Twilight Vendetta (29 page)

The waitress shuffled forward, leaving the light behind her and moving into a sea of shadows. When she was standing in front of the two of them, she stopped and stood still. She was staring but not seeing. Devlin’s thrall was powerful.

He moved a step closer, and she tipped her head to one side, offering her neck up to him like a sacrificial virgin.

He smiled very slightly and bending, bit in. His mind was still open, and Emma clung to it as she felt what he was feeling–what she herself had experienced only moments ago. The thrill of fresh human life force rushing over his tongue, coating his throat, filling him. The electric jolts of nerve endings coming awake and erect with pleasure and reaching and stretching for more. The need, the hunger, the passion, the desire. She felt it all, and took a quivering breath as she watched his mouth moving over another woman’s throat.

A surge of jealousy flowed into her from out of nowhere, and she gripped the woman’s shoulders and tore her away from him. “Get out of here!” she told the waitress. “Go, now!”

Pressing a hand to her neck, blinking as if she had just woken to find herself sleepwalking on a tightrope, the waitress gave her head a shake, turned, and ran back toward the building.

Devlin was staring at Emma, his eyes alight, his lips parted and moist. She gripped him by the front of his shirt, yanked him to her and kissed him hard and deep and long. He grabbed a handful of her hair to hold her while he explored her mouth with his tongue. His hips arched into hers, and she tore his shirt open and bit his chest, his shoulder, his neck. Tiny nips of her razor sharp incisors, drawing droplets of blood for her to lap.

He growled and his arms around her wrapped tighter. They turned, stumbling off the pavement, onto the sidewalk, into the grassy picnic area and crashed into a wooden table. Devlin pressed her down onto it, pushed her legs wide, and drove himself in between. Their clothes were scraps, lining the path they’d taken to get there. There was nothing between them now. Naked to the night, her skin scraped over the rough wood of the table beneath her as he plunged into her, kissing and biting her all the while. When he pulled back and thrust even harder, the table broke in two, dropping them both to the ground. He landed on his knees, gathering her to him, wrapping her legs around his waist as he rose up again. And then he carried her to the nearest tree, pressed her back against its bark and continued ravishing her body, biting her neck, her breasts, drinking little sips after piercing her skin, slamming her into the tree so hard it rained leaves and small twigs down around them.

If she’d been human, this kind of sex would have broken her. A human body couldn’t bear it. The twisting and tightening of every muscle as she approached climax was beyond anything she’d experienced as an ordinary mortal, and nearly beyond endurance even now.

But then he pushed her higher, ruthlessly, right over the edge, and she screamed as waves of pleasure, tsunamis, more accurately, washed over her, drowned her, took her over.

As the tides receded, she found herself lying on top of him on the ground, licking at one of the tiny bites she’d made all over his chest like a cat at a saucer of milk. She stopped, lifted her head, met his eyes. “Did I hurt you very much?”

“Just enough, Emma,” he said with a lazy smile.

But she spotted something else behind his eyes. Something like worry. Something like fear. And maybe even a little bit like regret.

If they were going to lose themselves to passion every time they fed, Devlin thought, then it might take longer than he’d anticipated to make it to White Plains and the newly restored headquarters of DPI that the prisoner had called The Sentinel.

By God, the sex had been intense. Incredible. Indescribable pleasure still radiated through his body, and it renewed itself every time he thought about it, or so much as looked her way.

He’d had sex with his own kind before, so he knew it was above and beyond sex as a mortal, or even sex with a mortal. But even with other vampires, it had never been the way it was with Emma.

She was a wild thing in his arms and every bit as crazed as he was. There was something different about the chemistry between them. Something entirely new to him.

They were back in the car. He was driving, and rather touched that she’d offered to let him. She sat in the passenger seat, slumped low in the seat, with her knees against the dashboard, head tipped back, gaze fixed on the star-dotted sky and nearly full moon above. If he had to put a name to what she was doing, he would have said, “Basking.” In moonglow, or afterglow. Possibly both. He didn’t dare ask, because he wasn’t ready to talk about whatever was happening between them. He was a loner, a rebel leader, and a man without attachments. He’d always been. Almost always, at least. And he would always be. This was just a brief side trip in the midst of his journey. And she...she was an oasis on a trek across the desert. She was the precious water that would carry him the rest of the way. She was temporary, and so was this mission. Soon enough he’d have to get back to reality. There was no point in discussion. This was pre-decreed.

“Devlin?”

Oh, God, here it comes, he thought. “Yes?”

“What were you, before you were a vampire?”

It was not the question he’d been expecting. “Human,” he said.

She tipped her head toward him and made a face. “Is it secret then? Something dark and dire that you’ve never talked about with anyone else, ever before?”

“It’s not a secret. It’s just not a very pleasant story.”

“I’d like to hear it, all the same.”

He shrugged and thought about saying no. He considered telling her that it was none of her business, and that it didn’t matter anyway since they’d be going their separate ways once he helped rescue her father. He, back to the island to continue building the resistance. And she, off to whatever adventures awaited her. He imagined she would lead the way in paving a path toward diplomacy. Organize peace talks and education campaigns to promote understanding between the races. She was a peacenik at heart, despite her recent slip into the dark side.

He was a warrior. The dark side was his home.

“Were you always so angry?” she asked.

He slid a sidelong glance her way. She was still relaxed, still blissfully enjoying their ride, just quietly waiting for him to tell her a story as she watched the stars overhead.

He found himself complying, despite that he’d already decided not to.

“I was an ordinary man. I had my own business, liked my life just fine, despite its…challenges.”

“What kind of business?” she asked, her curious eyes on his face. He could feel them without looking.

