Vampire Most Wanted (11 page)

Shrugging, she said, “While the pain caused by the need to feed
feels
unbearable, the pain of healing actually
is
unbearable. Marcus won’t be able to withstand it for long before he—” She paused abruptly as Marcus’s moan turned into another long, loud shriek. His whole body vibrated briefly in her arms, his teeth snapping like a cornered dog in pain, and then he went abruptly limp as if someone had flipped a switch turning him off.

Divine stared down at his pale, scarred face and released a little sigh. Marcus had passed out, but who knew how long that would last. The pain would probably wake him in a bit and have him thrashing and screaming again. They had to move quickly to get him tied down so he wouldn’t hurt himself. He’d simply prolong the healing if that happened. That concern uppermost in her mind, Divine shifted her hold on Marcus, and then stood up with him cradled in her arms.

Jackie stepped back, expression incredulous, and for a minute Divine thought the girl was such a newbie as an immortal that she didn’t yet know her own strength now. She realized that wasn’t the case though when Jackie said, “Your chest.”

Divine glanced down and took brief note of the bloody rivulets in her chest where she’d trapped Marcus’s hands. He’d clawed at her, digging into her chest to try to make her release him. She’d been aware of it at the time, but had ignored it. Sighing, she shrugged, “He did worse in the back of the SUV. I’ll heal.”

Swinging away toward the door, she asked, “Can you show me to the room you prepared for him?”

“Of course.” Jackie hurried around her to get the door, held it for her, and then rushed past her again to lead her to and up the stairs. They were halfway up when Vincent hurried back through the front door, chains in hand.

“You should have told me he’d stashed them under the front seat. I looked everywhere before I found them there,” Vincent reprimanded as he hurried toward the stairs.

“Sorry,” Divine murmured, not bothering to explain that she had hid them there, not Marcus. She hadn’t wanted him to wake up and see them and be reminded of the unpleasantness he’d suffered.

“Here, let me take him for you,” Vincent offered, rushing up the stairs behind them.

“I’m—” Divine had meant to say she was good, but didn’t get the chance to finish. Vincent had already handed the chains to Jackie and then took Marcus from her. He then hurried up the stairs, Jackie hard on his heels. Divine was left to follow.

Eleven

“Y
ou’re awake.”

Marcus had barely stirred when Vincent’s overly cheerful voice finished rousing him from sleep. Opening his eyes, he stared briefly at the man standing beside the bed he lay in before glancing around the room. It was disturbingly cheerful, a bright yellow room lined with a wallpaper border of sunflowers. He closed his eyes with a sigh. “Yeah.”

“How do you feel?” Vincent asked.

Marcus popped his eyes open again as his brain began to function. He was in a room in Vincent and Jackie’s home, healing after a fire that had torched Divine’s RV, he recalled.

“Where’s Divine?” he asked abruptly, trying to sit up, only to have Vincent force him back down with one hand on his chest.

“Slow down, buddy. She’s fine. Resting in her own room. Now, tell me how you feel,” Vincent insisted, withdrawing his restraining hand and straightening when Marcus stopped struggling to sit up.

Marcus almost barked out
Fine
as an automatic reply, but then thought better of it and took inventory. Nothing hurt, which was a relief. He had a serious case of dry mouth though, and while he wasn’t suffering the pain of blood hunger, he was hungry . . . which was truly weird. He hadn’t experienced that in quite a while.

“Hungry,” he said finally.

Vincent nodded as if that were to be expected. “We could tell you were on the verge of waking up so Jackie went down to fetch you a drink and something to eat. She should be back in a minute.”

“How could you tell I was on the verge of waking up?” Marcus asked curiously.

“You stopped moaning and thrashing hours ago and lay still as death since then,” Vincent said dryly. “But about ten minutes ago you started shifting restlessly and talking in your sleep.”

Marcus stiffened at this news. “Talking? What was I saying?”

“Something about ball busters,” Vincent said with amusement. “It wasn’t very intelligible for the most part.”

Marcus grimaced and relaxed in the bed.

“I gather Divine did some damage to the old baby makers, huh?”

Marcus stiffened again, eyes sharp on the younger man. “Did Divine tell you that?”

Vincent shook his head solemnly. “I read the memory from your thoughts.”

Marcus stared at him silently for a moment, his mind in an uproar. Vincent shouldn’t be able to read him. The man was younger than he. The fact that Vincent could read him . . . well, that was another symptom of finding a life mate. Hunger, sex drive, and the inability to block your thoughts were all signs of a life mate’s presence. Divine
was
his life mate.

“Damn,” Marcus muttered finally, letting his head fall back and eyes close. “I was afraid of that.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Marcus scowled at the sympathetic words and opened his eyes again. “So? Can you read her too?”

“Yes,” Vincent admitted, but Marcus didn’t miss the reluctance in his voice.

“Yes, you can read her, and . . . what?” he asked quietly. When Vincent hesitated, he guessed, “She’s Basha?”

