Sex, Lies, and Vampires

stairs from Belinda's apartment to the outside door. He was a shadow on the dark stairs, being clad in his coat and hat, with a black scarf that Belinda had dug out of a closet wrapped around the lower part of his face. 'We've been dealt a few blows, but we're still on top. It's all going to be downhill from here, just you wait and see!'

I reached for the doorknob, jumping away as it suddenly swung open toward me.

A man in a black overcoat and hat loomed in the doorway. Behind him, a woman in sunglasses limped toward the door.

Christian stared at me in surprise—probably the same amount of surprise that was visible on my face.

Only I was quicker. I lunged forward, shoving him backward through the door, slamming it shut and twisting the deadbolt closed as I quickly traced the binding ward on the door.

'They found us!' I hissed over my shoulder to Adrian. He didn't need any further explanation. He grabbed my wrist and started dragging me back up the stairs to Belinda's apartment.

I grabbed the newel post to stop my ascent, my gaze riveted on the door. I watched with amazement as the ward I had drawn began to unravel, the green ward dissolving bit by bit. Right before my eyes!

'What the hell?' I pulled myself free from Adrian and ran the few steps to the door, touching the unraveled end of the ward, quickly redrawing it into the pattern of binding.

The ward glowed green for a second, started to fade, then glowed again as it once more began to unravel.

'Nell, leave it! There is a back way out of Belinda's flat!'

I touched the ward with the tip of my finger, gritting my teeth as it fought my touch. 'You go,' I said, focused on the recalcitrant ward. 'I'll stay here and hold the door.'

'I am not going to leave you,' he snarled, jumping down the stairs to grab me.

'It's that Allie woman,' I said, fighting with the ward to keep it from undrawing any more. 'She's trying to unmake it on the other side of the door.'

'Nell, leave it. We must escape now.'

I twisted the unraveled edge of the ward back onto itself, tying it in a knot, watching it for a second to make sure Allie wasn't going to be able to undo it quickly. The ward quivered and strained, but held.

'I don't think so,' I said, facing Adrian. 'No, listen to me, I think we should split up. They don't want me, they want you. You go up to Belinda's and slip out the back. I'll keep Little Miss Wardypants busy here so they can't get in until you've gotten safely away.'

'I will not leave you,' he growled as he grabbed me. I allowed myself to droop against him for a moment, brushing my mouth against his.

I appreciate the macho he-man protective instincts, Adrian, but this time you're going to have to conquer them. You know as well as I do that Christian and Allie won't harm me. I'm in no danger, so you can stop bristling with indignation over the thought of us splitting up.

I will not leave you. I will not throw you to their mercies.

My lips drifted over to his jaw. It wasn't Christian who wanted to kill me, it was Sebastian. I swear to you, I will be safe. Now that I went to all the trouble of believing six impossible things before breakfast, White Rabbit, I don't intend on losing you.

Hasi—

Go. I will meet you later, at the British Museum.

Where will you go? He was weakening. His need to protect me warred with the realization that what I said was true, but it was touch and go there as to whether or not his heart or his head would win out.

The one place a vampire can't go—a church.

His sigh brushed my mind as he pulled away from me. 'Dark Ones can enter churches, Hasi. We are damned, but not demons.'

'Oh.' I glanced at the ward. It was beginning to fray at the opposite end as Allie worked to unmake it. I had a few seconds, nothing more. 'I'll go to the US Embassy, OK? That's got to be the most secure place in London. I'll meet you at the British Museum just after sunset.'

'Nell, if we separate, we won't be able to merge.'

That stopped me for a few seconds. I have never thought of myself as an overly clingy person, but since meeting Adrian, I felt any separation greatly. It was almost as if a part of my consciousness were missing. If I felt that way just by being in a different room from him, what would it be like with the entire city between us?

The door behind me shook with a blow. I had no choice.

'Go!' I shoved him up the first couple of stairs, leaping back to the door to wrestle with the ward. The knot I had tied slipped free. Reluctantly Adrian stared up the stairs. 'Adrian?'

He paused at the top, swathed in so much black he almost faded into the shadows.

'I love you.'

His head jerked, but whether in acknowledgement or disagreement I'll never know. The ward slipped through my hands and almost completely unraveled. I grabbed the end of it, holding tight as Adrian pounded on Belinda's door. It opened, and he disappeared at the same moment the door in front of me bucked with the force of a hard blow. The ward twisted and squirmed in my hand, the sound of a large, angry vampire attacking the other side clearly audible. I held on to the ward as long as I could, trying to knot it again, but Allie had much more experience with wards than I. The entire ward melted in my hands as wood splintered. I leaped back out of the way as Christian threw himself at the door again, the wood giving way completely without the ward to hold it shut. I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed, with what I hoped was an insouciant look on my face. 'Fancy meeting you here.'

Christian snarled something in a vaguely familiar language as he rushed past me.

'Get a little too much sun?' I called after him, waggling a finger toward one side of his face where the skin of his neck and cheek were red. 'You'd better watch that. Skin cancer, you know.'

He ignored me. I looked past Allie as she marched in. 'What, no Sebastian?'

She paused at the bottom of the stairs, pulling off her dark glasses to glare at me. 'He can't tolerate the light at all. And if you had made my husband stay out in that sun one second longer, I would have decked you!'

I lifted my chin, refusing to allow her to intimidate me. 'You could try.'

She snorted before limping up the stairs after Christian. 'Don't tempt me.'

I waited until Belinda answered the pounding knocks Christian was delivering to her door before turning and slowly walking out the now destroyed front door into the cheerful light of a rare sunny day.

Chapter Sixteen

With the morning came the usual London hustle and bustle—cars, buses, and people all hurried up and down the streets, everyone moving with purpose and a sense of belonging. The scent of diesel mingled with more enticing odors drifting from a nearby bakery. My stomach rumbled as I clutched tighter the paper bag of food Belinda had pressed on me. There would be time to eat it once I found a safe place to hole up in. I wandered around to the back of the block-long building in which the pub was located just in case Adrian had hung around waiting for me, but he wasn't there.

'Whoa!' I jumped back in surprise as Christian landed suddenly on the ground in front of me, having leaped, I assumed, from the second-story balcony outside Belinda's apartment.

He jerked his coat up around his neck, pulling low over his head an Indiana Jones-ish hat as he glanced upward. 'You stay here, Allegra. I will follow the trail of the Betrayer.'

I looked up as well. Allie leaned over the balcony and yelled down, 'He's not worth it, Christian! I know your tolerance of the sunlight is growing, but it's not strong enough for you to go haring around London!'

'Perhaps I won't need to chase him. Perhaps this one will tell me where he is hiding.' His head turned to look at me. Before I could do so much as blink, he had my neck in a painful grip, his face near mine, his black eyes narrowed. Suddenly he stopped, sniffing the air a couple of times.

'You have Joined with the Betrayer?' he asked, releasing my neck.

I stepped back, rubbing my bruised skin. 'Not that it's any of your business, but, yes, I have. And I'd