There was no hot water.
Alexandra was huddled on the cold tiled floor in the tiny bathroom, her drenched clothes lying in a ball next to her. She’d turned the shower on ten minutes ago and now she was still desperately clinging to the hope that the water would magically turn warm if she let it run long enough. She’d settle for lukewarm, even. Was that really asking too much?
Apparently it was.
After another ten minutes passed, Lex finally conceded defeat. She jumped under the icy spray and quickly washed away the smeared remnants of her makeup and the lingering stains of blood that marred her pale skin. Then she scampered out of the shower, her teeth chattering more violently than when she’d gone in.
“Yeah, this is a really nice motel,” she grumbled to herself, remembering what the clerk behind the reservation desk had said when he’d refused to give her a room key. “A goddamn Hilton.”
She knew the real reason the clerk had rejected her had nothing to do with the motel’s reputation; it had been personal. Lex had seen in his mind that he’d been attracted to her, and he’d also been disgusted with himself for lusting after a girl who looked so young and vulnerable, with her wet clothes sticking to her body and the streaks of blood running down her face. His struggle had been unconscious, of course; the only thing the clerk had been aware of was a dire need to get rid of her.
Well, it didn’t matter, she’d gotten a room. She only wished that it hadn’t cost her so much money.
Lex had done a lot of traveling throughout her life, but she’d never done it by herself before. She had never handled the transportation or hotel details like this. That had always been left up to her maker, and then later, Tristan. No wonder she was terrible at it.
This was actually the first time that she’d even left Montreal since she’d arrived with Reece last year. When he’d seen that Lex had become restless only a few months later, he’d promised her that he would take her somewhere once his work slowed down. After a while, though, she realized that that was never going to happen. His work never slowed, never stopped. She understood that, but a part of her still hated him for making her a promise that he knew he couldn’t keep.
Pain stabbed through her and she cursed herself for allowing it to happen.
Okay. Enough, she thought. Stop thinking about Reece and go to sleep. She hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, and she would need a clear head tomorrow so that she could think of a way out of this hellhole.
As she walked out of the bathroom, wrapped in the miniscule piece of cloth the motel tried to pass off as a towel, she saw a puddle of water on the floor around her bag. Then a sudden realization struck her: all of her clothes were wet, not just the ones that she’d worn as she ran through the freezing rain. Her bag had gotten completely soaked as well.
With a resigned sigh, Alexandra unzipped it. She peeled each piece of clothing out of the bag and threw them over the back of the hardwood desk chair, over the doors and the doorknobs, over the open draws of the rickety, old dresser and the television that sat on top of it—anywhere she could find so that they would be dry in the morning.
Of course, that left her without anything to wear to bed, and the thought of slipping under the tattered bedspread completely naked was revolting. God knows what people had done in that bed. But still, it was probably better than lying there in her cold, wet clothes. So after she turned off the lights, Lex gritted her teeth and lay down on the bed, pulling the covers over her almost rebelliously.
Over an hour later, she was still lying there wide-awake as she stared at the ceiling. She couldn’t relax. In the quiet of the room, her heartbeat seemed as loud as thunder, and it was beating too fast.
It had been over four years since she had spent the night in a strange place like this, since her maker had left her for dead. As she lay there, it almost felt like she was back with him, locked in a room that she had no chance of escaping from, waiting for him to come for her. While this motel was not the kind of place that her maker would have chosen—he’d had expensive taste—Lex still felt trapped and sick. She was choking on the close, stale air; i was pressing against her, holding her down, and she couldn’t stand being held down. It plucked at a tight string of anxiety in her gut, triggering a wave of panic that surged through her.
Finally, Alexandra shot out of bed and yanked open every window in the room. The winter air rushed in, fresh and frigid as it blew over her bare skin. She breathed deeply, appreciating the cold for the first time in her life. It reminded her that she was no longer a slave. She was free.
Lying down on her side, she laid the blanket over her so that her legs and arms remained uncovered, letting the breeze flow over them. As the water that still clung to her wet hair began to freeze, and the rising sun melted the dark sky into a vibrant shade of blue, Lex finally fell asleep.
