Deadly Encounters (Raina Kirkland Book 4) Page 4

  “Raina,” he said softly, and he launched himself at me in a chest crushing embrace.

  “Damon,” I whispered against his warm neck, and just the feel of his arms made me want to cry, but I held back the tears. He hugged me for a while with no words passing between us. I just enjoyed the feel of his heart beating fast against my chest and his strong warm arms wrapped around me.

  Finally he let go and looked at me. “What happened to you?”

  I looked back at Alistair. “It’s a long story. Can we have a seat?” I asked them.

  “Yes,” said Damon. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Do you have any blood in the fridge?” I asked.

  Alistair put his hand on my shoulder and leaned down to my level, “I’ll have some brought, warm and fresh.” I smiled my thanks up at him and he pulled out his cell phone from his jean pocket.

  “Where are Thomas and Isobel?” I asked as Damon moved from the entrance and into the kitchen. Damon’s apartment was small. Everything occupied one open space with the decor a blend of old world rustic and modern.

  “They’re at their aunt’s house. Thomas and Isobel usually spend the weekends with Katie and Everett.”

  I sat down on his couch and watched him go through the motions of preparing himself a cup of strong coffee. “So, Katie and Everett are still seeing each other after five years?”

  “Yes, they’re still together,” he said with his back to me.

  That was sweet. Katie was my half-sister. We had the same human father, but while my mom was a half-n-half witch-elf, her mom was human, and a hateful one at that. Everett was a distant cousin of mine, no relation to Katie whatsoever. When I died they’d only known each other for a few days.

  “Why is the house empty? The whole family could easily live there,” I said.

  He shook his head. “The last time I ever set foot in that house was when we found your blood all over your office.” He leaned against the counter for support. “Katie and Everett asked if they could still live there, but I told them no. I couldn’t stand the idea of anyone living in that house after what happened to you there. I couldn’t go back and I never put it up for sale. We didn’t have a body to bury, so the house became your tomb. ”

  I looked away from him with a frown, but I could feel him watching me.

  Alistair closed the door and took a seat near me on the couch. “The blood will be here soon. I assumed that you wouldn’t want to drink it from a person.”

  “You assumed correctly,” I said, but my eyes shifted around the room. There were no toys, or mess, or games. There was nothing to indicate children lived there. It didn’t surprise me at all. Damon was always a clean freak.

  There was a soft knock at the door just as Damon sat down on the other side of me with his warm coffee in hand. I could remember a time when the smell of coffee would make me salivate, but now it just grossed me out, like bitter dirty bean water. Alistair stood up from the couch in one fluid movement. He moved to the door quickly. I heard him say, “thank you,” quietly before closing the door, and then he was back at the couch, seated and handing me a large, hot metal mug of blood.

  “Freshly pumped,” he said as I took the mug from his hand.

  “Thank you,” and I tried to drink slowly and with dignity when all I really wanted to do was chug it down and ask for seconds. But I set the mug on the coffee table and bit my bottom lip. “I’ve kept so many secrets from you, both of you. I don’t know where to start.”

  Alistair drank down his mug of blood quickly and sat back, clasping his hands together in his lap. The look on his face was a guarded one, deep in thought. Looking to Damon, I could tell nothing from his posture. He simply set his coffee down and scooted closer to me.

  “Just start with where you’ve been for all these years. The house was obviously broken into, trashed. A circle was carved into the floor in your office. Your blood was everywhere. They found hair, skin and bone fragments. Detective Fillips said it looked like you were butchered in that room.”

  “I was.”

  “By whom?” Alistair asked. I could tell Alistair was losing his calm because his British accent was coming through.

  “Raphael,” I said.

  “That demon?” asked Damon. “I thought he was helping us.”

  “No, he always meant for me to die. He was just toying with me.”

  Damon jumped to his feet. “I’m going to summon that son of a bitch right here, right now!” he roared.

