Shock and fear paralyzed me for a split second before self-preservation surged. The defense training Saber had drilled into me kicked in, and I went for a countermove that should have thrown a normal attacker through the wall.
Instead, the thing ramped up the crushing force at my neck and wrapped an iron band around my rib cage.
The television blared on as my attacker squeezed my body like a blacksmith’s bellows. Fear bled into panic. I gripped and pulled on the arm crushing my larynx. Squirmed and kicked backward, hoping to hit a tender body part, but connected with a coquinalike wall of mass.
Had this thing killed Saber? Was it Starrack? The Void in a new form? If I were to have a prayer of saving Saber or anyone else, I had to save myself.
Then I remembered my secret weapon. Pulling auras.
Fighting to stay conscious, I narrowed my focus to sucking energy. Not taking delicate sips to sustain my life force as when I was buried in the coffin. I imaged thrusting my hand into the mass imprisoning me and pulling its life force inside out.
My attacker didn’t drop like a stone, but the pressure at my neck slackened. When it did, I shouted a raw and raspy karate
kiai
and sank my teeth into the meaty arm. My attacker only grunted, but the wavering image of Saber and another figure appeared, backlit in the bedroom doorway.
“
Por los dioses
, Tower. Stop. Let her go.”
Ray’s voice, I realized as more oxygen flowed to my brain, and he advanced close enough for me to dimly see him. Saber reached for the small of his back where he kept his .40-caliber Glock in his waistband. The safety clicked off.
“Stop, Tower,” Ray repeated. “It is the Princess. Francesca.”
Tower, the pro-basketball-tall vampire from the former Daytona Beach nest, relaxed his grip another fraction but didn’t let go.
“Princess Vampire?” Tower’s voice rumbled in my ear, and his rancid breath turned my stomach.
“It’s me,” I croaked. “Let go. Please.”
“No,” he growled. “You won’t trick me.”
“It is no trick,” Ray said, stepping closer. “The Princess and Saber will kill the thing that is making us sick, but you must release her.”
“Tower,” Saber said as he moved to the right and raised his weapon. “Let her go, or I will put a silver bullet in the center of your forehead.”
The clock in my head ticked tense seconds. Tower still held me, but I felt his indecision. It helped that I continued to siphon his energy and that his hold had relaxed a little more. I took the chance of revealing my dark vampire secret.
“Saber, don’t shoot Tower,” I rasped. “You know the smell of blood makes me sick, and I don’t want two messes to clean up.”
The shock value worked.
Tower’s arm fell away from my neck, and Ray jerked me out of reach. Saber caught me, his weapon still trained.
The huge vampire tilted his head at me. “You don’t savor the aroma of rich, fresh blood, Princess?”
I straightened, stepped from Saber’s loose embrace. “I don’t, Tower. The stench of blood makes me gag.”
“Truly?”
“Sorry to blow my image, but ’fraid so.”
Tower looked over my head toward the bedroom door, contemplating the weirdness of my weak stomach—or the weekend’s Florida Gators game, for all I knew or cared.
Ray put himself between his vampire and me. “Are you well, Princess?”
I nodded, bent to snag the remote, and silenced the TV.
“Now that I can hear myself think, what the blazes is going on? And why are the lights off in here?”
I turned to switch on a lamp but stopped at the tone of Ray’s voice.
“Do not, Princess, I beg you.”
I glanced at Saber’s shadowed face. He nodded. “Leave it, Cesca.”
“Okay, but tell me what’s going on.”
“It is
la oscuridad
,” Ray answered. “The darkness is draining my people.”
“Saber told me the Void had been sapping your energy.”
“But it has grown worse. Far worse.” He raked a hand through hair I knew to be thick and black. “It is disfiguring us now.”
My stomach roiled and breath caught in my abused throat. Ray looked and sounded enough like Antonio Banderas to fire a million fantasies. Then there were the other vampires in the former Daytona nest, now all joint owners in Club Hot Blooded. Cheerleader-pert Suzy, and tall, severe Zena. Middle-aged-looking Coach, and the married couple, Miranda and Charles. If they were each shriveling to shells, their features growing gaunt and discolored—
I broke off the thought with a shudder.
