Blood Bath, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series Book 4) (26 page)

This time my hand connected, clamping down on his bicep. "Gotcha!"

"Don't be so pleased with yourself. If I was Bathory you'd already be dead."

"If you were the Blood Countess the only mineral in this bath would be iron." I made the
ba da dum dum cha, drum sound and chuckled at my own lame joke.

"You have a sick sense of humor, has anyone ever told you that?"

"I may have heard it once or twice."

"Try again. The water is the between, you need to be able to feel my movements. Preferably before I am close enough to kill you."

It went on like that, over and over until my fingers were well past pruned and our time in the restorative pool was almost up. We worked through lunch and had run out of bottled water an hour ago. I was exhausted, dehydrated and ready to get the hell out of the steaming water. I'd drastically improved over the last forty-five minutes. Hopefully that meant we'd call it quits.

Mason couldn't get within
arm's reach of me anymore. Of course this wasn't the Matrix and a bullet could still do a lot of damage an arm's length away but I wasn't worried about being shot. Not really. Bathory didn't want me on the ground bleeding out. She wanted me trussed up, bleeding into her bathtub.

"Last time, come on." Mason snapped his fingers. "Don't start daydreaming now."

I wiped at the sweat dripping down from my hairline. "Sshh, I'm having fantasies about drowning you right now."

"
At least you're fantasizing about me. One more time and then I'll take you to dinner. Anywhere you want."

I already knew he wasn't in the bath with me anymore. He didn't try to hide it when he walked up the stairs and got out. The last two times he managed to get waist deep before I felt him in the water. The idea was to catch him the second he broke surface tension. Dinner sounded amazing. I was so hungry he could have offered me
Slim Jims and a Coke and I would have rated it a five star meal.

"Anywhere I want?"

"One of the little perks of being able to do what we do."

Food and more specifically coffee was excellent motiv
ation. I wanted Rhode Island clam chowder and clam cakes followed by dough boys with coffee. The possibility of giving in to my fried fantasy had my mouth watering and me feeling especially confident. I practically smelled the warm donuts covered in granulated sugar. Pushing the thoughts of fried dough out of my mind I found my center and focused on the water.

The water is the between
had become my mantra the last half hour. This time when I sent my senses out the wisps of steam thickened to a familiar fog. The crystal clear water darkened until completely replaced with a soupy grey.

The momentary excitement of the challenge, of actually being done with training for a few hours wasn't enough to counteract the exhaustion. I had accidentally opened myself to the between. Wholly and completely in a way I hadn't felt before, power oozed into ever
y pore

The second Mason pulled back the veil to follow me in I knew he was there. I pulled him to me, ready to claim my prize for winning when two things occurred to me. One, the reason I felt Mason was because he mov
ed like a gale force wind to get to me, and two we weren't alone.

The imprint on the between was familiar. It felt like mine, like a tainted version of me. Bathory. So she hadn't used all the blood poultice. Not that I wanted anyone else to fall prey to the Blood Countess but I was kind of hoping she would have used up all her reserves of my blood by now.

It would have been a hell of a lot easier if we were the only ones using the between. The feel of her in the grey made my skin crawl and stomach turn. It was wrong, her very presence defiling the particles that made up possibility. She closed the distance, moving easily through the decay she caused by being here. Thanks to my blood. I left Mason's side and moved to meet her, to put an end to this. Right here, right now.

Mason slammed into me, tackling me and forcing a rip in the veil that separated one reality from the next. It was lacking the finesse of our first trip but he managed to elude Bathory by taking control of the energy and jumping us back to his house. We landed in a tangled heap, arms and legs entwined, on his bed.

Thank the gods he had good aim because hitting the floor with this momentum would have left a hell of a mark. We stayed that way, with me on top of him, bodies pressed together, until I caught my breath.

"She was right there, Mace. We had her. We could have ended it." Frustrated, I shoved an elbow in his ribs.

"And what were you going to stake her with in just your underwear?"

"
We
could have done it." I struggled against him and might have elbow him again.

He grunted
. "She's stronger than those vampires at the bar, smarter too. Do you really think she would let you rip her heart out?" He shifted to avoid another elbow, his body rubbing against mine. This close I knew he suffered from a different kind of frustration. "I like it when you call me Mace, by the way."

Yeah,
that much was obvious. I started to climb off him, to find clothes before all this flesh on flesh led to something that could end up hurting my heart as much as Bathory wanted to hurt my body. Mason wrapped one long muscular leg around mine and pulled me back down, trapping me in a cage of bare limbs that had me hotter than the one hundred and seven degree water.

I really needed to get up and get dressed. Cotton and denim were my only defense against giving in to the urges I felt every time I was this close to Mason. I knew what I felt, what were both feeling but I also knew it would be a mi
stake to do this now. Too much had happened and all of it involved vampires.

Caligula, Bathory and Aidan. The first two were easier to deal with than the last. I w
ould kill the two murderous vampires but as much as I wanted to kill Aidan it would cause more problems in the long run. He made the decision to end it and deep down I knew he was right. I needed to deal with the way he ended it before I could start something else. Of course right now I still needed to deal with the incredibly sexy, mostly naked man under me.

"It's time for your training but I see the hunter is schooling you in a different subject." A
idan sounded upset. He wasn't entitled to feel angry, as far as I was concerned.

Well that was certainly one way to deal with Aidan,
I thought, feeling a little satisfied that he got a taste of his own medicine. It was glaringly obvious by the dark look in his eyes and the menacing sound of his voice that last night's show was exactly that.

