Days of Redemption (The Firsts Book 6) (22 page)

TWENTY ONE

A ball of orange fire, the sun sat on the edge of the ocean, an avid audience of one waited with a glass of wine for it to bid goodbye to the day and let the waiting night come forth.

Lauren wore her favorite white sundress, a fabric so sheer, you could see her nipples through it.  She couldn’t wait for Bryn to arrive and see her, nearly naked, waiting for him.   She didn’t want him to have any doubt about her choice.  It was him, it always was.  She’d told Michael that she was with Bryn.  He’d taken the news stoically, nodded and walked away.  She understood.

Tonight, though, she was ready to embrace life with a vampire.  She looked down and found her wine glass empty again.  Picking up the green bottle, she smiled. 

Damn!  Half of the bottle was gone already.  She poured another glass and held it up.

“To crazy decisions,” she said to the nearly-gone sun.

“I want to talk to you about that,” a voice said out of the darkness.

Michael.

He stepped into the weak light that spilled out of her shack onto the porch.

Lauren looked up at him.  He was still wearing his scrubs from earlier in the day, but he was disheveled.

“Michael, I thought we’d finished this.”

“No.  I know we had something.  This man, this ape-like giant, he can’t be your type.  He’s forcing you, he has to be.  You’re a beautiful, gentle, smart woman.  You
cannot be attracted to that oversized heathen.  Be honest with me.  Is he forcing you?”

“No, Michael.  He’s actually the gentlest man I’ve ever known.  Michael, Bryn is a good man and I’m with him now. I’ll be with him until he doesn’t want me anymore. Is that smart? 
Probably not.  But it doesn’t change anything.  Please, you need to go before he gets here.”

“I think what you mean is that
I
need to go before he gets here.”

The second man’s voice that came out of the darkness made Lauren’s blood run cold.  It was one she
prayed she would never hear again.

Lauren grabbed Michael’s arm and pulled hard as she stepped off the porch.

“Run!  Come with me now!”  She’d cleared the porch and was heading down the beach when she looked back and her heart sunk. 

Michael hadn’t followed her.  His figure stood unmoving, in front of another male figure.  Lauren saw the outline of a handgun against the flickering light of the candles she’d lit on the railings.  She couldn’t leave him. 

The man holding the gun was the one who had kidnapped her from her apartment in Chicago.   And she knew if she ran, he’d kill Michael just to piss her off.  It was doubtful that he’d let him live, even if she went back, but she had to try.

“Let him go,” she called out, as she approached, still some distance away.  “And I’ll come back.”

“Right,” Claude’s voice traveled to her.  “No, you cannot be trusted.  Come back, and I will let him go.  Those are
my
terms.  They are
not
negotiable.”

To have come this far and to lose it all.
  She didn’t have a choice.

As she walked slowly back to her shack, aware it was the last thing she’d see before she died, she let her eyes wander to the setting sun. It was down, but she doubted Bryn could make it there in time.

“I hope you know,” she whispered, as she climbed the steps.  “I hope you know I could have loved you.”

Michael was terrified.  Lauren walked up to him, and put her body between Michael and Claude.

“I’m here.  Do something honorable for once, and let this man go.  He’s a doctor and he’s a good man.  Please.  You wanted me, and I’m here.  I beg of you.”

Claude smiled, his eyes shifting from Lauren to Michael.  “You beg of me.  That sounds nice.  I
like
begging. 
Oui
, perhaps it will help.”

“Then I will.  On my knees, if that will please you.”

“It might, considering how difficult you’ve been this past year.

“
Just, uh, one question. How did you find me?”

“Bitch.
  You thought you got away, but that wasn’t going to happen this time.  I put a tracer on you.  Under your hairline in the back.  I know those freaks have a way of fucking us, and I wasn’t going to lose you again.”

“Why didn’t you come sooner?”

“Ask your boyfriend.  Oh, no, excuse me, you will not be able to do that.”

Waving his hand, Claude pointed to Lauren.  “Come closer.”

“All right, but, you’re going to let him go, right?”

“Sure.”

He wasn’t, she knew that, she just didn’t know how to stop this.  Staying in front of Michael, she yelled, “Run!” and shoved him away from her, and this time, he did.  At the same time, she threw herself at Claude.

Claude grabbed Lauren’s hair and ripped her sideways
as he fired. 

In the awful slow motion that happens when a tragedy unfolds before shocked eyes, Lauren watched Michael take the hits, several bullets slammed into his back and he went down as if his body defied gravity.

Her tortured cry barely escaped as Claude threw her against the door of her shack.

“One more death on your head,
chérie.
But I will not let you suffer long
. 
Finally, I can finish this.”

Lauren had only seconds between watching bullets end the life of the wonderful man she’d worked with the past few months, and feeling bullets slam into her, one,
more, she didn’t know how many.  It didn’t matter.  She knew now, it was over.  And she was wrong.  The last thing she saw before her eyes closed forever was Claude, his cheerful smile as he threw a piece of paper towards her and turned away.  

She didn’t even feel her body as it hit the rough-hewn boards.

Scrubbed,
wearing lightweight new clothes he’d compelled from a shop outside the hotel, a bottle of his favored whiskey in his hands, Bryn approached the tiny shack Lauren had called home for several months.  It reminded him of somewhere he had lived long ago in the Highlands.

