Tempest of Vengeance (39 page)

Lash hugged me, his tenseness leaving his
shoulders. “I’m glad he didn’t feed on you,” he whispered. “I was
never comfortable with that part of the plan. Even being under that
cloaking spell, and being close enough to hear everything, I was
worried. If he had wanted to hurt you—”

“I’m fine,” I assured. “And Devlin’s also
fine. He’ll be asleep for hours. Titus said that injection I gave
him would ensure he stayed out.”

“You know he’s going to be pissed,” Lash
interrupted, grinning slightly. “He wanted to hold Ulysses for a
while, to torture him.

“I wasn’t risking it,” I said with a shrug.
“You kill your enemies, not keep them captive.”

“I agree,” Lash said, pulling me tight
against him. “I feel much better knowing he’s ashes.”

“You aren’t even a little regretful?” I said,
caressing his cheek. “You know part of the reason Devlin was
keeping him alive was going to be to provide blood for you, if you
needed it.”

“Shh, don’t talk about that,” Lash hissed,
hugging me close. “It wasn’t worth it. As you said, you kill your
enemies. Because of what you and I did, we know who the weak link
was that cost Robin her life.” His tone turned low and scary.
“Jerry will be getting a visit from me this afternoon. Keith, Seth,
and the other bears have already grabbed him, on my orders, and
should be on their way to the cells with him about now. And when
I’m done, Titus will have his monthly meal ready for him when he
gets to work tonight.”

Eww. Don’t think about it, Sar. Don’t
grimace too much, either, or you’ll make Lash feel bad, for what
he’d had to do in the past.
“Come on,” I said, breaking away
from him. “We’d better get Dev back in his own bed. I’m worried
about him here in your room, so vulnerable, and so close to the
sun.”

Lash nodded. He picked Devlin up wrapped in
the blankets, and carried him back into his own bed, where I lay
him beneath the sheets, and gave him a gentle kiss. We walked out,
locking the door after us, and back into Lash’s room, where I
helped him rehang the curtains over the sliding glass door,
plunging the room again into darkness.

Lash came to me, wrapping his arms around me.
“Can I interest you in some celebratory sex?”

I giggled, then turned to him. “You didn’t
find me just by scent, did you? You can see in the dark, can’t
you?”

“Of course, though it’s not the same as
regular sight,” Lash said, his tone both amused, and also
surprised. “Most weres can. But I can scent you too, Sar. My sense
of smell is better than my eyes, in the dark.” He paused.
“Sar?”

“Mmmhmm?”

“I want to know something, about you...and
Theo.”

“Ask.”

“Well, two things, actually.”

Must be important, to swing his thoughts
off sex.
“Ask already, then.”

“If I’d died back in September, and you were
still with Theo...would you have taken Ulysses’ deal, to be free of
Devlin?”

“No. He hurt my daughter. Even if he hadn’t,
Devlin I know well enough to manage. In spite of his actions
sometimes, I do believe he loves me. Ulysses would have just been
another master who would have used my dependence on him against me.
I don’t want another man having control over me. I don’t want
another man in my life who
wants
control over me.”

“You know I don’t want that, right? I mean, I
want you to let me know where you are, and sometimes to promise not
to go places or do some things, but that’s so I can protect
you.”

“I get it,” I kissed him tenderly. “So what’s
the other question?”

“Come to bed, and I’ll ask it.”

We took off our clothes, and got in his bed,
lying together, our bodies entwined. “Spill it,” I said finally,
when he hadn’t made any move to speak.

“What did you talk about, with him?” Lash’s
voice in the darkness was very hesitant, yet also driven.

“What did I talk about with who?”

“Theo.”

“When?”

“When you were together.”

I gave him a look to let him know I thought
his question was very odd, then turned on the light near the bed
before turning to face him. “Why do you want to know this?”

“You seem to not know a lot about weres and
yet you were married to one for over a year. Hell, you dated, well,
lived with one for longer than that. You did things with me as
friends that you didn’t do with Theo, like discussing books,
getting sushi, or lying in the sun. He was your mate, and you acted
as though you loved him. So in all that time you were together,
what did you talk about, that you don’t know so many things about
weres? Did he not talk to you?”

