“Jealous?” Tom leaned down and ran his tongue over the skin at the base of her neck. “I’d be happy to show you how it’s done.”
Sara struggled against him, but her breath was shallow in her lungs.
“My fangs aren’t as sharp as some, but they’ll get the job done.” He chuckled. “Too bad your favorite patient won’t be able to witness your transform—”
“What?” she managed to utter. “What patient?”
“The one who always comes before the rest of us.”
Gray
?
God, no.
Her eyes searched Tom’s maniacal ones. “Where . . . ?”
“Why do you love him so much?” A snarl erupted from Tom’s throat and he released her, gripped her shoulders and pushed her back, rammed her against the wall.
Gasping for breath, her back screaming in pain, Sara cried, “What did you do? Tell me right now, you sick fuck!”
Tom slipped his hand under her chin, his palm putting pressure on her windpipe. “I would have given you anything. Done anything for you. That vegetable couldn’t even say your name.”
Kicking out, she fought wildly, like a cat. But it was no use. She was losing air, losing oxygen.
Then suddenly, Tom was yanked off her. She slumped to the floor, grasping her throat, trying to pull air into her lungs, feeling as though she might vomit and pass out simultaneously.
“No, Alexander.” Nicholas’s voice, somewhere in her mind. “He’s mine.”
“He touched her.”
Alexander. He’s here
. She pulled in air and cried, “Gray . . . ?”
“He’s fine, Sara,” Alexander said. “Dillon brought him to me.”
“Trainer is mine,” Nicholas growled, his mind single-tracked.
“No,” Sara said, gasping for breath, pulling herself up, stumbling over to where Alexander held Tom by the throat. “He’s mine.” She grabbed the knife from Alexander’s waist. “I’m done with this bullshit.”
Tom grinned as she approached. “You don’t have the guts, bitch.”
Without deliberation, Sara hauled back and ran the blade deep into Tom’s stomach. The effort exhausted her and she dropped into a chair.
“Oh God, Sara.” Alexander gathered her into his arms, held her against him like a child.
In the back of her mind, Sara heard the snap of a neck being broken and a crack of bones as Nicholas finished him off.
“Take her home,” Nicholas said quickly. “I’ll clean this up.”
“Do not dispose of him. We need his memories.”
“Where are you going to exit? Roof?”
“Window.”
“I’m on it.”
Tucked into Alexander’s chest, Sara heard the cut of glass, felt the blast of frozen air, then the moment of weightlessness before they were flying.
35
D
illon lay on a bed in one of the Romans’ spare rooms, getting sewn up by the vampire doc, while six feet away, the man she’d saved watched with a sneer on his full lips. Gray Donohue was also ass-to-the-bed, his face littered with a few bruises and one cut above his left eye that he’d gotten when Dillon had punched Trainer in the head and he’d fallen back, hitting Gray and knocking him into a food service cart. While his sister’s eyes were always a very animated, passionate dark blue, this guy’s gaze was metal gray and cold as the death he longed for.
Dillon knew his expression had nothing to do with Tom Trainer’s attack. The damaged human male before her hated life, living, existing in a world he felt no connection to, didn’t have a place in. Having lived inside herself for two hundred years, Dillon understood the penchant for apathy-laced rage. Not that she was ever going to share her “feelings” with anyone. She didn’t do feelings, and wasn’t looking for sympathy.
“This may sting a bit,” the doctor said, applying some kind of solution to Dillon’s wound.
“Shit!” Dillon jumped at the blistering sensation, hissed at her. “You think?”
Leza shrugged and attempted to look repentant. “The wound’s incredibly deep. Nearly took out your liver.” She smiled. “Let’s give this an hour, shall we? Then I’ll heal it the rest of the way.”
“Sure,” Dillon muttered, feeling as though someone had planted bowling balls made of acid inside her organs. “Thanks a million.”
As Leza walked out of the room, Dillon caught Gray staring at her, his metallic gaze accusing.
You saved my life for what exactly?
“What the fuck are you staring at, human?” she barked, her gaze dropping to his hands, the heinous burns that ruined his flesh. Fine. He had a scarred exterior, a shitty life. Yeah, well, internal scars were just as debilitating, just as much of a mind fuck. You didn’t see her going around with a perpetually pissed-off puss 24-7.
