Pray for Dawn

FOUR

The little Themis weasel had his phone turned off, sending me directly into his voice mail. However, he left me a message stating that he and Ryan were already on their way to Savannah. My instructions were to stay put until they arrived later that afternoon.

This was not the news I had expected, nor was I relieved. Ryan didn’t take little jaunts around the world on a whim. He had discovered that it was far easier to direct people if he remained in a single, central location—at Themis—and let everyone come to him. And they did.

It would be a few hours before they touched down and finally reached the city. I took advantage of the rare lull to shower and slip into bed. Despite all the chaos surrounding me, sleep came quickly, sucking me down into a swirling vortex of nothingness.

Not nearly enough time passed before I felt my thoughts surfacing again, pulling above the fog of sleep toward consciousness. Something or someone had wakened me. I lay there with my eyes closed, floating somewhere between sleep and consciousness, trying to remember where I was and why I needed to wake up. Someone was close. Where was I? Slowly I remembered that I was in the hotel. I paused. Had someone checked into the room beside me, the noise drawing me from sleep? That had to be it.

Exhaling, I let my mind drift back toward sleep. And then the bed moved. My breath caught in my lungs and my muscles stiffened, waiting for a sign that I had imagined it. I hadn’t. The mattress dipped and shifted under the weight of someone crawling into bed next to me. Adrenaline raced through me.

Slowly I reached out with my powers just to get a feel for whom or what was now lying next to me. It didn’t take much—the feel of the energy I brushed against was unmistakable. Vampire. Holding my breath, I stretched as if relaxing, reaching my right hand up under my pillow. My fingers closed around the hilt of a small knife. I wouldn’t be able to kill the monster with it, but it might buy me enough time so that I could grab one of my swords on the other side of the room.

Had I been asleep so long that it was night again? Where the hell were Ryan and James?

A small, cool hand lightly touched my ribs and slid up my chest to settle over my heart.

My eyes flew open when I rolled over to plunge the dagger into the creature’s chest. But the low growl lodged in my throat when I saw Mira lying beside me, an amused smile lifting her full lips while her red hair spilled across the white pillow beside me like a river of blood. In my surprise, she was able to easily grab my wrist and push me onto my back. She slithered on top of me so that she was straddling my hips, her luminous lavender eyes glowing faintly in the darkness. Holding my hand out over the edge of the bed, she gave it a little shake to get me to release it. I allowed the knife to fall. If Mira had wanted me dead, she would have killed me already.

Her powers flowed over me like a cool, summer rain. I fought the urge to let my eyes drift shut as the energy that poured from her washed away the last of my tension and anger. I knew she was a heartless killer, but there was something so clean and soothing about the caress of her powers. And to touch her was intoxicating.

“Oh, good,” she purred. “You want to play. James said you’d be too tired.”

“Get off,” I snapped, lying still beneath her. I tried to ignore the way her dark red hair fell around her pale face and over her shoulders. I tried to ignore the feel of her thighs pressed against my hips. Anything to keep my body from hardening beneath her. Her playful mood didn’t need to be provoked.

“I plan to. How about you?” she said with a wicked grin. She released her hold on my wrist and slid her fingers along the length of my arm back to my chest. Her other hand was splayed on my ribs and slowly moved higher to rest over my heart, pounding like a thing gone mad. Even without her keen hearing, I’m sure she could hear it.

With a gentle shove, I pushed Mira off of me and rolled to my feet, fighting the urge to shake my head. Mira couldn’t use her power to fog my thoughts or coerce me into doing something I didn’t want to do. Call it a natural immunity. Unfortunately, it didn’t make me immune to Mira herself. After three months apart, I had forgotten what it was like to be around her, and now I was drowning. Somehow the memory of her smile, her smell, her touch had all faded with time, but now that I was faced with her again, I found myself aching to touch her.

I turned to face her, grateful that I had pulled on a pair of boxers before climbing into bed, not that they did much to hide the fact that the brief scuffle had left me rock hard. Mira smiled appreciatively up at me and stretched on my bed like a contented cat lounging in the sun. The lithe vampire lay on her side watching me, the white sheets tangled about her feet. She was dressed in a pair of tight-fitting, faded blue jeans and a plain back T-shirt.

