Raven Walks (8 page)

“Come on,” he said as he tucked her into his
arms and led her to safety.

And though he was of the same species of the
Creature who had just assaulted her, somehow she felt safer knowing
he was there.

Though it made no logical sense, she knew it
was in her best interest to follow where Raven walked.

Raven watched the candlelight dance across
Abigail’s sleeping face. She hadn’t wanted to return to the coven
with him, but rather put as much distance as possible between
herself and the horrible creature that attacked her. But as was his
nature, Raven did not take no for an answer.

Somehow, she knew she could trust him. She’d
been short on heroes or saviors for quite a long while now, but
somehow she sensed that if he hadn’t hurt her by now, he wouldn’t.
And that, really, was the scariest revelation of all. Abigail had a
long history of taking men that wouldn’t hurt her and turning them
into men who did. She had created monsters before.

The real question now was could she trust
herself not to do it again?

To put her mind at ease he hadn’t made
another advance on her. Instead he lulled her to sleep with his
words and his thoughts. Finally her emerald eyes closed and the
tension drained from her face.

He wanted to reach out and touch her, but had
resisted.

He didn’t know why he resisted. He just knew
it would be better if he did.

He sat in the chair beside the door, keeping
watch. If her attacker returned to find her, Raven would be
prepared.

He rested his head against the wall. Who had
attacked Abigail? That was the real question. There was no mystery
as to why. Vampires were predators in the truest sense of the word.
They were the top of the food chain. Chasing down a scared human in
an alley wasn’t unlike a cheetah stalking a gazelle. It was just
the natural order of things, in any way the vampire life could be
natural.

But modern vampires tended to feast upon the
blood of the willing. There were covens such as this one where they
found shelter, havens for those who wished to be fed upon matched
only by those who wanted to feed. It was a time in history Raven
was glad to he had survived long enough to see.

He remembered the not so distant past when
vampires roamed as serial killers of the worst sort: with ravenous
appetites that were never sated, no matter how many lives were
extinguished in their wake. There was no sex back then. The act of
feeding was the act of sex. Sharp, lengthened fangs would penetrate
soft, virgin skin; bodily fluids were exchanged in an orgasmic
flurry of blood and death.

Now sex rode shotgun to that appetite, and
the need to suck a victim dry had abated over the last century. He
liked to think he himself was a big reason for that change. He was
the one who resisted the label “murderer,” and instead used his
heart-stopping charisma to satisfy a hunger of a different
kind.

But the Creature tonight had been angry, not
lustful. His, or her, intent had been to destroy rather than just
consume. Such motives seemed foreign to Raven, and quite frankly
scared him.

He could only imagine the terror a vulnerable
human like Abi would experience, face to face with someone who was
determined to do her that much harm. Had Raven not come along…

He shuddered. He didn’t want to think about
it.

A knock interrupted his reverie. He quickly
answered so that Abi would not rouse from her peaceful slumber. The
door opened to a tall man whose skin was the shade of mocha and
whose eyes were the color of amber. It was Sebastian Crane.

Sebastian looked beyond him to where Abi lay.
“How is she?” he asked in a low voice.

Raven inched out of the door and into the
hallway. “She is resting.” He didn’t need to ask how Sebastian
would know about the Creature in the alley. Sebastian was the most
powerful psychic vampire he knew, having wandered this Earth for
nearly four hundred years. He’d been sent to the Americas courtesy
of a slave ship, where he proceeded to fight his own civil war
throughout the 1800s with the evilest, meanest slave owners across
the South. He willed them to come to him, to buy him, to try and
torture him – and then punish them with all the power and menace of
a vampire’s wrath.

He knew what evil lay inside the hearts of
monsters, both human and immortal.

It frightened Raven immediately that
Sebastian looked as troubled as he felt. He placed a hand on
Raven’s shoulder. “Which is more than I could say for you, my
friend.”

