Darkness Bred (Chimney Rock) Read online

  Colin did pause, but only for a moment before he laughed loudly and shook his head. “You know better than that. I wouldn’t be tight with Brande and his wolves any more than I would with you, dog.”

  When Sean didn’t respond, Colin waved for him to follow and turned as if to make his way deeper into the forest. He stopped after a few steps and looked over his shoulder. “Come with me, unless you want me to take you, and you know I can. You’re no match for me, Sean.”

  “Are you insane?” Sean asked. “Nothing has changed since I threw you away like a rag doll.”

  “A lucky accident,” Colin said. “I was caught off guard.”

  Argument was wasted on this self-involved, self-indulgent creature. Sean stayed where he was, his head cocked and indicating his detached interest in whatever Colin might come up with.

  “You’re forcing my hand. Be logical. We have the same enemies and we could learn from each other.”

  “I’ve got to give you points for creative trying,” Sean said.

  Colin scowled. “Enough of this.”

  He moved as only a vampire can, so fast he became invisible but for velocity streaks marking his path. And then he was upon Sean, grabbing him by the throat and swinging him off his feet.

  Sean’s legs collided with a tree and he hooked them around the trunk. Grabbing Colin’s body, Sean snapped him into the air and slammed him down on snags of fallen wood, rocks, and the wintry thicket, sharp where all leaves and berries had fallen from the pointed branches.

  The vampire breathed like a train on an uphill path through a tunnel. Colin gasped loudly in the hollow way only vampires could achieve. He struggled out of the brittle underbrush that enmeshed him, faced Sean again, and tore at one of his ears before Sean realized his intention.

  Sean heard the tissue rip, felt the pain, and slapped Colin’s hand away. Since Colin had already encountered him in fully human form, there was no dilemma about shifting or not shifting.

  Colin was on him again, trying to finish severing the ear, taking hold of Sean’s right shoulder and moving violently to dislocate it and wrench the arm completely loose of its socket.

  Using both feet, Sean landed a flying kick into Colin’s throat. The sight of the vampire staggering, gasping, and rasping, if only for moments, allowed Sean to rush in and press his advantage.

  Grimacing at what felt like thrusts with a burning sword, he jammed his arm back into place at the shoulder and rammed Colin backward.

  How to disable him without taking him to the point where he was so disabled, the next act should naturally be to drive a stake into his heart and go on to kill him? Much as he wanted the other dead, he wanted the information Colin might have more.

  The man’s eyes were black with red rims around the irises. Hunger did that to these people. Sean smiled at him. “Can I offer you a snack? A few sips of something I think you’ll like. I keep it in the refrigerator for surprise visitors. I do believe in hospitality.”

  Colin’s tongue whipped, snakelike, over his red lips. “Where did you get it? Do the Deseran, like Leigh, build up too much blood, is that it? Do they have to drain some away now and then?” He smiled, forgetting to keep his fangs retracted. “How luscious.”

  Sick to his stomach, Sean kept on smiling. “It usually goes for transfusions.”

  Colin threw up his hands. “Such a waste. Where is it? Quickly, while it’s still there.”

  “You cannot know where…where it is. I shall have to blindfold you.” And in the unlikely event that Colin did as Sean asked, he would then have to lead the vampire where he could contain him—whatever that would take.

  “You think I’m a fool?” Colin sneered.

  “No, that’s why I didn’t offer the blood immediately. Never mind. Perhaps another time.”

  “It is so sweet,” Colin said, sounding dreamy. “I have heard about it. And your alpha doesn’t even use it. Such a waste.”

  A movement behind Colin, at the base of a tree, then in the thicket, caught Sean’s attention. He quickly averted his gaze. It could be nothing but a small animal making its way through familiar territory.

  Or it could be a certain small animal up to no good and about to get them both in terrible trouble.

  “I could keep my eyes closed while you take me,” Colin said. “I am a man of my word and I won’t look.”

  Right.

