Would she murder him?

"Over the years you've walked a wide path around me when you could have easily slain me," she whispered, so others would not hear. "I offer you the same regard."

Her eyes glinted with unnatural light, a silvery shard of hunger. "I wish you no harm physically. My mark would mean little for one so proud and one who walks alone. Were you in a pack, it would be different. I'd drink you until you moaned for me to satisfy you."

She spoke truths. A vampire mark would mean little to him now-unless he ever wished to start a new pack. Should she bite him, he would feel it as a human would. As an intense o.r.g.a.s.mic draw at the core of his being, one that commanded he submit.

The idea of succ.u.mbing to this b.i.t.c.h's persuasion brought bile to his throat.

"Besides-" Elvira tilted up his chin "-there's another who'll wish to take a bite out of you soon enough."

She propped her hands at her hips. The pale globes of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were the only discernible shape on her black-cloaked figure. "Come on, boys. Our work here is finished."

Turning, she marched off, her sycophants in tow.

The whip dragged across his shoulders, slicing his jacket and jerking him forward to the ground. He landed, digging his fingers into the pummeled gra.s.s and clutching dirt.

Severo could only repeat the words she'd said over and over until he understood them.

...another who'll wish to take a bite out of you...

"Bella!"

Rage twisted Severo as he made a quick s.h.i.+ft. Within moments, the werewolf howled out its anger. Vampires had hurt it. Yet though it could sense that they were close, it did not seek to track them.

A stronger scent drew it into a loping race across the field, toward the house.

The patio door was smashed in. The granite coffee table lay on the patio flagstones, on top of the shattered gla.s.s.

The werewolf charged across the debris. Gla.s.s shards pierced its paws, yet it did not slow down. Barking at the fierce cuts to its flesh, it trotted into the living room.

A thin streak of crimson ran across one couch cus.h.i.+on. The werewolf knew that scent. It was tainted with cloves. The scent briefly calmed it. Her. Its mate. Where was she? Was she harmed?

Calm turned to rage.

Rus.h.i.+ng through the kitchen, it followed a trail of broken dishes and a crack in the wall where a force must have punched through.

Moving quickly, it took the steps downstairs, scenting blood so strongly, it growled and punched the walls as it made it to the laundry room.

Not a wolf or vampire, but not a human, either.

Not your mate.

It loped upstairs. Closing its eyes, it twisted its neck, scenting the air. Longtooths. Three of them dead. Others, no longer in the house, had left a scent trail that led toward the front door, which hung on one hinge.

Another scent grabbed at it. Mate.

Down the hall.

Inside the room with a bed the werewolf found her. The limp, bloodied body of its mate lay across the tousled white sheets.

A howl birthed from its core and vibrated through its entire being.

Severo shook off the sharp tingles of the s.h.i.+ft and became instantly alert on the floor before the bed.

He clutched his foot and gripped the gla.s.s shard that had penetrated all the way through the top of his foot. Growling as he pulled it out, he tossed it aside. Blood spilled from his foot, but he gave it no mind.

He spied a body on the bed-and let out a cry.

Clenching a fist, he wondered if Elvira's minions had finally done what they'd set out to do that night of the chase. Please, they must not have raped her. He would tear those vampires limb from limb, and then...But no, she'd been placed on the bed.

Perhaps she had not been violated, after all.

She moaned, and he lunged to the bed and leaned over her. "Bella, I'm here."

"I did it. Killed...vampires." Her voice cracked and her head fell back as he lifted her by the shoulders.

A pile of ash on the other side of the bed startled him.

"Good girl. You got them. I'm sorry. I don't know how they made it through the wards. I was outside. There were so many of them. Bella, you're bleeding."

He reached to flick on the lamp. Just leaning over her, filling his senses with her blood, sickened him. He should have been inside to protect her. What h.e.l.l had she gone through while he was out batting around vampires?

What he'd thought a head injury was quickly revealed to be neck wounds when the light gleamed across her side. Thick, viscous blood glittered. It had begun to coagulate, but there was so much, he couldn't tell if she'd been slashed or stabbed.

His heart knew it hadn't been a weapon of steel that had harmed her.

Fingers shaking, Severo touched the blood. He winced when the nature of the two wounds was revealed. Teeth marks.

Gathering her into his arms, he rushed into the bathroom and deposited her in the tub. As water filled the tub, he tore her clothing from her and tossed it behind him. He tugged down a towel from the bar and plunged it into the water.

Scrubbing the towel over the wounds on her neck, he wasn't sure what he could accomplish. He only knew he had to wash away the blood.

Chapter 18.

E merging from a groggy dream of ash-filled air and snarling fangs, Bella blinked and groaned. Was she underwater? Her skin was wet, yet the pressure of the water did not pull her down. The steamy scent of lemons made her wonder if she was in the bathroom.

Opening her eyes, she saw her lover sitting there, his shoulders bowed, his hands hanging between his bent knees. There was such intensity in his eyes. They were what had held her since day one. A promise of truth, trust and honor lived there in Severo's eyes.

