"Don't open your eyes, you might faint again."
Those were the first words Lissianna heard. Her eyes had been fluttering in preparation of opening as she regained consciousness, but she squeezed them tightly closed and took a slow breath. "Greg?"
"Yes."
"You're on my right?" Lissianna asked, though she could tell he was from the direction his voice was coming. She asked the question simply to make him speak again. She hadn't been quite awake when he'd first spoken, and the word "yes" was nothing to judge by, but Lissianna thought his voice sounded a little odd.
"Yes. I guess that makes me your right-hand man." The words were followed by a forced chuckle. By her guess the sound was coming through his teeth, as was his speech. The man had his teeth clenched, telling her he was in horrible pain.
She turned her head to the left, opened her eyes and found herself staring out on a sunny backyard. There was no sign of either Father Joseph or Dwayne, and Lissianna was sure that she and Greg were presently alone in the glassed-in sunporch.
When she turned her head just a little more, Lissianna was able to see that she was seated, leaning against the only nonglass wall in the sunroom. Her arms were drawn up over her head, hanging by chains attached to her wrists. She was chained to the wall.
"Shades of medieval England," she muttered, then asked Greg, "Are you chained to the wall as well?"
"Yes."
Lissianna nodded. "What happened? Why didn't they kill us?"
"Well, your fainting at the sight of blood rather confused them since it doesn't fit with their image of a big bad vampire," he said with derision. "Now they don't know what to think. Father Joseph was in a state. He didn't know what to do, but he had to go and couldn't give it the time he felt it deserved at the moment, so they decided to chain us up until he deals with this emergency at the shelter."
"You mean they don't believe we're vampires anymore and still just took off and left you wounded and bleeding?" Lissianna asked with amazement.
"Yeah, well that's the thing," Greg said, and Lissianna was now positive he was talking through gritted teeth. "Your Father Joe rushed forward to help me after you fainted. He opened my shirt and started mopping up the blood, then he and Dwayne got into an argument about whether to call for an ambulance or not. Father Joseph was insisting they should, I think he was falling for the story after all. Dwayne didn't want to--he was afraid he'd go to jail for shooting me. Father Joseph finally convinced him to call, then turned back to tend my wound again and noticed it had gotten smaller. He told Dwayne to hang up."
"Oh dear," Lissianna murmured.
"Yeah," Greg agreed on a weary sigh. "He was upset that the silver bullet didn't kill me... speaking of which, the bullet came out while they were arguing. How did it--?"
"The nanos would consider it a foreign body and work to get it out."
"Incredible." He sighed.
"Not really, the body does the same thing naturally with slivers and such." She glanced up at the chains again. "So they plan to take care of us when Father Joseph gets back?"
"Yes." He gave a breathless laugh. "The good news is, Father Joseph brought in the wood he mentioned and Dwayne is fashioning a stake from it even as we speak, so there will be no waiting. We can be staked together if that's what they decide in the end."
"Damn," Lissianna breathed.
"My sentiments exactly," Greg agreed. He fell silent, and she thought she heard the beginning of a groan before he silenced it. Concern eating at her, she closed her eyes, turned her head to the right, tipped it back, and opened her eyes. Lissianna let her breath out on a little sigh when she found herself staring at the wall and the glass ceiling that came out over them. Taking another deep breath, she slowly lowered her gaze until the top of his head came into view... then his forehead, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Lissianna paused once his whole face was in view, knowing that if she caught a glimpse of even a droplet of blood she'd faint again.
Now that she could see him, she was almost sorry she'd looked. Between his wound and the sun, Greg was in a bad way. He leaned against the wall as she did, but with his head tipped back as if he found it too heavy to hold upright. His eyes were closed and his face so pale it was almost gray. It was also tight with pain. Greg was in desperate need of blood and suffering horribly.
Unaware that Lissianna was looking at him, he took a slow deep breath and managed a steady voice, as he said, "Maybe not. They might just stake me and not you. When he left, Father Joseph didn't know what to think. They believe I'm a vampire, but aren't sure what to make of you. They considered that you might be a very new vampire, and that's why you fainted when you saw the blood. Father Joe mentioned that if that was the case, you might return to your normal state if I was vanquished."