“We’re not sure one way or the other,” Vincent admitted.

“What?” Marcus asked with disbelief, sitting up again.

Vincent pushed him back down almost automatically, his attention on his thoughts and trying to express them. “She has a very . . .” He paused, hesitated, and then tried again, “Her mind is rather . . .”

“Rather what?” Marcus snapped impatiently, sitting up again, only to have Vincent absently push him back flat in bed again as if it were little effort at all. He might be healed, but he obviously hadn’t regained full strength yet if Vincent could handle him so easily, he thought with disgust, and then glanced sharply at Vincent as the man started to speak again.

“I’ve never been able to read someone as old as Divine appears to be,” he said finally. “Her mind is . . .” Vincent grimaced and then said, “Well, frankly, it’s a weird combination of almost anal organization and complete disorganization at the same time.”

“How could she be both organized and disorganized?” Marcus demanded impatiently, sitting up again.

“It’s weird, I’ll admit,” Vincent said, pushing him back in the bed once more, and then sitting down on the edge of the bed beside him and leaning his weight on his elbow on Marcus’s stomach as if it were a pillow. The move ensured Marcus wouldn’t rear up again, which was apparently the man’s intent. But he looked damned pleased with himself as he did it. “But I think it might be a result of the length of her life.”

“The length?” Marcus asked with a frown. “How old is she?”

Vincent shook his head. “Not sure, but she’s old. There are memories in her head dating way back. She’s spent her life always moving from one place to another, always amongst nomadic, mortal tribes. She’s traveled with the Wu Hu, Huns, Magyars, Romani, carnies.” He gave a crooked shrug, his elbow digging into Marcus’s stomach. “There are far too many to list them all.”

“Try,” Marcus said dryly.

“What’s more interesting,” Vincent went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “is that in every section or chapter of her life, she’s had a different name that
was her name
. Now, and since she began traveling with carnies, it’s been Madame Divine and the moment she became Divine, she was no longer whoever she was in the previous chapter of her life. With the Romani it was Nuri, which means Gypsy, which is what the Romani are and how she’s lived her whole life as far as I can tell.”

“Nuri,” Marcus murmured.

Vincent nodded. “As far as she was concerned that was her name while she traveled with the Romani and her previous name and life no longer existed.” He pursed his lips and then commented, “It’s almost dissociative.”

Marcus scowled at the comment. “When did you get your psychology degree, Dr. Freud?”

“No degree yet,” Vincent admitted cheerfully. “But I’ve been taking some night courses the last year or two and have a little psychology under my belt.”

“There’s nothing more dangerous in this world than ‘a little’ knowledge,” Marcus growled.

Vincent heaved a dramatic sigh, showing his acting roots, and then perched his chin on the heel of his palm and arched one eyebrow. “Since you’re obviously cranky, I shall skip to just the facts. She’s in the next bedroom sleeping after her own bout with healing.”

“What?” Marcus sat up abruptly, despite Vincent’s weight on him. “Healing from what?”

“You shouldn’t be up yet,” Vincent said with a scowl as Marcus tossed his sheets and blankets aside and sat up on the side of the bed.

“Screw you,” Marcus snapped, looking around for his clothes. “What is she healing from?”

“The wounds you gave her,” Vincent said grimly as Marcus stood up.

That brought him up short and Marcus turned to stare at him wide-eyed as Vincent walked around the bed toward him. “Wounds I gave her?”

Nodding, the younger man gave him a push that sent him toppling to sit on the side of the bed again. Bending then, Vincent grabbed his now unresisting legs and lifted them onto the bed, turning him on it as he did. He then covered him up and announced. “You gouged out some nice striations on her chest after drinking the blood when you got here. I gather from what I read of her mind, those weren’t the first injuries you gave her. While you were out of your head healing in the SUV, you did some serious damage. She was suffering and in serious need of blood herself, though we didn’t realize that at first.”

Finished tucking him in, Vincent sat on the side of the bed again, eyed him solemnly, and said, “The woman is very good at hiding her pain. And judging by some of the memories I caught glimpses of, it comes from practice.”

“What does that mean?” Marcus asked with concern. “What did you see?”

The door opened then and they both glanced toward it to see Jackie walking in with a tray in hand. Marcus raised his head, his nose sniffing the air.

“I thought you’d be awake by now, I—” She paused abruptly, her gaze shooting to her husband as an alarm suddenly sounded in the house.

“What’s that?” Marcus asked, sitting up abruptly.

“The security alarm. Someone’s breached the gate,” Jackie said grimly, turning toward the dresser with her burden.

Marcus didn’t stay to watch her set it down, but leaped off the bed, and strode out of the room with Vincent hard on his heels.

“Where is she?” he growled, once in the hall.

“This one,” Vincent said, leading him to the next door on the right. The man wasn’t stupid enough to get between him and the woman in the room. He merely turned the knob and pushed the door open. Vincent then stepped back to allow Marcus to enter. It was a good thing too, since Marcus would have charged right over him in his bid to see that Divine was okay.

