Muffled voices grew silent. The sound of traffic disappeared. And the line went dead.
“Fuck!”
Ronan squeezed his phone so tightly that the plastic cracked in his palm. How could he possibly leave the city? He was newly turned, Mikhail and Claire had barely survived their ordeal with the slayers, and someone was going to have to help oversee Jenner’s transition. Not to mention how Ronan was going to deal with Siobhan’s ire if she discovered he’d ditched her. But how could he stay when Chelle could be someone’s captive—or worse? What if the Sortiari had taken her to use as leverage against Mikhail? They could have been following her for weeks—months—for all he knew. And any relic, especially one rumored to be as powerful as Set’s chest, would be dangerous in their enemies’ hands.#p#分页标题#e#
How could he possibly leave? How could he not?
“Is everything okay, baby?”
Ronan looked down as though only now realizing he was still standing in the middle of a crowded nightclub with an eager dhampir waiting to get into his pants. “I’m out of here,” he replied absently as he snatched the highball glass of scotch from the table and swallowed it down. He needed a little liquid courage if he was going to go to Mikhail and tell him that he was thanking him for the gift of transformation by abandoning him while the future of his kingdom was still so uncertain.
Shit.
He turned and stalked through the club. From behind him the female shouted in her infantile whine, “Call me!”
Yeah. Sure. Whatever.
Out front, he waited for the valet to bring his car around, his impatience mounting by the fucking nanosecond. The sun would be up in six hours and he had a hell of a lot of ground to cover between now and then. And once he got to Crescent City, what then? He had no leads, no information aside from his sister’s name and the relic she’d been hunting, both of which, spoken to the wrong person, could get them both killed.
Mere weeks as a vampire, his soul lost to the void, and Ronan might just die before he could get it back. What happened to those who died untethered? Did he really want to know?
CHAPTER
32
Becoming a vampire sure took a lot out of a girl.
Claire stretched like a contented feline on the expanse of Mikhail’s bed. Or was it their bed? The tether that bound his soul to hers gave a tug. Like an invisible length of rope that connected them no matter how far apart they might be. She smiled into the darkness as she remembered the intense moments of their lovemaking and the bliss of feeding from Mikhail’s vein. As though her life had truly begun the moment she’d become a vampire, there was no empty, painful past, only the present and her future stretched out before her.
Her hands wandered over her bare collarbone, fingertips trailing between her breasts. A chill raced over her flesh as she ventured lower, revisiting all of the places Mikhail’s hands had been before her palms settled on her belly.
The baby.
Her last human memory had been of lying on that damned table, eyes squeezed shut, as Gregor ripped scream after tortured scream from her with the razor-sharp edge of his blade. Mikhail had saved her. Saved their child before Gregor could hurt him. Her son floated safe and secure in her womb. And she had her mate to thank for that. But before the slayers had taken her to that shithole of a basement so much more had happened. Events that had been all but forgotten in the midst of her transition. Jesus Christ—“Vanessa!”
Claire flew from the bed and smashed into the opposite wall. A harsh breath of air left her lungs in a woof! as her ass made contact with the floor. Through the darkness, she caught sight of the wall. A large, Claire-shaped indentation marred the drywall. Holy shit, if she’d been going any faster she would have plowed right through it like some sort of deranged cartoon character.
After all of the damage she’d caused to Mikhail’s posh digs, she had a feeling he’d want to reconsider keeping her around. At this rate, she was bound to cause thousands of dollars’ worth of damage before she got a grip on her new supernatural speed and strength. Claire tried not to let the way the individual carpet fibers felt against her palms distract her as she pushed herself up from the floor. She shot straight up, her feet no longer making contact with the floor as she rocketed up toward the vaulted ceiling, missing the roughly hewn timber support beams by mere inches.
Her landing was considerably more graceful, and she lit back on the floor as easily as a cat jumping down from a tree. Wow. Okay, Claire. Get a freaking grip and get your shit together. There were too many distractions in this new state of existence. Her brain and thought patterns didn’t even work in the same way. Her mind was cranking too quickly, probably what a kid with ADHD felt like when he was hopped up on sugar. Multitasking took on a whole new meaning as her thoughts wandered in multiple directions. Vampiric strength and speed weren’t simply limited to her physical traits.#p#分页标题#e#