Sundown & Serena (30 page)

“What do we do now?”

“I’ll teleport them to their beds. With a
little rest, and a lot of meat, they’ll be good as new.” She got to
her feet. “But you won’t have anyone visiting you for at least a
few days.”

I felt a chill. “Where are the others who
went with them?”

“Dead,” Lash hissed, striding into the room.
“Ebediah didn’t come easily. He’s trying to tear his cell apart
right now. We’ll need to reinforce the bars with magic, a holding
spell of some kind.”

“Devlin’s an idiot!” Leri exclaimed loudly.
“Ebediah’s the only vampire Ruler who himself knows magic. He’d
have been much smarter to go after Zane!”

“Zane’s the weakest of the Rulers, even
weaker than Danial,” Lash hissed, looking at her coldly. “Devlin’s
got to be strong. To do that, he needs to drain someone strong. And
Ebediah was the only one so confident he would not be attacked that
an attack with so few men would have worked.”

Leri just looked at him, then away, her
blatant opinion that an 80% loss and 100% injury rate didn’t
constitute a successful attack. I noticed belatedly that Lash
seemed fine, though he was covered in blood spatters, and his whip
was caked with it, like his boots. His knife and its sheathe was
oddly missing.

“Titus asked you to come below, when you’re
done,” Lash added. “He needs your help with Sola. He can’t keep
blocking them both.”

Leri whipped her head back, incredulous. “You
brought her back alive too? She’s the one that taught him
magic!”

Lash nodded. “Devlin’s orders. And he’s still
your boss, Leri.”

“That’s fucking great,” Leri said
sarcastically. “Tell Titus I’ll be down in a minute.” She got up,
and motioned with her hands to two prone guards. Kev’s and Vince’s
bodies rose in the air a few feet, and she strode off, the bodies
floating behind her like attentive dogs.

Lash turned to me. “Go back to bed,” he
hissed tiredly. “The worst is over.” Then he turned, and headed
going downstairs. The bellowing was even louder now.
Is that
Ebediah?

I did as he asked, though I didn’t sleep for
some time, wondering where all this was leading, and what it would
mean for me.

* * * *

The next morning, I attended a mass funeral
at dawn in the estate graveyard located behind the house. The other
bears that had gone on the mission had been killed, as Lash had
said, including my former lovers Matt, Van, Harald, and Gerry. But
the saddest thing to me was that four other bears had died, ones I
hadn’t known or spent time with, because those had been mated bears
who had stayed behind at Hayden, and never came to South America at
all. Their widows were crying loudly as a local priest gave a
simple blessing. One widow was hysterical, screaming that her mate
couldn’t be gone, he was coming back, he’d promised her he would,
and so he couldn’t be dead. Jazz finally slapped her, and she
quieted, but the tension remained high. I excused myself as soon as
possible, heading toward the house.

When I got back, Nick was in the kitchen. He
hugged me so hard I couldn’t breathe, and I hugged him back just as
hard, relieved he was back. “I heard what happened,” he said. “I’m
sorry we didn’t get back until now.”

“Nick!” Devlin shouted from the basement,
impatient. “Get down here!”

Nick gave me an anxious look and left.

I’m tired of being passive,
of never knowing what’s going to happen next.
My eyes
narrowed and I followed Nick down the stairs. He went through what
looked like some kind of workshop, and then through the door at its
far end. I went to the door and listened. It wasn’t hard to hear,
with my fox-coyote hearing.

“How dare you, Dalcon?” It was the same old
voice from last night, calmer now and speaking English, albeit with
a very odd inflection.

“You know me, Ebediah,” Devlin said in
rolling tones. “I dare most anything.”

“Where is Sola?” Ebediah roared. “What have
you done with my Oathed One?”

“She is dead,” Lash hissed nastily. “Devlin
drained her this morning.”

There was utter silence. I held my
breath.

“You broke our most sacred law, to do such a
thing,” Ebediah said in hushed tones. “Laws you yourself wrote!
Have you no respect for love?”

Lash laughed raucously, but someone stifled
him, as he stopped abruptly. Again, silence.

