Dark Solace (16 page)

“Right after I leave at nine,” Theo said,
checking his watch. “And I’m late, so anytime.”

“I’m surprised Lash isn’t going with you,” I
said curiously.

“Devlin said he didn’t trust the bears not to
trash the place if they were left alone there.” Theo shrugged.
“It’s just as well he stays behind. You know we don’t get
along.”

“I’m aware,” I said, kissing him goodbye. “Be
careful.”

“You be careful, too,” he said softly,
stroking my face. “Call Titus and tell him to come and get you.
He’s late.”

I wasn’t able to teleport to Danial’s house
right now, or even to the grounds of his land, but it was only
temporary. Titus had put up a spell to block anyone getting in
except him, just for that night, for extra security. While I felt
safer knowing any attempt to attack Danial’s home would be foiled,
no teleporting was a pain in the ass. “I’ll call right after you
leave,” I promised. “I just need to get some clothes on and pack
some last minute things.”

“I wish we both could just go back to bed,”
Theo said wistfully, hugging me. “That last hour with you was
perfect.”

“Yes, it was,” I said sexily. “Now get going
before I demand a repeat performance.”

“You’ll get one the second I get back,” Theo
said huskily. He gave me a last hug, and then dashed out the
door.

Silently wishing him luck, I threw a few
changes of clothes in a bag, my brand new sexy nightgown, an
oversized T-shirt, my favorite hairbrush, and some extra
conditioner. Danial had everything else I would need, especially
for one night.

The new nightgown I was planning on wearing
for him had come the day before in the mail. I planned to leave it
there that night with a romantic note on it, saying that I’d wear
it for him this weekend. For this evening, though, the T-shirt
would do.

I called Terian. “Where’s my demon ride,
Tears?”

“Putting up some extra protective barriers
around the main house. He’ll be there in two minutes, he says. Sit
tight.”

“So much for small talk,” I said, listening
to the sudden dial tone. Replacing the receiver, I caught sight
again of my package from Dev on the counter.

I looked it over, wondering why Dev had sent
me something in the mail. He usually preferred to give me any gifts
in person. Weirder, the postmark was from Georgia, from four days
ago. I turned it over in my hands, foreboding filling me.

This couldn’t be from Devlin. Maybe I
shouldn’t open it. What if it were poison? But it didn’t feel like
poison; there was something hard inside. Also, poison would have
affected Theo when he’d carried it all the way from the mailbox to
the house. What if the poison was for me?

Going to the sink, I grabbed my rubber
gloves, put them on, and then tore open the package. Out slid a
sheathed knife and one piece of paper. I set the paper aside, all
my attention on the knife. It was beautiful, the hilt and sheath
made of cherry wood. Eager to try it on, I opened my belt and put
it through the two belt loops. Refastening my belt, I unsnapped the
knife, and slid it out of its sheath. The blade was honed to a
razor’s edge, and engraved with acid on the top, making the steel
dark and rough. The finger guard was also acid-etched. I looked
closer. In the darker part of the blade—so faint as to be almost
hidden—was a Japanese symbol, perhaps a word. But the lines of it
were clean, freshly carved. Someone had put this symbol on the
blade, most likely whomever had sent it to me. What did it
mean?

Without putting down the knife, I picked up
the piece of paper.

Sar, you need a good knife, so I’m giving you
this one. I’ve sharpened it, and it should serve you well for years
to come. Lash.

He’d drawn a little snake next to his
name.

This was bizarre. Why was he in Georgia? He
was supposed to be at Hayden. Was he on a job? Why not wait to give
me the knife in person when he got back?

I was still holding the knife when Titus
appeared, his blackness making me shiver.

It was always so much thicker than Terian’s,
so much more powerful.

“Ready to go?” Titus said gently. Then he saw
me with the knife.

As I looked into his eyes, I suddenly
understood he both knew what this meant, and that he was not happy
about my present. My foreboding deepened. “What is this?”

“It was time, Sarelle,” Titus said. “He left
a week ago. Devlin thinks he went out on a job, that he’s coming
back later tonight.”

I knew exactly what he was talking about:
Lash’s death. My apprehension became panic. “Why?” I asked loudly.
“Lash said he had years left! Years!”

“More like months,” Titus said, his red eyes
holding mine. “And that was months ago.”