  But why not try, and every moment bought was a gift. Sean took the man by the elbow and was immediately thrown off with enough force to toss him on the ground several yards away.

  “Forget your little ploys,” Colin said. “I only pretended to be interested. They are waiting for us, we have to go.”

  “They?” Sean said innocently.

  Colin leaped on top of him, but immediately reared up to his knees and screamed.

  Balanced on his shoulders, Skillywidden trailed a silver chain back and forth over the vampire’s neck while he made disoriented swipes trying to dislodge her. Clamped in her teeth, the chain should have been too heavy for so tiny a creature, but she obviously had considerable strength.

  Shaking his head, Sean gingerly took part of the chain and looped it around Colin’s neck. He made a knot, then grabbed for Skillywidden, but she didn’t intend to be caught.

  She moved out of his reach, stood on her hind legs, and clawed at the air over her head as if catching a ball. With the pads of one paw spread, the claws extended, she bounded up Colin’s back and drove the same paw into the side of his head.

  His eyes closed instantly and he fell forward. Sean rolled out of the way just in time to let the man land, unconscious, on his face.

  chapter SEVENTEEN

  The underbrush sucked at her paws. Slippery with rain that had slithered through the trees, the wet, mossy tangle made a treacherous course for Elin to use when she wanted to get up to speed.

  Traveling as Skillywidden was an amazing advantage but there were places that could snare her small limbs.

  Thank goodness Tarhazian couldn’t reach Skillywidden with those cold fingers of hers. Elin leaped on, aware that regardless of how warm she was in her silvery fur coat, the temperature appeared to be dropping and there might be ice and snow to contend with later.

  Yes, she was running from Sean. Wild as that seemed, she couldn’t be sure how he would react to her interference in his fight with Colin and she wasn’t ready to find out.

  “Elin!”

  A shiver rippled under her skin. He sounded furious, which was an outrage considering how much she had helped him.

  Suddenly stubborn, she whipped around, hid behind a tree trunk, and shifted to human. She stepped out, one finger held imperiously forward, and when Sean came into sight, she called, “Stay where you are.”

  He slowed down but didn’t stop. Instead he crept toward her, his golden eyes narrowed to slits and a triumphant smile on his lips. His hair was free and swung forward, thick and casting menacing shadows over his face.

  “If you come any closer, I won’t tell you what you need to know, and I’ll disappear at once,” Elin said.

  The smile became a grin. He paused and crossed his arms. “You terrify me.”

  “I just stopped Colin for you.” She tried not to let him see her shiver.

  The grin disappeared. “You did. Thank you for that although I might have managed by myself. I asked you to stay at Gabriel’s—because I don’t want you exposed to even more danger. How did you get out?”

  “I went to the bathroom,” she said smugly. “I wonder if Niles has broken the door down yet.”

  Sean smothered a laugh and took a step closer.

  Elin stepped backward. “Stand still, or I’m gone and I mean it.”

  “I’ll find you, and I mean it.”

  “You’re really pushing things,” she said, although she was beginning to feel both unsure of herself—and breathless with the prickle of sexual awareness. Everything about him excited her.

  “How come you can shift and still be dressed?” Sean said,
looking her over closely enough to bring a spasm of need between her legs.

  “You want me to be naked?”

  He considered her words. “Yeah, that’s what I want. But this isn’t the right time or place. How come you aren’t—”

  “Wearing only my skin,” she finished for him. “Because my gift allows me to shift with my clothes. They just come back when I do. Don’t you think that’s a whole lot more civilized than your naked nonsense?” Much as she enjoyed it.

  He smiled again and she felt herself blush. “The question is,” he said, “how long Colin will stay the way he is and what should I do about it?”

  “The silver will cause him a lot of pain,” Elin said. “And there’s another reason he isn’t going anywhere fast, but…anyway, he could be unconscious for some time.”

  “You hit him with something I couldn’t see,” he said.

