22
THEY’D had lasagna and salad for dinner tonight, but the dishes were manageable. She wouldn’t be able to tease Mel about leaving her too much responsibility. Not that she would anyway. As she washed, Alanna watched the sanctuary members playing volleyball by the lake, a family canoeing out against the night sky, a full moon shining on the water. Mel, Frank, Miah and Nerida were by the communal bonfire. The purpose of the nightly ritual was to share stories, everyone encouraged to contribute a positive anecdote, whether it was the birth of a baby, a school accomplishment, the witnessing of a lovely sunset. Or the moment a woman decided to take control of her life and stop allowing another to harm her or her children. Though she couldn’t hear the stories over the splash of the water and clank of the dishes, she enjoyed seeing the looks on the participants’ faces, their reactions.
When arms slipped around her waist, she smiled, pleased by Niall’s mouth on her throat. He’d gotten up around late afternoon. True to her word, she hadn’t slept, but she pretended she’d been napping, invited to come back by Evan because her sparring match with Mel had tired her out. She wasn’t sure he’d believed her, but he’d gotten dressed, said he was overdue to help Frank with that plumbing job. He’d left her with a warm kiss that made her try to pull him back into the bed. He evaded her with a chuckle, then bent to Evan, brushing his lips over the oblivious male, still deep in sleep. “You worry too much, vampire,” he murmured. Then he’d straightened, given Alanna a fond look and left her.
Now he was back, freshly showered, suggesting the plumbing job had been messy. “Do you need help drying, muirnín? The sooner you’re done, the sooner I can take you out and have my way with ye under the stars. Finish what you tried tae start, you shameless hussy.”
She poked him with her elbow. “Yes, you can help. If you can keep from breaking the dishes with those big hands of yours.”
He pinched her, but picked up a towel. For a few minutes, they worked in companionable silence, and then he laid his hand on hers, stopping her. Alanna glanced up at him, saw he seemed to be contemplating something, his mouth serious. Then he glanced at her. “I need tae tell you some things, lass. I know you think that your time is limited, but nothing is sure in this life. And I know you want to stay with Evan. If the stars align and that happens . . . ye need to know things about him. Like his annual kill.” He gave her a poignant, wry smile, even as his eyes stayed serious, sad. “His annual kill’s always a Jew who strictly follows kashrut. Sounds twisted, but ’tis as close to kosher as he can get. He has an odd way of honoring his past, his faith, even as he’s had to move away from it, ye ken?”
“No.” She pulled her hand away from his. “I won’t talk about this. You’re not going to—”
“Aye, I am,” he said, catching her chin. “And we both know it’s going to be sooner than later. You want to serve him, right?”
He had her on that one. She put her hand over his, clung to it tightly. Nodded.
“All right, then. We dinnae have to talk about it this moment, but I am going tae start telling you things. Though I expect you’ll already know most of it, sharp as ye are. But no more sadness in your eyes.”
He flicked suds at her, splattering the front of her T-shirt, startling a gasp out of her. Retaliating set off a splash war. The damn man refused to stop until she was giggling and splashing him more boisterously.
He snatched up the sprayer and aimed it at her, but before she could squeal and fend him off, he stopped abruptly, as did she, Evan’s voice commanding their attention.
Come to me. Quickly. Come from the northwest.
His urgency wasn’t tension, but excitement. Even so, they left the kitchen without hesitation, headed out across the grass. Niall seized her hand so they could run together across the compound. They were moving away from the lake, toward the forest where it headed deeper into the surrounding hills.
When you pass the perimeter marker, come as silently as you can. Stop at the crest of the hill, where the trees open up, so you can see it.
They exchanged a glance, but kept moving together swiftly. As they drew closer, Niall slowed them down, cutting down on their noise. When they at last topped the hill, Alanna drew in a breath. The rising moon appeared huge and yellow, dominating the sky. But what made it even more remarkable was what Evan had intended them to see. On the hill directly across from them was a family of bears. The mother bear was sitting in that peculiar humanlike way, her legs out before her. One cub leaned against her, the other exploring the grass, occasionally standing on his hind legs like a human toddler. Less than ten yards away was a doe and her fawn, the mother browsing the grass as the baby took tentative steps toward the cub, and he toward the baby.
They’d arrived downwind, explaining why Evan had told them to come from that direction. Putting his fingers to his lips, Niall lifted Alanna, then moved like the silent hunter he was, like the wind itself, until he’d reached Evan. The vampire was sitting so still amid a spray of bushes, she almost missed him. They sank down next to him, Alanna in between. Evan was studying the scene with that intensity that suggested he wasn’t even aware of their approach, except that he’d called to them.