  “No,” I said, grabbing at Damon’s black shirt. He looked down at me like I was crazy. “No need.” No more lies, no more secrets; not with the people I trusted most in the world, and Alistair and Damon were those people. I untied the cloth from around my hand and showed them the burning light radiating from my left hand. “I didn’t think I could kill him, so I trapped him inside of me.”

  “How?” asked Alistair, but it was almost a whisper with his eyes on my palm.

  “Death changed me. I don’t understand it fully yet, but I was able to pull him into me and concentrate all that energy into one small spot.”

  “How did you come back to us?” Damon asked. He was visibly trying to calm his breathing as he took his seat next to me. “You were slaughtered.”

  I looked down at my hands. One was cold, almost grey with thin white lines running all over it. The other was glowing bright with Raphael’s life-force. I took a deep breath. “My brother, Nick brought me back. He killed Raphael’s assassins and took my remains. He put them in a freezer the night I was killed. Then last night, he put me back together.”

  Damon trailed his hand down my arm, following the curves of the scars. “He put you back together? Why did he keep you a secret? If I’d known there was even a possibility that you could come back to me, I would have done anything for him!”

  “Gabriel could have sewn you back together that very night, and he’d have done a better job of it,” said Alistair.

  I winced at his words. Bastion Fatal had a great doctor. I had no doubt that Gabriel could have done what Alistair said. But the fact that Alistair could tell just by the look of me that Nick had done a bad job, meant I looked terrible. I don’t know why that bothered me so much. I was never considered beautiful before. I wasn’t ugly either. Maybe it hurt because my appearance was just one more thing taken from me in all of this. One more thing I had no control over. I put my right hand over my face to hide the frustrated tears I couldn’t stop.

  Damon wrapped his arm around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head.

  “Raina,” Alistair began. “I’m sorry. You’ve been through so much. That was—careless of me. I’m sure the scars will fade and everything else will smooth over. I am sorry.”

  I looked up at him, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. I felt hideous. I felt like a freak. Looking at his knees I said, “I have something to tell you.”

  He sat up straight. “Raina, you’re still you.”

  Such a weak attempt at making me feel better. I shook my head. “Leave it. I don’t need a pity pep-talk. I’m talking about your sister. I’m talking about Adia. Raphael put her soul inside Isobel. At the time I thought it was an act of kindness, a second chance for Adia. But that wasn’t Raphael’s intentions at all. He wanted the presence of Adia’s soul in Isobel’s body to drive her crazy, like it drove you crazy. It was his way of continuing to punish me even after I was dead.”

  Alistair and Damon both fell silent. It was a terrible quiet, thick with tension. Alistair stood up and moved clear across the room. Damon left the room entirely. I heard his bedroom door slam shut and I jumped in my seat.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” came a quiet voice in my head. “You don’t know who Adia was to these men.”

  In my head his voice sounded the same as last I heard it. Raphael was communicating with me. “What? What are you talking about?” I thought.

  “Let me out and I’ll tell you.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  In my m
ind he laughed loud and without reservation, “Good luck then. This should make for an interesting show.”

  “I can find out on my own,” I said, and I could. With hardly any effort at all on my part, I could know exactly what they were thinking in that moment.

  “You’re going to break your promise to never read their minds? Have you no honor?” he laughed.

  I growled inwardly, while I looked straight ahead with a controlled facial expression. Damn it! I lived by rules, and one of my biggest rules was to always keep my promises. I promised Damon I’d never violate his private thoughts. I never extended the same promise to Alistair, but up until a couple days before I died I couldn’t read the minds of vampires.

  “Raina? Hello,” Alistair said as he waved his hand in front of my face. I blinked up at him and he moved away, back to the other side of the room. I shook my head to bring myself out of my own brain. I trusted these men. I had to trust them to tell me the truth. Or, perhaps Raphael was lying again. As he said before, demons lie.

  “You kept this to yourself?” Alistair asked. “You didn’t think I deserved to know that my sister’s soul was inside your baby?”

