Twilight Vendetta (6 page)

Devlin’s senses were still full of Emma. Her scent. The sight of her, so beautiful, porcelain skin, salt water clinging to her face and thick lashes like pearls. How dark her blond curls looked when they were all soaked and plastered to her head, as opposed to the platinum color they were when dry. The plumpness of her lips and how tempted he’d been to taste them. The press of her breasts against his chest as he’d held her. Her body heat. The steady, excited beat of her heart.

She attracted him to her the way a baited hook attracts fish. She was dangerous to him, because she was a danger to herself. Always taking risks. Always putting her life in jeopardy.

He wouldn’t let himself care about her. It was bad enough he couldn’t resist going to her aid when she got into trouble. He wasn’t going to let it develop into anything more.

Vampires couldn’t keep themselves from helping The Chosen. But they had full control over anything beyond that. He didn’t have to
feel
anything for her. He didn’t have to let this ridiculous fondness for her grow into something more. She’d been a child before. And then a teen. He had a weakness for children.

But Emma wasn’t a little girl anymore. And his weakness for her was turning into a danger to him. Distracting him. He had a mission: to build the resistance. To fight back against humanity. To raise his kind out of the shadows, and to end the slow but steady genocide mankind intended for them.

He and his crew had found a cave in the woods just before dawn, and he’d been certain the day sleep would shut Emma out of his mind. And yet each minute had seemed to stretch endlessly before the day sleep claimed him. And then he was there again, with her in the ocean, holding her waist between his big hands and feeling her warmth wrapping around him like an embrace, falling into her eyes, drunk on her breath and the way it bathed his lips with each exhale. And more. The thrum of blood rushing through her veins, the pulse of it, the soft swoosh of its current. He could smell it, almost taste it.

The last time he’d seen her, she’d been in the mountains on a ski trip with her senior class. She’d been skiing under the lights at nighttime, and he’d been watching. Drawn to her, as he had always been drawn to her since her birth. He didn’t know how it worked the way it did, how he often found himself in the same city where she was, even though it was never deliberate. He’d seen her hang-gliding by night in the Smoky Mountains, shocked when he’d felt her presence there. He’d crossed paths with her in Paris, in Tokyo, in Budapest. Most of the time, he managed to avoid watching her extreme stunts. Mostly, she risked her pretty neck by day. And for that, he was grateful. Watching her tempt death wasn’t the most appealing way he could think of to spend his time.

There was some kind of unseen bond between them, working beneath the surface to pull him into her orbit like the sun’s gravity pulls the planets into hers.

On the slopes that long ago night, he’d felt Emma’s pain. It had exploded through his brain only seconds after he’d sensed her presence. And her scream of anguish had brought him out of hiding, right into the open. He raced across the mountain, his speed impeded by the deep snow.

She lay in a tangle of skis and poles. Her shin bone was broken right in half, and one jagged edge had torn its way through her tender skin. Her blood was spilling into the snow, and it was a sight that made his nerve endings feel exposed and raw.

“It’s all right, Emma, it’s all right.” He’d fallen to his knees beside her, carefully peeling away the ski pants. Every time he moved her even a little, pain rocketed through her, and he felt it just as vividly as she did, wincing with her. His eyes watered, it hurt so much. She was cold, shivering. So he shivered. She had tears on her cheeks, and he wanted to weep for her.

Her eyes were on her leg. “It’s broken, isn’t it?” she asked, her words emerging on a soft breath.

He nodded. “I’ve got to set the bone so we can stop the bleeding. Brace yourself.”

She was holding herself up on her elbows so she could see the injured leg, the blood, and him. “Maybe we should wait for the–” And then she stopped, her gaze moving rapidly over his face. “I know you.”

He pulled the two parts of the bone in opposite directions so the broken ends met once again, and she shrieked as if he was killing her and fell back into the snow. He could have screamed as well, because her pain was his. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Emma.”

She lifted her head, then let it fall again. “I’m dizzy. Am I bleeding out?”

“You’re dizzy from the pain, not the blood loss.” He was wrapping her leg in her thin scarf, pulling it tight enough to stop the bleeding. The cut wasn’t bad, but in one of The Chosen, one had to take precautions. Her pain was intense, but she bore up well. Once he finished binding the wound, he watched it for a moment, then nodded. “It’s holding. You’re not bleeding anymore.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you. You probably just saved my life. I have a condition–”

“I know.”

He hadn’t meant to blurt that. It had just come out, and now she was staring at him. Her always untamable, pale blond curls were sticking out from beneath her knit hat, framing her heart-shaped face. She’d always been a stunner. She had the biggest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen. And angel-blond hair that fell in satin spirals every which way. Her lips were as red as oxygen-rich blood and her skin almost as pale and flawless as a vampire’s.

He shook himself out of his thoughts, and realized he’d been staring. And she was staring right back. Frowning a little, she said, “How do you know about me? How do you always happen to be nearby when I’m in trouble?”

He looked around. “We need to splint your leg. I’ll have to break one of your skis.”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve saved my life.”

“You’re hallucinating. You’ve lost more blood than I realized.” He snapped a ski in half, placed it on either side of her shin, and began wrapping it tightly with his own scarf.

“I’m not hallucinating. I remember. I...I couldn’t forget.”

“Here, this is better,” he said, knotting the scarf hard. Then he scooped her up into his arms, and started trudging through the snow down toward the lodge below.