In fact, he opened his mind, showed her how he’d paint it, adding the haze of a fog, increasing the sense of suspended time, an unlikely moment where the mother deer would normally take her baby out of range of the adult bear, or the adult bear would chase the doe off as a potential threat to her cubs. Perhaps Farida Sanctuary spun magic even over the wildlife.
Unbidden, she thought again of Stephen coming here. It made her cold, a shiver running over her skin. Though she never wanted to leave, if Stephen could get to her, she’d prefer it to be far away from this place, so no harm could come to the people. To that magic.
She put her hand on top of Niall’s, the other aligned with Evan’s leg, just barely brushing his trouser leg, because she didn’t want to disrupt the artist’s flow of thought, but that connection was enough to steady her. She was done running. She would stand with them. She breathed in the moment, breathed deep.
Her heart stuttered, seized . . . and she screamed.
The deer bolted, her fawn right on her heels. The bear made a surprised growl, then she, too, disappeared into the darkness with her progeny. Evan and Niall never noticed, having caught her together, but Alanna saw it. She was arched up from the ground, agony jerking her head back at an unnatural angle.
Gasping, she clawed at their hands. She struggled to focus on their faces, wanting to hold on to them as long as she could. I’m sorry, so sorry, Master.
She hoped Evan knew she meant him. If Stephen was dying, she would go within moments of him. But maybe the blocker would give her a precious extra minute, and she could say something.
“Alanna, no. Hold on, lass.” She tried to reach up to Niall. He caught her fingers, and Evan overlapped them. The vampire had his hand on them both, and she could see it, how hard he wanted to hold on to them, to defy the terrible mortality vampires had to face. Not for themselves, but for their servants.
Alanna, you will not leave us. He knew it was a futile order. She couldn’t fight the biology of Stephen’s bond. But the saying of it meant everything, the expression in his face, the tension of his body that proved he would fight with everything he had to keep her here. Niall was a hard rope of muscle as well, wanting an enemy to fight, but he could only hold her hands. She saw the flash of it in his mind then, him holding his wife’s hands, telling her not to go, telling her he loved her.
He had, though it hadn’t been the type of love he’d discovered later. That nebulous feeling of something more out there would have been plowed down in his subconscious as he plowed his fields, except Evan had brought it to glorious life. She knew how he felt. Exactly how he felt, because their minds, for this painfully blissful instant, were held together inside Evan’s.
It’s all right to love him, Niall. There’s no shame . . . to loving. To wanting. No matter how little time there is left. Thank you . . . for letting me . . . love the both of you.
The Scot’s gaze became dark, anguished. “Damn it . . .” He snarled something at Evan, and Evan’s hand merely tightened on him, his gray eyes fastened on her face. He was watching for something, measuring . . . Something that suddenly gave her hope. He said something to Niall she was spinning too high in her mind to catch, but Niall lifted her. The two males were moving swiftly through the grasses, back toward the compound, so fast everything was a blur. Or perhaps that was her physical state, everything hazed by disorienting pain.
The agony was incredible, frightening, as she’d expected. How bad would it get before she actually died? At a certain point the soul finally leaped into the dreaded chasm of death because the pain afflicting the body drove it to leap. But her Master had forbidden her to go.
Her heart had to be exploding. She couldn’t breathe. Perhaps she’d passed out for a while, because when she became aware again, she was in the bedroom in the cottage. Evan and Niall were . . . they were outside, talking to someone. She felt disoriented, and had the strange sensation that she’d become disconnected from her body for a while, everything in a bright light, a peculiar drifting. Coming back to her body was like a wall meeting an oncoming car. The pain was back, in full force, radiating out from her stuttering heart.
Shadows were collecting around her vision. She sensed him there, the presence she dreaded more than any other. She tried to open her mouth, call out, but then there was one very large shadow, falling down over her now like a cloak. Pain exploded in her head, struck through that covering. She was plunged into darkness, the terror following her like maniacal laughter.
It had been a cloak, not death. Opening her eyes, she looked at the close stone walls of a narrow cave. She could breathe a little better, but her chest still hurt badly. It was an effort, but she turned her head to see Stephen sitting against the wall, staring at her as if he could hate nothing in the world the way he hated her. And being hated by a vampire was a terrifying thing.
Being on the run had marred even his vampire beauty. The smooth black hair was shorn close to his head, his green eyes burning with anger in a gaunt face. His unkempt state reminded her of the Trad.
“Your chest hurts because I drove a stake into my own heart and then ripped it out,” he said in a monotone, those flat eyes staying on her. “You died, InhServ. As did I. Just for a moment, just long enough to make them leave your side. A calculated risk, but I have nothing to lose anymore, do I? Thanks to you.”
“You . . . betrayed them,” she managed.
He surged from the wall, moving so fast she couldn’t follow him, But she felt the single, precise kick that broke ribs, punctured a lung. As she sputtered, blood frothing her lips, he loomed over her. “Your loyalty was to me,” he snarled.