The door burst open then and Sara rushed in. Her eyes were wild with fear, her expression so anxious Dillon almost wanted to call her over for a hug of support. Almost.
When Sara spotted her brother on the bed, she ran over to him and ran her hands over his skin, his face. “Are you okay? Look at me! God, are you okay?”
“He’s fine,” Dillon said when the guy refused to make eye contact with her. “Just a few bruises.”
“What happened?” Sara asked without turning around.
“Your ex-patient wanted to take out the competition.”
“Oh God.”
Gray turned his head then and feigned sleep.
“Let him rest, Doc,” Dillon urged, knowing Sara was barking up a tree that just wanted its branches cut off.
It took Sara a good five minutes before she moved, before she allowed her gaze to lift from her brother’s face. But when she did, she came over to Dillon and shook her head, let out a heavy breath. Her grateful blue eyes took in every inch of Dillon’s face. “Looks like I owe
you
a debt now.”
The ripe bruise encircling Sara’s neck wasn’t lost on Dillon, but she kept her eyes off of it and her mood light and easy. “Finally. Someone owes me for once.”
Sara reached for her hand, sincerity glowing in her eyes. “Anything you want, D.”
Dillon lifted her brows. “Anything?” She’d meant to come off playful, but it was there—she knew it was there in her eyes as she looked up at the human woman she’d been protecting. Attraction. And Sara knew it too.
A smile split Sara’s features and she leaned down and kissed Dillon squarely on the mouth. Just once, soft, a peck. When she stood up again, she had the nerve to look impish. “How’s that?”
“Not exactly what I expected.”
Sara went from impish to insulted in under a second. “What? I didn’t bring the heat?”
Dillon laughed. She couldn’t help it—the girl was too damn likable. “You and me, Doc—friends. Good friends.”
“Fine,” Sara muttered. “Have it your way, but don’t say I didn’t try.”
Laughing, though it hurt like hell, Dillon envisioned the expression on Alexander’s face when she told him all about the momentary, innocent girl-on-girl action she’d had with his woman.
Yes, she mused, watching Sara return to her brother’s side. Busting Alex’s chops—good times.
On the roof of Walter Wynn Hospital, Alexander and Nicholas hovered over Tom Trainer’s dead body, good times as unattainable an idea as removing the Eternal Order from power. Time ticked loudly away, reminding Alexander that he had to retrieve Trainer’s memories before it was too late, before his brain shut down completely and Ethan’s hiding place remained a mystery.
Baring his fangs, he dropped his head and struck. He went deep, and directly into the temple. As a premorph he’d barely been able to break the skin without a brutal strike, now it was like a knife through butter.
A tunnel stretched out for miles in his mind, on both sides, still shots of memory played, one frame after the other. Alexander saw Tom as a child, playing on his lawn, Tom hiding in a closet, a rabbit in his lap, his hands encircling the poor creature’s neck.
“Easy, Alex,” Nicholas warned gently. “Don’t get emotionally involved in what you see. Concentrate.”
Circling around the memory, Alexander pressed forward, navigating around memories he did not need or want until he got to the recent past. When he saw Sara, he backed up, then slowed . . .
Yes
.
There we are
.
Dare, sex, the town house, the battle with Alexander and his brothers, and the move to the new location. He centered in and sucked, Trainer’s blood memories flowing into him. It was quick and when he pulled out, the release of suction echoed in the freezing air as his mind quickly processed what he’d taken in.
Nicholas eyed him. “Taste good?”
“If you like sewer with a side of infection,” Alexander said, standing up, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his coat.
“Did you get a location?”
Alexander shook his head. “Just visuals.”
“Could you make it out? Was it the city?”
Alexander walked to the edge of the roof, frustration stabbing at his gut. He couldn’t tell what the location was or where it was, yet it felt familiar to him somehow.
Nicholas jogged after him. “The ‘eyes’ have thirty minutes to collect. Maybe they’ll drop another piece of the puzzle.”
Maybe
. Alexander stared out at his city, his mind working at hyperspeed. “Dare has a boss.”
“What? Who?”
Alexander shrugged. “Don’t know. Trainer didn’t know either.”
Nicholas lifted his brows. “Well, if that’s true, it explains the extraordinary power of a mere Impure. But how would the power transfer? Through blood?”
