Chasing Shadows

chapter Thirteen

Mark hesitated for only a second before tightening his grip on me and opening his mouth to allow my advancing tongue entrance. I reveled in the taste of him as I had every other time we’d kissed passionately, but I wanted more.

I pushed him toward the bed and reached to yank off my socks and shoes. Mark did the same, and we divested ourselves of the rest of our clothing in quick succession. Coming together again, our mouths and hands explored one another, but I was still feeling needy and eager, so I pushed him again. He fell back against the bed and reached for me even as I straddled him, placing my knees on either side of his hips and guiding his mouth to my breast even as I lowered myself onto the already hardened length of him. He held onto me and rocked his hips in perfect rhythm with mine, his hands holding my derriere as his lips traveled between my mouth and each of my tingling nipples.

I moaned my pleasure and my breathing came in shallow gasps as I ground my pelvis against his, the friction teasing the sensitive nub below my pubic bone and sending delightful tremors through me. My arms wrapped around his neck and my hands fisted in his hair as I rode, holding him tightly to me. He suddenly turned and rolled us so that he was on top, and he began thrusting with fervor as I wrapped my legs around him, bringing him deeper into me. As I felt the first waves of my climax begin to roll through my body, I jerked his head to the side and dropped my fangs, biting down hard where his neck met his shoulder; every nerve ending in my body responded with an intensity I could not measure as I began to swallow his blood.

Mark buried his face in the mattress and groaned loudly as he came, thrusting hard and fast until he was spent. When his body stopped moving I stopped drinking, and he held me as I began to cry once more. It was a long time before I fell quiet.



*****



If I slept at all it was only intermittent naps, and we were up at seven when the alarm went off as usual. Before we did anything else, I made Mark drive me down the road to the Mitchell farm so that I could see the horses. Though I did not cry I could still feel tears behind my eyes as I hugged each of their necks and spoke soothingly to them. I was happy to see them, but could not help being reminded that their fellow barn mates had not survived.

“You know they can stay as long as you need them to,” Harry told me quietly.

I leaned into Hadhafang’s neck as I stroked her nose. “I’ll make sure you are duly compensated, Harry.”

He waved off my words. “Don’t worry about it.”

I looked pointedly at him. “Harry, I insist. You can’t afford to feed four more animals on your own. It’s only right I should pay you to keep them until I get a new barn built.”

My breath hitched on the last words, but I held the tears in check. I was not going to cry anymore, I told myself sternly. The time for tears had come and gone—now it was time for mad.

Harry shook his head. “If you insist on paying for the feed yourself that’s up to you, but the board is free. It’s only neighborly, since you lost so much.”

Tommy, Harry’s eldest boy, came into the barn then with a basket full of eggs. “I’m s’posed to give these to ya, since your chickens didn’t make it,” the 16-year-old said. “Real sorry ‘bout the barn and your animals, Ms. Caldwell.”

I stepped away from the aging mare and out of the stall they had put her in. After closing the gate I gave the teenager a hug, and then gave one to his father before I accepted the gift.

“You Mitchell men are too kind to me,” I said sincerely.

Tommy blushed and mumbled a thank you before turning and jogging back into the house. Harry gave me a long, assessing look. “How are you doing, sweetheart?” he asked.

I shrugged dismissively. “About as well as can be expected, I suppose,” I replied. “I mean, I cried, and cried, and cried some more. Don’t think I have any tears left, which is fine by me ‘cause now I just want to be pissed.”

“And rightly so,” Mark put in.

Harry glanced at him and nodded. “Indeed,” he echoed. “You got insurance to cover the damages, I assume?”

I laughed mirthlessly. “Yes, I have insurance. The arson investigator even asked me that this morning, although for a different reason, of course.”

My neighbor snorted. “They’d be idiots to look at you for this. You loved those animals like they were your own kin.”

Because his words hit so close to home, I gave Harry a smile. Maybe it was a farmer thing, who knew? But he was right—all my animals had been like family, especially given that it had been just me and them for years. Even a crop farmer like him understood that.

Harry adjusted the baseball cap he wore. “Probably stupid of me to ask, but you got any idea who woulda done this?”