Beyond him, she saw a strange disaster. The doorway had a big bite out of it. A force had punched the wall and taken out part of the door frame and Sheetrock. b.l.o.o.d.y footprints led from the bedroom to the bathroom tiles.

Every part of her ached and her muscles had been stretched beyond their capacity. But of course, after battling a houseful of crazed vampires, what did one expect?

"Oh my G.o.d, the vampires." When she tried to move, her hand slipped on the edge of the porcelain tub and she fell back into the water. "What the h.e.l.l?"

Now she realized Severo sat on the toilet lid, not reacting to her distress, but waiting patiently. He wore only jeans. Watery blood pooled at his bare feet. His face was dirty and his shoulder had blood on it.

"Why am I in here?" she asked. "Why am I all wet?" She followed his gaze over the floor. A pile of b.l.o.o.d.y towels sat heaped before the vanity.

"I had to clean the wound," he offered in a raw, quiet voice. "It's still bleeding. It was left unsealed. I...couldn't take it away. I'm sorry."

She shoved herself up but the slick tub kept her sliding to a reclined position. "Wound? Your shoulder?"

"No, sweet. You."

"Was I cut? None of them had weapons. I ran from them. Took a few out with those wooden bullets and a stake. They got Heloise. Oh, Severo, Heloise."

She slapped a palm to her forehead, and when she thought the tears would come, she realized she had gone beyond them. Her chest heaved. Sorrow for the fallen housekeeper prodded her sympathy, but she had abandoned tears sometime after that first vampire had been staked.

Among her thoughts she remembered what Severo had said.

"What do you mean, 'left unsealed'?" she asked him.

Why didn't he just hug her? More than anything she wanted him to hold her and make her know everything was all right. That the vamps were all gone. They were alive. That meant they had won, right?

"Saliva is necessary to seal the wound and prevent the vampire taint from rus.h.i.+ng into the bloodstream," he explained. "You don't remember?"

Standing, he loomed over her. He had blood all over him-at the corner of his eye, on his shoulder and at his abdomen. Blood had dripped onto his jeans. Not from fresh wounds. Streaks of dried blood from earlier wounds that had rapidly healed.

"Bella..."

He sucked in a breath. His eyes s.h.i.+fted up and along the shower curtain rod, searching for something. The pulse of his jaw, which she had once thought so s.e.xy, now disturbed her.

"You've been bitten. And there's nothing I can do to reverse the imminent change," he blurted.

She gripped her neck and flinched at the pain. Slippery blood coated her fingers. "A vampire bit me?"

She met her lover's tired gaze and he nodded. "I'm going to tend to Heloise. She should not be left as she is. You'll be fine until I return?"

Fine? What was fine? She'd been bitten by a vampire. Was she going to change? Would she die? Would she want to drink blood?

Severo awaited her reply. Why wasn't he holding her?

If she closed her eyes and opened them again, would this crazy nightmare go away?

"Bella?"

She nodded, though she couldn't meet his tired eyes. "Sure. Fine."

And he walked from the room without bowing to kiss her or offering to help her out of the tub.Was he horrified by her?

"He hates vampires," she murmured. Sliding a finger along her neck to feel at the gaping tooth marks, she now found tears. "Will he hate me?"

Severo jogged downstairs. A sense that he had been here recently-as the werewolf-put up his hackles.

As suspected, he did not find Heloise's body in the laundry room. The ichor pool glittered brilliantly, and he knew that, by some strange and magical means, her body had returned to Faerie, whence it had come.

He knelt before the devastation.

Sheets were shredded, some spattered with red. It could only be vampire blood. So Heloise had put up a fight? Good girl.

Closing his eyes and bringing his joined palms up to his face, he wondered what he could say, then knew it would be better to say nothing. Thanks for all she had done for him would be inappropriate. It was a bittersweet moment.

He slammed the laundry room door closed behind him and made a hasty retreat to the kitchen. Piles of vamp ash sat among the debris of broken furniture, of his life.

How many vampires had gone after Bella? There must have been as many inside the house as outside.

How had they breached the wards? And the locks?

Looking around, he realized he did not know where to begin. How did one make things right when they were so wrong?

She is wrong now.

Catching his balance against the kitchen counter, he gasped in a breath. Wrong? No, not his Bella.

"Please, let her be right."

He placed a call to the cleaners, who promised they'd arrive within the hour.

Well and fine. He should probably tend his own wounds. Not that it mattered. They'd all healed-save the gaping gash through his heart.

"Bella," he whispered. "Bella."

Not wrong. Never wrong.

The wards and locks would have to wait before he could figure out why they had failed. He wouldn't need them now. He sensed Elvira had gotten exactly what she'd wanted, and would not return.

And what had she won from this round of battle? She would turn the one thing Severo most loved into the one thing he most hated.

"Masterful revenge," he muttered, then kicked aside a bloodied couch cus.h.i.+on.

The patio-door gla.s.s clinked beneath his boot toe. Suns.h.i.+ne tickled across the shards of safety gla.s.s as if they were large pieces of faerie dust. Poor Heloise. She was an innocent.

As was Bella.He snapped a finger against a shard stuck in the door frame. Soaring through the air, it landed and slid across the pool tarp.

"I should go to her."