Страница 39 из 48
Was he? I'm not sure.
I turn away from Avery, and Williams. I can't look at either of them.
How long will he be like this?
I feel Avery come close. His hands touch my shoulders. When he speaks, it's a whisper in my ear.
"There's no way of telling. It could be hours. It could be days or weeks."
"What do we do with him then? What do we tell his wife?"
Avery turns me to face him. She will be told the truth. Williams will have prepared her for this possibility. As for the rest of the world, Chief Williams will have suffered a stroke. We have a facility nearby where his needs will be met. He will be well cared for. You did nothing wrong. Now, I must make some telephone calls. Perhaps it would be better if you went upstairs. No one need know you were here.
Reluctantly, I agree. There will be nothing to gain by complicating matters with my presence. The truth will not be known to anyone except Williams's wife, and even then, I'm sure what Avery tells her will be an altered version of what really happened. Again, I owe Avery my life. He always seems to have my best interest at heart.
I trudge up the stairs to my room. I stretch out on the bed, listening as an ambulance arrives, listening as voices drift up and away, listening as Avery recounts a story that is accepted as the truth because of who he is. Eventually, the voices quiet, the sirens move off, and Avery is at my side.
It's over now. You are safe.
But David is not.
Avery sits on the edge of the bed, draws me to him. I'm sorry about David. But Williams was your last hope to find him. You must let it go now.
Despair settles around me like a velvet curtain being drawn, thick and black and shutting out hope. Still, I shake my head, fighting it.
I don't understand this, I tell him. Why was David taken? What sense does it make? I've gone over this a thousand times in my head. If it had been Donaldson or the Revengers, at least there's a co
Avery's arms drop away. Aggravation and impatience form a crease in his brow, though he fights to conceal it from his thoughts.
Instead, the tone of his voice is patient and full of understanding.
"What do you think you can do now? You've exhausted all leads. There's no one left to help."
"Then I'll start over. I'll go back to Beso de la Muerte . I'll talk with Donaldson's vampire friends. Maybe I was wrong about him.
Maybe David is there somewhere—"
"Do you really think he'd still be alive if he was?” Avery pushes himself to his feet. “You can't keep doing this. You have to accept that David is lost. You must learn to separate yourself from mortals. It's a lesson best learned at the begi
Avery's agitation is like a knife thrust. He pounds one fist into the other as he paces. “It could have been worse,” he continues.
“Don't you realize it could have been your parents or Max that were taken? This is a warning. You are not like them anymore. You are immortal. You will watch your parents wither and die, and Max will be a vessel to draw from, nothing more. You don't need them anymore, A
But me.
Avery opens his mind and the frenzy of negative feeling is gone. Instead, his thoughts are full of love, overwhelming, complete. He's beside me on the bed, his look a question.
Confusion snarls my thoughts. I start to pull away, but his emotion is so intense, I'm swept along. I'm in his arms and I can't tell where his passion leaves off and mine begins.
I don't fight it. I don't want to. I don't understand what's happening, but he offers me the one thing I seem to find only in his arms—
safety. I let him strip off my clothes, feel his hand sear a path down my abdomen, explore my thighs, move up. My own urgency soon matches his. This is much more than sexual desire and the degree to which I respond stuns me. I find myself calling his name over and over. And more.
Love, intense, relentless as a rip tide permeates my being.
Can he feel it?
Do I want him to?
It's too late to wonder about it now. Imprisoned in a web of arousal, I let desire spiral through me until it soars to a height of passion I have never known before.
Chapter Thirty-Four
It's not until Avery has left my bed that I start to think, something that does not seem possible when he's touching me. Did I let Avery know that I loved him? Did he read it in my thoughts? I don't even know if it's true, but it certainly felt like it at the time. And it certainly drove all other considerations from my head. Important things, like finding David, something I'm not ready to give up on.
If Avery was a witch, I'd think I was under a spell. But Avery is a vampire. We don't cast spells.
Do we?
I'm hovering on that point between consciousness and sleep when a flash of something important jolts me awake. It's something Williams said, something I should ask Avery about. It's that thing about being “the one.” It all got lost in what happened to Williams and in what happened after that.
But I can ask him now.
I throw off the covers and shrug into the robe Avery left for me. He's gone into his own room to shower, and when I knock on his door and there's no answer, I let myself in anyway. I'll wait for him to finish.
But the bathroom door is open and I don't hear the shower ru
But the shower is empty and dry, as is the bathtub. Did he go downstairs to get a drink? I start to send out a mental query to determine his whereabouts when I remember it won't work—that pesky white noise. I'll have to find him the old fashioned way.
It's dark and quiet in the house. My vampire night vision allows me to see without turning on lights, and I make my way downstairs and into the living room. The debris from the broken coffee table has been swept away. I suppose Avery took care of that before the ambulance arrived. There's not even a shard of broken glass to hint at the battle that took place here.
A tremble passes through me. I'm not ready to face what I did to Williams, because in spite of what Avery said, I know I'm to blame. Williams was so afraid of me, he willed himself into a state of suspended animation from which he might never recover. I can't understand how such a strong, old soul could be driven to such a thing by a newbie.
But I push the thought out of my head. I need to find Avery. Perhaps he can make sense out of the riddle Williams spun. I know I can't do it alone.
A search of the library and kitchen yields nothing. Avery is not in any of the downstairs rooms, nor is he on the deck. Puzzled, I start back up the back stairs to the bedroom landing. As I get to the top, it hits me that perhaps Avery has gone to the attic. If he has, am I prepared to intrude? The intensity of his anger is rivaled only by the intensity of his passion. I've evoked both in him today.
I'm unsure what to do. I'm standing in the hall between our bedrooms when I hear it. The sound of a door opening. From inside Avery's room.
But I was just in there. The adjoining bathroom doors were already open and the closets are walk-ins. No doors. Yet I hear the distinct clatter as the tumbles of a lock click into place. Then Avery's footfalls pad across the carpet and the rush of water from the shower floats out across the still night air.