I shrugged and heaved a sigh, and Mark put his arm around my shoulders as I said, “I haven’t got a clue, Harry. Not who, not why—and that’s what gets me, you know? Why would anybody have torched my barn? Why would they have set the horses free but not the rest of the animals? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s possible the horses freed themselves,” he mused. “You don’t lock the barn, and they’re strong enough to kick the gates open.”

“Those yearlings couldn’t have,” Mark offered, shaking his head. “Whoever started that fire let the horses out and left the others behind to die. At least that’s the way it looks to me. I’m sure the investigation will tell us for sure.”

“To be honest with you, I don’t see how. I saw what happened—all the wood’s burnt to cinders and the metal clasps will have melted down,” said Harry.

I turned and walked back over to my horses, patting each one of them on the neck again and kissing the soft, peach-fuzzy end of their noses. “Goodbye, loves,” I told them. “If Harry doesn’t mind, I’ll come by and see you again later.”

“Now, sweetheart, you know darn well I won’t mind,” said Harry behind me.

I turned back with a weak smile of thanks. I then gave Harry another hug with my free arm and whispered “Thank you” in his ear.

He held me for a moment and said, “You’re more than welcome, Saphrona.”

When Mark and I were back in the truck and headed back toward home, he glanced over and asked me, “Whatever happened to his boys’ mother?”

I turned to look at him. “They’re divorced—happened about a year before I came back to the farm. Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “Because I think Harry has feelings for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re just friends.”

Mark shook his head. “Maybe on your end, Saphrona, but I saw how he looked at you, the expression on his face when he held you. He kept calling you ‘sweetheart.’ I’m telling you that he’s got some strong feelings for you.”

He turned up into the driveway then. “You don’t think he’s jealous enough to set my barn on fire and kill my animals, do you?” I asked, my tone disbelieving.

Setting the parking brake and turning off the engine, Mark turned to me. “No, honey, that’s not what I’m saying. From what little I’ve observed of the man, he cares about you too much to hurt you like that. It’s just that I noticed he cares. Probably wishes he was the one comforting you instead of me, so while he may be envious, he’s not so blindly jealous that he would have done this.”

I studied him for a moment, partly to keep from having to look at the ruined barn. I knew the arson investigator would be back today with a team of people to go through the wreckage and try to gather what evidence they could. I hoped they cleared the scene soon so that I could begin to have the place cleaned up, because it hurt too damn much to look at it.

“Maybe you’re right. But I never noticed. I’ve just thought of him as a friendly neighbor,” I said, then reached for the door handle.

“And I’m sure that while he may have hoped for more one day, Harry’s fine with that as long as you are happy,” Mark said as we were climbing out of the truck. “I’m sorry if my bringing it up bothers you; I was just curious, because his feelings would explain why he’s so willing to help you out. Even friendly neighbors sometimes want to be compensated for their trouble, and he wasn’t even asking for money to feed the horses, let alone take care of them.”

“’Sometimes’ being the operative word there, Mark,” I pointed out. “Since I don’t age, obviously I’ve had to move around some over the years. I actually hadn’t been to this property in about fifteen years when I moved back five years ago. And you know what? Before I’d even emptied the moving truck, Harry was the first person to visit, the first who offered to help me out if I ever needed it, and that was before he even knew anything about me. So even if he is motivated by romantic feelings, I believe that first and foremost he’s a good man who’s willing to help his neighbor through a hard time.”

He reached for me and gave me a light hug. “I’m sure you’re right, Saphrona. I believe Harry is a good man, too.”

Juliette appeared on the back stoop then. “Saphrona, you’ve had some phone calls while you were gone,” she said. “Lt. Parks said he and his team will be here at nine to comb through the rubble for any usable evidence, though he wishes to remind you that the combination of water and fire may have destroyed any the arsonist left behind. Lochlan and Diarmid have also called. Both of them wanted to know how you were doing, and Loch said he’ll be coming out to see you after he finishes his own…breakfast. Your father said he would be stopping by after nightfall.”

