Vampires Gone Wild (Love at Stake #13.5)(19)
Author: Kerrelyn Sparks

Chapter Four

“HE’S HERE.”

Valiance could smell his blood on the wind. Mondrian had always been good at tracking, but Valiance had never fully appreciated his brother’s skills until his scent stopped right outside a house with a magical border around it a mile thick. The white stones around Esme’s house glowed in the moonlight, creating a boundary around the property Valiance was sure he couldn’t even get through.

Violet crouched beside him. “Think we just confirmed your girl is family.”

“She’s not my . . .” Valiance dropped it. Violet wasn’t going to stop, and he didn’t have the breath to waste.

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

Valiance had to shift his weight to accommodate the fire burning down his injured leg. “Wait him out. And then you can see if she’s okay tomorrow morning.”

“That’s not the Valiance I saw stand up against his Clade Source.”

Valiance clenched his jaw, and the entire back of his head lit up like a lightning storm, all bright lights and pain. His jaw was still throbbing though he’d set it himself on the way over here. The blood from the crack on the back of his head was dried now and made the leather of his sheath itchy.

Violet winced for him. “You need to feed, don’t you? It’s why you’re not healing. Not enough of your own power to heal yourself. Isn’t that how it works?”

“You volunteering?”

Violet finally shut up for two seconds, so he could think. Mondrian wouldn’t be able to get through that border, especially if his intentions were to hurt Esme. But even if Valiance was right and Mondrian couldn’t see Esme, he might be able to see her grandmother.

Valiance might be able to make it through the border. Make sure they were okay. But if Esme had seen three seconds of what happened in the parking lot, she was never going speak to him again, let alone invite him in to wait out the night against another vampire.

His head dropped down to his chest. His true colors had shown through, and she’d seen them and ran.

“I smell pity,” Violet said.

“You smell a man realizing he should have stayed in the shop.”

“Yep. Self-pity. Smells a little like rotten milk.”

“Were you always so campy?” He looked over at his Prima.

She nodded. “Yes, actually. But I’m right.”

Violet jumped and reached for the glowing cell phone in her back pocket. “Just when things were getting good.” She sighed as sat down on the cold ground. “Hello. What? Now? I’m kinda in the middle of something, Nash. Oh, well talk about burying the lead. Of course. I’ll meet you there.”

Violet hung up the phone, and her energy danced around her. “I have to go.”

“What?” Valiance snapped.

“Kandice just went into labor a month early. I have to go.”

“You’ve got a hostile vampire hunting innocents in the city.”

Violet patted him on the back. “And I’ve got my best Riko on the case.”

“Riko? That’s a shifter title.”

Violet ran her fingers through her long hair as she pulled it back into a ponytail. She slipped off her tennis shoes and shoved them in her messenger bag. “I’m a shifter. The words are pretty. Do you accept?”

“Accept what?”

“The rules and responsibilities of being the warrior and the protector of the pack?” She zipped up her jacket against the cold wind. She dropped her personal borders, and her power sizzled around them. “Do you accept?”

Valiance knew you didn’t say “no” to Violet, and even if you did, it didn’t stay a “no.” “Yes?”

“Wonderful. From what I’ve heard, there’s a vampire going around and attacking innocents. Take care of it. Call Tucker if you can’t handle it.”

Violet winked. In a blur of black and a whirl of energy, her panther form streaked down the street in the direction of downtown before Valiance could even manage a protest.

He clenched his jaw, and the pain flared again. “I don’t have my cell phone,” he finally said to the wind.

“Told you she wasn’t worth it.” Mondrian appeared in the street before Valiance, his hands casually in his pockets.

Valiance rose. The slick red over Mondrian’s lips was unmistakable, even in the dim glow from the streetlights. He’d gotten a chance to feed. It was like hitting a reset button on the evening. He’d be faster now, stronger than Valiance who barely had anything, power or blood, left.

“The Prima trusts us to clean up our own messes.”

