Burn the Night

Seventeen

Danaus found me seated on the floor in the sunny yellow bedroom at my house the next night. A shaft of thick moonlight shone through the open curtains, cutting a square on the ground and glazing the furniture in an ethereal silver glow. After Lily’s death, Danaus and I had pulled the sheets and blankets off the bed and washed them. We opened the windows, welcoming in a chilly early spring breeze in hopes of the fresh air washing out her scent. But no matter what we did to cleanse the room, I swore I could still smell her presence in there, even after the past few months. I closed my eyes and drew in a slow deep breath so the air filled my useless lungs. I held it, picking apart the scents of dust, laundry detergent, lemon-scent cleaning product, and finally Lily.

She had been so briefly in our lives. A child of the street with an amazing gift to see the auras of the people around her, Lily had been special to me. She had spirit and courage. She was quick and resourceful. She should have survived. At that moment she should have been safely ensconced at the Themis compound, being taught by the paranormal researchers in a positive environment. Instead, she now lay in a cold grave in a distant cemetery because a bori had used her to get to Danaus and me. We had failed her.

But then Lily wasn’t the only one haunting me. Just down the hall, Tristan’s room remained completely untouched from when he was last in there. When I returned home from Venice in December, I locked the door to that room and allowed no one to touch his things. I didn’t even go inside, but I could imagine the unused bed, rumpled from where he would lay on it as he read. The computer on his desk would be sitting in sleep mode, waiting for its master to return home so he could resume his search for new music. Books and magazines were haphazardly scattered about the room, while a pile of laundry lay in one corner, waiting to hit the washing machine. I knew his unique scent would be thick in the air. If I entered his private domain, I would be lost to the horror of our past.

I replayed that night in Venice and doubts ate at me. I couldn’t convince myself that I had done the right thing. Macaire had shattered his mind, so that Tristan would look straight through me, never seeing my loving face or the tears streaming down my cheeks as my heart broke in bitter shards. I should have found a way to save him. If I had taken another minute and not been consumed by rage and despair, I might have come up with a way to save him. Vainly I reminded myself that his mind was broken: he was locked in a world of perpetual torment, and it had been my responsibility to set him free. Killing Tristan might have been the kindest thing I could have done for him, but it was slowly destroying me.

Heavy footsteps creaking on the wooden stairs helped to break my destructive train of thought, but it didn’t completely free me of the two ghosts that seemed to be clinging to me. I had come into Lily’s room to hide from the rest of the world as I tried to think about the chaos swirling around me. But my thoughts were stuck on my two dead companions.

I didn’t need to reach out with my powers—I could feel Danaus’s energy swirling up the stairs like the tentacles of a sea creature to search me out. Warm and comforting, they wrapped around me, beating back my demons before he leaned against the door frame to stare down at me with a frown marring his handsome face.

“What are you doing?” he demanded as I looked up at him.

“Thinking.”

“I can’t imagine that any productive thinking can be done in here.”

“I never said it was productive thinking. I’m just thinking.”

“About what?”

“All the ways in which I went wrong.”

“Mira . . .”

“No, Danaus, think about it. I mishandled things, and now Michael, Thorne, Lily, and Tristan are all dead. My judgment is off. And now I’ve gone and made a pact with the naturi. I have agreed to be Rowe’s ally, of all people! The creature that has been torturing or trying to kill me most of my life!”

Danaus heaved a heavy sigh as he leaned his shoulder against the door frame. “Michael and Thorne were lapses in your judgment. You didn’t think ahead and bad things happened. But you’ve learned, Mira. You’ve grown more cautious and you’re thinking things through instead of rushing headlong into a situation. Valerio and Stefan could have easily been killed in Budapest, but your careful planning saved them on more than one occasion.”

His words stung a little as my own fears were validated, but I respected Danaus’s point of view and his honesty. He wasn’t going to lie to me to make me feel better. “What about Lily and Tristan? Maybe if I had—”

“There is no ‘maybe’ with Lily and Tristan,” he interrupted. “The situations were far beyond your control. Gaizka got the better of us when it came to Lily, and we didn’t anticipate the depths of Macaire’s depravity when it came to Tristan. We lost them to bad people. It happens no matter how hard we try to protect everyone we love.”