Though I was hardly in any state of mind to have to deal with my father, the only thing that came to mind when I processed Juliette’s message was, “I didn’t realize Diarmid watched the news.”

Shaking my head, I climbed up the steps, and once inside, I set the basket of eggs Harry and the boys had given me on the counter, and reached for a frying pan. Mark stilled my hand, saying, “What are you doing?”

I frowned. “What do you think I’m doing? I’m making breakfast,” I replied.

“Babe, let me and Juliette do that for you.”

With a sigh, I shook my head. “Mark, I’ve got no farm work to do today. No animals to tend to, no stalls to clean. I’ve got nowhere to put my hay when I go to harvest it next week. I have to make breakfast because I’ve got nothing else to do, because somebody thought it would be a brilliant f*cking idea to torch my barn and kill all but four of my animals!”

With each word I spoke, my anger seeped out of that place inside me where I’d carefully held it in check, and my voice rose in pitch. I emphasized each syllable by gesticulating with my hands, waving them around in front of me. This actually drove Mark and Juliette back, until the end of my speech when they were forced to duck as I threw the cast-iron skillet I always cooked eggs in. It missed Mark’s head by inches and crashed through the window by the door.

I screamed again in frustration and anger, realizing I’d just added another headache to the top of the heap.

Mark held his hands out as if in surrender, saying, “Saphrona, I’m sorry. I know it ain’t easy, but try to calm down, okay?”

As he spoke, Lochlan stepped through the back door. Sidling around Juliette, he wordlessly took me by the arm and began to lead me through the house.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, trying vainly to break his grip.

Loch opened the front door and pulled me across the porch, then shoved me down the steps. I stumbled and fell to the ground, rising quickly and baring my fangs with an angry hiss.

Mark shoved Lochlan’s shoulder as he emerged on the porch behind us. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, man?”

My brother ignored him. He shrugged out of the suit jacket he was wearing and laid it over the porch railing. “My sister needs to vent some of her anger,” he said as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his sleeves and rolled them up. He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top collar button as he came down the steps toward me. “If a fight is what she wants, a fight is what she’ll get.”

“I wasn’t aware your doctorate had changed from an M.D. to a Ph.D., Loch Ness,” I spat, annoyed by his arrogance.

Mark jumped down the porch steps to try and block him. “I’m not going to let you hurt her,” he told him forcefully.

Loch rewarded him with an “Oh, please” expression. “Better I fight her than you, because she could and most likely would do something to you she will later regret. Better I than your charming sister, who could in turn unintentionally hurt Saphrona were she to fight her in her animal form. And I’ve no intention of hurting her, brother. Just helping her let off some steam.”

“Oh really?” I challenged. “You think I can’t hurt you? Is that why you want to fight me? Because I’d hurt them and not you? I might be half human Lochlan Mackenna, but I can still kick your ass.”

“We’ll just see about that,” Lochlan replied with a smile, sparing Mark just one more glance before stepping around him and coming toward me.

“Aren’t you worried about ruining that expensive suit of yours, brother dear?” I taunted as we circled each other.

He shook his head. “They’re only clothes, dear sister. They can easily be replaced,” he fired back. “Only thing I have to worry about is getting tired.”

“Don’t think I’ll stop just because you pass out.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Lochlan replied, and then he rushed me.

We slammed into each other like two linebackers on a football field. I dug my heels into the ground and shifted my weight from one foot to the other, slipping under his arms and jamming my elbow hard into his ribcage. Loch grunted but didn’t stagger or fall; he pivoted away from me and then swept my legs out from under me.

I rolled as I fell, coming up on my feet with a snarl. I charged toward my brother, screaming like a banshee as I swung first my left fist, then my right, neither of which Lochlan bothered to block. I started to think that he wasn’t even really trying, he was just teasing me, and that only served to enrage me further. I started putting all the power I had into my punches, catching him in the face, chest, and shoulders.

“You wanted to fight me, so fight me, you a*shole!” I hollered, still whaling. “Fight back!”

After a few more hits he did start trying to block me, but I was undeterred. I just kept swinging, not even directing my strikes. I aimed wildly, madly, landing a blow wherever I could. My vision had gone red with a rage so blinding I didn’t even know what I was mad about anymore.