Breathing hard, Karissa plunged her stake into the greasy vampire’s heart and she watched as he fell to the ground lifelessly. She was always happy to kill a vamp that was preying on someone, but she was especially glad that this one was dead. He’d given her a hell of a time: bruising her face, breaking out of her holds, catching one of her kicks and then driving his knee into the nerves at the back of her thigh. He’d even resorted to pulling her hair at one point, which had been a pathetic, but effective move. Then she’d finally managed to get the jump on him, using his own momentum to push him off balance so that she had a clear shot at his chest.
She turned away, checking up and down the alley for the teenage girl that the vampire had been biting when Karissa had come along, but the girl was nowhere to be found.
Good. She just hoped that the waiflike blond who’d been wearing too much makeup and not nearly enough clothes for a December night would head home and stay out of trouble.
Karissa headed back towards the street, smiling to herself as her heart rate slowed. She was definitely on a roll tonight, killing three vampires in five hours. She hadn’t patrolled in over three weeks, not since Nick had been attacked, and it felt really good to get back to work.
And she was back with a vengeance.
The Night World always underestimated her, not only because she was human, but also because she looked like some college sorority chick. Tonight, for example, she was dressed in her skin tight, low-rider jeans that flared out below the knee, her navy pea coat, and her brightly-colored cashmere scarf that she’d wrapped twice around her neck. Hardly the attire that a warrior would be expected to wear. Karissa actually owned a hat that matched the scarf, but she’d forgotten it when she stormed out of the apartment. Still, with an intentionally ditzy smile on her face, her vacuous persona was working well for her. Even that greasy vampire had wasted too much time playing with her, instead of killing her right off the bat. He really hadn’t been the sharpest knife in the rack.
The streets were mostly empty at this hour. The bars and clubs had long since closed. It was a little strange to be out this late by herself. Most nights that she patrolled, Sorrentino, who was also human, was at her side. Cahill tried not to let anyone on the team patrol by themselves, especially not the humans.
Tonight, however, she just didn’t want to see anyone. Besides, she had a black belt in aikido—she could take care of herself. In fact, she could hold her own against most of the team members. Alyssa and Jase were tough, but somewhat predictable. She’d recently found out the hard way that she could take Sorrentino—she’d also learned never to tease him about his first name being Francis. And Karissa actually knew from her sparring sessions that she could even handle Nick.
Of course, her idiot boyfriend liked to remind her that a witch didn’t need to be trained in physical combat to beat her. He could knock her out with one magick blow.
Her jaw clenched. She had managed to cool off over the past few hours, but as soon as her mind conjured up the image of Nick sitting at the kitchen table, his hazel eyes glimmering with power as he threatened her, anger welled up inside of her all over again. He was such a creep, thinking that he could intimidate her because he was a witch and she was nothing but a measly human. On nights like this, she didn’t even understand why he would do something so degrading as to date her.
And to think that she’d wasted three weeks by his bedside when she could have been out fighting the Night World. Then what would he have done? That first week, Nick hadn’t even been able to summon enough power to heat up his own soup or change the TV station. He would have been lost without her.
Come to think of it, he needed her even when he wasn’t hurt. The boy could not use a computer to save his life. She had lost count of the number of times he’d gotten lost in cyberspace just trying to check his e-mail. And his color-coordination skills seriously sucked. Nick ought to thank his lucky stars, or the Goddess, or whatever, that she was around.
Karissa hadn’t realized that she’d been walking home until she turned onto her street. She was still too angry to face Nick, but she really wanted to take a hot shower to thaw out her frozen limbs. Then she would go to sleep, and hopefully she would wake up in a more reasonable mood, if Nick were lucky.
Besides, although she hated to admit it, Karissa knew that she didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Alyssa, Jase, and Sorrentino wouldn’t mind letting her crash at their place for a few hours, or even a few days, but with three people already crammed into a one bedroom apartment, there wasn’t much room for her. Not to mention the fact that she wanted quiet to sort through her thoughts, and those three were anything but.
When she reached the front door, she turned her key in the lock as silently as possible, hoping that Nick had already gone to bed. Before she could push the door open more than an inch, the knob was abruptly ripped out of her grip as Nick wrenched the door open from inside the apartment. His hazel eyes were wide and he was breathing hard, as if he’d run a marathon. “Where the hell have you been?” he exclaimed.
