Lover Unveiled, page 37
Sahvage. I’m here.
She thought the words at him so hard that she began to strain, and she kept repeating them until she felt like she was going to burst. Exhaling on a great explosion, with her lungs burning and her heart skipping beats, everything went wonky.
Gasping, Mae opened her eyes and—
Nothing had changed.
Sagging in her own skin, she looked around and felt a despair that went further than even the pain she’d been carrying around about Rhoger—and that was because everything that had happened to him was wrapped up in the piercing agony now marking the center of her chest.
And she was going to lose Tallah, too.
Everything was gone. Her life as she had known it, her life as she had wished it would be.
And she would never, ever know where Sahvage’s kisses would have taken her.
She was going to lose him as well.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she regarded this strange, unholy prison she was trapped in—and the horror that there was nothing to do but wait for the demon to come back.
Which would be both a beginning and an ending.
All hope lost.
In the midst of her sadness and regret, Sahvage’s face came to her mind once more, from back when he’d shown up at the cottage and they’d fought that shadow. The image of him was from after the attack, when they’d been in the kitchen. He’d been joking with her, a sly smile on his face, his black-blue eyes sparkling.
Under different circumstances, maybe they could have had a life together—
“I could have loved him!” she yelled at no one.
With a swipe of her arm, she backhanded the silver dish, the stupid, go-nowhere bullshit in it going flying—and hitting the steel-reinforced door on a splash that stuck. On account of the fucking true-blue birthday candle.
All at once, the lights flickered . . . and went out.
While an older security guard was sent off with no memories of three vampires showing up in his building’s basement, Sahvage was going insane as he walked through some kind of storage place.
That was four-thousand-plus square feet of absolutely, fucking empty.
But Mae was here.
Stalking around the pylons that were holding up the ceiling, he couldn’t explain what he was scenting, what he was sensing. Mae was here. He could almost feel her. And yet his eyes were telling him that he was alone in this concrete four-walls-and-not-a-damn-thing.
“I don’t get it,” he gritted out.
Butch, the Brother who’d volunteered to tour guide him, shook his head. “This is how it was for me and V, too. We were tracking the demon on GPS, but . . . we couldn’t find her even though she was at this location.”
“Mae’s here.” He breathed in and smelled smoke, too. Along with his female’s scent. “I can . . . she’s here.”
Faster and faster, he kept walking around. But like that was going to change anything?
“Fuck this,” he said as he marched back to the steel door. “I get the fucking Book. Then I make a deal with her. She wants it, and she’ll do anything to get it.”
The pain of remote faces looking back at him were a loud-and-clear he was not having.
“Sorry, Mae comes first.”
Tohr shook his head. “We’ll get your female back. But the Book and that demon can’t be reunited. It gives her too much power.”
“Just so we’re clear”—Sahvage leveled his stare—“I don’t give a shit whether that brunette blows up half of Caldwell, the only thing I care about is Mae.”
“We have other resources. We can help you.”
“All I need is that fucking Book. I’ll take it from there.”
As Sahvage faced off at the Brothers, he recognized the screaming in his head. It took him back to all those fun-filled nights looking for Rahvyn. Goddamn, how had he gone from glancing at Mae in the crowd at that fight to this . . . hollow despair . . . at not being able to save her?
He was a simp.
“I’m coming for you, Mae,” he said loudly. “You stay alive, I’m coming for you.”
As his voice echoed around the gray-and-black concrete, he knew he was insane. But there was no getting off this train.
He turned and stalked out of the storage unit. Closing the door behind himself and the Brothers, he looked up and down the corridor as the other fighters continued to give him all kinds of no-go hairy eyeball.
When he walked away, he felt like he was peeling off his own skin. And the only way he could keep going was by promising himself . . . he was somehow going to find his female.
Not that she was his.
For fuck’s sake, he should have listened to his gut and not gotten involved—
The clanging clatter rang out in the hallway, like something metal had hit . . . something metal. Spinning around, he frowned at the nothing-happening.
“What is it?” Tohr demanded.
“Didn’t you hear that?”
“No. There was no sound.”
Butch shook his head. “There was nothing, my guy.”
Sahvage ignored them. But when there was no repeat and no . . . fucking anything at all . . . he knew he was just being an ass.
“Motherfucker.”
He turned away—and that was when he heard the weeping. Soft. As if from a distance . . . yet the sound was unmistakable.
Gripped with focus, Sahvage walked back to the steel door, even though he didn’t expect to see anything.
He was wrong.
“Mae! Holy fuck! Mae!”
The solid metal panel had somehow morphed into a screen: He could see through it now, and on the other side, Mae was sitting cross-legged on a bright white marble floor, her head in her hands, her sobs carrying through whatever kind of existential distance separated them.
“Mae!” he yelled as he dropped to his knees.
“What are you doing?” Butch said.
“She’s right there! What the hell is wrong with you? Mae!”
Sahvage touched the metal—and it gave way, his fingers somehow pushing into that which shouldn’t have had any give in it at all.