He
still fed from Ryanne, pumping her full of endorphins until she begged for release but pleasure wasn't his goal. Of course part of him enjoyed it, the vampire and the man, but his plan had been to hurt me, to convince me that despite how much we cared about each other it wasn't meant to be. And it worked. Better than he thought if I had to guess by his mood.

I hadn't realized the sun was down and it was time to practice with Aidan until he darken
ed my door. Maybe I'd get off the hook since Bathory was so close. Maybe we would step things up and go after her. Maybe they'd both make me train harder. This should be fun. And by fun I mean tortuous.

Nothing happened between Mason and
me. We hadn't acted on the attraction we - even Aidan - knew was there but I was happy to let Aidan think we had. I pressed my lips against Mason's, a gentle kiss that hinted at more. He didn't seem to mind playing along, kissing me back. He deepened the kiss for a moment, letting me know when I was ready there would definitely be more, before pulling back and helping me off with an easy push.

"I guess I should change into something
…" I looked down at my underwear, "less revealing." Catching the duffle bag Mason tossed to me I headed into the bathroom.

20

Aidan and Mason waited for me in the training room- as far away from each other as possible. Aidan moved to the center of the mat when I came in. Without looking I knew Mason had positioned himself against the back wall, assuming his position from last night.

I joined Aidan on the mat, practically tripping over Conry who had been glued to my side since I got back. "Did Mason tell you what happened?"

"I am over three hundred years old. I do not need a hunter to have the sex talk with me."

"I was talking about what happened today, with Bathory. She was in the between."

"Exactly why you are not supposed to be." He glared at Mason. "All the more reason for this training."

I spent the next ten minutes listening to Aidan give me instructions that sounded a lot like the ones Mason gave in the bath house. "Ready?"

"If you are."

Mason gave a short, low whistle and Conry obediently padded over to sit beside him. If I didn't know better I might
have thought my guardian liked Mason better than me. I pondered the fact that my dog never listened to anyone other than me but had no problem taking orders from Mason.

Aidan disappeared from the mat. Damn, I forgot how good he was at this. I cracked my neck, first to the right then the left and rolled my shoulders. I bounced on my feet a few times, shaking out my arms and the urge to spar that had been building since I walked into the training room.

I needed to calm down, center myself, if I wanted to catch Aidan before he got close. Mason and Aidan seemed to be in agreement that when we faced Caligula and Bathory they wouldn't be alone. I had to be able to sense a cloaked vampire before we could go after them. I would master this tonight. I was sick of waiting. That bitch was after my blood. I was going to kill her.

Unlike my training with Mason, Aidan didn't take it easy on me. He swept my legs from under me, knocking me hard on my ass the first time he came at me. Standing up hurt but I didn't so much as wince from the pain radiating out of my tailbone.

"You'll have to do better than that. You should have spent more time on your training and less time cuddling to your new boyfriend."

He was already gone, lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce. Since I still couldn't pin point his location I shou
ted my retort. "How's Ryanne?" His answer was a palm in the middle of my back. I stumbled forward, coming down hard on my right knee. "Son of a bitch." I slammed a fist on the mat.

Aidan snatched me by the hair, snapping my head back. He licked his lips, fangs slightly extended. "She's a delight." He shoved my head forward, letting go of my hair.

His tone didn't match his eyes but I wasn't backing off now. Brushing myself off, I stood. My blood had been replaced with piss and vinegar and it pumped hard through my veins, my temper well out of control. "Don't you mean delicious?" That earned me another shot from the shadows, this time behind the knee. My legs buckled and I went down again.

"What's the matter with you? Concentrate. What we practiced in Cross Bath, Maurin. Come on
," Mason shouted from the sideline. He still didn't know exactly what happened last night but he pieced it together. "He's using your anger against you. Clouding your perception with emotion."

“No shit. Tell me something I don’t know.”
For the third time I picked myself up off the mat, determined to put Aidan flat on his back. With a deep, cleansing breath I pushed away the hurt and anger.

Reeling in my temper
was harder and taking longer than I thought. Aidan didn't wait for me to finish composing myself. He came at me from the left but this time I felt him before he touched me. Barely, but still it was an improvement. I spun to my right, his hand grazing my shoulder. He was relentless but each time I improved, gaining enough distance to defend myself. When I felt him come from behind I threw an out elbow, ramming him in the solar plexus.

His grunt of pain was the best praise I'd had all day. This time I even felt him move away. He displaced air the same way I moved in the between. Once I knew what I was feeling for
, it was easier to follow him. I closed my eyes and waited for the disruption in the atmosphere.

My left hand shot out, connecting with a hard throat chop. If I had to guess by
the gurgling sounds coming from him I might have crushed his wind pipe with that hit. Not that it would slow him down since vampires didn't need to breathe.

"It's training remember? Stop trying to break my fecking bones." His wind pipe was apparently fine even though his voice sounded like he had been gargling with ra
zor blades. With a parting shot - a hard shove on the shoulder - he was in the shadows again.

Mason watch
ed me intently, analyzing my every move targeting my weaknesses. I felt his eyes on me. I turned to face him. There was a subtle change in his expression.

I was surprised by the realization that I had paid enough attention to Mason to pick up on those little dif
ferences. Even without the minute increase in the angle of his eyebrows or the single twitch in the corner of his right eye, I would have felt Aidan move. The moment he was close enough I positioned myself, throwing him down with a technique I had learned in Aikido a couple of years ago.