Mara watched in horror as Jones pressed the blade closer to the gremlin’s throat. Lucien’s eyes blazed with fury.
“She’ll die slow and painfully, unless you volunteer to replace her.” Jones’s face became an ugly mask. “You’re much greater a prize, Mara.”
Petra’s frantic gaze sought hers. She was just a kid, who would die if Mara didn’t take her place.
“I’m going to rip you to shreds for this.” Lucien quivered with rage, but did not move. A snarl tore from his throat.
Jones was a raving lunatic. Mara held out her hands in a gesture of peace. “I’m not evil. Why have you hunted and stalked me? I never harmed anyone. All I wanted was a normal life. An ordinary college student, living like anyone else. Please, let her go.”
Red suffused Jones’s face. “You could never be normal!”
Stunned, she stared as lowered the knife from Petra’s throat. Her demon half noticed. Stunned, she felt white light and dark meld together.
“I knew you from the Society’s records. I’ve kept track. All the time you remained in seclusion, I waited. Watched. I knew as soon as you tried to enter society, you would endanger the populace. You are the spawn of the devil.”
Horrified, she dropped her hands. In her quest for a normal life, she had condemned herself. And this lunatic knew it, waited for the time when she’d emerge. “The Society is supposed to protect paranormal beings!”
“I’m not associated with them and my mission is to free the human race of those like you. You’re a deviant, conceived in a sinful mating.” He gestured with the knife to Petra. “Like her.”
“She’s a gremlin!”
“Petra was whelped from a vampire, and a gremlin father. Evil.”
“No Jones. You are the evil one.” Lucien’s quiet, controlled voice was steady as a rock, while she shook inside. How could he remain so calm, she wondered.
“You say that only because Petra’s your niece,” Jones snapped.
“Lucien? Petra’s your niece?” she whispered.
He made no response, but a muscle jumped in his neck, betraying his fury.
It made sense now. The way he protected her, spoiled her. Feared for Petra when he feared nothing. “You didn’t tell me. Why? Because you didn’t trust me?”
“I was going to tell you, Mara. Tell you everything. I do trust you.” Lucien fisted his hands and she saw how badly they shook. “I did not trust my own rage at Jones.”
He drew a deep breath. “My sister fell in love with a gremlin, an illegal mating. She and my brother-in-law died when Petra was a baby and made me her guardian. The Society warned of dire consequences if Petra misbehaved. One night I forgot to lock her in her room while I was with my lover. Petra escaped and bit a neighbor and his wife, nearly exposing our kind to the human world. The Society put a bounty on her head. She was four years old.”
His jaw was stone, his eyes dark ice. “They agreed to lift it if I joined their force of soldiers. My assignment was to kill a Darklighter.”
Mara’s heart hammered in her chest. “The Darklighter, the woman you told me about, the one they ordered you to destroy.”
Anger glimmered in his eyes. “The woman the Society’s advisor ordered destroyed. One Dennis Jones.”
“He’s human!”
“And a powerful psychic. Jones drew the attention of the Society through his work with various police departments. The Society hired him to find a rogue werewolf evading their best trackers. He found the rogue in time to save a family’s life. They decided to hire him permanently and sealed his lips against telling the truth about our world. In return, they cast a mirror spell to protect him. If anyone tried hurting him, the pain would come back to them in double.”
Lucien’s expression darkened. “But he had his own agenda and his own view of what was evil. He framed a Darklighter and accused her of killing humans.” His voice broke. “Cornelia. My lover.”
Like pieces of a mosaic, the picture formed. Bile rose in her throat.
Jones bristled. “She deserved to die. I knew she was evil, because all Darklighters have a demon within them. I ordered her destruction. He refused, even after seeing evidence she had killed.”
“You set her up,” Lucien said tightly. “The bloody shirt in her house, the bodies…all from a human serial killer. Not her. Cornelia never hurt anyone.”
“I had to force your hand.” Jones looked surprised. “You were too blind to see what I did. I gave you a choice. Kill Cornelia or the hunters would rip Petra to shreds. You made the right choice, Lucien, just as I knew you would.”
Pain rippled over Mara in waves of hot anguish. Lucien’s pain. He had killed his lover, thinking she was evil, to save his niece. No wonder he refused to open his heart to Mara. Because it had already been shattered with that terrible choice he’d been forced to make.
“It wasn’t until the real killer confessed to authorities that I realized I’d been duped. I beat Jones bloody. I should have broken his neck, but couldn’t without killing myself as well. I couldn’t leave Petra alone and unprotected.”
“I can’t believe you got away with this!” Infuriated, she glared at the psychic.
“All they could do was mark him as a warning to others. The mark was invisible to humans. Jones disguised it to capture you, pretending it was a head wound,” Lucien told her.
Mara felt Lucien’s frustrated rage in their shared blood link. He longed to dispatch Jones so the human would never again hurt another. Yet this powerful Ancient could not touch the man. She marveled at Lucien’s control. For years, he’d reined in his own temper and desire for revenge. Now she understood what the vampire meant when he’d told her to find balance. Because he’d been forced to quell his own burning need for justice.