"Oh." Lissianna felt her heart squeeze as he stopped speaking and bit his lip against the pain. The stupid man was trying to be brave and not let her know how he was suffering. If it had been she, she'd have been screaming her head off and whiny as hell. Lissianna wasn't a huge fan of pain.
Deciding she had to get him out of there, she peered up and gave an experimental tug at the chains holding her arms to the wall as she said, "I'm surprised Dwayne didn't stay here and stand guard."
"He did, for a while," Greg said. "He sat here, grinning and carving his damned stake lor about half an hour, but then he got kind of freaked out and took off. I think he's carving his stake out front while he waits for Father Joseph to return."
"He got kind of freaked out?" Lissianna asked.
Greg gave a short harsh laugh. "It maybe had something to do with my threatening to rip his heart out of his chest and eat it."
"What?" she asked with a half laugh of disbelief.
"Well, I was in pain and cranky and not pleased that it was because of his not wanting to call an ambulance that they noticed the wound was shrinking," Greg excused himself, then added, "And the idiot was asking the stupidest damned questions."
"Like what?" Lissianna asked, hoping to keep him distracted from his pain.
"Questions like, what's it like 'doing' a vamp chick? And can a guy 'keep it up' longer once he's a vampire?" Greg shook his head with disgust. "The guy's a disgusting pathetic little loser. I can't believe you bit him."
Before Lissianna could respond to that, he asked, "It wasn't like when we--I mean, you didn't like--" He bit off his own words and shifted his position, only to wince in pain.
"It wasn't like it is when I bite you," Lissianna said gently, recognizing that he was jealous. She couldn't really blame him. All of their bites had included at least kissing and more often a lot more, she wasn't surprised that he might wonder if feeding was always like that for her.
"I never kissed Dwayne. In fact, kissing isn't usually a part of feeding for me, Greg. You were a special case," she informed him, then recalled that the man had tried to kiss her. Lissianna just hadn't responded Shrugging it away as unimportant, she continued, "And, as for his being an irritating loser, that just made me feel less guilty for biting him."
Greg gave another breathless laugh, then winced in pain and had to pause for a minute before he could say, "I can see how that would be the case. I wouldn't feel at all guilty for biting him."
"Maybe you'll get your chance," Lissianna murmured, and turned her gaze back to the chains, thinking that if she could get them loose, Dwayne would be lunch for Greg. Anemic or not, she hoped he would at least ease some of Greg's discomfort and give him a little strength so they could escape. Lissianna would then have to get home and send her mother and the others back. They could wipe Dwayne's memory, then wait for Father Joseph to return and take care of him, too. With their wariness of her she wouldn't be able to, but the men wouldn't recognize her mother, aunt, or uncle, and the older Argeneaus might be able to do what she couldn't.
"I suppose this means I'm definitely out of a job. I'll have to quit working at the shelter," Lissianna said to keep Greg talking. "I guess that takes care of the worry about our schedules conflicting."
"Yes. That's true." Greg gave a harsh laugh, then broke into a fit of coughing.
"Are you all right?" she asked with concern, when the fit passed.
"Yes. I just have a tickle in my throat. I need a drink. I feel so dry," he complained unhappily.
Lissianna's mouth tightened. It was the nanos, she knew. They would be sucking up the blood at an incredible rate, and his body would be leaching liquid from anywhere it could find it to create more blood to appease them. She didn't tell Greg that; instead, she turned her attention to examining the setup of the chains holding her to the walls.
There was really only one longish length of chain, she saw. It led from one of her wrists to the other and had been threaded through a ring attached to the wall. Lissianna studied the ring with interest, noting that it was one thick piece of metal shaped into a circle, but its ends weren't soldered together. If she applied enough pressure, she might be able to widen the gap where the ring ends met, perhaps even enough to slip her chain free. Her wrists would still be chained together, but she would be able to get up and perhaps get them out of there.
"So," Greg said, drawing her gaze carefully back down to him. "Just like in all the bad horror movies, here we end up, a couple of vampires, staked out in the sun... or in the sunporch as the case may be."
Lissianna gave a laugh, she couldn't help it, his tone was so sardonic. "All the very worst movies," she agreed. "Hollywood just doesn't understand us vampires."
"I think they're jealous," Greg announced. "All that money and success, and they still grow old and die."