It was a squeezing, drowning sensation, but he could do much worse. Despite the madness and desperation driving him now, she saw the calculation in his burning gaze, lingering evidence of the intelligence that had driven his ascent in the vampire ranks.
“You deserve far worse, but you’ll have to wait on that in the afterlife. I intend for you to have centuries to dread my arrival. But before I kill you, InhServ, you’ll feed me one more time.”
He spat InhServ like a curse, yanked her upper body off the floor and stabbed his fangs into her neck, as excruciating as a knife blade. The stress to her system had overridden the blocker, which meant Stephen could scramble Evan’s radar, his ability to find her. A lot would rest on how good a tracker Daegan was. Not just Daegan. Niall.
He was a better hunter, warrior and scout than a crofter . . . But if Niall and Evan found her first . . . oh God. She knew just how powerful Stephen was.
If I had time, I’d f*ck your traitorous cunt, bludgeon you to take away your beauty.
He wasn’t listening to her mind. He never had, had he?
“You . . . betrayed . . . me,” she rasped.
Stephen pulled back. The shock of hearing words an InhServ would never speak had snagged his attention. By doing what she’d always done—tell the truth to her Master—she’d make sure he killed her fast, before Evan or Niall were in danger. Licking her lips, she met his gaze. Deliberately. And since she could barely breathe, she spoke in his mind.
A servant serves for one reason. Because we love our Master or Mistress. I wanted to love you, and I couldn’t. I based my devotion on my love of service, not of you. That was my greatest mistake.
“I’m not your whore,” she coughed. “Or your maid service. I’m your servant.” A soul-deep oath, a commitment to the vampire, to be loyal and protect his soul with all that I am. Pushing herself up on weak elbows, she put her face right up into his, showing no fear. He wouldn’t get that from her.
“My brother died,” she whispered. “And you let twelve servants f*ck me until I bled. To prove my loyalty to you. I owe you nothing.”
Blood was trickling out of the corner of his mouth and she used a trembling hand to collect it, placing it on his tongue as he stared at her. His fang pressed against her knuckle and she increased that pressure, letting it cut her. “I may wake in the afterlife chained to you forever,” she rasped, “but you will be chained to me as well. Do what you feel you must, my lord.”
“If you value your f*cking head, you’ll step away from her.”
Stephen let go of her, leaping to his feet. The jolt made her groan, cough up more blood, but through the wracking pain she was able to see Evan arrive in the cave entrance, Niall at his shoulder.
Let him have me. Don’t . . . I can’t bear for either of you to be hurt. Please. Don’t let me take that to my grave.
“Daegan too far away?” Stephen passed a contemptuous gaze over Evan. “The weakling of the litter. This InhServ belongs to me, her fate mine to decide. You interfere with that, I’ll kill you with her. I’ll kill you anyway, for daring to mark what was mine.”
“She was never yours,” Evan answered, the gray eyes fired steel. “You never deserved her.”
Niall drew a wooden stake from his belt, flipped it in his hand. “How fast are ye, Lord Stephen?”
Stephen bared his fangs in a hiss. “Faster than you can throw.”
Niall threw in the middle of the sentence, and Stephen was gone. But he didn’t reach Niall. Evan met him in between, the two of them crashing into the stone side of the cave so hard dust billowed from the ceiling. Heart in her throat, Alanna saw Stephen had the immediate advantage, his hand locked on Evan’s throat, fist striking him midbody, hard enough she could almost see the organs rupturing beneath the skin. Then Evan was airborne, only not alone, for her Master had seized Stephen’s body. Both males spun out of balance, hitting the ground with a sound of cracking rock.
Another stake sliced through the air, as precise as a thrown knife. It caught Stephen in the lower back. He howled, pivoting. As he did, Evan shoved him back to the ground, driving it in farther.
Pain exploded in the same location, but Alanna bit through her lip, containing the cry. Niall leaped on Stephen as Evan grappled him from behind, holding on with an expression of grim, fierce determination. Stephen flailed, knocking Niall back, but the Scot returned in a blink, plunging his hunting knife hilt deep into Stephen’s chest.
Stephen screamed, and Alanna did as well, the pain far too much to bear. She writhed, fireworks exploding in her vision. The darkness of the cave became silver green, and she was dying, she had to be dying, because no one could hurt this much and live. She couldn’t even move, because there was no way to escape the pain.
Help . . . help . . .
Alanna, I’m here. I’m here. Evan’s voice, her Master, in her mind, and then Niall, too, the two of them holding on to her. There was the smell of blood and metal, a howling rage in her head breaking through, drowning them out
There was no practical purpose to his invasion now. Stephen was caught. This was pure, malicious vengeance. He cracked open her subconscious, the nightmares flooding in. The agony twisted her, choked her, yet she was screaming.
