The Vampire Queen's Servant(63)

She tugged the dress off herself, a hard rip rather than taking it off, underscoring the primitive nature of the game she intended to play. She wore nothing under it. Dropping to a crouch in bare feet, she rested her fingers on the dirt and considered him, her head c cocked, fangs catching the moonlight.

"Once I find you"—he noted she apparently had no doubt of this—"you'll try to stop me from running you to ground, using every weapon or method you've learned. I want to see what your brother has taught you. See if you can evade me, thwart my intent."

"What intent is that, my lady?"

A flash of her eyes in the night, and Bran whined, the sound evolving into a half growl. "To treat you as prey. Capture you as I would if I was doing it on speed and intelligence alone. No seductive games. No glamour. Tonight you see my true face, Jacob. I will see how you survive it."

He considered that. "And the dogs?"

"They'll run with the hunt, like the Fey riders at night, for it's their nature. They like to run. But they won't help find you. This is between you and me only."

He inclined his head and began to remove the wooden arrows from the wrist gauntlet.

"What are you doing?"

"Preparing for the game you've proposed, my lady." He removed the gun from his back waistband. Then a knife with its leg sheath, several hidden stakes and the small crossbow he carried, making a tidy pile of the weapons between them.

"I told you to bring those for a reason."

"Which would be?" He blinked at her.

"You realize playing dumb means absolutely nothing when the person you're trying to irritate can read your mind?"

"Then I suspect whether I state the obvious or not, you're quite capable of being irritated. I won't draw a weapon against you, my lady. Not now. Not ever."

"My point is to show your weapons will be useless against me."

"As they've been against other vampires my brother and I have hunted and killed?" Now his temper flared, and he saw her green eyes fire in response. "Perhaps one day I'll show you I'm not nearly as impotent against your enemies as you believe me to be. But I won't use you as an example. As formidable as you are, my lady, I won't risk you being wrong."

He removed another knife from the harness on his back, flipped • and staked it into the dirt two feet from her before he dropped the harness to the ground as well. "Good hunting, my lady. Perhaps it's best you won't be listening to my thoughts for a while."

He moved into the forest, letting its darkness swallow him. He'd run the trails with Bran and already knew where many of them were, since he'd explored the width and breadth of her property in the daytime hours. That she would catch up to him quickly, he'd no doubt. Vampire senses were keen. Hearing, sight, and of course she knew the property even better than he did. With only a fifteen-minute lead, he'd leave enough of a scent she'd pick up lingering traces of that as well. So he thought about an open area where she'd have to slow her approach, take time to search, and knew just the place.

Damnable, aggravating woman. Sometimes the similarities between her and Gideon were far too marked, their propensity for always assuming they knew what was best.

What does it gain to prove a man impotent, to convince him without a doubt he's helpless? A parent will still rush into a burning building to save his child, knowing they'll both die. Is it an act of futility, or a noble choice imbued with its own power because of the love that drives it?

His anger surged up, driving out philosophy in favor of raw reaction.

I'm not Thomas, damn it. Did you ever holdfast to his arm at night to keep him close to you in your dreams? Perhaps this isn't about proving Carnal can rip me limb from limb or that I'm ready for politics at the Council Gathering, but that you have control over a situation and feelings already far beyond your control. You're afraid of recreating a situation that broke your heart. But I am not him. And I am definitely not your fucking husband.

Pain shot through his temple, causing a brief sense of dizziness that made him stumble. His jaw flexed.

No cheating, my lady.

A sense of infuriated woman, heat and fire, and she was gone, pulling out so fast he felt somewhat sick to his stomach. He had no doubt her purpose was to hear what was going through his head, not to find him. But by catching her there, he'd won a point. She was not invulnerable and unaffected by him. No one was invulnerable. Not vampires, humans or wolfhounds. Grudgingly he admitted only the dogs seemed to accept that with good grace.