Anger made the angles along Mondrian’s face sharper, uglier. “Is that what I am? A mess to clean up?”

Valiance walked out onto the street, hiding the wince of every step. “Destroyed my evening.”

Mondrian looked at the small house. “So your girl is special?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going to kill me, your own brother, to protect her?”

“Yes.” The honesty rang through Valiance and made the sword on his back hum with anticipation.

Valiance saw another figure in the darkness. Female. Older. And completely under the sway. He recognized the glassy eyes of the woman as she stumbled this way and that. Like a marionette on strings, she danced how Mondrian wanted her to dance.

Valiance didn’t have time to get her before she fell to her knees beside the white stone periphery of the house, her teeth snapping against each other as she dropped. Where a vampire couldn’t touch the protective border, an innocent human would have no problem pulling a stone out of place to break the spell.

He ran for her, but Mondrian met him in the middle of the street. His brother slammed against him with the force of a semitruck, and they flew down the street. Valiance landed hard on the pavement, with his brother on top of him, and they rolled, both struggling for the upper hand.

There was a distinct clap of flesh meeting something solid, but it didn’t come from him.

Valiance looked over from his position beneath Mondrian to see an old woman with a baseball bat standing over the limp body of the puppet woman. It had to be Esme’s grandmother, the abuelita she spoke so lovingly about, wielding the bat like Babe Ruth himself.

The older woman’s courage gave Valiance the kick he needed. He threw Mondrian over his head and jumped to his feet. He used the last of his energy to enhance himself, heal his leg, and give his muscles the strength they needed to wield his sword.

“Keep the circle,” he called out to the old woman.

The woman yelled something back at him. But he missed it when his eyes landed on Esme standing in the doorway of their small house. The entire world stopped for a moment, and he was caught up in the sight of her. Her dark hair unbound, her cheeks flushed, she glowed in the doorway of her home with her tear-filled eyes.

He heard Mondrian’s sword sing as it cut through the air behind him. Valiance ducked and felt the wind of the attack against his hair.

Valiance swung his arm back hard, and Mondrian’s ribs cracked under his blow. He turned around sharply and swept Mondrian’s legs out from underneath him. The other vampire bounced against the concrete like a rubber ball. Valiance caught his shirt in his fist and threw him at the protective spell.

Mondrian slammed against the magical border and sizzled and seized within the white energy before being thrown across the street into a car. There was no alarm, just Mondrian’s long groan.

Valiance tried not to smile, but it was the first break he’d gotten all evening.

He turned back to the house, where Esme and her grandmother were together on the porch. He walked over to the edge of the white stones but didn’t dare step across. He looked at Esme. “Are you okay?”

“No problem here,” her grandmother said, her grip still tight on the bat.

“Stay inside. I’ll be right—”

Mondrian’s boot landed square between Valiance’s shoulders, and he flew forward through the white-stone protective spell and landed hard on the frozen ground of her front yard.

Mondrian’s hand clamped down on Valiance’s ankle and raked him back along the ground. As Valiance struggled to stop, he felt the protection spell break around him as he pulled a white stone from its place, like the pop of an electrical transformer.

Mondrian ripped him from the ground and threw Valiance into the same car that had broken his own fall. Valiance let gravity take him and slid down to the pavement. He couldn’t feel his legs for a moment and fell forward to his knees, seeing nothing but stars.

He leaned back against the car and shook the celestial array from his vision. He had to blink a few times for his sight to focus.

Mondrian was already on the porch. He grabbed Esme’s grandmother and locked an arm around her neck, swinging her petite frame around like a rag doll.

He was less than a foot away from Esme, who had plastered herself against the outside wall next to the door.

His brother didn’t need to yell; the wind carried his threats fine enough. “Bet she never goes out with you again if you let her grandmother die.”

Mondrian cloaked him and her grandmother in darkness and blurred away into the night.

