Twilight Vendetta Read online

  Chapter Three

  By the time her dad had brought her meal to her, the sun was rising outside. Pale bits of light found their way in around the heavy curtains, shades and blinds. Her dad had never let go of the habit of keeping the sun out. He’d never given up living a nocturnal lifestyle. He was still waiting for his love to return. He would never give up hope.

  Emma’s childhood had been filled with stories about them meeting, falling love, and their breathless romance. It was her favorite thing to hear about when she was a little girl. All her bedtime stories were mini-romance novels about her own mom and dad.

  The stew he brought to her was hot and hearty, the tea soothing and perfect, and the dry pajamas and blanket finally filling her body with warmth. Her teeth had stopped chattering. She was curled up on the corner of the sofa, and her father was sitting in front of his biggest radio, fiddling with dials and holding the headset up near his right ear, but not putting it on. She noticed a few new silvery strands in his hair. A few in his eyebrows too, behind the black-framed glasses that had been the same exact style every day of her life.

  “When I told you what I’d overheard about the sighting of the Anemone,” Oliver said, “I didn’t expect you to put yourself in the middle of a battle.”

  “Really, Dad? Cause...we’ve met, right?”

  He smiled on cue, but it didn’t meet his eyes.

  “It wasn’t really a battle anyway. It was an ambush.”

  “So you were out there. You saw what happened? There was a tweet. Wait, I favorited it.” He found the tweet on his phone, then turned it toward her.

  2 unarmed teen vamps shot on sight by goops off OR coast. I-witness. #ERFU

  “Was that you, Emma?”

  She nodded. “On the way home. It’s a new handle. I deleted the account right after the post. Used all the usual precautions. Don’t worry, it won’t be traced back to me. No one ever knew I was there.” Except that vampire. She got a chill up her spine remembering him, then reminded herself that her pair of human heroes knew too. But they hadn’t exchanged names, so she was safe.

  The fear in her father’s eyes was genuine, and she knew it. His greatest fear was losing her just like he’d lost her mom. “You were right there. You saw it?”

  “Close enough to hear the shots. Picked up the rest from their radio transmissions.” She let her head rest on the back of the sofa and tried to keep her eyes open long enough to finish her stew.

  He shook his head slow, “Risky, daughter. Risky.”

  “I used a disposable phone to post the tweet. Ditched it right after. She shrugged and ate some more. “I had to do something. I’d just witnessed what looked like an execution at the hands of government-sanctioned troops.”

  “Not the first time it’s happened,” he said. He looked back at her, a hint of his darkest memory in his eyes. “How’d you end up in the water? You were in a boat, right? So how’d you end up soaking wet?”

  She bit her lip, lowered her head. “You’re getting too far ahead, Dad. Those two teenagers were shot in the chest, their lifeless corpses dragged up onto a boat. Then they came back to life.”

  He went very still, just staring at her. “Vampires don’t heal until the day sleep.”

  “I know that as well as you do.” She’d spent her lifetime learning about the Undead, and the past few years trying, anonymously, to help drum up support for fair treatment and civil rights for them through the recently formed, mostly anonymous group of activists known as ERFU. “I don’t think these were vampires,” she said softly. “I think they were something else. One of the goops called them Offspring.”

  Her father’s eyebrows bent at the word. “Offspring,” he repeated, as if mulling on what it might mean. “And then what happened?”

  “There was screaming. The kids killed two of the assassins, but then they were tranquilized or something. The goops took them to shore, threw them into the back of a van, and took off for parts unknown.”

  “Ah-huh. And then you went into the water?”

  “I knew the vampires had to be nearby. I had to find a way to tell them what had happened.”

  He came nearer, pursing his lips like he already knew the answer to his next question. “And you did that by...?”

  “I stashed the radio equipment, bagged my phone, rowed out far enough to make getting back a....challenge. And then I chopped a hole in my boat.”