I just wanted someone to pay.

“Saphrona!”

I don’t know how much time had passed before Mark’s voice, desperately calling my name, found its way through to me. The moment my brain finally recognized it though, the moment I discerned fear and panic in his tone, I froze instantly, afraid that I was somehow hurting him.

When my vision cleared, I realized that I did not have my teeth in Mark’s skin, draining his life away, as I had feared. I saw that I was in my front yard, my chest heaving with exertion, and that my brother’s beaten and bruised body had just dropped to the ground at my feet. I raised my hands up to examine the knuckles, which were scraped raw and covered with thick, viscous blood…

…Lochlan’s blood.

With a strangled cry of a different kind, I fell to my knees beside him and carefully lifted his head into my lap. “Oh my God, Lochlan!” I cried, stunned beyond belief at the severity of the beating he had endured, obviously at my hands. “Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you fight back?”

He chuckled, opening the only eye that wasn’t swollen to look up at me. “I tried. Especially when it really began to hurt.”

Lochlan’s wounds were, of course, already beginning to heal, but I could see he would need some help with it—he would need blood.

“Oh, Lochlan, why?” I asked, brushing his hair back from his face.

He struggled to sit up, and my heart twisted when he winced in pain. “Because you needed it,” he replied. “I knew the moment I walked in the door that you were a on a really short fuse. You needed to let some of that anger out, and I thought it best you do it to me rather than someone a little more fragile.”

“But look at how much damage I did! I almost can’t believe I did this to you,” I bemoaned, my eyes raking over the bruises beginning to fade and swelling beginning to recede.

“Had some of your man’s blood recently?” Lochlan parried jovially, looking up from my face to Mark’s.

I felt heat burning my cheeks. “Yeah. This morning,” I mumbled.

Loch cautiously rotated his right shoulder, gritting his teeth as he did so. “Judging by the wholloping I just went through, dear sister, I’d guess you’ve had a little every day since you met him.”

The color staining my cheeks deepened as I heard Mark clear his throat. “Just about,” he confirmed.

Determined to regain control of the situation before Loch started in on the exact nature of my sex life, I rocked back on the balls of my feet and pushed myself to a standing position, then held a hand out to my brother. “Come on, let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

Lochlan nodded and reached up to take my hand. I pulled him to his feet easily, though he staggered against me. “Damn it, Loch, you’re such an idiot,” I mused as I helped him up to the porch. “You knew I’d had his blood recently, and you antagonized me anyway? You got a death wish or something?”

He shook his head as he laughed. “I’m not dying until well after I’m bonded, and probably not even then,” he said.

Stopping to grab his jacket from the railing, we made our way back into the house. Juliette led us into the kitchen, and without my having to ask, she reached into the refrigerator for the bottle of blood I’d pulled from the deep freezer the night before last and set it on the table.

“Thank you, my lady,” Lochlan said to her, picking up the bottle and unscrewing the cap, and then tilting his head back to take a long drink of it.

“Lochlan, I can warm that up for you,” I said.

He shook his head before tilting it back for another swig. “Warm only makes it go down easier. This will do. In fact, I’m feeling better already.”

I looked him over to judge for myself, relieved to see that his right eye was no longer swollen shut. The bruising around it was fading at the same rate as the rest, but his nose was crooked. “You’re, um, you’re gonna have to reset your nose,” I pointed out sheepishly.

He reached up to feel it. “Bugger me,” he muttered, and setting the bottle on the table, put both hands alongside his nose, snapping it loudly and then giving it a slight adjustment. He held onto it for a moment to be sure it wouldn’t shift out of position, then sat back and reached for the bottle of blood again.

“Ugh, I have never seen anyone break their own nose before,” Juliette observed with a shiver. “Think I’ll go grab the egg skillet from the back yard.”

She walked out the back door as Mark and Loch both shook their heads and laughed, and after washing my hands I went back to the task of preparing breakfast. This time, of course, Mark didn’t protest—he helped without saying a word.