I took another deep breath and slowly released it as I stared straight ahead into the room, trying to force some of the tension out of my shoulders. My ass was getting sore from sitting on the floor for the past couple of hours and my back was stiff. However, I still wasn’t ready to move. I felt as if I had managed to find a hiding place from the world in this bright little bedroom, and I wasn’t ready to leave it.

“Why does it feel as if the world is falling into chaos?” I murmured, talking mostly to myself. “The Daylight Coalition has decided to strike now, endangering countless nightwalkers and lycanthropes in my own domain. I can’t shake the feeling they have been drawn to this city because of me. As a result, Daniel has been put into an extremely dangerous situation in hopes of garnering information. To make matters worse, Cynnia comes to me with a plan to get rid of her sister by teaming up with Rowe and the rest of the naturi. It’s the very thing I swore I would never do! Ally with the naturi!”

“You’re trying to do what is right for your people,” Danaus reminded me.

“Right for my people? Can I even be trusted to judge what is ‘right for my people’?” I snapped, twisting around to stare up at him. “I’m romantically involved with a nightwalker hunter that is part bori—the sworn enemy of the nightwalker nation! I’ve agreed to an alliance with the naturi in an effort to stop a war that would bring the Great Awakening. I feel as if I’ve killed more of my own kind during the past several months than I’ve saved.”

“Think of the faceless numbers you’ve saved by your actions,” Danaus calmly said, to which I only gave a derisive snort.

“And to add to my fun, members of the Soga clan are here trying to drag me back to Japan in hopes that I will solve their problems.”

“You can’t help everyone.”

“At this point I don’t feel I can even help myself,” I groused, falling deeper into self-pity. The situation truly was growing more and more out of control, and it was only going to get worse when Nyx and Rowe finally arrived in my city. I would have to find a way to work with Rowe without trying to kill him at the first opportunity. Not the easiest of tasks.

“Enough,” Danaus growled. Pushing away from the door frame, he stepped into the room and stood before me with his feet wide apart and his fists on his hips. “Stop the whining. Stop the complaining. Stop the self-pity.” Grabbing my left upper arm, he hauled me to my feet and then bent low enough to drop me over his shoulder while wrapping his free hand around my legs.

“Danaus!” I shouted, struggling to get into an upright position as he walked out of the room and headed for the stairs. He bounced me once, causing me to lose my balance. I flopped back down so I was lying over his shoulder. My hair felt forward, partially obscuring my view of his nice ass as we slowly and steadily descended the stairs.

“You need some distraction. Clear your mind.”

“If you want to distract me, we could have stayed upstairs and used one of the other bedrooms,” I suggested.

“This is better,” he firmly said as he hit the ground floor and made a sharp turn around the banister. He paused long enough to open the door under the stairs that led down the basement.

“Better than sex? I really doubt that,” I replied, pushing some hair out of my face as he started to descend yet another set of stairs.

Danaus said nothing in reply. He just silently continued down into the basement. Once in the center of the room, he none too gently dropped me on my ass on a thin mat. I gazed around the room in the bright overhead lighting. A couple months ago we had removed all the furniture, the wet bar, and the big screen TV. It had all been a facade in the first place to convince anyone who came into the house that there was nothing out of the ordinary.

In place of the items of leisure, Danaus and I had ripped up the carpet and replaced it with a covering of thin sparring mats. The walls were covered in a wide variety of weapons and sparring shields. The room was now a big open space for us to practice our fighting techniques. In here, blood was spilled and bones broken, but since we healed so quickly, the wounds were only a temporary distraction before we were back at it again.

As I sat in the middle of the mat, I watched Danaus walk over to the far wall containing the various staves and other blunt objects, all arranged according to discipline. I frowned as he paused, looking over the broad selection.

“What are you in the mood for?” he called out as his hand passed over a quarter staff and headed toward the Far Eastern fighting style weapons. As I watched him, I kicked off my shoes and pulled off my socks, preferring to be barefoot on the mat to give me better grip.

