“That could be the real reason he brought us down here – to get rid of me so I couldn’t tell the others. He may assume I know – or that I’ll find out – because I’ve been talking to the leaders of your House.”
“We have to get out of here,” she said. She gripped his arms tightly and looked up. “Hello?” she called. “Can anyone hear me?”
“Can the Gifted read your thoughts?” he asked her,
wondering, too, if they could read his.
She nodded. “Some of them can.” She bit her lip and searched his face. “What if they
do
come and they fight Andrew to try and rescue us? Can they beat him?”
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Bring it on and we’ll see, he thought. Then he looked at her
and was filled with shame. He had to protect her at all costs.
Andrew was right; despite everything they’d been through, he and Andrew were done. Liam was no longer part of the Wellington Nest. He was a renegade like Jean-Marc de Devereaux, the Gifted leader of the House of the Phoenix. He too, had clashed with the others of his kind; he too, had struck out on his own to protect his loved ones.
Liam peeled off Claire’s wet raincoat, slipping her arms through the drenched sleeves. Then he took off his black leather jacket and draped it over her shoulders. Putting his arm around her, he eased her over to the torches.
“You need to get warm,” he said. “You’re freezing. It will
sap your strength.”
The scent of her fear increased.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
A war over our heads. A possible attack on my loyal confederates. My sire, turning on me. It’s a miracle she got here without being killed. They must have followed her.
“We’ll be out of here soon,” he told her.
“Hmm-mm,” she said non-committaly, pulling his jacket around her shoulders. Did she realize that she took a step away from him?
He ran his hands up and down her arms and across her back, willing the cold away. The top of her turtleneck was sopping wet, as were the hems of her jeans. The rest was relatively dry.
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They held each other in silence, tense and uneasy. He was alert to every sound – the flickering of the torches; the skittering of rats; her breathing; her pulse. She was so frightened.
He pulled one of the torches out of its holder and handed it
to her. Then he took the other one.
“We should gather some things to burn,” he told her. “We
need to keep these going.”
He didn’t tell her that his great-grandmother Abigail had been burned as a witch. No one knew that. Back in the day, when he had married Moira, he should have told her. He’d been too afraid she’d refuse him. After his Change, he hadn’t known there really were witches – now called the Gifted. It was Andrew who told him about them. New York City had been a neutral zone, where no Gifted were allowed to live or work their magic. But the House of Phoenix had moved in, and a good thing too, with all the troubles.
Claire stayed close beside him as he began to search. The tunnel floor was slick with moss and rat droppings, but little else to feed the flames. The tunnels were familiar, despite all the years since he and the nest had lived in them. Where would they be now, if Andrew hadn’t led them out, taken them to live in luxury? He felt a terrible sense of loss, and he grieved.
Time passed; he didn’t know how much, but he was beginning to get hungry. He had to assume she was, too. The torches were dwindling into stubs maybe a foot in length. He could see in the dark, but she wouldn’t be able to. It would be bad for her when the torches finally went out.
They came to a T-intersection. He scented the exit route the nest had used and took that one. A rat ran over the tip of his boot and he thought briefly about catching it. He might do well to take a moment away from her, find a rat or two, and drink. His
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stomach turned at the thought. He would be mortified if she saw
him do it.
But I can’t get too hungry, he thought anxiously.
At the end of a tunnel was a metal door, closed and locked.
He felt the barriers of holy objects – communion wafers and
crosses – on the other side. For reasons unknown even to Andrew, Christian symbols deterred vampires even though vampires were not evil in the traditional Christian sense.
“Can you open it?” she asked hopefully.
“I want to check it out first,” he replied.
He thought about breaking down the door anyways, enduring if he could and taking on whatever comers were there. Now, while he still had his strength.
He turned his head and saw a hole of blackness. It was a small sort of room, with what appeared to be a small pile of leather near the wall. Entering the space, he smelled Sanguine, Jack and Dianne, his confederates. Upon closer inspection, he realized the leather was three jackets. They had dropped them for him on the way out. For her.
He was moved. And he had hope.
He led her into the room and pointed to the jackets.
“These are from my allies. I want you to rest here. Stay
warm. I’m going to explore a little.”
“Don’t leave me,” she begged, reaching out a hand.
“I’ll be back soon,” he promised, squeezing it. If you have
to burn the jackets to do it, do it.”
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She licked her lips, nodded, watching him as he went back
to the tunnel proper and re-examined the door.
There was something in his head whispering,
No
.
“What?” he asked aloud, turning half around. “Claire?”
But he knew she hadn’t called him.
He put his hand on the door. The barriers on the other side
of the door tingled against his palm.
Go back to her. Be with her
.
He jerked his hand away and took a step backwards. What
the hell was going on?
Frowning, he whispered, “Who are you? Where are you?”
It had to be her gifted housemates. It had to be help on the
way.
There was no answer. He stood still, cocking his head,
listening. Nothing more came to him.
He crouched down and pressed along the bottom edge of the
door. His fingers stung.
“Claire, I heard something. Someone,” he called to her. “A
voice inside my head.”
He walked back into the little room to find her on her feet. The torches were propped against the wall, and she was unzipping her jeans. Her face was serious, the colour in her cheeks high. His gaze dropped to the roundness of her hips, the tiny square of fabric covering her sex, as she pushed her jeans over her hips, down to her knees.