“I came to tell Saber,” Ray said, “that I am temporarily closing the club and dispersing my vampires. Tower insisted on guarding me tonight, but I did not expect him to attack you. It is part of the illness, Princess.
Un efecto secundario.
”
“A side effect. I understand, Ray. I’m not angry with Tower, but where are you all going?”
He shrugged. “Underground. Saber may explain further if he wishes, but we must go.”
Ray turned toward Tower and jerked his head toward the door, but paused to face us again.
“This evil will not stop feeding on us. It is voracious, and humans will be next on the menu. I beg you, Princess.
Vaya con la luz
and triumph.”
Go with the light? Brilliant idea. Too bad our merry little band of Void hunters had only a bare glimmer in the dark to go on.
The door clicked softly, but the snick of Saber’s Glock as he put the safety on seemed to echo. So did the sigh he exhaled.
I turned to find him carefully placing his weapon on the coffee table.
“Cesca, I’m sorry. I should have listened more closely. I should have heard you come in.”
Without a word, I walked into his arms. The first kiss was a light brush of our lips. The second kiss deepened, a playful dueling of lips and teeth and tongues until Saber hauled me closer. I felt his desperation then and held him tight, reassuring him through touch.
I’m here. I’m fine. I love you.
Saber broke the kiss and buried his face in my hair, his breathing as labored as if he’d run a marathon.
“God, when I saw that Tower had you. He could have ripped your head off in a second, and I—”
“Deke, stop. It’s over. I admit I had a fright, but my defenses kicked in. I could’ve pulled Tower’s aura harder if I’d had to.”
He released me enough to give me a level stare. “You don’t hold back when you’re in danger. Ever. Especially not now when we’re going up against Starrack and the Void. Understood?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now lie on the sofa while I get the first aid kit.”
“Let me see your neck again,” Saber said half an hour later as he leaned over me.
From my reclining position, propped up by cushy throw pillows on the sofa, I removed the ice gel pack he’d insisted I use and let him inspect the damage. Or lack thereof. My tussle with Tower had left bruises, but they had bloomed and faded ten minutes into the coldpack treatment. Still, it was sweet of Saber to coddle me. It gave him something to do besides continuing to rail at himself for failing to hear me come home.
The living room lamps blazed bright, but he squinted at my neck for any lingering discoloration.
“Saber, you’re acting like a vampire searching for the choicest place to bite me. It’s creepy.”
He quirked a grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I think you need another bottle of Starbloods. Just to be sure you’re healing internally.”
“Gag, no. One a day is enough. What I need,” I said as I levered upright, “is to know what Ray said.”
Saber sat beside me and gathered me in his arms.
“You don’t want to know how he looked?”
I tilted my head to see his expression. “How bad?”
“His skin is two shades darker and lined like a road map. The younger vampires are in worse shape.”
Bile rose at the image. God, what would I do if Saber’s gorgeous Latino skin began to blacken and shrivel? I resolutely push the thought away.
“You think he and the others will survive?”
Saber scooted deeper into the cushions and dropped his head against the sofa back. “I don’t know, Cesca. Even if they do, the effects of the life force drain may not be reversible.”
I snuggled closer, my head on his chest. “Are he and his crew going underground figuratively or literally?”
“Literally. Ray’s heard on the undead grapevine that the illness slows in vampires who live in basements, so he’s going one better. He’s moving the crew deep into caverns.”
“In Florida?”
“West of Tallahassee.”
“Huh. Hope he has mega cases of bottled blood to take.”
“He has enough, but he’s also taking the blood bunnies.”
I pushed upright and stared at Saber’s somber expression. Blood bunnies were groupies and donators, and the three I knew of were romantically involved with some of Ray’s vampires. But surely he wasn’t forcing them to go.
“He’s not,” Saber said.
“Not what?”
“Not forcing the blood bunnies.”
“You’re reading my mind?”
“Your face. They volunteered to go, and I approved the plan.”
“Simple as that? Don’t those women have jobs and families?”
“Families not so much, from what I know. I assume they’ve taken leave or vacation time from jobs.” He shrugged. “They may be young, but they’re legal adults, Cesca.”
