Page 22 of Revelations

“Changed your mind, huh?”

A growl escaped her lips just as the door to the room blew open. Acrid black smoke and dust billowed in, making it impossible to see anything. She expected vamps to flood into the room to wreak vengeance for their now really dead, not just undead, boss. Instead, a familiar tall form stood silhouetted in the doorway.

The smoke cleared to reveal his beautiful face, marred by a scowl. His icy blue eyes narrowed as he took in the scene before him.

Jasper.

“What the bloody hell?!”

Kael’s body tensed underneath her. His arms remained tight around her. “Well, I see the cavalry has arrived.” Greylyn tried to push off of him, but he had no intention of letting go. “As you can see, sir, we were doing just fine on our own. Would you mind giving us a few minutes alone?” One hand waved the intruder away.

“I’m just here for her. You can rot in…”

She’d seen that murderous expression before, on more than one occasion. Jasper’s grip on his rage was frayed to the breaking point. If she did not act fast, he would rip Kael into shreds.

Greylyn bolted up. She would deal with Jasper’s anger later, once they were out of there. First, she needed to diffuse the situation, so that they could escape. “Later, Jasper. Business first.”

She hoped that her eyes conveyed her silent plea to not press the issue at this exact moment. His intelligence most likely would concede that now was not the time, but sometimes emotion got the best of him…and it usually did where Kael was concerned. There would be a reckoning, but it had to wait.

“Did you happen to see any humans?”

Growling in disgust, Jasper shook his head as if to dislodge the image of Greylyn and Kael from his brain. “If you mean that jerk from the club…yes. He’s toast. Sorry. Found the girl wandering the woods on the way here.”

“I’m guessing the explosion was your doing then, not the vamps.” Jasper did have a proclivity for fireworks.

Jasper chuckled. “You know how much I love to make things goboom.”

Kael was still seated on the ground. “You know what they say—the bigger the explosion, the smaller the…”

Jasper lunged for Kael.

“No!” Greylyn jumped in front of him with her hands outstretched and a withering look at them both.

Jasper turned away, but not before Kael flashed a toothy grin.

“Cut it out, both of you!”

One more instance of their ego-fueled feud, and she wouldgladly sucker-punch them both. More smoke billowed into the room from the corridor, making them all cough.

She waved her hands in front of her face. “Let’s get out of here first…alive. After that, you two can kill each other.”

Both men made to grab her arm, but she twisted out of their reach. She did not need any of their help to walk!

Greylyn stepped over the bodies of dead vamps littering the doorway and sprinted down the smoke-filled corridor.

A painful twinge ricocheted through her head as fierce as the explosion, but with more directed energy.

As it was in the beginning…

She slid to a stop, not bothering to glance back at the two men behind her. Without a word to either of them, she pivoted down the corridor leading to the garden.

“Darling, the exit is the other direction,” Jasper shouted after her.

Despite shouts from Jasper and Kael, Greylyn fought her way through the smoke and rubble. An unknown force propelled her back to the conservatory, as the words echoed louder in her head.

Just as she grabbed the handle to open the door into the garden, the flesh on her hand sizzled, but oddly she did not feel a thing. Uncertainty reared in her mind.What the hell am I doing?

Common sense screamed for her to turn around and run in the other direction, but something called to her inside the garden. It was not going to allow her to deny its will.

---