“I know.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
Rather than answer, she leaned in and shocked Sydney down to the marrow by laying her lips softly on hers. The kiss was gentle, but persuasive. And though she didn’t go further, the message was clear.
She would do whatever it took.
“You’re asking a lot of me.” Sydney took a shaky breath and eased back. Her lips still thrummed with the power from Emily’s kiss. No power burned like that of intention. “You know how I feel about this whole vampire thing. I’m not there yet in my own head, but you’re asking me to be your sire. If it can even be done, which I have my serious doubts about. And once you’re a vampire, if it works, then what? You have your sense of self back and all will be hunky-dory?” She gripped Emily’s wrist when she shifted her face away. “Or is there more?”
“That would be plenty.”
“Is there more?” she repeated softly, already knowing the answer.
“I’m going to kill him. Happy now?” Emily’s head whipped back and their gazes collided with enough furor to shoot sparks. “He deserves to die. And I deserve to be the one who sends him to hell.”
Kellan tightened his leather jacket around himself as he walked the darkened street toward Pastry ’n’ Joe. It was heading toward midnight, and no one was about though it was a balmy early summer night. Such was the allure of a small town. Not a damn thing open past nine o’clock, but lots of privacy for nocturnal activities, should one know how to blend.
As he’d been blending for thirty years now, he’d grown used to never staying too long in any one plac
e. Already he and Lucas had lived in Nettles for going on two years. They could spare a few more, but then it would be time to pick the next nondescript town in nowhere, USA. Not aging was a problem. Better to move on before anyone asked any pesky, unanswerable questions.
Would Sydney go with him? He shook his head as he lifted his collar against a sudden gust of wind. Premature to wonder, since she’d yet to give him another chance to show he wasn’t an insensitive brute. Hell, they’d never even been on a date. After all, Sydney had been unconscious most of the hours they’d spent together.
Probably why their relationship had lasted as long as it had, he mused sourly.
He turned on to the block that held the coffee shop and quickened his step. He knew she was still at work because her car—the one he’d delivered to her and left outside her apartment—was parked at the end of the lot. But the lights in Pastry ’n’ Joe were out and when he tried the door, it was locked.
Panic scraped icy nails down his throat, though he couldn’t have said why. Maybe she’d gone into the storeroom or—
Then he saw her, bent over a motionless figure on the black-and-white tiled floor. And he saw the blood.
Jesus Christ, what had she done?
He shook the door, rattling it in its hinges. “Sydney,” he said in a low, insistent voice, knowing she would hear him.
Her tear-streaked face lifted, caught in a beam of moonlight. “Kellan!” He saw her lips move around his name, but he didn’t hear it. Didn’t hear anything but her sobs as she ran to the door and pulled it open, then threw herself into his arms. “Help her. Lord, please help her. She’s going to die.”
Without letting her go—and oh God, did it feel good to hold her again—he moved into the shop, half-dragging her when her feet remained rooted to the floor.
“What happened? You bit her,” he said gently when she only shook her head. “Who is she? A patron? Someone who works here?” He knelt and parted the tangle of oak-brown hair that covered her deathly white skin. He took her face in by inches, his dread magnifying.
“Sydney,” he breathed, not only afraid for her victim now, but for her.
She crouched beside him. “It’s not too late, is it? Tell me it’s not too late!”
He gripped her chin, wet with her tears and smeared with blood—Emily’s blood—and shook her until her streaming eyes leveled on his. “You need to tell me exactly what happened, so I can fix this.”
Because if I can’t, there will be three of us dead tonight.
Kellan closed his eyes. And he wouldn’t blame Luke one bit.
“I didn’t want to do it. Honestly. It wasn’t my idea. I tried to convince her she didn’t want this life. I don’t want it, so why would I inflict it on my best friend?”
Her words drove one more stake through his heart, but the hits kept coming. He should be used to them by now. “Your best friend?”
“Yes. We’re friends now. She understands. She doesn’t judge me. Oh God, I should have thrown her out of here when she came up with her stupid plan, no matter the reasons.” Her throat worked as she stroked Emily’s cheek with the back of her fingers. “She’s Lucas’s mate.”
“Yes.”