Vacation with a Vampire & Other Immortals (15 page)

When he was finished, he spun, faced the hulking black shadow of the university and raced toward the woman who was now the center of his life.

“Y
ou stupid bitch.” Derek yanked at her hair until Emma’s eyes watered. “You won’t stop this.”

He forced her through one of the oldest buildings on the Edinburgh campus, using her like a divining rod. He faced her first one way and then the next, down long, empty corridors of what seemed to be an ancient section of the university. When he didn’t find what he was searching for, he dragged her farther along the darkened halls.

Now that her time was running out, all Emma wanted was the chance to tell Bain she loved him. To let him know that the past week—despite everything—had been the most amazing of her life. That she would love him forever. That maybe, one day, she’d be born again and they’d have another chance.

But even with that, she kept her thoughts closed to him, afraid of distracting him while he was fighting. He would come to her. She knew it.
Believed
it. All she had to do was stay alive long enough for him to come storming to her rescue.

Then her racing thoughts crashed to an end. She jolted in Derek’s grip as something dark and ancient awakened in her blood and made it buzz as if it sizzled just beneath her skin. Evil wasn’t just a word, she told herself as she felt the black stain of it slide through her system. It was alive and hungry and calling to her as if to a lover. Emma moaned and pulled back, instinctively trying to distance herself from the source of that power.

Derek laughed in her ear and his voice was a hiss of sound. “I knew you’d find it for me. Blood calls to the cup. Soon this will be over. Soon, my brothers will own this world and all of you will service us.”

Oh, God.

Fist still in her hair, Derek dragged her down the hall, enjoying her struggles to get free. The dark heat emanating from the cup was more intense the closer they got and Emma’s body erupted in a sheen of sweat. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t force enough air into her lungs to keep from feeling light-headed, dizzy and disoriented.

At last, her mind helplessly sought out Bain’s.
It’s here. Derek found it. Help me.

Emma!

The roar of her Highlander’s voice in her mind was a momentary comfort. Finally, though, Emma’s body seized up at her nearness to the cup. A faint, tight moan slid from her throat and Derek laughed. Throwing the closest door open, he stepped inside and spotted the very thing he was searching for.

Emma dropped to the floor, trying to make herself a smaller target. She curled into herself, trying to ease the racking pains shuddering through her now that she was so close to that damned cup.

It was no use, though. Just being in the same room with the thing was killing her. She felt her bones shrieking. Felt her soul cringe and her blood boil. There was ancient power in that cup. Dark and evil.

She looked up as Derek took the cup from a low shelf and ran his long, pale fingers over it in slow, loving strokes. The ancient bronze cup was battered and stained, its once-pristine surface blackened through time and the evil that had brought it into existence. The inscription etched around its rim was barely legible. But when Derek lifted it, those faded symbols suddenly illuminated with a dark red light that seemed to burn into the bronze, rejuvenating the cup into what it had been in the beginning.

A dark promise of death and power and change.

“You see?” Derek sighed. “It reacts to me. It knows its time has come.”

Emma watched him smile at the damn thing, and for a moment, she half expected him to kiss it as sports champions kissed a hard-won trophy.

He slanted a look at her. “The demon world has long sought this cup. Forged by your ancestors for use when worshiping the old ones.”

He walked close and crouched beside her where she huddled on the floor. His burning, maniacal gaze speared into her eyes. “It was lost centuries ago. Even my kind couldn’t find it. Buried and forgotten, the cup lay hidden beneath the earth. Until a new housing project was begun. It was freed from the muck and brought here to wait for your arrival. Now it sings to me.”

Pain welled and blossomed inside her. The closer the cup was to her, the deeper the agony twisting within. How could her ancestors have forged a bargain with whatever had created that cup? How could they have thought, even for a moment, that anything was worth the fetid stench of the thing being brought into this world?

She shuddered, lungs collapsing, brain burning, and still she managed to look into Derek’s eyes and whisper, “Bain will stop you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, bitch.” He smiled. “Your Guardian is as good as dead.”