“Stay with her,” Vincent said after glancing to the unconscious woman in the bed. “Jackie and I will check out the breach. We’ll come back either when we catch someone or when it’s all clear.”

Marcus merely grunted, his attention on the restless woman in the bed. She wasn’t screaming or thrashing, but she wasn’t still either. Soft moans and murmurs of pain were leaving her lips and she was shifting this way and that in the bed, obviously still healing.

Vincent had said Marcus had hurt her, and the knowledge made him peer carefully over her face. When he didn’t see anything there, he reached for the top of the blanket covering her and tugged it down, revealing the peasant blouse she still wore. Like the one from that morning, this one was stained with dry blood, but more disturbing to him were the scars on her chest. They were fading even as he watched, but were obviously from deep scoring. It was as if he’d tried to dig deep trenches in her chest. Marcus could only imagine how much pain he’d caused her. It made him wonder about the other injuries Vincent had mentioned his having caused her. What had he done to the poor woman while out of his head after the fire?

The question made him tug the blanket lower. He’d intended to get a look at her arms that rested at her sides under the blanket, but instead his attention was caught by an even larger bloodstain below her left breast. It was dry now but had blossomed around a hole through the material there. She’d obviously been stabbed with something.

How the hell had he missed this earlier and not questioned her? he wondered with dismay, and then, thinking back, recalled that she’d been wearing a leather jacket over the top when he’d woken up.
His
leather jacket, he thought now. The desert got chilly at night and she may have donned it for that reason, but it had done a fine job of hiding all of this too.

“All clear,” Jackie announced, suddenly appearing in the door.

“Video shows two men climbing the fence and then fleeing when the alarm sounded. Good thing Jackie insisted on alarming the fence and yard as well as the house after that business when she was turned,” Vincent added, pausing behind her, one hand on her shoulder.

Marcus glanced to the couple and nodded. He had been there for “that business” and wasn’t surprised that Jackie had ramped up the security since then. The culprit who had attacked her might now be caught and taken care of, but an experience like that could haunt a person and make him more cautious. His gaze slid back to Divine, and he asked, “Did I do this to her?”

“You were out of your head,” Vincent said at once, slipping past Jackie to move to his side. “She doesn’t hold you responsible.”

She might not, but he felt guilty as hell for it and asked grimly, “What did I stab her with?”

“I gather it was an arrow, or a bolt I guess,” Vincent said, peering at the wound and then bending to tug the peasant blouse out of her skirt and up so that he could get a look at the wound. It was further along in healing than the striations in her chest.

“Where the hell did I get— Oh,” Marcus ended on a mutter as he recalled the weapons box built into the floor beside the refrigerator. Every SUV had one; his held a gun, knife, and bows with specially made bolts, the tips painted with a drug strong enough to knock out an immortal, if only temporarily.

“I gather the two of you were struggling and you opened the weapons box, grabbed the first thing, and stabbed her. Fortunately, you stabbed her with the wrong end, and accidentally stuck yourself with the drugged tip while doing it,” Vincent announced, straightening. “Which is probably a good thing. You passed out and she was able to get into town and buy chains, then chain you down before you came to.”

Marcus grunted, and then muttered, “I’m surprised she didn’t use them to stake and bake me out in the desert if I did all of this to her.”

Vincent actually smiled faintly at the suggestion, but shook his head. “She doesn’t seem the type.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Jackie agreed, and when Marcus glanced to her, the woman added, “She was very caring with you when you passed out and we brought you up here. And the memories we can read suggest she’s like that with everyone. Divine’s a mothering type, taking care of and helping everyone she encounters.” She paused briefly to peer at Divine’s face and then frowned. “If she
is
Basha Argeneau, than I think Lucian must be wrong about her being rogue.”

Marcus had been coming to the same conclusion himself, but had feared his decisions were biased by the fact that she was probably his life mate. Still, a woman who did what she could to help pretty much every mortal she encountered just didn’t seem to be the type to hang out with and harbor an animal like Leonius Livius. She wouldn’t align herself with a man who brutally sliced up and slaughtered whole families. Perhaps she wasn’t Basha. That was a good thing.

They were all silent for a moment, each of them peering at Divine, and then Jackie said quietly, almost apologetically, “We need to sort out what is going on here. Who set the RV on fire? Were they after you or her? Is it likely it was the same people who broke in here? Could they have followed you?”

When Marcus frowned but didn’t respond, Vincent said. “She’s right, my friend. We need to know what we’re dealing with here. Whether we need more people, more security, more weapons.”

“Yes, yes, and yes,” Marcus said at once. He definitely wanted anything and everything they could get here to keep Divine safe. Running one hand through his sleep-ruffled hair, he dropped to sit on the side of the bed and quickly began to recount everything that had happened since arriving at the carnival. He faltered, however, when he got to the part about his taking bagged blood to Divine, and barging into her RV with his offering without waiting for her to invite him. Just recalling what had happened then was enough to make him want to moan in remembered agony.