“For beating your skull in? Give me the jo¯ staff,” I replied. My aikido was far stronger than some of my other training, giving me what I hoped would be an edge. Danaus picked the jo¯ staff off the wall and threw it at me as I pushed to my feet. I caught it over my head and frowned as he pulled down a pair of eskrima sticks, as I expected. His kali training had proven to be much better than mine when we’d both fought with the medium-sized rattan sticks in the past, leaving me with more than a few welts and a broken forearm. I had learned that opposing him with the jo¯ staff tapped better into my aikido training, which was also complemented with more than a little Jeet Kune Do training. In this sparring session, it appeared we would be evenly matched. A small smile grew on my lips as he settled the two sticks in his hands and gave them a few lightning quick swipes through the air.

“What? No kalis or bankow?” I mocked, referring to the wavy blade and the spear that were commonly matched with one of the eskrima sticks in a traditional kali fight.

“Just blunt objects tonight. We’re playing a slightly different game,” he said with a smirk.

“Different scoring system? We going to twenty points instead of ten?”

“Better. If a hit is scored, the loser takes off an article of clothing.”

My eyebrows jumped and my mouth fell open as I stared at him for a second. “Strip sparring?”

“You needed a distraction and a way to burn off some steam.”

I gave a small chuckle and shook my head at him as I turned my jo¯ staff over in my hands, getting ready for his attack. “Grand Masters are rolling over in their graves right now.”

With my feet planted on the mats, I clenched my muscles and tightened my grip on the red oak staff as Danaus closed the distance between us. His face was completely expressionless, and I could feel the calm sweeping through his mind and down through his body as he settled into total focus on knocking the absolute crap out of me. I, on the other hand, was a ball of energy waiting to explode. I could find no calm, no center of peace, as thoughts of the Daylight Coalition, Rowe, Cynnia, and the Soga clan all danced through my head.

The second he was within striking distance, Danaus pounded me with a flurry of hits I barely managed to block. The hunter was a blur of motion, aiming striking blows from the top of my head to the inside of my thighs as he searched methodically for an opening. The speed at which he came at me kept me on the defensive, but I didn’t back up an inch, refusing to give him the satisfaction of overpowering me with his speed and skill.

After more than five minutes of nearly nonstop blows, Danaus stepped back and wiped the sweat from his left temple. He wasn’t breathing heavily yet, but the flurry of strikes had taken its toll. I took the opening and launched my own attack with the jo¯ staff. He caught a strike aimed for his neck with his eskrima stick, but before I could sweep the staff down to knock his legs out from beneath him, he hit me with a punyo, slamming the end of one of the eskrima sticks in the dead center of my forehead.

Dazed, I stumbled backward a couple steps until I finally landed on my ass in the middle of my mat. With my left hand, I touched my forehead to find a steady trickle of blood starting to slide down to the bridge of my nose. I wiped away the blood as the wound quickly closed. I had a feeling I would have a bruise there for several more minutes. My thoughts were scattered and my head throbbed, making me wonder if he’d succeeded in cracking my skull.

“I want your shirt,” Danaus proclaimed.

Frowning, I put down my staff, pulled my black cotton T-shirt over my head and tossed it at him. The hunter caught the shirt with one of the sticks in his hand and tossed it to the side of the room as if putting aside his prizes. I was beginning to wish I hadn’t bothered to take off my shoes. My focus wasn’t on the fight as it should have been, and I was going to lose quickly if I didn’t get centered.

Grabbing up my staff again, I rose to my feet with a push of my powers. I stuffed all my stray thoughts down into a ball in the pit of my stomach so my mind was finally clear. Before I had my feet properly set, Danaus came at me again with sticks flying. I beat them back, and actually managed to overpower him enough to forced him to take a step back. My usual vampire speed was returning as I focused on the fight before me. Danaus struck out with his right hand, and I easily blocked it, but it was a feint. He jabbed with his left hand, hoping to catch me in the middle of the chest. I twisted out of his reach, balancing most of my weight on my right foot. As he started to pull back from the missed blow, I once again swept down with my staff. This time the jo¯ staff hit its mark, slamming into the back of both of his legs. Danaus hit the mat flat on his back, knocking the wind out of his lungs.

Grinning, I stood over him with the jo¯ staff pointed at his throat. “Shirt, please.”

“I’m still wearing my shoes and socks,” he patiently pointed out.

“And I said shirt. Now.”