“I’m going to tear your throat out,” Lucien growled.
“No Lucien,” Mara cried out. “The rules. You can’t kill him without killing yourself.”
“Fuck the rules.” Lucien started forward, fangs descending in a virulent hiss.
Grabbing his arm, she hung on, trying to draw him back. It was like trying to stop a wave from crashing ashore. “There has to be another way, there has to be.”
And then Lucien stopped. He glanced at her with a slight smile.
“Yes. There is.”
Lucien had wanted to kill Dennis Jones for 48 long years. And each year that had passed, he learned to live with himself, with the guilt over killing Cornelia, and following an archaic set of rules no longer holding him fast.
Jones smiled slowly. He gestured with the knife. “Can’t touch me, vampire. I know the rules. I helped dictate them.”
Cruelty twisted the man’s prune-like face. Jones cackled as the knife hovered near Petra. Lucien studied his enemy with calm detachment.
I’m forbidden from hurting you.
But I’m not forbidden from you hurting yourself….
Lucien felt his powers surge. “This is for Cornelia. And for Petra, and Mara. And for all the innocents you wanted to hurt.”
The physic blanched. “You can’t hurt me.”
“I’m not the one who will hurt you.”
Into the man’s mind Lucien tunneled, culling out all Jones’s sick thoughts. He spun these into a vortex, encasing them in a house of mirrors so the man had no choice—he had to look deep inside himself.
Jones screamed and dropped the knife. He stood, staggering backwards, holding his head as if it would split open. “Make it stop,” he moaned. “Make it stop! I can’t stand it, it’s horrible!”
Dematerializing to Petra’s side, Lucien lifted her into his arms. Petra clasped his neck, burying her face into his shoulder with terrified sobs. She shifted back into a gremlin, her pointed ears sagging.
“I was so scared! The fire, and then when you went inside after Mara, and she ran after you to save you…”
Lucien glanced at his lover. “You tried to save me?”
“You were so strong, running into the fire when you knew fire could kill you. I had to do something, and your courage gave me the strength to do it,” Mara told him.
Something eased in his chest. “Thank you.” He set Petra down as she shifted into a teenager again. “Honey, I want you to go into the house, take a bath and calm down. The police will be here soon and you’re green again. I don’t want them freaking out. Will you be okay?”
Sniffling, she nodded. Then she ran over and hugged a startled Mara, who hugged her back.
“You saved Lucien and I’ll never forget that. Thank you, Mara. Anything I have is yours.” She hesitated. “Well, except maybe the red Jimmy Choos.”
“Petra, they’re cinders now,” Lucien reminded her.
At her crestfallen expression he added, “But I’ll rebuild and then we’ll go shopping and buy you enough shoes to fill a closet. Deal?”
“Deal.” Petra beamed.
As the gremlin raced toward the house, Mara gestured to Jones, who had dropped to the ground, writhing in apparent agony. “What happened?”
Lucien’s expression tightened. “I touched his mind and mirrored his own thoughts. He could no longer hide from himself. I did not destroy Jones. He’s self-destructing and will never hurt anyone again.”
Fishing a cell phone from his pocket, he dialed 9-1-1 and reported that an unbalanced man had set fire to his garage. “The fire is extinguished, but he’s quite insane and babbling about vampires, demons and space aliens. Please hurry.”
As he thumbed off the phone, Mara raised her eyebrows. “Space aliens?”
“Thought I’d toss that in for good measure.”
He cupped her blackened face, his gaze tender. His kiss was a brush against her mouth, and then he deepened it, wrapping his arms around her as if fearing to let go.
She wished he never would.
Strapped to a gurney and sedated, Jones was hauled away by ambulance. They were taking him to the psychiatric wing of a nearby hospital. When forced to confront the true evil, the man’s mind had turned on him.
As Lucien predicted, the psychic would never hurt anyone again.
They’d showered and quickly dressed. Now Mara paced the study while Lucien put the director of the Society on speaker phone. Sitting at the carved mahogany desk, he explained what had happened to Jones. His sculpted features tightened as he glanced at her.
“I met the terms of the assignment and have demands of my own, Stamos. I will no longer work for the Society unless you grant Petra and Mara an order of permanent protection against any future or past actions.”
“Can’t do that,” the voice droned over the speaker.
“Cannot or will not?”
“Petra and Mara are already under the order. It was issued the moment I left your house after you agreed to mate with Mara.”
Shocked, she whirled and stared at the phone. “But what about the bounty hunters?”
“They were to intimidate you into joining with Lucien. Nothing more. They’ve been recalled.”
“You bastard, you lied to me,” Lucien breathed.
“It’s in the job description,” the director admitted. “What else do you expect? You’re free from future assignments, Lucien. Now go celebrate your new lives. But Mara, ah, if I were you, I’d skip the wine.”
A bolt of white energy slammed into the phone as Lucien flicked a hand. It exploded in a shower of plastic, smoke rising from the ruined instrument. He gave it a rueful look.
“I always did prefer my BlackBerry.”