A hard thudding, and she had a moment’s respite. Someone was hitting Stephen, trying to knock him insensible, probably Niall, or maybe Evan, she couldn’t tell. All she knew was her soul was clutched in his hand, a vise grip intended to destroy her.
Fire sizzled from her throat, down into that place deep inside the body that ached from emotional pains too great to bear. Blood on her lips, fingers working on her throat, making her swallow. Adam, a skeleton with skin dripping off him like water, reached out to her, wanting to pull her into a swamp of nothingness, of despair. So real, she could smell the mud, bony fingers around her wrist.
Alanna, don’t listen. Don’t look. Don’t let him win.
Such a faint noise. Someone speaking . . . it was like being in a pitch-black room, a haunted afterlife, everyone moving, no one aware of one another, yet each person able to see all the insensible ones. She could hear that voice, would move toward it if she could find it.
I’m here. In your heart, in your soul. It’s a choice, Alanna. Choose.
No, it wasn’t a choice. It was about power and strength . . .
You’re stronger than any of us. Forest for the trees . . . trees for the forest . . .
No. Stephen was her Master. She had to be true to her training.
Be true to your heart. I am your Master, Alanna. Niall and I both. You serve us, and us alone. Not Stephen. You love us. You will obey us, no matter the pain, no matter your fear. I forbid you to fail us. Be the extraordinary servant I know you are.
She struggled like a child pulling against an adult hand as Stephen dragged her toward that abyss. She couldn’t find Evan or Niall. There was nothing in the chasm but utter madness. She wasn’t strong enough. She couldn’t override her Master . . .
He was never your Master, Alanna. Your heart has tae be earned, remember? Ye gave us your heart and soul. Now get your arse back to us, where ye belong. Dinnae make me come after you.
Need . . . you . . . to do that. Help. Trying . . .
Try harder.
Arteries exploded, her heart galloping. She’d give anything for one touch from each of their hands. When she went to that abyss, they’d be lost to her forever.
Choice . . . she thought she’d given up choice, but Evan had proven that a lie. In a world where they gave up all other choices, servants retained a single significant decision.
Who they served.
She wanted to make that choice, but it was too late. I’m so sorry. She threw herself against that steel wall, again and again, bloodying herself, breaking bones. She’d lost, but they’d know she’d tried to obey. The walls closed in on all sides, a permanent, fearful coffin.
Evan . . . Niall . . . Masters . . . She went down screaming, fighting. Then her grip slipped, and the fall happened, plunging her into permanent oblivion.
It was utterly horrifying, what the spirit could bear. Hellfire, terror, pain, darkness, suffocation. As she spun through that endless morass of familiar nightmares, she discovered a known nightmare was far worse than a new one. Faced with the unfamiliar, hope could exist for a blink. She had died. This was the Hell Stephen had designed for her to share in their eternal afterlife, for she could feel his howling presence throughout all of it.
She was used to letting go, submitting, so she didn’t fight any longer. There was nothing left to fight for. She existed in that macabre world, in jerky motion under strobe lights. Screams and tears. A soul, cut apart from everything else and plunged into this, had no sense of death or life, Heaven or Hell.
“It may save her . . . she knows how to be empty . . .”
A voice she knew, here then gone. She marched with an army of stumbling, headless children, whose arms fell off and geysered black blood if she touched one of them. They became charred toys.
In a world of horrors, she saw everyone she knew. Adam was the worst, his corpse, his twisted spirit, his screams in the night as she lay wrapped in sharp barbs, unable to help him. But there was someone missing from the never-ending morbid show. She didn’t want to long for them, because the worst nightmare of all would be to have them here. But she couldn’t help it. She was a child in need of the only source of comfort she trusted. As the river of blood eddied and spun, taking her on and on, she needed them there, no matter in what terrible form they’d come. She struggled for anything about them. A scent . . . a touch . . . any memory at all. She needed one single scrap of memory. She couldn’t remember their names. Stephen had taken that from her.
After what seemed like centuries in the place of the eternally damned, she received the miracle of a single moment. Large hands on her face, a Scottish brogue soothing her, another long-fingered hand touching her arm, both holding her . . .
It was a memory, the past, yes, but she clung to it, made it hers, defended it with a futile savagery. She spun a cocoon around it and herself, letting the nightmares do everything else they wished, as long as they didn’t try to touch that cocoon. She could put faces with those hands. Brown eyes, gray eyes. Wanting something from her, demanding something from her.
Her world of fire, of death and decay, despair and pain, started to turn gray. Fiery color leached away, taking all substance and form with it. Before she was aware anything had changed, she was drifting in a storm, where there were lightning flashes and thunder, but she was in the colorless current, oscillating in the eddies. The nightmares boiled onward in the sky above, indifferent. Then everything became gray and still.