Karissa impatiently pushed past him and stepped inside. “Out,” she replied coldly as she took off her coat and unraveled her scarf.
The witch shut the door and stalked up behind her. He wasn’t using his cane, she noted with irritation. He didn’t have any trouble obeying Cahill’s orders down to the letter, but apparently he had no qualms about disregarding his doctor’s instructions.
“It’s been hours,” he said unsteadily.
With her back to him, Karissa paused, suddenly disturbed by the tone of his voice. She’d never heard him sound like that. If she didn’t know better, she would say that he sounded afraid.
Before she could say anything, he grasped her shoulders from behind and carefully ran his hands down her arms, as if he was examining her. It was too bizarre. She shook his hands off and spun around. “What’re you doing?” she asked him accusingly.
Nick didn’t answer. He just stared at her with a strange look in his eyes, like he hadn’t seen her in weeks and he was trying to take her all in. Then he touched her again, pushing her hair off her forehead and running his fingertips over her cheeks.
Karissa held both of his wrists as he cupped her face. “What are you doing?” she asked him again. “What is the matter with you?”
The witch frowned and his hands fell away from her. “What’s the matter with me? You storm out of the house in the middle of the night and disappear for almost six hours, and you have the nerve to ask me that?”
“Hey, you’re the one who threatened me, and I didn’t see you trying to stop me from leaving.” She was purposely baiting him, hoping to drag him into an argument that was familiar, because right now the frightened expression on Nick’s face was weirding her out.
When he didn’t bite, she exhaled an exasperated breath. “And anyway, this isn’t the first time you’ve made me so mad that I couldn’t stand to be around you,” she reminded him. She hated that he was making her say it, because it made her anger seem petty, but she needed to do away with this anxious stranger who had stolen her boyfriend’s body.
“I don’t care,” he said fiercely, and Karissa realized that he meant it. Whatever was bothering him now had nothing to do with the fight they’d had earlier. “The Night World is gunning for us and you ran out into it—alone. You could have gotten hurt.”
Bewildered, she shook her head. “We’ve been out fighting the Night World for years, Nick, and you know that I’ve worked alone before. Why are you suddenly acting like…” Her voice trailed off as she finally understood what this was about. Neither of them had been out on the streets since he’d been hurt, and that attack was the first really close call that he’d ever had. It had obviously shaken him up more than either of them had realized.
The last of her anger faded. Karissa stepped closer to him and looked up into his eyes. “I’m all right,” she assured him. “I’m right here.”
“You don’t understand. When you walked out that door, I was so pissed off. And when you didn’t come back…” He glanced away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her.
“You thought something happened to me.”
He nodded. “It’s just…that vampire nearly killed me. We go out there every night, insisting that we know there’s a good chance we’ll die, but you don’t really know until it happens.”
“But it’s happened before,” Karissa said softly. “We lost Beth. You weren’t like this then.”
“No. To me, her death just doesn’t seem real. I wasn’t there to see it happen. I think part of me still believes that she just moved or something. That’s probably why I never pushed Cahill for the details.”
Nick looked back at her, his gaze so intense that it made her shiver. “Look, I don’t give a damn about myself. But I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”
Karissa’s heart swelled. She wished that she could just leave it at that and throw herself into his arms, but they still needed to settle the fight they’d had before. Too many things were said to simply forget about it. “Even though I betrayed your trust?” she murmured.
Nick gave her a knowing look. “I had a right to be mad about that, Kar, and I’m not going to apologize for it. But to be fair, I don’t think that was the only reason I was mad.”
“Oh?”
“What you were saying about Cahill pissed me off because I think maybe you were right about him. I just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Wait, did I just hear you say that I was right about something?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said begrudgingly.
“So if I was right, then that would make you…”
“Wrong. All right? You were right, I was wrong. You’re a goddess, and I’m a pathetic loser who does not deserve to kiss the ground that you walk on.”
She knew that he was just teasing, but Nick’s words struck a nerve. “I’m just a human,” she said quietly. “You’re the witch.”
Tilting his head to the side, he gave her a confused look. “So? You think I care about that?”
“Well…” She glanced away, biting her lip.
“I work for Circle Daybreak. I’ve been with you for two years. How can you possibly think that I look down on you for being human?”