  I shrugged. “I was afraid of what that would mean to you. I assumed that Adia’s soul and Isobel’s would be one and the same. I wasn’t sure how you would react to that. I needed to think about it, but between the time I found out and the moment I died was only a matter of days. I had so much on my mind at that time. I had a group of assassins hunting me for fuck’s sake. Adia being reborn wasn’t on the top of my list at that moment. Saving everyone I loved was!” I took a breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have.”

  Alistair’s face was stuck in a mean glare, his arms crossed over his chest. He hadn’t looked at me like that in years. Not since Adia left him, and he regained his sanity.

  “Yes, you should have told me—because—I’ve kept something from you as well. I wasn’t driven mad by the presence of my sister in my body. I was being driven by my sister.”

  My brows creased in thought. “What does that mean?”

  “She drove him, dummy. He was her cold meat puppet,” I heard Raphael say in my mind with cruel laughter in his voice.

  “All those things I said and did; all of that was her. I was a prisoner in my own body. I was forced to watch that, to live through that. Adia was always cruel growing up. Becoming a vampire made her more so. But when she lost her body and was forced to live on through me, she became an evil thing. She made me into a monster, Raina.”

  “Told you so,” said Raphael.

  “But I know Adia, Alistair. She lived inside me as well,” I began.

  “For a little over a month, maybe two. She didn’t want to scare you off. She was manipulating you, Raina. She wanted to gain your trust and then she was going to—take you; take your body. I know. I was inside here.” He pointed to his head, “screaming every day for three years.” He moved closer. “I didn’t tell you because you loved her so much, but the night she left me, she didn’t leave out of kindness. She made a deal.”

  My eyes were wide with shock and I would say disbelief, but I believed him, and I was scared for Isobel. “She made a deal?”

  “Yes, with someone we both know, a demon. Adia wanted your body, and he wanted you dead.”

  “You’re talking about Raphael, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty,” said Raphael in a singsong voice.

  “He agreed to destroy your soul and replace it with hers. The moment he took her soul out of my body I rushed to your side. I swore to myself that I’d keep you safe.”

  “You have…” I said as I thought back on all the times he saved my life, all the times he put himself in harm’s way to protect me. “But why?”

  He gave a shallow shrug of his shoulders before he sat back down beside me, just inches from me, and put his hands on my knees. “When I never heard from Adia or Raphael, I assumed he’d double crossed her. I let my guard down. But this all makes sense now. It’s easier for an old soul to take over a new one, like Isobel’s.”

  I closed my eyes, because a horrible thought came to mind. Raphael hated Mato, my first boyfriend, my first lover. Was it because vampires can’t have kids? Did he set Damon and me up?

  “Oh, this is awkward,” said Raphael.

  “You set us up, didn’t you? Damon adopted your grandson, Thomas and then you forced me under threat of death to adopt Thomas away from Damon. But you knew I could never tear a family apart. You knew Damon would be a permanent fixture in my life. But how could you know we’d fall in love unless he was in on it. Oh my goddess, Damon was in on it!” I felt sick.

  “It’s my business to manipulate things; people and events. I knew Damon would take on Thomas with some delicate nudging on my part. I didn’t want to see my wife’s last remaining heir live his life out in captivity. I paired you with Damon to get your guard down and get you out from behind your Aunt’s enchanted walls. That-is-all. Adia had no part in that.”

  “Too coincidental.”

  I felt Raphael’s annoyance. “Adia tried to possess you, as she had Alistair, the first night you were infected with her blood, but you were too strong for her even then. She tried to make you a legion vampire under Alistair’s control, in order to have more sway over you and thereby possess you. But you denied her that win as well. As a last resort she contacted me. She wanted me to destroy your soul and replace it with hers. I agreed, and took her soul from her brother’s body, but I had different plans for you already set in motion. I gave her your daughter instead.”

  “Take Adia out of Isobel, now!” I heard only laughter from him. “Bastard!”

  I sat quietly long enough that Alistair left me to find Damon.