"Yes," Lissianna agreed, but she wasn't finding it funny anymore. She'd lived two hundred years, Greg was only thirty-five and he hadn't even ever bitten anyone-- well, he'd bitten her, but that didn't count--and here he might die just for being one of her kind... and she had never even told him she loved him. Why hadn't she told him? Because of fear--the fear of making a mistake, the fear of being hurt. Well, she'd decided a couple of hours ago not to be afraid anymore, so it was time to tell him. It might be now or never.
"Greg," she said quietly.
"Yes?" He sounded weary and pained.
"Do you remember when you asked me about true life mates?"
"Yeah. You said your mother claimed there was a true life mate for each of you."
"I didn't tell you how we are to recognize them though, did I," she said solemnly. She didn't bother to wait for him to answer, but drew in a deep breath, then said, "We're supposed to recognize our true life mates by two things: we cannot read their minds and we cannot control them. Like I can neither read nor control you."
"I know," he said softly, drawing her startled gaze back to his face. He smiled despite his pain, and said, "Thomas told me."
"When?" she asked with surprise.
"Last night," he admitted, then added, "It made me feel better."
"It did? Why?"
"Because it made me realize that what I was feeling was probably meant to be."
Lissianna sighed wearily, "Was this meant to be, too, then?"
"Lissianna." He turned his head slowly to peer at her. His eyebrows rose when he saw that she was staring at him, but he said, "I don't regret anything. Even if I die today, I wouldn't have missed any of it for the world."
When she merely stared back at him, her face blank, Greg smiled and closed his eyes. "Lissianna, have you ever noticed how when you're happy, time seems to pass by fast, while when you're miserable it goes real slow?"
"Yes."
Greg opened his eyes. "Life would have been a blink with you whether it lasted a millennium or a month. I'm that happy when I'm with you."
He was saying he loved her, and Lissianna drew in a deep breath, but then held it, then let it nut slowly, and said, "I'm happy with you, too. I love you, Greg, and while my turning you doesn't automatically make you my life mate, I'd like you to be."
Greg's expression stilled, then slowly eased and a smile lit his eyes. "I do love you, and I'd like that, too," he said seriously. "I waited thirty-five years for you to come along and fell in love with you in a matter of a couple of days." He paused, then added sadly, "And I wish I could be your life mate. Forever wouldn't be long enough, but it doesn't matter since it looks like we don't have more than a couple hours." Greg shook his head. "I can't believe I'm going to lose you when I just found you."
"You aren't going to lose me," she said grimly.
"Aren't I?" he asked with disbelief.
"No," she said firmly. "We're getting out of here."
"And how are we going to manage that?"
He sounded exhausted and spent and he was starting to look as bloodless as a corpse. Lissianna knew he wouldn't stay conscious much longer. She felt anger well up within her and allowed it to come, mentally feeding it with the unfairness of the whole situation, deliberately building it into a fury that would add to her strength.
He'd waited thirty-five years? The question rang through her head. She'd waited over two hundred, and she'd be damned if anyone was taking him away from her, especially not a confused priest and that idiot keeping him company.
Glancing up, she grabbed ahold of her chains above her wrists, braced herself against the wall, and said, "Like this," as she suddenly threw herself forward, tugging at the chains with all her might.
"We're stronger than they are, Greg," she pointed out, as she straightened and examined the ring her chain was threaded through. A small smile pulled at her lips as Lissianna saw that there was now a small gap where the two ends of the ring met. It wasn't big enough to pull the chain free... Yet.
"I think we might be smarter than them, too, at least I know we're smarter than Dwayne." She threw herself forward again with another jerk, then straightened to see the gap had widened a little more.
"And I'm not going to allow either of us to be vanquished by an idiot who runs around with a fake tan and a cucumber in his pants." Lissianna jerked forward one more time and the gap widened enough that the chain slid free and slammed down on her head.
"Are you okay?" Greg asked. He was sounding more alert, she noted as she nodded and straightened. Hope was rousing him somewhat. Free from the wall, Lissianna started to turn toward him, then caught herself, remembering that she couldn't look at him. This could be tricky.
"This could be bad," Greg said, and she knew he was watching as she got to her feet and turned away from him until she was facing the wall.
"What could be bad?" she asked, stepping to the side until she bumped into his arm and could see the chains holding his own amis to the wall. His chain was longer, allowing his hands to lie at his sides. Lissianna grabbed the ring his chain was threaded through and examined it.
