Chapter 7 #2
But she was teaching him a different way, changing him in slow degrees, bringing her light into his darkness.
And he made a concerted effort to learn and grow, to be the sort of man who could bring a smile to her face and happiness to her life.
Because she was his soul. Who was he if not the man who loved her beyond all reason and beyond any attempt at self-preservation?
The phone began to ring in his office. They all heard it despite the distance from where they stood and the glass patio door that closed off his workspace from the outdoors. Lindsay frowned and turned, still growing accustomed to her vampiric senses.
Adrian moved away, rounding the corner. The glass panel slid aside as he approached, and he willed his wings away.
They dissipated like fog in a stiff wind when he stepped inside, affording him comfortable movement as well as the ability to blend with mortals.
The speakerphone was engaged by the third ring, and his gaze held Lindsay’s as he settled into his chair.
“Mitchell,” he greeted the caller.
“Captain. Siobhán here.”
He leaned back in his chair, settling in.
He’d tasked Siobhán with studying the disease ravaging the vampire ranks, and she had been working ceaselessly on that mission for weeks.
It was she who’d inadvertently discovered that Sentinel blood cured the illness when a Sentinel working with her was bitten by one of the infected, resulting in the infected returning to a normal vampiric state.
Considering the tens of thousands of vampires in North America alone and the less than two hundred Sentinels left in existence, it was information they couldn’t afford to have the vampires discover before an alternate cure was found. “How are you progressing?”
“Slowly but surely. I’ve got a dozen infected in stasis now. We can keep them alive with steady blood transfusions, but they have to stay anesthetized, or they’re impossible to control.”
Adrian had seen the monstrosities in action firsthand. He knew how mindlessly violent they were. “How quickly do they lose higher brain function?”
“How far do you want me to go to find out?” she asked grimly. “They’re already infected by the time I get them. If you want a play-by-play of what happens from exposure to illness, I’ll need to deliberately infect healthy subjects.”
“Do it. Our blood is a cure, so we can reverse the damage.” It was a brutal order, and one he didn’t enjoy giving, but the ends justified the means.
When Nikki had attacked him and nearly taken his life, she’d still been cognizant enough to speak to him coherently. How recently had she been exposed? Had she been an example of someone who’d been recently contaminated? Or someone who’d been ill for a while?
“Have you been able to spot any patterns in the rapidity of progression?” Some vamps were dead within a few days, others lasted a few weeks, and still others appeared to be immune. Why?
“I think I’m onto something in that regard.
” Her excitement came through in her voice.
The pixie-like Sentinel was ravenous for knowledge.
“I’m not entirely positive yet, but it seems as if the advancement varies depending on how far removed the minion is from the Fallen heading their vampiric hierarchy.
For example, Lindsay is once removed from Syre.
Her infection would advance much more slowly than a minion she Changed, who would be twice removed from Syre. And so on and so on.”
He set his elbows on the armrests and steepled his fingers together. “You need to test Fallen blood.”
“It would be helpful, yes,” she conceded, certainly knowing how difficult it would be to attain. “Then I could see if it at least slows the development of the disease.”
“I’m your best chance of getting it,” Lindsay interjected. “As a vampire myself, I’d fit right in to any location where they congregate.”
Adrian’s response was immediate. “No.”
Her brows lifted. Her amber eyes challenged him—the distinctive irises of a vampire.
One who could move among the others with ease, but who was still frail in many ways.
His Sentinel blood would protect her from the illness, and she knew how to fight and wouldn’t hesitate to kill, but she’d still be vulnerable, and he wouldn’t be close enough to protect her.
And there was the fact that while most minions would have no idea who she was, some of the Fallen did because of Syre and Shadoe. She wasn’t totally anonymous.
He couldn’t risk her, couldn’t lose her.
“No,” he said again, pushing the negation into her mind for emphasis.
“Stay out of my head, angel,” she growled.
Siobhán’s melodious voice floated out of the phone’s speaker. “I’m also going to need more lycan blood.”
“Not a problem.” He had plenty cryogenically stored for identification and genetic testing purposes. “Anything else?”
“Perhaps…” She hesitated a moment. “Perhaps other angelic blood samples. From a mal’akh or even an archangel. Preferably both. Perhaps we Sentinels aren’t the only ones who carry the cure in our veins.”
