Veil of Midnight (34 page)

Niko might have made a lame joke about the miraculous effects of his sexual prowess, but he knew it was a different kind of magic that had pulled Renata through her reverb. “You drank my blood yesterday. That’s what’s different.”

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“You think your blood not only helped my shoulder but also helped with this? Is that even possible?”

“It’s definitely a possibility. A Breedmate who regularly drinks a vampire’s blood becomes much stronger than she would be without it. Aging slows to a snail’s pace. Her body’s cells, muscles, and entire metabolism reach peak fitness and health. And yeah, a lot of times a Breed male’s blood will impact her psychic ability too.”

“That’s why Sergei never had me drink from him,” Renata said, her mind already speeding ahead toward the same conclusion Niko had reached. “He made no secret that he liked the fact that my power was limited to small bursts. The couple of times I tried to hit him with it, I could never hold it on him long enough to take him down, and in the end the effort always cost me dearly once the reverb set in.”

“Sergei Yakut was Gen One,” Niko reminded her. “His blood in your system might have made you practically unstoppable.”

Renata scoffed quietly. “Just one more shackle he kept on me. He must have known I would have killed him if I had even the smallest hope that I might succeed.” She fell silent for a minute, idly plucked at a blade of grass on the floor of the makeshift shelter. “I did try to kill him…the day Mira and I fled the lodge together. That was the day he put the hot andiron to my back. He did other things to me that day too.”

Nikolai didn’t have to ask what more she had endured. The scars from the brands that had been seared onto her back were heinous enough, but to think Yakut’s punishment went even further…Niko’s blood roiled with outrage. He put his hand over hers. “Jesus, Renata. I’m sorry.”

She glanced up at him, a steady green gaze that wasn’t seeking sympathy. “His only mercy was that he didn’t force Mira to watch everything that was done to me. But Sergei told me that if she or I tried to escape again, or if I ever turned my mind’s power on him even a little, it would be Mira who’d pay in the same ways I had. He promised worse for her, and I knew he meant it…so I stayed. I stayed, and I obeyed him, and every hour of every day I hoped for some miracle that would erase Sergei Yakut from my life.” She paused, reaching up to caress his face. “Then you came and everything changed. I guess in many ways, you are my miracle.”

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Nikolai captured her hand and placed a kiss in the heart of her palm.

“We’re both fortunate.”

“I’m glad Sergei is dead,” she confessed softly.

“He should have suffered more,” Niko said, not even trying to curb the dark edge of his voice. “But he’s gone.”

Renata nodded. “And now Lex is dead too. Yakut’s guards. All of them.”

“By this hour of the morning, he and the others in the lodge are nothing but ash,” Niko said as he reached up to hook some of her glossy black hair behind her ear. “After you fell asleep last night I went back in and opened all the shutters for the sunlight to do its thing. I also called Boston to give them the numbers in Lex’s cell phone. Gideon’s going to call us with details once he’s run traces on them.”

Another nod, her voice soft with hope. “Okay.”

“While I was in there, I also brought you something I thought you might be missing.”

He leaned over to the stash of weapons and other assorted supplies he’d retrieved and picked up the silk-and-velvet package that belonged to Renata.

“My blades,” she gasped, joy brightening her face as she took the package from his hands. She untied the ribbons that secured it and unrolled the length of velvet that encased the four custom-engraved daggers. “Jack gave these to me…”

“I know. He told me that he had them made for you as a gift. He said he wasn’t sure you’d kept them.”

“I’ve cherished them,” she murmured, tracing the hand-tooled hilts with her fingertip.

“I told him that you still had them. He was glad to hear how much they mean to you.”

Her tender gaze bathed him in gratitude. “Nikolai…thank you. For doing that for Jack, and for giving these back to me. Thank you.”

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She came toward him and kissed him. The brief press of her lips slowly melted into something deeper. Nikolai cupped her face in his hands, smoothing his thumbs over the softness of her jaw, the delicate angle of her cheekbones. She parted her lips as his tongue swept along their seam, then moaned sweetly as he delved inside.

His fangs stretched into sharp points as lust ran through him like fire. Between his legs, his sex was a column of granite, rising instantly to the thought of having Renata beneath him. When her hand trailed down past the waistband of his pants to touch him, his greedy cock leapt, surging even harder under the heat of her palm as she stroked him.

“What time is it?” she murmured against his fevered mouth.

He grunted, too engrossed in the torment of her petting to immediately process the question. Through the rough sawing of his breath, he managed to rasp, “It’s early. Probably sometime around nine.”

“Well, damn, I guess that is pretty early,” she murmured, moving her mouth away from his and kissing a trail of heat along his throat, playing over the knob of his Adam’s apple. “You can’t be out in the sunlight, right?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm.” Her moist lips descended, onto his bare chest. He leaned back onto his elbows as she followed one of his
glyphs
with the tip of her pink tongue, tracing the arcs and the tapering swirls around his nipple and across the plane of his stomach. When she spoke, her voice vibrated all the way into his bones. “So, I guess that means we’re stuck here for a while, huh?”

“Yeah.” The word was more gasp than sound. Her kiss traveled lower now, past his navel, still following the lines of his
dermaglyphs,
heading for the part of him that was straining, throbbing with the need to feel those moist hot lips clamped around him.

“Stuck here until nightfall, I suppose.”