I stepped backward, returning to my side of the sparring mat so he could sit up and pull his black T-shirt over his head. He tossed it to me and I caught it with one hand. Bringing it to my face, I pretended to take in a deep whiff. “Ahhh . . . I smell fear,” I said before tossing the shirt over to the side of the room.

Danaus gave a deep chuckle as he pushed to his feet again. A new feeling twisted in my stomach as I watched the play of muscles before me. His stomach was flat and lined with thick muscles, while his arms bulged as he flexed the muscles and took up position with the eskrima sticks. The shirt had been a mistake. I now had a new distraction, and this one wasn’t as easy to push away as it danced before my eyes. Damn it, I should have said shoes. I could only hope standing before him in a lacy red bra was having a similar effect, but I wasn’t willing to rely on it. Danaus had an unnerving focus when he wanted to win.

As we stepped back into the fight, I struggled to clear my mind so I could focus solely on the blur of eskrima sticks. As Danaus started to circle me, I thought I had an opening at last. I raised my jo¯ for an overhead blow, but he blocked it with one hand striking me with a redondo by whipping the free stick about to slam against the back of my head. My head jerked forward, but I had enough focus still to snap the end of my staff forward in hopes of catching him in the knee with the end. Unfortunately, he shifted out of the way in time and took a step back.

“Jeans,” he said, ignoring my attempts to strike when we were supposed to have already separated.

Temper and frustration rising, I threw my jo¯ staff down to the ground with a loud clatter while I unbuttoned and jerked off my pants. I threw them at Danaus and quickly picked up my staff. He had enough time to toss them over to where my shirt lay before I was attacking again. I was half naked and feeling more than a little vulnerable, but my temper was also flaring. Danaus and I were usually evenly matched in most of our sparing matches, but I was letting him take advantage of my distraction and losing to him in a most embarrassing fashion.

We exchanged strikes back and forth for several minutes, neither gaining the advantage over the other. I blocked one of his strikes with my staff, but his eskrima stick slid down the pole, smacking into my hand with enough force to bloody the knuckles. I didn’t release my jo¯.

Danaus took a step backward, lowering his guard. “Bra.”

“That doesn’t count as a strike! You didn’t mean to hit me!”

“A strike is a strike.”

“I’m not giving it to you.”

“I think you will,” he said with a narrowed gaze. He dropped the eskrima sticks and approached me. I backpedaled, but was unwilling to strike at him if he was unarmed. As he reached me, he grabbed my jo¯, pulled it out of my hands and dropped it on the ground. He wrapped his right hand around the back of my head, grasping a handful of hair as he pulled me roughly against him, locking his lips over mine. I didn’t hesitate, kissing him back with the same passion as my eyes fell shut. The fingers of his right hand tightened in my hair while his other hand cupped one of my breasts. His thumb brushed over the nipple, causing it to harden beneath the thin layer of lace.

I fought back an evil smile as I suddenly grasped both of his arms and swept my leg behind both of his, taking him to the ground. I landed on top of him, laughing. “I think that officially counts as a strike,” I announced with a smile. “Give me your pants.”

“I’m still wearing shoes and socks,” he pointed out with a smug smile.

I shrugged as I moved to straddle his lower hips. “I guess you’ll just have to lose them along with your pants.” Reaching down, I unfastened the button on his jeans and pulled down the zipper before he grabbed me. He flipped me onto my back and came to kneel between my bent knees.

“I think that counts as—” he started to say, but I halted the words in his throat by rising up on my elbows and kissing him. I got the point—he wanted me to relax and stop second-guessing myself, but now I was ready to get down to business.

Shifting my weight to my left elbow, I reached up and ran my hand over his chest, loving the feel of his warm, smooth skin lightly laced with dark hairs. I deepened the kiss, tasting him, memorizing him the same way I did every time I made love to this man. I wanted him burned into my brain so there was no getting him out. I wanted him so deeply ingrained in me that I walked around with his scent wrapped through mine. A part of me still longed to have his blood filling my veins, but I refused to feed off him. I wanted Danaus to remain pure and untouched by my kind. He was to remain above the reach of the food chain.

Danaus reached behind me and with one hand unsnapped my bra. He quickly swept the bit of fabric aside so my breasts were free. My nipples brushed against his chest, teasing us both before he finally lowered his head and took one breast into his mouth. My head fell back and a low moan rolled from my throat as the first wave of delicious sensations slipped through me. My knees on either side of his hips tightened, holding him in place.

