

Chapter Twenty-four

“What now?” Jaċken grumbled at the sound of someone knocking on his bedroom door. He still had a mountain of paperwork to fill out about their clash with Lørke. Not exactly a sit-at-your-desk kind of guy, he’d procrastinated the job, and didn’t want to be dealing with anyone’s bullshit. Hoisting himself up from his chair, he stalked across his bedroom and yanked open the door.
Ah, crap
. He dropped his brows into a dark scowl: Toni and Vinz.

“What happened?” he bit out. Had Lørke attacked again? Usually, that dickhead needed some recovery time after taking on the voltage he had, not to mention several knife wounds, but Jaċken wouldn’t have been surprised if Toni’s strong scent had motivated Lørke toward more inhuman feats of dick-headedness. Besides, she looked really upset.

“She’s having some kind of freakout.” Vinz’s tone was calm, although a subtle something in his expression suggested he’d rather be fighting a horde of Om Rău than dealing with a woman in a
mood
. “She took off like a bat out of hell from the hospital, and I gave chase. She claims she wasn’t trying to escape, and,” he shrugged, “I believe her. Such a move would’ve been too stupid for a woman like her.”

“What set her off?”

“Beats the shit out of me.”

“I’m standing right here,” Toni remarked churlishly. “You can ask your stupid questions directly to me.”

Vinz shot Jaċken a look. “She, um, insisted on talking to you.”

He raised his eyebrows.
Me
?

“Yes.” Toni took a step closer to the door. “Right now, Jaċken.”

“Ah, okay, then….” Vinz backed up. “You’ve got her, then, sir. Right?”

No—
shit,
no—he didn’t
have
her. He’d spent most of the last three days making all kinds of threats to himself not to get stuck alone with Toni again, especially in a bedroom. But Vinz was already heading off and—
double-shit
—Toni was pushing past him into his room.

He cursed in an undertone, then shut the door and leaned back against it. “Okay, so what’s up?”

She faced off with him from the middle of his room, feet braced, hands planted on her hips, her eyes fiery with the kind of stubborn determination that never seemed to work out well for him. His stomach did a slow roll over and he fought against the urge to swallow. Last time she’d worn that expression, he’d ended up spilling his guts about why he liked old movies. Yeah, this had
bad
written all over it.

“I need to see your fangs, Jaċken.”

He straightened with a snap, the tips of his ears flaming. Jesus, “bad” did not begin to cover just how
not good
this was. “No, Toni.
Hell no
, in fact.”

“Jaċken—”

“Go.” He jerked open his door again. “Out of my room. Right now. This isn’t up for debate.”

She paused a moment, then briskly crossed his room.

Thank God
. She wasn’t going to put up a fight. He almost sighed in relief over the unexpected gift, although a part of him felt an odd disappointment, too. He was starting to get used to her pushing him, kind of felt like he…needed it on some level, to be more himself. Most days, it was just too easy to remain locked behind the hard shell of anger he’d erected around himself too many years ago to remember.

The last three days especially, he’d been on a downward spiral. He’d thrown three knives at his own father and gotten into a knock-down-drag-out brawl with the man, and even though he hated the bastard, he was never sure how he was supposed to feel about shit like that. So, he just didn’t. Numbness was even better than anger.

Yeah, he didn’t have to be Dr. Phil to realize that this habit was a throwback from his Oţărât days, where he’d just walked through life on autopilot, numbly waiting for the next fist to fall, the next insult to be slung, the next disappointment to crash down on him. He’d learned to stop bothering with things like hope or with trying to find moments of joy or fun.

Until Fađe would draw him out.

If anyone could relate to what it was like to be born from one of the town’s biggest assholes, it was Fađe.

Lørke was a huge asshole, no doubt about that; as one of the last two pure-bred Om Rău males in the world—the other being, Jøsnic, his co-leader of Oţărât—Lørke redefined concepts like merciless and ruthless. But somewhere in Lørke and Jøsnic’s fucked-up Om Rău brains they at least recognized the value of the women, especially the Dragons, and focused their brutality on the men.

Not Bøllven.

He was the cruelest, most vicious son of a bitch in Oţărât when it came to the females, preying on them in particular…and Fađe was his daughter. Her upbringing had been about as brutal as Jaċken’s, and somewhere in the violence of their lives, they’d fostered a relationship out of their shared misery. It was probably no exaggeration to say that, if not for the care of Fađe and his mother, the two women in his life, Jaċken would’ve disappeared so far behind his defenses there would’ve been no coming back.

And now here was Toni—infuriating, funny, smart, so damned beautiful—the only woman in a long time who could make him want to do stupid, asinine shit like just talk. A woman he was forced to push away. A woman who was leaving right now….

Toni grabbed the door out of his hand and slammed it shut, her eyes glinting defiantly. “Here’s the thing, Jaċken. I think I believe all this stuff about vampires and demons now. Okay? All right? But I need more evidence; I
want
more. Are you listening to me? And everyone says you’re the only one who can control his fangs voluntarily.”