A Dark Kiss Of Rapture

CHAPTER 8

Francesca, Lady Seagrave, eyed the big vampire who prowled around the refuge she and Baron had created together and felt the hatred sizzling in her blood along with the silver that burned like acid. He was lost in the recording he listened to on her wireless headphones, his face a mask that revealed none of his thoughts. But he had to hear what she’d heard through the bugs she’d placed in his hotel room. The tenderness and affection that had developed between him and his mortal lover were evident in every word they spoke to each other, every breathless cry and pleasured moan.

It was going to wound him terribly when he lost her, perhaps even break him considering how long he’d gone without anyone being necessary to him.

The crash of something breakable shattering on the floor sent a jolt through her. There were others in her home; two men Raze had called to assist him. They were presently rifling through her things, watching the videos she’d made of certain memorable kills. They watched and listened with such horror, as if it was a surprise that a vampire should hunt prey. That’s what was fundamentally wrong with those in power of the vampire nation-they acted like animal rights activists who advocated vegetarianism, an impossible stance when ruling those who could be nothing but carnivores.

Mortals were food and sport. It was a joke that vampires should hide their existence and scrape for scraps to eat when there was so much to be had. The Sentinels were powerful, yes, but Syre had never once made an attempt to break out of their rigid boundaries. Who knew what they could accomplish? She and Baron envisioned a world in which vampires ruled as they should. She hadn’t Changed to live like this. What was the point of having so much power if you never wielded it?

Raze yanked the headset off his ears and shot daggers into her with his gaze.

Her mouth curved. “It’s my right to take her from you. Baron gave her to you as surely as if he’d introduced you. You wouldn’t have been in Chicago to meet her if not for us.”

“Were you planning on going through my entire black book?” he shot back. “Taking out every person I’ve fucked?”

“Oh no,” she crooned, nursing her vicious fury like a babe at her breast. “She’s special to you. Not like the others. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been at her place this morning. You would’ve taken what you wanted and left before sunrise. I miscalculated how quickly and deeply you fell for her, but it doesn’t matter. She’ll die, whether or not it’s my hand that kills her. You have so many enemies, Raze. She won’t last a minute in the grand scheme of things.”

Francesca had to give him credit, his face and body language gave nothing away. But she knew the impact of her words. Tossing her head back, she laughed.

“You’re a crazy bitch,” he said grimly. “I’m just wondering if you were always psychotic or if the Change warped your brain.”

“I Changed for him. We Changed for each other, so we’d always be together and you’ve taken him from me. And for what? You’re as much of a Sentinel pet as the lycans. Now you’ll lose something irreplaceable. You’ve finally found what you’ve been missing and it’s about to be ripped from you. I hope you’ll see what’s done to her. I hope you watch while she’s cut and torn and broken. I hope her screams stay in your head-”

There was a split second in which she registered the gun in his hand. And then there was nothing.

Raze studied the baroness’s slumped head with icy detachment. She remained upright courtesy of the ingeniously heinous chair he’d found in her home-a chair with silver-plated spiked manacles at the wrists and throat, and a bottom and back with blades that protruded or retracted via a handle on the backside.

Turning away, he looked around the warehouse loft and considered what she’d left behind. There was an entire bookcase of recorded atrocities stored in jeweled cases. It was a collection that could never fall into a Sentinel or lycan’s hands, or questions would be raised that had no good answers. Some of what he’d seen would haunt him for years to come, minions who’d succumbed so completely to bloodlust that they were little more than ravening beasts. Raze wasn’t certain there was anything-even the Creator’s command that the Fallen live endlessly with their vampiric curse-that could prevent a war if Adrian believed vampires were a threat requiring complete eradication.

After all, Adrian had broken other commandments without punishment.

“This place is a house of horrors,” Crash muttered behind him, tossing the disks into a crate to be destroyed. “And they were proud of it. They could’ve kept all this shit in a cloud or on a hard drive, but they wanted the visual of how many kills they had under their belt.”

Raze’s phone vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out. “Raze.”

“How extensive is the infestation in Chicago?” Adrian asked without preamble.

His back stiffened. “I’m taking care of it.”