Raven rubbed his eyes. It was true, between
all the events of the last few days Raven felt as though he hadn’t
slept in about a hundred years. He was weary with worry. “It’s been
a rough couple of days,” he stated unnecessarily as they began to
pace the hall together. “Have you heard anything else about
Sonja?”

Sebastian shook his head. “The last person
who saw her was Constantine.”

Raven smirked. “And therein lies the
problem.”

Again, Sebastian shook his head. “If
Constantine turned her, he’d wear it like a badge of honor. He’s a
greedy son of a bitch, but he’s also vain. That’s one thing you can
count on.”

Raven agreed with a reluctant nod. It was
just easier to blame Constantine than to contemplate there was
someone else out there – someone worse.

Sebastian knew what his friend was feeling.
“It’s just better not to get involved,” he finally said, his amber
eyes leveled on Raven.

Raven met his gaze. “Meaning?”

“You know what I mean. Humans are not our
equal. They’re our prey. To grow attached to them while we walk the
constant tightrope of lover and killer isn’t fair to anybody.”
Raven looked away. He knew what he was saying was true. He just
didn’t really want to hear it right now. “Deep down,” Sebastian
told him in a low voice, “We are all that Creature in the
alley.”

Raven stepped back. He refused to believe
that. “I’ve got to get back,” he told Sebastian as he quickly
turned away.

“Remember what I said,” the older vampire
called to his departing back. “To save her life, you must set her
free.”

Raven slammed the door behind him as he went
into the room where he’d hidden Abigail. She barely stirred. The
sleep he put her under was deep. He was thankful for that. Maybe
she could awaken and forget everything. Forget the incident in the
alley, forget the way he’d taken Tracy Lynn – maybe even forget
him.

It would be better, Raven thought to himself
as he came to sit beside her on the bed. This time he didn’t resist
touching her face. He ran a fingertip along the line of her jaw,
the smooth silk of her cheek. Her body responded to his touch. Her
mouth parted and a soft sigh escaped.

He traced a finger across her virgin neck and
then across the creamy exposed skin of her chest. He watched her
breasts pucker up to him as the blush rose up her neck and across
her face. This time she moaned, and his body responded to the soft,
sensual sound.

His finger continued its journey in between
her supple breasts and across the curve of her stomach. Her legs
opened slightly. He knew he could have her right then and there if
he wanted.

“
To save her life, you must set her
free
.”

He growled with frustration as he yanked his
hand away. Damn it to hell, why did he care? Why did it matter? She
was merely prey, subject to his hunger and his desire.

Then he remembered the fire in her eyes and
her righteous indignation as she interrogated him about Tracy Lynn.
She was defiant as she challenged him, letting him know that she
would be no easy conquest. It was though she was desperate to prove
that to him, and to herself.

He’d felt more alive in those moments than he
had in nearly two hundred years of feasting and fucking without
restraint or regret.

A small knock at the door preceded
Constantine poking his head into the room. “How is she?” he asked,
and truly seemed genuine in his concern.

But Raven was unimpressed. He glared at the
younger vampire. “How do you think she is? Probably regretting the
moment she ever walked into this place.” He looked down on her
again. “I can’t blame her.”

Constantine approached. His master’s anger
was irrelevant to him. “I’ll take her home. She won’t want to wake
up here.”

Raven stood to face him. “How do I know that
you’re not the one who wants to murder her?”

Constantine looked him straight in the eye.
“Because you know.”

Raven studied him for a moment. Finally,
“I’ll let you take her if you promise one thing.”

“I don’t make promises,” Constantine was
quick to point out. But Raven simply waited. With great reluctance,
Constantine bit out, “What?”

“Never bring her back here. You take her
home, you vanish from her life, leaving her the same way you found
her. Let her free.”

Constantine glared at his master for a moment
as he contemplated his options. “Why do you care, Raven?”

Raven only wished he knew. He said
nothing.

Constantine walked around Raven to perch on
the edge of the bed next to Abi. “You know, this reminds me of a
time when I left the woman I loved in your care. Entrusted you,
even. Remind me again, Raven. How did that work out?”