Twelve minutes later he found the glade he sought. About twenty-five-feet in diameter, it was surrounded by an interlocking circle of live oaks, pines and maples, their branches a tapestry against the night sky. There was a good amount of undergrowth as well. If she moved rapidly, she'd give herself away. She could leap up into the trees, travel that way. But while vampires could leap to extraordinary heights, they couldn't fly, so she wouldn't be able to soar over the trees. He squatted on his heels, putting his back against one of the large oaks growing so closely to the pines he was enclosed on three sides. Even more important, he was shadowed. Crossing his arms, he bowed his head to his breast, closing his eyes so he wouldn't rely on them. Vision was a hindrance when it came to vampires. The human eye could not follow them, and yet it would try to, draining energy and focus from other senses he'd found more useful.

Concealed at his hip was the only weapon he hadn't dropped from his arsenal. He'd use it to prove his point, if he could. It was the vampires' assumption of human weakness that got them killed. How often had he and Gideon used one of the team as bait, leading the vampire into a trap, distracting him, taking him out with an error in judgment? Yes, Gideon had lost people, because vampires weren't stupid. Their senses could detect danger in ways humans were not as honed to pick up, except with exceedingly high effort and practice.

But he made every effort to do so now. Listening, his nostrils flared, body tense but loose at once. Alert and ready to move.

There were a variety of sounds. Leaves and branches making contact as the breeze moved through them. One of the nocturnal animals scratching at something. A bark in the distance as one of the dogs found something of interest and warned one of his more aggressive brethren back because he wasn't finished examining it to his satisfaction. He could hear the quiet sound of his own breath. His heartbeat. Thud. Thud.

She'd hear that when she got close enough, but she'd have to pinpoint its location. You didn't often escape a vampire. Gideon taught him that early. Once they were on your trail, your only chance was to turn to the offensive, set them up to surprise them and take them out. Was she moving quietly through the wood now? Those bare feet pressing precisely into the earth, disturbing no undergrowth, her body flowing through it, letting the foliage pass across her bare skin, branches leaving tiny red scrapes that would vanish in a blink? The moonlight would turn her pale skin to milky gray, all that dark loose hair cloaking her. A creature of the night. Why had she undressed? To show that with nothing but her bare hands she could take him down? Or to distract him with those curves, the pale folds of her sex she'd revealed with a primal immodesty as she crouched in her feral pose, watching him discard his weapons. His body burned at the deprivation. His cock had no sense at all when it came to her, but he ruefully acknowledged no other part of him seemed to, either. His heart ached to hold her in his arms.

Slowly he raised his head, opening his eyes as he braced the back of his head on the tree trunk. The branches of the large live oak across from him stretched out like the gnarled arms of a giant.

It took a blink for him to realize there was something not part of the expected picture. When he scrolled his gaze back, at first he thought he might be in a Faustian dream. Perhaps there were other reasons Lyssa had the forest perimeter patrolled. Not only to give her warning of vampire intruders, but to protect creatures humans only dreamed about in surrealistic nightmares or whimsical fantasy.

Then shock coursed through his blood, freezing him. He was looking at his Mistress.

She crouched on a tree limb the way she'd been squatting on the ground when he left her. It was this position that suggested the amazing possibility to him. Her bare toes curled into the limb, elongated so they were more like a bird's claws, holding her balance. It seemed she'd broadened and thickened in the shoulders with the transformation, but as he continued to study her, he was reminded of the gargoyles at Notre Dame. Winged gargoyles.

Her skin was silver gray now. Her hair was gone, her small skull as delicate as a child's, the ears pointed, fangs pronounced and curving out over her bottom lip. Yes, that was a tail wrapped around the branch several times, helping her remain still. It had a barbed tip. Her fingers were talons. The smooth sleekness of her was like an animal, no womanly softness. Even the discernable mounds of her breasts were part of the sleek musculature. Yet he found her incredibly feminine. He'd have known she was female even without the male curiosity that caused him to seek evidence of her bosom, her sex. Her eyes had gotten larger, rounded, more widely spaced like a doe's, with long lashes and no irises or whites, just pure darkness. The skin did not look scaled, but tough, like a seal's skin.

Despite the legends, he'd never known a vampire who could shape-shift. Their affinity for caverns associated them with bats, their affinity for predatory animals like Bran gave rise to the idea they could become all sorts of things, stories he'd always known were untrue. Vampires had exceptional, deadly talents. Speed, strength, seductive illusion. Transforming into something else was not one of them. What he was looking at had to be another mysterious power of his lady's Fey parentage.