Darkness Dawns (11 page)

She sagged weakly. “Roland?”

“Yes.”

The dizziness returned.

“P-please don’t kill me,” she murmured, then sank into oblivion.

Roland caught Sarah as she fainted. Slipping one arm around her back and the other beneath her knees, he lifted her up and settled her against his chest. Her head lolled and came to rest on his shoulder.

Fiery pain shot through the arm his new nemesis had broken. Because Roland had lost so much blood again, the limb had only healed superficially.

It didn’t matter. Pain he was familiar with. Fear he wasn’t.

And it had definitely been fear that had gripped him when he had seen the lead vampire take off and chase Sarah after she had driven away.

Bastien, he had heard one of the flunky reinforcements call him.

Giving in to impulse, Roland buried his face in Sarah’s tangled, leaf-strewn hair. The pleasant citrus scent was now suppressed by that of the forest mulch she had collected in her flight.

His preternaturally enhanced senses reassured him that her heartbeat, though rapid from sprinting and panic, was strong.

The intense relief he felt was disquieting.

Roland raised his head. She looked like hell. Unlike Sarah, he could see clearly in full darkness and his first glimpse of her had been a shock.

The left half of her face was smeared with blood that oozed from a gash near her hairline. Her clothing was torn in half a dozen places and coated with so much dirt, leaves, and grass that even if he hadn’t seen the path she had cleared on her way down the hill, he would have known she had taken a bad fall.

The bandages he had carefully wrapped around her hands were gone. Her fingers and palms bled from numerous cuts, some of which still had pieces of glass lodged in them. So did
her left forearm. Her right forearm and elbow were scraped. Both arms, her chin, and her collarbone sported pink patches that would no doubt morph into ugly bruises over the next few days.

She must have been in agony. Yet she hadn’t given up.

When he had reached the bottom of the hill, Roland had been astounded to see her running blindly across the meadow.

Running.
Not walking.

He frowned down at her.

Had she been running from
him
or from Bastien?

Just as he had hoped, she had wasted no time in leaving after he had tackled the bastard, breaking several of the vamp’s ribs, so she couldn’t have known who the victor would be.

Not that he would call himself the victor. He hadn’t defeated Bastien. Bastien had decided a strategic retreat was in order when it had become clear he wouldn’t win.

Worried about Sarah, Roland had elected not to pursue him.

If Sarah had known Roland was the one trailing her, would she have stopped or continued to run? He had seen the horror suffuse her face when she had realized what he was. It was the same he had seen consume Mary when he had mistakenly taken her into his confidence.

He barely knew Sarah, so it shouldn’t have hurt.

But it had.

“Arghhhhhhhhh!”

Roland stiffened when that male roar rent the air.

A warning? A charge sounded?

“What the hell happened to my car?”

Marcus.

Relaxing, Roland shook his head and started back to face his friend’s wrath, jostling his precious burden as little as possible.

He snorted, a sound rife with self-mockery.

Precious burden?
Sarah didn’t mean anything to him. Never
would
mean anything to him. Never
could.

It didn’t matter that she was one of the most intriguing women he had met in centuries. Nor that she had been all that is kind to him, laughed with him, teased him, slept curled up against him on her futon. So soft and sweet.

Now that she knew what he was, she would despise him.

And, knowing that, only a fool would allow himself to care for her.

Sighing deeply, the self-proclaimed fool trudged up the hill and forged through the trees.

Marcus paced back and forth beside his car in long, angry strides that would’ve been more impressive if they weren’t hampered by a pronounced limp. When the lead vampire had taken off after Sarah, Roland had quickly finished off his foes and followed, leaving Marcus behind to battle the half dozen who were left of the new arrivals. Not that he had minded. He could handle it and had, though not before a Marilyn Manson look-alike (why did so many new vamps find it necessary to submerge themselves in goth facades?) had shattered his right kneecap.

That particular vamp had then unwillingly supplied the blood that had healed his leg enough for Marcus to continue and eliminate all comers.

After which he had raced here and found this.

