Chapter 3 #2
Vash flipped the phone back around to face her. “How did you get your hands on Lindsay?”
The hair on Elijah’s arms and nape rose with his sudden fury. He’d pinned the vampress to a tree by the throat before she knew what’d hit her.
Vash found herself flattened into the coarse bark of a tree trunk by over six feet and two hundred twenty pounds of bristling, growling lycan. Her fury over being caught unawares was exacerbated by her prickling dislike of Elijah’s proprietary feelings toward Lindsay Gibson.
“What?” she taunted, catching the wrists of his hands presently wrapped around her neck. His heavily muscled thigh was shoved between hers, and his lean hips pressed against her pelvis in a way that set her heart racing. “Got a hard-on for Adrian’s woman?”
“Where is she?”
Her smile was mocking. “Why do you care?”
“Lindsay saved my life.”
“I knew I hated that bitch for a reason.”
“She’s with Adrian.”
Elijah looked down at the phone on the ground and Syre’s steely-eyed visage. “Is she unharmed?”
“If she’s still alive, she’s healthier than she’s ever been.”
A chill slid down Elijah’s spine. He looked at Vashti, whose eyes were bright with challenge. While a mortal would have lost consciousness by now from lack of air, the vampress was merely flushed, which made her even more beautiful. “What did you do to her?”
“What she wanted done,” Syre answered. “Release my second, Alpha, before I decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
“Not yet.” Maybe not ever, if his growing suspicions were realized. His gut knotted as the fear deepened.
Vash smiled. “How did you get her, Syre?”
“She was brought to me by members of the Anaheim cabal.”
Elijah growled. “There’s a vampire nest in Southern California?”
“We prefer to call them cabals or covens,” she corrected, “depending on the size.” She turned her gaze to Syre. “Did they tell you how they got her out of Angels’ Point?”
It was no secret that Angels’ Point, Adrian’s compound in Anaheim Hills, was a fortress. Set high above the city, it was guarded by Sentinels—and before the revolt, lycans—as well as the finest electronic security surveillance millions could buy.
“No.” The turning wheels in Syre’s mind were evident in his contemplative tone. “I assumed they’d acquired her somewhere between her work and the Point.”
“We need to talk to them. They have a winged contact they’re not sharing.”
“I’ll see to it. And I’ve sent the Alpha’s blood sample from the scene of Nikki’s abduction out to be analyzed for anticoagulants, as you requested. I’ll let you know the results when I have them.”
There was a pause. “Are you all right there, Vashti?”
The circle of her fingers released Elijah’s wrists, freeing her hands to slide up his arms like a lover. Teasing him. Goading him. “Of course.”
“Check in regularly, so I can be certain.”
“Yes, Syre.”
Yes, Syre. Elijah was determined to hear her cede to him as thoroughly…
while she was beneath him, taking hard, deep thrusts of his aching cock.
That he could want her and want to kill her at the same time was fucking with his head.
Rachel’s pain was a vice around his ches…
Lindsay had lost her mother to Vashti’s viciousness, yet still he craved the vampress with a ferocity that shook him.
She squeezed his shoulders with a vampire’s strength, which just happened to be the exact pressure he most enjoyed. Her hands ran down either side of his spine, kneading, before reaching his ass and palming it. Her tongue peeped out and slid over her full lower lip.
“You can’t have Lindsay, you know. She’s brain-dead over Adrian. Gave up her life for him.”
He fought the seductive lure she was trying to wrap him with. “What—exactly—did you do to her, Vashti?”
“You’ve been a Sentinel dog for years. Bet you’ve never seen Adrian look twice at a woman. Why her? What’s special about her?”
“Get to your point.”
“She’s—well, she was—Syre’s daughter.”
Elijah froze, his fingers going slack with shock. “Impossible.”
None of the vampires could procreate—soulless creatures couldn’t create a being with a soul. But…Lindsay had shown anomalous traits almost from the beginning.
“She was born with another soul inside her. The reincarnated soul of Syre’s naphil daughter, created before he fell.”