It all came together for me at once. This was
why Lash had asked me to go back to Devlin. He’d known he was
dying, and he’d wanted Devlin to have someone who loved him so he
wouldn’t be alone, or get into too much trouble. This was why he
had talked about family, and that it meant something to him. This
was why he hadn’t cared if he’d died saving us, because he was
going to be dead soon anyway. Why he had warned me to be careful,
if Dev and I went out again, because if it happened again, he
wouldn’t be around to save us. Why he and I had gone out for sushi
that night, but he hadn’t eaten much. He hadn’t been feeling like
hibernating, he’d been getting ready to die. And he’d asked me to
come those extra days to Hayden because he’d wanted to spend some
extra time with me, lying together in the sun as we had those
months ago and talking to maybe the only person in his life who
shared his taste in movies.

“But I saw him! I talked to him! He was
fine!” I screamed hysterically.

“He got a wound on a job he did a few weeks
ago,” Titus rumbled. “Some were bit him. It wasn’t bad, and I
healed what would heal, but it turned septic anyway. His immune
system is shot, and had been for a while—”

Had it been Satar who’d bit Lash? Something
told me it had been. My hysteria went up another notch. “No, he was
fine!” I shouted. “He saved me, saved Devlin! He carried him—!”

“He collapsed when he got back to Hayden,”
Titus rumbled, his red eyes smoldering. “Saving Devlin and you took
everything he had left. He spent these past two weeks recovering
enough strength to go wherever it is he went.”

That day I’d seen Lash reading with the
blankets. He hadn’t moved, and his body had been mostly covered.
I’d thought he had just been cold...

I closed my eyes, fighting tears. “But why
not stay here with Dev? Why go off alone?” I shouted. “Who wants to
die alone?”

“He did,” Titus said, his deep voice agitated
now. “And it was his choice.”

Fury rapidly replaced anguish. “He only made
that choice because you didn’t tell him about my blood! That a
massive infusion of it might work, might save him!”

“Devlin would never risk you, not even for
Lash,” Titus said harshly. “He’d need to take all of it, Sarelle.
You’d die saving him. And there’s no guarantee it would even
work.”

This couldn’t be happening. Fate couldn’t be
that cruel, that Lash could save us but not himself. That he was
going to die alone, without his loved ones near him, after all the
good he had done. But fate was that cruel. I’d seen it firsthand,
when a freak accident had left me a widow. I’d seen it later, in
the years I’d spent apart from Theo, thinking he was dead. I’d seen
it in the tears Danial had cried, all those times now I’d left
him.

Lash had saved us. This time he needed
someone else to save him. And I’d be damned if I stayed here,
knowing all this, and didn’t at least try.

I looked at Titus, stripped off the gloves,
and resheathed the knife at my side with a sharp click. “If I did
it, could you save me?” I said bluntly. “Or would he need to turn
me when it was done?”

Titus completely lost it, his angry
terrifying. “You are not risking your life, not for that evil
snake!” he snarled, showing his many rows of teeth. He reached for
me with clawed fingers, his eyes flaming, the heat coming off him
making my body break out in sweat. The stench of sulfur and
brimstone smothered me, his blackness engulfing me as if I’d been
dropped into Hell itself.

I teleported instantly, evading him, and then
I was standing holding my purse and duffel bag in the parking lot
of the Eckerd’s in Alan’s Creek.

I flipped open my phone, and called Titus. He
answered before it had rung once, snarling out his words. “Don’t
you dare, Sar! He’ll kill you! Think of your children!”

I’d had enough of people telling me what to
do, what I had to do, what was best for me. I was doing this. “Get
whatever you need ready!” I snarled back. “And leave your phone
on.”

“You don’t even know where he is—”

“I know.” I hung up, and threw the phone in
the nearby dumpster. It could be used to track me, and I needed not
to be found, not for a while. Thankfully Titus hadn’t recharged the
tracer spell he’d put on me yet. He had been going to do that
tonight, as soon as we got to Danial’s house.

Taking out my old phone from my purse, I made
sure the battery was charged. It was. I turned it off to save the
battery, and then teleported again to Dr. Camlyn’s office building
in my usual exam room, number one. It took me a good twenty minutes
to gather up everything I thought I would need. Then I teleported
again, this time to the Everglades. If Lash had a home other than
Hayden, this had to be it.