“True.” The blood bunny I’d had a fondness for, the lisping Cici, had cut her ties with the Daytona Beach vampires even before Ray took over. She’d moved to St. Augustine, was attending a local college, and worked at Walmart.
“Look at the upside. The bunnies can make grocery and Starbloods runs, thus protecting the public.”
“The bunnies can also notify the VPA of any deaths.”
“True,” he said. “And best of all, their vampire lovers won’t go through the illness alone.”
Neither will you, I silently vowed, and cupped his cheek in my palm. “Saber, you’re such a romantic.”
He waggled his dark brows and pulled me close again. “Any fantasies I can fulfill while the night is still young? A candlelit bath, perhaps?”
I levered away and gave him my best intense stare. “Are you sure you don’t read my mind?”
“Only as much as you read mine.”
With that and an enigmatic grin, he rose and strolled into the bedroom. The faucets roared with water a moment later, so I locked the door, reset the alarm, and joined Saber. With candlelight flickering on the glass tiled walls of my art deco bathroom, the swirl of warm, scented water in the jetted tub, and my man both relaxing me into a rag and stimulating me to passion, I never did puzzle out if he was reading my mind or not.
I found Saber’s note on the turquoise 1950s retro kitchen table the next afternoon. He wrote that he’d gone to Cosmil’s and would see me after my ghost tour for some more quality time before I took off for the bachelorette weekend in Fernandina Beach. He’d also programmed Triton’s and Cosmil’s cell numbers into my phone. What a guy.
If you’re wondering why a design student has an art deco bathroom, a retro kitchen, a surfer-chic bedroom, and a British-colonial living room, it’s because I’d gone period mad when I decorated. However, since most of the period flavor was in the accessories, the décor could be easily changed if and when I ever moved out of the cottage and into a place truly my own.
I didn’t think about Saber and I moving in together. At least I hadn’t until this past week when he’d camped out with me. After coming home to an empty house during those weeks he was on the road, I admitted that having him to myself every night was tempting.
Did I have wedding fever?
I pondered that as I dressed in black shorts and a lime green T-shirt, and with my hair in a ponytail, my feet in black sandals, I headed out to meet Maggie at Daphne Dupree’s store, Beach Bake. The shop was located on the island near Dondanville Road, so I avoided the downtown route in favor of taking US 1 to the 312 bridge, then heading south on A1A. The same direction we’d taken to Cosmil’s place on Tuesday.
Maggie wore business casual and gave me a broad grin as I exited my SSR. “Things really are back to normal with you and Saber, huh?”
“How can you tell?”
“You’re glowing.”
“Only pregnant women and people exposed to way too much radiation glow, Maggie.”
“And women getting great sex.”
“Okay, if women glow, what do men do?”
“If they know what’s good for them, they keep doing their women right.”
I shook my head. “Good thing you’re getting married.”
“Isn’t it?” she countered brightly. “Plus it’s the perfect excuse to gorge myself with chocolate.”
Once inside, we didn’t limit ourselves to chocolate. Lemon, coconut, strawberry, and banana cakes made an appearance at the tasting table. I stuck to savoring nibbles. Maggie groaned in ecstasy over whole slices. Small slices, true, but I don’t know where she put all that cake.
Daphne was clearly delighted that every sample met with our approval, and beamed over our final order that included a second chocolate groom’s cake and a banana coconut sheet cake with coconut icing. Daphne talked Maggie out of a lemon cake but promised threedozen lemon tarts on the house and agreed to add another layer to the traditional wedding cake to be decorated in a Victorian motif.
I faithfully recorded the order in my maid of honor binder, while Maggie insisted on paying Daphne in full. I wasn’t surprised since she’d done the same with the caterer on Wednesday. The florist and rental company had three-quarter payments down, with the balance to be paid before the ceremony.
Maggie was nothing if not efficient.
We chatted outside for a few minutes after the tasting. I started to tell her that I’d seen Triton and made peace with my memories. Maggie knew all about my early years and even knew Triton was a shifter. But Maggie had an appointment with the photographer, so I let it go.