"This," Greg said. "Being saved by a girl. It could be bad for my ego. Guys aren't supposed to be saved by a girl."
Lissianna smiled faintly, relieved by the light tone to his voice. It was much healthier than the defeat that had claimed him earlier. "Your ego will survive," she assured him. "And you can save us next time if it will make you feel better."
"Geez, you mean this happens often?" he asked, as she let go of the ring and caught up his chain in both hands.
Lissianna chuckled and assured him, "Hardly ever." Then she braced one foot against the wall and pulled with all her might.
"What exactly does 'hardly ever' mean?" he asked sounding worried as she paused to examine her handiwork. "I should watch out for this kind of thing once every... say... fifty years?"
"Once every hundred or so," she answered, then pulled on the chain again. The gap widened even farther.
"Besides," Lissianna said as she readjusted her hold on the chain for another pull. "You already saved me once, when I was staked. This time was my turn."
She gave the chain one more pull and stumbled back a step, nearly losing her balance when the chain pulled free. Catching herself, Lissianna let go of his chains and braced her hand against the wall for a minute. Freeing them both had taken a lot of energy, and while she didn't think she'd been unconscious long, they'd been exposed to the sun for at least an hour by her guess. She was feeling the effects, too.
"Are you okay?" Greg asked.
"Yes," Lissianna said, trying to work out how she was going to get him out of there without seeing the blood on his chest and fainting. She heard a rattle and knew Greg was trying to get to his feet. She also knew he wouldn't be able to under his own steam. Pushing herself away from the wall, Lissianna knelt beside him and reached blindly to the side until she felt his arm, then she slid her hand under and held on to help him up.
"You're going to have to be my eyes," she told him, as they managed to make it upright. Closing her eyes, Lissianna turned so that she could take his arm over her shoulder and help keep him upright.
Greg sighed. "We really have to deal with your phobia."
"Tomorrow," Lissianna assured him, and heard the small, breathless laugh that escaped him. "What?"
"Nothing," he said, but she could hear the smile in his voice. "I'm just starting to believe that there might be a tomorrow for us, after all."
"Oh, there will be. Lots of them," she assured him, and started to urge him forward. "The door is this way, right?"
"Right."
Lissianna knew the moment they stepped out of the sun even before Greg said, "We're in the house. It's dark. You can probably open your eyes."
She lifted her head so that she would be staring straight
ahead and not anywhere near Greg, then opened her eyes. They were in the hallway that led from the sunroom to the front door. Lissianna hesitated, thinking she should probably leave Greg there and go take care of Dwayne, but she was reluctant to leave him alone. She had no idea where Dwayne was and didn't want the man finding Greg while she was searching the house for him. But she couldn't drag him with her.
Lissianna sighed, then moved toward the nearest door, pulling Greg with her. The door led to a kitchen. There were no lamps lit, and the windows were curtained, but some sunlight was creeping around the edges, making it bright enough to see. She helped Greg into the room and eased him down to sit on a chair at the table, her glance catching on a stack of mail resting there. The top one read Dwayne Chisholm, but the one beneath it said Mr. and Mrs. Jack Chisholm.
"This must be his parents' house," Greg murmured, looking over the mail as well. "He must still live with his mom and dad."
"Yes," Lissianna agreed.
"Judging by the stack of unopened mail, they must be on a trip at the moment," Greg said with a sigh.
"Yes," Lissianna repeated, then glanced toward the door to the kitchen as the sound of a vehicle coming up the driveway reached her ear.
"Father Joseph's back," Greg said grimly.
"Stay here." Lissianna turned away to move back to the door, then eased out into the hall. She heard what she thought was a car door slam as she started up the hall, then another and then the distinctive sound of the side door of a van opening. Had Father Joseph brought company, Lissianna, wondered anxiously.
She eased to the window beside the front door and peered through a crack in the curtain, ready to break and duck into the nearest room at any moment if they were approaching the house, but she felt sure she had a little time since she hadn't heard the side door of the van close. Presumably, they were retrieving something from the van.
"Probably a sword to cut off our heads after they stake us," Lissianna muttered to herself with disgust, then stilled as she saw who was in the front yard standing around Dwayne.
