Twilight Vendetta (33 page)

The two nodded and dashed into the forest without a backward glance.

Emma leaned over Devlin. “Can you walk?”

“Anything’s possible,” he said.

“Then let’s get you up and find a good hiding place a little farther away from the blood trail you left.” She reached down for him. “Just in case.”

“Yeah, better safe....” He clasped her hand and let her help him get upright. And then he leaned on her and hopped on his one good leg through the forest. “Now I know how Roland must feel,” he muttered.

They traveled uphill, because something told Emma that was the way to go. She didn’t know what was telling her that, some sort of extra sense she hadn’t possessed before. There were so many of them to explore and examine and dissect, so many new abilities that she wanted to push to their limits. This was all new to her. All...radiant. All miraculous.

But she’d been in full-on crisis mode ever since she’d been changed, and she still was. There hadn’t been time to play or explore her new self.

“There will be, though,” Devlin said. And she realized she’d been thinking very loudly. “You’ll live forever. At least for centuries. As long as you can stay a few steps ahead of DPI, and you will, there will always be more time.”

She was having trouble walking, because she couldn’t wrestle free from his eyes long enough to watch where she was going. She’d forgotten again that he could hear her inner dialogue as if she was speaking it aloud unless she blocked. And she had no reason to shut him out. He was...he was a part of her. His blood ran in her veins.

He heard that, too. She knew by the flare of awareness that briefly overshadowed the pain in his eyes.

“You’re hurting,” she said.

Devlin nodded. “We’re almost there.”

“Almost where?”

He shrugged, staring ahead. “To whatever safe haven you sensed up here.”

“You sense it, too?”

“The pain’s pretty much blotting out everything else. But I’ve glimpsed something a couple of times. A rusted metal roof. It should be just over the next ridge.”

“Who knew there was this much wilderness here, of all places?” she asked, casually pulling his arm around her shoulders and wishing he’d lean on her more than he was. The forests in upstate New York were different from the ones in Oregon. The trees were smaller here, and the woods denser, harder to traverse. There seemed to be more undergrowth and briars, and fewer easy paths to take. Then she saw the roof he’d mentioned, rusted tin with a stovepipe sticking out of it. The shack supporting the roof was made of wide unpainted wooden planks, gray with age. It bore a single window with four panes, none of them broken, despite the shack’s obvious age. There was just one door, made of the same slabs of aging wood as the rest of the place.

They hurried closer, Emma ducking out from under Devlin’s arm to run ahead. He called her back, but she ignored him and opened the door, which resisted only a little. Once she got it open she looked inside, her night vision better now than her daytime vision had been before the change.

Devlin was hopping up beside her before she could finish her inspection of the place. There was a large tank of some kind, old and rusted, with valves and spouts, and a metal pipe that twisted around in a spiral. There was what looked like a fire box underneath, with a square cast iron door.

Devlin said, “I think this is a moonshine shack.”

“A what now?” Emma asked.

“It’s for making whiskey.”

She went farther inside, noting the undisturbed litter on the floor, the rust on the machine. “Doesn’t look like it’s been used in a long time.”

“No, and I don’t sense any sign of human presence here. Your instincts were good.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded, coming inside to join her. Emma swept a spot clean with her feet, then she sat down and held up a hand for him to join her. He lowered himself carefully down beside her, then leaned his broad back up against the wall, good leg bent, bad leg stretched out in front of him. It was bleeding again.

Emma re-adjusted the tourniquet. She had to lean in close to get the right grip. Then she pulled the thing so tight he moaned. God, she wished she could ease his pain. She decided distracting him from it might be the best she could do for now, and there was plenty on her mind distracting her, so she decided to share.

“You say my instincts are good,” she said. “I’m not so sure.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve been thinking more about this. And I think we’re right to suspect that they let us go.”

“You’ve thought of something more?” He grimaced, a hand reflexively reaching for his thigh, then he stopped it and put his hand on the floor.

She nodded. “Rhiannon and Roland were pinned down with almost no cover. Those snipers on the rooftops would have to be the worst shots on the planet to not so much as nick one of them. And the kids...the little Offspring, they were standing right out in the open at first. Is it reasonable to believe that a dozen trained shooters with high-powered rifles couldn’t have hit one of them?

He nodded. “I noticed it too, but presumed they wouldn’t want to destroy the Offspring. They’ve invested a lot of money and time into creating them. They want them, but they want them alive.”

“Okay, so what about the vampires, then? What about Roland and Rhiannon? They didn’t hit them. Or me. They hit some of those...those other beings, though. The Shifters? I felt flashes of pain, and I smelled blood just inside the forest.”

He nodded. “I did, too. I felt one of them run by me just as I was hit.”

“Maybe he was the target. Maybe they were deliberately letting the vampires go. No one followed us, no one shot at us, and no one came into the woods to track us. I think they let us go, Devlin. I’m sure of it. I just wish I knew why.”

“We’ll deal with their reasons later. We need to keep our focus on our mission.”

She closed her eyes. “Our mission.”

“Reuniting you with your father.”

Emma felt a smile pull at her lips. “You kept your promise. He’s free and I’ll be with him again tomorrow.”

“Tonight,” he said.

“Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re in no condition to keep moving, Dev. I thought we’d stay here, spend the day. Your wound will heal while you sleep and we can move on at sundown.”

“Rhiannon isn’t going to wait that long.”

“Well, then why did you let me drag you up the mountain to this shack?”

Tipping his head to one side, he said, “Because I need blood. Your blood. And you know what happens when I drink from you.”

She lowered her head, tried to roll her eyes a little, but her heart wasn’t in it. Devlin pushed her hair off her cheek. “You know what happens,” he whispered, “When I sink my teeth into your perfect, salty skin and taste the power of your blood. Maybe it’s because it’s my blood all mingled with your own energy, making something new. Making it better. Bringing it to perfection just by virtue of its hostess. I live in you now. And when I taste you, all I want is....”

“More,” she whispered.

“Yes. More. And more. I want all of you, Emma Benatar.”

She was tingling with desire already. All he had to do was look at her to make her feel this wild need for him, for his touch. “You told me once there could never be anything between us.”

He trailed his fingertips over her cheek. “I can’t love you, Emma.”

“Because of your wife? The one you lost more than a century ago?”

He lowered his eyes. “Because a man like me can’t love. I’ve never known anything but hate and intolerance. I can’t trust because I’ve been betrayed over and over again. And because I’m going to lead a revolution. And that’s going to make me, and anyone else in my life, a target. And because at heart, you’re a peacemaker. We’d be at odds. You’d be at risk. I’d be second guessing myself at every turn.”

“That’s weak,” she said. “Even all of it together is weak. And I think you know it.”

He nodded. “All right, yes, it’s also because of Maria. I don’t ever want to hurt like that again. It almost killed me, losing her and the baby. I haven’t even wanted a dog again since all that. I can’t do it, Emma. I can’t.”

She lowered her head. “So all we’ve got is...here and now.”

“Is that enough for you?”

“Not on your life,” she said. Then she peeled her blouse over her head and turned around, swinging one leg over him, keeping her weight on her knees. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t take every bit of you that I can get.” She bent over and brushed her neck over his face, over his lips. “Have a little sip, Dev. It’ll make you feel so much better.”

He opened his mouth, closed it on her neck, sucking softly, teasing with his tongue. His hand on her nape tightened; his beautiful incisors pierced her flesh and sank deep.

And everything in her entire body experienced the rapture.

A couple of hours later, they were trudging through the woods again. Devlin limped along, still in pain, as much from the tourniquet as the wound, especially since Emma stopped every quarter mile or so to tighten the thing up again.

Devlin was in a state that was extremely rare for him. He was afraid, and he couldn’t talk himself out of it by saying that the ice demon gnawing at his stomach from within was irrational. It was completely rational.

Somehow, against all of his defenses, Emma had managed to get under his skin. She’d made him care about her, care
for
her, made him want more than he should. Already, she’d nearly died because of him, and more than once. When this mission was over and he was back at the island, he had to make her leave. Banish her from his life, once and for all.

He doubted it would be as easy to banish her from his heart. Its fortress had been breached. There was no going back. He’d hoped to protect himself from the pain of loving and losing. Now all he could hope for was to protect her from dying due to his proximity. He was going to war against mankind. He would become DPI’s most targeted vampire.

I can’t build another life of ignorant bliss, another love so full of hope, only to lose it to death. To murder. To violence. I can’t get comfortable like that again. Let my guard down. Domestic bliss is for mortals. Daring to be happy is like waving a red flag in front of the bull named fate.

He was afraid, pure and simple. He was afraid of living through a terrible loss again. He didn’t really think he could.

All of those thoughts were tormenting him to the point where his throat hurt from clenching so tight against the pain. He was so distracted that it was she, the fledgling, who first smelled it.

Devlin, stop!

Her message came clearly, urgently, from her mind to his as they traversed the forest. He walked with a pronounced limp. But he had been replenished by her blood and her body, and was feeling stronger, despite the pain in his leg and the greater pain in his soul at knowing, more than he’d known before, just how short their time together had to be.

He stopped, opening his mind and sensing the area, immediately picking up on what she had. There was someone nearby, and the scent of strange blood was heavy in the air, a scent he’d only recently experienced for the first time.

“It’s them,” he whispered. Knowing she would know exactly who he meant, but adding anyway, “The shifters we freed.”

She nodded. “One of them’s wounded,” she whispered back.

He moved in their direction, putting himself in front of Emma, and recognizing the energy and scent of the two shifters, Tara and Tomas. He went slowly, silently, closing his mind to interlopers, because he didn’t know if they were psychic or not. He didn’t know anything about their kind, or even what their kind were, exactly. He placed every footstep with great care, moving like a ghost through the forest.

And then Emma called out loud, “Tara? Tomas?”

He shot her a killing look, but she only made a face and kept speaking, full volume. “Don’t be afraid, it’s Emma and Devlin, the ones who set you free. We’re alone. Just the two of us. Devlin was injured, too.”

He shook his head at her trusting nature, taking it as further proof of their incompatibility, and they moved a few more steps, then stopped. The scent said they should be on top of them, but there was no sign of the two. Emma’s perplexed frown captured his attention so completely that he lost track of what he was supposed to be doing for a moment.