“What about that light trick you did before?” she replied defensively. “What about the whole I’m-a-witch-so-I-don’t-need-to-walk-to-take-you-down thing?”
He gave her a deprecating laugh. “Hey, I need to say something when all the guys start ragging on me because my girlfriend can kick the crap out of me.”
She smiled in spite of herself. It really wasn’t fair how easily he could elicit a smile from her. “I’m serious, Nick.”
His expression sobered. “Karissa, of course I don’t care that you’re human. I love you. You’re a remarkable woman and you’re an amazing fighter—not just for a girl or for a human; you’re amazing, period. I mean, I train along with everyone else, but I know that I’ll never be as good as you. All I’ve got is magick. So maybe I do sometimes throw that in your face.”
“So…you’re jealous,” Karissa stated, raising her eyebrows.
“If you want to pin a label on it, yes,” he replied stiffly.
“Huh. Sweet.”
“You’re not going to be gracious about this, are you?”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Nick laughed shortly. “I guess I deserve that.” Then he paused for a moment, becoming serious once again. “I think I understand why you didn’t tell me about Lex. You did what you had to do.”
“But…” Karissa prompted.
“But I still think that it was wrong. And now that I know, I’m going to tell Cahill. And that’s just what I have to do.”
Damn. She’d been hoping to give Lex a little more time. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Reece to go after his soulmate, but Karissa didn’t want the vampire to know that she’d given up the secret so soon. She really did want to be friends with Lex when Reece brought the girl back. Not even for her own sake, but for Lex’s. Working for Circle Daybreak could be very…isolating. You had to take whatever company you could get sometimes. It wasn’t good to spend as much time alone and withdrawn as Lex did.
Still…there was one sure-fire way to stall Nick.
Karissa moved closer to him until her body brushed his. Lifting her head up, she whispered, “You don’t have to tell him now, do you?”
The witch’s breath hitched, his hazel eyes darkening. “Why?” he murmured, slipping his arms around her. “Do you have something else in mind?”
“It’s just that we’ve both been up all night,” she said as Nick leaned in to kiss her neck. “We should really go to bed. Don’t you think?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not exactly tired,” he purred in her ear.
“Oh,” she replied mischievously, “I think I can fix that.” She pulled back slightly so that she could see his face, and then she kissed him hard. All of the emotions that had run rampant inside of her that night suddenly came spiraling to the surface, fueling the kiss.
Nick broke away after a minute and leaned down to pick her up into his arms, making her squeak in surprise. “What? You know that I’m stronger than you,” he said smugly.
“Baby, it doesn’t matter how strong you are. I can still kick your ass.”
He chuckled as he took a step towards the hallway, but his bad leg collapsed under their combined weight and they toppled to the floor. He turned his torso as he fell, shifting her to the side as he took the brunt of the impact himself.
Karissa wound up landing next to Nick, with one of his arms underneath her. He was lying on his side, his other arm slung over his head, and he was shaking.
She leaned over him. “Oh god,” she gasped, starting to panic. “Are you okay? Nick?”
The witch lifted his head so that she could see the smile on his face, and she realized that he was laughing. “Oops. Forgot about the leg,” he admitted.
Seeing that he wasn’t badly hurt, she relaxed. Then she couldn’t help giggling along with him. “You idiot,” she snickered. “That’s what you get for trying to show off.”
A moment later, he abruptly stopped laughing and in the breathless silence that followed, the space between them crackled with energy. He gazed up at her, the heat returning to his eyes as he reached up to cup the back of her neck, drawing her down to him.
The kiss was slower this time, more languid, but it still made her head spin. The last clear thought Karissa had was that the phone call to Reece would definitely have to wait—for a very long time.
“Fuck!” Aiden cursed under his breath when he saw the sharp curve in the road up ahead.
He was lost in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the tugging of the soulmate link to guide him. It had been over an hour since he’d first felt it on the highway. And while he’d thought that it would be easy to follow the link straight to Lex, he hadn’t known that the roads in this mountainous part of New York were so curvy. Whenever he reached an intersection, he would feel the link pull him in a certain direction and the new road would lead him closer to Lex for a while, but then it would turn, sending him the wrong way. Then he had no choice but to stay on the road until the next intersection, which was often several miles away. So as the sun rose, he essentially found himself playing a very large, annoyingly complex game of “hot and cold”.
