How had it come to this? he wondered, feeling helpless. After all of his precautions, all of his self-denial…
Because, in all honesty, since the moment he had first laid eyes on her, Jessica Ramos had completely entranced Nathan.
He’d been stepping out of his apartment one day as she’d stepped into hers, a bag of groceries in one hand and an industrial-sized bucket of kitty litter in the other. She had paused in the hallway to nod ‘hello.’ Her startling combination of dark hair, light brown skin, and clear blue eyes had arrested him; her ample bosom, slim waist, and curvy hips had set his blood on fire. But it was her expression that had utterly unhinged him. Her smile, and the way it lit up her eyes, had seemed to encapsulate so many of the simple pleasures he’d been missing from his existence for so long—happiness, peace, comfort, warmth. The encounter, brief as it had been, had rattled him to the very core, but he had done his best to conceal his powerful response, striding past Jessica with nary a glance at her, or even the hint of a return nod.
Her countenance had been emblazoned across his mind, though. He had spent a lot of time thinking about her since then.
Particularly once the sun rose, and Nathan went to bed. Then his fantasies would sometimes take on such vivid dimensions, he could have sworn he felt her silky thighs wrapped around his waist and heard her voice screaming out his name…
He’d had the feeling they would get along quite well.
Still, he had known he would never be able to confirm that conjecture. Despite the pull of his desire, he’d vowed to stay away from her. As far away as he could, anyway, given that he lived right across the hall from her. If he avoided her, he’d decided, she wouldn’t get hurt because of him.
Now here she was, though, in the clutches of a mad nosferatu, most likely about to get killed, and it was most certainly his fault. He should never have involved her in the plot against Celia, much less allowed her to come here and put herself in danger.
You are a horrible, despicable person, Nathan Smith, he silently cursed himself.
Then again, he wasn’t a person at all anymore, was he? He was a monster, and everything he touched was condemned. Doomed to be corrupted by the evil harboring inside him. He’d been a fool to forget it for even a moment, and the fact that he had only increased his disgust with himself. Maybe when all this was over, assuming he survived, he would convince Kiefer to put a stake through his heart and be done with it. That was likely the only way Nathan would ever be able to prevent anyone being harmed again because of him.
Across the room, Celia was still having a field day. Flaunting her increasing strength, she used the power of her mind to snatch a broken table leg from the floor. “This is for you, dearest,” she said, and pressed the splintered wood into Jessica’s hand. “Much fiercer than those piddling toothpicks you’d brought along with you, isn’t it? Better suited to taking down a monster of Nathan’s caliber. Now you take that across the room there and stab him in the heart with it. There’s a good girl.” She used telekinesis to sweep a path clean on the floor, and then nudged Jessica with a faux-friendly pat on the back.
Jessica, her eyes heavy-lidded and her lips sagging open, started forward, the makeshift stake raised in her hand. She took jerky steps across the carpet, as though some part of her were still fighting Celia’s mind control. Tears tracked down her face, and Nathan’s heart broke to see them. He lifted one boot off the floor, intending to engage his super-speed and try to snatch her away to safety, but Celia instantly noticed. The master telekinetically dragged his foot back to the floor. He could feel her psychic hold slithering around him then, like an iron band digging into his chest. He pushed against it, testing, and found he could still move his arms, but his legs were stuck fast. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Celia scolded him, wagging her finger. “Try anything like that again and I’ll snap her neck from here.”
Nathan gritted his teeth. It dismayed him to feel how powerful the master still was, even after all her time spent in the ground. Her brief feeding frenzy had done much to restore her. He could feel gaps in her hold on him, to be sure—chinks in the armor, as it were—but they were unstable and too difficult for him to pinpoint. He was nowhere near as adept with magic as Kiefer, and he was too afraid to try any spells against Celia when he couldn’t be sure they would work. Not with Jessica’s safety at stake.
“You’ll have to kill her if you want to stop her,” Celia called out to him now, a twisted smile dancing on her lips. “If you want any chance of engaging with me—and oh, how I know you want that chance—you’ll have to come through her, my newest loyal body guard.”
Nathan knew it was true. Even if he could somehow break free of Celia’s telekinesis, if he tried again to grab Jessica, or to make his way past her, the master would force the girl to do battle with him. To the death. She would never relent, and Nathan would have to destroy her if he wanted to get