“I hauled goods from one place to another.”

“Like those truckers we just left?”

He smiled slightly, nodded only a little. “Except that my horsepower came from actual horses, and my rig was a wagon.” That should be enough to satisfy her curiosity, he thought, hoping she would not ask anything more.

“That’s right. You lived in a time before the invention of cars and trucks and...everything?”

“Trains. We had trains. Steam engines. When I would arrive in a location, I would work helping to build the rails while awaiting a load of goods ready to be hauled back again, or on to another place.”

“Building the rails,” she said it slowly, drawing out the final word. “Swinging a sledge hammer like Casey Jones.”

“Just like that.”

“That explains the bod,” she said slowly. “I’d been wondering if you were a professional wrestler or something.” She glanced sideways at him. “All that, from swinging a hammer. Nice.” Then she frowned. “Here in the U.S., yes?”

He warmed under her praise and nodded. “Yes.”

She tilted her head to one side, studying him. “And how were you changed? How did it happen?”

He heaved a sigh and wondered why he was letting her gently tease his story from the deep places where it had been resting quietly for decades upon decades.

“I was of mixed ancestry. I’ve told you that.”

“Mm,” she said, nodding. “Native American, Samoan and African. I think that must be why your skin is so beautiful. You’re not pale like other vampires.”

“I was…less pale as a human.”

“Oh,” she said, and then. “
Oh.
”

“I was held up on the road. Gunmen ambushed me in the middle of nowhere, took everything they could carry. I went for my gun, and they shot me. Left me to die slow with a bullet in my belly. Lucky for me, it was after sundown.”

He slid a look her way. Her eyes were wide, her attention riveted. It was flattering the way she hung on his every word. And the way she looked at him, her eyes devouring him slowly every so often.

“What happened?” she whispered.

“A vampire came along. I was one of The Chosen, so he must’ve heard or sensed I was in trouble. He came to me. Asked me if I wanted to live. And I said yes.”

“And then what?”

“When I woke again, a night and a day had passed. It was night again. He spent that night teaching me about my new nature. Showing me how to use my powers. Drilling me on how to stay alive. After that he left, and I never saw him again.”

“What was his name?”

He glanced her way. “Damien Namtar,” he said softly. “I didn’t realize until much later that he was one of the first, if not the very first vampire. That’s a story he didn’t tell me, and one I will insist on hearing, should we meet again.” He lowered his eyes. “Assuming he’s still alive.” He saw her gaze turn inward, as if she was searching the memory banks of her mind for that name. He knew she had researched vampires on her many travels, in search of her mother, and thought she was trying to place the name. But then she blinked back into the moment.

“What did you do after that? Did you have a family to go back to?”

He blinked in reaction to the word family, but thought he covered it quickly enough. “Let’s save that part of the story for anoder time.” He was fairly certain he’d kept any hint of a quiver from his voice. “It’s going to be dawn soon. It’s time for us to find shelter.”

She nodded. “My mother had a family. She thought she could keep right on living just the way she did before. Being a wife, taking care of Dad and me. They shifted our lives around, became nocturnal. When I was old enough, I was home schooled by night, and we slept most of the day. I didn’t even think it was all that strange, living the way we did. It was all I knew, really. She’d been transformed when I was still a newborn. And then all of a sudden it hit me that not every kid my age lived their entire lives by night. Even moms who worked the night shift were occasionally seen during the day.”

He nodded. “It was bound to happen, I suppose. Kids are smart. You can’t keep much from them.”

She nodded. “You had a family,” she said softly. “Kids.”

He shot her a look.

“I saw you flinch when I asked. Did you try to keep living like a human, like my mom did?”

Emotions quaked down deep inside him. He felt like a fault line under pressure, reminded himself to take care not to let the pressure break free and rip him into pieces. “I did try, for a little while.”

“And what happened?”

He met her eyes and thought
I’m not going to tell her anything more
. Aloud he said, “I confided in my best friend, who was also our town’s only doctor. He was the only person in our town who had treated me…as a person, instead of as a person whose skin was a few shades darker than caucasian.”

“Was your wife…?”

“Her mother was Mexican, she was mixed like me. Otherwise, they probably would have attacked us long before they did.”

She lowered her head, closed her eyes.

“I thought Doctor Scott, as I called him, could...put me back to the way I was before. Fix this thing that Damian had done to me. He promised he’d look into it, and I believed him. I trusted him. But as soon as I left his side, he went to the sheriff. I didn’t know. If I’d known, I’d have never left home that night.”

“Oh, Devlin–“

“A mob of vigilantes came to the house and burned it with my wife and baby son inside. I wasn’t even home, but my wagon was out front so they assumed I was.”

In his mind’s eye, he saw it again, the image that had seared itself into his memory. The smoldering remains of their little house, blackened, just one wall left standing, partially burned. The ribbons of black and gray smoke writhing up from charred piles of who knew what on the ground. The smell, the pungent, horrid smell of burning bodies. He was a vampire, so the scents were keen to him. He knew which of the acrid smells came from the charred body of his wife, Maria, which came from the remnants of his baby boy, Charles, and which came from his devoted hound dog Bart, who’d died with his family that night. He could also detect the scents of every man who’d been there while he’d been away. Every single one of them. He could conjure their faces in his mind, their physical bodies, their voices. It was as if the scent of a man carried strands of his DNA and the vampiric mind could unravel the coils and see the end result.

He remembered knowing it was his own fault, for being what he was. And he remembered, too, gradually coming to understand that the good folk of Beacon Township had always hated him just for the color of his skin. They’d hated him for his blood. They’d been waiting for an excuse to let that hatred loose.