“If you think that’s going to be enough to put me off, you haven’t learned anything about me in the last several eons.” The smoothly modulated tone of the Sentinel’s voice only made his words more disturbing. “Discovering a few hundred armed minions in a heavily populated metropolis is a big fucking problem. Tell Syre if he can’t get a handle on his ranks, I’ll take the necessary steps to manage it myself.”

“Why don’t-”

“You and the six minions who arrived today have forty-eight hours to wrap it up and clear out.”

The line died, leaving Raze cursing at an angel who couldn’t hear him.

There were times when he thought there was no way to clean up the mess the Fallen had made, times when he thought even damage control was out of their reach. There were tens of thousands of vampires policed by less than four hundred combined Fallen and Sentinels plus a few thousand lycans. The odds were against them in every way.

He’d felt helpless before, but now he had something he couldn’t bear to lose. He would hunt down the ones whose names he found here in Baron’s safe house, but that wouldn’t make Kim any safer. As long as they were connected in any way, she would be a target.

Back in his hotel room, Raze looked into the video feed of Vash’s office on his brand-new iPad and caught her up. “I got the list of Baron’s followers off his laptop and most of the team is out hunting them now. They had me tailed from the moment I arrived at the airport. While I was killing Baron at the ballpark, the baroness was here in my room planting bugs.”

“So now we know why she wasn’t there that night.”

“Right. That’s what I couldn’t get: why the hell did they draw my attention? If they hadn’t dumped that body on my porch, we wouldn’t be on to them now. Reviving Grimm’s doctrine was a ruse. They used it to round up enough minions to put on that show at Wrigley Field, but their real agenda was to get those bugs on me for future intel gathering. We found them in every room of my suite and on my iPad. They planted tracking devices on my bags. They knew every move I made and would have continued to know, if she hadn’t fucked up and gone after Kim this morning. The baroness hadn’t planned on my being there.”

Vash pushed her hair back from her face and looked grim. “I hate to say it, but your Kim is going to be a problem for you, unless you’re planning on Changing her and taking the risk that she won’t lose herself in the process. You’ve made a lot of enemies over the years.”

Everything inside him recoiled at the thought of losing Kim in any way, by his actions or someone else’s. “That hasn’t escaped me. But I wasn’t their only target. They had rudimentary plans to lure you and Salem out, too, using one of Salem’s old hunts-like they did with me-and data on Charron’s killers for you.”

“Well, fuckin’ A.” Her amber eyes were hard and cold. “They’re lucky they went with you first. They wouldn’t have liked dealing with me.”

“I thought the same thing,” he said wryly. “In a related matter, Adrian called me today. He’s ordered me and the team out of Chicago by Tuesday. To say he’s not happy about armed minions in the city would be an understatement.”

“Fuck him and the high horse he rides,” she snapped.

He smiled. “You’re just pissed because he’s got us by the balls with this one.”

“Whatever. The fucker shouldn’t always be right.” She took a deep breath. “Listen, I don’t want to distract you from what you’re doing, especially while you’ve got Adrian breathing down your neck, but… Nikki’s gone missing.”

Raze froze. Torque’s wife. “What do you mean by ‘missing’?”

“She was supposed to pick up Torque in Shreveport last night but she never made it.”

“You’ll need me.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah. But take care of what’s on your plate there first. We need to put a lid on that mess and I need your head in the game when you get back here.”

“Keep me posted.”

“Of course.”

He signed off and stood, methodically packing up his things. There wasn’t much.

“The room is yours,” he told Crash. “I’ll call you when I get out in the field. I have something to take care of.”

Crash waved absently, his attention riveted to the data on Baron’s laptop.

Raze had barely knocked on Kim’s door when it was yanked open and she threw herself into his arms.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, pressing her face into his chest.

With one arm around her waist, he lifted her feet from the floor and carried her into the apartment, closing them inside by leaning back against the door. “For now.”

What a lie, he thought. Everything was far from all right. No matter what he decided, it was going to be painful for both of them.

She searched his face for answers. “Talk to me.”

He dropped his bag on the ground and wrapped his arms around her, engulfing her in the strength and heat of his body. “I brought my crap to your door, Kim. And then I came back anyway.”

“Damn right you came back.” She had the same look of determination on her face that she’d had when she picked him up in the club. “I would’ve hunted you down if you hadn’t.”