“What vexes you, hunter?” she whispered when I frowned. I had forgotten how soothing her voice could be, like a cool balm over an angry wound.

“I’ve never seen you in jeans,” I muttered, before I could catch the words. Leather, yes. Mira’s closet had to be filled with leather. I’d even seen her in a business suit, but never in a pair of ordinary jeans and T-shirt. She looked so casual and relaxed, not like a killer who had witnessed more than six centuries of life.

For this rare spark of time, I could just see Mira as a young, vulnerable human woman lying in my bed with beckoning arms. How long had it been since I had fallen into a pair of soft arms like that? At this point, the face and name was lost to time itself, but the girl had managed to get me to forget about the bloody fight for my soul and to briefly escape the endless battle.

However, Mira wasn’t a vulnerable woman, but a cold-blooded killer with more than six hundred years of experience under her belt. But then, I was no novice foot soldier either. Time had taught me that a pair of welcoming arms could be just as deadly as a man with a gun. I might want to escape the world for a time, but it always managed to find me.

“Don’t you like them?” she mocked, rolling onto her back. “I can take them off.” Digging her heels into the mattress, she lifted her slim hips and undid the button. I managed to clamp my eyes shut when her nimble fingertips picked up the zipper pull.

“Enough, Mira,” I growled, earning a sultry chuckle from her. Her laugh was almost physical rubbing against me before dissipating into nothingness. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Come back to bed.”

I opened my eyes to find her facing me once again. She rubbed her hand over the spot where I had lain just moments ago. “We can snuggle.” Her nose wrinkled and her voice was teasing. “I’ll behave.”

“I thought you wanted to kill me.”

“I’m sure we’ll get back to that eventually.” She flashed me a wicked grin just wide enough to reveal her fangs. “Come back to bed. You’re tired.”

I sighed, my eyes briefly flicking over to my alarm clock. It was almost 2:30. And then my eyes slammed back to the harsh red numerals as understanding clicked in my sluggish brain. It was almost 2:30 in the afternoon and Mira was awake. I turned around to my left and jerked open the heavy curtains that hung in front of the window. Beside me, I heard Mira hiss and launch herself off the bed. I looked away from the window to find her curled in the shadows of the far corner near the bathroom. Her eyes were wide and her teeth were clenched.

“What the hell are you doing?” she shouted at me. “Close the curtains!”

I glanced back out for a minute, just checking that I hadn’t lost my mind and that it really was afternoon. The sun-drenched morning had given way to gray, overcast skies as a storm system moved into the area, leaving the heavens looking as if it would start raining at any moment. There was no sunlight to be seen, but Mira wasn’t willing to take any chances.

I pulled the curtains closed, but she didn’t visibly relax again until I took a couple steps away from the window. She slowly stood with her arms crossed over her stomach.

“How is it you’re awake?” I demanded.

“A gift from a friend,” she said, regaining her grin.

“Ryan.” The warlock’s name rumbled from somewhere in my chest and crawled up my throat, coated in frustration and anger.

“Your warlock is proving to be useful.” She sounded indifferent, but I knew better.

“How? What has he done?”

“Nothing that concerns you.”

I frowned at her, which only caused her smile to widen. I didn’t trust either of them and it didn’t bode well for anyone if they were suddenly working together. “You’ve been with Ryan all this time.”

Mira chuckled, leaning against the corner of the wall. She shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and stared at me. “You make it sound so sordid. Jealous?”

“You’ve been missed. The lycans stopped me today in their search for you.”

“Yes,” Mira frowned. “Barrett was kind enough to leave a somewhat scathing voice mail on my phone today. Apparently, you’ve been busy. I spent the better part of an hour reassuring him that I hadn’t been kidnapped or killed.”

“You disappeared without a trace,” I reminded her.

“I’m a nightwalker; it’s what we do.”

“Did you even bother to take Gabriel with you?” Previously she had not traveled without protection, but following the death of her other bodyguard, Michael, I sensed a hesitance to bring Gabriel along on her travels.

“I’m not helpless.” Her narrowed eyes began to glow again, but this time it was from anger. I had no doubt Mira would tear out my throat if I pushed her too far. She wasn’t known for her patience.

“But Tristan is. Did you even bother to tell him that you were skipping town?”