“What did you do, Vashti?” he repeated.
“What had to be done for one soul to overcome the other.”
Rage burned through his blood like fire, tightening his hands around her throat. In that moment, he was a breath away from separating her head from her neck.
“Did you Change her?” he snarled, fighting off the shift rippling just beneath his skin. “Did you kill her spirit? Is Lindsay gone?”
For the first time, fear shadowed her eyes and whitened her lips.
As his claws extended and pierced through her pale skin, blood slid over the upper curve of her breasts in crimson tendrils.
“She’s still Lindsay. Shadoe’s soul was lost when Syre finished the Change. And he wasn’t lying—Lindsay wanted it.”
“Bullshit. She hated vampires because of you. Because you killed her mother. She would never become one willingly.”
A frown marred the space between Vash’s brows. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Two decades back. A pretty little blond five-year-old and her mother, having a nice picnic in the park…until a pack of vamps decided to have a snack.”
“No.” The confusion cleared. Her gaze bored into his.
“Not my style. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask her.
She must’ve figured it out when she gnawed these holes in my neck and dug into my blood memories.
She had me down and pinned with a sharp piece of wood nearby; she could’ve vanquished me, but she let me go. ”
Needing definitive answers, he pushed away from her plush, pliant body. He derided himself for wanting to believe her. “I need to know she’s okay. Make it happen.”
“You’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
He staked her to the tree with a fierce glance. “Now, Vashti.”
Cursing under her breath, she retrieved her phone from the ground and riffled through her contacts. A moment later, ringing came over the phone, followed by the clipped greeting of a receptionist at Mitchell Aeronautics.
“Adrian Mitchell, please. Tell him Vashti is calling.”
Elijah’s arms crossed as he waited, his mind spinning from the fact that the vampires had once had Lindsay in their clutches and had let her go back to Adrian, effectively forfeiting the Sentinel leader’s only weakness. Why?
“Vash.” Adrian’s richly sonorous voice flowed through the phone’s speaker, sans video.
“How’s the new love of your life, Adrian?” Vash’s mouth curved bitterly. “Did she make it?”
“She’s exceptionally well. How’s your neck?”
“Still holding my head and body together.”
“You continue to have vicious rogues in your numbers, Vashti.” Despite the harshness of his words, the Sentinel leader’s tone remained as even and smooth as always. “We’ll be hunting them.”
All of the Sentinels displayed that steely control and neutrality of emotion, but Elijah had heard Adrian speaking with Lindsay, and he knew the angel’s still waters ran deep.
She snorted. “Not everyone in your ranks is toeing the line either, I hear.”
“You’ll stay away from Lindsay. She’s no longer any concern of yours or Syre’s.”
Vash looked at Elijah. “She’s a vampire, Adrian. That makes her one of us.”
“She’s my mate; that makes her mine. Forgetting that will see your neck no longer serving its purpose.”
“I love it when you talk dirty,” she purred. “Give my regards to Lindsay.”
She ended the call, then redialed. The video activated, and Syre’s face appeared. “Lindsay’s okay. And Adrian threatened me over her, so he’s still protecting her. She’s in loving hands, Samyaza.”
Elijah stepped closer, his gaze riveted to the vampire leader’s haunted eyes.
A long moment later, Syre swallowed, and a deep exhale escaped him. “Todah, Vashti.”
“You’re welcome.” Her face and voice softened. “I should have checked sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.”
Silent understanding passed between the two vampires.
The instinctive exchange bespoke of a long relationship and deep compassion.
Elijah was contemplating his own changing perceptions of Vashti—most especially his absorption in her as a person with a soft heart beneath the hard exterior—when she ended the call and faced him.
She arched a brow. “Feel better?”
“Enough for now.” He wouldn’t feel totally settled until he spoke with Lindsay himself, but at least he knew she was with Adrian, who would die for her. His friend was safe for now.
“Less inclined to kill me now?”
He bared his teeth in a smile.
She shrugged. “Worth a shot.”