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Next time, he decided, was now.
Crabbing along the bottom, he retrieved his weapons, moved to the edge, and climbed out as quietly as he could. Then he stood and scanned the back of the house across the wide pool. The wrap-around second-floor balcony was empty, doors open, curtains still. Except for the blood-scent hanging in the damp air, there was no hint of either vampire or humans. Nor could he feel Bijou in his mind.
A profound emptiness settled over the night like the calm before a storm. Every hair on his body rose in silent alarm. His hands tightened on the hilts as he moved the swords out to either side of him, ready to counter any attack. Balancing on the balls of his feet, he stepped back softly, his water-logged boots squelching as he pivoted. All his senses heightened to detect the smallest movement and lowest sound.
There was neither.
The silent horror that waited for him had been there all along. It melted into his awareness out of the darkness at the end of a long dock. Dominique didn’t need to see the gold script on the sleek, black hull to know the mega yacht’s name, to remember instantly all the nightmares he had endured aboard. There was only one.
Apokryphos.
His sire’s lair…
16
Walk Into Hell
The moment the first whiff of his sire’s cedar smoke scent touched his nose, Dominique knew it was useless to run. He did anyway.
Bijou could have stopped him before he reached his bike with little effort. Kambyses could have done it with no effort at all. Neither one bothered to show themselves—though both were surely watching him gun the bike’s engine down the driveway and out the gate.
They could afford to let him run. With her fresh bite on him, he was as good as tethered. She could track him down at leisure and deliver him to Kambyses wrapped in chains.
His deepest instinct was to run—the faster and farther, the better—but his need to return to his lair and Cassidy overwhelmed all else. Perhaps this was a compulsion to remain close. If so, he wouldn’t fight it. Cassidy was everything.
Fragile, mortal Cassidy. Hopelessness threatened to crush him by the time he stripped and showered as if he could scrub the truth out of his pores. He had placed her in the center of a conflict neither of them could survive.
When he slipped into her bed, he wanted only to hold her and love her. And he wanted her to not wake and realize how impossible their situation had become.
She woke. He didn’t touch her.
“Oh God,” she said after searching his quiet demeanor. “She’s still alive.”
“I could not kill her.”
“Could not?” The “would not” hung between them and pinched her face.
“She is too strong.”
Cassidy nodded, thoughtful, and pushed sleep-tousled hair out of her face. “I see.” Wheels tumbled behind her eyes. “Okay. So…wait. I’ve seen you put down a two-thousand-year-old vampire. Are you telling me this chick is stronger than that?”
He shook his head a little. “No, but…her master is.”
“Her—” She connected the dots in a flash—and blanched. “No. Not him.”
He slipped under the comforter and pulled her close. For a long while, he simply let her warmth soak into his weary body and breathed her familiar sweetness as he prepared to speak the words he never wanted to be true. “Kambyses has found me.”
She tightened her hold on him.
“Bijou is only a pawn, maybe his spawn,” he murmured, stroking her hair and pushing away the memory of the girl dying in his arms earlier. If Kambyses had sired Bijou with his blood—unlike Dominique, who had received only his serum—or allowed her to drink from him recently, either would explain her tremendous power, which far surpassed her age.
“She could have killed me with ease tonight, but he did not permit it. She is his to command. Even…” His thoughts spun out to the inevitable, terrifying conclusion. “Even had I finished her”—and the humans with her—“it would have made no difference.” None whatsoever. “I should not have come back here.”
“Here is where you belong,” she said against his chest.
“Here is where he knows he can find me. If I want to escape him, I have to run as far as I can for the rest of the night, and the next, and the next thousand after that. And he…” His tongue felt numb, uncooperative. “He would still win, because I would have lost you, my humanity.” What other purpose could there be for what Bijou had done?
“Then I’ll come with you. We can leave right now. Just go. Anywhere. We’ll figure out the details later.” The resolve ringing in her voice grew with every word and almost gave him hope. Almost.