“You’ll drain me, too. I see your men there,
and your demon,” Ebediah said, sounding already lost. “Without her,
I’ve no desire to go on anyway.”

“I do have respect for love,” Devlin said in
slow measured tones. “You have had centuries with yours, Ebediah,
while I have mourned my broken heart. I must do right by my own
love. And everything else must give way before it, including
yours.”

“So be it. I give you this gift then, along
with my blood.” Ebediah paused. “I curse you, Devlin Dalcon, that
whatever you most desired, whatever you really hoped to gain from
doing this, you will not attain it. I promise you it will slip
through your fingers like grains of sand.”

“Shut your mouth!” Devlin growled. “Leri,
silence him.”

“May your darkest fears find you on the cusp
of your happiest moment with your love.” Ebediah went on in
sepulcher tones. “And may all that you most feared come to pass,
shredding that happiness like straw in the wind.”

“Beware, Devlin. What he says is true,” Leri
cautioned. “He has the power to make his words reality!”

“Then silence him with a spell, before he
says anymore!” Devlin snarled. “Hold him fast!”

There was a clang of steel, and the movement
of hurrying feet.

“And may your love share in your suffering!”
Ebediah shouted, struggling. “May she suffer the same fate when all
she cherishes dies in flame!”

Ebediah cut off with a scream, the sounds of
loud sucking and struggling punctuated with more intermittent
screams as he was drained.

I crept back upstairs to my room, and huddled
in a chair, a blanket around my shoulders, turning up my iPod as
high as I could, so I didn’t hear the screams.

Chapter
Twelve

It was a clear spring day. Sarelle or Sar, as
she liked me to call her had come to paint some of the recently
finished repaired walls of Hayden. She’d done that a lot lately,
since she’d begun to be a regular guest here at Hayden.

Devlin’s plan of draining a powerful vampire
to reclaim his seat of power as one of the world’s Vampire Rulers
had worked. He’d become the Master of Canada, taking Ebediah’s
spot. Sar had accepted him, as he’d hoped. In fact, they were now
promised to one another under vampire law called officially the
Oath. Sar was already pregnant with his child, a cross between a
vampire and a human called a dhamphir. Sar’s husband had left her,
then come back again, though the details of that I wasn’t sure of.
There seemed to be some odd love/sex triangle with Devlin, his
brother Danial, and now Theo, Sar’s wayfaring husband, taking place
that had all four of them on edge most of the time. As with other
intrigues, I’d planned to keep to myself and avoid her. But Devlin
had come to me himself right after New Year’s Eve, when all this
had first happened, and asked me to spend time with her when she
visited.

I’d stared at him, incredulous. “But isn’t
she here to spend time with you?”

He’d looked uncomfortable, but didn’t say
anything.

“I cannot help you if you won’t tell me the
truth,” I said, using the direct yet calm tone I usually used for
his new hires. “What is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to be her friend,” he admitted
finally.

“Why?” I stammered.

“Because I think it would be good for both of
you,” he cajoled with a sudden winning smile. “You must miss a
woman’s company, Serena, after all these months with only men that
have for the most part one thing on their mind.”

I’d grown a little daring in the last month
with all that had happened, no longer too shy to speak my mind.
“You never worried about my lack of female friends before,
Devlin.”

He scowled at me. “Very well. She has friends
at Danial’s home. I want her to have one here, and Valerie is not
very nice to any females, no matter what species. I want you to
make her feel that she has a friend here to confide in.”

I folded my hands across my chest. “You want
me to spy on her?”

He shook his head, then shrugged. “Women tell
things to other women that they would never tell a man. I want you
to tell me if she voices unhappiness to you.”

All women alive do that,
and likely daily.
I certainly did it frequently enough with
Nick, whose mind never seemed to be on me, where I thought it
belonged. “And?”

“And I’ll do my best to correct it, so she is
happy,” Devlin finished. “There has not been a mistress at Hayden
in some time, Serena. I am out of practice at being a husband, so
to speak. The hardest years of a relationship are the first ones. I
want my relationship with Sar to work very much. I’m asking for
your help.” He paused. “I will of course double your salary, for
indulging me in this.”

