Her black eyes were wide, and her pale hand shook. Stretching up on her tiptoes, she slashed the knife through the ropes holding him upright.
He crashed down.
“Hold on,” she groaned, her arms encircling him as she helped him to the ground. She smelled like spiced oranges, and his stomach growled. They hit with a thump. She shook her head. “You got blood all over me.”
“Sorry,” he slurred.
She reached into her pocket for a large coffee mug. “Here’s a fresh dose.” Gently, she put the cup to his lips.
The scent of fresh, female blood had his fangs shooting down. Opening his mouth, he drank deeply until the mug was emptied. For the past few days, every time he’d been alone, somebody had secretly delivered him fresh blood. Nourishment from a different female each time. Willa was paying a fortune to buy him blood. “Why are you helping me?”
She shrugged. “Maybe I’m a nice person. Maybe I think you’ll help me get away from my psychotic brother.”
Yeah, Suri was a freaking nut job. “I’ll help you.”
Hope filled her porcelain face. “You’ll mate me?”
His retina began to repair itself, and his ribs clicked back into alignment. “We don’t need to mate. I can save you.” The face in the wall snorted. Actually snorted.
Willa sighed. “You can’t even save yourself.”
The rock face nodded in agreement.
“What do you know?” Jase growled at the rock.
Willa stiffened and then glanced around the room. “Who are you talking to?”
“Nobody. You need to go—if he catches you in here. . .” Jase ripped the rope bindings into small pieces so Suri wouldn’t know a knife had been used. Even so, Jase slipped the knife out of Willa’s pocket. He’d get free, and then he’d get her free.
She nodded. “Okay. But we’re going to have to move soon—he’s sending me away in a week.”
“We will.”
As the demon slipped out of the room, Jase pocketed the knife. It was time—do or die.
CHAPTER 24
Amber shivered next to Kane as the helicopter slowly lowered toward the ground. Dawn was breaking over the mountains, sending spirals of pinks and golds across the morning sky.
He slid an arm around her shoulder, tucking her closer. Warmth cascaded off him, and her body relaxed against her will.
The man was a killer. A cold, merciless killer. Yet when he held her, she almost felt safe.
Life used to be so black and white. Killing was bad, nurturing was good. But Kane was a good man. The spinning in her mind was making her dizzy. Her eyes felt like someone had shoved chalk in them. Dry and painful. She hacked out a dry cough.
Kane tightened his hold. “We’ll get water and electrolytes in you the second we land. You need nourishment.” His cool palm pressed against her forehead. “You’re still warm. Damn fever.”
Yeah, but she’d succeeded this time. Kind of. If one considered using their own mind, a gift from God, to harm people. Yeah, that’s who she had become. “What I did, it hurt that demon.” Not only did she know she hurt him, she’d felt the pain as if it were her own. She’d shared agony with a demon. Agony she created.
Kane pressed a kiss to her head. “I know.”
She shook her head. Now that she could think clearly and wasn’t trying to harm evil beings, her heart hurt for the injured people they’d found. “I don’t understand why you sent those poor people to the other hospital and not the good one.”
He sighed. “All the hospitals are good. Chances are they wanted to know the location of the one hospital we keep secret so they could report back to the demons.”
“That’s unfair. Those poor people were tortured by demons.” How could he not understand?
Sadness and determination curled his lip. “I know, sweetheart. They were tortured and probably turned. We’ll get them medical as well as psychological help to deprogram them. Trust me.”
The helicopter set down on the landing pad in the forest, and the vampires jumped out. Kane seemed to steel his shoulders before turning to hold out a hand.
She accepted his help, leaping to the ground. He cushioned her fall and held her until she regained her balance. There was something so darn sweet about him, her mind spun. He’d been so cold in sending those prisoners away, but maybe he was right that they needed psychological help. And she’d just seen him kill. Yet, he’d killed to protect her. She wasn’t proud of the fluttering butterflies in her abdomen about that.
As they neared the entrance to headquarters, Max stormed out, his gaze on her. “We have a problem—it’s your grandmother.”
Amber stumbled. “What’s wrong?”
Max glanced at Kane and then back at her. “Hilde’s gone.”
Fear slammed so hard through Amber that her head began to ring. Her grandmother was gone? “How is that possible? How long has she been gone?”
Kane propelled her into headquarters. “How many came for her?”
“You were right. Full contingency of demons. We sent her for a walk in the woods with someone looking like Oscar, in case they’ve been watching via satellite the last couple of days.” Max marched along next to them toward the open elevator.
All sound, all reality stopped.
Kane nudged her into the elevator and pushed a button. “Thanks.”
Max nodded, his hard face concerned as the door closed.
Amber took several shallow breaths. “You were right?” Her voice rose at the end.
“Yes.”
She kept her gaze straight ahead to keep herself from screaming. Betrayal burned hotter than fear down her throat. “Please explain.”
“Your grandmother approached Dage with a plan.”
The doors opened. Amber moved into the familiar hallway as if she was half-awake. “A plan.”
“Yes. She’s a demon destroyer, and if the demons got ahold of her, they’d probably head right to their headquarters.”
“Where they’re probably holding Jase.”
“Yes. We figured they’d lead us to him.”
Rage shot nerves to life just under her skin. “What about my grandmother?”
“She wanted to go.” Kane shoved open the door to the rec room.
Hurt joined the anger. Why hadn’t Hilde confided in her? Amber slid her hand along the clean bar toward a set of pretty wineglasses. Her fingers wrapped around a stem. “So there was a plan in place.”
“We figured the demons would strike while we were falling into their trap. The plan was Hilde’s idea.” Admiration filled Kane’s low tone.
“So you let my grandmother be kidnapped by the demons.” The very monsters that had almost broken Amber’s brain.
“Yes.”
She swung. No thought, no rationality, she just swung as hard as she could for his face. The wineglass impacted his cheekbone, shattering into pieces. Blood welled in a slight cut.
He could’ve stopped her. A vampire’s reflexes had to be much quicker than a human’s. But he allowed her to make contact. To smash the glass into his skin.
Slowly, one dark eyebrow rose. “Feel better?”
No. If anything, she felt worse. She dropped the worthless wine-stem to the rug. “You would never sacrifice your family like this.”
He blinked. “You’re wrong. I have and probably will again sacrifice my family for this war.”
“You had no right,” she forced out, her lungs heating.
“She offered, and we really didn’t have much of a choice.”
Wait a minute. The air compressed in Amber’s solar plexus. “When you saw Jase wasn’t in the cell—when you told Talen to make the call. The call was to let the demons take my grandmother.”