Today would have been her fourteenth birthday.
The little girl"s name had been Lori. Lori...a sweet, red- headed little girl, wide eyed and innocent. Kelsey shook her head. Such a child had alighted on the Council"s doorstep just a few years ago, wrapped in Eli"s arms.
The vampire had been reeking of blood and violence, his eyes full anguish and pain as he turned the child over to Kelsey, a.s.suring her that the little one"s memory of the night was gone.
Kelsey had wished she could do the same for Eli but he had left in silence before she could even offer a shoulder.
A gifted child, another witch, one who would be a Healer.
The child had often asked of her sister...Sarel.
Sarel, the angry powerful young witch who was killing Eli.
A tangled path had led her to Eli"s door.
Sarel had arrived only hours after her father had killed her mother, before he had turned on his own child. The child hadn"t been killed though. Her father had died viciously, his throat ripped wide open, his blood painting the floor red instead of feeding Eli. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d"s body had been pummeled and beaten and broken, a more brutal, and deadly version of what he had often done to his wife and kids.
It hadn"t been one of Eli"s cleaner kills.
Standing enraged before the lifeless woman who had let her children be beaten, his emotions, his helplessness apparent as he held the tiny, underfed nine year old in his arms while she sobbed and cried.
Eli had resorted to mind control to soothe the child, erasing her memories of that night and taking her away.
Sarel had strong, untrained psychic skills, not just the witchcraft. The hunter had left too much of himself, let himself feel too much rage. He hadn"t just attacked and killed-Eli had fought, wanting to feel bones break under his hands, wanting to feel skin tear and blood flow. And he had let his own blood be spilled as he allowed the man to fight-as he let the perverted b.a.s.t.a.r.d think he would win before he killed him.
Sarel had locked on the scent of his blood, his rage, convincing herself she was tracking a killer. That was how Sarel had found him. Tracking the path of emotions, the line of blood and rage, going without any knowledge of his looks or his name, for more than four years, she had tracked him.
Between the blood and the emotion, she was led across the country to Eli. It had taken years, but she had followed the trail of righteous death, not seeing it for what it was, and had landed here. Every unexplained death, every near bloodless corpse pulled her closer. She hadn"t heard, or if she had-she had ignored-the stories of abuse and neglect and crime that surrounded the supposed victims.
Having arrived here nearly a year ago she had hidden behind the guise of glamour while she watched Eli, while she planned, while she researched.
While she grieved.
Sarel thought Eli had killed her baby sister, the baby sister who was alive and well at Excelsior, learning the ways of Healing, being a happy child, being a witch, being free.
"Oh, sweetheart, aren"t you in for a rude awakening,"
Kelsey murmured. Under her breath, she murmured the words to a spell of entrapment, one to hold the other witch helpless, both magically and physically, until Kelsey or Kelsey"s death, released it. Not that what she was going do was going to kill her, but it was definitely going to hurt.
Lifting her head, she looked at her audience of two. At some point, one of them had sent the others from the room, so there was n.o.body but Declan and Tori, the unconscious witch, and the dying vampire. Baldly, Kelsey said, "Eli"s running out of time. He"ll die unless she feeds him, and does it willingly, within in the next few hours. I don"t think we have the time to talk some sense into her."
Declan had been standing behind Tori, his arms wrapped around her waist, holding her against his naked body, his chin resting atop her blacks curls. But at Kelsey"s words he spun away and started to pace the confines of the room, his hands flexing and relaxing.
From time to time, the bones in his body would start to s.h.i.+ft and power would shudder through the room as he battled the wolf that raged to be free.
Tori caught him as he pa.s.sed by her, stroking her hands soothingly down his arms before turning back to Kelsey. "So what do we do?" she asked calmly.
"We can"t do anything, but I can. However, I won"t be worth much afterward. I"ve put a spell on her, so she can"t run, and she can"t fight in any way. That way, in case this doesn"t work, she can"t turn on you while I"m out."
"Out doing what?" Declan asked.
"Pa.s.sed out. Out cold. Unconscious," Kelsey said, a small smile tugging at her mouth. "This is definitely not going to be one of the smartest things I"ve ever done."
With that she turned and moved to Eli"s side.
"I need her on the bed," Kelsey said as she crawled across the bed to kneel in the middle by Eli"s p.r.o.ne form. She could feel him, still there, but growing weaker. The pain that was ripping through him was enough to make her nauseated, but she had to clamp down and s.h.i.+eld against what he was suffering now.
It was the suffering from his past she needed, his emotions, his need for justice, his loneliness. Declan tossed Sarel down carelessly before turning back to his stalking. "If I fail, I know you will kill her," Kelsey said softly. "But she didn"t do this because she is evil. She isn"t. She"s misled. But she"s also dangerous. Kill her, but do it fast, and do it clean. And-politely, if you can.
