Chapter 22
Jesse ran.
Through the dark streets of L.A., her gun drawn and steady in her gloved hand, its chambers loaded with silver bullets. The soft creak of her leather pants masked the sound of her low whistle.
Above her, on the rooftop to her right, her lover stood with a confident grace, his leanness outlined by the light of a full moon. As always when she saw him, his beauty took her breath away. But breathlessness wasn’t a problem these days. And no vampire trying to get away with biting someone in her territory could outrun her anymore.
Plus, she had added another secret weapon to her arsenal. A friend.
On the ground, fairly close, an answering growl rumbled through the night like a charging freight train.
“Come on, wolf,” she muttered. “Get this monster and I’ll buy you more muffins than you can possibly eat.”
She caught soft laughter from above and glanced that way. Tonight, Lance looked the part of the knight he’d once been. She’d seen several of his lifetimes in the heat of passion, though she often tasted the presence of secrets he still withheld.
Lance was formidable up there on the roof, in his dark pants and leather duster—all that leather a precaution against the silver intended for a rogue vampire invading their space.
She’d promised him a trip home as soon as this pervert was dust. They’d take Stan along. Nadia would like that, even if Carol wouldn’t be so keen on the separation.
Everyone deserved a vacation now and then from their secrets. Some freedom. The exception being the monsters, who were presently nearly nonexistent in this part of Los Angeles, thanks to no small thing some called the Night of Dark Surrender, and to her own kind of rebirth.
And thanks to the gorgeous immortal who taught her things, day by day, and who had shared what he held so dear with her, in the name of love. Bad things, and good things. How to come back from death. How to move through shadows, and survive the light. What it took to control the cravings and the ever-present thirst. But then, she was used to issues of control after a lifetime of dealing with it.
She was still a fighter.
Her new images? Buzzwords? Death and rebirth, willingly accepted. Sex and intimacy. Timeless, un ending love beyond imagination, and beyond boundaries. Strange new liaisons. Friendship. Purpose. Guardian angels … the new, unspoken platform for her company.
She and Lance were two souls entwined. Night souls, reborn of darkness, but allowed to live in the light. Massing their strength to help others in need. Keeping the monsters in their places. Understanding that forces of good can overcome evil in the darkest of circumstances, if the heart is pure. And understanding that love can conquer even the most heinous of prejudices, in the end.
Way too many things to have learned in six short months.
“Boss?”
“Hey! You changed back,” Jesse said, cruising to a stop.
“Cloud cover,” Stan said. “Plus, he took all the fun out of it.”
Jesse looked up to find the rooftop empty. She grinned, showing, she knew, a gleam of fang.
“Mind if I ask what he does with the crazy blood suckers he catches?” Stan asked.
“Do you really want to know?”
Stan shrugged. “Nope. Sometime you’ll tell me about this, though. What happened, and how you do anything around those.” He pointed to her mouth.
Jesse nodded. “Sometime.”
“Well, I suppose I’ll be off, then, since it’s after mid night,” Stan said, his voice lowering to a bass register.
“Home?”
Stan’s turn to grin. “Carol and I have new sheets.”
Jesse laughed out loud.
Stan glanced up at the moon, emerging again from the clouds. “Secrets aren’t always bad,” he said.
“Yours was a whopper,” Jesse admitted.
Stan’s grin widened. He stretched his shoulders and his thick neck, then gave a bark of impending transformation, heralded by a disgusting popping sound from the vicinity of his spine. He asked gruffly, “Does he still wear those poofy shirts?”
Then he was gone …
And another body, the epitome of magnificent mysteries … golden hair gleaming in the moonlight like a halo … eyes the color of a Slovenian lake … fangs hinting at his own special kind of lust, and just now tipped in red … pushed her into the side of the closest building, pressed his body suggestively to hers … and smiled.