"Greg, it's okay," she yelled back up the hall, then pulled the door open and stepped out onto the porch.
"Lissianna!" Juli spotted her first and came running up to the porch. Vicki, Elspeth, and Marguerite were hard on her heels. Only Martine remained behind and Lissianna knew the woman must be inside Dwayne's thoughts, controlling him and wiping them clean. While he had seen her with Thomas, Jeanne Louise, and Mirabeau at the bar, Dwayne hadn't met the rest of her family so wouldn't have been at all wary at their approach, leaving him vulnerable to their control. Though Lissianna had to wonder what he must have thought when the van had pulled up and a whole passel of women had tumbled out.
"Can we come out yet?" she heard Thomas shout from the van.
"Yes," Marguerite called. "Martine has him under control."
Mirabeau, Jeanne Louise, and Thomas started to scramble out of the van.
"Bring blood if you have any! Greg is in a bad way," Lissianna shouted, then staggered as the twins reached her and both tried to hug her at once.
"Are you all right?" Marguerite asked as she mounted the porch.
Lissianna nodded and smiled at her as her cousins released her. "How did you find us?"
"When you did not come home, we got worried. There was still the little matter of the staking to solve and while I knew you did not think it was your friend Debbie, I was still suspicious. So, when you failed to show up, I called the shelter. A girl named Kelly answered your phone. She said you and some 'really cute guy' had left with Father Joseph."
Lissianna nodded slowly. The office she and Kelly shared overlooked the parking lot. The girl must have reached the office and been looking out the window when she and Greg had gotten out of his car to get into the van.
"I didn't know what to do then, so we all piled into the van and headed down to the shelter," her mother continued. "Your friend Debbie was just leaving."
Lissianna grimaced. Debbie was worse than she for working late. Since her husband's death, she seemed to avoid being home alone.
"Since she was there and we had not sorted out the staking business, I read her mind and found out that she had only told her mother and someone named Claudia that you were at her house that night, but that Father Joseph had been there when she had told the girl."
"So we suspected Father Joseph was our man," Thomas announced, mounting the porch with a cooler in hand. Blood for Greg, Lissianna knew.
"Aunt Marguerite had us bring it from the house when we left... Just in case," Thomas explained, when he saw her peering at the cooler. "Where's Greg?"
"End of the hall, last door on the left," Lissianna answered, wishing she could go with him, but it would be a waste of time. The moment she saw his Woody chest she'd faint. That thought made her ask, "I don't suppose you have an extra shirt with you that Greg could borrow?"
"I'll figure out something," Thomas told her, and moved off into the house.
Lissianna turned to her mother. "Were you guys the emergency at the shelter?"
Jeanne Louise grinned. "Yes. We knew we had to find Father Joseph. We had that girl Kelly call him, but he wouldn't say where he was, so we had to invent an emergency to get him back to the shelter so we could read his mind and find out where you were."
"And all the time we were afraid it would be too late," Elspeth murmured quietly.
"But it wasn't." Lissianna reached out and squeezed her cousin's shoulder. "What did you do with Father Joseph?"
"Lucian is dealing with him," Marguerite informed her. "He will wipe his mind, then meet us back at the house."
"And Martine is taking care of Dwayne," Lissianna said, glancing toward the front yard, but the couple was no longer there.
"Martine took him around back," Marguerite said quietly. "She needs quiet to do her work. It's more difficult when they know what we are."
Lissianna nodded.
"Come." Marguerite urged her toward the porch steps. "You look pale. You need blood. We have another cooler in the van."
"We don't have an IV though," Jeanne Louise warned her. "But Thomas said if we have you close your eyes, we can pop the bags on your teeth and it works."
"Yes," Marguerite said, then shook her head. "I wish I had thought of it years ago. It is much faster than an IV."
"What about Greg?" Lissianna asked, glancing back into the dark hallway behind her.
"Thomas will take care of him," Marguerite assured her. "They'll be along shortly.
Lissianna nodded and allowed herself to be led from the porch.
"So?" her mother asked as they approached the van. "Have you and Greg sorted everything out?"
"Yes," Lissianna murmured and a small smile played around her lips. "We have finally talked and have agreed to be life mates."
Marguerite snorted. "There was never any doubt that you were life mates, dear. You just had to realize it... and it took you long enough to get around to that."