And as if she sensed him, Mae jerked her head up and looked around.
“I’m here!” He ripped his jacket off and held it out to the Brother closest to him. “Take this.”
Tohr stared down in confusion. “What are you talking about.”
“I’m going in after her. I’m going to pull her out. But I’m going to need an anchor.” He didn’t care how he knew this with such clarity. “Hold this!”
Tohr continued to look at him like he’d lost his mind—join the goddamn club—but the Brother grabbed on to the jacket’s wrist.
“I don’t know where the hell you think you’re going—”
“Your opinion is irrelevant.”
Sahvage braced his body, one foot planted behind him, the other set right on the lip of the door. Then he extended his arm into the steel panel . . .
The sensation was unpleasant, like he was pushing his hand through cold mud, but like he gave a shit. He just kept going, leaning farther and farther forward, his palm, his wrist, his forearm, penetrating through the door . . . and coming out the other side.
Mae reared back.
And then instantly, her expression changed. Sahvage!
Or at least that’s what he thought she said. He couldn’t hear her.
“Take my hand,” he yelled. “Take it—I’ll pull you through.”
Even though he didn’t know whether that was possible. He didn’t know anything other than he wasn’t leaving without her.
“I’m going in,” he said to nobody.
Moving carefully, he put his boot into the other version of reality and shifted some of his weight. That same instinct that told him to make sure to keep one foot in each plane of existence, one on each side of the door, got louder and louder, so he relied on the hold on his jacket’s sleeve as he tilted himself off-balance.
Penetrating the door with his torso gave him a bad case of the shivers, his skin goose bumping, his muscles twitching, his bones aching deep in his marrow. And as his head broke free of the resistance, he was hit with all kinds of sights and smells. Clothes. Something burning. Perfume.
Like he gave a fuck.
Mae was right in front of him. He could finally scent her tears, feel her presence—and hear her properly.
Oh, God, she was hurt. Her face was wounded and—
“Sahvage!”
As she launched herself at him, he grabbed on to her body, but couldn’t spare even a second to check her injuries. “Hold on, my female. Just hold me tight.”
Looking over her head, he had a brief, but indelible, impression of racks and racks of fancy shit. And modern furniture and a kitchen and a bed platform. There was a whole living space in the storage area, but the demon was so fucking clever, wasn’t she.
“Here we go,” Sahvage said.
The last thing he noticed, as he started to pull back, was the white vinegar bottle right next to the door. And the container of salt. And a box of birthday candles.
And a white-and-gray scaled purse that was on fire.
Whatever. He had Mae in his arms, and that was all that mattered.
• • •
Mae had been at the end of her rope, weeping into her hands—when she’d heard something outside the door. And then an arm, a heavily muscled, heavily veined arm, had somehow, in some way, come at her. She’d been so shocked, she’d nearly bolted.
But then she’d scented Sahvage. Clearly.
And then he’d appeared, right in front of her, leaning through the door.
“Mae!”
As he’d said her name, she hadn’t thought twice. She’d sprung forward and thrown herself at him—and the second his solid hold registered, she nearly blew apart from relief. She had never gripped anything so hard in her life.
Sahvage told her something about holding on to him, but that was a command she did not require as she locked on to the back of his neck and all but wrapped her legs around his waist. When he started to retreat through the door, the pulling was terrible, her body stretching until her bones were spears of agony and her muscles strings of white-hot pain. All she could do was bury her face in his thick throat and try to keep breathing.
The trembling came next, chills racing through her, chattering her teeth, spasming her legs. Just as she thought she was going to shatter apart, at the moment when she knew she could take no more, there was a release, all the drag on her body disappearing—
Mae exploded out of the lair, sure as if she were spring-loaded—and Sahvage was her landing pad. As they were thrown back against a corridor’s wall, she banged into his chest, her knee hitting something rock hard, her nose registering all kinds of new smells.
“I’ve got you,” he said in the numb aftermath. “You’re okay, you’re out . . . I got you.”
Mae shook all over, her adrenaline ebbing and leaving her so limp, she couldn’t lift her head.
“It’s all right . . .” Sahvage murmured as he stroked her shoulders.
Gradually, Mae’s senses came back online properly. They were in a hallway . . . outside of a steel door that was closed.
Two enormous males were standing over them.
And a demon was still returning at any second.
With panic, Mae shoved herself up off Sahvage’s pecs. “We need to get out of here. She’s coming back. We need—my house. Let’s go there. The salt will keep her out—”
“Can you dematerialize?”
With Sahvage’s help, Mae managed to stand mostly on her own, but when she lurched to the side abruptly, he cursed. So did she.
“If you have to go on foot, we’ll guard you,” one of the males, the stockier of the pair, said.
As she glanced at him, she realized he had a pair of black daggers strapped, handles down, to his chest. And so did the other one.
The Black Dagger Brotherhood, she thought with awe.
“I’ve got you,” Sahvage said for the hundredth time.
The next thing she knew, he’d scooped her up and started running. With all his strength, he carried her down the concrete hall like she didn’t weigh anything at all, his boots pounding over the bare floor as the two Brothers provided cover in front and in back.