“I’m not going to apologize again,” Raven
told him. “It’ll never be enough for you.”

“You got that right.” Constantine looked down
at Abigail, and his anger seemed to evaporate somewhat. “She
reminds me of Nina in a lot of ways. She’s strong, she’s stubborn.”
He looked back at Raven. “Even if I tell her not to return, she
will.”

Raven thought back to the Creature. “I doubt
that.”

Constantine turned back to Abi and brushed
her copper hair from her face. “You could have taken her, you
know.”

Raven felt the desire bubble up inside of him
as he glanced down at Abigail, still flushed from his hands on her
body. Physically he wrenched away. “I’m not like you,” the older
vampire retorted as he walked to the door. “I have respect for the
living.”

Constantine watched Raven depart. “I haven’t
promised you anything yet, you know!”

Raven turned to glare at him from the door.
“You wouldn’t want to disappoint your master, now, would you?”

The door slammed and Constantine growled with
his own frustration. He gathered Abigail into his arms and took off
into the night.

In his own quarters, Sebastian drank wine
from a pewter goblet. He gazed out of his window at the moon riding
high across the dark summer night. A lone tear hovered at the
corner of his eye as he thought about the loves he’d lost over the
past hundreds of years. The advice he’d given Raven was solid. It
was just a shame it was advice he himself had never learned how to
heed.

He could still name them off one by one.
Alana. Josephine. Elizabeth. Rayn.

Sonja.

His eyes closed and he recalled that dark
winter night she had first sneaked into the club, a mere teenager
at best. She had been a child of the streets. She was hungry. She
was cold. But she was not afraid. It was that last part that had
him hooked the moment he looked into her wide eyes, the same shade
of topaz as his own. He had been unable to turn her away, even
though he knew that would have been best.

For years he looked over her like a daughter.
He nurtured her and protected her. And he had loved her. God, how
he had loved her. Much more than she could have ever known.

Now she was gone. A victim to his lineage. He
sat the goblet down with a slam. He should have turned her himself,
he thought. It was the only way to protect her, he understood that
now. If he couldn’t stay away, and only the gods knew how he
couldn’t, then he could have turned her and trained her to be as
powerful as he.

But that chance was long gone now. He grasped
the goblet and hurled it across the room, smashing the stained
glass window. After a moment of luxuriating in his impulsive
action, he gathered his senses and walked over to the window, to
pull the heavy drapes closed.

And that’s when he saw her, standing under a
broken street light.

Like a flash he flew from his window and
landed on the ground behind her. Her short dark hair glistened in
moonlight. That familiar tribal tattoo crawled across her lower
back. She hadn’t turned to face him, even though he knew she could
feel his presence.

“Sonja,” he spoke softly.

He approached cautiously. Something was not
right. Her energy was not the same; and he should know because he
fed from her many times. Her aura was small and dim. It was like
she was in another spiritual realm.

“Sonja,” he said again, louder, with more
command. He reached out and touched her shoulder and she jumped
from the contact. He gently turned her around and then gasped when
he saw her pale eyes and her tiny fangs.

She had just awoken, and had yet to feed.

He effortlessly lifted the small woman in his
arms and then sprang back to his quarters. He had to protect her
now. She was most vulnerable then. He couldn’t protect her as a
human, but now she was one of his own. He knew exactly what she
needed.

The drapes closed behind them, he carried her
to his velvet draped bed. She was gasping for air as she trembled,
almost like a seizure. He touched the hair that framed her face,
stuck to her skin in a cold sweat. Her dead eyes looked right
through him.

“Don’t worry, my love,” he whispered. “You’ll
be better soon.”

He tossed aside his cape and unbuttoned his
shirt. Gently he lay down beside her. He touched her hair, her face
and her neck. As his fingers lit upon the wounds there, they began
to sputter and breathe. She coughed before she leaned over and
wretched. But her stomach was empty.