The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1) (28 page)

The wolf stepped between Magdalena
and me with a deep, guttural snarl.

“You can’t protect her anymore,”
the vampire snarled.
 
“She is going to
die, and then you after her, and then…”

But the wolf had leapt forward, and
in a single, terrible instant, had her large jaws clamped firmly around
Magdalena’s neck.

There was a snapping sound.

Magdalena crumpled in a bloody
heap, and the wolf sprang to the side, shaking herself.
 
She landed heavily on her paws, licking her
blood-flecked snout as she breathed out, shaking herself again.
 

Magdalena made a bubbling, wheezing
sound from the ground and then fell utterly silent.

The wolf lifted her lupine head and
gazed at me with those beautiful blue and green and gray eyes.

My breath came fast in my throat,
my heart roared blood through me as I said in the smallest voice:
 
“Layne?”

The wolf hung her head, her eyes
leaving my gaze.
 
And, as I watched, the
wolf became a little smaller, the nose a little shorter, the fur became a
little more impossibly like clothes…

And there, kneeling on the ground
in front of me, was a bloody, battered Layne, dripping blood onto the black and
white tile again.

Beside her, the heap of body that
had once been Magdalena twitched.

“That won’t hold her long,” said
Layne gruffly, rising and striding quickly toward me with only the slightest of
limps as she left a trail of blood drops behind her.
 
She held out a hand gently to me, letting out a deep breath.
 
“Elizabeth, we have to go.”

I winced away from her as she
reached my side.
 
But Layne seemed not
to notice, or did because she set her jaw, and then shook her head slightly,
leaning down and picking me up again just like that day in Dogtown.

Carrying me, she stalked past
Magdalena toward the front door.

But she paused before she opened
the door.
 
She leaned down a little and
shifting me in her arms, she picked up my violin case in her right hand.

Chapter 13:
 
The Choice

It must have been an odd sight, a
bloody woman carrying another bloody woman down the street, their clothes
disheveled, Layne’s hair matted with blood and her arms and legs leaving a
trail of blood drops behind us as I clung to her neck and concentrated on
breathing as the wound in my leg finally,
finally
seemed to seal.
 
But if we looked strange or visiting
directly from a nightmare, at least there weren’t that many people out to see
us, and we mercifully made it to the parking garage without much incident other
than an old man staring at us from a café chair, folding his paper in front of
him and holding his mouth open and his eyes wide as if he’d seen a ghost.

We didn’t say anything to each
other until we were safely in the car, the doors locked and the peaceful
silence falling between us.

“Elizabeth…” began Layne, taking a
deep breath and tightening her hands on the wheel, the keys still in her jeans
pocket and not in the ignition.
 
There
was so much dried blood and grime on her hands.
 
I stared at them and blinked.
 
“I’m…very sorry you had to see that,” she whispered, then.
 
And she glanced at me, her eyes glittering
and dark and sympathetic.

“I just…I just don’t understand
what’s going on,” I said, my voice breaking.
 
“Was she…?
 
Are you…?”
 
I didn’t know how to put everything into
words, and my broken syllables hung in the air between us.

Layne bit her lip, shoving a
blood-caked bit of hair out of her face and shook her head.
 
“I can’t,” she said simply.
 
“It’s at your father’s discretion to tell
you or not.”

“Tell me
what?
 
What are you talking about?
 
Why does everyone keep bringing up my
father?”
 
I knew I was nearing
hysterics, but if I didn’t get answers, and soon, I didn’t know how much more
of this I could possibly take.

Layne’s cell phone, in her other
pocket, chirped at the both of us.

“Your ring tone sounds like a
chickadee?” I asked her incredulously.
 
With a sheepish grin that was absolutely incongruous in her
blood-stained face, Layne tugged her phone out of her pocket and pressed it to
her ear.

“Yes, sir.
 
She’s safe.
 
Right away,” she said between pauses.
 
She glanced at me as she ended the call, and then she carefully reached
across the space between us.
 
“Your
father wants to see you,” she said, searching my face.
 
“And I think he’s going to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” I asked miserably.

But she shook her head and started
the car.

The drive to my father’s passed in
an almost instantaneous blur.
 
When
Layne pulled up to the building, there was no one to greet us on the porch, the
wind making the hanging baskets of pansies swing back and forth in the ominous,
graying sky.
 

When we came in through the
entryway, there was no one there waiting for us, no Al with her cart of tea and
baked goods, no Ben with his driver’s cap on backwards and a big grin on his
face.
 
The room was empty and cold.
 

Layne had helped me hobble up the
stairs and into the entryway, but now, again, she picked me up effortlessly and
I made no protest.
 
Through the long
hallways she carried me, until we’d reached my father’s study.

The massive wooden door was shut,
and Layne set me down gently against it.
 
She lifted up her hand and once, twice, three times, Layne knocked
lightly on the door.

From the other side came my
father’s voice, impossible to read.
 
“Enter,” he said quietly.

Layne paused for a long moment, her
hand still folded and resting against the door.
 
She didn’t reach for the door knob, but stayed, her hand against
the wood, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath as she lowered her face,
bit her lip.
 

I turned to her like she contained
gravity that I had to answer to.
 
She
was so close, so warm.
 
Blood still
dripped down her face, and she was probably in so much pain, but still,
still
…she
turned, lifted her chin, and Layne stared deeply into my eyes with her own
flashing ones, her jaw set in a hard line.

“Elizabeth,” she said simply,
softly.
 
I’d never heard her voice so
quiet.
 