I gave an inward sigh at his love for her,
feeling a sharp pang that likely no one would do such a thing to
ensure my happiness.
Perhaps a man needs to be
four hundred years old to be a full adult.
“Agreed. Will you
introduce us? Or am I supposed to chance on her some morning on my
own?”

“I will tell her that you are interested in
learning some of her skills, like sewing and baking,” Devlin said.
“I’m sure that Nick or Vince might enjoy a pie or cookies
occasionally. And I know that your own attempts to make bread did
not turn out very well.”

Vince, Dev’s right, you
need to learn to keep your mouth shut.
“I already know
sewing. But yes, I’d like to learn baking, if she’s good at
it.”

“Very good, or so it’s said,” Devlin
affirmed. “Good. I will arrange a time with her, and let you know.
Thank you, little dove.” He kissed the back of my hand, then
left.

I sat down, thinking on his proposed plan,
and realized that the idea of having a female friend was something
I wanted very much. I had settled into my role here, and I still
enjoyed my work. But there were only so many movies I could watch
and so many books I could read. This country was new to me, and I
longed to explore more of it, but I didn’t want to go by myself. I
wanted someone to go with me, to show me the sights and ensure that
it was fun, not scary. It would be fun to have someone to take
walks with, and talk to about all the things that I couldn’t talk
to Vince or Nick about. And lately, that seemed like most
things.

Vince had been a little distant since his
mission for Devlin. It was hard for me to remember his loving words
before he left, or imagine him uttering similar endearments to me
again. I had chalked up his parting words that night to his worry
about dying. Because he’d survived, he likely regretted saying them
at all. But he was still friendly to me, and sometimes we would
watch a DVD together, or just talk after sex.

Nick was even more distant, to the point I
thought something had happened to our friendship. Now his caresses
were purely lust, and as soon as the sex was over, he found some
excuse to leave. I minded on one level, but on another, it was a
relief. Of the bearmen I’d initially met, only Kev, Vince, Nick,
and Jazz were still alive. I worried about that, worried that one
of them would die next. I had of course made acquaintances with a
new set of guards who had taken the place of those dead. But my
relations with those men were very unemotional to me. I thought of
them as strangers I was intimate with, not like the group I’d been
part of in Rio. Because the truth was, that a majority of them
would probably die in a short time, and others would come to
replace them. It wasn’t healthy to get attached if I was only going
to have to say goodbye right after I said hello.

I was a lot more cautious now than I had been
six months ago. I was even cautious of Sar, not knowing if Devlin
had told her my function at Hayden, or how she would take the news,
if he hadn’t. I hadn’t expected to like her, knowing her part in my
various lovers’ deaths, and how Vince and Kev felt about her. Even
though it had been Devlin’s decision to go after Ebediah, they both
blamed her for the dead guards, as well as for the deaths of their
other friends years ago when Devlin had stormed her house in an
effort to capture her. And so had the remaining werebear widows.
Most of them were gone now. As was custom, Devlin had given them
their widow’s severance “blood money” as it was called in guard
slang, the day after the funerals were held, and they had left for
their new lives elsewhere.

But life went on. And I grew to like Sar, and
the time we spent together.

She and I would be baking today, provided she
had the time and energy after her painting was done. There had been
no attacks on Hayden so far. Even Perseus had only come that once
for an official visit, and none of our people had died, which I had
to admit was Sar’s work, as it had been her intercession and the
announcement of her dhamphir in the making which had driven that
vampire asshole away. Even Lash seemed to be mellow lately,
spending a good deal of his time reading. Last week it had been the
Bible.
Just when I think he’s past all
redemption...

There was a knock at the door. Knowing I had
no appointments, I opened it quizzically to find Lash.
Think of the snake, and he appears.
“Yes?”

“Come downstairs, please,” he hissed, his
tone more gentle than I’d ever heard it. “I need to speak to
you.”

Uneasy, I followed him downstairs. We both
sat at the dining room table. Lash looked at me and away, then
spoke in that same gentle tone. “Vince and Kev tried to hurt Sar. I
stopped them in time, Serena.”