Arriving near the edge of the swamp, I was
immediately besieged by mosquitoes. I hurriedly walked as fast as I
could to the campground head office, covering my head with one of
my shirts from my duffel bag. That kept most of them off me, though
there were a few bites already on my forehead and hands.

The building was closed, being night, but I
broke in easily, the door having only a simple key lock. After that
experience with Ulysses, I’d kept my lock picking tools in my
purse. Theo had taught me well, though he would not approve of me
using my learned skills to save Lash. Theo was not going to like
any of this. He was going to be enraged and he might even tell me
it was over between us. But Lash was my friend and he was dying,
and I didn’t care.

I looked through the files to see who was
registered at which campsite. With it being the off-season, the
park was mostly empty, so there weren’t that many groups here
camping. Also, most of the older tourists elected to stay in the
one hotel within the park, rather than at a campsite. If it had
been summer, there would have been way too many people around to
have a chance in hell of finding one man alone camping. But Lash
would want as much privacy as possible. It made sense he would be
in the most remote campsite there was.

I finally found him listed: Mr. Lash, party
of one. He was staying at the very edge of the campground, nearest
the swamp. He hadn’t bothered to use an alias. But why would he? No
one would have come looking for him except Dev, and he thought he
was on a job. No one but Titus knew he wasn’t coming back tonight
to Hayden. Except Dev, Lash had no other friends to wonder where he
was.

I grabbed a map from the office, leaving the
door unlocked. Grabbing a can of bug repellent, I coated my
clothes, then the shirt I’d draped over my head. Getting my
bearings with the small penlight from my purse, I began to walk.
The mosquitoes were bad, whining and buzzing around my head, but
the spray repelled most of them. At least, I wasn’t swatting them
at every other step.

The ocean was calm to my left, the waves
gently lapping. It was cloudy, and there was no moonlight to see
by. Even the stars were concealed. The night was lighted only by
the rest rooms, great concrete buildings that had clouds of
mosquitoes near them, hunting for blood beneath the fluorescent
lights.

Lash’s campsite was a ways from the park
office. I walked for more than an hour, checking my bearings every
so often to make sure I hadn’t wandered too far off the path in the
dark. With every step my worry increased. What if I wasn’t in
time?

Finally, I reached the edge of the
campgrounds, and saw his truck, the familiar black Avalanche Danial
had been driving that fateful night we met. Behind in on the grass
was a large tent, a light glowing inside.

I stopped, suddenly hesitant. What if he
wasn’t alone?

Screw it. I’d come too far to be shy now.
Every minute counted. I ran to the door of the tent. “Lash?”

My utterance came out quiet, the sounds of
crickets and other night insects loud in my ears.

The tent unzipped. Lash stood there, his face
in shadow.

I was so relieved to find him alive that I
hugged him, blinking back tears. He pulled me inside, and
immediately zipped up the tent door behind me, before all the
mosquitoes came in. Then he grabbed me roughly and kissed me hard,
his forked tongue slipping between my lips, his arms going around
me. My shirt that I had draped over my head fell off, dropping to
the floor of the tent.

Lash tasted of hard alcohol. There was a
mostly empty bottle of Laphroig sitting beside his inflatable bed.
And he was stark naked. This wasn’t why I’d come here...

As I went to push him off me, my hands
clasped his arms. They were cooler than a vampire’s, as cool as the
night air. I took a sharp intake of air, breathing in his scent of
earth, leaves, and musk. Underneath it now was the sweet scent of
decay.

Lash broke the kiss, then paused, as if
waiting for something. I rapidly blinked back tears, trying to get
control of my voice enough to talk.

“Don’t cry,” he hissed softly, reaching up to
wipe away my tears with his callused hand.

Tears streaming down my cheeks, I grabbed his
face in my hands and kissed him. He groaned in satisfaction, then
kissed me back, our tongues entwining as he guided me back beneath
him down on his bed. Lash broke the kiss abruptly, his hands
unfastening my jeans and stripping them off. He paused for a second
when he saw the knife at my belt, then his actions became more
hurried. Carefully, he lowered his body beside me on the bed.
Rolling partly onto me, he kissed me again adamantly, his hands
running up under my shirt to unfasten my bra. He pressed his hips
to mine, his erection firm and unyielding against my lower belly.
Letting out a hiss of longing, Lash kissed me again on my mouth,
and then reared back to pull my sweatshirt off over my head, taking
my bra with it. My hair caught in one of the straps, a few strands
yanking free.