  “Wonderful!” He threw his hands out to his sides and tipped his head back. “You risked your life, yet again! How many times do I have to tell you, Emma Louise, to beg you to be careful? How many times do I–”

  “It worked.”

  He lowered his head and his arms dropped to his sides as if they were made of lead. “Of course it did.” He was not amused. But he was curious.

  “A vampire came to save me. The same one, Dad. The same one who saved me from the car wreck and the skiing accident. I said something about it being the third time, and he said it was the fourth, but I was too young to remember.”

  He frowned, his eyes shifting back and forth as he visibly searched his memory. Then he blinked and looked at her. “You spent the night at your mom’s parents’ once. You were two years old. We were away for an overnight at a B&B to celebrate our anniversary. Your grandfather heard banging on the back door, the one that led out onto their patio and into the pool area. He went to check it out and found you dripping wet, sitting on the concrete. No one was around. You were completely alone, but you had clearly been in the water, and had got yourself out again.”

  He blinked away the memory and met her eyes. “It must’ve been him.” Then his eyes widened a little. “Maybe he knows something about your mother!”

  “I intended to ask, but a pair of fishermen came after me in a little motorboat at the same time. I managed to tell the vampire that his friends were alive and captured, and then he left, and let the two pain in the ass do-gooders save me.”

  “If the vampire hadn’t come, you’d have needed saving.”

  Oh, hell, she’d brought the subject back around to that again. Her father hated her thrill-seeking, life-risking ways. And she got that, from his perspective. After all, she was his only child. He’d lost his wife, the love of his life, and he didn’t want to lose Emma, too.

  But he was going to. And probably within the next twelve years, fifteen at the outside, if her condition proved to be typical. Unless, of course, she became a vampire. She just wasn’t sure if she wanted to live that way.

  “Dad, you said a lot had been happening tonight. Aren’t you going to tell me what?”

  He looked at her, bit his lip. “I want to. But I’m afraid you’ll go running off half-cocked and risk your life again.”

  “They were just kids. Sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. A girl and a boy. And now they’re prisoners and God only knows what’s happening to them.”

  He heaved a great big sigh. “I think I can figure out where they took them,” he said. “And I’ll tell you. But I want you to promise me you’re not going to try to go after them. Just convey the information to the nearest Undead we can find–without you risking your life to draw them out–and then let them deal with it. You promise?”

  She looked him in the eyes, nodded once.

  “Out loud, Emma Louise.”

  She smiled. “You still talk to me like I’m a kid.”

  “Out loud,” he said.

  Sighing, she recited the words he wanted to hear, even raised her right hand as she did so. “I promise I won’t try to single-handedly rescue those two kids.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

  She smiled, glad he hadn’t noticed her insertion of “single-handedly” into the verbal contract she’d just signed. “So? Where do you think they are?”

  He nodded. “We’ll need a map, a compass, and the precise time and location you saw them put into the van,” he said. Then he started shuffling papers around in search of those items.

  Devlin’s senses were still full
of Emma. Her scent. The sight of her, so beautiful, porcelain skin, salt water clinging to her face and thick lashes like pearls. How dark her blond curls looked when they were all soaked and plastered to her head, as opposed to the platinum color they were when dry. The plumpness of her lips and how tempted he’d been to taste them. The press of her breasts against his chest as he’d held her. Her body heat. The steady, excited beat of her heart.

  She attracted him to her the way a baited hook attracts fish. She was dangerous to him, because she was a danger to herself. Always taking risks. Always putting her life in jeopardy.

  He wouldn’t let himself care about her. It was bad enough he couldn’t resist going to her aid when she got into trouble. He wasn’t going to let it develop into anything more.

  Vampires couldn’t keep themselves from helping The Chosen. But they had full control over anything beyond that. He didn’t have to feel anything for her. He didn’t have to let this ridiculous fondness for her grow into something more. She’d been a child before. And then a teen. He had a weakness for children.