“You know now.
 
About me.
 
But you
don’t
know,” she whispered, searching my face.
 
“About yourself.
 
You don’t know…”
 
She
swallowed, and then she was actually blinking back tears.
 
She rubbed the back of her hand angrily over
her right eye, shaking her head as she growled deep in her throat.
 
“I’m sorry,” she said then, and the two
words sounded so broken.

I wasn’t entirely certain what had
just happened.
 
I wasn’t entirely
certain what I’d just seen.
 
It seemed
so utterly impossible.
 
But here I was,
and here Layne was, and we were standing together.
 
Broken and battered, but whole and somehow, impossibly
alive,
and
we were together.

I moved purely on instinct when I
put my arms around her shoulders and tugged her closer to me.
 
I didn’t think as I stood up on my one good
leg, on tiptoe, and pressed my mouth against her bloody one.

She tasted salty and warm, metallic
and feverish.
 
But we kissed anyway, the
two of us, pressing tightly against each other because we’d been through hell
together that afternoon.

And I supposed now that I knew her
secret.

Even if I didn’t quite know mine
yet.
 

Layne broke away from me, her
strong arms around my waist as, again, she bent her handsome head and pressed
her forehead against my shoulder.
 
She
breathed out brokenly, choking down a hoarse sob, tears standing clearly in her
eyes.
 
“When you go into that room,” she
whispered, “your father will tell you
everything
.”
 
She said the words so softly, so brokenly,
and my heart ached inside of me.
 
“And
it will change everything,” she said.

“It won’t,” I told her fiercely,
but she straightened, stiffened, shook her head.
 
She rolled back her shoulders, and she took one step forward,
past me.

And slowly, Layne opened the door
for me to my father’s office.

I clenched my hands into fists, but
I couldn’t put off the inevitable.
 
I
took a deep breath and stepped inside my father’s study, Layne sliding in
behind me.

Alexander Grayson sat behind his
desk.
 
The desk I used to use as an
imaginary ship when I was little.
 
Now,
he sat there, pale as a ghost, face contorted in worry, and he stood quickly,
coming around from behind the desk to gather me in his arms and hug me tightly.

“You’re not all right,” he said,
glancing all over me and taking in the blood leaking down my leg, dripping from
my thigh.
 
“You’re not all right!”

“Dad, I’m fine, I’m fine, please
don’t worry—I’m okay,” I told him, patting his shoulder, and trying to take
deep breaths.
 
I was losing a lot of
blood and starting to feel light headed, but I considered that the least of my
troubles.
 
Instead, I plopped down in
one of his chairs in front of his desk and gazed up at my father with a
frown.
 
“Now…please.
 
What’s going on?”
 
I asked simply then.
 
My
voice sounded so tired.

He glanced sidelong at Layne, his
eyes widening when he took in her appearance, and then my father—my incredibly
sweet father—pulled out the other chair for her, which Layne gratefully took,
depositing herself down in a heap of limbs, resting her head on the back of the
chair and groaning as she stared upright at the ceiling like she was perfectly
comfortable and felt no need to ever get up again.

My father folded his hands
nervously in front of him, and then cleared his throat. “I’m going to say this
as simply as I can,” said my father then, leaning back against his desk as he
looked at me with grave eyes, all traces of nerves gone, and resignation
apparent.
 
“Elizabeth, sweetheart, you
need to know…you almost died today because of a promise I made to your mother.”

I watched him, my heart starting to
turn inside of me, even as I turned my mother’s ring on my finger.

“Your mother died because she made
a simple choice,” said my father then, his face contorted in pain.
 
“She had that choice.
 
She asked me to keep that from you, to spare
you from it.
 
To let you live a normal,
happy life.
 
And you have, Elizabeth,
haven’t you?”

“I don’t understand,” I whispered.

“This is so much harder than I
thought,” he groaned, threading fingers through his hair and rubbing at his
chin.
 
He gazed at me thoughtfully.
 
“Elizabeth, your mother died because they
were trying to get to me.
 
I couldn’t
protect her, and she was killed.”

I stared at him.
 
“By the fishing moguls?” I managed weakly.

“No,” he said, and then my father
gazed down at me with such a sad expression, I could feel his heart breaking
from where I sat.
 
“By vampires.”

Hearing the word made me feel
sick.
 
And though my dad was a funny
kind of guy, I knew that he absolutely, positively wasn’t joking.

“I’m a vampire, sweetheart,” said
my father with a small shrug and a wince.
 
“And for many, many years I have kept that fact from you.
 
And I have kept from you that I am the
leader of the Nocturne Council of Boston.
 
Which means that I’m the leader of this whole area.
 
And that others don’t particularly like it,
and have been trying to oust me for a very long time.
 
They got your mother, because your mother didn’t want to change,
and because she was human, she was an easy target.”
 
He gazed at me meaningfully for a long moment.

“What are you saying?” I whispered.

“They won’t stop until I am destroyed.
 
And now they have discovered that I have a
weakness.
 
They think it is easiest to
destroy me through…well.
 
You.
 
Your mother made me promise not to tell you
the truth.
 
She wanted a normal life for
you, and I respected that.
 
But now that
you’ve almost died…I hope she forgives me.”
 
My father crouched down in front of me, searching my face.
 
“Elizabeth,” he said softly.
 
“There’s only one way to keep you perfectly
safe now.”

Layne glanced at me, a single tear
running down her cheek, across her clenched jaw and falling onto her arm and
mixing with the blood there.