“You haven’t changed. Not even a little bit,” she whispered. She dragged her fingers over his face. “So pale,” she said. “And so cool.”

“It’s freezing outside. I’m no cooler than you are.”

“Stop lying to me.”

You don’t know me. You’ve never seen me before. I’m a stranger to–

“Oh, no, don’t you even
try
to pull that mind control crap on me, Mister!”

He stood stock still, looking straight ahead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You’re a vampire. I’m a BD. What you all call The Chosen. That’s why you’re helping me. And it’s why you saved me before, too. Isn’t it?”

He was so stunned that she could know what he was that he couldn’t even answer her. And then he heard what she couldn’t possibly with her human ears—the distant
shoosh
of skis in snow, higher up the mountain, but heading this way.

He set her down and turned to leave.

“Wait! Wait, you can’t just leave me. I’ll freeze to death out here. What if–”

“People are coming. A minute, two at most, and they’ll be here.”

“They’ll run me over!”

“You’re off the trail.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“And you never will. Goodbye, Emma.” And he left her there in a burst of speed that couldn’t help but confirm her suspicions, taking giant leaps to maximize his velocity in the deep snow.

But how had she known what he was? This was long before vampires had been outed to the world of man. Long before anyone besides themselves and DPI, and possibly a few rare humans, had known of their existence. And yet,
she
had known.

Devlin came awake with a painful start and looked around him in utter confusion. It was dark in the cave, but he could see just fine. The sun should’ve been up by now, though, shouldn’t it?

“Hey, Dev,” Bellamy said. “I hope our first order of business tonight is to feed. I’m so hungry I’m almost transparent.”

Devlin blinked. “It’s night again?” He pressed a hand to his head.

“Yeah, it’s night again.” Bell frowned at him. “You okay?”

“Yes. Fine. I woke a little...disoriented.” Because he had dreamed. He had dreamed about Emma. And everyone knew that vampires didn’t dream.

Emma had slept like the dead. Being the daughter of a vampiress, she’d been raised on a nocturnal schedule, and even though her mother had vanished, she’d kept to it, to a degree, her entire life. Not as much as her father had, but still....

Frankly, she preferred the night to the day. It was cooler, cleaner, fresher, somehow. And hushed. The harsh light and sharp noises of daytime had never appealed to her.

She opened her eyes and sat up on the sofa where she’d crashed, running a hand back and forth through her hair. And she smelled bacon. “Dad?”

“Go take a shower, babe. You’ve slept the day through. You’ve got fifteen minutes before nightwalker breakfast. Then we get back to work. All right?”

She smiled. Nightwalker breakfast was their pet name for the meal they ate at sundown. Most people ate dinner around then. But the Benatars ate breakfast in the evening. It had been that way for Emma’s entire life.

She got to her feet, walked past the bank of radios and equipment, and glanced at her father’s notes. He had a map, with the spot marked where Emma had seen the two teens thrown into that van. He had drawn an arrow in the direction she’d seen them moving.

While she’d been out in the ocean trying to lure vampires to her rescue so she could tell them what she’d seen, her father had been picking up bits and pieces of communication from government radio frequencies he wasn’t supposed to be able to tap into. He’d transcribed what he’d heard and some notes of his own.

Package ... arrived. (2:37 a.m.)

Exercise ..eme.. caution. (extreme)

Project Offspring. (offering? office spring? off string?)

Offspring
was the right answer, she thought. That had been what she’d heard one of the goops call those two kids. She didn’t know what it meant, but she was sure it was no coincidence that her father had heard that term on the radio.

Based on the time and place of the kids capture, and the time of the radio message “package…arrived” Oliver had done some math. Using an educated guess at the van’s likely speed, he’d drawn a circle on the map that included the entire possible area, half of which was in the ocean, and they certainly hadn’t wound up
there
by van.

Today, they would try to narrow it down some more. She didn’t know exactly what they would do with the information once they had it. Walking into a government internment camp to rescue prisoners was a bit risky, even for her. But her father was brilliant. He’d think of something.

She eyed the map again, noting that the area wasn’t all that big. Then she heard eggs being cracked and knew time was short, and she needed that shower. So she headed up the stairs to her room.

Emma didn’t
really
live with her father, because she was usually traveling the globe, trying to find out about local vampires and writing about her daredevil experiences to pay the bills and provide a cover. But when she was home, this was often where she stayed. She kept all her things in the bedroom her dad kept just for her, the same one she’d had since childhood. She stored her Jeep in her dad’s garage…except for this time. This time, after meddling in clandestine government affairs, she’d parked her Jeep a couple of blocks away, just in case. Putting her father at risk was not on her to do list.

She grabbed a bunch of clothes and headed into the bathroom for a shower, moving quickly because she was eager for that breakfast she could smell cooking downstairs. So she cranked on the water, adjusted the temperature, and jumped right in, scrubbing herself from head to toe, and washing her hair twice to get the dried salt and sand out of it, and then using extra conditioner to repair the damage.

She stepped out onto the plush pink bathmat when she was finished, reached for a towel, and froze.

He was standing there, staring at her.

Her vampire.

“What the–!” Emma snatched the towel from the rack and wrapped it around her, so startled she almost forgot to be overjoyed to see him again. Thank God, she thought. Thank God he’d come to find her.

Aloud, she only said, “What are you doing in my bathroom?”