“We didn’t talk a lot, like you and I do,” I
said, blushing. “We watched a lot of movies, and we bantered a lot,
made a lot of jokes, and we had a lot of sex. I had work to do, and
so did he. We had children to raise. A good part of the marriage we
were working on our problems, like the women he’d been with before
and after me, my attraction for Danial, my health, the people
trying to kill us. Later, it was Devlin and Danial, all that
sharing me that no one really liked. That was what killed it, I
think. We stopped talking sometime during the marriage, and he
started dictating things to me. And...” I trailed off.

“Go on, Sar.”

“I had Titus break the bond between Theo and
me, after I got back from the Everglades.”

“Why?” Lash was incredulous. “It’s rare what
you shared with him.”

“Because I loved him enough to let him go,
because he wasn’t going to be happy sharing me,” I forced out. “I
think now a lot of what kept us together was the bond. Yes, the sex
was good, even great. But although I liked him, cared for him, what
did we have in common? Almost nothing. Once we hit problems, we
fell apart. Without that bond to keep us together, Theo would
probably have left me when I began to want Danial. And that’s even
if he ever admitted he liked me in the first place. Without that
spell that night, he wouldn’t have kissed me the first time, or
dreamed with me. There would have been nothing to start, so there
would have been nothing to end.”

Lash was silent, his expression thoughtful
and introspective.

“Why did you want to know all that?” I asked
him again.

“I want not to lose you like he did,” Lash
hissed, clearly agitated. “I want to not make the same mistakes he
did with you. But my temper’s a bad one, Sar. Sometimes I’m as bad
as Devlin, worse really, though I know you haven’t seen me like
that too often, mostly with Theo.”

That went without saying. I still remembered
his confession at Davy’s.
He’s got no memory of that night.
There’s no point bringing it up now.

“I want you to tell me, if I’m doing
something wrong,” Lash hissed, holding me against him, his cheek
pressed into my hair, my face in the crook of his neck. “Tell me,
so I can fix it, before you decide it’s easier not to try anymore
to make it work. I don’t ever want to fight with you again the way
we did a few weeks ago.”

“It’s a deal, if you’ll do the same for me,”
I said, and kissed him. He pulled back, and gave me a tilted-head
look, like he didn’t know what I meant.

“Lash, you should have told me very bluntly
that you needed me as a snake,” I said gently. “You should’ve told
me that you had gotten a potion for me, for us—”

“The first I already did,” Lash said a little
testily. “And I was worried you’d refuse.”

“I told you I loved you,” I replied, trying
to keep my irritation in check. “I need you to be honest with
me.”

“Talk about honest! You should have told me
immediately when you realized you were in love with me. That very
moment, you should have been calling me,” Lash hissed forcefully.
“I would have been on the road in the next minute, coming to get
you so we could be together, no matter who stood in my way, Danial,
Dev, or Theo. I knew you cared for me a little, but—”

“Should I have said ‘I care deeply for you’?”
I mocked.

“Don’t be sarcastic about this, or I’ll spank
you,” Lash hissed sharply, “You’ve been in love before, Sar. You
knew what you were feeling. I hadn’t been before—”

Lash went silent, realizing what he’d just
admitted. We didn’t speak for a minute, just holding one
another.

“I wanted to say what I felt a lot of times,”
I whispered in his ear. “But I was afraid to.”

“Tell me again.”

“I love you, Lash.”

Lash didn’t reply. He just hugged me close to
him, as if he would never let me go.

* * * *

That Devlin was not happy when he came to was
an understatement. He was livid I’d dosed him with a sleeping
potion, and incensed to find Ulysses dead. But when Lash told him
about Jerry’s betrayal, and also the information that Jerry had
given up before Lash killed him, Devlin thanked Lash and I for
killing him instead.

Lash had discovered from Jordan, Elle’s
attacker, that Ulysses was watching Danial’s home, to see who came
and went. We’d always assumed the watch point was from some
location on or near the road that led to Danial’s hidden driveway,
but we’d been wrong.