“You wouldn’t find me.” And god, it killed him to think of her trying to. Because he understood the drive, the need and hunger to be near each other. It’s what brought him back to her even when he knew the best thing for both of them would be for him to walk away completely.

“Try me,” she challenged grimly. “If you want to go because you don’t feel anything for me, that’s fine. I won’t make it difficult for you. But as long as I think you’re taking the same ride I am, I’m not letting you get off easy.”

He pressed his cheek to hers, swamped with wanting her, with wanting this -the sense of being right where he should be. He carried her to the couch and sat, arranging her so that she straddled him. She draped her arms over his shoulders and leaned back, affording him the opportunity to drink in the sight of her. She wore blue jeans and a loose V-neck T-shirt, looking soft and sexy and beautiful.

“Am I in danger?” she asked. “Is that what the roses were about? Is that what you’re kicking yourself over?”

“Not immediate.” Raze’s fingers shifted into her hair, pushing it back from her face. “But as long as I’m with you, it’s always going to be hovering in the background. You don’t need any more traumas, Kim. You’ve had more than your share already.”

“I come from a family of cops. I’ll be okay.” She cupped the back of his head, making sure his gaze stayed locked with hers. “It’s good you came back, Raze. Whatever else you may think, whatever else is going on, it’s important that you came back. It was the right thing to do.”

He hugged her again, running his hands up her spine to mold her into him. “I’ve got work to do today and I didn’t ask you first, but I gave up my room and brought my stuff here.”

“Good.”

“You say that now, but you don’t know what I am and I can’t tell you until I’m given permission to.”

“You tried warning me off the night I met you, remember? And it didn’t work, even when you were just a seriously prime piece of beefcake.” Kim squeezed him hard. “It’s not going to work now that I’m invested.”

“You don’t know what I do. You’ll need to know. I’ll need to tell you when I can, but I have to leave soon. No later than Tuesday. And I don’t know when I’ll be back. It could be weeks. Months.”

“Just so long as you come back. Promise me that. That’s where we’ll begin. We have the phone and internet. We can video conference. It won’t be the same as touching you, but at least we’re not giving up.”

His head fell back onto the sofa cushion, his eyes trained on the ceiling but not seeing it. “I’m going to be honest and tell you what’s running through my head. Dropping this now would be the best thing for both of us. We’ve had a couple days together. A week from now it won’t seem as intense. A few months down the road, it’ll be a fond memory. That’s the easy way to go.”

“You’re absolutely right.” She took a deep breath. “I was thinking the same thing while you were gone. I was rehearsing what I’d say to you, how to put across that I’d had a great time but the weekend was enough for me. There’s something here, we both know that, but it’s just a spark right now. With a little time and a little distance, it’ll burn out.”

He exhaled harshly. “Yeah.”

“But then I realized I’m not okay with that.” She was staring at him when he lifted his head to look at her. “Because I don’t know if I’ll find that spark again. I don’t if it would be the same if I did find it later. What if this is it? What if you’re the best thing that ever happened to me? Am I going to spend the rest of my life wondering what could have happened if I’d been strong enough to try? I don’t want to live with those questions haunting me.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the worse thing that’s ever happened to you,” he muttered. “Let’s clear that up now.”

“And I’m pretty sure you could turn into a werewolf during full moons and I wouldn’t care.”

“What?”

“Or maybe a troll on Wednesdays? Maybe you’re a vampire, and that’s why I haven’t seen you eat.”

“Christ.” He couldn’t help it; his lips twitched with the urge to laugh. Which was just part of her magic. He was a different person with her. And he liked being that guy. Liked being her guy.

“Ha!” Kim’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “I spend most days examining bodily fluids, which a lot of people think is gross. We all have our blemishes. And we’re not talking about marriage here. We’re talking about taking a chance. Making a few phone calls. Sending a few emails.”

She nuzzled his nose with hers, a playful gesture that no one else would dare to make with him. His lungs seized with a terrible yearning. Tilting his head, he kissed her, drinking her in. Her lips were soft and sweet beneath his; her returning kiss was deep and slow. Savoring.

“What do ya say, rough guy?” she murmured against his mouth. “Wanna take a chance on me?”

“Yes.” Raze took her mouth again. “Yes. Fuck. But I have to go now. I have to work.”

“But you’ll be back.”

He fisted his hand in her hair and nodded. “I’ll be back.”