nuzzled her freckled nose against the sweet animal’s, then buried her face in its neck.
The creature’s scream startled Lindsay so violently she jerked and sank beneath the waves. The memory slid away from her, getting caught in the churning surf near the burning shoreline, but not before Lindsay caught the ripe smell of blood and the beauty of crimson soaking into pristine white. Like Adrian’s wings.
She kicked her way back up to the surface, gasping with a mixture of fear, fascination, and building hunger. The scent of the creature’s blood drove her wild. Her mouth watered with the desire to drink it greedily the way Shadoe had.
Shadoe smiled at Lindsay’s sputtering breaths. The naphil floated gracefully on her back with her hands tucked behind her head. Her dark hair fanned outward, as did the transparent gauzy skirts of her dress. She looked like a nymph, beautiful and seductive.
“You were already a vampire,” Lindsay accused.
“No. The nephalim thirsted for blood before the Watchers fell. Our angel halves needed the energy found in the life force of others.” There was no horror or remorse in the woman’s voice. No shame or embarrassment.
Lindsay struggled to make sense of it all. The raging heat was slowly fading and languidness returned to her. She felt like taking a nap, like sinking into the silken embrace of the memories around her.
“He’s loved me forever,” Shadoe said casually. “Obsessively.”
“I know.”
New recollections lapped over her. She recognized some of them from her dreams. They made sense now. Every image and scene held Adrian in moments of lust and passion. Lindsay watched with a sharp, ferocious jealousy. She closed her eyes but still found no relief. The memories were in her head, her mind. Whispering. Crooning. Pleading. She was about to dive beneath the waves just to get away from them when she saw herself. She stilled her restless thrashing and took it all in, reliving the tender moments she’d shared with Adrian.
Pain seared her at the understanding of what that meant: while making love to her, he’d been thinking of someone else.
The reminiscences continued unabated, giving her no peace.
She cried at the heated emotion radiating from Adrian as he asked her to take everything he offered her.
“What does that mean?” she asked Shadoe in a voice made husky by heartbreak and longing. “ ‘
“It means ‘my soul.’ It’s an endearment.”
Lindsay absorbed that. As the memories swirled around her, spinning faster and faster until a vortex formed in a downward spiral, she noted how his endearments for her changed as their relationship progressed. Toward the end, he referred to her only as his soul. Not Shadoe’s. His.
He’d been saying good-bye to Shadoe, not her.
Lindsay kicked upward, fighting the voracious sucking of the whirlpool. She was screaming, shouting for help, drowning with the sudden realization of how poorly she’d interpreted her dreams the night before.
Adrian loved her. And god knew she was crazy enough about him to die for his happiness. Which appeared to be what she was to him-the woman who made him happy.
She wouldn’t give him up. She refused. He knew her inside and out. From the beginning, he’d allowed her to choose which direction she wanted to travel, and whichever road she chose-the hotel or the hunt, with or without him-he had made accommodations to allow her that freedom while still keeping her safe. She could be herself with him and he would love her that way. Cherish her.
With all her might, Lindsay fought the relentless pull of the now glowing abyss below her, but the cyclonic recollections around her rose higher and higher, and the reels of images in the sky above her seemed farther and farther away.
“Shadoe!” she yelled. “You’ll never have all of him. Never again.”
An arm shot out and grasped her wrist. Shadoe leaned over the lip of the vortex, her long black hair hanging in a satiny curtain around her lovely face.
“Part of him belongs to me now.” Lindsay whimpered, her shoulder separating from its socket as she was pulled in two directions. “You don’t strike me as the type of woman who’s willing to share.”
“And you are?”
Lindsay’s jaw tightened against the pain. “I’ll take whatever I can have of him,” she bit out. “If he thinks of you sometimes, I can live with that. Can you live with him making love to my body when he’s with you?”
Shadoe’s sloe eyes narrowed. Then her lush red lips curved in a smile. She released Lindsay’s arm, and Lindsay fell toward the radiant light below.
Her rival dived into the vortex, racing past Lindsay with her arms outstretched and her hands clasped together in a narrow blade. She cut through the light and disappeared inside it. Instantly the whirlpool’s direction changed, surging upward. As the moving pictures above Lindsay rushed down to meet her, she held her breath and closed her eyes.
She was spit out of the tempest with a gasping breath of cognizance.
Jackknifing up, Lindsay woke in a strange bed. She blinked at finding Kent Magus sitting in a chair beside her.
“Kent?” she queried, realizing she was drenched with sweat. So much sweat that the comforter and sheets beneath her were soaked with it, too. Something hard rattled around in her mouth. She spit it out, then another one. She winced at the sight of her two human canine teeth in her palm. “What are you doing in my dream?”
Kent stared at her, then frowned. “Lindsay…? Where’s Shadoe?”
“
“Shit,” he whispered, running his hand through hair that had become spiky from his restless fingers.
“What are you doing here?”
He scrubbed at teary, reddened eyes. “I’m your-I’m Shadoe’s brother, Torque.”
“Oh. I thought you were my night auditor.” She fell back into the wet bedclothes with a groan, certain she was both crazy and dying. No one could feel as bad as she did and live through it. Violent shudders wracked her body as if she were freezing, but she was burning up. Her mouth felt stuffed with cotton that tasted like an ashtray. Her stomach was churning as if ready to heave, and her head was throbbing so viciously she felt like something was trying to slam its way out of her skull from the inside.
But the reality she’d woken up to was worse.
She was still Lindsay, still crazy about Adrian, and she was one of the things they both hated and hunted-a vampire.
CHAPTER 23
Adrian saw the smoke rising from the remnants of the Navajo Lake pack miles before he reached it. When Damien pulled the Suburban through the gates, they entered a literal war zone. Very little remained intact. Fires burned untended. What had once been the cryogenic storage facility was a charred hole in the ground several meters deep. Not one window remained unbroken. Feathers dotted the ground along with dozens of naked corpses.
For the first time in two days, an emotion penetrated the thick haze of grief clouding Adrian’s mind and heart.
Climbing out of the truck, he surveyed the devastation. He rubbed at the dull pain in his chest and asked, “How many Sentinel casualties?”