  The pressure irritated her. “Perhaps I did.” She still wasn’t ready to share Deseran secrets, not until she asked Leigh, and not until she told Sean about herself. She felt panicky about how he would react when she did tell him. She would welcome the swirling drifts of glittering colors and their strange powers attracted her to them. She felt as if they kept her safe. But it wouldn’t be fair to Sean to seek that comfort while she was with him.

  “So you won’t explain how you can knock out a vampire?”

  “If I would explain it to anyone, it would be you,” she told him quietly. “I trust you to do what you think is best, for you and for me. Can you say the same about me?”

  “I trust you, Elin, but I fear that strong will of yours.”

  She had no answer.

  Blood trailed from one ear and stained the side of his face. His clothes were torn. And he managed to look like the most desirable male she’d ever met—more desirable than that if it were possible.

  “I think we should leave Colin where he is,” Sean said. “He knows nothing about Skillywidden. You made sure he didn’t see you. He’ll be embarrassed that he couldn’t subdue me and take me wherever he wants me to go. There’ll be a pause in what he’s up to, but not for long before he’s back again. I’m going to Saul. I’ve got to get to The Island.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want you to go.”

  Sean shook his head. “You know I’ll do what I think has to be done, Elin. First I have to get you to a place of safety and warmth.”

  He frowned and looked through rather than at her. She knew he was communicating with someone else. Quietly, she waited, watching him, battling the strangeness of being, at the same time, in extreme danger and so sexually aroused, she wanted to wind herself around him right here.

  She must not practice her unusual skills of seduction, not now. But how she longed to stroke him with the essence of her body and watch him struggle. She could make him helpless in her hands, but that wasn’t what she really wanted. Elin wanted Sean to take her in every meaning of the word. The decision about what happened with them was his to make now.

  He looked at her and she saw he was no longer involved with another mind. “Niles isn’t happy with what you did,” he said, but a smirk was there. “Locking yourself in the bathroom and ducking out wasn’t what he had in mind. Leaving Pokey in attack mode wasn’t funny either.”

  “I didn’t, exactly,” she said, unable to meet his eyes. “All I said was for Pokey to…”

  “Yes.”

  “I told her not to worry because I’d be back. She doesn’t really understand.”

  “And she bit Niles’s nose when he broke down the door,” Sean said, but he couldn’t help smiling.

  “I must apologize to Niles,” Elin said honestly and diplomatically. “He showed me he would be willing to accept me. I’ll say I’m sorry for what I did.”

  “Wise woman,” Sean said. “He thinks we’re right to get out of here and leave Colin. That way it’s just a skirmish between the vampire and me.”

  “And you told him you’re going to get Saul to take you to The Island?” Elin said.

  He looked at the ground, and started toward her again.

  “You didn’t tell Niles,” she said, as she turned and fled once more.

  She ran, growing colder and colder as the wind whipped through her thin dress. That iciness she had expected began to emerge and even her flying feet and swinging arms did nothing to warm her.

  A fiery rim of copper from behind dark clouds showed through the thinning trees, bringing in the dawn. She would not let Sean go to that place, Island or whatever, alone. The thought that he could die there terrified her.

  “That’s it.” He reached her, whirled her around, and threw her, like a bundle of nothing, over his shoulder. “You have teased me, my love. I shouldn’t let you goad me, but you have. I have a lot of business ahead of me. It’s time to get some things clear between us.”

  *

  He took her to Two Chimneys.

  She said nothing when he carried her up the ladder to the loft and pushed her beneath the thick down quilt on the bed.

  “Colin will be set free by his scourge but he won’t come after me again too quickly. Niles will want to know what went down but he’ll swallow his curiosity until a more appropriate time.”

  “More appropriate than what?”

  In the darkness he saw her better than almost anyone else would. Cocooned in the bed with her head covered but her face exposed, she could not be more awake, or more aware of him.

  “More appropriate than when people are exhausted and need to rest.”

  “I’m not exhausted.”