She lay there, blinking at the uniform solidity of it. She hadn’t been aware of herself as a body for some time, so it felt like working a puppet when she lifted her own hand. She pushed at the gray. It swirled around her hand, odorless smoke, its coolness clinging to her fingers. Her arm was bloody and thin. Bloody thin, someone might say. It gave her heart a twist, the memory of that voice.
Not just thin. Bone. She was a skeleton herself, her soul a monarch butterfly fluttering against her rib cage. Veins traced their way over the bone and then muscle surrounded them, like clay settling around straw, forming something solid, enduring.
It was odd to watch oneself be created. Skin adhered to the muscle. In the hollowness of her torso, a mass of organs started to fill her. Heart, lungs, all those things a doctor knew about. Brian would know what they all were, she was sure, and then she wondered who Brian was.
Her toenails and fingernails, her hair, came last. It was brittle, but it would perhaps get stronger. Because Evan liked her hair so much. Niall was fond of wrapping his hands in it . . .
She cried out at the painful joy of it. The return of their names was the greatest gift she could imagine Heaven bestowing upon a wretched, lost soul. Evan, Niall. Evan Niall Evan Niall . . .
“We’re here, muirnín.”
Evan Niall Evan Niall Evan Niall . . .
“It will take her a while to be coherent. Perhaps never. There was significant trauma to her brain.”
“Bollocks. You said she’d die. She’d never wake up. She’d never speak. She’s doing all that.”
“I said it wasn’t likely. The odds have been against her throughout. She continues to defy them.”
“Of course she does.” A hand closed over hers, those artist’s fingers stroking her. “She’s a constant discipline problem.”
“Always mouthing off, telling everyone tae truth about themselves. ’Tis damn irritating.”
She twitched, frowning, and those hands tightened on her. She wanted to say something, but she couldn’t. Something was missing. The emptiness . . . truly empty. There was no connection, no mind inside hers. Nothingness. It alarmed her, scared her in a way even the nightmares hadn’t.
“Gone. Marks . . . gone.” She was straining for something, but then she felt lips brush her face, her hands, and things eased.
“Wheest. It’s fine. We’ll fix it. But now ye have to rest, grow strong again.”
“You are the most perfect servant,” Evan said. His breath touched her still-numb face, but yet she felt it. “You’ll get better now, return to us. Niall has been a rabid bear. He stormed into Council chambers, demanding that Lady Lyssa—‘High Heid Yin of the whole bloody Council’—get off her ‘arse’ and help you. I’ve promised to have him severely flogged, but with you occupying my nights, I can’t get any work done. Marcus has sent me dire messages about the death of my career. I’ll have no money to feed Niall.”
The words were flowing water, gurgling beneath the surface, then coming clear again. She was a leaf spinning in the eddies, trying desperately to follow the current, to hold on to their voices.
“An artist who cannae do his art is like living with a fully stocked pincushion up your arse all day.” Niall was speaking now, his fingers tightening on her, helping her focus. Tears were running over her gaunt cheeks. Tears of joy. “I’d stake him, swear to God, except I’d follow him, aye? So I’m f*cked unless ye come back.”
The gray was closing in again, but the touch of their hands wasn’t going away. She drew in a sigh, so very tired, but it was all right. She could sleep now. Somehow, they’d rescued her from Hell. How or why wasn’t important. They were her Masters, and she expected nothing less than miracles from them.
As she sank back into oblivion, but for the first time in weeks with a look of peace on her face, Niall’s and Evan’s gazes met over her body. When his usually stoic Scot reached across and gripped Evan’s wrist, hard, Evan put his other hand over Niall’s. They were both shaking.
“F*cking hell. She made it through. The lass did it.”
Evan wanted to agree, but he couldn’t trust it yet. Over the past several weeks, he’d endured every dismal daily report on her condition. Brian had frowned, scrubbed his hair to spikes in frustration, retooled his treatment formula. The next day, he’d prepare the same report. No obvious progress on removing the marks.
She’d just said they were gone, but they had no idea how clear she was in her own head. It would need to be verified. Stephen might have figured out a way to make her believe they were gone so they’d kill him and he’d get the last victory. He’d figured out the only reason he was being kept alive was to preserve a servant’s life, an ignominy that was small vengeance compared to the agony he’d inflicted on her.
In sync, both men’s attention went to Lord Brian. Daegan stood behind him. The Council’s assassin had his arms crossed and was leaning against one of the lab’s stainless steel counters. Out of the way, but awaiting the verdict. Earlier in the evening, when she’d first started saying Evan and Niall’s names with such determined purpose, Daegan had reappeared. Gideon sat on one of the rolling chairs at the other end of the lab, pushing it back and forth over the same yard of ground.