We were about midway through the meal when a car could be heard coming up the driveway. I reached out with my supe-sense and detected three humans, who were at that moment exiting their vehicle and headed toward my door. A glance at the clock showed me it was 9 a.m. Lt. Parks was right on time.

I looked over at Lochlan as a knock sounded at the front of the house, and silently thanked whoever had shut the front door. “Go upstairs and hide while the arson investigators are here,” I told him.

“Why? Are you afraid I’ll eat them?” he quipped lightly.

I groaned as Mark and Juliette laughed. “No, it’s probably because you still look like you just got your ass handed to you on a plate,” Juliette mentioned. “There’s blood all over your shirt.”

Loch looked down as the knock sounded again, and Parks’ voice called out, “Ms. Caldwell, it’s Lt. Parks.”

“Just a minute!” I called back.

“Well, isn’t this a sodding mess,” my brother said when he saw the ruination that was his shirt.

“Come on, man,” Mark said, gesturing for him to follow. “I’m sure I have something you can wear.”

The three of us headed into the living room, and I waited until Mark and Lochlan were on the second-floor landing before I opened the door. “Hello, Lieutenant.”

Parks nodded cordially. “Ms. Caldwell, good morning.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It is hardly that, Lieutenant,” I replied sardonically.

He nodded. “Of course. My apologies.” Turning to the man and woman behind him, he added, “These are my associates, Sgt. Trimble and Sgt. Withers. We’ll be going around to have a look at the wreckage, see if there’s any usable evidence.”

“But you doubt you’ll find anything,” I observed.

“Now, Ms. Caldwell, there’s always a chance—”

I waved his words away. “Don’t bother trying to patronize me, Lt. Parks. You already said as much when you called this morning, and I am well aware that with the extent of the damage, the chances of your finding evidence you can use in court—should it ever get that far—are virtually nonexistent. Still, you have a job to do. Why don’t I let you get to it?”

Parks nodded and then gestured to his associates. They headed back to the SUV they had arrived in and I turned around, heading back into the house and shutting the door behind me as Lochlan and Mark came back down the stairs. Mark had managed to find my brother a plain gray t-shirt to wear, which fit well and didn’t look too incongruous with the slacks he had put on earlier that morning. He also looked a lot better than he had when they’d gone upstairs—he’d cleaned himself up and the bruises were continuing to fade.

“You know, Loch, you really didn’t have to come out here,” I commented as we all walked back into the kitchen.

“Saphrona, you had something terrible happen to you,” Loch replied. “I came because I wanted to support my sister.”

I smiled. “And that’s all well and good, but there’s really nothing for you to do here,” I pointed out. “All you got for your trouble was a beating you didn’t deserve. You’d have been better off staying home, or going to work even though it’s Sunday.”

“Which reminds me, I’ve been wondering,” Mark broke in. “How is it that you manage to work during the day?”

Lochlan regarded him casually. “I suppose that Saphrona’s explained to you the true nature of vampire biology by now, correct?” he asked, and Mark nodded. “Then you also know that regular consumption of blood not only nourishes my kind, but gives us energy, enabling us to stay awake during daylight hours. The nature of my profession requires that I work the day shift, so I’ve no choice but to be a pretender.”

“A pretender?”

I looked over at Mark. “Pretenders are vampires who are, in essence, pretending to be human.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So Loch, if you don’t kill, like you said the other day, where do you get your blood from? Do you get it from Saphrona?”

Lochlan scoffed. “Egads, no. I’m of the opinion that I’ve been drinking human blood far too long to give it up completely. I only have animal when I visit my sister, otherwise I get it from where I work.”

“And where is that?”

“At a biomedical research facility, my dear brother. We’ve an attached blood bank.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “And nobody notices when some of that goes missing?”

My brother shrugged. “The blood bank screens donations to make sure it is free of disease. Those samples which are deemed unsuitable for transfusion are then scheduled for disposal. I dispose of them.”