When they got a heavy door with a red exit sign over it, the stockier Brother jumped ahead and held the thing open.
“This way,” he ordered.
Mae felt her awareness come and go, like it had just after she’d been in that accident. Meanwhile, Sahvage just kept soldiering on, running, running, running, as if he had endless amounts of energy and all the power in the world in his body.
Eventually, they came to some kind of delivery facility, a lineup of cargo bays and all kinds of rolling bins suggesting they were in a big building’s mail processing department. The two other fighters immediately went over to one of the receiving areas and broke open a set of vertical doors, rolling the slats up on their tracks—
All at once, Mae smelled night air—that carried a hint of oil and trash. They were downtown somewhere.
“I can dematerialize,” she said roughly. Clearing her throat, she spoke louder. “I can do it.”
“Let’s get you checked out first.”
Sahvage jumped down to the pavement, and as he started running again, she realized they were heading to a huge RV . . . where a man in a white coat—a human?—was standing by what looked to be an operating room.
“No, it’s not safe,” Mae said as she pushed against Sahvage’s shoulder. “I have to go back to my house. She’s coming here any minute—”
“Mae—”
“No!” She shoved herself out of his arms and had to catch herself on the vehicle’s brake lights. “She’s coming!” Mae looked at all the males in a panic. “You don’t understand what she is—”
“No,” the stockier one countered. “We know exactly what she is. If you have a safe place, get to it now. We’ll catch up with you.”
Sahvage opened his mouth as if he were going to argue, but the Brother grabbed his shoulder. “Let her go where she needs to be, we’ll bring the medicine to her. You got her out once, but I will guarantee you that whatever loophole you found? That demon is going to plug it up the moment she returns. We have seconds now, let’s use them.”
Mae stepped forward and put both her hands on Sahvage’s face. “Meet me at my parents’. Tell them where to go.”
And then, even though she was still woozy, and in spite of her pounding head and the pain in her body, she squeezed her eyes shut.
You can do this, she told herself sternly. More than that, you have to.
Or her life, and the lives of Sahvage and the two other males, were over.
He couldn’t believe Mae was able to do it.
In all Sahvage’s years of combat back in the Old Country, and even throughout his human fight club experiences lately, he’d never seen such an act of will. Even though the female could barely hold herself upright, she somehow managed to gather the focus and presence of mind to dematerialize back to her house.
Not only that, she made it into the garage. All the way up the door.
He’d followed her the whole time, staying right behind her. So that as she finally collapsed, he re-formed just in time and caught her.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured as he took the keys he’d grabbed from her car ignition out of his leather jacket.
Thank fuck he’d thought to snag them. The copper lock would have been trouble.
Rushing inside, he left the door unlocked for the Brothers and headed directly for the basement with her. He did not want those other males checking out the rest of the house and finding her brother in the tub. There were too many complications already to volunteer for those kinds of questions.
“The bedroom I’m using is down there,” Mae mumbled.
Fortunately, there were lights left on so it was easy to get to the modest room with simple furnishings. And as he laid her on the bed, she let out a ragged sigh—
Up above, heavy footfalls announced the arrival of the Brothers, and as Mae closed her eyes and breathed roughly, the other fighters came down to the cellar.
“Manny’s ETA is about ten minutes,” Tohr said.
The protective male in Sahvage wanted to tell both of them to get out of Mae’s private space, but he shut that shit up quick. This was a more-the-merrier kind of situation, especially given that the merriers came with all kinds of extra guns and ammo.
As time ticked by, everyone stayed quiet as Sahvage sat on the edge of the mattress and held Mae’s hand. She was so still that had she not been drawing breaths, he would have worried she had passed—
“Hello?” came a voice from up above.
“Down here, doc,” Tohr called out.
The human in the white coat jogged a descent, a black duffle rustling at his side. “Hey,” he said as he addressed Sahvage. “I’m Dr. Manello. We weren’t introduced.”
As the guy approached the foot of the bed, Sahvage looked him up and down. Handsome man. Big shoulders for a human. Seemed competent.
But Sahvage did not fucking move from Mae’s side. And as the silence stretched out, the Brothers cleared their throats.
“I promise,” the doc said, “this is strictly medical. I need to examine her, though. She’s got obvious head trauma, okay?”
With a wave of aggression surging in his body, Sahvage wanted to tell the guy that she was just fucking fine—except he didn’t really know that. Which was the point. She’d been in a car accident, gotten abducted, and then nearly been lost forever thanks to that goddamn brunette. A “strictly medical” exam was called for, especially given the fact that Mae was lying back against those pillows like maybe she needed a crash cart, her beautiful face painfully pale, her body too motionless, her chest rising and falling in a shallow way.
There was just one little problem.
Sahvage kind of wanted to take the handsome, dark-haired human . . . and put the guy’s face through a plate glass window. And then maybe nail his arms and legs to a wall. And hit him with a spray of accelerant, followed by a—