  But Emma wasn’t a little girl anymore. And his weakness for her was turning into a danger to him. Distracting him. He had a mission: to build the resistance. To fight back against humanity. To raise his kind out of the shadows, and to end the slow but steady genocide mankind intended for them.

  He and his crew had found a cave in the woods just before dawn, and he’d been certain the day sleep would shut Emma out of his mind. And yet each minute had seemed to stretch endlessly before the day sleep claimed him. And then he was there again, with her in the ocean, holding her waist between his big hands and feeling her warmth wrapping around him like an embrace, falling into her eyes, drunk on her breath and the way it bathed his lips with each exhale. And more. The thrum of blood rushing through her veins, the pulse of it, the soft swoosh of its current. He could smell it, almost taste it.

  The last time he’d seen her, she’d been in the mountains on a ski trip with her senior class. She’d been skiing under the lights at nighttime, and he’d been watching. Drawn to her, as he had always been drawn to her since her birth. He didn’t know how it worked the way it did, how he often found himself in the same city where she was, even though it was never deliberate. He’d seen her hang-gliding by night in the Smoky Mountains, shocked when he’d felt her presence there. He’d crossed paths with her in Paris, in Tokyo, in Budapest. Most of the time, he managed to avoid watching her extreme stunts. Mostly, she risked her pretty neck by day. And for that, he was grateful. Watching her tempt death wasn’t the most appealing way he could think of to spend his time.

  There was some kind of unseen bond between them, working beneath the surface to pull him into her orbit like the sun’s gravity pulls the planets into hers.

  On the slopes that long ago night, he’d felt Emma’s pain. It had exploded through his brain only seconds after he’d sensed her presence. And her scream of anguish had brought him out of hiding, right into the open. He raced across the mountain, his speed impeded by the deep snow.

  She lay in a tangle of skis and poles. Her shin bone was broken right in half, and one jagged edge had torn its way through her tender skin. Her blood was spilling into the snow, and it was a sight that made his nerve endings feel exposed and raw.

  “It’s all right, Emma, it’s all right.” He’d fallen to his knees beside her, carefully peeling away the ski pants. Every time he moved her even a little, pain rocketed through her, and he felt it just as vividly as she did, wincing with her. His eyes watered, it hurt so much. She was cold, shivering. So he shivered. She had tears on her cheeks, and he wanted to weep for her.

  Her eyes were on her leg. “It’s broken, isn’t it?” she asked, her words emerging on a soft breath.

  He nodded. “I’ve got to set the bone so we can stop the bleeding. Brace yourself.”

  She was holding herself up on her elbows so she could see the injured leg, the blood, and him. “Maybe we should wait for the–” And then she stopped, her gaze moving rapidly over his face. “I know you.”

  He pulled the two parts of the bone in opposite directions so the broken ends met once again, and she shrieked as if he was killing her and fell back into the snow. He could have screamed as well, because her pain was his. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Emma.”

  She lifted her head, then let it fall again. “I’m dizzy. Am I bleeding out?”

  “You’re dizzy from the pain, not the blood loss.” He was wrapping her leg in her thin scarf, pulling it tight enough to stop the bleeding. The cut wasn’t bad, but in one of The Chosen, one had to take precautions. Her pain was intense, but she bore up well. Once he finished binding the wound, he watched it for a moment, then nodded. “It’s holding. You’re not bleeding anymore.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Thank you. You probably just saved my life. I have a condition–”

  “I know.”

  He hadn’t meant to blurt that. It had just come out, and now she was staring at him. Her always untamable, pale blond curls were sticking out from beneath her knit hat, framing her heart-shaped face. She’d always been a stunner. She had the biggest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen. And angel-blond hair that fell in satin spirals every which way. Her lips were as red as oxygen-rich blood and her skin almost as pale and flawless as a vampire’s.