“We will ask,
Duro
.” He pulled Nicholas into his side, ready to flash. “Right before we kill him.”
36
S
ara stood naked in front of the mirror in Alexander’s bedroom, her skin still damp from the shower. Tipping her chin up, she inspected the bruises on her neck, ran her hand over them, and swallowed. The throbbing pain had her gritting her teeth.
No more fear, Dr. Donohue.
Trainer’s dead—the threat of him gone for good.
And yet she remained here, in this house, his house.
“Cruel, cruel girl.”
“You’re back,” Sara said, the pleasure in her tone blatant.
Alexander came up behind her, dressed in black combat gear and looking like something the U.S. military would keep a secret from their enemies.
Grinning, he looked in the mirror at her. “How are you?”
“I’m not sure yet,” she said honestly.
“Your brother . . . ?”
“Is sleeping. He still won’t talk to me.”
“You’ll try again.”
“And again.” She smiled weakly. “What about you? How are you? What do you need?”
Wrapping his coat around her naked flesh, he breathed her in, then shook his head. “For now, I need your excessively brilliant brain. Some ideas, profiling.”
She liked that. “Okay.”
“After running from his previous residence, Ethan Dare continues to elude me. Trainer’s memories gave me little. I see room after room of simplicity, but it’s not an apartment or condo, and I can’t tell if he’s remained in the city or not.”
Sara let this information sink into her brain for a moment, then said, “Well, I think that after leaving his home—or feeling as though he was forced out of his home—he’d find somewhere completely opposite, somewhere he feels no positive connection to. In fact, he may have run to somewhere he could do real damage and not care.”
“Damage ...” Alexander nodded, his eyes heavy and thoughtful. “I’ll think on that, run it by my brothers.”
“Hey, Alex?”
His gaze lifted to hers, his expression surprised at what she’d called him. “Yes?”
Sara turned in his arms, looked up into his beautifully fearsome face. “I want you to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Take the memory from Gray.”
“But you—”
“
I
,” she interrupted passionately, “am a fake.”
With a soft growl of reproach, Alexander cupped her face. “No, Sara.”
“And a phony,” she continued, nodding. “You were right—back at the hotel. I am worried about the risks to Gray’s mind, but honestly I’m more worried about myself. Half of my life was paying for the accident I caused, the other half was spent trying to fix it. It’s like, what am I without the pain, you know? The guilt? What am I without the constant cause?”
“You are the woman I love.”
The
woman
. Not the
veana
. She’d never be his
veana
. Her heart stilled with momentary sadness, but she asked again, “Will you do it?”
He leaned down and brushed his lips over hers. “Yes.”
A loud rap on the door startled them both.
“The ‘eyes’ have come through, Alex,” Nicholas called through the wood. “We have a location.”
Alexander nodded at Sara. “We will talk of this more later.”
She didn’t want him to go, but she released him. “Be careful.”
“Of course.”
“No, I mean
really
careful. As in, don’t give Bronwyn anything that needs to be healed, okay?”
“Bronwyn has gone home.”
It was as though the sun had risen in her chest and she nearly squealed with happiness. “She has?”
He nodded, grinning. “She knew, as I always did, that we were not true mates.” He took her in his arms then and kissed her, hard and sweet, his tongue grazing her teeth. But when he broke away, his smile was gone, and his eyes registered concern.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“Nothing.” He frowned, backed up. “You will wait for me.”
She nodded. She wasn’t going anywhere.
Turning, he strode to the door, but when his hand reached for the handle, he froze. “Room after room,” he muttered. “A place he would hate, would want to destroy.” Then he suddenly roared, “That’s what I saw—the
credenti
!”
From the other side of the wood, Nicholas yelled, “Yes! How the hell did you know?”
37
A
lexander flashed to the front gates of the Manhattan
credenti
, taking Lucian and Nicholas with him. Grazing his fangs against his wrist, he waited for the blood to flow. When it leaked red and strong from the puncture wounds, he ran it along the iron lock. As the gates disengaged and swung slowly back, Alexander readied himself, weapons drawn. His attempt to keep Sara out of his thoughts kept failing. Even as he ran, quietly and stealthily through the parklike setting inside the
credenti
grounds, he thought about his mouth on her, his tongue. He’d lapped at the tips of her teeth and had felt something . . . something disturbing, yet something that had made his body roar with lust.