“Not quite yet.”

Emma heard Bain’s voice and reacted instantly. Fighting the crippling pain inside her, she took advantage of Derek’s momentary surprise. She reached out, batted the cup out of his hand, then watched as it rolled across the room toward Bain. He kicked it out of reach, lifted his sword and smiled at the demon. “Your plan is finished.”

Her hand burned where she’d touched the cup, but already, with distance, the pain she felt began to fade just enough to make drawing breath easier.

“I’ll kill the bitch!” Derek dragged her to her feet, and stood behind her, using her body as a shield. He grinned at Bain and said, “So you see, your plan ends, as well, Guardian.”

Before Emma could figure out what Derek meant by that, he bit her.

She screamed while white-hot pain lanced through her throat as his teeth dug deeply into her flesh. This, she thought wildly, she hadn’t expected. Her eyes met Bain’s horrified gaze and she felt agony spiral through her system like a tightly wound string suddenly released. Heat, then cold, washed over her,
in
her, as if something hideous—something alive—was racing through her bloodstream. Her gaze locked on Bain, she saw fear dazzle his eyes before the edge of her vision began to go gray.

Over,
she thought.
All over now with no hope of a happily ever after.

A shout of pain, raw with rage, tore from Bain’s throat as he watched Emma slide slowly to the floor at the demon’s feet. He heard her last coherent thought and his soul wept for her even as his body and mind raged with the need for vengeance.

Her green eyes were glazed, her already fair skin going pale as milk. Blood stained her torn throat and ran in bright rivulets down the front of her blue T-shirt. His heart shattered, Bain felt her agony as his own, took the pain inside him and used it to finish the demon that had brought all of this down on them.

Cup forgotten, the demon laughed. “You can’t kill me on this plane, Guardian, but I’ve killed what’s yours.”

Bain had no time for conversation and no wish to talk to the smiling beast standing over Emma. Instead, Bain rushed him, lifted his sword and swung it in a wide arc. The razor-sharp blade sliced through Derek’s neck in one clean stroke. The demon dropped to the floor and Bain kicked the body away from Emma.

Weakly, Emma clapped one hand to her neck. “Thought you said they couldn’t be killed.”

Bain spared the body a quick look. “It’s not dead. Like a lizard, it will regenerate whatever it needs.”

“That’s…gross.” She let her hand fall to her lap, glanced at the bright red blood coating her fingers, took a breath and said, “Not vampires, huh?”

Stop talking
. He tore his shirt off, ripped at the fabric, then folded a strip of the material into a thick square and used it as a pad, holding it to her injured neck. Too much blood loss, he thought, even knowing that the blood wasn’t the real problem. There was no way to keep the truth from her.
You have been poisoned.

“Poisoned? Great. How long do I have?” Her eyes held his, demanding truth when he would have preferred a more gentle lie.

His heart twisted in his chest. The love of his life was so near death it terrified him. He, a Guardian who hadn’t known the bitter taste of fear in too many centuries to count, now felt it overwhelm him.

“Tell me, Bain,” she insisted in a voice that was barely more than a hush.

“Not long.” Fresh fear as well as despair jolted through Bain. He was going to lose Emma permanently unless he acted. Soon. But the “cure” was not a sure thing. How could he risk it? Yet how could he not?

I love you, you know.

Her voice sounded in his mind and he wondered frantically how he could go on throughout eternity never knowing the touch of her thoughts again.

“I know,” he said, kissing her forehead, sweeping her curls back from her pale face.

She laughed shortly, painfully.
Not the response I wanted.

“Then I will give you what you need to hear. What I need most desperately to say. I love you, Emma Campbell Madison,” he told her softly. “And trust me when I say I never thought to put the words
love
and
Campbell
in the same sentence.”

She smiled, as he’d hoped she would, then closed her eyes on a soft moan. Time was ticking past. Every moment lost brought them that much closer to an end that he could not even contemplate. How could he be expected to go on through the eons without Emma at his side? Without her smile, her laugh, her touch? How could he face a long eternity of darkness with no promise of love or laughter to warm him?