She"s suffered enough."
"Suffered?" Declan rasped, his voice a painfully deep growl, his eyes glowing neon green and swirling with his anger. "Suffered?"
"Yes. She"s suffered. As one member of the Council to another, I charge you with this. Do not toy with her. Do not be cruel. She may escape if you do. And you know we can"t risk that. But I know that she deserves better."
Declan"s words were cut off by Tori. Her blue eyes were glittering and gleaming with the tears she still held back but she promised in a rough, husky voice, "If you fail, I will make certain she dies quickly and cleanly, Kelsey. I promise."
Declan made a rude sound behind her and started to mutter under his breath as he resumed his pacing.
Kelsey idly wondered if there would be furrows in the wood from his pacing by the time this was over.
Turning she placed one hand on Eli"s chest, dropped her s.h.i.+elds and called the magic. Placing the other hand on Sarel"s chest her head fell back and the tips of her long braids brushed the linens.
Magic pulsed hot and thick through her veins as she chanted under her breath, heat swirling and filling the air around her until it felt too thick to breathe. Light built and built and built and then exploded in a blinding flash.
Tori flung an arm over her eyes and cried out in shock as the light exploded like a bomb without smoke or fire.
Through watery, hazy eyes she searched the room.
Kelsey wasn"t there.
"Where"d she go?" Declan asked. "I can"t see her." Then he lifted his head, and flared his nostrils, dragging air in. "But I can still smell her. It"s like she"s...inside them."
Sarel felt the alien presence battering at her sense of self but she was too f.u.c.king weak to fight it. It spilled in, flooded her, filled and then drained out, taking her anger and her guilt with it, leaving her hollow.
A soft, gentle voice said, "He isn"t what you think or who you think. You saw him with the witch sight, saw the warrior. That is who he is."
"f.u.c.k you."
The woman laughed. Her voice stroked over Sarel, soothing a thousand pains, healing small hurts as she said, "He"s a good man. Didn"t your father deserve to die?"
"My sister didn"t."
"No. The child didn"t deserve to die. And she"s not dead. But you won"t believe that. So I"m going to show you."
The hollowness inside Sarel was suddenly flooded.
That night-it was like she was there again. The blond, achingly beautiful vampire had kicked open the door only seconds after Sarel"s father had pumped her mother full of lead, while he stared at sweet little Lori with hot, hungry eyes. Lori was crying and screaming and covered in her mother"s blood.
The vampire had cast one look at her and whispered quietly, "Sleep."
And Lori"s eyes closed as she slid to the floor, soft whimpers still falling from her lips.
"Invite me in."
Sarel shuddered at the power in those words, recognizing the silent psychic command and watching as her father did so, inviting the man in while his mind frantically tried to figure out why he had just done so.
"You did it so I can kill you," Eli purred, stalking around the room, circling ever closer to the sweating man who suddenly stank of fear. Eli looked like a tawny gold mountain lion, sleek, deadly, predatory.
He stopped when he was standing in front of the mortal again, flas.h.i.+ng his fangs at him and smiling.
"I"m going to enjoy killing you," Eli whispered savagely.
Sarel"s father bellowed and flung himself at Eli, hitting him with a blow that would have shattered the jaw of a human. Eli smiled and said, "This is going to be more fun than I thought."
Sarel watched as the blond vampire slowly, thoroughly, and with immense skill, pounded her father into the ground the way she had so often dreamed of doing.
From time to time he would back off, allow the human to catch his breath, gather his strength and his fear, and launch another attack. Eli would take a few blows, letting the b.a.s.t.a.r.d think he could be beaten, and then he would whirl faster than the eye could follow and reappear behind her father, taking him, kneeing him in the kidney or smacking him tauntingly on the head.
The final time it happened Eli simply s.h.i.+fted, going from his mortal form to gray smoke, reforming behind the man who had gone white and pale with sheer fear.
Eli drank in the fear like it was wine but when he gripped the man from behind and sank his teeth into the human flesh he did it merely to rip it open and make him bleed. The mouthful of blood he caught he spat out onto the floor after he had used his sharp teeth to pierce and rip open the carotid so that the man fell into a puddle of his own blood and died only seconds later.
Sarel tried to scream when she saw the man go to the sleeping child and everything inside her went cold as he reached to touch her. But he didn"t. He paused and stared at the blood on his hands and body. "That"s really going to help her mental condition, mate," he muttered in a clipped English accent as he turned to walk around the puddle of blood.
Sarel was still frozen where she had been, unable to follow, but she heard water splas.h.i.+ng and when the vampire returned, the blood still stained his clothes, but not his hands or face. Dull horror bloomed inside her at what she saw on his face when he paused to stare down at her mother"s lifeless body. Helplessness, rage, disgust. The same feelings Sarel had so often felt towards her mother.