Valiance tried to push himself up against the car, but the power was gone. He fell to the concrete. He couldn’t breathe. Everything hurt, but it wasn’t over. He might not have his unnatural strength, but he was still breathing. He wouldn’t stop fighting until he stopped breathing.

Slowly, he pushed himself up to his feet and stumbled to the edge of the yard. He carefully put the stone he’d dragged out of alignment back into place.

He looked up to see Esme still standing on the porch, like a frightened statue, only her wide eyes following him across the yard.

“Do you know where the locking stone is?” he asked. He started to walk the periphery. He didn’t know much about this kind of magic, but he knew the locking stone needed to be recharged if the border was going to go up.

Esme didn’t answer, just watched him.

He kept walking. Fairy magic wasn’t foreign to him; he was one, for Christ’s sake. The glamour, the seeing of the unseen. The taking and giving of natural magic. Granted, he was the darker distant cousin of what normal people thought as fey, but the same principles applied. Too bad he’d never dabbled too much in garden magic.

It could have been his raw state, but as he passed the corner stone in the yard, a power sort of tickled at his ankle. He knelt. Well, it was supposed to be a kneel, but really he fell forward, landing next to a larger than average white stone half-buried in the yard.

He put his hand on the stone, and it was warm. A normal fae could probably just push power into the stone, but he was a vampire. It had to be blood with him.

He looked down at his hand to find a small trickle seeping from a wound on his knuckles. He smeared it against the stone. The periphery jumped back to life, like plugging back in a line of Christmas lights. What did you know? He did have it in him.

He had to take a deep breath before he pushed himself to his feet. When he did, Esme was standing right next to him. The spell between them didn’t prevent him from smelling the flowers in her hair or seeing the bright sparkle in her eyes from the fearful tears that stayed wavering on the edge.

“Where did he take her?” she asked.

“I do not know. But I will get her back.”

Esme looked him over from head to toe. “She didn’t tell me much except that you’re a . . .”

Valiance cringed. He didn’t want her to say the word; it would kill everything within him to hear the disdain in her voice.

“That you can see me because you’re a good guy.”

Valiance felt like he could breathe again.

“You’d better come inside. You don’t look so good. And someone’s going to notice that car.”

He shook his head. “We need to find your grandmother.”

“Abuelita is strong, apparently stronger than I ever gave her credit for. You need help before you go and get yourself flattened. Again.”

SHE TOOK HIM into the kitchen, but when she flipped on the light, he flipped it off right behind her. It left the only light in the small room the glow from the stove top and the moonlight that filtered in from the small window.

Fear sizzled down her spine as she went to the far side of the room to get the first-aid kit. However, all the fear turned to a kind of strange excitement as she watched him gingerly take off his jacket and his shredded dress shirt, exposing the sword running down the length of his back. His shoulders were broader than any man’s she’d ever seen, and the handle of the sword seemed to wink at her in the moonlight streaming in from the windows.

He slowly walked across the kitchen to the sink and began to wash his hands.

She grabbed a few towels for him and quickly set them beside him before scurrying back to her place at the end of the counter.

She could see pain in his eyes as he moved. He slowly dried his hands. He wetted the towel and held it to his face, wiping off some of the dried blood and sweat.

He drew in a tired breath before he spoke, his voice low, soft. “Do you still have my phone? I think I need to call for help.”

Esme had to think. The encounter already seemed like a lifetime ago. “It’s in my purse.” She scooted around him quickly and dashed into her room to find it.

The foreign phone was easy to find in her familiar purse, and she slipped back into the kitchen swiftly, setting the phone between them on the counter.

Valiance took it and popped it open. He hit a few buttons and growled as he put the phone to his ear. At least, it sounded like a growl. “No answer.”

Esme gulped. “So no backup?”

Valiance turned around and leaned against the kitchen counter. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve said that too many times.”

Valiance turned his blue eyes to hers. “I am sorry, Esme. I never meant to . . .”