Freakin’ vamp would pay!

Swearing fluently, he stepped into the open driver’s door and, despite his wounds, effortlessly pushed the vehicle off the road. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with it beyond the obvious damage done to the body (it looked like someone had dropped a wrecking ball on it), but it wouldn’t start.

Slamming the door shut, he resumed his pacing.

He was full of rage and pain and adrenaline and hadn’t felt this alive in years.

Seven years to be exact.

And Marcus liked it.

A lot.

Which was why Seth was worried about him.

Seth must have intuited it. Marcus didn’t know how, because Seth had not hunted with him or witnessed the change firsthand. Yet Seth had accused him of taking unnecessary risks and being self-destructive before banishing him to small-town North Carolina, where vampires were generally fewer in number.

Marcus smiled grimly.

Ah, but Seth’s plan had backfired.

Tonight had been great. Tonight he had been presented with a challenge that could very well have defeated him. Tonight he felt alive.

The foliage on the other side of the car parted and Roland emerged, carrying a bloody and battered Sarah.

Marcus halted, thinking her dead until he picked up her racing pulse. “Is she okay?”

“She will be.” Roland glanced at the white Geo Prism parked several yards behind the Prius.

Marcus shrugged. “I thought we might need it to catch up with her if the vamp didn’t get her first.”

“Sorry about your car,” Roland muttered, heading for the Prism.

Marcus followed and opened the passenger door for him. “Don’t worry about it. I already called Reordon. He and his cleaning crew will take care of it.”

Roland said nothing, just eased inside the cramped vehicle.

Marcus watched his friend curiously. Roland wasn’t behaving in his usual irascible, distance-himself-from-everything-and-everyone manner. In fact, he didn’t seem to want to distance himself from Sarah at all, curtly refusing Marcus’s offer to take her until Roland was settled, instead tightening his hold on her and keeping her with him.

Roland’s touch was downright possessive as he cradled Sarah on his lap and arranged her just so, ensuring she would be comfortable. Under Marcus’s bemused gaze, he then gently cupped a hand protectively over her head and motioned for Marcus to close the door.

Marcus closed it, fascinated, and circled the rear of the car.

Who the hell was this woman and how had she managed to snare Roland’s interest so quickly?

Because she had definitely snared it.

Squeezing his long frame behind the wheel, he closed the door and turned the key. The engine sputtered to reluctant life. “Where to?”

“My place,” Roland said, not looking up as he carefully began to pick pieces of glass out of Sarah’s hair and drop them to the floorboard.

Marcus pulled onto the road and followed Roland’s directions. “Did the vamp do that to her?”

“In part. He jumped onto the hood of your car and brought it to a crashing halt.”

Marcus frowned. Judging by the way the tires had squealed and smoked as Sarah had sped away from the house, she had been going damned fast. “How did he catch her?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Roland shake his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a vampire move so swiftly. Fortunately, I got there before he could lay a hand on her and she ran away while we fought.”

“Did you kill the fucker?”

“No, Bastien chose to retreat.”

And Roland hadn’t gone after him? Very telling. “His name is Bastien?”

“That’s what one of his men called him. By the time I found Sarah, she had tumbled down a wooded hill and was racing across a field.”

Glancing away from the road momentarily, Marcus saw Roland tenderly smooth his big hand over her hair after the
last particle of glass was tossed away. “Was she running from

Bastien? Or from you?”

Roland’s lips tightened. “Both, I think.”

“What did she say when you caught up with her?”

Roland’s eyes were grim when they met his. “She begged me not to kill her.”

Silently, Marcus swore and returned his attention to the road.

That did not bode well.

Twenty minutes later, Roland gently deposited Sarah on the dark brown sofa in his living room and placed a pillow beneath her head. That she was still unconscious worried him.

As he knelt beside her, he noticed the blood that coated his hands and forearms and turned to Marcus. “Get me a towel, will you?”

Marcus disappeared into the kitchen, then returned to the entrance and tossed Roland a towel. “What are you doing?”