Brian ignored the wall of male impatience, checking the readings from her blood draw. He handed them over to Debra for a second verification. Her brow furrowed as she read the screen. Evan always watched her more closely than her Master, because it was impossible to read anything from Brian’s face. The scientist took a blood smear to a microscope, adjusted the lens, then scribbled into one of his many notebooks. He used a form of shorthand that only he and Debra knew. Evan and Niall had both shamelessly tried to translate it when he wasn’t around.
Clearing throats wouldn’t increase the scientist’s pace, nor death threats. During these twenty-two days, they’d tried all of those things, and everything in between. So Niall settled back onto his stool at Alanna’s head. As he lowered his hand to stroke her hair, there was a hesitation, a brief glance at Evan before he made contact. When she didn’t react with convulsions or terror, a sigh eased the great shoulders. Only in the last few hours had they been able to touch her without making things worse.
They’d both gone mad from her screaming, the pitiful whimpers and cries, the thrashing of her body to get away from an enemy they couldn’t see or fight for her. To make it worse, Brian hadn’t been able to use anything to sedate her. It would interfere with the experimental treatment. He’d had to put her in a soundproof room, monitoring her through machines and a window. Otherwise, she would have driven everyone but Evan and Niall out of the Savannah estate that was temporary Council headquarters. Of course Lyssa would have ordered her to be put down before that, and then Evan and Niall wouldn’t be here, because they would have had to be dead to allow that.
Well, at first. Within three days of witnessing her in such obvious agony, it was like having a preview of Hell, piped straight into the speaker system. He and Niall took turns standing outside that window, one of them always watching over her. More than once, fingers digging into the sill of the viewing window, Niall had fought the overwhelming compulsion to break into that room, to end her suffering. Evan hadn’t blamed him, for he’d fought the same feeling. Even Lady Lyssa, who’d come down to view Alanna’s condition, had compassion in her jade green eyes. The tightening of her mouth reflected Evan’s own uncertainty about this course of action, yet she’d told Brian to do whatever he could for her, to spare no expense, a high honor for the Council to bestow upon a human servant.
Evan would never forget that hasty drive to Savannah in the RV. Niall had driven the heavy vehicle like a bat out of hell, with her making those horrible hoarse, continuous screams every time Stephen regained consciousness. Daegan had used restraints that a vampire couldn’t break, put him in one of the storage lockers. Each time the captured vampire roused, Gideon would open the lid and use a pipe to knock him out again, but it was only a temporary effect. Unfortunately, once they arrived at Council headquarters and the treatment began, Stephen couldn’t be sedated for the same reasons Alanna couldn’t, and the vampire seemed determined to exercise the one power he had left, to punish her for his fallen state.
The treatment put on the back burner by Council, that Brian had been tweaking in his spare time, was the only possibility to break the mark between a servant and Master who’d been bonded beyond five years. From the first, Brian made it clear that it was untested, volatile.
“It has a slim chance of working, and even then depends a great deal on her own strength.” He’d made the case to Lady Lyssa in his lab. Evan had turned away from the window to Alanna’s soundproof room to hear his report, though Niall kept his attention on the girl. Instinctively, the men had fallen into a pattern. Evan focused on the things that would require a vampire’s approval, whereas Niall kept his attention on her. On whatever front necessary, her needs would be met.
“It’s administered over a twenty-one-day period,” Brian continued. “Two treatments a day, and it’s essentially a poison.”
Lady Lyssa nodded. “Will there be any effect upon Evan, since he’s marked her?”
“If it works, he’ll feel the break when it happens, because it will obliterate any marking in her blood. However, it should be no worse than the physical sense of severing that occurs when a servant dies.”
An experience he hadn’t had. Yet. He was keenly aware of Niall, the man’s heat and presence within a yard of him.
Lyssa looked toward him then. Though she was a slim woman and barely over five feet tall, her presence filled a room, riveting all attention upon her. Except for one. Her gaze shifted to Niall. On a normal day, Evan would have sent Niall a sharp command to show respect and attention to the vampires in the room, but she gave him a slight shake of her head before he could do it. His servant had put his hands on the window, as if he could somehow draw the evil plaguing Alanna to himself. Evan gripped his shoulder, then gave Lyssa full attention for both of them.
“You are her Master, Evan. This decision is yours.”
It was an unexpected privilege, since his guardianship was temporary. But all that mattered was Alanna. If it worked, her mind would be out of his reach, but it would also be out of reach of Stephen’s.
He couldn’t make an obvious overture to his servant, especially not in this company, but he would do it. Niall?
The man bowed his head, pressing his fingers harder against the glass. If there’s any chance she can be free of this bastard, we need to do it.
Evan met Lyssa’s gaze. “I’ve never met a servant as strong as Alanna. Given the strength of my own servant, that’s saying something. Let’s give her the chance to fight.”