  “As long as I’m trapped inside you, I can’t do shit. But I can give you some friendly advice. Keep an eye on Damon. He and Adia have history.”

  “What history?”

  “Raina,” Damon said from the hall with Alistair behind him. He was wearing a leather coat and boots. “You might want to take a shower and change into your own clothes.” And he set a small pile of clothes on the coffee table.

  “Are you mad at me, too?” I asked him.

  “I’m not mad at you,” said Alistair, but I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at Damon, the father of my children, the love of my life.

  Damon ran his hand through his hair before he answered me. “I’m a lot of things right now, but I’m mostly glad you’re home and concerned for Isobel. I called your sister. I didn’t tell her you were alive. I assumed you wouldn’t want too much company right this moment.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded, “I told her that I wanted to pick the kids up a day early and take them out to dinner, which I will do before bringing them home. That should give you plenty of time to clean yourself up.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, this time with a smile. He bent down and hugged me tight.

  “I love you,” he said, and then he walked out the door, but something about him was off; his posture, his voice…Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t guess at what it was. Maybe I didn’t want to.

  IN AN AWKWARD PLACE

  THE LIGHTS IN Damon’s bathroom were mercifully dim as I undressed in front of the mirror. I was scared as hell of what I’d see as I let the green dress fall to the floor. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see that again; that lumpy, discolored poor excuse for a body. I held my breath and opened my eyes. I looked into the mirror and I let out a low gasp of relief. My skin was smoothing over, with tiny white vein-like scars fading well into pale skin. My body had healed much in the last few hours. Hell, it almost looked like a normal female body…but it didn’t look like mine.

  I pressed my hand against my stomach and felt only hard muscle behind thick skin. Whatever excess fatty tissue I had before was gone, recycled by my body along with my lower bowels. Which explained why I hadn’t had the urge to use the toilet. It also explained why my abdomen was so irregula
rly petite. I had a true hourglass figure now; large breasts, wide hips, tiny middle. Nothing but muscles and bone. I didn’t need anything else. As I understood it, my stomach and lungs were still completely intact, though altered. For vampires, the stomach’s inner walls are thick and smooth, no longer producing acid, while the small intestine is shortened and redirected to the heart. I put my hand on my chest and I could feel the shallow beating of my own heart as it pumped the blood I drank throughout my body, circulating oxygen, nutrients, and hormones and maintaining body temperature.

  The only real downside to being a vampire, besides the obvious social stigma, was the sun aversion. The vampire virus changes every cell in the body of its host in order to make a more suitable home for it, and for this particular virus that meant no sunlight. There goes any hopes of gaining that golden tan I’d always wanted… By all accounts, I should have burned almost instantly when the sun touched my skin. I could only guess being a demigod had something to do with my survival.

  The only part of me that I recognized at all was my face; heart shaped with sharply curved eyebrows, dark red eyes and naturally red lips. But thanks to the scars, not even that was left unspoiled. Was I me at all anymore? At least I had my mind.

  “Plus one!” Raphael spoke up.

  “Shut it!” I demanded. He did, but whether or not it was because I told him to, only he knew that. Actually, I’d quite forgotten he was there at all, listening to my thoughts, seeing what I saw in the mirror. My cheeks flushed with embarrassment, which shocked the hell out of me. You’d think my new streamlined vampire body wouldn’t waste such a precious commodity on such a trivial emotional response…Whatever, why should I be self-conscious for Raphael? Fuck him.

  I bent over to turn on the shower, but I heard steps approaching from outside the room. It smelled like Alistair, and even though the water was freezing cold, I rushed into it when he knocked. COLD! SHIT! COLD!

  “Yes?” I called out.

  “May I come in?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Yes,” I said softly. I was behind the white shower curtain, but still, I held onto my breasts as he came through the door. Through the curtain I could just make out the outline of his tall, slender body. I watched him lean against the countertop and look at me. No doubt he could see the outline of my body as well. With that in mind I leaned back against the cool tile.