“He’s not helpless!” she snarled. She pulled her hands out of her pockets and pushed off the wall toward me. “She just taught him to be that way.” There was no question as to who “she” was. Sadira had made Tristan more than a century ago and Mira before that. She had kept Tristan weak and dependent upon her, as if to ensure that he never left her the way Mira had.

“I never asked for this,” she continued, her eyes darting away from me for the first time as her hands balled into tight fists. She hadn’t. Mira valued her independence, her lonely existence. She had told me once that she had never made another of her kind and that she never would. Yet, she was now saddled with another’s child because she couldn’t bear to see Tristan tormented by her peers. And to make matters worse, she had started a family with at least two other nightwalkers in an attempt to protect them and add some more security to the city.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re his mistress now.”

“Who are you to lecture me about my duties, hunter? Tristan is mine and none shall harm him.” Her powers suddenly filled the room like a cool wind sweeping in laced with the scent of lilacs. We stared at each other, the tension building to the point where the muscles in my jaw began to tic. I was waiting for her to twitch first. I wouldn’t strike first.

And then just as suddenly, the energy flowed out of the room. Mira took a couple steps backward and shook her head, looking somewhat confused. I knew her thoughts had to be the same as my own. How had we pushed each other so quickly to the point of each nearly tearing the other’s heart out? She looked up at me and her grin seemed sheepish. She had almost lost control. Mira had come in here to seduce me, not kill me.

“Why are we fighting?” she softly began, one corner of her mouth quirked in a playful smile. “Let’s go back to bed. You’re tired.”

“Out, Mira!” I shouted, pointing toward the door. It was all just a game to her.

“Fine,” she sighed. “I’ll go play with James.” Mira scooped up what looked like a cloak that had been draped over one of the chairs by the door. She wrapped it around her before she strolled out of the room, her hips swaying.

“Call Tristan!” I called after her before she shut the door.

I drew in a deep breath through my nose and slowly released it as I rolled my shoulders. I didn’t completely relax until I felt Mira enter another room farther down the hall. By the thrum of power seeping from that direction, I was willing to bet it was Ryan’s room. The warlock would keep her occupied while I caught a few hours of sleep.

Placing the knife back under my pillow, I lay back down on the bed and drew the sheet up to my stomach, but Mira’s scent lingered on the pillow next to me. I closed my eyes, but her image danced there on the other side of my eyelids, her smile taunting me. I didn’t want to think about her, much less about how the tightness in my chest had instantly unraveled when I saw her lying safe and smiling next to me.

I hadn’t seen her in three months, but my body’s reaction had been instantaneous. I loved the soft touch of her hands and her deep laugh when she was amused. It had been tempting to just slip back under the sheets and press her body to mine.

Mira could appear to be just a beautiful woman full of life and laughter, but she still held that exciting edge; that cold, crisp touch of power that followed her wherever she went, a barely concealed threat of danger and uncontrollable energy like a building thunderstorm. Around her, my blood pumped and the hair on my arms stood on end with the energy that crackled between us. For the first time in more centuries than I wanted to count, I felt alive when she was near. Before Mira, I had become a shell going through the motions of living, only getting a short brief burst of adrenaline when I was hunting. Yet, when Mira was around, it was an emotional roller coaster of anger, frustration, surprise, horror, and even joy.

But she was a vampire. A monster. A heartless killer.

At least that’s what I tried to remind myself, but the longer I knew her—the more I saw of her world—the harder that was to believe. She didn’t kill humans. She might have toyed with them and played her games, but she didn’t kill. And regardless of whether she admitted it to herself, she cared about Tristan’s safety.

In my head, I could easily imagine Bodhi shaking his head at me with his knowing little smile. I had traveled with the bald, bandy-legged gypsy for less than two decades, but he and his family had become my family for a time. He was first to try to get me to forgive myself for being born. He was also the first to point out that vampires were evil, following the loss of one of his sons. He would have reminded me that there is nothing wrong in appreciating the beauty and grace of a Bengal tiger, just never think you could take one in as a pet. It would only rip your heart out despite your admiration.

Staring up at the ceiling, I sighed and laced my fingers behind my head. Maybe Mira was right and I needed sex. It had been a long while since I had been with a woman. My attraction to Mira could just be a buildup of sexual tension, but I wasn’t about to relieve that tension with her, no matter how tempting she was. I was tired of being a plaything for powerful creatures.