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Her eyes were shiny with emotion as she slipped his jacket off her shoulders and allowed it to gently fall to the ground. She gazed at him steadily and gathered up the edge of her red turtleneck sweater.
“Maybe it’s the same voice I heard, telling me to make love
to you,” she whispered. And then she took off her sweater.
“No, it’s too cold,” he said, rushing to her. He meant to embrace her, warm her, but his mouth came down on hers. His fangs were much smaller than any other vampire he had ever known; carefully, he slipped his tongue into her mouth and found the sweet taste of her there. Slowly they sank to the floor, on the pile of jackets left by his comrades. He kissed her hungrily, splaying his hands over her back as she reached to the front of her bra and unhooked it, drawing it away from her breasts.
Then he knew with every fibre of his being that they were meant to make love now, that it was the best thing they could do to save themselves.
To say goodbye
, said the voice.
“No,” he rasped under his breath.
She moaned as his right hand cupped her breast and he ran his thumb over one taut nipple and then the other. Her jeans were down around her knees. He moved swiftly to her wispy thong, and moved it aside, pleasuring her sex, his finger over her clitoris, the shell-lip, glistening pink.
He slipped his finger inside her, feeling the wetness, the
warmth. Wanting to be there.
Then his need shifted and he felt himself hungering for her as only a vampire could; hungering for human blood. He
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panicked, drawing away, but she held him tightly as his finger stayed inside her. His body was reacting, hard and thrusting; so, too, were his fangs, aching to bury themselves in her veins. She was in terrible danger.
Part of his mind registered that she was unzipping his trousers and moving her hand inside. Her fingers grazed his sex, then wrapped around it. He reared, engorged. He groaned like an animal; he hissed and writhed.
“Get away from me,” he pleaded. “Claire, run.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. She moved her hand up and down, kissing his mouth, the sides of his mouth, the hollow of his cheek.
“Holy Mary, leave me,” he begged again, as his mouth crashed over hers. He pulled her up in his arms, as she madly pushed her own jeans further down, and then his.
“Do it,” she urged him.
“Lass, lass,” he groaned, his Irish brogue thickening. He felt years fall away from him. He was so young again. Ireland was there, shamrock green and purple, and the sea and seabirds calling him to go afar.
Take your loved ones and go. You’ll be back someday
.
But they had never gone back. They were dead.
But Claire is alive. Keep her alive.
Then they were joined, one to one, and the sensation thatroared through him blazed a white-hot heat from the base of his spine to his sex and into his chest, where his heart did not beat. Where his heart . . .
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Then he saw her: his ancestress, walking in the heather. Old Maggie Cadogan, the witch, bending beside the cairn on the hill, her lips moving. And then Maggie at the stake, the fire rising, smoke filling her lungs. He heard her words: “Such as mine will carry my blood until the dark days; and it will boil in their veins and give them powers such as you have never seen ”–
It was her voice inside his head.
Liam’s blood was boiling now, steaming away the Change until he felt a terrible thumping in the cage of his ribs, in the veins that were as cold and empty as the tunnels. His lungs filled with air for the first time in over one hundred years.
“Oh, God, oh my God,” Claire whispered. “Your skin . . . it’s warm. And your heart . . .” She flattened her left hand against his chest. “It’s
beating
, Liam, it’s beating.”
He wanted to tell her, to speak to her. But the flames inside him were rising higher. He was a
man
, and not just a man but a man of witch-blood born. He was deep inside Claire and he pushed her backwards onto the jackets and took her, hard. More energy surged through him and more heat. Blurry kaleidoscopes of colours, sounds and smells rushed through him. He could no longer see, or smell, or taste; he could only feel. He was rocketing through the sky. He was a comet, on fire.
“Sex magic,” she whispered. “The Gifted ”–
He was Gifted. He hadn’t known it: no one had. He’d been Changed and now changed again. He took her hard, allowing ecstasy to mount within him. He felt her constricting around him, weeping with excitement and wonder. Her smooth, heated core; his woman, his living woman, his darling . . .
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Oh, my God, I’m not alone any more, he thought, as tears streamed down his face for his lost loved ones, for all the hopes dashed and the anger and hatred that had consumed him.
Like a windstorm, his body gathered its forces, and hovered for one last moment before he poured his joy and his life into her. He climaxed in a river of energy, of magic. He was soaring and floating; he was loved and he was new.
“Liam, Liam,” she cried. She was with him, riding the throes of her own passion as she clung to his shoulders. For a moment he thought they were flying, floating in delirious joy.
Back down to earth, back down inside the tunnel, they rested in each other’s arms, silent and weeping, both of them. He had no words; he clung to her, gasping, feeling his body live.
“What . . . how,” she began, and then fell silent as she
covered his face with soft kisses. And then more kisses.
She was dazed. He dressed her quickly, like a little child, and put Sanguine’s jacket and then his own on her, for warmth. He put on another leather jacket – it belonged to Jack – and picked her up in his arms.
He didn’t know what was going to happen, but he could save her now. He knew it. He would take on all comers, battle all monsters and men and vampires. He would have Andrew’s head on a pike before dawn if it came to that.
But he would not lose another beloved woman.