It came to light through Jerry that Ulysses
had sold Robin’s werewolf pelt for a massive cloaking spell. It hid
the two large RV’s that he’d parked on Danial’s land off the road
that he’d bought with money from the first stolen werebear pelt.
He’d been lurking and plotting there all along, with no one the
wiser. But the most chilling thing was that Bill Winger, Elle’s
tutor, had been helping Ulysses, feeding him information on patrols
and guard routes, so that none of the guards, not even Theo or
Tears, had noticed any comings and goings from Ulysses’ camp. That
was how he’d known where to find Danial that night he and T were
attacked. How he’d known where to find Sundown, that day she was
attacked. Bill had mistaken her for me, when he saw her driving
past. Ulysses had even been using Danial’s vehicles; the van Elle
had been attacked in had been one that had belonged to Lander that
had been sitting in storage for the last few years. The Pathfinder
Ulysses had driven to his challenge fight with Devlin had been the
one Danial had purchased for T, when he had first learned to
drive.

That very afternoon, after killing Jerry,
Lash and Titus went to Danial’s home and together with Theo,
Terian, and T, they destroyed the rest of Ulysses’ camp. Lash
wouldn’t talk about it after, except to say vengeance had been done
and there was nothing left but ashes. But Devlin told me later that
there had been evidence that Jerry was going to act to let Ulysses
free inside Hayden, and also arrange to have the gate open, in
order for an all-out attack to take place, one involving more than
fifty werebears, all polar bears that had once been employees of
Ebediah. Devlin said nothing about what had happened to those
bears, or the two from the day of his battle with Ulysses, but he
advised me to wear my headset in the basement for the next month
when I worked down there on e-mail for T. I agreed, and asked
nothing more.

Bill was brought to Hayden by Lash the day
after Ulysses died, shaking and shivering, but untouched. But when
he saw Devlin baring his fangs evilly, he wet his pants in sheer
terror.

Devlin, denied of his own revenge against
Ulysses, took out all of his anger on Bill, setting him free
outside at dusk, telling if he made it over the wall of Hayden, he
would be allowed to live. My vengeful vampire lord spent the night
playing with the former tutor, and came back before dawn licking
his lips. I knew by Dev’s pure satiated look that he’d let Bill get
to the wall, and almost over it before killing him. But I didn’t
shed a single tear for that bastard.

The most unsettling thing was the unexpected
discovery of a werefox pelt in Ulysses’ camp. It had not come from
one of Danial’s foxes, but some creature had lost its life. We
reasoned that this was how Terian had found out about Lash and I,
that one of Ulysses men, perhaps the sorcerer killed by Terian, had
been spying on us that night we’d returned from the Everglades.
That they had overheard what had happened, and seen that Terian was
the weak link, and the key to infiltrating Danial’s home. Because
it was clear from Jerry’s confession that Ulysses hadn’t been able
to set up camp at Danial’s until Terian had been out of the
way.

After hearing that, I felt responsible in a
way for what had happened. Devlin hugged me, and assured me that
Terian did, too, asking me to let it go. “Ulysses would have found
some other way to infiltrate Danial’s, if not that one,” he said
soothingly. “Don’t blame yourself.” But secretly, I wondered if
that were true.

* * * *

Lash and I were lying in bed one afternoon.
Devlin was feeding in Titus’s old room, and I knew he would be a
while, as he’d said not to expect him to be joining us until after
nine or so. Lash had used the opportunity to make love with me, as
he often did, and then we had slept a while, our bodies entwined.
I’d cried when I awoke from a dream of Devon, and my weresnake mate
had held me, saying nothing.

“I never got to know what he looked like,” I
wailed. “I won’t recognize him, when I die, if I go to where he
is.”

“He’ll recognize you,” Lash whispered gently.
“And he’ll come bounding up to see you, probably knocking you over.
You’ll hear him purr again, Sar. You’ll see his human form then,
too. He’ll probably look just like Theo.”

“It’s funny,” I whispered, smiling bitterly.
“But humans have wreaked the greatest hurt on me. It wasn’t a
vampire, a were, or even a demon. It was humans.”

“What do you mean?” Lash hissed softly,
pushing my hair back from my eyes. “Ulysses was human, but all
vampires start out as human.”

“Not that. All this started because Theo was
taken from me by a human, who wanted to sell him for profit, and
because another human wanted to use Danial and he for target
practice. You know the story?”