He could not.
Would not.
Bain knew he had to act quickly. But first, he must tell her what he was thinking and then convince her to take the risk. To chance life. With him.

There is a way to perhaps defeat the poi son.

She slowly, painfully, opened her eyes and looked at him, waiting for whatever else came next.

“Living flame.” He said the words aloud, as if testing the sound of them on his tongue.

Clearly confused, she frowned and asked, “How?”

“You must walk through it.” She blinked at him and he heard her thoughts, scattershot through her mind. More than that, he felt her fear, her reluctance to leave him, and he felt her waning strength. He waited, though, for her to speak her doubts aloud.

“Through eternal fire?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling her to her feet, supporting her weight easily when her knees buckled and she slumped against him. He cradled her tightly to his chest and knew that he would do whatever was necessary to keep her there. With him. Where she belonged. “It is dangerous. But it should work.”

“Should?”

She was even paler now, her skin nearly translucent, as if she were already beginning to leave him and this world behind. Everything in Bain was a defiant fist, refusing to let her go.

He cupped her face in his palm, forcing her to look up into his eyes. “Hear me, Emma. There are no guarantees in life. Not even when one is immortal. Yes, there is a risk to you. The flames could kill you. But without them, you will most surely die and I find I can’t bear the thought of it.”

Her eyes shone with unshed tears and she tried to lift a hand to touch his face. But she couldn’t quite manage the task. “You do love me.”

“Aye,” he muttered thickly, “I do at that and seeing you in pain is tearing at me. I won’t lose you, Emma. But, ultimately, you are the one who must choose. Choose life, Emma. Choose the risk. If the eternal flames don’t kill you, the poison will be gone from your system and you will be immortal.”

Just like that?

He caught the flicker of hope in her mind and clung to it.

“Standing in the fire is not an easy thing,” he warned. “The flames will consume the poison. Consume that damned cup. Consume your mortality.”

“What’ll be left?” Her voice was barely a whisper now, as if she were nearly too far gone already for him to reach.

“You,” he insisted. “You will be left. The essence of you. And you will be with me. Always. There will be
us.
It will work, Emma. I will stand in the fire with you. I will take as much of the pain as I can, but you will have to trust me, Emma. Do you?”

Instead of answering, a question simmered in her mind and slammed into his.

You’ve been hiding something from me, Bain. Something in your mind you don’t want me to see. So before I answer your question, tell me what that is.

His arms, so strong, so capable, felt useless as he cradled the only important thing in his world. He sensed her body shutting down, the demon’s poison slithering through her blood, infecting tissue and bone. Draining the life from her inch by inexorable inch. All Bain knew was that she must survive, so he gave her the one thing he’d kept from her.

“I didn’t want you to know that an immortal may give up eternity. Become human.”

“What?” Her eyes were clouded now, nearly opaque as her eyesight failed. Her breath was coming in short, irregular gasps. “You could become human?”

“Yes,” he said, ashamed now that he’d ever thought to hide it from her. “Guardians can choose to give up the life of battle, become mortal like their mates. But I didn’t wish to. A warrior is all I have ever been. I could not step away from my duty, Emma. Not even for you.”

You big dummy.

His eyebrows arched high on his forehead.

She sighed heavily. “I wouldn’t want you to be less than you are, Bain. I fell in love with my Highland warrior. Why would I want him to be anything else?”

“I am a fool.”

Yeah, pretty much.
Her laughter was fading now, too, the soft sigh of it in his mind more of an echo of what it had once been.

“We can’t wait,” he announced. “The demon’s poison spread faster than I expected.”

Her head lolled against his chest.
I trust you, Bain. Build me a fire.

He did. Holding her propped against him with one arm, with his free hand, he sketched ancient symbols in the air. His fingers drew light and magic from the cold, drafty room, and as he whispered words of an ancient tongue known only to the Guardians, the very air around them shimmered and twisted with power.