With my right hand, I slid my palm down his flat stomach and inside the waistband of his boxers. The tips of my fingers teased across the head of his hardened member, causing it to jump at my touch while his hips jerked forward. I tried to slide lower so I could run my hand down his shaft, but Danaus caught me by the hips and held me in place. His mouth switched to the other breast, while his hands started to pull my panties down off my hips.

Reluctantly, he pulled away from me so he could completely pull off my red panties, leaving me lying completely naked before him. The hunter stared at me with dark hungry eyes. Putting his hands on my knees, he spread my legs apart, leaving me vulnerable and aching for his touch. His right hand slid down my knees along my inner thigh to settle between the sweet folds of flesh to touch my clitoris. My hips instantly rose off the mat as I jerked at his touch. His finger easily slid deep inside of me, earning him another moan before he slid it back out again.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” I choked out when I could think clearly again.

“I guess you should take care of that,” he murmured, sliding his finger inside of me again to erase all thought. His hand left me and I prepared to move when his mouth settled over the same spot his hand had been only a second earlier. His tongue invaded me, pushing me past all rational thought as a part of me hovered on the edge of an orgasm, but I wasn’t willing to give in just yet. I wanted him panting and desperate as well.

Grabbing a fistful of hair, I pulled him up so he was nearly lying on top of me, and then I slammed him down on his back. I quickly climbed on him so I was facing his feet, allowing me to jerk down both his pants and boxers to his knees. He was partially trapped by his clothing, limiting his movement and leaving him at my mercy. I wrapped one hand around his hard penis and raised it up so that I could run my tongue along its long length. Danaus groaned and bucked beneath me, then clenched my hips with both of his hands as I carefully took the entire length of him in my mouth.

He grabbed me and pulled me backward so he could return his tongue to my clit while I sucked on his hard cock. My thoughts swam in a warm pool of pleasure, pulling me back toward the orgasm I had been fighting moments earlier. I was close, but I needed more.

Sensing my physical frustration, Danaus lowered his head and focused on kicking off his shoes. I gave his cock one final suck before letting it go. The hunter jerked off the last of his clothes in one quick motion then pulled me beneath him. He entered me in one thrust, causing me to scream in pleasure.

Foreplay was over. No more teasing. No more taunting or gentle touches. With his hands braced on either side of my head, Danaus pounded deep inside of me while I wrapped my legs around his waist, lifting my hips to meet each of his thrusts. After only a couple of minutes I was crying his name as the orgasm ripped through me like a hurricane pounding the shore. My body gripped him buried deep inside me, squeezing him tighter until he finally exploded as well, wringing a groan of pleasure from him before he finally collapsed on top of me, his body trembling.

We lay together in silence for several minutes with him still deep inside me. I listened to his breathing slowly even out while his heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm. To my surprise, Danaus started chuckling. I looked over at him, raising one eyebrow, but he only motioned toward the wall closest to me. I turned my head to see the private bedroom I used during the daylight hours.

“So close to a comfortable bed, and yet so far away,” he said wearily.

I snorted, looking back over at him. With my hand, I moved some hair from his face so he could see me clearly. “Yeah, but this was more fun.”

“True.”

“Besides, we had yet to properly christen this room,” I teased. To our mutual delight, we discovered that we both had a ravenous sexual appetite, and during the past few months we had taken the time to have sex in most of the rooms of the house as the moment struck us. For some reason, the sparring room had been left out until now. It proved to be far more comfortable than the kitchen, but still not as nice as my bed in my private chamber.

I smiled at him, letting my fingers run down his hard jaw to rest for a second on his chin. “Thank you,” I whispered. Between the sparring match and the sex, he had managed to distract my thoughts and in some strange way restore my confidence. He believed in the decisions that I was making and the direction I was heading. Danaus believed in me.

“We’ll get through this. Nick, Rowe, and all of them. I’m here with you. I’m here to stay,” he said, leaning his head down to press a kiss to my fingers. “I just ask that we use a bed next time. I’m getting too old for this shit.”

Arching my back, I threw back my head and laughed. Danaus laughed as well, letting the sound bounce off the walls and fill the house, holding the darkness at bay.