  He breathed deeply through his nose. “No, I don’t think you are. But let’s see.”

  Stripping rapidly, he kicked his clothes aside and slid into the bed with her. He gathered her close, hugging her, chafing chilled skin until her shivers subsided. And she clung to him, her face tucked into his neck, one leg hooked over his hip.

  Her hands started to move over his body. Now stroking his face, her fingers fluttering along the outline of his mouth, now rubbing his chest, tangling with the hair there, slipping down his sides and around to his spine, back over his hips to his belly. Moving, moving, turning every inch of him white-hot.

  He should not let this happen like this. It was not the way of his kind.

  Under the covers she dived and delved, kissing a path behind her racing hands, sucking in the taught tissue on his abdomen while she squeezed his buttocks, ran her fingers between them, and pushed his upper leg back to make room for her mouth.

  Elin licked him delicately. She had made this her time, she intended to complete her plan to seduce him, and he let himself sink into the seduction. When her mouth closed over his penis, she sucked softly, teasing until he didn’t think he could hold back. Her fingers played to the base of his erection, weighing and pressing; so gentle, so firm—an exquisite pressure on a hair trigger.

  Her silk dress wound about her body.

  Now it was up to him. He raised her head, hardly able to bear the separation of her mouth from his flesh. Her dress came off so easily, and the filmy panties. She wore no bra, and in his hands her lithe, firm body slipped, twisted until she was once more wound about him.

  From her thighs, to her hipbones, across her flat belly, over her small rib cage to her pointed breasts, Sean allowed himself to revel in the sexy, satin feel of her skin over tender flesh. She made small sounds, wanting sounds, and pushed herself harder into his hands.

  Sean made circles around her breasts, trailing the backs of his fingers across her soft skin. He licked and kissed the sensitive places at the sides of her breasts and began to kiss the same circles he’d made with his fingers.

  Flattening both hands on her pelvis, grazing over her mound, he stroked upward to cover those sweet breasts, to pinch her nipples between his fingers.

  Elin convulsed, she jerked and folded, curled against him. And her teeth sank into his shoulder. She pulled his penis toward her, but he held her off, secured her arms to the bed, and slid down to tuck his tongue into
the neat little cleft of her sex.

  She struggled against him as if she could take charge again, which only made him smile even while his genitals pulsed.

  Opening his mouth wide, he encircled the opening into her body and claimed the place that drove her mad. And within seconds she writhed against him, lifted her hips to meet his tongue, pushing as if to force him deeper.

  He felt orgasmic tremors break over and through her and smiled again. Deliberately, he stretched his legs straight down, pressed himself into the bed to help him stay in charge of what was happening to him.

  He must be the stronger one. She could be forgiven for giving in to appetite, he could not.

  Elin panted. As Sean moved to lie, half over her with a thigh across her hips, she twisted to slide her arms around his neck and hold on tightly enough to make him protest.

  She laughed. “Don’t tell me I’m hurting you. I couldn’t.”

  There were many ways to hurt, many forms of pain, some of them irresistible.

  “Come to me,” she whispered in his ear. “If you want to.”

  He nuzzled her neck. “I want to more than you’ll ever know. Will you become my mate, Elin? Will you braid your life with mine so we’re one?”

  Silence made him frown, then he felt her tears on his face, their saltiness on his lips. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry.” He wiped the tears away. “I want to make you happy.”

  “You already have. I want to be your mate.”

  He ran his fingers into her masses of black hair and combed it out across the pillows. “Then we are promised. We will become sealed and you will be my mate.”

  “And you will be mine,” she said.

  “First we must deal with the formalities of my people, and with the threats that have been made against all of us,” he said.

  “But you will make love to me now?”

  Her small voice turned his heart.

  “When I’m sure you are ready and I’ve done everything I must do to get rid of anything that could threaten you because you are my mate.”

  “Sean—”

  He kissed her words away. “I’m going to hold you through the night, unless you tell me to leave.”