“You drink diseased blood? That sounds really gross. How can you do that without getting sick?” Mark’s tone was incredulous.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be diseased to be unsuitable, but yes, sometimes I do. Better that than killing someone or making some poor git into a vessel. Besides, human illness does not affect vampires,” Lochlan replied, “though I will say drugs and disease do affect the taste of the blood. Many of the harder narcotics like heroin and PCP make it very bitter. Mild viruses like the common cold are hardly a bother, but when you encounter blood that has a venereal disease…”

He shuddered and made a face, to which Mark shook his head. “So just like me, vampires never get sick?”

Lochlan and I looked at one another. “No. However, we can be poisoned,” Loch answered.

Mark’s gaze roamed between us. “How?” he asked.

“Dead blood,” I replied. “A vampire cannot drink the blood of the dead, because it no longer contains the essence of life.”

“And the blood I acquire from the bank is all from living donors, so I’ve nothing to worry about,” added Lochlan.

“How is the blood of the dead poisonous?”

“It acts in us much the same manner as tetrodotoxin does in humans—it’s a paralytic neurotoxin. Numbness, arrhythmia, shortness of breath… the list of symptoms goes on,” Loch explained. “And like tetrodox, its effects on the body vary with the level of toxicity—or rather, the amount of blood ingested or introduced to the bloodstream. Precisely how it enters the body is also a factor, in that ingestion lengthens the amount of time before one becomes symptomatic, though not by much. An introduction directly into the bloodstream, such as by injection, would produce faster results.”

“Also, substances that are toxic or poisonous to humans can affect us too,” I added. “However, because we metabolize them differently, they’re usually not as severe in their effects as they are to humans. Again, it depends on how much of it we are exposed to.”

Juliette came out of the basement in that moment, making me realize that I hadn’t even noticed her absence. She carried with her, to my surprise, three bottles of blood from the deep freezer.

“Juliette, you didn’t have to do that,” I said as she placed one in the sink to temp and the remaining two in the refrigerator.

She shrugged. “I know that you’ve had Mark’s blood today, and your private business is none of mine, but I wanted to make sure there was some of this available so you wouldn’t have to take any more of his. Lochlan drank the only one you had thawed and I figured he was going to be here for a while, so I thought it a good idea to get more.”

Lochlan grinned. “How very kind of you, my lady. One might almost think you cared about me.”

Juliette shot him a sour look. “Don’t flatter yourself, bloodsucker. I’m just making sure you don’t get any funny ideas about my brother or those humans out there.”

“Not worried I’ll get funny ideas about you?” he countered, wiggling his eyebrows up and down suggestively.

“On the contrary. I’d love for you to be that stupid, so I’d have an excuse for wiping the floor with you just like your sister did,” she said sweetly.

I snorted thinking of what he had said about her the other day, and Lochlan looked at me with a grin. Mark and Juliette, however, both frowned.

“You think I can’t take him?” Juliette demanded, her hands going to her hips.

I coughed so I wouldn’t laugh. “It’s not that. I’m sure you could give me a run for my money in the butt-kicking department.”

“Damn right I could,” she affirmed with a nod.

“Then what is so funny?” Mark wanted to know.

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Best not to say.”

“Oh, but now they’re going to be insanely curious, dear sister,” Lochlan said with a grin, a clear indication that he was enjoying himself. “Should I tell your lover and his sister what I said about her the other day?”

“I don’t think—”

Juliette stepped over to him and poked a finger in his chest. “What did you say about me?”

Mark looked between Lochlan and me; after seeing my expression, he shook his head and said, “Jules, let it go.”

“No,” she retorted. “I want to know what he said about me.”

Loch sat forward in the chair he’d dropped into so that their lips were only inches apart. “I said that you had fire, that you were quite the looker, and were we not natural enemies I’d be inclined to take you to my bed.”

I could see her eyes widen. Juliette stepped back, staring down at him, and I began to wonder if she was contemplating slapping him. Instead, she said nothing and walked quickly out of the kitchen, dashing up the stairs to the second floor and, presumably, her room.

The silence that followed her exit was broken by Mark. “Keep your hands off my sister,” he said.

Lochlan laughed. “Not that you have any say in the matter, dear brother, but I daresay you have nothing to worry about there. Unfortunately, given that I am a vampire and she a shapeshifter, I shall never have the pleasure of putting my hands anywhere on her.”