The horror only grew when he picked up Lori with gentle hands. His touch woke the little girl and she started to scream, huge wracking sobs ripping from her between the screams, and the man"s beautiful face twisted with misery and sorrow. Sarel saw blood tinged tears trickle down his face as he rocked the grieving child back and forth. Finally, he caught her tiny face in one long, graceful hand and whispered gently, "Sleep, pretty child. When you wake, things will be better."
Sarel felt power shudder through the air, and her psychic abilities let her see that he had erased Lori"s memory of that night. Completely erased, not covered, or pushed back until she was older. The night simply hadn"t happened.
Nausea roiled in her gut and she wanted to cover her mouth against the urge to vomit but she still couldn"t move. The house, the vampire and her sister faded from her sight, but she was now somewhere else, a million somewhere elses, watching a million repeats of what she had just seen.
Yes. Eli Crawford was a killer.
A vigilante.
She watched as he took the lives of drug dealers, men and women who sold children, rapists, child molesters.
Not all of them were the sc.u.m of society she would have expected. Three she recognized-a hotshot movie star who was rumored to have a taste for cruelty, a politician who had used his wife"s money to aid his rise to the Senate while he kept her drugged and locked away as he raped their two children, and an NFL football player who had already done time in jail for battery. His wife had taken him back and he would have killed her that last night if Eli hadn"t intervened.
"Not real. You"re making me see this. It"s not real,"
Sarel murmured, trying to console herself.
The woman"s sigh seemed to wrap around her. "You"ve enough of a gift to be able to tell if I were lying. My psychic skills aren"t as strong as yours, but if you don"t believe what your eyes are showing you, then perhaps you will see what your soul and heart show you."
Feeling as though she had been ripped from her body Sarel could see her herself, clad in black camouflage, smudged with dirt and soot, as she hovered above the bed. Next to her still form she saw the vampire-pale, gray with impending death. And then she was flung into his body.
Whatever it was that kept her helpless hadn"t blocked her sight this time. A warm, vivid blue light pulsed all around her. Warrior. She battled the unseen, unstoppable force that was propelling her straight into his soul. "Stop it!"
Sarel screamed. She tried to dig in her heels, but the force that was behind her was far too strong and there was no stopping it.
No.
She felt Eli, felt his weak surprise, felt how he still battled against the insidious poison she had placed inside him, felt his gradual acceptance.
Eli was aware of them, she realized. And he knew who she was, but he ignored her.
"Kelsey, have you gone and grown up already, little girl?"
"Yes. It"s been nearly forty years, Elijah. Did you still think I was the little girl you carried away from that house before you burned it down?"
"Forty years? Only forty?" He laughed weakly. "A witch. How did I know that would happen?"
Sarel felt the other witch"s impatience, and heard it this time as the woman said, "Are we going to stand here and exchange small talk?"
"I"ve nothing better to do until I die. Takes my mind of the f.u.c.king pain, a little anyway," Eli said.
"Don"t you want to live, Eli?"
Eli laughed. Sarel shuddered as the sound wrapped around her, sounding both hot and cold, hard and soft.
Both a caress and a slap at the same time. "I"m not alive, Kelsey. I"m dead, a f.u.c.king vampire."
"You"re not dead, Eli. You"re just not human anymore. But even if you are willing and ready to die, what about Tori and Declan? You"re bonded with them. They felt pain when you were hurt, and they"re sick now."
"That was a lie," Sarel thought, startled. She could sense it, taste it. But Eli didn"t seem to notice.
She felt his unease grow.
"Tori and Declan will be fine," he said finally. "Haven"t you heard? Tori is Wonderwoman. There is little that she can not do."
"She fed you, too much. Now she is ill."
Eli seemed to shrug. "She will be all right. Both of them."
"I don"t think they will," Kelsey argued. "Tori tried to feed to you and it weakened her far too much. She"s in a sleep that I can"t wake her from, and Declan"s half mad with fury. If Tori and you both die and he doesn"t, I"m afraid I"ll have to kill him. He"ll lose control, Eli. Even if he doesn"t, what of his soul-bond to Tori? Do you really think he can live more than a few months without her?"
"NO." The fury blazed and pulsed around them until Sarel could hardly feel anything past it, until she was suddenly the focus.
"You."
Sarel felt the witch rip her soul back, felt the witch tear herself out of them both as Eli fought his way back to awareness. A low, furious whisper tore past his dry lips, harsh and painful, as she stared at him, "You." Eli"s eyes opened. He was too f.u.c.king weak to move but he could see the woman next to him from the corner of his eye, could smell her. It was the woman who had shot him, the woman Kelsey had brought into his soul.
She sat up slowly, her eyes refusing to meet his.
"Get...out," he gasped, the fiery hole in his chest robbing him of the ability to think.