“Uh-huh.” She took one end of the waistband’s drawstring ties between her teeth and gave it a hard tug. The knot fell loose, and she pulled the warm-ups down, just enough to bare the eager head of his

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cock. She licked him, watching his face as she swirled her devilish tongue around the fat plum of his flesh, suckling at the drop of slick fluid that beaded there.

“Ah, Christ…”

“So,” she murmured, her breath skating across his wet skin, tormenting him even more. “What are we going to do in here all day while we wait for nightfall?”

Niko chuckled. “Baby, I can think of a hundred things I’d like to do with you.”

She smiled up at him in challenge. “Only a hundred?”

Before he could fire back a smartass reply, she wrapped her lips around his cock and took him deep into her mouth. As Niko’s body went nuclear with pleasure, he found himself praying that the day and his time alone with this incredible woman—his woman—could stretch on forever.

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Twenty-six

Renata walked into the back door of the lodge and paused just over the threshold. She had left Nikolai in the shelter, deciding that her need for the bathroom, a hot shower, and a change of clothes that actually fit her was greater than her reluctance to step foot ever again in Sergei Yakut’s domain.

Now she hesitated. The early afternoon sun was a warm presence at her back, encouraging her along, but inside the lodge was dim and cold. Shadows played over the toppled furniture and stretched across the rough planks of the floor. She drifted in, and walked toward the place where Lex had fallen.

His body was gone, the blood too. Nothing but the smallest trace of ash left behind—just as Nikolai had promised. The shutters on the bedroom window were thrown wide open, but the sun had since moved past. A fresh breeze carried the scent of pine pitch and crisp forest air into the dank stillness of the place. Renata breathed it deeply into her lungs, letting the fragrance of the new day purge her memories of all the death and blood and violence that had cloaked the lodge last night.

Today, in this new light, so much seemed different to her.

She herself seemed different, and she knew the reason why.

She was in love.

For the first time in a very long time, perhaps in all her life, she knew a sense of true hope. It nestled in her heart—a belief that her future held something more than just bare survival, that she might at some point measure happiness in years, not rare, fleeting moments. Being with Nikolai, whether in his arms or standing by his side, made her believe so many things were possible.

Renata walked into the great room, bolstered by the fact that this would be the last time she’d need to look at the place.

This was good-bye.

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When she and Nikolai left here to continue their search for Mira, this lodge, the terrible barn and holding pen out back, Sergei Yakut, Lex, and everything else that scarred the past two years of her life would be history. She would leave all of it here, the ugliness and pain banished from any part of her future.

This part of her life was over.

She strode into the small bathroom she’d shared with Mira, at peace with herself and her surroundings as she turned on the hot water for the shower. As a humid steam began to roll out from the curtain, she unfastened the few buttons left on Jack’s borrowed oxford shirt and stood there for a moment, naked, contemplating her future with new eyes. She didn’t know what awaited once night fell and a dangerous new leg of this journey began, but she was ready to face it head-on.

With Nikolai beside her—with hope and love burning as bright as a flame in her heart—she was prepared to take on anything.

Like a battle-bound knight seeking anointing and blessing, Renata stepped under the hot spray of the shower. She closed her eyes in a solemn prayer as the cleansing water poured over her.

* * *

Nikolai stayed in the shade of the vine shelter as Renata’s footsteps approached from outside.

“Knock, knock,” she called to him through the leaves. “Coming in now, so watch the daylight. Wouldn’t want you going crispy on me.”

She parted some of the thick greenery and slipped inside, mouthing a quick apology when she noticed he had Lex’s cell phone at his ear. Niko had called the Order soon after she’d gone out to the lodge to clean up. The news out of Boston was a mix of good and bad, along with an extra helping of seriously fucked up.

The good? One of the numbers on Lex’s phone was, in fact, Edgar Fabien’s. Using that bit of intel, Gideon had been able to hack into Fabien’s records in the International Identification Database. Now the

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Order had the addresses for the Darkhaven leader’s Montreal residence, his country house, as well as data on all his other property holdings, both business and personal. Gideon had access to Fabien’s cell phone numbers, license plate tags, computer files, even the son of a bitch’s electronic surveillance equipment at the Montreal Darkhaven.

And that’s where the bad had come in.

Edgar Fabien wasn’t home. Gideon’s hacking had turned up a video feed from early last night showing a group of seven Breed males—one of them presumably Fabien—leaving the Darkhaven in the company of Enforcement Agency armed escorts. It had been hard to tell who Fabien’s visitors were, as their tailored suits all looked alike and their faces had been completely obscured by dark hoods.

As for the seriously fucked up part, the group of vampires had left with a child in tow. A young girl who evidently hadn’t gone along peacefully. Gideon’s description of the petite blond female left no question whatsoever that it was Mira.

“You still with me?” Gideon asked on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, still here.”

“Lucan wants Fabien brought into Boston for questioning. That means we need him alive, my man.”

Niko exhaled a curse. “First we have to find the bastard.”

“Yeah, well, I’m all over that. I ran GPS tracers on all of Fabien’s cell phones. Got a lock on a location about an hour north of Yakut’s place—one of the properties on record for Edgar Fabien. It’s got to be him.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure enough that we’ve already sent backup your way. Tegan, Rio, Brock, and Kade are heading north to rendezvous with you as we speak.”