The road veered again and he took the corner at forty miles an hour, his tires barely gripping the slick roads as his car threatened to fishtail. Turning the steering wheel into the swerve, he managed to stay in control. When the road finally straightened out, he floored it.
Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, clouding his mind. The first and last time that he had tracked Lex down, she’d been a prisoner in a Daybreak compound. Aiden had been able to feel the connection with her then, but in his madness, he’d believed that he was sensing Eve’s spirit inside of Alexandra. Even then, as insane as he’d been, he had calculated his way inside the compound, out of the maximum security cell that Daybreak had locked him in, and into Lex’s own cell.
Right now, though, Aiden’s mind was failing him. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t plan. He could only feel Lex—her loneliness, her fear—and the desperate compulsion to find her.
A few miles down the road, the bright lights of an open gas station and convenience store momentarily blinded him. It was actually the first station that he’d seen in the hour that he’d been driving around the narrow, rural roads. Squeezing his eyes shut, Aiden was about to drive past it when his brain finally started to function.
He pulled into the gas station, slamming to a stop right in front the store.
Inside, there was a young man standing behind the counter, talking on the phone. He didn’t even glance at Aiden when the vampire pushed the door open.
“I know…” the guy was saying. “Can you believe he did that? And I mean—”
“I need a map,” the vampire interrupted in a clipped voice.
Without a pause in his conversation, the human employee pointed to a circular rack that stood behind the magazine rack. “So what’re you doing tomorrow night?” he was asking the person on the line. “Yeah? Me and Jake got a few kegs…”
Aiden quickly scanned through the selection and grabbed the most comprehensive one. Then he strode up to the counter and unfolded the map, laying it out flat. “Where are we on here?” he asked.
The guy turned away, pretending that he hadn’t heard. “Totally,” he said into the phone. “It’ll be awesome. And Tara’s going to come. This will definitely be our night—”
“I’m in a hurry.”
The human just threw him an annoyed glance, and then went back to staring at the cartons of cigarettes behind the counter as he talked.
Impatiently, Aiden searched through the guy’s thoughts, trying to find the answer to his question, but all he got was the human’s name, the details of the party he was having and the image of some girl’s cleavage, no doubt belonging to this Tara girl he’d been talking about.
“Yeah, okay,” the guy—Mike—was saying now. “You should head over around ten, so—”
Aiden snapped. He could feel the soulmate link pulling even harder at him now that he was standing still and he needed to get back on the road. Telepathically, he ripped the phone out of the human’s hand and spun him around.
The color instantly drained from the guy’s face. He raised his hands in the air, as if he were being robbed. “What the hell…” he gasped.
“What the hell, indeed,” Aiden said in a calm, reasonable voice. “Is this the way you treat all of your customers?”
The human was nearly hyperventilating. “How did you do that? What are you? What do you want?”
“Funny you should ask. Right now, I want to kill you. I want to reach across the counter and snap your neck before you even have the chance to scream. And there is only one thing preventing me from doing that: you know where we are on this map and I don’t. If you value your life at all, you will come over here and tell me what I want to know. Do you understand me, Mike?”
“B-but if I do that, how do I know you won’t kill me after?”
Aiden almost respected him for having the sense of mind to ask that question, but he only smiled. “You’ll just have to take it on faith, I suppose,” he replied softly. “Now, if would please come over here…”
Shaking, the employee took a nervous step towards the counter, but he was moving too damn slow.
“Now!” Aiden shouted.
Mike jumped forward and hastily looked down at the map. “Um…” he said, his hands trembling as his fingers ran over the paper.
Watching the guy fumble with the map as he looked back and forth between the index and the curving lines of the roads, Aiden silently cursed himself. He had frightened this pathetic human so badly that he might not even be of any use now.
Suddenly Mike pointed his finger. “There!”
Aiden looked down, memorizing the spot, and then he ripped the map away in one sweeping motion. He didn’t even bother trying to refold it as he started out of the store.
Just before he reached the door, he thought he heard Eve’s appalled gasp in his ear, and he rolled his eyes. “Ah Christ.”
Turning back, he threw a ten dollar bill down on the counter. “There,” he snapped aloud at Eve as he headed out of the store. “Happy now?”
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