“You don’t ask for much, do you?” Adrian said drily. Even though malakhim—the lowest rank of angel in the lowest sphere—were the most numerous, getting blood from one was no easy task. “I’ll see what I can do. Keep me posted.”
“Yes, Captain. Of course.”
He hung up, his gaze never leaving Lindsay’s face.
She was careful not to openly challenge him in front of his subordinates, a circumspection she’d always displayed and he had always appreciated.
But she’d challenge him in private. He would never tell her how much it aroused him when she did so. He’d just keep showing her instead…
“We need a plan B, Lindsay. Work on coming up with that.”
Elijah shoved both hands through his hair, his heart pounding violently, his gaze on the woman sprawled prone on the bed.
Vashti’s hair was a crimson cloud around her, the glossy strands lying sinuously atop her back and shoulders.
Her face was turned toward him, her lips parted as she panted.
Her clawed hands fisted the fitted sheet, and trails of tears were still visible on her pale cheeks.
Not due to him, but to the nightmare she’d suffered that had woken him.
No…please…stop… Over and over in a broken litany. Whimpers and gasps of pain. Moans of agony that ripped through his vitals.
He would never forget the bloodcurdling scream that had sent him leaping from the bed as a man but landing on the floor in his lupine form.
Without his will. His beast had bypassed his control for the first time ever. For her. Because she’d cried out in distress, struggling through the throes of a nightmare.
And he’d been unable to shift back until the beast was certain she was all right. He’d paced the room, sniffing along the cracks around the door and in the corners, growling because there was no other outlet for his helpless fury but to search and find nothing to kill.
Once he’d been assured that nothing in the locked room posed a threat to her, he’d padded over to the bed. He had nuzzled against the crown of her head and licked away her tears. She’d calmed then, settling back into a fitful sleep. Only then had he been capable of shifting back.
Everyone was wrong about him—he was no Alpha, or he would never have shifted without conscious thought. Which meant they needed to find one who was. Quickly.
In the meantime, he was crazily attuned to Vashti.
To the extreme. Their primal mating had brought on more than explosive orgasms. It had altered him and his reactions to her, eroding his control and his goddamn common sense.
He could hardly recognize himself this morning. What the fuck was the matter with him?
He was afraid he knew. Those endless moments when he’d been bound and captured beneath her, helpless to stop her as she took his blood and his semen into her mouth, riveted by the burn of fury and ferocious desire as she sheathed his aching cock in her tight, hot depths…
They’d shifted him on the inside. And when he had taken over, and she’d shattered beneath him, he had accepted the surrender of such a powerful and lethal woman with a possessive surge of awe and gratitude.
Someone’s fist pounded against the door, and Elijah yanked it open, scowling at the interruption of Vashti’s rest.
“What do you want?” he snapped at Salem, who sucked up all the space in the hallway. Elijah didn’t give a shit that he was bare-assed naked. Neither did the vamp.
“Have you seen Vashti?” Salem barked back. Then his nose twitched as he scented the air. His eyes widened as he comprehended just how thoroughly Elijah had seen her.
“Yeah. Go away.”
“Where’d she go?”
“She’s sleeping. Come back later.” Elijah backed up and shut the door.
Salem stopped the latch from catching with a slap of his palm against the metal. “Sleeping?”
“You know. Eyes closed. Lack of consciousness. Sound familiar? Go away.”
Salem pushed to widen the opening. “Move aside, lycan.”
Bored with the conversation and still aggravated by Vash’s nightmare, Elijah stepped out to the hallway and shut the door carefully behind him.
Then he shoved the vampire across the hall and into the opposite doorway, which Salem busted through to slide into the foot of a heavily occupied bed.
Elijah got a glimpse of enough bare limbs and arched necks to make up at least four bodies.
Salem was up and in Elijah’s face in a split second. “You’re pissing me off, dog. Vash doesn’t sleep.”
“She does when she’s tired.”
Amber eyes glowing, Salem’s voice lowered ominously. “What did you do to her?”
“Really?” Elijah asked drily. “That’s none of your damn business.”
“If you hurt her—”
Elijah laughed at that, a sound with little humor in it. He’d been chained and assaulted, and the vamp was worried about Vash. “She can take care of herself.”
Salem stared him down. Elijah yawned, fatigued by lack of food, too little sleep, and a whole lot of fucking.
“She hasn’t slept in decades,” the vamp said finally.