Roland began wiping the blood from his hands. “She has a nasty head wound and some bad bruises and scrapes. I’m going to heal her.”

“Oh, no, you’re not. Not until you feed. You’ve lost a lot of blood and have much more severe wounds of your own. You know what will happen if you heal her without feeding first.”

“I’m not going to put my needs before hers, Marcus. She saved my life.”

“And you saved hers, so the two of you are even.”

“Hers would not have been in danger if she hadn’t found and helped me.”

“Oh, please. Do you really think that after babysitting you and watching the sun roast your hairy ass, Ren and Stimpy would have walked past her with a smile and a wave and continued on their merry way? She’s a lovely woman living alone in the middle of nowhere with no one nearby to hear her screams. They were stabbing you because they wanted to
know what it felt like. What makes you think they wouldn’t have raped and tortured her just to see what
that
felt like? If you ask me, she’s damned lucky she
did
find and help you. So you can stop playing the martyr and feed.”

Ignoring him, Roland tossed the towel aside and settled his palm on the ribs he had seen Sarah clutching as she ran. Just as he had suspected, three of them were cracked.

His hand heated as he focused his flagging energy. His own ribs began to ache as hers healed beneath his touch.

Releasing her, he shifted uncomfortably.

“Here.”

A bag of blood appeared a few inches in front of his face. Roland’s gaze followed the arm offering it to its owner.

Marcus now stood behind the sofa. “I brought it to you in case you were simply too tired or lazy to get it yourself.”

Roland brushed it aside impatiently. “Get that out of here.”

“Stop being stubborn,” Marcus demanded. “You need it and she’s unconscious.”

“But she could wake at any moment.”

Actually, she already had.

Sarah had been flirting with consciousness ever since Roland had settled her on what felt like a very comfortable sofa.

Roland was a vampire. Marcus was, too. And she was now alone with them and terrified of what they meant to do to her. She needed to escape but had no hope of outrunning them. So she had enacted the only plan she could think of with her head pounding and sharp pains darting through her chest every time she drew in a breath: feign sleep, eavesdrop, gather information, then sneak away at the first opportunity.

The hardest part so far had been keeping her heartbeat steady and slow despite her fear and not flinching when Roland had touched her sore ribs.

Well, no. The absolute hardest part had been not freaking out when Marcus had told Roland to feed, assuming she would be the main course.

The more she listened, though, the more uncertainty crowded her. Roland didn’t sound like the soulless predator she had seen suck the blood of that goth kid in her front yard. He sounded like the nice guy she had spent the day with. The one who had let her sleep on him without copping a feel, disinclined to complain about her weight resting on his many wounds.

He sounded protective of her.

“And Seth thinks
I’m
unreasonable,” Marcus muttered. “She knows what we are.”

“And she’s already seen me feed once, Marcus. I don’t want her to see me do it again. She’ll be scared enough when she wakes.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Clearly you didn’t see her face when she dove for the car and screeched away.”

Inwardly, she winced. Jeeze, that sounded cowardly.

“I was preoccupied, if you’ll recall,” Marcus responded dryly. “Besides, she was only afraid because she thought you were a vampire like the others. Once you explain that you’re not, that you’re an immortal, she’ll come around.”

He wasn’t a vampire? What was an immortal?

“The way Mary did?” Roland asked dryly.

Who was Mary?

Marcus snorted. “Mary was a twit, infected by the superstitions of her time and easily influenced by others.”

“She was not a twit. She was well-educated.”

“She was a bluestocking, a student of the classics with her head in the clouds. Despite her love of books, she knew little more of the world than her female peers and, as I said, was easily influenced by others. Perhaps if she had been capable of thinking for herself, she wouldn’t have betrayed you the way she did.”

Roland grunted.

“None of that matters, anyway, because Mary and Sarah are two different people. Mary would never have hit a man in the head with a shovel to save you. Sarah did.”

Well, that made her feel better.

“Plus, I happened to see a number of paranormal romance novels on her bookshelves when we were at her place, so she may not freak out at all.”