Smiling, he noticed the flickering candles around the deck in the back.  She was waiting for him.

He didn’t break into vampire speed, but he picked up his step.  They’d made love nearly a dozen times last night, and he still couldn’t wait to see her again.

“Y
e’ve got it bad, vampire,” He admitted to himself out loud.

Instantly, as he rounded the bushes that lined the side of her little home, he knew something was horribly wrong.  A shape lay crumpled on the decking, surrounded by something dark. 

God, no!  He could smell her blood!

He split the air getting up on
to the deck to her, but she was so near to death, he couldn’t hear her breathe. 

Without thought,
or reason, he ripped open his arm and fitted it over Lauren’s mouth.

“Drink, little human, drink!” he said urgently.  Seconds passed as he forced his life-giving blood into her, but she did not respond. 
Was she too far gone?  Was he just too late?

No!   He would not accept that.  Not while there was still life, even as little as there was, he would not allow her to
cross that tiny distance from life into death!

Bryn widened the slice and fed her as much as he could,
probably more than he could spare, he did not care.

An eternity of seconds passed before he heard the first sign of hope…she gagged. 

He pulled her into his arms and brushed her blood-matted hair from her face. 

“Go ahead, baby, choke, gag, let me know ye’re
fightin.’  Let the blood in…let it fix this.”

He watched her eyelids flutter, and dropped his head to press his lips to her forehead.

“Ye’re gonna make it, darlin.’  Don’t let ‘em win.  Ya gotta come with me when I kick their fuckin’
arses
!”

Keeping his torn arm over her mouth, Bryn continued the feed.  He had no idea how long it had been, but finally he felt her hand come up and try to push his arm from her mouth.

“No…” she said, so weakly he barely heard.

Was she trying to tell him not to save her? 
That
wasn’t going to happen!

“Bryn, no…”

“Keep drinkin’ and come back to me.”

“Too…”  Lauren went into a gagging fit.  “…much.”

“Ye’re worried about me?  Take the blood, baby.  I’ve got plenty.”

He held her close, watching as she struggled
to breathe, but he’d given her all he dared at this time, so he pulled his arm away from her mouth.  His eyes left her only one time when he glanced up to see a second figure lying still several yards away.  That one was finished.  An innocent bystander.  Although he couldn’t see the body clearly, he thought it might be the man she’d been kissing when he arrived here last night.  He was sorry to see that, he knew she liked him, but there was nothing Bryn could do for him now.   Vampire blood could heal injuries in humans, but it couldn’t save the dead. 

Her injuries
would be fatal, too.  He’d known that when he found her, so much of her blood already spilled.  Whoever shot her intended that even a vampire couldn’t save her.  Although he’d fed her a lot of his blood, she wasn’t healing quickly enough to live. 

There was only one choice now. 
One.  Or she was gone.

Bryn hesitated only a moment because he didn’t know…they had never discussed the subject…if she would want this
.

He would have to give her
much more blood. 

Bryn
would have to trigger conversion, and she would become vampire.

Wo
uld she want this?  She was unconscious, he couldn’t ask her, and time wasn’t on her side.

He pulled her closer and kissed her, his decision made.  His heart chose for him.  He wouldn’t live without her.

His wound had closed to stop the bleed, so he tore it again.

This time, after a few minutes of forcing
her to drink, he could feel the blood begin the change, and she fought it.  They always did.  It was painful and horrible, what the change caused as the human body transformed, every cell new and alien to itself.  She would become something completely different than what she was now.  And she would be his forever.

Holding his arm tightly over her mouth, he easily weathered her blows as she struck him.  Good. 
If she was strong enough to fight him, he hoped she was strong enough to accept the change. 

He prayed she was.  Some didn’t make it.  But this fiery woman,
with the heart of an angel and the soul of a tiger,
his
woman, she would make it.  Smiling, he thought that she would attack him later for making the choice for her.  And that she would
love
being vampire.

While he
continued to force her to drink, he used his other hand to dig his cell phone from his pocket, and hit a key.

“David!  I need the plane immediately. 
In Sulawesi.  Makassar.  It’s the little scientist, Lauren.  She’s converting.”

David’s sigh came through loudly.  “What happened?”

“I don’t know, but someone got to her.  The vampire society, I’m certain.   Just before I got here, someone had shot her to death.   I arrived seconds too late, so I had no choice.  But I need to get her somewhere secure.  Your cell in Iceland, quickly and by nightfall.”

“
The planes ready, Bryn.  I’ll be on it.  Send me the details of where you’ll be and I’ll have a car there as soon as possible.”

“Thanks, bro.”

Bryn texted directions to David, and dropped the phone back into his pocket.

He should
bind her.  She could hurt herself as her body reacted and fought against the fire that would come as her body shed its parent DNA structure.  But as he searched around, there was nothing that would hold her.  Some twine and thin chain that she would break through in moments when the pain escalated. 

“Hurry, David,” he whispered, as he looked inside the dismal shack.  Nothing at all that would be helpful.  Going back out to the deck, he noticed a figure walking along the beach.

“Hey, hey, can ya come here for a moment?  I need some help,” he called out, praying they would come.  He needed line of sight with the eyes to compel someone.

Fortunately, the figure started towards him.   It was a local woman, slight, small, pretty, with gently browned skin and satin black hair that swung loose at her side.

She gasped and dropped to the deck when she saw Lauren lying there in a pool of blood.