If the treatment had not involved Stephen, they could have transported him outside of the range of her mind, taken him to the North Pole. But Brian needed daily samples, comparisons, brain activity readings on them both.
Though Evan knew Stephen had to remain untouched for the treatment to have any chance of success, watching her continued torment made Evan appreciate Daegan’s and Gideon’s wisdom. Throughout the three weeks, neither male told him where on the estate the vampire traitor was being held.
When day twenty-one had passed with no obvious change, Evan felt like his soul had been torn in two. Even Lord Brian and Debra, who’d given so much to this effort, looked affected by it. On day twenty-two, he would have to confront other options. No. The only other option. Near midnight, he left Niall watching over her, and went to find Daegan. The assassin was in the garden, doing graceful, lethal exercises with his katana while Gideon straddled a bench, cleaning and sharpening an array of knives. Given his reason for seeking Daegan out, the sight brought Evan up short.
The vampire’s awareness was as finely tuned as that of any predator Evan had witnessed. So he wasn’t surprised when Daegan’s attention turned to him the moment he stepped on the path toward them.
They didn’t offer small talk, empty chatter. Things were well past that. Since Evan had second marks on Alanna, he could hear what was happening in her mind, pulling him into the hell with her whenever he lowered the shield between them. At first, he’d felt he was abandoning her by keeping that wall up. Finding his way through the maze of her nightmares had been futile, though. It had made it far worse for her as well, Stephen punishing her for Evan’s competing presence, the f*cking hell spawn. When Evan had tried harder to break through, it had affected Niall as well. Evan had passed out in front of Alanna’s window one night, suffering a gushing nosebleed. Debra went to get Niall and found him almost impossible to rouse, in a sleep so deep, his body so cold, she’d struggled to find his pulse.
Lyssa has forbidden you to lower the shield between your minds again. Lord Uthe had delivered the stern admonition to him in his room, while he was cleaning up. His gentle fingers on Evan’s face, the rough threading through his hair, had belied the reproof. I know you will not heed her words if you think it will help the girl, but think of Niall’s well-being. Your own sanity.
His sire was right. He hated it, though. There’d been no way to help her. Not until now.
“If this goes on much longer . . .” He cleared his throat, met Daegan’s gaze. “If we can’t sever their link, I’m going to ask the Council to spare Stephen’s life. I’ll take over any care and expense associated with that.” He’d devote his life to being the vampire’s jailer. “I want to free her the only way we can, for as long as we can.”
The second part was much harder to say. “If the Council agrees . . . you know how to take a life without pain? Any pain at all?”
Daegan’s dark eyes were fathomless, but in them, Evan sensed the poignant understanding. Gideon rose, coming to his Master’s side.
“Yeah, he can.” The servant’s midnight blue eyes revealed an empathy with Evan’s plight that almost cracked him open, then and there. “He’ll make it as gentle as a mother laying a baby down for a nap.”
Evan couldn’t speak, so he nodded, turned away. He’d never believed in that nonsense about the servant following the Master into the afterlife, but he wasn’t going to take a chance. It might be the only thing he could do for her.
Fifteen minutes later, on his way back to the lab, he felt a stabbing pain through his chest, a disorienting dizziness that drove him to his knees in the hallway. A castle servant stopped, called for help, asked him what he needed. He bent forward, fingers tented on the wall to steady himself. No. Niall. No. Not now.
Then he felt his servant, the thread there as strong as ever. It wasn’t Niall. Alanna. The connection had broken. His marks had been erased.
When he was steady enough to regain his feet, he’d run for the lab, despite the fact he had to stop and throw up into what he was sure was a very expensive vase. He wiped his mouth, kept going. Debra met him at the lab doorway, eyes alive with tentative hope. “I was just coming to get you. There’s been a change. She’s saying your names.”
He saw the welcome sign of an open door to Alanna’s soundproof room. As he came to her side, her eyes were still closed, but that mantra was a whispered song coming straight from her embattled soul.
Dear God, thank you. When he met Niall’s gaze, there were too many things that couldn’t be said in his Scot’s face. “Try touching her,” Brian said quietly. He and Debra were watching the monitors on her vitals.
Niall’s hands quivered, but Evan nodded to him. “Try it, neshama.”
Niall slowly laid his hands on her brow. It creased beneath his touch, but then she murmured their names again. The wrenching in Evan’s heart nearly drove him to his knees again. Forcing himself to take his time, he closed his fingers over her pale, thin ones. When she didn’t react by screaming or flinching, it overwhelmed him. He didn’t care that Brian and Debra saw the tears fill his eyes. As he put his hand on Niall’s head, his servant was openly weeping.
