Page 25 of Love, Rekindled

“Wait…” Levet didn’t need to strain to hear the shrill scream of fear. It came through loud and clear. “No, we had a deal.”

“Consider it canceled.”

Levet hissed as the presence of the second vampire simply disappeared. Poof. He was gone.

“Umm.” Bertha took a step backward at the sound of a door being pulled open. “I think it’s time to leave.”

“Good idea,” Levet muttered.

The click of leather soles against cement echoed through the tunnel, and Bertha reached out to grab Levet by the wing, dragging him farther down the main tunnel.

“Let’s leave faster.”

Levet clicked his tongue. Had she seen his legs? They weren’t built for speed. “I am going as fast as I can,” he protested.

There was a blast of icy air from behind. Levet didn’t turn his head. He assumed the vampire had caught sight of them and was now hot on their trail.

“This way.” Bertha tugged him into one of the side passages.

They sprinted through the darkness, attempting to stay ahead of the pursuing vampire. But just as Levet dared to hope they might avoid a painful death, a solid cement wall appeared ahead of them.

“Uh-oh,” he muttered. “Dead end.”

Turning to discover if they had time to escape, Levet searched for their pursuer. There was nothing. Just a thick, empty darkness. Was it possible they had shaken the vampire? Just as he dared to hope it was possible, he heard a dull, ominous thud overhead. As if someone above them had dropped something. Something really, really heavy. Like the Eiffel Tower. Seconds later, the ceiling began to form fissures that spread from side to side. Dust filled the air, and the fissures widened to cracks. The next thing Levet knew, the cement turned to rubble.

“Well, this is a bummer,” Bertha said a second before the ceiling collapsed on their heads.

CHAPTER 6

Mere secondsafter the sun slid over the horizon, Azrael led Jayla out of the hotel and toward the nearby mountain.

He wasn’t only in a hurry to get his sword back—although that was high on the list. But it’d also been nothing less than torture spending hours alone with the glorious female. The fierce desire to take her in his arms and claim her had slammed through him with the force of a tornado. It was only the knowledge that he wasn’t certain that Jayla’s power could retrieve his sword that leashed his instincts.

Even if Jayla was prepared to become his mate—and that was still a bigif—he wouldn’t burden her with a male who would be dead within a few weeks. If not days. Once he had the sword in his hands, he would devote the rest of eternity to convincing her that they belonged together.

Glancing over his shoulder, he watched as Jayla pushed her way through the heavy underbrush.

“Do you know where you’re going?” she demanded, obviously not enjoying her scuffle with Mother Nature.

“I found a trail the first time I tried to get into the cave,” he assured her, leaping onto a tall boulder and then moving onto the ledge that wound its way up the steep incline.

Jayla quickly walked at his side. The path was narrow, but vampires possessed an uncanny grace and balance.

“How close did you get?” she asked, tilting back her head to study the peek far above them.

“To the edge of the ridge.” Azrael pointed toward the crest just below the cave. “Then, a blast of fire nearly ended everything. If I hadn’t taken a dive off the side of the mountain, I would be ash.”

His tone was light, but at the time, he’d felt a sharp-edged terror. For his very long existence, he’d been beyond immortal. He’d become accustomed to taking risks with no worry of consequences. The realization that he would no longer return from the dead without his sword, combined with his weakened condition, had forced Azrael to confront his impending death with blinding clarity.

He’d realized what was important. Or, more importantly, preciselywhowas important.

“Ah, that explains the battle Siros was talking about,” she murmured.

Azrael frowned before he recalled the manager whining about his extended stay when he’d crawled back to the hotel, broken and bloody from his fall.

“I didn’t want to confess that I’d been fleeing from a dragon,” he admitted. “Siros would never have let me through the door.”

Jayla sent him a wry glance. “Was it when you were diving off the mountain that you decided to invite me to confront a hormonal dragon protecting her egg?”

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