  He shook himself out of his thoughts, and realized he’d been staring. And she was staring right back. Frowning a little, she said, “How do you know about me? How do you always happen to be nearby when I’m in trouble?”

  He looked around. “We need to splint your leg. I’ll have to break one of your skis.”

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve saved my life.”

  “You’re hallucinating. You’ve lost more blood than I realized.” He snapped a ski in half, placed it on either side of her shin, and began wrapping it tightly with his own scarf.

  “I’m not hallucinating. I remember. I...I couldn’t forget.”

  “Here, this is better,” he said, knotting the scarf hard. Then he scooped her up into his arms, and started trudging through the snow down toward the lodge below.

  “You haven’t changed. Not even a little bit,” she whispered. She dragged her fingers over his face. “So pale,” she said. “And so cool.”

  “It’s freezing outside. I’m no cooler than you are.”

  “Stop lying to me.”

  You don’t know me. You’ve never seen me before. I’m a stranger to–

  “Oh, no, don’t you even try to pull that mind control crap on me, Mister!”

  He stood stock still, looking straight ahead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You’re a vampire. I’m a BD. What you all call The Chosen. That’s why you’re helping me. And it’s why you saved me before, too. Isn’t it?”

  He was so stunned that she could know what he was that he couldn’t even answer her. And then he heard what she couldn’t possibly with her human ears—the distant shoosh of skis in snow, higher up the mountain, but heading this way.

  He set her down and turned to leave.

  “Wait! Wait, you can’t just leave me. I’ll freeze to death out here. What if–”

  “People are coming. A minute, two at most, and they’ll be here.”

  “They’ll run me over!”

  “You’re off the trail.”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “And you never will. Goodbye, Emma.” And he left her there in a burst of speed that couldn’t help but confirm her suspicions, taking giant leaps to maximize his velocity in the deep snow.

  But how had she known what he was? This was long before vampires had been outed to the world of man. Long before anyone besides themselves and DPI, and possibly a few rare humans, had known of their existence. And yet, she had known.

  Devlin came awake with a painful start and looked around him in utter confusion. It was dark in the cave, but he could see just fine. The sun should’ve been up by
now, though, shouldn’t it?

  “Hey, Dev,” Bellamy said. “I hope our first order of business tonight is to feed. I’m so hungry I’m almost transparent.”

  Devlin blinked. “It’s night again?” He pressed a hand to his head.

  “Yeah, it’s night again.” Bell frowned at him. “You okay?”

  “Yes. Fine. I woke a little...disoriented.” Because he had dreamed. He had dreamed about Emma. And everyone knew that vampires didn’t dream.

  Emma had slept like the dead. Being the daughter of a vampiress, she’d been raised on a nocturnal schedule, and even though her mother had vanished, she’d kept to it, to a degree, her entire life. Not as much as her father had, but still....

  Frankly, she preferred the night to the day. It was cooler, cleaner, fresher, somehow. And hushed. The harsh light and sharp noises of daytime had never appealed to her.

  She opened her eyes and sat up on the sofa where she’d crashed, running a hand back and forth through her hair. And she smelled bacon. “Dad?”

  “Go take a shower, babe. You’ve slept the day through. You’ve got fifteen minutes before nightwalker breakfast. Then we get back to work. All right?”

  She smiled. Nightwalker breakfast was their pet name for the meal they ate at sundown. Most people ate dinner around then. But the Benatars ate breakfast in the evening. It had been that way for Emma’s entire life.

  She got to her feet, walked past the bank of radios and equipment, and glanced at her father’s notes. He had a map, with the spot marked where Emma had seen the two teens thrown into that van. He had drawn an arrow in the direction she’d seen them moving.

  While she’d been out in the ocean trying to lure vampires to her rescue so she could tell them what she’d seen, her father had been picking up bits and pieces of communication from government radio frequencies he wasn’t supposed to be able to tap into. He’d transcribed what he’d heard and some notes of his own.