Coming back to the present, Evan realized they’d come full circle, from that absurdly short time ago when they’d first met Alanna in a lab like this one, touching her, soothing her. The thought made it bearable, barely, waiting for Lord Brian to announce the results. Had Stephen’s marks been removed? His second-marking wasn’t as strong a bond as Stephen’s third mark, so the former’s removal hadn’t been a guarantee of the treatment’s success. But it showed the treatment had had an effect, which meant they could give her more time. If she was plunged back into the nightmares again, though, would that make him any better than Stephen, tormenting her with no sure end in sight?
Brian lifted his gaze from the microscope, met Evan’s. He kept his grip on Alanna, his other holding Niall’s shoulder.
“The marks are gone,” the scientist said. “All of them.”
Niall choked on another sob, and Evan tightened his fingers on the man. He had to swallow the ache in his own throat. Over three weeks of watching her writhe and cry, enduring horrors they couldn’t see. It was over.
“Until she truly wakes, we won’t know what neurological damage she’s suffered,” Brian said. “Her vitals are dangerously low. She’s fully human again, no protection or added strength from vampire marks.”
Evan understood Brian’s warning. They’d watched her turn into a ravaged skeleton over the past three weeks.
“Would a new third mark help her chances of survival?”
The question was on Evan’s lips almost instantly, but it was Lyssa who asked it. The queen had arrived without Evan noticing. Her sharp attention was on Brian, though, not their failure to rise as she entered the room. She made a curt gesture, dismissing etiquette.
“Yes,” Lord Brian responded. “But not for seventy-two hours. The treatment has to cycle fully out of her system first. Her body might give out before then.”
But she was at peace. She was free. Evan told himself that was the most important thing, even as he burned for that seventy-two hours to vanish, so they could do whatever was needed to help her.
“So, three days to choose the appropriate vampire to re-mark her.” Lyssa nodded.
Niall started to surge off the stool. Evan had the presence of mind to clamp down on him, keeping him still. Peace, Niall. Remember your place.
Despite Lyssa’s leniency for Niall’s earlier behavior, the crisis had passed. Niall had no voice here, and she expected Evan to control his servant accordingly.
Fortunately, Evan did have a voice, albeit he was considerably outranked in the room. He was rising, even as he compelled Niall to stay seated. At the Scot’s jerk of motion, Lady Lyssa’s jade eyes had strayed to him, one brow rising in subtle, deadly challenge. She was likely well aware of what kind of exchange had just occurred between him and his servant.
Evan bowed to the queen, drawing her attention. “I know Alanna’s training was intended to serve a far higher purpose than a vampire with my lack of ambition, but is it possible her circumstances would allow my petition, my lady?”
“Prettily said. You may have more capacity for politics than you purport.”
“With due credit to your intelligence, my lady, I expect it’s a rare fluke, caused by how important the issue is to me.”
“Very well.” She nodded. “Speak plainly. Do you want her or not?”
“With all my heart. I don’t believe I’ve ever wanted anything quite as much. Not since three hundred years ago.”
He didn’t look toward Niall, but he felt him acknowledge his meaning with a numb surprise. He’d also reminded Lyssa he was on the cusp of losing his own servant. Though he wasn’t above using the sentiment if it would help, he hoped Niall realized it wasn’t meaningless manipulation.
“I will take it under consideration. Will the girl be coherent anytime soon?” She directed that to Brian.
“Unfortunately, we can’t predict that, my lady.”
“But you are certain the marks are removed.”
“Within a 99.9876 percent certainty.”
“Despite that wide margin of doubt . . .” She sent a look toward Daegan. “Stephen’s existence is no longer necessary. The Council sentenced him when he betrayed us. Please attend to it. Have the staff burn his filth to ash and thoroughly sweep it from the grounds.”
“With pleasure, my lady.” Daegan’s eyes gleamed. Gideon rose from the desk chair, clearing his throat.
“I’ll go along with you. Hold your purse while you take care of that.”
Over these past several weeks, and even before then, Evan knew he and Niall would have fought for the satisfaction of taking the bastard’s life. But now, seeing Alanna in peaceful slumber for the first time in so many days, neither of them could be compelled to leave this room for something as unimportant as revenge. In the end, love was a far stronger emotion than hate. It was a comforting thought.
“She’ll need to stay in a hospital bed and be monitored, but we can move her to a more comfortable environment.” Brian looked around the soundproofed room. “We’ll put her in the infirmary quarters for staff.”
“It’s on the first floor level,” Debra supplied. “Where she’ll get sunlight and a lovely view of the garden.”
Lady Lyssa had disappeared, indicating she’d take no further appeals from Evan on the matter. He and Niall would simply have to wait, and hope. As difficult as that seemed, compared to an hour ago, it was like seeing the sun rise over land after the forty days and nights of the biblical Flood.
“Thank you, my lord.”